Self-healing gels are emerging as promising materials for various human-interfaced applications. Unveiling microscopic processes for self-healing gels is crucial for not only understanding ...self-healing mechanisms but also guiding material design, which is, however, hardly achieved because of the lack of direct and effective approaches. Herein, covalent bond-induced emission of AIEgen is, for the first time, utilized for establishing a fluorescence turn-on strategy to visualize microscope processes for self-healing gels. Such strategy allows the in situ monitoring of gelation and self-healing processes with extremely low background. Besides, the fluorescence also endows self-healing gels with diverse emission, especially white-light emission. By coding these multicolor fluorescent self-healing gels, fluorescent codes with a stealth effect are successfully fabricated with features of stretchability, wearability, reusability, and diversity, performing superiorly in anticounterfeiting. These results give rise to a deep insight into self-healing mechanism and will potentially boost the development of new multifunctional self-healing gels.
Bone metastasis is the main cause of death in patients with prostate cancer (PCa), but there lacks effective treatment method. Immunotherapy shows new hopes for bone metastatic PCa patients, while ...the efficacy is still unsatisfactory and limited by the unique immunosuppressive microenvironment in metastatic bone site. Here, we developed a bone-targeted nano-delivery system as a nano-regulator to enhance the immunotherapy of bone metastatic PCa. The nanosystem was assembled via coordination between phytic acid (PA) and Fe
3+
to form nano-sized metal–organic framework (MOF), through which mitoxantrone (MTO) was encapsulated. At cellular level, the nanosystem showed selective cytotoxicity towards RM-1 PCa cells over immune cells, and could induce tumor cells immunogenic cell death (ICD) to improve the immunogenicity of the tumor. Moreover, the nanosystem was able to induce ubiquitination of TGFβ receptor (TβR) on immune cells to promote its degradation, thus serving as a nano-regulator to block the functions of TGF-β, an abundant cytokine that has a systematically immunosuppressive effect in the tumor microenvironment. Upon intravenous injection, the nanoparticle showed pro-longed blood circulation and targeting accumulation into bone metastatic site, and imposed robust anti-tumor effect in combination with αCTLA-4. In addition, bone destruction was significantly alleviated after treatment to reduce the skeletal-related events. Overall, this work provides a biocompatible nanomedicine to restore immune sensitivity of bone metastatic tumor for enhanced immunotherapy by blocking TGF-β signaling pathway.
Two-dimensional (2D) superlattices, formed by stacking sublattices of 2D materials, have emerged as a powerful platform for tailoring and enhancing material properties beyond their intrinsic ...characteristics. However, conventional synthesis methods are limited to pristine 2D material sublattices, posing a significant practical challenge when it comes to stacking chemically modified sublattices. Here we report a chemical synthesis method that overcomes this challenge by creating a unique 2D graphene superlattice, stacking graphene sublattices with monodisperse, nanometer-sized, square-shaped pores and strategically doped elements at the pore edges. The resulting graphene superlattice exhibits remarkable correlations between quantum phases at both the electron and phonon levels, leading to diverse functionalities, such as electromagnetic shielding, energy harvesting, optoelectronics, and thermoelectrics. Overall, our findings not only provide chemical design principles for synthesizing and understanding functional 2D superlattices but also expand their enhanced functionality and extensive application potential compared to their pristine counterparts.
A low crosstalk and broadband polarization rotator and splitter (PRS) consisting of a bi-level adiabatic taper, a symmetric micro Y-junction and adiabatic couplers is proposed and demonstrated using ...a silicon-on-insulator platform. Due to the principle of mode evolution, the proposed PRS exhibits superior performance over a broad bandwidth. The waveguide with a thin ridge layer is introduced to reduce the crosstalk from TM 0 mode and increase the coupling strength of TE 0 mode. The proposed PRS is experimentally demonstrated with a loss about 1 dB and a crosstalk about -14 dB over a wavelength range of 100 nm.
The corrosion features of 20# carbon steel, the base material of sour water stripper, in NH4Cl solution were examined in this research. The anatomical samples of the corroded parts were characterized ...by an X-ray diffractometer and other analytical tools. It was found to be a localized perforation caused by pitting, and the corrosion product was FeCl2. 20# steel was subjected to electrochemical testing using Tafel polarization and Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The studies showed that the 20# steel’s cathodic depolarization reaction rate speeds as density rises, and that the concentration polarization gets more marked as temperature rises. The corrosion rate of 20# steel is the fastest when temperature hits its highest point of 80°C, measuring 4.7142 mm/a. When density rose from 5 to 20%, corrosion rate grew from 1.6378 to 7.2430 mm/a.
Exosomal miRNAs, as potential biomarkers in liquid biopsy for cancer early diagnosis, have aroused widespread concern. Herein, an electrochemical biosensor based on DNA “nano-bridge” was designed and ...applied to detect exosomal microRNA-21 (miR-21) derived from breast cancer cells. In brief, the target miR-21 can specifically open the hairpin probe 1(HP1) labeled on the gold electrode (GE) surface through strand displacement reaction. Thus the exposed loop region of HP1 can act as an initiator sequence to activate the hybridization chain reaction (HCR) between two kinetically trapped hairpin probes: HP2 immobilized on the GE surface and biotin labeled HP3 in solution. Cascade HCR leads to the formation of DNA “nano-bridge” tethered to the GE surface with a great deal of “piers”. Upon addition of avidin-modified horseradish peroxidase (HRP), numerous HRP were bound to the formed “nano-bridge” through biotin-avidin interaction to arouse tremendous current signal. In theory, only a single miR-21 is able to trigger the continuous HCR between HP2 and HP3 until all of the HP2 are exhausted. Therefore the proposed biosensor achieved ultrahigh sensitivity toward miR-21 with the detection limit down to 168 amol/L, as well as little cross-hybridization even at the single-base-mismatched level. Successful attempts were also made in the detection of exosomal miR-21 obtained from the MCF-7 of breast cancer cell line. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to built horizontal DNA nano-structure on the electrode surface for exosomal miRNAs detection. In a word, the high sensitivity, selectivity, low cost make the proposed method hold great potential application for early point-of-care (POC) diagnostics of cancer.
The DNA nanobridge structure was constructed on the electrode by hybridization chain reaction (HCR) for the detection of exosomal miRNA-21. Horizontal DNA nanostructures make the signal groups closer to the electrode surface and increase the efficiency and reliability of signal transmission. Display omitted
Cancer is one of the devastating diseases in the world. The development of nanocarrier provides a promising perspective for improving cancer therapeutic efficacy. However, the issues with potential ...toxicity, quantity production, and excessive costs limit their further applications in clinical practice.
Herein, we proposed a nanocarrier obtained from aloe with stability and leak-proofness. We isolated nanovesicles from the gel and rind of aloe (gADNVs and rADNVs) with higher quality and yield by controlling the final centrifugation time within 20 min, and modulating the viscosity at 2.98 mPa S and 1.57 mPa S respectively. The gADNVs showed great structure and storage stability, antioxidant and antidetergent capacity. They could be efficiently taken up by melanoma cells, and with no toxicity in vitro or in vivo. Indocyanine green (ICG) loaded in gADNVs (ICG/gADNVs) showed great stability in both heating system and in serum, and its retention rate exceeded 90% after 30 days stored in gADNVs. ICG/gADNVs stored 30 days could still effectively damage melanoma cells and inhibit melanoma growth, outperforming free ICG and ICG liposomes. Interestingly, gADNVs showed prominent penetrability to mice skin which might be beneficial to noninvasive transdermal administration.
Our research was designed to simplify the preparation of drug carrier, and reduce production cost, which provided an alternative for the development of economic and safe drug delivery system.
With the increasing demand for personalized and customized home products, how to realize the innovative design of furniture and improve the design efficiency has become a research hotspot for related ...professionals. Aiming at these problems, the study extracts the main color of furniture images by optimizing the K-mean clustering algorithm, uses the simulated annealing algorithm to color-match the furniture, and reconstructs the image by edge detection to design a furniture design method based on image color extraction. The results revealed that in the foreground part, the correct rate of color match based on the design method was 95.7%, and in the background part, the correct rate of color match based on the design method was 94.81 %, which proved its effectiveness. The average feature point extraction time and the average feature point matching time of the design-based algorithm were 5.45 ms and 9.83 ms, respectively, which proved its high computational efficiency. In furniture color edge detection and overall color match, the image obtained based on the design method was significantly clearer, and the overall coherence, saturation and brightness were closer to the input image. In addition to raising the standard of furniture design, the study's design methodology increases design efficiency and offers solid technical support for the area.
To investigate serum irisin levels in girls at different developmental status and explore the significance of irisin for the diagnosis of central precocious puberty (CPP) in girls.
In this ...cross-sectional study 111 girls were enrolled, including 43 cases of CPP, 44 cases of peripheral precocious puberty (PPP) and 24 cases of girls with normal sexual development as controls. The data on age, weight and height, measured blood levels of luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), estradiol, and irisin were collected. Pelvic Doppler ultrasound was performed to evaluate uterine length, transverse diameter, anteroposterior diameter. The girls were divided into non-CPP group and CPP group according to gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) stimulation test.
Serum irisin levels were significantly higher in CPP group than in PPP group and normal control group. Serum irisin level was positively correlated with basal LH level, basal FSH level, peak LH level, peak LH /FSH ratio, uterine volume, bone age, and bone age index. The area under the curve, cut-off value, sensitivity and specificity of serum irisin were 0.958, 219.255 pg/ml, 100% and 80.6%. The combined diagnosis of CPP in girls by serum irisin and serum basal LH combined with uterine volume had an AUC, sensitivity, and specificity of 0.994, 97.6%, and 100%, superior to that of the single index.
Serum irisin level in girls with CPP is significantly increased. An irisin combined index could help the diagnosis of CPP in girls.
•Reduction of these pesticides mainly affected by the residuals and immersion time.•Efficiency of ultrasonic processing mainly depends on pesticides types and treating-time.•Molecular docking was ...used to elucidate the interaction between pesticide lettuce leaves.•Machine leaning was aided causal inference for carbamates and pyrethroid reducing.
This study explores the reduction of carbamates (CAs) and pyrethroids (PYs) − commonly used pesticides − in lettuce using various immersion solutions and ultrasonic processing. It also examines the role of machine learning and molecular docking in understanding the mechanisms of pesticide reduction. The results revealed that the highest reduction of both CAs and PYs exceeded 80 % on lettuce leaves. In most samples, the reduction increased with the power of ultrasonic processing and processing time. The results of machine learning models (XGBoost and SHAP) showed that during the immersion cleaning of CAs and PYs, as well as during both immersion cleaning and ultrasonic processing of CAs + PYs, the reduction was most influenced by the initial pesticide levels and immersion time. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC–MS) analysis of lettuce’s wax layer identified 24 compounds, including fatty alcohols, fatty acids, fatty acid esters, and triterpenoids. Despite the absence of active sites, the lipophilic nature of long-chain aliphatic compounds aids in pesticide binding, while triterpenoids form strong hydrogen bonds with pesticides, indicating a robust adsorption on the lettuce surface. This study aims to offer insights into the efficient removal of chemical pesticide residues from fruits and vegetables, addressing critical concerns for food safety and human health.
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