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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Intramuscular fat (IMF) is one of the most important factors positively associated with meat quality. Triglycerides (TGs), as the main component of IMF, play an essential role in muscle lipid ...metabolism. This transcriptome analysis of pectoralis muscle tissue aimed to identify functional genes and biological pathways likely contributing to the extreme differences in the TG content of broiler chickens.
The study included Jingxing-Huang broilers that were significantly different in TG content (5.81 mg/g and 2.26 mg/g, p < 0.01) and deposition of cholesterol also showed the same trend. This RNA sequencing analysis was performed on pectoralis muscle samples from the higher TG content group (HTG) and the lower TG content group (LTG) chickens. A total of 1200 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between two groups, of which 59 DEGs were related to TG and steroid metabolism. The HTG chickens overexpressed numerous genes related to adipogenesis and lipogenesis in pectoralis muscle tissue, including the key genes ADIPOQ, CD36, FABP4, FABP5, LPL, SCD, PLIN1, CIDEC and PPARG, as well as genes related to steroid biosynthesis (DHCR24, LSS, MSMO1, NSDHL and CH25H). Additionally, key pathways related to lipid storage and metabolism (the steroid biosynthesis and peroxisome proliferator activated receptor (PPAR) signaling pathway) may be the key pathways regulating differential lipid deposition between HTG group and LTG group.
This study showed that increased TG deposition accompanying an increase in steroid synthesis in pectoralis muscle tissue. Our findings of changes in gene expression of steroid biosynthesis and PPAR signaling pathway in HTG and LTG chickens provide insight into genetic mechanisms involved in different lipid deposition patterns in pectoralis muscle tissue.
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.
Molybdenum disulfide is naturally inert for alkaline hydrogen evolution catalysis, due to its unfavorable water adsorption and dissociation feature originated from the unsuitable orbital orientation. ...Herein, we successfully endow molybdenum disulfide with exceptional alkaline hydrogen evolution capability by carbon-induced orbital modulation. The prepared carbon doped molybdenum disulfide displays an unprecedented overpotential of 45 mV at 10 mA cm
, which is substantially lower than 228 mV of the molybdenum disulfide and also represents the best alkaline hydrogen evolution catalytic activity among the ever-reported molybdenum disulfide catalysts. Fine structural analysis indicates the electronic and coordination structures of molybdenum disulfide have been significantly changed with carbon incorporation. Moreover, theoretical calculation further reveals carbon doping could create empty 2p orbitals perpendicular to the basal plane, enabling energetically favorable water adsorption and dissociation. The concept of orbital modulation could offer a unique approach for the rational design of hydrogen evolution catalysts and beyond.
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