Lightweight and high-efficiency microwave absorption materials with tunable electromagnetic properties is a highly sought-after goal and a great challenge for researchers. In this work, a simple ...strategy of confinedly implanting small NiFe204 clusters on reduced graphene oxide is demonstrated, wherein the magnetic clusters are tailored, and more significantly, the electromagnetic properties are highly tuned. The microwave absorption was efficiently optimized yielding a maximum reflection loss of -58 dB and - 12 times broadening of the bandwidth （at -10 dB）. Furthermore, tailoring of the implanted magnetic clusters successfully realized the selective-frequency microwave absorption, and the absorption peak could shift from 4.6 to 16 GHz covering 72% of the measured frequency range. The fascinating performances eventuate from the appropriately tailored clusters, which provide optimal synergistic effects of the dielectric and magnetic loss caused by multi-relaxation, conductance, and resonances. These findings open new avenues for designing microwave absorption materials in future, and the well-tailored NiFe204-rGO can be readily applied as a multi-functional microwave absorption material in various fields ranging from civil and commerce to military and aerospace.
Atherosclerosis is the primary cause of hardening and narrowing arteries, leading to cardiovascular disease accounting for the high mortality in the United States. For developing effective treatments ...for atherosclerosis, considerable efforts have been devoted to developing
models. Compared to animal models,
models can provide great opportunities to obtain data more efficiently, economically. Therefore, this review discusses the recent progress in
models for atherosclerosis studies, including traditional two-dimensional (2D) systems cultured on the tissue culture plate, 2D cell sheets, and recently emerged microfluidic chip models with 2D culture. In addition, advanced
three-dimensional models such as spheroids, cell-laden hydrogel constructs, tissue-engineered blood vessels, and vessel-on-a-chip will also be covered. Moreover, the functions of these models are also summarized along with model discussion. Lastly, the future perspectives of this field are discussed.
The role of social media as a mobilization tool has been widely discussed in the digital age, yet empirical evidence on the online consensus mobilization around environmental issues in a relatively ...restrictive political setting remains largely unexplored. In this study, my aim is to understand how activists strategically harness social media to take collective initiatives and to stimulate communal awareness against current waste disposal industry and waste management policies in China. Using a content analysis method, I examined 557 posts from 12 anti-incineration WeChat subscription accounts with the help of NVivo software. In reference to social constructionism and social movement theories, I argue that consensus mobilization includes three core undertakings: identification, demonstration, and resolution. Investigating the anti-incineration discourse production on WeChat contributes to a more nuanced comprehension of online mobilization in an authoritarian context. And the results have practical implications for environmental-related activism via social media.
Background and Objective:
Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a common complication in preterm infants; predicting the degree of BPD at an early life stage is difficult. Inflammation is a crucial ...risk factor for BPD pathogenesis, and the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a potential systemic inflammatory biomarker. We aimed to assess the predictive value of the NLR for BPD.
Methods:
We carried out a retrospective, single-center, observational study of neonates with gestational ages (GAs) <32 weeks and assessed the association between the NLR and BPD.
Results:
The study population included 296 preterm infants with BPD (
n
= 144) or without BPD (
n
= 152). Among the infants, 75 (25.3%) had mild BPD, 37 (12.5%) had moderate BPD, and 32 (10.8%) had severe BPD. The BPD group had a higher NLR at birth and at 72 h than the non-BPD group. The NLR cutoff value at 72 h for the prediction of BPD was 3.035 (sensitivity = 0.519, specificity = 0.964), and the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.714. The NLR cutoff value at 72 h for predicting severe BPD was 3.105 (sensitivity = 0.607, specificity = 0.819), with an AUC of 0.756. At the NLR cutoff value at 72 for the prediction of BPD, the AUCs were 0.640 and 0.970 in the preterm infants with EOS and congenital pneumonia, respectively.
Conclusions:
The NLR is an inexpensive, accessible and convenient tool; an increase in the NLR at 72 h could be an early predictor of BPD, especially severe BPD. Additionally, the NLR at 72 h could be a predictor of BPD in preterm infants with intrauterine infections.
Background and Objective:
As bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) can lead to considerable mortality and morbidity, this disease is the focus of attention in neonatology. Vitamin D (VD), which has ...anti-inflammatory properties and promotes lung growth, may have a therapeutic effect on BPD. The overexpression of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) has been demonstrated to be involved in the pathogenesis of BPD in our previous study. This study aimed to elucidate the effect of VD on BPD and the role of NETs in this process.
Methods:
Newborn rats were exposed to 90% oxygen continuously for 7 days to mimic BPD, and rats under hyperoxia were injected with 1,25(OH)2D3 at different doses (0.5 ng/g, 3 ng/g). Alveolarization, pulmonary vascular development, inflammatory cytokines and NETs were assessed.
Results:
Hyperoxia increased mortality, decreased body weight, impaired alveolarization with a decrease in radial alveolar count (RAC) and an increase in mean linear intercept (MLI), and impaired vascular development with low vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression. Meanwhile, hyperoxia enhanced expression of the proinflammatory factors TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6, and elevated NETs in lung tissues and plasma. Low-dose VD (0.5 ng/g) administration increased the survival rate, attenuated developmental retardation, improved alveolarization, and pulmonary vascular development in hyperoxia-induced BPD, and reduced the expression of proinflammatory factors and NETs. However, high-dose VD (3 ng/g) treatment did not attenuate lung injury or NETs significantly, and even led to more severe developmental retardation and a higher mortality rate.
Conclusions:
Low-dose VD increased the survival rate, attenuated developmental retardation, and improved alveolarization and pulmonary vascularization arrest in hyperoxia-induced BPD partially by inhibiting NETs.
Transcription factors play a significant role during the symptomatic onset and progression of prion diseases. We previously showed the immunomodulatory and nuclear factor of activated T cells' (NFAT) ...suppressive effects of an immunosuppressant, FK506, in the symptomatic stage and an antibiotic, minocycline, in the pre-symptomatic stage of prion infection in hamsters. Here we used for the first time, a combinatory FK506+minocycline treatment to test its transcriptional modulating effects in the symptomatic stage of prion infection. Our results indicate that prolonged treatment with FK506+minocycline was effective in alleviating astrogliosis and neuronal death triggered by misfolded prions. Specifically, the combinatory therapy with FK506+minocycline lowered the expression of the astrocytes activation marker GFAP and of the microglial activation marker IBA-1, subsequently reducing the level of pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin 1 beta (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and increasing the levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines IL-10 and IL-27. We further found that FK506+minocycline treatment inhibited mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) p38 phosphorylation, NF-kB nuclear translocation, caspase expression, and enhanced phosphorylated cAMP response element-binding protein (pCREB) and phosphorylated Bcl2-associated death promoter (pBAD) levels to reduce cognitive impairment and apoptosis. Interestingly, FK506+minocycline reduced mitochondrial fragmentation and promoted nuclear factor⁻erythroid2-related factor-2 (NRF2)-heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) pathway to enhance survival. Taken together, our results show that a therapeutic cocktail of FK506+minocycline is an attractive candidate for prolonged use in prion diseases and we encourage its further clinical development as a possible treatment for this disease.
Recently, the increasing popularity of local area services, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, on which thousands of clients subscribe and download popular contents all the while, has drawn more ...and more attention on the study of content dissemination networks. Device-to-device (D2D) communication, which allows two devices to directly communicate with each other, has become an effective content dissemination method. With the goal of reducing the delay of content dissemination process with D2D communication, we propose an evolutionary game (EG)-based distributed resource allocation scheme. Moreover, we theoretically prove the existence and stability of game equilibrium and further propose a global search algorithm to achieve equilibrium. In the algorithm, all D2D links will select resource adaptively based on the predicted contact duration. Aiming at improving the prediction accuracy of contact duration, we propose social trajectory similarity (STS) to represent the overlapping of history trajectory among all the mobile users by mining user behavior patterns. Numerical results show that our proposed STS increases nearly 20% correlation with history trajectory overlap compared with jaccard index. Furthermore, our EG-based scheme reduces the delay over 15% compared with the coalition game scheme, and over 30% compared with the random selection scheme. In addition, our proposed scheme also increases throughput efficiency with nearly 20% and achieves better fairness.
•Recent advances on TENG and PENG-based sensors and sensing systems were summarized.•The working mechanism and applications of TENG and PENG were reviewed.•The trends and challenges ofTENG and PENG ...in sensing fields were discussed.
Diversiform sensors and sensing devices with high reliability and self-powered features are critical in future wearable and flexible electronics of various fields. As a new energy harvesting technology, nanogenerator represented by triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) and piezoelectric nanogenerator (PENG) has attracted wide attention because it can effectively utilize renewable energy. Self-powered sensing technology based on TENG and PENG has been greatly developed because of its advantages over traditional power supply technology. The recent progress of TENG and PENG as self-powered smart sensors or power supply of sensing systems for a variety of applications has comprehensively summarized, such as environmental monitoring, biomedical application, and human–machine interface system. The latest achievements are also systematically reviewed from the aspects of advanced triboelectric/piezoelectric materials, implementation performance and prospective applications. The development of emerging nanomaterials makes TENG and PENG exhibit great application potential in the fields of nano-power sources, self-powered nano-devices, and micro-implantable chips. Moreover, some insights about future development trends and challenges of TENG and PENG in sensing fields were put forward. Triboelectric and piezoelectric nanogenerator has great prospective applications for the micro/nano energy and self-power of diversiform sensors and sensing systems as an emerging technology.
Inflammation is a response of body tissues to injury and infection. Compounds that can inhibit inflammation have been shown to have potential therapeutic clinical application. Gambogenic acid （GEA） ...has potent antitumor and anti-inflammatory activities. Herein, the molecular mechanisms of GEA＇s anti-inflammatory effect were investigated in lipopolysaccharide （LPS）-stimulated macrophage cells. The results showed that pretreatment with GEA could markedly inhibit interleukin （IL）-1α, IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor-α, IFN-β, IL-12b, and IL-23a production in a dose-dependent manner in LPS-induced model. Furthermore, this drug significantly reduced the release of nitric oxide （NO）, and impaired the protein level of inducible NO synthase and the cyclooxygenase 2. The finding also showed that the effect of GEA may be related to the suppression of the nuclear factor-κB （NF-κB） and mitogen-activated protein kinase （MAPK） signaling pathway. These results indicate that GEA could suppress LPS-simulated inflammatory response partially by attenuating NO synthesis and NF-κB and MAPK activation, suggesting that it may become a potent therapeutic agent for the treatment of inflammatory diseases.
The theory of strategic action fields (SAFs) is a perspective from which to better understand the emergence, stability, and change of the meso-level social order. However, the transferability of this ...theoretical perspective requires additional empirical evidence. Therefore, this study regards municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration in China as a SAF, in which various forces vie for the dominant position around the construction and operation of incineration plants. Given that all fields are embedded in a shifting social and cultural context, I analyze the interactions and competitions between incumbents and challengers. I then examine a series of consecutive events in the SAF, such as the emergence of the waste crisis, the development of MSW incineration, and consequential episodes of contention. I also investigate other factors that may affect the prospects for stability and change of the SAF, including actions of the state, influences of other related fields, and large-scale crises. By tracing the developmental trajectory of the SAF of MSW incineration, I discuss the applicability of the theory of SAFs to understanding an underexplored field in China.
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