Development of easy‐to‐make, highly active, and stable bifunctional electrocatalysts for water splitting is important for future renewable energy systems. Three‐dimension (3D) porous Ni/Ni8P3 and ...Ni/Ni9S8 electrodes are prepared by sequential treatment of commercial Ni‐foam with acid activation, followed by phosphorization or sulfurization. The resultant materials can act as self‐supported bifunctional electrocatalytic electrodes for direct water splitting with excellent activity toward oxygen evolution reaction and hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline media. Stable performance can be maintained for at least 24 h, illustrating their versatile and practical nature for clean energy generation. Furthermore, an advanced water electrolyzer through exploiting Ni/Ni8P3 as both anode and cathode is fabricated, which requires a cell voltage of 1.61 V to deliver a 10 mA cm−2 water splitting current density in 1.0 m KOH solution. This performance is significantly better than that of the noble metal benchmark—integrated Ni/IrO2 and Ni/Pt–C electrodes. Therefore, these bifunctional electrodes have significant potential for realistic large‐scale production of hydrogen as a replacement clean fuel to polluting and limited fossil‐fuels.
Three‐dimension nickel‐based electrocatalytic electrodes (Ni/Ni8P3 and Ni/Ni9S8) are developed for application in water splitting. The as‐obtained Ni/Ni8P3 catalytic electrode, particularly exhibiting excellent electrocatalytic activity and stability due to its advanced structure effects, can serve as a highly efficient and stable bifunctional catalyst for overall water splitting.
A novel SARS-related coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has recently emerged as a serious pathogen that causes high morbidity and substantial mortality. However, the mechanisms by which SARS-CoV-2 evades host ...immunity remain poorly understood. Here, we identified SARS-CoV-2 membrane glycoprotein M as a negative regulator of the innate immune response. We found that the M protein interacted with the central adaptor protein MAVS in the innate immune response pathways. This interaction impaired MAVS aggregation and its recruitment of downstream TRAF3, TBK1, and IRF3, leading to attenuation of the innate antiviral response. Our findings reveal a mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 evades the innate immune response and suggest that the M protein of SARS-CoV-2 is a potential target for the development of SARS-CoV-2 interventions.
ZnCo2O4 quantum dots anchored on nitrogen‐doped carbon nanotubes (N‐CNT) retain the high catalytic activity of ZnCo2O4 to oxidize water while enabling an efficient oxygen reduction performance ...thereby combining these desirable features. These advantages realize a bifunctional catalytic activity for ZnCo2O4/N‐CNT that can be used in rechargeable zinc–air batteries.
Logistic regression is among the most widely used statistical methods for linear discriminant analysis. In many applications, we only observe possibly mislabeled responses. Fitting a conventional ...logistic regression can then lead to biased estimation. One common resolution is to fit a mislabel logistic regression model, which takes into consideration of mislabeled responses. Another common method is to adopt a robust M-estimation by down-weighting suspected instances. In this work, we propose a new robust mislabel logistic regression based on γ-divergence. Our proposal possesses two advantageous features: (1) It does not need to model the mislabel probabilities. (2) The minimum γ-divergence estimation leads to a weighted estimating equation without the need to include any bias correction term, that is, it is automatically bias-corrected. These features make the proposed γ -logistic regression more robust in model fitting and more intuitive for model interpretation through a simple weighting scheme. Our method is also easy to implement, and two types of algorithms are included. Simulation studies and the Pima data application are presented to demonstrate the performance of γ-logistic regression.
The newly emerging coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 causes severe lung disease and substantial mortality. How the virus evades host defense for efficient replication is not fully understood. In this report, we ...found that the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein (NP) impaired stress granule (SG) formation induced by viral RNA. SARS-CoV-2 NP associated with the protein kinase PKR after dsRNA stimulation. SARS-CoV-2 NP did not affect dsRNA-induced PKR oligomerization, but impaired dsRNA-induced PKR phosphorylation (a hallmark of its activation) as well as SG formation. SARS-CoV-2 NP also targeted the SG-nucleating protein G3BP1 and impaired G3BP1-mediated SG formation. Deficiency of PKR or G3BP1 impaired dsRNA-triggered SG formation and increased SARS-CoV-2 replication. The NP of SARS-CoV also targeted both PKR and G3BP1 to impair dsRNA-induced SG formation, whereas the NP of MERS-CoV targeted PKR, but not G3BP1 for the impairment. Our findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 NP promotes viral replication by impairing formation of antiviral SGs, and reveal a conserved mechanism on evasion of host antiviral responses by highly pathogenic human betacoronaviruses.
The development of highly efficient and robust photocatalysts has attracted great attention for solving the global energy crisis and environmental problems. Herein, we describe the synthesis of a p–n ...heterostructured photocatalyst, consisting of ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs) decorated with BiOI nanoplates (NPs), by a facile solvothermal method. The product thus obtained shows high photoelectrochemical water splitting performance and enhanced photoelectrocatalytic activity for pollutant degradation under visible light irradiation. The p‐type BiOI NPs, with a narrow band gap, not only act as a sensitizer to absorb visible light and promote electron transfer to the n‐type ZnO NRAs, but also increase the contact area with organic pollutants. Meanwhile, ZnO NRAs provide a fast electron‐transfer channel, thus resulting in efficient separation of photoinduced electron–hole pairs. Such a p–n heterojunction nanocomposite could serve as a novel and promising catalyst in energy and environmental applications.
Improved electron–hole separation: ZnO nanorod arrays have been decorated with BiOI nanoplates. The p–n heterojunction thus obtained plays a significant role in photoelectrocatalytic processes, where the BiOI nanoplates provide reaction sites for the degradation of organic pollutants, and the ZnO nanorods provide a fast transfer channel for electrons, which are ultimately transported to the counter electrode along an FTO substrate (see figure; FTO=fluorine‐doped tin oxide).
Display omitted
Development of efficient, affordable, non-precious metal oxides catalysts is critical for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, we present a spinel NiCo2O4 nanowire arrays ...(NWAs), synthesized by a simple solution route, as an inexpensive, efficient anode electrocatalyst for water electrolysis. The as-prepared NiCo2O4 NWAs contains Ni2+/Ni3+ which replace Co in octahedral sites of the spinel Co3O4, exhibiting higher catalytic activity than that of Co3O4 and NiO. The enhanced catalytic activity of NiCo2O4 NWAs is correlated with a large surface area, one-dimensional (1D) architecture, high conductivity and synergistic behavior of Ni/Co bifunctional catalyst. Besides, oxygen vacancies, which favor efficient electrons transport, supply more active sites, and assist in the adsorption of OH−, can be conducive to make high utilization of catalytic materials in the OER. Moreover, the magnetic properties of NiCo2O4 NWAs are also investigated in detail. The results indicate that NiCo2O4 NWAs could be a promising economical and environmentally benign bifunctional electrocatalyst for water splitting and other applications.
Cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) senses viral DNA in the cytosol and then catalyzes synthesis of the second messenger cGAMP, which activates the ER-localized adaptor protein Mediator of IRF3 Activator ...(MITA) to initiate innate antiviral response. Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) proteins can antagonize host immune responses to promote latent infection. Here, we identified HCMV UL42 as a negative regulator of cGAS/MITA-dependent antiviral response. UL42-deficiency enhances HCMV-induced production of type I interferons (IFNs) and downstream antiviral genes. Consistently, wild-type HCMV replicates more efficiently than UL42-deficient HCMV. UL42 interacts with both cGAS and MITA. UL42 inhibits DNA binding, oligomerization and enzymatic activity of cGAS. UL42 also impairs translocation of MITA from the ER to perinuclear punctate structures, which is required for MITA activation, by facilitating p62/LC3B-mediated degradation of translocon-associated protein β (TRAPβ). These results suggest that UL42 can antagonize innate immune response to HCMV by targeting the core components of viral DNA-triggered signaling pathways.
In this work, we have successfully prepared urchin-like NiCo2O4 spheres via a facile hydrothermal method without any templates or surfactants. The as-prepared urchin-like NiCo2O4 spheres have uniform ...diameters of 6 μm with numerous small nanorods radially-grown from the center. Typical nanorods have diameters of 20–50 nm and lengths of 2–3 μm. Remarkably, urchin-like NiCo2O4 nanostructure as an alternative non-precious metal electrocatalyst for ORR exhibits catalytic performance and excellent cycling stability in alkaline environment.
It is still a challenging issue to achieve efficient and tunable fluorescent carbon dot (CD) powders. Herein, we report a novel and general solvothermal strategy to in-situ embedding CDs in trisodium ...citrate crystal matrix, and these CDs exhibit tunable emission from green to yellow and a high quantum yield up to 21.6% in solid state, comparable to that in solution. This intriguing fluorescence phenomenon may be caused by the space confinement from trisodium citrate crystal matrix, thus enabling CDs to effectively suppress the aggregation-induced luminescence quenching. The CD powders have been employed for fabricating white light-emitting devices on blue chips with adjustable color temperature. Moreover, solid-state lighting systems like flexible fluorescent films and plates have been demonstrated by using the CD powders as the luminescent medium. This work provides a facile way to achieve tunable solid-state fluorescence CD powders, which have promising applications in CDs-based luminescence devices.
Display omitted
PDF
