Ceramic–polymer composites are of interest for designing enhanced and unique properties. However, the processing temperature windows of sintering ceramics are much higher than that of compaction, ...extrusion, or sintering of polymers, and thus traditionally there has been an inability to cosinter ceramic–polymer composites in a single step with high amounts of ceramics. The cold sintering process is a low‐temperature sintering technology recently developed for ceramics and ceramic‐based composites. A wide variety of ceramic materials have now been demonstrated to be densified under the cold sintering process and therefore can be all cosintered with polymers from room temperature to 300 °C. Here, the status, understanding, and application of cold cosintering, with different examples of ceramics and polymers, are discussed. One has to note that these types of cold sintering processes are yet new, and a full understanding will only emerge after more ceramic–polymer examples emerge and different research groups build upon these early observations. The general processing, property designs, and an outlook on cold sintering composites are outlined. Ultimately, the cold sintering process could open up a new multimaterial design space and impact the field of ceramic–polymer composites.
A “Cold Sintering Process” (CSP) is introduced to design ceramic–polymer functional composites, especially composites with high volume fractions of ceramics, and with polymers in intergranular regions of the ceramics, dispersed throughout the ceramic matrix, or laminated between dense ceramic layers. CSP opens up a simple route to densifying dissimilar materials in low temperatures with controllable electrical, mechanical, and thermal properties.
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Hybridization is an important evolutionary process that results in increased plant diversity. Flowering Prunus includes popular cherry species that are appreciated worldwide for their flowers. The ...ornamental characteristics were acquired both naturally and through artificially hybridizing species with heterozygous genomes. Therefore, the genome of hybrid flowering Prunus presents important challenges both in plant genomics and evolutionary biology.
We use long reads to sequence and analyze the highly heterozygous genome of wild Prunus yedoensis. The genome assembly covers > 93% of the gene space; annotation identified 41,294 protein-coding genes. Comparative analysis of the genome with 16 accessions of six related taxa shows that 41% of the genes were assigned into the maternal or paternal state. This indicates that wild P. yedoensis is an F1 hybrid originating from a cross between maternal P. pendula f. ascendens and paternal P. jamasakura, and it can be clearly distinguished from its confusing taxon, Yoshino cherry. A focused analysis of the S-locus haplotypes of closely related taxa distributed in a sympatric natural habitat suggests that reduced restriction of inter-specific hybridization due to strong gametophytic self-incompatibility is likely to promote complex hybridization of wild Prunus species and the development of a hybrid swarm.
We report the draft genome assembly of a natural hybrid Prunus species using long-read sequencing and sequence phasing. Based on a comprehensive comparative genome analysis with related taxa, it appears that cross-species hybridization in sympatric habitats is an ongoing process that facilitates the diversification of flowering Prunus.
Advancements in micro‐resolution 3D printers have significantly facilitated the development of highly complex mass‐producible drug delivery platforms. Conventionally, due to the limitations of ...micro‐milling machineries, dissolvable microneedles (MNs) are mainly fabricated in cone‐shaped geometry with limited drug delivery accuracy. Herein, to overcome the limitations of conventional MNs, a novel projection micro‐stereolithography 3D printer‐based self‐locking MN for precise skin insertion, adhesion, and transcutaneous microdose drug delivery is presented. The geometry of self‐locking MN consists of a sharp skin‐penetrating tip, a wide skin interlocking body, and a narrow base with mechanical supports fabricated over a flexible hydrocolloid patch to improve the accuracy of skin penetration into irregular surfaces. Melanoma, a type of skin cancer, is selected as the model for the investigation of self‐locking MNs due to its irregular and uneven surface. In vivo immunotherapy efficacy is evaluated by integrating SD‐208, a novel transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) inhibitor that suppresses the proliferation and metastasis of tumors, and anti‐PD‐L1 (aPD‐L1 Ab), an immune checkpoint inhibitor that induces T cell‐mediated tumor cell death, into self‐locking MNs and comparing them with intratumoral injection. Evaluation of (aPD‐L1 Ab)/SD‐208 delivery effectiveness in B16F10 melanoma‐bearing mice model confirms significantly improved dose efficacy of self‐locking MNs compared with intratumoral injection.
An advanced projection micro‐stereolithography 3D printer‐based self‐locking dissolvable microneedle is presented as a mass‐producible and cost‐effective transdermal drug delivery platform for precise microdose delivery of drugs in a minimally invasive manner. As a proof‐of‐concept, a novel combination immunotherapy approach proposed to improve melanoma treatment efficacy shows a significantly higher efficacy when delivered via self‐locking microneedles than intratumoral injection.
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Allioideae includes economically important bulb crops such as garlic, onion, leeks, and some ornamental plants in Amaryllidaceae. Here, we reported the complete chloroplast genome (cpDNA) sequences ...of 17 species of Allioideae, five of Amaryllidoideae, and one of Agapanthoideae. These cpDNA sequences represent 80 protein-coding, 30 tRNA, and four rRNA genes, and range from 151,808 to 159,998 bp in length. Loss and pseudogenization of multiple genes (i.e., rps2, infA, and rpl22) appear to have occurred multiple times during the evolution of Alloideae. Additionally, eight mutation hotspots, including rps15-ycf1, rps16-trnQ-UUG, petG-trnW-CCA, psbA upstream, rpl32-trnL-UAG, ycf1, rpl22, matK, and ndhF, were identified in the studied Allium species. Additionally, we present the first phylogenomic analysis among the four tribes of Allioideae based on 74 cpDNA coding regions of 21 species of Allioideae, five species of Amaryllidoideae, one species of Agapanthoideae, and five species representing selected members of Asparagales. Our molecular phylogenomic results strongly support the monophyly of Allioideae, which is sister to Amaryllioideae. Within Allioideae, Tulbaghieae was sister to Gilliesieae-Leucocoryneae whereas Allieae was sister to the clade of Tulbaghieae- Gilliesieae-Leucocoryneae. Molecular dating analyses revealed the crown age of Allioideae in the Eocene (40.1 mya) followed by differentiation of Allieae in the early Miocene (21.3 mya). The split of Gilliesieae from Leucocoryneae was estimated at 16.5 mya. Biogeographic reconstruction suggests an African origin for Allioideae and subsequent spread to Eurasia during the middle Eocene. Cool and arid conditions during the late Eocene led to isolation between African and Eurasian species. African Allioideae may have diverged to South American taxa in the late Oligocene. Rather than vicariance, long-distance dispersal is the most likely explanation for intercontinental distribution of African and South American Allioideae species.
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The development of solid electrolytes with the combination of high ionic conductivity, electrochemical stability, and resistance to Li dendrites continues to be a challenge. A promising approach is ...to create inorganic–organic composites, where multiple components provide the needed properties, but the high sintering temperature of materials such as ceramics precludes close integration or co‐sintering. Here, new ceramic–salt composite electrolytes that are cold sintered at 130 °C are demonstrated. As a model system, composites of Li1.5Al0.5Ge1.5(PO4)3 (LAGP) or Li1+x
+y
Alx
Ti2−x
Siy
P3−y
O12 (LATP) with bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI) salts are cold sintered. The resulting LAGP–LiTFSI and LATP–LiTFSI composites exhibit high relative densities of about 90% and ionic conductivities in excess of 10−4 S cm−1 at 20 °C, which are comparable with the values obtained from LAGP and LATP sintered above 800 °C. It is also demonstrated that cold sintered LAGP–LiTFSI is electrochemically stable in Li symmetric cells over 1800 h at 0.2 mAh cm−2. Cold sintering provides a new approach for bridging the gap in processing temperatures of different materials, thereby enabling high‐performance composites for electrochemical systems.
Ceramic–salt composite solid electrolytes are fabricated through cold sintering at 130 °C. Cold sintering enables integration of bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI) with ceramics to achieve ionic conductivities near 10−4 S cm−1 and relative densities of ≈90%. Stable cycling over 1800 h in Li metal symmetric cells is also demonstrated.
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Cold sintering is an unusually low-temperature process that uses a transient transport phase, which is most often liquid, and an applied uniaxial force to assist in densification of a powder compact. ...By using this approach, many ceramic powders can be transformed to high-density monoliths at temperatures far below the melting point. In this article, we present a summary of cold sintering accomplishments and the current working models that describe the operative mechanisms in the context of other strategies for low-temperature ceramic densification. Current observations in several systems suggest a multiple-stage densification process that bears similarity to models that describe liquid phase sintering. We find that grain growth trends are consistent with classical behavior, but with activation energy values that are lower than observed for thermally driven processes. Densification behavior in these low-temperature systems is rich, and there is much to be investigated regarding mass transport within and across the liquid-solid interfaces that populate these ceramics during densification. Irrespective of mechanisms, these low temperatures create a new opportunity spectrum to design grain boundaries and create new types of nanocomposites among material combinations that previously had incompatible processing windows. Future directions are discussed in terms of both the fundamental science and engineering of cold sintering.
Phylogenetic analysis aims to produce a bifurcating tree, which disregards conflicting signals and displays only those that are present in a large proportion of the data. However, any character (or ...tree) conflict in a dataset allows the exploration of support for various evolutionary hypotheses. Although data-display network approaches exist, biologists cannot easily and routinely use them to compute rooted phylogenetic networks on real datasets containing hundreds of taxa. Here, we constructed an original neighbour-net for a large dataset of Asparagales to highlight the aspects of the resulting network that will be important for interpreting phylogeny. The analyses were largely conducted with new data collected for the same loci as in previous studies, but from different species accessions and greater sampling in many cases than in published analyses. The network tree summarised the majority data pattern in the characters of plastid sequences before tree building, which largely confirmed the currently recognised phylogenetic relationships. Most conflicting signals are at the base of each group along the Asparagales backbone, which helps us to establish the expectancy and advance our understanding of some difficult taxa relationships and their phylogeny. The network method should play a greater role in phylogenetic analyses than it has in the past. To advance the understanding of evolutionary history of the largest order of monocots Asparagales, absolute diversification times were estimated for family-level clades using relaxed molecular clock analyses.
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A Na‐ion solid‐state electrolyte, Na3P0.62As0.38S4, is developed with an exceptionally high conductivity of 1.46 mS cm–1 at 25 °C and enhanced moisture stability. Dual effects of alloying element As ...(lattice expansion and a weaker AsS bond strength) are responsible for the superior conductivity. Improved moisture stability is regulated by shifting low‐energy moisture reactions to high‐energy ones due to As.
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Cold sintering is a low‐temperature powder process methodology that enables the densification of ceramics and ceramic‐based composites at significantly reduced times and temperatures. Although the ...general notion of required pressure for the cold sintering is in the hundreds MPa, some material systems were reasonably demonstrated to be densified in the pressure below 50 MPa, which allows to increase the sample size up to 25 cm2 using a small tabletop laboratory press. Indeed, the pressure requirement has been a major constraint on promoting its application deployments, but this study is intended to propose a path to alleviate that limitation. Five different ceramic and composite systems (three ZnO‐based composites, Li1.5Al0.5Ge1.5(PO4)3, and zeolite Y) with applications in electronic, structural, and energy storage were investigated as a preliminary example of the size scale‐up process. One of the observed challenges of the scale‐up process was to obtain homogeneous microstructure all over the sample as the transient phase evaporation rate may be different upon the localization. In the case of ZnO, the inhomogeneous pellet translucency may pertain to partial anisotropic grain growth within the same sample.
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Commelinaceae (Commelinales) comprise 41 genera and are widely distributed in both the Old and New Worlds, except in Europe. The relationships among genera in this family have been suggested in ...several morphological and molecular studies. However, it is difficult to explain their relationships due to high morphological variations and low support values. Currently, many researchers have been using complete chloroplast genome data for inferring the evolution of land plants. In this study, we completed 15 new plastid genome sequences of subfamily Commelinoideae using the Mi-seq platform. We utilized genome data to reveal the structural variations and reconstruct the problematic positions of genera for the first time.
All examined species of Commelinoideae have three pseudogenes (accD, rpoA, and ycf15), and the former two might be a synapomorphy within Commelinales. Only four species in tribe Commelineae presented IR expansion, which affected duplication of the rpl22 gene. We identified inversions that range from approximately 3 to 15 kb in four taxa (Amischotolype, Belosynapsis, Murdannia, and Streptolirion). The phylogenetic analysis using 77 chloroplast protein-coding genes with maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian inference suggests that Palisota is most closely related to tribe Commelineae, supported by high support values. This result differs significantly from the current classification of Commelinaceae. Also, we resolved the unclear position of Streptoliriinae and the monophyly of Dichorisandrinae. Among the ten CDS (ndhH, rpoC2, ndhA, rps3, ndhG, ndhD, ccsA, ndhF, matK, and ycf1), which have high nucleotide diversity values (Pi > 0.045) and over 500 bp length, four CDS (ndhH, rpoC2, matK, and ycf1) show that they are congruent with the topology derived from 77 chloroplast protein-coding genes.
In this study, we provide detailed information on the 15 complete plastid genomes of Commelinoideae taxa. We identified characteristic pseudogenes and nucleotide diversity, which can be used to infer the family evolutionary history. Also, further research is needed to revise the position of Palisota in the current classification of Commelinaceae.
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