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The compact structure of a chlorine-doped continuous CNT sheet/polyvinylidene fluoride (Cl-CNT sheet/PVDF) was successfully optimized by means of a hot-press treatment to improve the mechanical and dielectric properties with a high densification degree. Then, the densified Cl-CNT sheet/PVDF dielectric layer was inserted between two PVDF insulating layers to fabricate a sandwich composite. It was found that the dielectric and mechanical properties were effectively enhanced, with a dielectric permittivity of 40.4 (@10 2 Hz), a dielectric loss of 0.16 (@10 2 Hz), a tensile strength of 139 MPa, and a tensile modulus of 4.4 GPa under a hot-pressing pressure of 20 MPa. Furthermore, the densified Cl-CNT sheet/PVDF was used as an electrode in a multilayer sandwich composite film, and good performance was obtained. The improvement mechanism was discussed and the studied CNT composite and other dielectric composites were compared. It demonstrates great potential for applications in dielectric and electrode materials to achieve structural and functional integration. more...

Depression is a highly prevalent disorder that affects more than 300 million adults worldwide in 2015. Depression also frequently coexists with many other conditions such as osteoporosis and one-third of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) survivors had depressive symptoms. Antidepressants have become the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. In addition to the regular process, drug discovery and development (R&D) for depression presents extra challenges because of the heterogeneity of the symptoms and various co-occurring disorders. Botanical medicine with multi-functional nature has been proposed to be more effective, providing rapid control of core and comorbid conditions of depression. With the technical advances in analytical instruments, metabolomics is entering into a "new generation". Next-generation metabolomics (NGM) has the capability to comprehensively characterize drug-induced metabolic changes in the biological systems. NGM has demonstrated great potential in all the stages of pharmaceutical R&D in the last 10 years. Albiflorin isolated from Peony roots is a promising drug candidate with multi-target for depression and is currently under development by Beijing Wonner Biotech. In this work, we summarized the common analytical platforms for NGM and its main applications in drug R&D. We used albiflorin as an example to illustrate how NGM improves our understanding of drug candidate actions and facilitates drug safety evaluation. Future directions on how to expand the use of NGM for new antidepressant development in pharmaceutical industry were also discussed., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.org.) more...