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Abstract Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have been considered a unique class of hybrid materials for a wide variety of potential applications. With the existence of almost infinite MOFs, high-throughput computational screening (HTCS) is a robust technique to accelerate the search for promising MOFs. However, conventional HTCS studies reported in the literature neglect the stability of MOFs, which must be considered for practical applications. Here we integrate four stability metrics (thermodynamic, mechanical, thermal, and activation) with HTCS to identify top-performing, synthesizable, and stable hypothetical MOFs for CO2 capture. The thermodynamic and mechanical stabilities are evaluated through molecular dynamics simulations, while the activation and thermal stabilities are predicted using machine learning models. Finally, we identify top-performing hypothetical MOFs satisfying all these stability metrics. This study underlines the central importance of integrating stability metrics when screening MOFs for applications.

The continuous downward movement exhibited by the Lashagou landslide group in recent years poses a significant threat to the safety of both vehicles and pedestrians traversing the highway G310. By integrating geomorphological interpretation using multi-temporal optical images, interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements, and continuous global navigation satellite system (GNSS) observations, this paper traced the formation period of the Lashagou landslide group, and explored its kinematic behavior under external drivers such as rainfall and snowmelt. The results indicate that the formation period can be specifically categorized into three periods: before, during, and after the construction of highway G310. The construction of highway G310 is the direct cause and prerequisite for the formation of the Lashagou landslide group, whereas summer precipitation and spring snowmelt are the external driving factors contributing to its continuous downward movement. Additionally, both the long-term seasonal downslope movement and transient acceleration events are strongly controlled by rainfall, and there is a time lag of approximately 1–2 days between the transient acceleration and heavy rainfall events. This study highlights the benefits of leveraging multi-source remote sensing data to investigate slow-moving landslides, which is advantageous for the implementation of effective control and engineering intervention to mitigate potential landslide disasters.

BackgroundEfficient early detection methods for lung cancer can significantly decrease patient mortality. One promising approach is the use of tumor-associated autoantibodies (TAABs) as a diagnostic tool. In this study, the researchers aimed to evaluate the potential of seven TAABs in detecting lung cancer within a population undergoing routine health examinations. The results of this study could provide valuable insights into the utility of TAABs for lung cancer screening and diagnosis.MethodsIn this study, the serum concentrations of specific antibodies were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in a cohort of 15,430 subjects. The efficacy of both a 7-TAAB panel and LDCT for lung cancer detection were evaluated through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses, with sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) being assessed and compared. These results could have significant implications for the development of improved screening methods for lung cancer.ResultsOver the 12-month observation period, 26 individuals were diagnosed with lung cancer. The 7-TAAB panel demonstrated promising sensitivity (61.5%) and a high degree of specificity (88.5%). The panel’s area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.8062, which was superior to that of any individual TAAB. In stage I patients, the sensitivity of the panel was 50%. In our cohort, there was no gender or age bias observed. This 7-TAAB panel showed a sensitivity of approximately 60% in detecting lung cancer, regardless of histological subtype or lesion size. Notably, ground-glass nodules had a higher diagnostic rate than solid nodules (83.3% vs. 36.4%, P = 0.021). The ROC analyses further revealed that the combination of LDCT with the 7-TAAB assay exhibited a significantly superior diagnostic efficacy than LDCT alone.ConclusionIn the context of the study, it was demonstrated that the 7-TAAB panel showed improved detective efficacy of LDCT, thus serving as an effective aid for the detection of lung cancer in real-world scenarios.

Resolving single-crystal structures of two-dimensional covalent organic frameworks (2D COFs) is a great challenge. Here, the authors identify two different growth mechanisms of COFs, enabling the growth and structure determination of micron-sized 2D single-crystalline COFs.

Replicating the performance of protein water channels (aquaporins) in artificial one-dimensional channels are often synthetically challenging. Here, the authors show that porous organic cages allow water permeation on the same magnitude as that of aquaporins while effectively rejecting small ions.

Abstract In the last two decades, metal−organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted overwhelming attention. With readily tunable structures and functionalities, MOFs offer an unprecedentedly vast degree of design flexibility from enormous number of inorganic and organic building blocks or via postsynthetic modification to produce functional nanoporous materials. A large extent of experimental and computational studies of MOFs have been focused on gas phase applications, particularly the storage of low‐carbon footprint energy carriers and the separation of CO2‐containing gas mixtures. With progressive success in the synthesis of water‐ and solvent‐resistant MOFs over the past several years, the increasingly active exploration of MOFs has been witnessed for widespread liquid phase applications such as liquid fuel purification, aromatics separation, water treatment, solvent recovery, chemical sensing, chiral separation, drug delivery, biomolecule encapsulation and separation. At this juncture, the recent experimental and computational studies are summarized herein for these multifaceted liquid phase applications to demonstrate the rapid advance in this burgeoning field. The challenges and opportunities moving from laboratory scale towards practical applications are discussed.

Supramolecular containers are promising enzyme mimics, but they currently accommodate only a limited range of chemical transformations. Here, the authors describe coordination cages that catalyze two-component cascade reactions without relying on an external or encapsulated catalytic species.

Molecular rotors that fluoresce upon restriction are useful components in functional materials. Here, the authors incorporate molecular rotors into 2D porous organic nanosheets, creating sensitive and selective fluorescent sensors for volatile organic compounds and metal ions.

Reducing membrane thickness to nanometre scale should increase the throughput of gas separation sieves. Here, the authors report a sieving membrane composed of two-dimensional metal-organic framework nanosheets, exhibiting both high permeation flux and thermally switchable behaviour.

Background: The microbiota plays a critical role in the process of human carcinogenesis. Pancreatic head carcinoma (PHC)-associated tongue coating microbiome dysbiosis has not yet been clearly defined.Objective: Our aim is to reveal the bacterial composition shifts in the microbiota of the tongue coat of PHC patients.Design: The tongue coating microbiota was analyzed in 30 PHC patients and 25 healthy controls using 16S rRNA gene sequencing technology.Results: The microbiome diversity of the tongue coat in PHC patients was significantly increased, as shown by the Shannon, Simpson, inverse Simpson, Obs and incidence-based coverage estimators. Principal component analysis revealed that PHC patients were colonized by remarkably different tongue coating microbiota than healthy controls and liver cancer patients. Linear discriminant analysis effect size revealed that Leptotrichia, Fusobacterium,Rothia, Actinomyces, Corynebacterium, Atopobium, Peptostreptococcus, Catonella, Oribacterium, Filifactor, Campylobacter, Moraxella and Tannerella were overrepresented in the tongue coating of PHC patients, and Haemophilus, Porphyromonas and Paraprevotella were enriched in the tongue coating microbiota of healthy controls. Strikingly, Haemophilus, Porphyromonas, Leptotrichia and Fusobacterium could distinguish PHC patients from healthy subjects, and Streptococcus and SR1 could distinguish PHC patients from liver cancer patients. Conclusions: These findings identified the microbiota dysbiosis of the tongue coat in PHC patients, and provide insight into the association between the human microbiome and pancreatic cancer.

Abstract Unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) needs locoregional ablation as a curative or downstage therapy. Microsecond Pulsed Electric Fields (μsPEFs) is an option. A xenograft tumor model was set up on 48 nude mice by injecting human hepatocellular carcinoma Hep3B cells subcutaneously. The tumor-bearing mice were randomly divided into 3 groups: μsPEFs treated, sham and control group. μsPEFs group was treated by μsPEFs twice in 5 days. Tumor volume, survival, pathology, mitochondria function and cytokines were followed up. μsPEFs was also conducted on 3 swine to determine impact on organ functions. The tumors treated by μsPEFs were completely eradicated while tumors in control and sham groups grew up to 2 cm3 in 3 weeks. The μsPEFs-treated group indicated mitochondrial damage and tumor necrosis as shown in JC-1 test, flow cytometry, H&E staining and TEM. μsPEFs activates CD56+ and CD68+ cells and inhibits tumor proliferating cell nuclear antigen. μsPEFs inhibits HCC growth in the nude mice by causing mitochondria damage, tumor necrosis and non-specific inflammation. μsPEFs treats porcine livers without damaging vital organs. μsPEFs is a feasible minimally invasive locoregional ablation option.

Purpose: Localization and mapping with LiDAR data is a fundamental building block for autonomous vehicles. Though LiDAR point clouds can often encode the scene depth more accurate and steadier compared with visual information, laser-based Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) remains challenging as the data is usually sparse, density variable and less discriminative. The purpose of this paper is to propose an accurate and reliable laser-based SLAM solution. Design/methodology/approach: The method starts with constructing voxel grids based on the 3D input point cloud. These voxels are then classified into three types to indicate different physical objects according to the spatial distribution of the points contained in each voxel. During the mapping process, a global environment model with Partition of Unity (POU) implicit surface is maintained and the voxels are merged into the model from stage to stage, which is implemented by Levenberg−Marquardt algorithm. Findings: We propose a laser-based SLAM method. The method uses POU implicit surface representation to build the model and is evaluated on the KITTI odometry benchmark without loop closure. Our method achieves around 30% translational estimation precision improvement with acceptable sacrifice of efficiency compared to LOAM. Overall, our method uses a more complex and accurate surface representation than LOAM to increase the mapping accuracy at the expense of computational efficiency. Experimental results indicate that the method achieves accuracy comparable to the state-of-the-art methods. Originality/value: We propose a novel, low-drift SLAM method that falls into a scan-to-model matching paradigm. The method, which operates on point clouds obtained from Velodyne HDL64, is of value to researchers developing SLAM systems for autonomous vehicles.

BACKGROUND:Ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury is associated with intestinal microbial dysbiosis. The "gut-liver axis" closely links gut function and liver function in health and disease. Ischemic preconditioning (IPC) has been proven to reduce I/R injury in the surgery. This study aims to explore the effect of IPC on intestinal microbiota and to analyze characteristics of microbial structure shift following liver transplantation (LT). METHODS:The LT animal models of liver and gut IPC were established. Hepatic graft function was assessed by histology and serum ALT/AST. Intestinal barrier function was evaluated by mucosal ultrastructure, serum endotoxin, bacterial translocation, fecal sIgA content and serum TNF-α. Intestinal bacterial populations were determined by quantitative PCR. Microbial composition was characterized by DGGE and specific bacterial species were determined by sequence analysis. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:Liver IPC improved hepatic graft function expressed as ameliorated graft structure and reduced ALT/AST levels. After administration of liver IPC, intestinal mucosal ultrastructure improved, serum endotoxin and bacterial translocation mildly decreased, fecal sIgA content increased, and serum TNF-α decreased. Moreover, liver IPC promoted microbial restorations mainly through restoring Bifidobacterium spp., Clostridium clusters XI and Clostridium cluster XIVab on bacterial genus level. DGGE profiles indicated that liver IPC increased microbial diversity and species richness, and cluster analysis demonstrated that microbial structures were similar and clustered together between the NC group and Liver-IPC group. Furthermore, the phylogenetic tree of band sequences showed key bacteria corresponding to 10 key band classes of microbial structure shift induced by liver IPC, most of which were assigned to Bacteroidetes phylum. CONCLUSION:Liver IPC cannot only improve hepatic graft function and intestinal barrier function, but also promote restorations of intestinal microbiota following LT, which may further benefit hepatic graft by positive feedback of the "gut-liver axis".

Cancer remains a leading cause of death worldwide and total number of cases globally is increasing. Novel treatment strategies are therefore desperately required for radical treatment of cancers and long survival of patients. A new technology using high pulsed electric field has emerged from military application into biology and medicine by applying nsPEF as a means to inhibit cancer. However, molecular mechanisms of nsPEF on tumors or cancers are still unclear. In this paper, we found that nsPEF had extensive biological effects in cancers, and clarified its possible molecular mechanisms in vitro and in vivo. It could not only induce cell apoptosis via dependent-mitochondria intrinsic apoptosis pathway that was triggered by imbalance of anti- or pro-apoptosis Bcl-2 family proteins, but also inhibit cell proliferation through repressing NF-κB signaling pathway to reduce expressions of cyclin proteins. Moreover, nsPEF could also inactivate metastasis and invasion in cancer cells by suppressing Wnt/β-Catenin signaling pathway to down-regulating expressions of VEGF and MMPs family proteins. More importantly, nsPEF could function safely and effectively as an anti-cancer therapy through inducing tumor cell apoptosis, destroying tumor microenvironment, and depressing angiogenesis in tumor tissue in vivo. These findings may provide a creative and effective therapeutic strategy for cancers.

To address the problems of too specialized content and single teaching methods in general education courses of science and engineering in colleges and universities, this study tries to reform such general courses under the guidance of the "student-centered" concept. A general chemical education course, "Chemical Mysteries in Movie and Animation", is used as an example. The aim of this course is to train students' independent thinking, analysis, and discrimination ability and give guidance for students' health and safety. The reformed course material includes course content, teaching and learning methods, and a course assessment. The course content is selected based on the students' chemical foundations and their demands for knowledge of health and safety, which is composed of nine themes that are closely related to health, safety, energy, and the environment. Situational teaching is employed as the main teaching method, in which a large amount of clips from movies and animation containing the chemical scenes of the nine themes are screened as carriers of chemical knowledge to attract students' attention and to mobilize students' enthusiasm for learning chemistry. A combination of several methods is used to assess the learning outcomes, and special attention is paid to the learning process and the progress of students. The investigation found that the course reform has achieved a good result and is suitable for the mode of general education courses of science and engineering in universities or colleges.