Forward osmosis is an emerging osmosis-driven membrane process, which has benefits of low energy consumption, low operational pressure, easy equipment, and low fouling. This review paper summarized ...the recent advances of forward osmosis technology based on the publications collected from Science Direct since 1996. Through the statistical analysis of 9345 articles, it was concluded that the research of forward osmosis mainly focused on the draw solution, membrane development, membrane fouling, and energy consumption. In this review, the most significant influencing factors of forward osmosis technology were analyzed, including membrane development, draw solution, and the operating conditions; then the existing problems were discussed in detail, including concentration polarization, membrane fouling, and reverse solute diffusion, which are closely related to each other; finally, the innovations and bottlenecks of forward osmosis technology were summarized, and the future perspectives were discussed. More attention should be paid to developing new membrane materials, designing effective draw solutions, minimizing the energy consumption, and creating energy-efficient recovery processes, to expand its commercial application. This review will deepen the understanding to forward osmosis technology, and provide comprehensive information for the scientific researcher and application engineers to facilitate the research and development of forward osmosis technology.
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•The recent advances of FO process in water treatment were analyzed and summarized.•The influencing factors, membrane, draw solution, operating condition were discussed.•The main regeneration methods of draw solution were introduced and compared.•The future direction of forward osmosis technology development was discussed.
Mitochondria are critically involved in reactive oxygen species (ROS)-dependent lung diseases, such as lung fibrosis, asbestos, chronic airway diseases and lung cancer. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) ...encodes mitochondrial proteins and is more sensitive to oxidants than nuclear DNA. Damage to mtDNA causes mitochondrial dysfunction, including electron transport chain impairment and mitochondrial membrane potential loss. Furthermore, damaged mtDNA also acts as a damage-associated molecular pattern (DAMP) that drives inflammatory and immune responses. In this review, crosstalk among alveolar epithelial cells, alveolar macrophages and mitochondria is examined. ROS-related transcription factors and downstream cell signaling pathways are also discussed. We conclude that targeting oxidative stress with antioxidant agents, such as thiol molecules, polyphenols and superoxide dismutase (SOD), and promoting mitochondrial biogenesis should be considered as novel strategies for treating lung diseases that currently have no effective treatment options.
This paper presents a coupled evaluation of rural habitat environment as well as rural tourism in China based on a multi-objective optimization algorithm. Firstly, the ANN model is used as the three ...objective evaluation function values of CVBEC, LCC and LCCO2 as the dependent variables, and the NSGA-II algorithm is introduced as the optimization algorithm for the multi-objective optimization of rural architectural design. Secondly, based on the ANN-NSGA-II algorithm, an improvement strategy is proposed for the rural building environment algorithm, and the multi-objective discrete particle swarm algorithm with a dominant ranking number is applied to rural tourism route planning. Then the coupled evaluation system of rural habitat environment and rural tourism is constructed by first and second-level indicators. Finally, the coordination degree and spatial autocorrelation analysis of the multi-system coupling relationship are conducted for the coupling evaluation system. The study shows that the coordinated development degree P value increased from 0.02 in 2017 to 0.83 in 2022, Moran’s I index of living environment and ecological environment system is greater than 0, and the Z value is greater than 1.63.
Exosomes (Exos) are nanoscale natural vehicles for transporting biomolecules to facilitate cell-to-cell communication, indicating a high potential of them for delivering therapeutics/diagnostics. To ...improve their delivery capacity, a simple, noninvasive, and efficient strategy for functionalizing Exos with effective targeting ligands as well as elucidation of the cellular uptake mechanism of these functionalized Exos was found be to necessary, but remained a challenge. In this work, we used diacyllipid–aptamer conjugates as the targeting ligand to develop an aptamer-functionalized Exos (Apt-Exos) nanoplatform for cell type-specific delivery of molecular therapeutics. The cellular uptake mechanism of Apt-Exos was investigated in details, and distinct behavior was observed in comparison to free Exos. By combining the excellent molecular recognition capability of aptamers and the superiority of Exos as natural vehicles, Apt-Exos can efficiently deliver molecular drugs/fluorophores to target cancer cells, providing a promising delivery platform for cancer theranostics.
As an endogenous mechanism affecting social and economic changes, the allocation of labor affects the overall efficiency and comprehensive level of economic development in a region. Firstly, this ...paper collects and analyzes the data from 2011 to 2020, then screens out useful data, and predicts the relevant data of the three major industries in 2021 by the grey prediction method and curve fitting method. Secondly, the principal component analysis is used to calculate the weights of indicators such as market share, industrial growth rate, employment contribution rate, and the pulling ability to GDP, and then the strength of each industry is calculated. Finally, the strong industries are determined according to the principle of increasing the intensity of strong industries, so as to provide suggestions for the optimization of the allocation of labor market resources in the three major industries.
Two‐inch‐sized perovskite crystals, CH3NH3PbX3 (X=I, Br, Cl), with high crystalline quality are prepared by a solution‐grown strategy. The availability of large perovskite crystals is expected to ...transform its broad applications in photovoltaics, optoelectronics, lasers, photodetectors, LEDs, etc., just as crystalline silicon has done in revolutionizing the modern electronics and photovoltaic industries.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) damage is associated with the development of cardiovascular diseases. Cardiac aging plays a central role in cardiovascular diseases. There is accumulating evidence linking ...cardiac aging to mtDNA damage, including mtDNA mutation and decreased mtDNA copy number. Current wisdom indicates that mtDNA is susceptible to damage by mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS). This review presents the cellular and molecular mechanisms of cardiac aging, including autophagy, chronic inflammation, mtROS, and mtDNA damage, and the effects of mitochondrial biogenesis and oxidative stress on mtDNA. The importance of nucleoid-associated proteins (Pol γ), nuclear respiratory factors (NRF1 and NRF2), the cGAS-STING pathway, and the mitochondrial biogenesis pathway concerning the development of mtDNA damage during cardiac aging is discussed. Thus, the repair of damaged mtDNA provides a potential clinical target for preventing cardiac aging.
Cell–cell interactions are mediated through compositions expressed on the membrane. Engineering the cell surface to display functional modules with high biocompatibility, high controllability, and ...high stability would offer great opportunities for studying and manipulating these intercellular reactions. However, it remains a technical challenge because of the complex and dynamic nature of the cell membrane. Herein, by using three-dimensional (3D) amphiphilic pyramidal DNA as the scaffold, we develop a biocompatible, effective, and versatile strategy for engineering the cell surface with DNA probes. Compared with linear DNA constructs, these pyramidal probes show higher (nearly 100-fold) membrane-anchoring stability and higher (about 2.5-fold) target accessibility. They enable specific, effective, and tunable connections between cells. Meanwhile, our results indicate that connecting cells in close proximity are critical to initiate intercellular communication. By combining high programmability and high diversity of DNA probes, this strategy is expected to provide a powerful and designable membrane-anchored nanoplatform for studying multicellular communication networks.
•Responses of soil water and salt dynamics to varied rainfall events and hydrological years were evaluated.•Salt leaching and deep drainage occurred mainly due to summer-concentrated rainfall during ...wet year.•Salt decrease percentage in the CL was greater than that in the GL in all hydrological years.•One brackish water irrigation application is avail salt leaching both in cropland and grassland.
Soil salination challenges sustainable agricultural production and management in the lowland area of the North China Plain (NCP). This study investigated the effect of varied rainfall events and hydrological years on deep drainage and salt leaching in Nanpi County in the NCP. Field experiments were conducted to measure soil matric potential (SMP) and soil water electrical conductivity (ECw) in 300 cm profiles of an irrigated cropland (CL) and unirrigated grassland (GL). The HYDRUS-1D model was calibrated and validated to optimize soil water and salt transport parameters using the SMP and ECw data obtained in 2015 and 2016, respectively. The results showed that the HYDRUS-1D model was reliable to simulate soil water and salt migration in 300 cm profiles at both sites. The salt leaching depths and degrees were positively correlated with precipitation amount. The heavy rain (45 mm) and rainstorm (68 mm) favored salt leaching within 100 cm, and severe and extreme rainstorms resulted in salt leaching within 150–200 cm both in the CL and GL. The SDP in the CL was greater than that in the GL in all hydrological years owing to agricultural cultivation and irrigation. Salt leaching in the 300 cm profiles mainly occurred in the rainy seasons of wet year, with the salt decrease percentage (SDP) being 61% in the CL and 42% in the GL. Salt leaching due to precipitation was sufficient in the irrigated CL in all hydrological years, and precipitation in normal rainfall years could remove 70–80% of soil salts within 50–63 cm soil depth. Grass growth without irrigation led to water deficits and salt accumulation when the annual precipitation amount was less than that in wet years. The results demonstrated that precipitation, combined with irrigation using of brackish and freshwater, could be usefully for soil salt leaching. A recommended irrigation scheme for water saving and salt control in CL and GL is one brackish water irrigation application and three freshwater irrigation applications each year in the NCP.
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