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NAD+level has been associated with various age-related diseases and its pharmacological modulation emerges as a potential approach for aging intervention. But human NAD+landscape exhibits large heterogeneity, and the lack of rapid, low-cost assays limits the establishment of NAD+baseline and the development of personalized therapies, especially for those with poor responses towards conventional NAD+supplementation. Here, we developed an automated NAD+analyzer for the rapid measurement of NAD+with 5 μL of capillary blood using a recombinant bioluminescent sensor protein and an automated optical reader. The minimal invasiveness of the assay allowed a frequent and decentralized mapping of real-world NAD+dynamics. We showed that sports and NMN supplementation can increase blood NAD+levels and that male on average has higher NAD+than female before the age of 50. We further revealed the long-term stability of human NAD+baseline over 100 days and identified the major real-world NAD+-modulating behaviors.

The rapid proliferation of tumor cells and tortuous vasculature in solid tumors often bring about a hypoxic tumor microenvironment, which renders tumor cells more resistant to many cancer treatments, including radiotherapy. In this study, an injectable and thermosensitive composite hydrogel composed of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) modified monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) (mPEG-PLGA-PFOA) and perfluorooctyl bromide (PFOB) that presented a thermoreversible sol-gel transition upon heating was developed to deliver exogenous oxygen for the relief of tumor hypoxia and enhancement of radiotherapy. The fluorinated modification of copolymers significantly increased the stability of PFOB in the mPEG-PLGA-PFOA aqueous solution owing to the fluorophilic interaction between PFOB and PFOA-modified copolymers. The introduction of PFOB not only efficiently heightened the oxygen loading capacity of the composite hydrogel, but also endowed it with excellent X-ray opacity, allowing the visual observation of the hydrogel via micro-CT imaging. After peritumoral injection of the oxygen-enriched composite hydrogel, the continuous supply of oxygen effectively relieved tumor hypoxia and down-regulated the expression of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α. Profiting from this, the hyposensitivity of tumor cells to radiation was successfully reversed, and the tumor growth in mice was significantly suppressed and the survival of mice was prolonged when combined with multiple X-ray exposure. As a result, the oxygen-enriched composite hydrogel shows a great potential for radiosensitization to improve the radiotherapeutic efficacy.

In this work, a low temperature (+, K+, and H+ ions.

An acidic solution based method towards flexible lithium ion battery (LIB) cathodes is developed in this work with perylene diimide (PDI) as the electroactive component and carbon cloth (CC) as the current collector. In this approach, PDI is firstly dispersed in concentrated sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and then deposited on CC substrate after the dilution of H2S04, which provides an organic solvent-free strategy to construct integrated LIB cathodes. The acdic solution based fabrication process also allows the facile adjusting of loading amounts of PDI in the cathodes, which can effectively influence the battery performances of the PDI/CC cathodes. As the result, the acidic solution processed PDI/CC cathode can deliver a high specific capacity of ~ 36mAh.g-1 at the current density of 50 m A.g-1 in both half cell with lithium foil as anode and full cell with pre-lithiated CC as anode. In both types of the batteries, the PDI/CC cathodes show good cycling stabilities by retaining ~ 84% of the initial capacities after 300 charge-discharge cycles at 500 mA.g-1. Additionally, the excellent mechanical stability of the PDI/CC cathode enables the LIBs in pouch cell to maintain the electrochemical performances under various bending states, demonstrating their potentials for flexible LIBs.

Automated fiber placement (AFP) in situ consolidation of continuous CF/high-performance thermoplastic composite is the key technology for efficient and low-cost manufacturing of large thermoplastic composites. However, the void in the in situ composite is difficult to eliminate because of the high pressure and the short consolidation time; the void content percentage consequently is the important defect that determines the performance of the thermoplastic composite parts. In this paper, based on the two-dimensional Newtonian fluid extrusion flow model, the void dynamics model and boundary conditions were established. The changes of the void content percentage were predicted by the cyclic iteration method. It was found that the void content percentage increased gradually along the direction of the layers’ thickness. With the increasing of the laying speed, the void content percentage increased gradually. With the increasing of the pressure of the roller, the void content percentage gradually decreased. When the AFP speed was 11 m/min and the pressure of the compaction roller reached 2000 N, the void content percentage of the layers fell below 2%. It was verified by the AFP test that the measured results of the layers’ thickness were in good agreement with the predicted results of the model, and the test results of the void content percentage were basically equivalent to the predicted results at different AFP speeds, which indicates that the kinetic model established in this paper is representative to predict the void content percentage. According to the metallographic observation, it was also found that the repeated pressure of the roller was helpful to reduce the void content percentage.

Flexible organic cathodes with 3,4,9,10-perylenetetracarboxylic diimide (PDI) as the active component, carbon black (CB) as the conductive agent and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) as the elastomeric matrix are obtained in this work via a solution-based phase inversion approach. In the resulting PDI/CB/TPU cathodes, the mass ratios of the three components manifest profound influences on their composition, flexibility, conductivity and lithium storage behavior. The integrated PDI/CB/TPU cathode with optimized ratio can deliver impressive rate capability and good cycling stability in lithium ion batteries (LIBs). More importantly, the full LIBs with PDI/CB/TPU cathode and carbon cloth anode exhibit excellent electrochemical performances, which show no decay even at bending states, demonstrating the appealing prospects of the solution-processed organic cathodes in wearable secondary batteries.

All-solid-state potassium ion-selective electrodes (K+ ISEs) using ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) sphere as the solid contact (SC) are fabricated in this work, which exhibit excellent K+-sensing capability including the stable Nernstian response in a wide linear range of 10−4.19–10−0.21 M, a low detection limit of 5.4 μM, short response time, and good stability. The excellent performances of the K+ ISEs are attributable to the OMC spheres with interconnected mesopore structure, uniform spherical morphology, high surface area, high conductivity, and high capacitance, which provide the highly efficient ion-to-electron transduction between the ion-selective membrane and conductive component in the electrodes. More importantly, the OMC sphere-based SC layer can be deposited in the flexible ISEs by solution processing, which thus enables the construction of ion-sensitive field-effect transistor-based handheld K+-sensing system with high sensitivity and reproducibility, demonstrating the potentials of the OMC spheres in practical ion detection devices.

In this work, we report a template-directed self-assembly strategy towards the gram-level synthesis of hierarchically ordered carbon tube-sheet superstructure (CTSS) by using MoO3 nanorod as the template and polyimide (PI) as the carbon source. Even in large quantities, MoO3 nanorods can guide the assembly of PI in solution into vertically oriented nanosheet arrays with periodic patterns, which can be converted to nitrogen-doped porous CTSS after the removal of template and thermal carbonization. Possessing hierarchically ordered architecture, rich porosity and high nitrogen content, CTSS is an appealing material for energy storage and conversion devices such as high-performance lithium ion battery anode and water splitting catalyst support. More importantly, the results in this work highlight an avenue for the controllable synthesis of hierarchically ordered carbon superstructures with diversified functions and applications.

Material cues to influence cell proliferation are a fundamental issue in the fields of biomaterials, cell biology, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. This paper aims to investigate the proliferation of single mammal cells on micropatterned material surfaces. To this end, we prepared cell-adhesive circular microislands with 20 areas on the nonfouling background and systematically examined adhesion and proliferation behaviors of different kinds of single cells (primary stem and nonstem cells, cancer and normal cell lines) on micropatterns. On the basis of the analysis of experimental data, we found two critical areas about cell proliferation: (1) the critical spreading area of cells from almost no proliferation to confined proliferation, denoted as AP and (2) the critical spreading area of cells from confined proliferation to almost free proliferation, denoted as AFP. We further summarized the relative size relationship between these two critical areas and the characteristic areas of cell adhesion on both patterned and nonpatterned surfaces. While proliferation of single primary cells was affected by cell spreading, those cell lines, irrespective of normal and cancer cells, did not exhibit significant cell-spreading effects. As a result, this study reveals that proliferation of single cells is dependent upon spreading area, in particular for primary cells on material surfaces.

The fabrication of insulation materials with ultralow thermal conductivity and excellent thermal stability at high temperatures (higher than 1200 °C) has remained an extremely challenging. In this study, we reported the manufacturing of mullite-based nanofibrous aerogels via the gel-casting and freeze drying methods using the electrospun nanofibers with different alumina/silica molar ratios (3:2, 3:1 and 3:0) as the matrix and silica sols as the high temperature binders. The formation process of the mullite-based fibrous aerogel and effect of aerogel composition on the sample physical and mechanical properties were investigated. All mullite-based nanofibrous aerogel show a similar multilevel pore structure. The minor pores were formed by the overlaps of nanofibers and were the fundamental porous structure of the aerogel, while the major pores was caused by the sublimation of the ice crystal. This unique multilevel pore structure make the mullite-based nanofibrous aerogels exhibit an ultralow density (34.64–48.89 mg/cm3) and low thermal conductivity (0.03274–0.04317 Wm−1 K−1) although the sintering temperature was as high as 1400 °C much higher than the service temperature of the traditional nanoparticle aerogel. In addition, besides controlling the fabrication parameters, the physical and mechanical properties could be also tuned by adjusting the composition of the nanofibers. The research of this work provides a new insight into the development of high efficient thermal insulation materials used at high temperatures.

An acid-pasting approach is developed in this work to fabricate the composite of perylenetetracarboxylic diimide (PTCDI) and carbon black in concentrated sulfuric acid. Different from traditional mechanical mixing, the solution-based fabrication strategy enables the sufficient blending of PTCDI as active component and carbon black as conductive agent in the PTCDI/CB composite. Serving as the cathode material, the PTCDI/CB composite shows excellent electrochemical performances in both lithium ion battery (137 mAh g−1 at 100 mA g−1 and 110 mAh g−1 at 2000 mA g−1) and sodium ion battery (134 mAh g−1 at 100 mA g−1 and 99 mAh g−1 at 1000 mA g−1), which are comparable to the state-of-art organic/inorganic cathode materials. Considering the simplicity of the processing procedures and the low cost of the starting materials, the acid-pasting approach is a highly attractive method for the solution-based manufacturing of organic secondary battery electrodes.

The stability of reference electrode (RE) is crucial for the wearable electrochemical biosensors, which is however barely investigated in previous work. In this paper, we reported the fabrication of fibrous solid-state Ag/AgCl RE with a facile electrochemical deposition process and following sintering, which could effectively improve the stability of the RE over long time and against mechanical deformation. Integrated with the fibrous ion sensing electrodes on a piece of gauze, the fibrous Ag/AgCl RE rendered the real-time analysis of the ion concentrations in artificial urine.

In view of the important roles played by Kinetochore proteins in mitosis, we believed that they may contribute to the development and progression of human cancers, which has been reported recently elsewhere. Kinetochore-associated 1 (KNTC1) participates in the segregation of sister chromatids during mitosis, the effects of which on non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remain unclear. Here, we sought to identify the biological significance of KNTC1 in NSCLC. KNTC1 protein expression in NSCLC tissues was investigated by immunohistochemistry. Lentivirus delivered short hairpin RNA (shRNA) was utilized to establish KNTC1 silence NSCLC cell lines. The effects of KNTC1 depletion on NSCLC cell proliferation, migration, apoptosis, and tumor formation were analyzed by MTT assay, wound-healing assay, transwell assay, flow cytometry assay, and in nude mouse models in vivo. After KNTC1 reduction, NSCLC cell viability, proliferation, migration, and invasion were restrained. A xenograft tumor model was also provided to demonstrate the inhibited tumorigenesis in NSCLC. In addition, the downstream mechanism analysis indicated that KNTC1 depletion was positively associated with PSMB8. The findings of the present study suggested that KNTC1 may have a pivotal role in mediating NSCLC progression and may act as a novel therapeutic target for NSCLC.

Background There is increasing understanding of the possible regulatory role of long non-coding RNAs (LncRNA). Studies on livestock have mainly focused on the regulation of cell differentiation, fat synthesis, and embryonic development. However, there has been little study of skeletal muscle of domestic animals and the potential role of lncRNA. Results RNA samples were collected from longissimus dorsi muscle samples of Shandong black cattle and Luxi cattle and libraries were constructed and sequenced. A total of 1415 transcripts (of which 480 were LncRNAs) were differentially expressed (P 0.9). The identified co-expressed mRNAs (MYORG, Dll1, EFNB2, SOX6, MYOCD, and MYLK3) are related to the formation of muscle structure, and enriched in muscle system process, strained muscle cell differentiation, muscle cell development, striated muscle tissue development, calcium signaling, and AMPK signaling. Additionally, we also found that some LncRNAs (LOC112444238, LOC101903367, LOC104975788, LOC112441863, LOC112449549, and LOC101907194) may interact with miRNAs related to cattle muscle growth and development. Based on this, we constructed a LncRNAs-miRNA-mRNA interaction network as the putative basis for biological regulation in cattle skeletal muscle. Interestingly, a candidate differential LncRNA (LOC104975788) and a protein-coding gene (Pax7) contain miR-133a binding sites and binding was confirmed by luciferase reporter assay. LOC104975788 may bind miR-133a competitively with Pax7, thus relieving the inhibitory effect of miR-133a on Pax7 to regulate skeletal muscle development. These results will provide the theoretical basis for further study of LncRNA regulation and activity in different cattle breeds. Conclusions The data obtained in this study were used to predict muscle-related LncRNAs-miRNA-mRNA interaction networks, which can help elucidate the molecular mechanism of cattle muscle development. These results can be used to facilitate livestock breeding and improve livestock production.

Organic electroactive compounds can be applied as alternative cathodes in rechargeable zinc ion batteries (ZIBs) instead of using inorganic cathode materials with low stability or high toxicity. However, many reported organic ZIB cathodes have some limitations, which are their tedious synthesis processes and low yields. In this work, perylene diimide-ethylenediamine/carbon black (PDI-EDA/CB) composites are prepared with a high yield of over 88% under mild conditions via a solution-based processing method. As the organic cathodes in aqueous ZIBs, the PDI-EDA/CB composites have a high specific capacity of 118.0 mA h g−1 at 0.05 A g−1; this capacity can be maintained as 95.0 mA h g−1 even at a high current density of 5.00 A g−1. Also, PDI-EDA/CB has good cycling stability by reserving 70.5% of its initial capacity after 1500 charge-discharge cycles at 1.00 A g−1, outperforming many recently reported ZIB cathodes. As disclosed by the structural and electrochemical characterization of PDI-EDA/CB, its excellent electrochemical performance is due to the zinc ion storage mechanism of PDI-EDA and the solution-based fabrication method.

While various cell responses on material surfaces have been examined, relatively few reports are focused on significant self-deformation of cell nuclei and corresponding chromosomal repositioning. Herein, we prepared a micropillar array of poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) and observed significant nuclear deformation of HeLa cells on the polymeric micropillars. In particular, we detected the territory positioning of chromosomes 18 and 19 and gene expression profiles of HeLa cells on the micropillar array using fluorescence in situ hybridization and a DNA microarray. Chromosome 18 was found to be translocated closer to the nuclear periphery than chromosome 19 on the micropillar array. With the repositioning of chromosomal territories, HeLa cells changed their gene expressions on the micropillar array with 180 genes upregulated and 255 genes downregulated for all of the 23 pairs of chromosomes under the experimental conditions and the employed Bioinformatics criteria. Hence, this work deepens the understanding on cell-material interactions by revealing that material surface topography can probably influence chromosomal repositioning in the nuclei and gene expressions of cells.

In this study, alumina hollow sphere-based ceramics were successfully prepared using the dimethyl silicone rubber, a kind of preceramic polymer, as the forming binder. A mixture of inorganic fillers, including SnO-SiO2-P2O5 (SSP) glass powder, boron carbide (B4C) powder, silicon (Si) powder and aluminum (Al) powder, were introduced into the silicone rubber to compensate for the weight loss caused by the ceramization of the silicone rubber. The green body exhibited an excellent flexibility and machinability due to the formation of the Si-O-Si polymeric network in the green sample. During the sintering process, the silicone rubber decomposed and transformed into the amorphous silica, occurring a large weight loss, while the oxidization reaction of the introduced inorganic fillers (B4C, Al and Si powders) could effectively compensate for this large weight loss to some content. The addition of SSP and B4C powders could decrease the melting point of the binder, and therefore improve the strength of the sample sintered at low temperatures (lower than 1300 °C); the addition of Si and Al powders could promote the formation of mullite phased, consequently introducing a high bonding strength between the alumina spheres. The sample with the addition of the mixed inorganic filler after sintered at 1500 °C exhibited a low density of 1.18 g/cm3, low thermal conductive of 0.83 W/mK and high compressive strength of 23.32 MPa and could be used as the high temperature thermal insulation materials in various thermal protection systems.

A modified superalloy-used heat-resistant adhesive, which can cure at room temperature and provide excellent bonding effect in a wide temperature range from RT to 1000 °C, was prepared from silicone resin as matrix, and Ni, Al, B4C, low-temperature-melting glass powder as additives. After pre-calcination, the bonding strength of adhesive reached 30.1 MPa after 700°C-calcination and maintained above 15.7 MPa during the whole heating process as the mixture of Ni-based intermetallics, heat-resistant ceramic generated and high viscosity glass generated in the adhesive. Without pre-calcination, the bonding strength still kept above 10.5 MPa during test from RT to 900 °C and decreased to 4.3 MPa at 1000 °C.

Printable organic field effect transistors (OFETs) have been investigated for more than 20 years, aiming at various emerging applications including flexible/wearable electronics, displays and sensors. Since many comprehensive review articles for this field have been published, here we will focus on the recent progress of this field and address the following issues critical to the future applications of OFETs. First, downscaling technologies for the printing of OFETs with fine resolution will be reviewed. The approaches for short channels and small overlapping as well as patterning of organic semiconductors are summarized. Second, various approaches for realizing low-voltage OFETs will be presented, which are critical to the power consumption of organic devices. Specifically, the operational voltages of OFETs have been successfully decreased to several volts by increasing the gate dielectric capacitance and reducing the sub-gap density of states at the channel. This review will provide guidelines for material design and fabrication processes of OFETs with high performance and advanced applications.

In response to the application requirements of secondary batteries at low temperature, an all-organic dual-ion battery with calcium perchlorate contained acetonitrile as the electrolyte (CAN-ODIB) is fabricated in this work. The electrochemical energy is stored in CAN-ODIB via the association and disassociation of calcium and perchlorate ions in perylene diimide-ethylene diamine/carbon black composite based anode and polytriphenylamine based cathode with highly reversible redox states. Benefiting from the energy storage mechanism, CAN-ODIB exhibits excellent electrochemical performances in tests with the temperature ranging from 25 to -50 °C. Especially, CAN-ODIB at -50 °C reserves ≈61% of the capacity at 25 °C (83.4 mA h g

Cellular responses on a topographic surface are fundamental topics about interfaces and biology. Herein, a poly(lactide- co-glycolide) (PLGA) micropillar array was prepared and found to trigger significant self-deformation of cell nuclei. The time-dependent cell viability and thus cell proliferation was investigated. Despite significant nuclear deformation, all of the examined cell types (Hela, HepG2, MC3T3-E1, and NIH3T3) could survive and proliferate on the micropillar array yet exhibited different proliferation abilities. Compared to the corresponding groups on the smooth surface, the cell proliferation abilities on the micropillar array were decreased for Hela and MC3T3-E1 cells and did not change significantly for HepG2 and NIH3T3 cells. We also found that whether the proliferation ability changed was related to whether the nuclear sizes decreased in the micropillar array, and thus the size deformation of cell nuclei should, besides shape deformation, be taken into consideration in studies of cells on topological surfaces.

Silversilver chloride (AgAgCl) reference electrodes (REs) for ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISEFTs) are fabricated using all-additive solution processes based on dispensing of Ag paste on large-size plastic substrate, which has the advantages of vacuum-free low-cost manufacturing with great material saving and capability of constructing miniaturized electrochemical systems. After deposition of a polyvinyl butyral protective layer on top, the fabricated AgAgCl REs can maintain stable electrochemical potential in KCl solution with a negligible drift rate of 0.37mVh and remain stable under different light conditions and in different electrolyte solutions over a wide range of concentration from 107 to 101 molL. ISFET measurements for hydrogen ions using the fabricated RE combing with an indium tin oxide working electrode show a high sensitivity of 58.47mVpH with excellent linearity in a wide range from ${\text{pH}}= {\text{2}}$ to ${\text{pH}}= {\text{12}}$ . Finally, the feasibility of the reliable AgAgCl RE is demonstrated by constructing a handheld ISFET pH measurement system with a calibration program to effectively compensate the variations among different samples and directly convert the measured signals to pH values.

Here we report a novel aerogel material assembled by the electrospun SiOC fibers with a hierarchical pore structure. The fibrous aerogels were successfully fabricated by the gel-casting and freeze-drying method using the SiOC fibers as the matrix and the silica sols as the binders. The effect of the SiOC fiber content and the silica sol content on the properties of the samples were investigated. The SiOC fibrous aerogels after calcined at 1000 °C exhibited low densities of 46.87–128.48 mg/cm3, low thermal conductivities of 0.0302–0.0440 W/m K, high compressive strengths of 18–167 kPa and relatively high specific surface areas of 12.48–34.87 m2/g. Such unique fibrous aerogel materials are foreseen as the promising high-temperature insulators, absorbents and supports.

A composite of perylene diimide/reduced graphene oxide (PDI/RGO) is fabricated via a hit-and-run strategy in this work. In the hitting step, the ionic self-assembly of positively charged N,N′-bis(N-ethyl-N,N-dimethylhexan-1-aminium)perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic diimide bromide (N+-PDI) and negative charged graphene oxide (GO) leads to the formation of the highly wrinkled composites (N+-PDI/RGOs) in solution. In the following running step to generate PDI/RGO, the composite of N+-PDI and solvothermally reduced GO is thermally treated at 300 °C to remove the ammonium groups in N+-PDI and further improve the conductivity. As the cathode in sodium ion battery (SIB), PDI/RGO delivers a specific capacity of ∼175 mA h g−1 at 50 mA g−1 even after 500 charge-discharge cycles and still maintains a capacity of ∼73 mA h g−1 at 800 mA g−1, outperforming most of the state-of-art organic SIB cathodes. More importantly, the investigation on the changes of the composites during the fabrication processes enables the understanding of the influences of the morphology, crystallinity, and compositions on their electrochemical performances in SIB, which will be helpful for the design of high performance organic electrodes in secondary batteries.