Aqueous Zn batteries that provide a synergistic integration of absolute safety and high energy density have been considered as highly promising energy‐storage systems for powering electronics. ...Despite the rapid progress made in developing high‐performance cathodes and electrolytes, the underestimated but non‐negligible dendrites of Zn anode have been observed to shorten battery lifespan. Herein, this dendrite issue in Zn anodes, with regard to fundamentals, protection strategies, characterization techniques, and theoretical simulations, is systematically discussed. An overall comparison between the Zn dendrite and its Li and Al counterparts, to highlight their differences in both origin and topology, is given. Subsequently, in‐depth clarifications of the specific influence factors of Zn dendrites, including the accumulation effect and the cathode loading mass (a distinct factor for laboratory studies and practical applications) are presented. Recent advances in Zn dendrite protection are then comprehensively summarized and categorized to generate an overview of respective superiorities and limitations of various strategies. Accordingly, theoretical computations and advanced characterization approaches are introduced as mechanism guidelines and measurement criteria for dendrite suppression, respectively. The concluding section emphasizes future challenges in addressing the Zn dendrite issue and potential approaches to further promoting the lifespan of Zn batteries.
Zinc‐based batteries demonstrate both intrinsic safety and high energy density compared with other metal batteries. Nevertheless, zinc‐dendrite issues such as special morphology and nucleation require unique protections, which develop rapidly and need further improvement. The remaining challenges are discussed and the future directions, i.e., dynamic contact, atomic‐level ionic flow mediation, dendrite protection under high depth of discharge, etc., are proposed.
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•Carbon frameworks (CFs) were synthesized via a facile salt template method.•Pitch molecular structure plays a decisive role in the graphitization degree of CFs.•Oxygen-doping are ...proved to enhance reversible Na+ storage by DFT calculations.•Amorphous CFs cycled 1000 times without obvious decay in both half and full SIB.
Carbon frameworks with appropriate micro- and macrostructure as well as chemical composition are prepared from aromatic coal tar pitch via a combined approach of molecular structure design and facile salt template method. When used as sodium-ion battery anode, the enlarged interlayer distance benefits sodium ion insertion/extraction and the interconnected nanosheets structure not only facilitates the contact of electrolyte but also shortens the sodium ion diffusion path. Additionally, the chemisorption of the sodium ion with nitrogen and oxygen containing functional groups on surface can further improve the electrochemical performance. The carbon frameworks exhibit reversible specific capacities of 272 mA h g−1 at 0.1 A g−1 and 121 mA h g−1 even at 10 A g−1, a high capacity retention of 93.4% at 2 A g−1 after 1000 cycles, indicating its good rate capability and very long lifespan. Sodium-ion full cells consisting of carbon frameworks anode and Na3V2(PO4)3 cathode are assembled. The full cells deliver high discharge capacity (210 mA h g−1 at 0.1 A g−1) and superior stability of 1000 cycles (0.012% capacity loss per cycle). The present paper proposes a universal approach for rational design of high-performance sodium-ion battery anode from highly aromatic precursors by molecular engineering.
Ultrafine SnS2 nanocrystals–reduced graphene oxide nanoribbon paper (SnS2–RGONRP) has been created by a well-designed process including in situ reduction, evaporation-induced self-assembly, and ...sulfuration. The as-formed SnS2 nanocrystals possess an average diameter of 2.3 nm and disperse on the surface of RGONRs uniformly. The strong capillary force formed during evaporation leads to a compact assembly of RGONRs to give a flexible paper structure with a high density of 0.94 g cm–3. The as-prepared SnS2–RGONRP composite could be directly used as free-standing electrode for sodium ion batteries. Due to the synergistic effects between the ultrafine SnS2 nanocrystals and the conductive, tightly connected RGONR networks, the composite paper electrode exhibits excellent electrochemical performance. A high volumetric capacity of 508–244 mAh cm–3 was obtained at current densities in the range of 0.1–10 A g–1. Discharge capacities of 334 and 255 mAh cm–3 were still kept, even after 1500 cycles tested at current densities of 1 and 5 A g–1, respectively. This strategy provides insight into a new pathway for the creation of free-standing composite electrodes used in the energy storage and conversion.
Purpose
Re-collapse of cemented vertebrae occasionally occurs after percutaneous augmentation. However, the potential risks still remain unclear. Several articles have reported some possible risk ...factors which were not consistent or comprehensive. This study aimed to make a retrospective review on patients with osteoporotic vertebral compression fracture (OVCF) after percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) or percutaneous kyphoplasty (PKP) and to further analyse the risk factors for treated vertebral refracture.
Methods
All patients receiving the PKP/PVP with bilateral approach were retrospectively reviewed from January 2014 to January 2016, among whom 230 patients with single level augmentation (30 in refracture group and 200 in the non-refracture group) were enrolled according to inclusion criteria. The following covariates were reviewed: gender, age, height, weight, body mass index (BMI), bone mineral density (BMD), serum bone turnover markers, surgical parameters including approach, cement volume, anterior height, and Cobb angle restoration. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to determine the relative risk of re-collapse of cemented vertebrae.
Results
Regarding the patient data, weight, BMI, and BMD were of statistical significance in refracture group (
P
< 0.01), among which only low BMD was a risk factor to cemented vertebral re-collapse (
P
= 0.022,
OR
= 4.197). In respect of surgical variables, the better restoration of anterior height and Cobb angle was found in refracture group (
P
< 0.05), both of which might increase the refracture risk but not be risk factors (
P
= 0.065,
OR
= 0.891, and
P
= 0.937,
OR
= 0.996, respectively). Besides, less injected cement (3.30 ± 0.84 ml
vs
4.46 ± 1.10 ml,
P
= 0.000,
OR
= 19.433) and PKP (
P
= 0.007,
OR
= 13.332) significantly boosted the potential risk of refracture (
P
< 0.001).
Conclusion
Patients with low BMD, or undergoing PKP, or receiving a low volume of injected cement might have a high risk of re-collapse in surgical vertebrae.
Wearable sensing systems, as a spearhead of artificial intelligence, are playing increasingly important roles in many fields especially health monitoring. In order to achieve a better wearable ...experience, rationally integrating the two key components of sensing systems, that is, power supplies and sensors, has become a desperate requirement. However, limited by device designs and fabrication technologies, the current integrated sensing systems still face many great challenges, such as safety, miniaturization, mechanical stability, energy‐efficiency, sustainability, and comfortability. In this review, the key challenges and opportunities in the current development of integrated wearable sensing systems are summarized. By summarizing the typical configurations of diverse wearable power supplies, and recent advances concerning the integrated sensing systems driven by such power supplies, the representative integrated designs, and micro/nanofabrication technologies are highlighted. Lastly, some new directions and potential solutions aiming at the device‐level integration designs are outlooked.
In this review, an in‐depth understanding and potential guidance of integrated design to develop new‐generation wearable integrated sensing systems are provided. Specifically, serval typical wearable power supplies and their designed integration with various sensors are reviewed. By summarizing the recent advances in flexible substrate‐based and all‐in‐one integration designs as well as their fabrication, the future research directions are outlooked.
Highlights
Nano-dispersed SnS
2
and CoS
2
phases endow CSC anode with electrolyte/structure-dependent cocktail mediation effect, showing superior rate capability and evidently lowered charge plateau ...compared with CoS
2
and SnS
2
/CoS
2
mixture.
Alternative electrochemical processes between nano-dispersed different metal sulfides and Na
+
carriers effectively overcome intrinsic flaws of monometallic sulfide, responsible for the lowered charge plateau of CSC.
As-assembled CSC//Na
1.5
VPO
4.8
F
0.7
full-cell shows high-rate capability, and high discharge plateau up to 2.57 V, which is comparable to that with alloy-type anodes.
As promising anodes for sodium-ion batteries, metal sulfides ubiquitously suffer from low-rate and high-plateau issues, greatly hindering their application in full-cells. Herein, exemplifying carbon nanotubes (CNTs)-stringed metal sulfides superstructure (CSC) assembled by nano-dispersed SnS
2
and CoS
2
phases, cocktail mediation effect similar to that of high-entropy materials is initially studied in ether-based electrolyte to solve the challenges. The high nano-dispersity of metal sulfides in CSC anode underlies the cocktail-like mediation effect, enabling the circumvention of intrinsic drawbacks of different metal sulfides. By utilizing ether-based electrolyte, the reversibility of metal sulfides is greatly improved, sustaining a long-life effectivity of cocktail-like mediation. As such, CSC effectively overcomes low-rate flaw of SnS
2
and high-plateau demerit of CoS
2
, simultaneously realizes a high rate and a low plateau. In half-cells, CSC delivers an ultrahigh-rate capability of 327.6 mAh g
−1
anode
at 20 A g
−1
, far outperforming those of monometallic sulfides (SnS
2
, CoS
2
) and their mixtures. Compared with CoS
2
phase and SnS
2
/CoS
2
mixture, CSC shows remarkably lowered average charge voltage up to
ca.
0.62 V. As-assembled CSC//Na
1.5
VPO
4.8
F
0.7
full-cell shows a good rate capability (0.05 ~ 1.0 A g
−1
, 120.3 mAh g
−1
electrode
at 0.05 A g
−1
) and a high average discharge voltage up to 2.57 V, comparable to full-cells with alloy-type anodes. Kinetics analysis verifies that the cocktail-like mediation effect largely boosts the charge transfer and ionic diffusion in CSC, compared with single phase and mixed phases. Further mechanism study reveals that alternative and complementary electrochemical processes between nano-dispersed SnS
2
and CoS
2
phases are responsible for the lowered charge voltage of CSC. This electrolyte/structure-dependent cocktail-like mediation effect effectively enhances the practicability of metal sulfide anodes, which will boost the development of high-rate/-voltage sodium-ion full batteries.
Bacterial blight, caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo), is the most important bacterial disease in rice (Oryza sativa L.). Our previous studies have revealed that the bacterial blight ...resistance gene Xa23 from wild rice O. rufipogon Griff. confers the broadest-spectrum resistance against all the naturally occurring Xoo races. As a novel executor R gene, Xa23 is transcriptionally activated by the bacterial avirulence (Avr) protein AvrXa23 via binding to a 28-bp DNA element (EBEAvrXa23) in the promoter region. So far, the evolutionary mechanism of Xa23 remains to be illustrated. Here, a rice germplasm collection of 97 accessions, including 29 rice cultivars (indica and japonica) and 68 wild relatives, was used to analyze the evolution, phylogeographic relationship and association of Xa23 alleles with bacterial blight resistance. All the ~ 473 bp DNA fragments consisting of promoter and coding regions of Xa23 alleles in the germplasm accessions were PCR-amplified and sequenced, and nine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were detected in the promoter regions (~131 bp sequence upstream from the start codon ATG) of Xa23/xa23 alleles while only two SNPs were found in the coding regions. The SNPs in the promoter regions formed 5 haplotypes (Pro-A, B, C, D, E) which showed no significant difference in geographic distribution among these 97 rice accessions. However, haplotype association analysis indicated that Pro-A is the most favored haplotype for bacterial blight resistance. Moreover, SNP changes among the 5 haplotypes mostly located in the EBE/ebe regions (EBEAvrXa23 and corresponding ebes located in promoters of xa23 alleles), confirming that the EBE region is the key factor to confer bacterial blight resistance by altering gene expression. Polymorphism analysis and neutral test implied that Xa23 had undergone a bottleneck effect, and selection process of Xa23 was not detected in cultivated rice. In addition, the Xa23 coding region was found highly conserved in the Oryza genus but absent in other plant species by searching the plant database, suggesting that Xa23 originated along with the diversification of the Oryza genus from the grass family during evolution. This research offers a potential for flexible use of novel Xa23 alleles in rice breeding programs and provide a model for evolution analysis of other executor R genes.
Lesion mimic mutants (LMMs) are ideal materials for studying programmed cell death and defense response in plants. Here we report investigations on two LMMs (
and
) from the indica rice cultivar JG30 ...treated by ethyl methyl sulfone. Both of the mutants showed similar mosaic spot lesions at seedling stage, but they displayed different phenotypes along with development of the plants. At tillering stage, larger orange spots appeared on leaves of
, while only small reddish-brown spots exhibit on leaves of
. At heading stage, the
plants were completely dead, while the
plants were still alive even if showed apparent premature senility. For both the mutants, the mosaic spot lesion formation was induced by light; DAB and trypan blue staining showed a large amount of hydrogen peroxide accumulated at the lesion sites, accompanied by a large number of cell death. Consequently, reactive oxygen species were enriched in leaves of the mutants; SOD and CAT activities in the scavenging enzyme system were decreased compared with the wild type. In addition, degraded chloroplasts, decreased photosynthetic pigment content, down-regulated expression of genes associated with chloroplast synthesis/photosynthesis and up-regulated expression of genes related to senescence were detected in the mutants, but the abnormality of
was more serious than that of
in general. Genetic analysis and map-based cloning revealed that the lesion mimic and premature senescence traits of both the mutants were controlled by recessive mutated alleles of the
(Sekiguchi lesion) gene, which encodes the CYP71P1 protein belonging to cytochrome P450 monooxygenase family. The difference of mutation sites and mutation types (SNP-caused single amino acid change and SNP-caused early termination of translation) led to the different phenotypes in severity between
and
. Taken together, this work revealed that the CYP71P1 is involved in regulation of both premature senescence and cell death in rice, and its different mutation sites and mutation types could cause different phenotypes in terms of severity.
To investigate the clinical outcomes of percutaneous vertebroplasty (PVP) versus percutaneous vertebroplasty combined with pediculoplasty (PVP-PP) for Kümmell's disease (KD).
Between February 2017 ...and November 2020, 76 patients with KD undergoing PVP or PVP-PP were included in this retrospective study. Based on the PVP whether combined with pediculoplasty, those patients were divided into PVP group (n = 39) and PVP-PP group (n = 37). The operation duration, estimated blood loss, cement volume, and hospitalization stays were recorded and analyzed. Meanwhile, the radiological variations including the Cobb's angle, anterior height of index vertebra, and middle height of index vertebra from X-ray were recorded preoperatively, at 1 days postoperatively and the final follow-up. The visual analogue scale (VAS) and Oswestry disability index (ODI) were also evaluated. Preoperative and postoperative recovery values of these data were compared.
The two groups showed no significant difference in demographic features (p > 0.05). The operation time, intraoperative blood loss, and time of hospital stay revealed no sharp statistical distinctions either (p > 0.05), except that PVP-PP used more bone cement than PVP (5.8 ± 1.5 mL vs. 5.0 ± 1.2 mL, p < 0.05). The anterior and middle height of vertebra, Cobb's angle, VAS, and ODI was observed a little without significant difference between the two groups before and 1 days postoperatively (p > 0.05). Nevertheless, ODI and VAS scores decreased significantly in the PVP-PP group than in the PVP group at follow-up (p < 0.001). The PVP-PP group exhibited a slight amelioration in Ha, Hm, and Cobb's angle when compared to the PVP group, displaying statistical significance (p < 0.05). No significant disparity in cement leakage was observed between the PVP-PP and PVP groups (29.4% vs. 15.4%, p > 0.05). It is worth noting that the prevalence of bone cement loosening displayed a remarkable decrement within the PVP-PP group, with only one case recorded, as opposed to the PVP group's seven cases (2.7% vs. 17.9%, p < 0.05).
Both PVP-PP and PVP can relieve pain effectively in patients with KD. Moreover, PVP-PP can achieve more satisfactory results than PVP. Thus, compared with PVP, PVP-PP is more suitable for KD without neurological deficit, from a long-term clinical effect perspective.
Transmembrane kinases (TMKs) play important roles in plant growth and signaling cascades of phytohormones. However, its function in the regulation of early leaf senescence (ELS) of plants remains ...unknown. Here, we report the molecular cloning and functional characterization of the
gene which encodes a protein belongs to the TMK family and controls chloroplast development and leaf senescence in rice (
L.). The
(
) mutant displays water-soaked spots which subsequently developed into necrotic symptoms at the tillering stage. Moreover,
exhibits slightly rolled leaves with irregular epidermal cells, decreased chlorophyll contents, and defective stomata and chloroplasts as compared with the wild type. Map-based cloning revealed that
encodes transmembrane kinase TMK1. Genetic complementary experiments verified that a Leu396Pro amino acid substitution, residing in the highly conserved region of leucine-rich repeat (LRR) domain, was responsible for the phenotypes of
.
was constitutively expressed in all tissues and its encoded protein is localized to the plasma membrane. Mutation of
led to hyper-accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), more severe DNA fragmentation, and cell death than that of the wild-type control. In addition, we found that the expression of senescence-associated genes (SAGs) was significantly higher, while the expression of genes associated with chloroplast development and photosynthesis was significantly downregulated in
as compared with the wild type. Taken together, our results demonstrated that OsWSS1, a member of TMKs, plays a vital role in the regulation of ROS homeostasis, chloroplast development, and leaf senescence in rice.
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