Highly reactive metastable intermixed composites (MICs) have attracted much attention in the past decades. The MIC family of materials mainly includes traditional metal‐based nanothermites, novel ...core–shell‐structured, 3D ordered macroporous‐structured, and ternary nanocomposites. By applying special fabrication approaches, highly reactive MICs with uniformly dispersed reactants, “layer‐by‐layer” or “core–shell” structures, can be prepared. Thus, the combustion performance can be greatly improved, and the ignition characteristics and safety can be precisely controlled by using a certain preparation strategy. Here, the preparation and characterization of the MICs that have been developed during the past few decades are summarized. Traditional preparation methods for MICs generally include physical mixing, high‐energy ball milling, sol–gel synthesis, and vapor deposition, while the novel methods include self‐assembly, electrophoretic deposition, and electrospinning. Various preparation procedures and the ignition and combustion performance of different MIC reactive systems are compared and discussed. In particular, the advantages of novel structured MICs in terms of safety and combustion efficiency are clarified, based on which suggestions regarding the possible future research directions are proposed.
Highly reactive metastable intermixed composites (MICs) prepared by different strategies show various characteristics and properties. By applying special fabrication approaches, highly reactive MICs with uniformly dispersed reactants, assembled in either layer‐by‐layer or core–shell structure, can be prepared. Thus, the improved and desired performances can be achieved by using a certain preparation strategy.
Aims
This study aims to compare estimates of primary liver cancer mortality from World Health Organization (WHO), Global Burden Disease (GBD) and Global Cancer Observatory (GCO).
Methods
Liver cancer ...mortality was extracted from WHO, GBD and GCO for 92 countries for the most recent year. Age‐standardized rate (ASR) was computed and used for current comparisons across the three data sources. Temporal trend for 75 countries was analysed and compared between WHO and GBD from 1990 to 2019 using joinpoint regression. Average annual percentage change for the most recent 10 years was used as indicator for change.
Results
The estimates of ASR were quite consistent across the three data sources, but most similar estimates were found between WHO and GCO in both region and country levels. The differences in ASR were negatively correlated with completeness of cause‐of‐death registration, human development index and proportion of liver cancer because of alcohol consumption. Consistent trends of ASR were found from 35 countries between WHO and GBD in the most recent 10 years. However, opposite trends were found from 10 countries with five from Southern America, four from Europe and one from Asia. Of the 18 countries for projection, opposite trends between WHO and GBD were found from seven countries.
Conclusion
While the ASR of primary liver cancer mortality was comparable across the three data sources, most similar estimates were found between WHO and GCO. The opposite trends found from 10 countries between WHO and GBD raised concerns of true patterns in these countries.
Lay summary
To date, the global estimates of primary liver cancer mortality have been provided by World Health Organization, Global Burden Disease, and Global Cancer Observatory, yet no study has compared the current estimates of primary liver cancer mortality from different data sources globally. This study aims to compare the most recent estimates of primary liver cancer mortality from 92 countries across these three sources. The comparisons were also made through the temporal trend analysis from 1990 to 2019, and the projection to 2030 between WHO and GBD. While the estimates of primary liver cancer mortality were comparable across the three data sources for 92 countries, most similar estimates were found between WHO and GCO. Opposite trends in the most recent 10 years were identified from five Southern American countries (Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Mexico), four European countries (Latvia, Sweden, Cyprus and Poland) and one Asian country (Uzbekistan).
Aiming at the problems of lack of background knowledge and the inconsistent response of robots in the current human-computer interaction system, we proposed a human-computer interaction model based ...on a knowledge graph ripple network. The model simulated the natural human communication process to realize a more natural and intelligent human-computer interaction system. This study had three contributions: first, the affective friendliness of human-computer interaction was obtained by calculating the affective evaluation value and the emotional measurement of human-computer interaction. Then, the external knowledge graph was introduced as the background knowledge of the robot, and the conversation entity was embedded into the ripple network of the knowledge graph to obtain the potential entity content of interest of the participant. Finally, the robot replies based on emotional friendliness and content friendliness. The experimental results showed that, compared with the comparison models, the emotional friendliness and coherence of robots with background knowledge and emotional measurement effectively improve the response accuracy by 5.5% at least during human-computer interaction.
Background and Aims
Hepatitis B vaccine has been included in the infant immunization schedule since 1991 in the United States. We aimed to assess its effectiveness against HBV infection and its ...impact on mortality.
Approach and Results
The study population was participants aged 6+ years with an HBV vaccination history and an HBV serologic test from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999–2018. Participants aged 18+ years with linked mortality records from 1999–2014 were followed for mortality analysis. Multivariable logistic regression was used to compute vaccine effectiveness (VE) overall, by year of birth, and by age. Cox regression was used to estimate HRs for all‐cause, cancer‐related, and cardiovascular disease–related mortality. A total of 64,107 participants were included in the main analysis, with 29,600 (40.7%) having completed HBV vaccination (three or more doses, vaccinated). The highest vaccination uptake was found among those born after 1991, at 86.5%. Vaccinated participants had higher prevalence of vaccine‐induced immunity than the unvaccinated (47.2% vs. 7.4%). Among those born after 1991, VE was found at 58% (95% CI, 18%–79%) overall and 85% for those aged ≥20 years (mean age, 22), whereas no effect was found among those born prior to 1990. HBV vaccination was associated with reduced risk of all‐cause mortality (HR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.68–0.90) and cancer‐related mortality (HR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.58–1.00) but not for cardiovascular disease–related mortality.
Conclusions
In the universal infant vaccination era, the HBV vaccine has shown substantial effectiveness against HBV infection and maintained strong protection for 20 years. It was also associated with reduced risk of all‐cause and cancer‐related mortality.
The study of positive species interactions is a rapidly evolving field in ecology. Despite decades of research, controversy has emerged as to whether positive and negative interactions predictably ...shift with increasing environmental stress as hypothesised by the stress‐gradient hypothesis (SGH). Here, we provide a synthesis of 727 tests of the SGH in plant communities across the globe to examine its generality across a variety of ecological factors. Our results show that plant interactions change with stress through an outright shift to facilitation (survival) or a reduction in competition (growth and reproduction). In a limited number of cases, plant interactions do not respond to stress, but they never shift towards competition with stress. These findings are consistent across stress types, plant growth forms, life histories, origins (invasive vs. native), climates, ecosystems and methodologies, though the magnitude of the shifts towards facilitation with stress is dependent on these factors. We suggest that future studies should employ standardised definitions and protocols to test the SGH, take a multi‐factorial approach that considers variables such as plant traits in addition to stress, and apply the SGH to better understand how species and communities will respond to environmental change.
We report an ultrasound-driven gold-nanoshell-functionalized polymer multilayer tubular nanoswimmer that can photomechanically perforate the membrane of a cancer cell by assistance of near-infrared ...(NIR) light. The nanoswimmers were constructed by a template-assisted layer-by-layer technique and subsequent functionalization of Au nanoshells inside the big opening. The nanoswimmers exhibit efficient and controllable movement toward target cells through the manipulation of the acoustic field. Next, the nanoswimmers with end-on attachment onto the HeLa cells achieve the poration of the cell membrane within 0.1 s under the irradiation of NIR light. The experimental and theoretical results suggest that the instantaneous photothermal effect provides enough photomechanical force to open the cell membrane. Such NIR-light-assisted nanoswimmers-enabled cell membrane poration possesses various advantages including active targeting, short time, and precision in single cells that conventional chemical and physical cell poration techniques could not achieve and, thus, provides considerable promise in a variety of biomedical applications such as gene delivery and artificial insemination.
Aims
This study aims to assess the trend of hepatitis B virus (HBV)‐attributable liver cancer as well as the impact of HBV vaccine on it.
Methods
We retrieved data from Global Burden Disease study to ...estimate trends of HBV‐attributable liver cancer by region and age from 1990 to 2017 and HBV vaccine data from World Health Organization to assess its impact on these trends for children (0‐14 years), adolescents and young adults (15‐29 years). Change of cancer cases, age‐standardized incidence rate (ASR) and estimated annual percentage change (EAPC) were used to quantify the trends of HBV‐attributable liver cancer.
Results
In this study, reduction in HBV‐attributable cancer incident cases was found among children (from 2080 to 1430), adolescents and young adults (from 10 890 to 9090). In terms of ASR, overall reduction was observed globally by an average of −0.45% (95% CI: −0.62 to −0.29) per year in the same period. The highest reduction in ASR was found in adolescents and young adults with EAPC of −3.02 (95% CI: −3.57 to −2.46). Although the ASR has decreased from all the five regions with universal HBV immunization programme, it has increased in the region without universal vaccination and the highest increase was found among children with EAPC of 1.97 (95% CI: 1.71‐2.23).
Conclusion
Significant reduction in HBV‐attributable liver cancer among children was mainly because of the universal HBV vaccination. However, the increasing trend of HBV‐attributable liver cancer in region without universal HBV vaccination suggested the necessity of introducing universal immunization.
The combination of bottom‐up controllable self‐assembly technique with bioinspired design has opened new horizons in the development of self‐propelled synthetic micro/nanomotors. Over the past five ...years, a significant advances toward the construction of bioinspired self‐propelled micro/nanomotors has been witnessed based on the controlled self‐assembly technique. Such a strategy permits the realization of autonomously synthetic motors with engineering features, such as sizes, shapes, composition, propulsion mechanism, and function. The construction, propulsion mechanism, and movement control of synthetic micro/nanomotors in connection with controlled self‐assembly in recent research activities are summarized. These assembled nanomotors are expected to have a tremendous impact on current artificial nanomachines in future and hold potential promise for biomedical applications including drug targeted delivery, photothermal cancer therapy, biodetoxification, treatment of atherosclerosis, artificial insemination, crushing kidney stones, cleaning wounds, and removing blood clots and parasites.
Bioinspired self‐propelled nanomotors based on controlled molecular self‐assembly permit the achievement of autonomously synthetic micro/nanomotors with engineering features, such as sizes, shapes, composition, propulsion mechanism, and function. Recent progress toward the construction, propulsion strategy, and movement regulation of controllable self‐assembled micro/nanomotors is summarized. Such assembled motors hold considerable promise in performing various tasks and diverse applications.
We describe fuel-free, near-infrared (NIR)-driven Janus mesoporous silica nanoparticle motors (JMSNMs) with diameters of 50, 80, and 120 nm. The Janus structure of the JMSNMs is generated by vacuum ...sputtering of a 10 nm Au layer on one side of the MSNMs. Upon exposure to an NIR laser, a localized photothermal effect on the Au half-shells results in the formation of thermal gradients across the JMSNMs; thus, the generated self-thermophoresis can actively drive the nanomotors to move at an ultrafast speed, for instance, up to 950 body lengths/s for 50 nm JMSNMs under an NIR laser power of 70.3 W/cm2. The reversible “on/off” motion of the JMSNMs and their directed movement along the light gradient can be conveniently modulated by a remote NIR laser. Moreover, dynamic light scattering measurements are performed to investigate the coexisting translational and rotational motion of the JMSNMs in the presence of both self-thermophoretic forces and strong Brownian forces. These NIR-powered nanomotors demonstrate a novel strategy for overcoming the necessity of chemical fuels and exhibit a significant improvement in the maneuverability of nanomotors while providing potential cargo transportation in a biofriendly manner.
Synthetic micro‐/nanomotors (MNMs) are capable of performing self‐propelled motion in fluids through harvesting different types of energies into mechanical movement, with potential applications in ...biomedicine and other fields. To address the challenges in these applications, a promising strategy that combines controlled assembly (bottom‐up approaches) with top‐down approaches for engineering autonomous, multifunctionalized MNMs is under investigation, beginning in 2012. These MNMs, derived from layer‐by‐layer assembly or molecular self‐assembly, display the advantages of: i) mass production, ii) response to the external stimuli, and iii) access to multifunctionality, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. The advance on how to integrate diverse functional components into different architectures based on controlled assemblies, to realize controlled fabrication, motion control (including the movement speed, direction, and state), and biomedical applications of MNMs, directed by the concept of nanoarchitectonics, are highlighted here. The remaining challenges and future research directions are also discussed.
Nanoarchitectonics is highlighted as an emerging, promising strategy for the fabrication, motion control, and applications of artificial micro‐/nanomotors based on diverse assembled architectures. The strategy affords assembled micro‐/nanomotors with multifunctionality, stimuli‐response properties, and the feasibility of mass production, which favors the applications of micro‐/nanomotors in biomedical fields.
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