Arsenate is removed by Fe–Zr binary oxide through formation of inner-sphere surface complexes, while As(III) is removed by formation of both inner- and outer-sphere surface complexes.
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...► The Fe–Zr binary oxide has high adsorption capacity toward both As(V) and As(III). ► Co-existing anions did not significantly influence the arsenic adsorption. ► As(V) is adsorbed by formation of inner-sphere surface complexes. ► As(III) is adsorbed by formation of both inner- and outer-sphere surface complexes.
Arsenate and arsenite may exist simultaneously in groundwater and have led to a greater risk to human health. In this study, an iron–zirconium (Fe–Zr) binary oxide adsorbent for both arsenate and arsenite removal was prepared by a coprecipitation method. The adsorbent was amorphous with a specific surface area of 339
m
2/g. It was effective for both As(V) and As(III) removal; the maximum adsorption capacities were 46.1 and 120.0
mg/g at pH 7.0, respectively, much higher than for many reported adsorbents. Both As(V) and As(III) adsorption occurred rapidly and achieved equilibrium within 25
h, which were well fitted by the pseudo-second-order equation. Competitive anions hindered the sorption according to the sequence
PO
4
3
-
>
SiO
3
2
-
>
CO
3
2
-
>
SO
4
2
-
. The ionic strength effect experiment, measurement of zeta potential, and FTIR study indicate that As(V) forms inner-sphere surface complexes, while As(III) forms both inner- and outer-sphere surface complexes at the water/Fe–Zr binary oxide interface. The high uptake capability and good stability of the Fe–Zr binary oxide make it a potentially attractive adsorbent for the removal of both As(V) and As(III) from water.
Stress granules are dynamic, reversible condensates composed of RNA and protein that assemble in eukaryotic cells in response to a variety of stressors and are normally disassembled after stress is ...removed. The composition and assembly of stress granules is well understood, but little is known about the mechanisms that govern disassembly. Impaired disassembly has been implicated in some diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal dementia, and multisystem proteinopathy. Using cultured human cells, we found that stress granule disassembly was context-dependent: Specifically in the setting of heat shock, disassembly required ubiquitination of G3BP1, the central protein within the stress granule RNA-protein network. We found that ubiquitinated G3BP1 interacted with the endoplasmic reticulum–associated protein FAF2, which engaged the ubiquitin-dependent segregase p97/VCP (valosin-containing protein). Thus, targeting of G3BP1 weakened the stress granule–specific interaction network, resulting in granule disassembly.
This work describes silicon nanoparticle-based lithium-ion battery negative electrodes where multiple nonactive electrode additives (usually carbon black and an inert polymer binder) are replaced ...with a single conductive binder, in this case, the conducting polymer PEDOT:PSS. While enabling the production of well-mixed slurry-cast electrodes with high silicon content (up to 95 wt %), this combination eliminates the well-known occurrence of capacity losses due to physical separation of the silicon and traditional inorganic conductive additives during repeated lithiation/delithiation processes. Using an in situ secondary doping treatment of the PEDOT:PSS with small quantities of formic acid, electrodes containing 80 wt % SiNPs can be prepared with electrical conductivity as high as 4.2 S/cm. Even at the relatively high areal loading of 1 mg/cm2, this system demonstrated a first cycle lithiation capacity of 3685 mA·h/g (based on the SiNP mass) and a first cycle efficiency of ∼78%. After 100 repeated cycles at 1 A/g this electrode was still able to store an impressive 1950 mA·h/g normalized to Si mass (∼75% capacity retention), corresponding to 1542 mA·h/g when the capacity is normalized by the total electrode mass. At the maximum electrode thickness studied (∼1.5 mg/cm2), a high areal capacity of 3 mA·h/cm2 was achieved. Importantly, these electrodes are based on commercially available components and are produced by the standard slurry coating methods required for large-scale electrode production. Hence, the results presented here are highly relevant for the realization of commercial LiB negative electrodes that surpass the performance of current graphite-based negative electrode systems.
The integrated stress response (ISR) is a critical mediator of cancer cell survival, and targeting the ISR inhibits tumor progression. Here, we have shown that activating transcription factor 4 ...(ATF4), a master transcriptional effector of the ISR, protects transformed cells against anoikis - a specialized form of apoptosis - following matrix detachment and also contributes to tumor metastatic properties. Upon loss of attachment, ATF4 activated a coordinated program of cytoprotective autophagy and antioxidant responses, including induced expression of the major antioxidant enzyme heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1). HO-1 upregulation was the result of simultaneous activation of ATF4 and the transcription factor NRF2, which converged on the HO1 promoter. Increased levels of HO-1 ameliorated oxidative stress and cell death. ATF4-deficient human fibrosarcoma cells were unable to colonize the lungs in a murine model, and reconstitution of ATF4 or HO-1 expression in ATF4-deficient cells blocked anoikis and rescued tumor lung colonization. HO-1 expression was higher in human primary and metastatic tumors compared with noncancerous tissue. Moreover, HO-1 expression correlated with reduced overall survival of patients with lung adenocarcinoma and glioblastoma. These results establish HO-1 as a mediator of ATF4-dependent anoikis resistance and tumor metastasis and suggest ATF4 and HO-1 as potential targets for therapeutic intervention in solid tumors.
Growth/differentiation factor 15 (GDF15), also known as MIC-1, is a distant member of the transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) superfamily and has been implicated in various biological functions, ...including cancer cachexia, renal and heart failure, atherosclerosis and metabolism. A connection between GDF15 and body-weight regulation was initially suggested on the basis of an observation that increasing GDF15 levels in serum correlated with weight loss in individuals with advanced prostate cancer. In animal models, overexpression of GDF15 leads to a lean phenotype, hypophagia and other improvements in metabolic parameters, suggesting that recombinant GDF15 protein could potentially be used in the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes. However, the signaling and mechanism of action of GDF15 are poorly understood owing to the absence of a clearly identified cognate receptor. Here we report that GDNF-family receptor α-like (GFRAL), an orphan member of the GFR-α family, is a high-affinity receptor for GDF15. GFRAL binds to GDF15 in vitro and is required for the metabolic actions of GDF15 with respect to body weight and food intake in vivo in mice. Gfral
mice were refractory to the effects of recombinant human GDF15 on body-weight, food-intake and glucose parameters. Blocking the interaction between GDF15 and GFRAL with a monoclonal antibody prevented the metabolic effects of GDF15 in rats. Gfral mRNA is highly expressed in the area postrema of mouse, rat and monkey, in accordance with previous reports implicating this region of the brain in the metabolic actions of GDF15 (refs. 4,5,6). Together, our data demonstrate that GFRAL is a receptor for GDF15 that mediates the metabolic effects of GDF15.
Since 2016 October, the active galaxy PKS 2247-131 has undergone a γ-ray outburst, which we studied using data obtained with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The emission arises from a ...relativistic jet in PKS 2247-131, as an optical spectrum only shows a few weak absorption lines, typical of the BL Lacertae sub-class of the blazar class of active galactic nuclei. Here we report a ≃34.5 day quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) in the emission after the initial flux peak of the outburst. Compared to one-year time-scale QPOs, previously identified in blazars in Fermi energies, PKS 2247-131 exhibits the first clear case of a relatively short, month-like oscillation. We show that this QPO can be explained in terms of a helical structure in the jet, where the viewing angle to the dominant emission region in the jet undergoes periodic changes. The time scale of the QPO suggests the presence of binary supermassive black holes in PKS 2247-131.
There is little question that the “electronic revolution” of the 20th century has impacted almost every aspect of human life. However, the emergence of solid‐state electronics as a ubiquitous feature ...of an advanced modern society is posing new challenges such as the management of electronic waste (e‐waste) that will remain through the 21st century. In addition to developing strategies to manage such e‐waste, further challenges can be identified concerning the conservation and recycling of scarce elements, reducing the use of toxic materials and solvents in electronics processing, and lowering energy usage during fabrication methods. In response to these issues, the construction of electronic devices from renewable or biodegradable materials that decompose to harmless by‐products is becoming a topic of great interest. Such “green” electronic devices need to be fabricated on industrial scale through low‐energy and low‐cost methods that involve low/non‐toxic functional materials or solvents. This review highlights recent advances in the development of biodegradable materials and processing strategies for electronics with an emphasis on areas where green electronic devices show the greatest promise, including solar cells, organic field‐effect transistors, light‐emitting diodes, and other electronic devices.
Recent research progress of biodegradable materials and green processing for green electronics is comprehensively reviewed. The biodegradable materials used for different functional layers and green/nontoxic processing for solar cells, organic field‐effect transistors, light‐emitting diodes, and other devices are discussed in detail. Future development and a perspective for green electronics are also proposed and presented.
Isocitrate dehydrogenase (
) mutations in glioma patients confer longer survival and may guide treatment decision making. We aimed to predict the
status of gliomas from MR imaging by applying a ...residual convolutional neural network to preoperative radiographic data.
Preoperative imaging was acquired for 201 patients from the Hospital of University of Pennsylvania (HUP), 157 patients from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and 138 patients from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) and divided into training, validation, and testing sets. We trained a residual convolutional neural network for each MR sequence (FLAIR, T2, T1 precontrast, and T1 postcontrast) and built a predictive model from the outputs. To increase the size of the training set and prevent overfitting, we augmented the training set images by introducing random rotations, translations, flips, shearing, and zooming.
With our neural network model, we achieved IDH prediction accuracies of 82.8% (AUC = 0.90), 83.0% (AUC = 0.93), and 85.7% (AUC = 0.94) within training, validation, and testing sets, respectively. When age at diagnosis was incorporated into the model, the training, validation, and testing accuracies increased to 87.3% (AUC = 0.93), 87.6% (AUC = 0.95), and 89.1% (AUC = 0.95), respectively.
We developed a deep learning technique to noninvasively predict
genotype in grade II-IV glioma using conventional MR imaging using a multi-institutional data set.
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Metastasis is a critical event affecting breast cancer patient survival. To identify molecules contributing to the metastatic process, we analysed The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) breast cancer data ...and identified 41 genes whose expression is inversely correlated with survival. Here we show that GABAA receptor alpha3 (Gabra3), normally exclusively expressed in adult brain, is also expressed in breast cancer, with high expression of Gabra3 being inversely correlated with breast cancer survival. We demonstrate that Gabra3 activates the AKT pathway to promote breast cancer cell migration, invasion and metastasis. Importantly, we find an A-to-I RNA-edited form of Gabra3 only in non-invasive breast cancers and show that edited Gabra3 suppresses breast cancer cell invasion and metastasis. A-to-I-edited Gabra3 has reduced cell surface expression and suppresses the activation of AKT required for cell migration and invasion. Our study demonstrates a significant role for mRNA-edited Gabra3 in breast cancer metastasis.
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