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Hepatorenal syndrome (HRS) is a unique form of renal dysfunction that results from circulatory hemodynamic dysfunction in advanced liver disease. We aimed to determine longitudinal trends in both all-cause and cause-specific readmissions for HRS in the United States. Using the National Readmission Database (2010–2018), we identified adult HRS patients during index admission via ICD codes. Fisher’s exact test and Cox regression analysis were used to compare proportions and compute adjusted p-values, respectively. Regression models were adjusted for gender, age, the Charlson comorbidity index, median household income, and hospital factors. A total of 169,522 HRS patients were included in the analysis (overall mean age 58.97 years). The incidence of HRS hospitalization increased from 5.30% in 2010 to 5.84% in 2018 (p < 0.01). Over the same duration, all-cause readmission at 30 days showed an overall increasing trend from 19.81% to 19.99% (trend p < 0.01). HRS-specific readmission at 30 days following an index hospitalization ranged from 13.60 to 15.98, with an overall increasing trend in the study period (2010–2018). While cirrhosis, hepatic failure, and infection were uniformly the three most common causes of readmission throughout the study period, cirrhosis and infection showed an upward trend. Rising readmissions, especially with hepatic failure and infection, in HRS patients signal a need for national strategies to manage and prevent HRS towards reducing its healthcare burden.

Cell micromanipulation is an important technique in the field of biomedical engineering. Microgrippers play a crucial role in connecting macroscopic and microscopic objects in micromanipulation systems. However, since the operated biological cells are deformable, vulnerable, and typically distributed in sizes ranging from micrometers to millimeters, it poses a huge challenge to microgripper performance. To solve this problem, this paper develops a dual-driven piezoelectric microgripper with a high displacement amplification ratio, large stroke, and parallel gripping. By adopting modular configuration, three kinds of flexure-based mechanisms, including the lever mechanism, Scott–Russell mechanism, and parallelogram mechanism are connected in series to realize three-stage amplification, which effectively makes up for the shortage of small output displacement of the piezoelectric actuator. At the same time, the use of the parallelogram mechanism also isolates the parasitic rotation movement, and realizes the parallel movement of the gripping jaws. In addition, the kinematics, statics, and dynamics models of the microgripper are established by using the pseudo-rigid body and Lagrange methods, and the key geometric parameters are also optimized. Finite element simulation and experimental tests verify the effectiveness of the developed microgripper. The results show that the developed microgripper allows an amplification ratio of 46.4, a clamping stroke of 2180 μm, and a natural frequency of 203.1 Hz. Based on the developed microgripper, the nondestructive micromanipulation of zebrafish embryos is successfully realized.

Abstract Designing next‐generation molecular devices typically necessitates plentiful oxygen‐bearing sites to facilitate multiple‐electron transfers. However, the theoretical limits of existing materials for energy conversion and information storage devices make it inevitable to hunt for new competitors. Polyoxometalates (POMs), a unique class of metal‐oxide clusters, have been investigated exponentially due to their structural diversity and tunable redox properties. POMs behave as electron‐sponges owing to their intrinsic ability of reversible uptake‐release of multiple electrons. In this review, numerous POM‐frameworks together with desired features of a contender material and inherited properties of POMs are systematically discussed to demonstrate how and why the electron‐sponge‐like nature of POMs is beneficial to design next‐generation water oxidation/reduction electrocatalysts, and neuromorphic nonvolatile resistance‐switching random‐access memory devices. The aim is to converge the attention of scientists who are working separately on electrocatalysts and memory devices, on a point that, although the application types are different, they all hunt for a material that could exhibit electron‐sponge‐like feature to realize boosted performances and thus, encouraging the scientists of two completely different fields to explore POMs as imperious contenders to design next‐generation nanodevices. Finally, challenges and promising prospects in this research field are also highlighted.

Meat and meat product irradiation is a non-thermal sterilization technology that uses high-energy ionizing rays to improve safety and extend storage period, effectively killing spoilage microorganisms and extending the storage period of meat and meat products. Previous studies have focused on the sterilization and preservation effects of irradiation treatment on meat products, as well as the impact of irradiation on meat protein and lipid oxidation patterns. In recent years, it has been found that irradiation can maintain and improve the nutritional composition and quality characteristics of meat by synergizing other techniques while achieving freshness, highlighting good prospects for application, especially in the field of prepared dishes such as Chinese and minced dishes. This paper reviews the application of food irradiation technology in the preservation of meat products and its effect on quality and texture characteristics, and proposes the use of auxiliary processes such as antioxidant technology, edible coating and gasification packaging to maintain or improve the original quality and flavour of meat products, as well as a hot trend for future research in food irradiation science, with a view to providing a reference for the scientific application of irradiation technology in meat industrialisation.

Practical application of a Si anode in a high-energy-density battery cannot be achieved due to the huge volume expansion of these anodes. Researchers have focused on binders of the anode to restrict volume expansion in order to address this issue, as the hydrogen bonds and mechanical properties of binders can be used to enhance adhesion and accommodate the volume changes of a Si anode. Herein, we comprehensively consider binders’ hydrogen bonds, mechanical properties, stability, and compatibility with the electrolyte solution, and design an ether-/ester-/fluorine-rich composite polymer, named P(TFEMA-co-IBVE). The proposed binder formula possesses outstanding stability, adhesion, and mechanical strength; moreover, it can accommodate the dramatic volume changes of a Si electrode and exhibits excellent electrochemical performance, achieving a high areal capacity of about 5.4 mA∙h∙cm−2. This novel polymer design may be applied to other electrode materials in the next generation of lithium-ion batteries.

Designing biomimetic olfactory neuroepithelium (BONe) with subnanosized active domains as artificial olfactory receptors (ORs) is highly desirable to sense various colorless and odorless hazardous odorants which find no appropriate ORs in the human olfactory neuroepithelium (ONe), yet challenging because of the unsuitability of biomolecules for a design that requires effective electronic features and stability. Herein, a DNA‐incorporated 3D BONe is introduced, where DNA facilitates optimal tuning of d‐band center, and in situ anchoring of PdO2 subnanoscale clusters (PdO2‐sNCs) on the exfoliated single‐layer reduced graphene oxide (SL rGO), to mimic wrinkled morphology of natural ONe. Unprecedentedly, BONe demonstrates benchmarked H2‐sensing performance (small recovery time of ≈30 s with a limit of detection of 50 ppb) at room temperature with yearlong durability, satisfying prerequisites of safe adoption of H2 clean energy. The great recovery is innovatively illustrated by the downshift of d‐band center of PdO2‐sNCs and strong electron transport of SL‐rGO network. An adsorption/desorption model is proposed to clarify the sensing mechanism. BONe design may eventually be integrated with artificial intelligent electronics for ppb‐level sensing of harmful gases to ensure accident prevention in modern public and military environments.

Chitosan/activated clay composite was prepared with chitosan solution and activated clay. With the decolorization ratio of sugar juice as an index, the effects of reaction temperature, reaction time, chitosan dosage and molecular weight on the preparation of chitosan/activated clay composite were investigated. The optimum conditions were obtained as follows: temperature 60 ℃, reaction time 7 h, chitosan dosage 2.0 g and molecular weight 2,000,000. The decolorization rate of the composite was up to 96.2%, which was significantly better than 56.7% of activated clay and 42.2% of chitosan. The decolorization rate of the structure of the composite was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analysis. The results showed that chitosan was evenly distributed on the surface of activated clay, forming a more stable composite structure and maintaining the porous structure of activated clay. The thermal stability of the composite was higher than that of chitosan. The adsorption experiment of gallic acid in sugar juice showed that the adsorption kinetics of the composite conformed to the quasi second order kinetic model, the adsorption rate was controlled by the diffusion process outside the particles, and the adsorption process conformed to the Langmuir isothermal adsorption model, which was monolayer adsorption.

In order to explore the influence of hydraulic cavitation modification on the aggregate structure and physicochemical properties of corn starch, this experiment took corn starch as the research object, and treated it with hydraulic cavitation for 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 min, respectively. After treatment, the particle size distribution, microscopic morphology structure, crystalline structure, molecular short-range order structure, the swelling power and solubility of corn starch were tested. The results showed that after hydrodynamic cavitation treatment of starch, the average particle size of corn starch granules increased, conical cracks and unevenly distributed circular pores appeared on the surface of starch granules, and the relative crystallinity increased from 22.25% to 29.23%. The degree of molecular short-range order first increased and then decreased, the swelling power increased from 9.87 to 13.10 g·g−1, and the solubility increased from 8.94% to 11.76%. The cavitation effect produced by hydraulic cavitation could change the aggregated structure of corn starch.

Abstract The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity of single‐atom catalysts (SACs) is closely related to the coordination environment of the active site. Oxygen‐coordinated atomic metal species bring about unique features beyond nitrogen‐coordinated atomic metal species due to the fact that the M–O bond is weaker than the M–N bond. Herein, a series of metal–oxygen–carbon structured low‐nucleus clusters (LNCs) are successfully anchored on the surface of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (M‐MWCNTs, M = Ni, Co, or Fe) through a foolproof low‐temperature gas transfer (300°C) method without any further treatment. The morphology and coordination configuration of the LNCs at the atomic level were confirmed by comprehensive characterizations. The synthetic Ni‐MWCNTs electrocatalyst features excellent OER activity and stability under alkaline conditions, transcending the performances of Co‐MWCNTs, Fe‐MWCNTs and RuO2. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the moderate oxidation of low‐nucleus Ni clusters changes the unoccupied orbital of Ni atoms, thereby lowering the energy barrier of the OER rate‐limiting step and making the OER process more energy‐efficient. This study demonstrates a novel versatile platform for large‐scale manufacturing of oxygen‐coordinated LNC catalysts.

Abstract Background Previous studies indicated that type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is related to an increased lung cancer risk, but its role in the prognosis of NSCLC remains conflicting. This study investigated the impact of blood glucose control on the outcomes in NSCLC patients with T2DM treated with platinum‐based doublets. Methods Clinicopathological and survival data from 191 T2DM patients with advanced NSCLC, who received platinum‐based chemotherapy, were retrospectively analyzed. Based on the blood glucose conditions during chemotherapy, patients were classified into poor (n = 84) and good control (n = 107) groups. Progression‐free survival (PFS) was assessed using the Kaplan‐Meier method. Results The median PFS among patients with good glycemic control [197.0 (95% CI: 136.3‐257.7) days] was longer than that among those with poor control [132.0 (95% CI: 112.5‐151.5) days] (P = .0003). Further subgroup analysis of lung squamous carcinoma and adenocarcinoma patients showed that the median PFS of the good control group was also significantly longer than that of the poor control group [179.0 (95% CI: 78.4‐279.6) days vs 125.0 (95% CI: 110.9‐139.1) days, P = .0014; 197.0 (95% CI: 124.3‐269.7) days vs 154.0 (95% CI: 129.9‐178.1) days, P = .0359; respectively]. The incidence rates of side effects were similar among patients with good glycemic control and those with poor glycemic control (all P > .05). Conclusions Satisfactory glycemic control during platinum‐based chemotherapy might provide a survival benefit to T2DM patients with NSCLC. Further studies are warranted to confirm our findings.

The effect of ultrasound on the kinetics of anti-solvent crystallization of sucrose was studied. The influence of temperature, stirring rate, supersaturation and ultrasonic power on the anti-solvent crystallization of sucrose was investigated. The relationship between infrared spectral characteristic band of sucrose and supersaturation was determined with an online reaction analyzer. The crystal size distribution of sucrose was detected by a laser particle-size analyzer. Ultrasound accelerated the crystallization process, and had no impact on the crystal shape. Abegg, Stevens and Larson model was fitted to the experimental data, and the results were the following: At 298.15 K, the average size of crystals was 133.8 μm and nucleation rate was 4.87 × 109 m−3·s−1 without ultrasound. In an ultrasonic field, the average size was 80.5 μm, and nucleation rate was 1.18 × 1011 m−3·s−1. Ultrasound significantly reduced the average size of crystals and improved the nucleation rate. It was observed that the crystal size decreased with the increase of stirring rate in silent environment. When the stirring rate increased from 250 to 400 rpm, the average size decreased from 173.0 to 132.9 μm. However, the stirring rate had no significant impact on the crystal size in the ultrasonic field. In addition, the activation energy of anti-solvent crystallization of sucrose was decreased, and the kinetic constant of nucleation rate was increased due to the effect of ultrasound. In the ultrasonic field, the activation energy was reduced from 20422.5 to 790.5 J·mol−1, and the kinetic constant was increased from 9.76 × 102 to 8.38 × 108.

Chitosan nanoparticles (NPs) exhibit great potential in drug-controlled release systems. A controlled hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) technique was developed to intensify the emulsion crosslinking process for the synthesis of chitosan NPs. Experiments were performed using a circular venturi and under varying operating conditions, i.e., types of oil, addition mode of glutaraldehyde (Glu) solution, inlet pressure (Pin), and rheological properties of chitosan solution. Palm oil was more appropriate for use as the oil phase for the HC-intensified process than the other oil types. The addition mode of water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion containing Glu (with Span 80) was more favorable than the other modes for obtaining a narrow distribution of chitosan NPs. The minimum size of NPs with polydispersity index of 0.342 was 286.5 nm, and the maximum production yield (Py) could reach 47.26%. A positive correlation was found between the size of NPs and the droplet size of W/O emulsion containing chitosan at increasing Pin. Particle size, size distribution, and the formation of NPs were greatly dependent on the rheological properties of the chitosan solution. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis indicated that the molecular structure of palm oil was unaffected by HC-induced effects. Compared with ultrasonic horn, stirring-based, and conventional drop-by-drop processes, the application of HC to intensify the emulsion crosslinking process allowed the preparation of a finer and a narrower distribution of chitosan NPs in a more energy-efficient manner. The novel route developed in this work is a viable option for chitosan NP synthesis.

The lumped kinetic model for the degradation reactions of chitosan by hydrodynamic cavitation was investigated in this study. The molecular weight distributions and mass concentrations were determined by gel permeation chromatograph (GPC). The degradation products were divided into several lumps according to their molecular weights. The appropriate number of lumps for the kinetic study was determined by comparing the residual sum of squares (RSS) values among different models. The RSS of six-lumped model (5.36 × 10−3) was relatively small and the estimation of parameters was simpler than other models. In this paper, six-lumped kinetic model was adopted and the corresponding reaction network was established. The kinetic parameters were estimated with the Levenberg-Marquardt, and the results showed that the degradation reaction of chitosan was mainly dominated by the formation of degradation products with similar molecular weights. The maximum value of kinetic parameters on the diagonal of the reaction network (1.63 × 10−1) was much larger than that of non-diagonal kinetic parameters (3.78 × 10−2). According to the results calculated and measured under different conditions, this model could accurately predict the concentration distributions of lumps in the reaction network, and most of the average absolute deviation were smaller than 9.3%.

Abstract Construction of noise model is an important task in the analysis of Global Positioning System (GPS) reference station coordinate time series. Ignoring the relationship between the noise on different components within a GPS station network may affect the accuracy of station's velocity and its uncertainty. In view of this problem, we propose to use the singular value decomposition (SVD) method to establish a new three‐dimensional (3‐D) noise model for GPS station networks. Our simulation tests show that the accuracy of the noise amplitude obtained based on the proposed 3‐D noise model is 30–50% higher than that directly obtained from Create and Analyze Time Series (CATS) software, thereby improving the accuracy of the velocity uncertainty by approximately two times. Taking the coordinate time series of 82 GPS stations from the Crustal Motion Observation Network of China (CMONOC) as an example, we confirm that significant correlation exists among noise amplitude estimates in the different components of the CMONOC stations. In general, the variation of white noise (WN) amplitude is 2–6% smaller than that of flicker noise (FN) amplitude, and the FN amplitude in the vertical component is 1% larger than that in the horizontal component. Compared with the velocity uncertainty obtained from CATS software, the variations of the velocity uncertainty obtained from the new 3‐D noise model in the horizontal components (7% for North, 8% for East) are slightly less than that in the Up component (9%). However, the velocity estimation is hardly affected by the new 3‐D noise model.

The shuttle effect hinders the practical application of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries due to the poor affinity between a substrate and Li polysulfides (LiPSs) and the sluggish transition of soluble LiPSs to insoluble Li2S or elemental S. Here, we report that Ni hexatomic clusters embedded in a nitrogen-doped three-dimensional (3D) graphene framework (Ni-N/G) possess stronger interaction with soluble polysulfides than that with insoluble polysulfides. The synthetic electrocatalyst deployed in the sulfur cathode plays a multifunctional role: (i) selectively adsorbing the polysulfides dissolved in the electrolyte, (ii) expediting the sluggish liquid-solid phase transformations at the active sites as electrocatalysts, and (iii) accelerating the kinetics of the electrochemical reaction of multielectron sulfur, thereby inhibiting the dissolution of LiPSs. The constructed S@Ni-N/G cathode delivers an areal capacity of 9.43 mAh cm-2 at 0.1 C at S loading of 6.8 mg cm-2, and it exhibits a gravimetric capacity of 1104 mAh g-1 with a capacity fading rate of 0.045% per cycle over 50 cycles at 0.2 C at S loading of 2.0 mg cm-2. This work opens a rational approach to achieve the selective adsorption and expediting of polysulfide transition for the performance enhancement of Li-S batteries.

Intratumoral immunity heterogeneity is poorly characterized. Here the authors apply exome sequencing, transcriptome profiling and T-cell repertoire profiling to multiple loci of non-small-cell lung cancer patients' biopsies and find high spatial immune heterogeneity with local mutational burden correlating with T-cell clonal expansion but not with cytotoxicity.

Abstract Exceptional performance reported for battery materials and devices in the scientific literature is often measured under conditions that are not aligned with practical applications. Aiming to bridge the gap between academia and industry, this Comment advocates the best practices for gauging performance and proposes guidelines on measurements with respect to a list of key metrics such as capacity, cyclability, Coulombic efficiency and electrolyte consumption.

This review paper summarizes the occurrence, removal and ecological risk of contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) reported in landfill leachate in China since 1996 (43 studies in 10 regions). Results show that many more studies are conducted in developed southeastern China than in developing western and northeastern regions in China. Phthalate esters (PAEs, with 15 studies) and pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs, with 13 studies) are the two most frequently studied CEC classes. Concentrations of nine CECs classes were in a wide range from 0.03 (organochlorine pesticides) to approximately 4500 μg/L (alkylphenol polyethoxylates/bisphenol analog). Meanwhile, concentrations of CEC compounds range from below detection limit (e.g. doxycycline) to approximately 4500 μg/L (bisphenol A). Several PAEs (diethyl phthalate, di-n-butyl phthalate, and di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate) and PPCPs (diclofenac and gemfibrizol) have significant variation between sampling sites. Typically, advanced treatment processes can achieve higher removal efficiencies of CEC compounds from landfill leachate compared with conventional treatment processes. Furthermore, environmental risk assessments of CEC compounds in treated landfill leachate using a risk quotient method show that 2 (substituted) polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (sPAHs) (benzo(a)anthracene and benzo(b)fluoranthene), 2 PPCPs (bezafibrate and sulfapyridine), γ-hexachlorocyclohexane, and bisphenol A pose high risk. The importance of monitoring and potential risks of CECs in the leachate to vicinity aquatic environment cross China is addressed. Keywords: Contaminants of emerging concern (CEC), Landfill leachate, Occurrence, Temporal/spatial variation, Removal, Environmental risk assessment