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Irinotecan (also known as CPT-11) is a topoisomerase I inhibitor that is primarily used for the treatment of advanced colorectal cancer. CPT-11 and its active metabolite SN-38 can directly damage intestinal mucosal cells. In addition, CPT-11 can activate the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) inflammasome/nuclear factor kappa-B p65 (NF-κB p65) pathway, ultimately leading to intestinal inflammation-related injury. Shu Bu Wenshen Guchang recipe (SBWGR) has the spleen and kidneys. Herein, we investigated the effects of SBWGR on intestinal injury and the TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathways in mice with CPT-11-induced delayed-type diarrhea, aiming to provide evidence for the treatment of CPT-11-induced delayed-type diarrhea.Thirty tumor-bearing mice were divided into normal control, model control, octreotide, low dose SBWGR, and high dose SBWGR groups, with 6 mice in each group. After successful modelling of delayed diarrhea, the normal and model control groups were given equal amounts of saline for 5 consecutive days, and the other three groups gave the corresponding intra-drug administration. Body weight, tumor size, Chiu score, intestinal ischemia and reperfusion injury, and disease activity index (DAI) were recorded in each group. The levels of intestinal interleukin-1β (IL-1β), IL-18, and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Intestinal TLR4 and NF-κB p65 levels were measured by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and protein blotting.The weight of octreotide and kidney was higher than the control group (P0.05); The tumor volume comparison of the model control group, octreotide group, warm kidney intestine low dose group, and warm kidney intestine high dose group were not significantly different (P0.05). Octreotide group, intestinal Chiu score, diarrhea score, DAI level, intestinal inflammatory cytokines, IL-1β, IL-18 and TNF-α intestinal level, intestinal TLR4, NF-κB p65 mRNA protein expression levels were significantly lower than those of the model control group (P0.05), and the amount of the treatment group was increased (P0.05).SBWGR exerts a prominent protective effect on intestinal damage caused by CPT-11-induced delayed-type diarrhea, which may be achieved by inhibiting the activation of the intestinal TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway.

Three binuclear platinum(ii) complexes have been synthesized, exhibiting deep-red to near-infrared emissions. The electron-donating groups of and hydrogen bonds play important roles in the regulation of emissions.

Developing practical storage technologies for acetylene (C2H2) is important but challenging because C2H2 is useful but explosive. Here, a novel metal-organic framework (MOF) (FJI-H36) with adaptive channels was prepared. It can effectively capture C2H2 (159.9 cm3cm-3) at 1 atm and 298 K, possessing a record-high storage density (561 gL-1) but a very low adsorption enthalpy (28 kJmol-1) among all the reported MOFs. Structural analyses show that such excellent adsorption performance comes from the synergism of active sites, flexible framework, and matched pores; where the adsorbed-C2H2 can drive FJI-H36 to undergo induced-fit transformations step by step, including deformation/reconstruction of channels, contraction of pores, and transformation of active sites, finally leading to dense packing of C2H2. Moreover, FJI-H36 has excellent chemical stability and recyclability, and can be prepared on a large scale, enabling it as a practical adsorbent for C2H2. This will provide a useful strategy for developing practical and efficient adsorbents for C2H2 storage.

Lanthanide-doped ultrasmall nanoparticles (NPs) are attractive for diverse applications because of their unique optical properties compared with their bulk materials; their practical use, however, ...

Coordination hosts based on flexible ligands have received increasing attention due to their inherent adaptive cavities that often show induced-fit guest binding and catalysis like enzymes. Herein, we report the controlled self-assembly of a series of homo/heterometallic coordination hosts (Me

By tuning the reaction solvents, two 3D luminescent MOFs based on Cu3I3S clusters, {[Cu3I3(TPSA)]·DEF}n (1) and {[Cu3I3(TPSA)]·DMF}n (2), have been obtained by utilization of a conformationally flexible ligand N,N′,N′′-tri(3-pyridine)thiotriamide phosphate (TPSA) under solvothermal conditions. They display different fluorescence on account of the proportions between two emission bands, of which, 1 is an orange-yellow-light-emitting phosphor and 2 is a single component white luminescent material. Moreover, the two cluster-based MOFs show multi-stimuli responsive luminescence towards temperature, solvents and nitro explosives.

The development of practical porous materials for the selective capture of CO2 from flue gas and crude biogas is highly critical for both environment protection and energy safety. Here, a novel met...

Lanthanide-doped inorganic upconversion nanocrystals (UCNCs) are promising as fluorescent diagnostic and therapeutic agents for in vivo applications ranging from biological imaging to disease theranostics. However, all currently available lanthanide-doped inorganic UCNCs are not biodegradable and thus cannot be harmlessly eliminated from the body of living organism during a reasonable period of time, making their clinical translations nearly impossible. Here, we report a class of red-emitting biodegradable UCNCs based on Yb3+/Er3+-doped inorganic potassium heptafluozirconate (K3ZrF7:Yb/Er) that features a dynamically "soft" crystal lattice containing water-soluble [ZrF7]3- cluster and a K+ cation. The red-emitting K3ZrF7:Yb/Er UCNCs exhibit a pH-dependent biodegradation capability upon exposure to water both in vitro and in vivo, and the rapid biodegradation rate, monitored using the intrinsic red upconversion luminescence, can be tuned particularly in a mild acidic tumor microenvironment (pH ∼5-6). More importantly, the final biodegradation products of K3ZrF7:Yb/Er UCNCs can be excreted from the body of mice in a short period of time with no evidence of toxicity, in stark contrast to the nondegradable β-NaYF4:Yb/Er UCNCs that primarily accumulate in the main organs of mice. These findings described here unambiguously would benefit the future biomedical applications and clinical translations of lanthanide-doped inorganic UCNCs.

Neighbor discovery is a fundamental task to support many other services in wireless multihop networks (WMN). Most existing related methods in WMN rely heavily on the information of radio waves. To extend the way to the neighbor discovery, this paper introduces another interesting way, visual light communication, to explore its property of linear transmission. We apply light emitting diode (LED) array and camera and present a novel communication system, named LED array to camera system (LC). This paper also designs a novel protocol, named LED to camera protocol (LCP), for it. Equipped with an LC, each node in a WMN can determine the precise direction and distance of its neighbors and recognize their identities. Furthermore, this paper also develops a method to infer the topology of the whole network. We design the hardware for LC and conduct extensive experiments to implement the protocol LCP. The average latency of the neighbor discovery is measured and can be as small as 1.087 seconds. LCP can achieve centimeter-level accuracy in distance and direction to averages of 0.37 cm and 1.67 degrees in these real experiments. The relative accuracies in distance and direction measurement are 99.11% and 88.92% on average, respectively. The simulation of the topology inference is also performed to show the feasibility and accuracy with the local distance and direction information.

The hardness and pin-on-disk sliding wear behavior of CrFeNi medium-entropy alloy (MEA) against Inconel alloy 718 at room and elevated temperatures were investigated. The results show that the hardness and coefficient of friction of CrFeNi MEA linearly decrease with elevating temperature. The wear rates at 300 °C and 600 °C are 40- and 150-times lower than that at room temperature (25 ± 1 °C), respectively. The wear rate of CrFeNi MEA at 600 °C is only ~ 25 pct of that of Inconel alloy 718. Surface microstructure evolution and wear mechanism were discussed in detail. The significantly enhanced wear resistance at elevated temperatures is mainly attributed to the formation of the glaze layer which consists of a dense equiaxed nanocrystalline oxide layer and a mechanically mixed layer of nanocrystalline oxides and partially oxidized pin and disk alloys.

The biceps and triceps alternatively act as agonists and antagonists to realize upper limb movement. Pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM), which is inflated and deflated with compressed air instead of water, has similar characteristics to those of human muscle. The challenge is whether an exoskeleton actuated by PAM can help biceps lift the upper limb. Accordingly, the principal aim of this research is to guarantee precise signal collection and control process and adopt the synergy control of PAM and upper limb. In this system, the biceps and triceps provide the main signals in synergy control, electrodes are pasted outside of biceps and triceps to sample their electromyogram signal (EMGs), and the mechanical structure and control system of the pneumatic exoskeleton are proposed. The relationship between duty-ratio-controlled variables and PAM contraction speed is given by experimental analysis, and the maximum duty ratio of controlled variables of input is set to 80. The feature analysis of EMGs can be various including envelope, moving average, and moving root mean square (RMS). The envelope is taken to extract muscle contraction information through upper limb muscles in a static contraction experiment. Then, the processes of biceps and triceps EMGs feature changes including rapid swing, slow swing, and discontinuous swing under various loads are analyzed during upper limb muscle dynamic contraction. The duty-ratio-controlled variables can be divided into five levels, which correspond to exertion rating from powerless to very strong in two EMG characters. These can be reflected in a scatter diagram of duty-ratio-controlled variables and average EMG characters. A nonlinear relationship can be transferred into the continuous system by the polynomial interpolation method, solving the problem of saturation. The net duty-ratio-controlled variables are adopted to control the on-off state and pulse-width modulation (PWM) duty ratio of the high-speed on-off valve. The forearm lifting up movement is unpowered and powered with various load EMGs, and elbow discontinuous swing angle overshoot is performed to analyze the coordination effect in a synergy control experiment.

Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAMs) and Pneumatic Cylinders (PCs) are the two main pneumatic actuators. New types of parallel mechanism configurations with joints are originally displayed in bionic joints, humanoid joints and robot joints, which can be devoted to robots design. Discussion results reveal that pneumatic actuators can be combined with parallel manipulator, which is proved to be a simple, effective and easy to design joints in robot.

Precise identification of each isomer among a series of isomers remains a formidable challenge. Herein, a novel luminescent framework (FJI-H26) with 1.6 nm nanochannels was prepared. It was used to precisely decode o-nitroaniline, m-nitroaniline, and p-nitroaniline, because of the specific matching between the emission spectrum of FJI-H26 and the absorption spectrum of every nitroaniline isomer. Furthermore, it was used to quantitatively detect traces of benzaldehyde from benzyl alcohol injections, and its linear ranges completely conformed to the requirements of both Chinese and European Pharmacopoeias. Such decoding behavior based on discriminative matching between the emission spectrum of a chemosensor and the absorption spectra of analytes has not been reported so far, and this can prove to be a potential strategy for the development of new chemosensors for precisely decoding isomers.

We demonstrate fine control of the nanocrystal size of ultrasmall Eu3+-doped Sc2O3 nanocrystals within an extremely small nanometer scale from 2.6 to 9.7 nm, thereby enabling us to thoroughly investigate the size-dependent surface-to-volume ratio in these ultrasmall NCs using an optical probe of the red-emitting Eu3+ ion for the first time.

Three unprecedented multi-cluster copper(i) halides (MCCHs) have been assembled using conformationally flexible ligands. Further explorations demonstrate that the conformational compliance of the ligands may be the key to trap and stabilize the various copper(i)-halide clusters in one system, which opens a new way for the construction of multi-Cu(i)-cluster complexes. Moreover, the MCCHs show distinctive temperature-dependent photoluminescence.

A novel multifunctional chiral In-MOF (InOF-18) was synthesized by a solvothermal method. The compound simultaneously contains exposed N groups and three kinds of chiral channels with different window sizes, chiral screw axes, and helicities as measured by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Luminescence measurements demonstrate that InOF-18 exhibits high sensitivity and ultrafast response (less than 5 s) for Cu2+ ion detection. Moreover, InOF-18 shows a high H-2 uptake of 179.77 cm(3) g(-1) (1.60 wt %) at 77 K and 1.0 bar and also had excellent selective gas sorption behaviors with IAST selectivity values of 10.44 and 37.83 at 273 K and 1.0 bar for CO2/CH4 and CO2/N-2, respectively.

Although dilute Cu-Cr alloys are frequently used for applications involving sliding contacts, their wear mechanism at elevated temperatures has rarely been explored. We fabricated a bulk Cu-6 wt pct Cr alloy using high-energy ball milling and spark plasma sintering, and systematically investigated its dry sliding wear behavior against 440C stainless steel at room temperature and 300 °C. The alloy had a heterogeneous microstructure consisting of coarse-grained Cu (average grain size: 1.5 µm) distributed into a nanocrystalline Cu-Cr matrix (average Cu grain size: 77 nm; Cr-rich precipitate size: 18 nm), which gave high strength and plasticity (ultimate compressive strength: 1020 MPa; strain-to-failure: 26.0 pct) at room temperature. At 300 °C, the strength was significantly reduced, the coefficient of friction and wear rate increased, and the dominant wear mode switched from adhesive wear to oxidative/abrasive wear. Uniformly distributed nanoscale Cr-rich and Cr oxide precipitates hindered severe plastic deformation near the sliding surface during wear at room temperature; at 300 °C, severe plastic deformation was observed, with elongated Cu grains and uniformly dispersed Cr-rich and Cr oxide nanoparticles. Formation of a discontinuous glaze layer consisting of equiaxed nanograins of Cu, Cu oxides, and Cr oxides resulted in severe abrasion-assisted wear, and reduced the wear resistance at 300 °C.

Trivalent Lanthanide (Ln3+)-doped fluoride nanocrystals (NCs) in the category of ALn2F7 (A = Li, Na, and K) have recently emerged as an attractive alternative to the well-developed ALnF4-type fluor...