Antimony (Sb) is an intriguing anode material for Li-ion batteries (LIBs) owing to its high theoretical capacity of 660 mAh·g
−1
and appropriate working potential of ~ 0.8 V (vs. Li
+
/Li). However, ...just like all alloying materials, the Sb anode suffers from huge volume expansion (230%) during repeated insertion/extraction of Li
+
ions, resulting in structural deterioration and rapid capacity decay. In this work, a novel amorphous Sb/C composite with atomically dispersed Sb particles in carbon matrix is prepared via a straightforward high-energy ball milling approach. The intimate intermixing of amorphous Sb with C provides homogeneous element distribution and isotropic volume expansion during cycling, resulting in persistent structural stability. Meanwhile, the disordered structure of amorphous material shortens the diffusion distance of lithium ions/electrons, promoting fast reaction kinetics and rate capability. Benefiting from the aforementioned effects, the amorphous Sb/C exhibits a high reversible capacity of 537.4 mAh·g
−1
at 0.1 A·g
−1
and retains 201.0 mAh·g
−1
at an ultrahigh current rate of 10.0 A·g
−1
. Even after 1500 deep cycles at 2.0 A·g
−1
, the amorphous Sb/C electrode still maintains 86.3% of its initial capacity, which outperforms all existing Sb-based anodes reported so far. Post-mortem analysis further reveals a greatly reduced volume variation of merely 34.6% for the amorphous Sb/C electrode, much lower than that of 223.1% for crystalline Sb materials. This study presents a new approach to stabilizing Sb-based alloy anodes and contributes to the construction of high-performance amorphous anode materials for LIBs, enabling advanced energy storage.
Graphical abstract
NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis) is a severe liver disease characterized by hepatic chronic inflammation that can be associated with the gut microbiota. In this study, we explored the therapeutic ...effect of Gynostemma pentaphyllum extract (GPE), a Chinese herbal extract, on methionine- and choline-deficient (MCD) diet-induced NASH mice. Based on the peak area, the top ten compounds in GPE were hydroxylinolenic acid, rutin, hydroxylinoleic acid, vanillic acid, methyl vanillate, quercetin, pheophorbide A, protocatechuic acid, aurantiamide acetate, and iso-rhamnetin. We found that four weeks of GPE treatment alleviated hepatic confluent zone inflammation, hepatocyte lipid accumulation, and lipid peroxidation in the mouse model. According to the 16S rRNA gene V3–V4 region sequencing of the colonic contents, the gut microbiota structure of the mice was significantly changed after GPE supplementation. Especially, GPE enriched the abundance of potentially beneficial bacteria such as Akkerrmansia and decreased the abundance of opportunistic pathogens such as Klebsiella. Moreover, RNA sequencing revealed that the GPE group showed an anti-inflammatory liver characterized by the repression of the NF-kappa B signaling pathway compared with the MCD group. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) also showed that GPE downregulated the pathogen-induced cytokine storm pathway, which was associated with inflammation. A high dose of GPE (HGPE) significantly downregulated the expression levels of the tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), myeloid differentiation factor 88 (Myd88), cluster of differentiation 14 (CD14), and Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) genes, as verified by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). Our results suggested that the therapeutic potential of GPE for NASH mice may be related to improvements in the intestinal microenvironment and a reduction in liver inflammation.
The objective of the study was to investigate the feasibility of CUBE-SITR MRI and high-frequency ultrasound for the structural imaging of the brachial plexus to exclude neoplastic brachial ...plexopathy or structural variation and measure the lengths of anterior and posterior divisions of the C7 nerve, providing guidelines for surgeons before contralateral cervical 7 nerve transfer.
A total of 30 patients with CNS and 20 with brachial plexus injury were enrolled in this retrospective study. All patients underwent brachial plexus CUBE-STIR MRI and high-frequency ultrasound, and the lengths of the anterior and posterior divisions of C7 nerve were measured before surgery. Precise length of anterior and posterior divisions of contralateral C7 nerve was measured during surgery.
MRI-measured lengths of anterior and posterior divisions of C7 nerves were positively correlated with that measured during surgery (anterior division, r = 0.94, p < .01; posterior division, r = 0.92, p < .01). High agreement was found between MRI-measured and intra-surgery measured length of anterior and posterior divisions of C7 nerve by BLAD-ALTMAN analysis. Ultrasonography could feasibly image supraclavicular C7 nerve and recognize small variant branches derived from middle trunk of C7 nerve root, which could be dissected intra-operatively and confirmed by electromyography during the procedure of contralateral C7 nerve transfer.
CUBE-STIR MRI had advantages for the imaging of the brachial plexus and measurement of the length of root-trunk-anterior/posterior divisions of C7 nerve. The clinical role of ultrasonography may be a simple way of evaluating general condition of C7 nerve and provide guidelines for contralateral C7 nerve transfer surgery.
Pure bacterial cultures were isolated from different tissues of moribund Megalobrama terminalis from a high mortality event that occurred at a farm in Foshan, China. Two isolates (F2 and F3) were ...identified as Streptococcus dysgalactiae subsp. dysgalactiae based on morphological and biochemical detection as well as molecular analysis. In brain heart infusion broth, the best growth conditions of isolate F3 were 35ºC, salinity 5‰ and pH 7. Furthermore, infection with isolate F3 (1.2 × 106 CFU/fish) led to the death of M. terminalis and zebrafish (Danio rerio). However, isolate F3 had no obvious pathogenicity to tilapia (GIFT, Oreochromis niloticus). When the water temperature was 29ºC, the corresponding mortality rates for zebrafish infected by isolate F3 were higher than those at 23ºC. Culture for 24 and 72 hr with isolate F3 resulted in the same mortality rates for zebrafish. The antimicrobial susceptibility assay revealed that isolate F3 was susceptible to ampicillin, florfenicol and several other antibiotics but resistant to nalidixic acid, streptomycin, sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim, neomycin and amikacin. To our knowledge, this is the first report that S. dysgalactiae infected the subtropical freshwater fish M. terminalis, which indicates that this bacterium is a potential threat to subtropical freshwater fish.
Two-dimensional (2D) metal–organic framework (MOF) nanosheets, with largely exposed surface area and highly accessible active sites, have emerged as a novel kind of sensing material. Here, a ...luminescent 2D MOF nanosheet was designed and synthesized by a facile top-down strategy based on a three-dimensional (3D) layered MOF {Zn(H2L)(H2O)2·H2O} n (Zn-MOF; H4L = 3,5-bis(3′,5′-dicarboxyphenyl)-1H-1,2,4-triazole). With a large π-conjugated system and rigid planar structure, ligand H4L was elaborately selected to construct the bulk Zn-MOF, which can be readily exfoliated into 2D nanosheets, owing to the weak interlayer interactions and easy-to-release H2O molecules in the interspaces of 2D layers. Given the great threat posed to the ecological environment by anti-inflammatory drugs and pesticides, the developed luminescent Zn-MOF nanosheets were utilized to determine these organic pollutants, achieving highly selective and sensitive detection of diclofenac sodium (DCF) and tetramethylthiuram disulfide (TMTD). Compared to the detection limits of 3D Zn-MOF (7.72 ppm for DCF, 6.01 ppm for TMTD), the obviously lower detection limits for 2D Zn-MOF nanosheets toward DCF (0.20 ppm) and TMTD (0.18 ppm) further revealed that the largely exposed surface area with rigid planar structure and ultralarge π-conjugated system greatly accelerated electron transfer, which brought about a vast improvement in response sensitivity. The remarkable quenching performance for DCF and TMTD stems from a combined effect of photoinduced electron transfer and competitive energy absorption. The possible sensing mechanism was systematically investigated by the studies of powder X-ray diffraction, UV–vis, luminescence lifetime, and density functional theory calculations.
With the increase of complexity and risk in drug discovery processes, human intestinal absorption (HIA) prediction has become more and more important. Up to now, some predictive models have been ...constructed to estimate HIA of new drug-like compounds with acceptable accuracies, but there are still some issues to be explored including the limited and unbalanced HIA data, the performance of different types of descriptors and the application domain issues of published models. To address these problems, in this study, we collected a relatively large dataset consisting of 970 compounds, and 9 different types of descriptors were calculated for further modeling. For all the modeling processes, a parameter named samplesize in the random forest (RF) method was applied to balance the dataset. And then, classification models were established based on different training sets and different combinations of descriptors. After a series of modeling processes and various comparisons among these statistical results, we explored the aforementioned problems and evaluated the reliabilities of existing HIA classification models and subsequently obtained a robust and applicable model based on a combination of 2D, 3D, N + and N rule-of-five (for the training set, SE = 0.892, SP = 0.846; for the test set, SE = 0.877, SP = 0.813). Compared with other published models, our model exhibits some advantages in data size, model accuracy and model practicability to some extent. This structure–activity relationship model is necessary and useful for HIA prediction and it could be a convenient tool for virtual screening in the early stage of drug development.
As a rising two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterial, layered black phosphorus (BP) nanosheets have shown promising applications in electronics and photonics. Besides the 2D layered structure, recently ...black phosphorus quantum dots (BPQDs) exhibiting unique optoelectronic properties had been successfully fabricated. However, the nonlinear optical properties of BPQDs at the telecommunication band have not been investigated. Herein, we synthesized the BPQDs by using a liquid exfoliation method that combined probe sonication and bath sonication. It was found that the evident saturable absorption ability of BPQDs at 1.55 μm waveband could be clearly observed. As for the applications of ultrafast photonics, we fabricated the BPQDs saturable absorber (BPQDs-SA) and applied it to an ultrafast laser. By virtue of the excellent nonlinear optical properties of BPQDs, the fiber laser delivers the stable pulse train with duration as short as 291 fs, whose performance could, to the best of our knowledge, compete with nowadays’ commercial optical saturable absorber devices. In addition, due to the highly nonlinear optical effect generated by the fabricated BPQDs-SA, the multi-soliton nonlinear dynamics in the fiber laser were also investigated. The obtained results suggest that the BPQDs could be an attractive nonlinear optical material for applications in the field of nonlinear optics.
•BPQDs own nonlinear saturable absorption at 1550 nm waveband.•The microfiber-deposited BPQDs was fabricated as a saturable absorber.•With the BPQDs-SA, the fiber laser delivered 291 fs mode-locked pulse-train.•Bound soliton and noise-like pulse were also investigated.
To investigate the prevalence and clinical characteristics of hypertension (HTN) and metabolic syndrome (MetS) in newly diagnosed diabetes with ketosis-onset.
A cross-sectional study was adopted in ...734 newly diagnosed diabetics including 83 type 1 diabetics with positive islet-associated autoantibodies, 279 ketosis-onset diabetics without islet-associated autoantibodies and 372 non-ketotic type 2 diabetics. The clinical characteristics of HTN and MetS were compared across the three groups, and the risk factors of them were appraised in each group.
The prevalence of HTN and MetS were substantially higher in the ketosis-onset diabetics (34.4% for HTN and 58.8% for MetS) than in the type 1 diabetics (15.7% for HTN,
= 0.004; 25.3% for MetS,
< 0.001), but showed no remarkable difference compared with the type 2 diabetics (42.7% for HTN,
= 0.496; 72.3% for MetS,
= 0.079). Furthermore, the risk factors for both HTN and MetS in the ketosis-onset diabetics resembled those in the type 2 diabetics, but significantly different from those in the type 1 diabetics.
The prevalence of HTN and MetS in the ketosis-onset diabetics were magnificently higher than in the type 1 diabetics but showed no difference in comparison to the type 2 diabetics. Likewise, the clinical features and risk factors of HTN and MetS in the ketosis-onset diabetes resembled those in the type 2 diabetes but differed from those in the type 1 diabetes. Our findings indicate that ketosis-onset diabetes should be classified into type 2 diabetes rather than idiopathic type 1 diabetes.
Lipophilicity, as evaluated by the n-octanol/buffer solution distribution coefficient at pH = 7.4 (log D7.4), is a major determinant of various absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination, and ...toxicology (ADMET) parameters of drug candidates. In this study, we developed several quantitative structure–property relationship (QSPR) models to predict log D7.4 based on a large and structurally diverse data set. Eight popular machine learning algorithms were employed to build the prediction models with 43 molecular descriptors selected by a wrapper feature selection method. The results demonstrated that XGBoost yielded better prediction performance than any other single model (RT2 = 0.906 and RMSET = 0.395). Moreover, the consensus model from the top three models could continue to improve the prediction performance (RT2 = 0.922 and RMSET = 0.359). The robustness, reliability, and generalization ability of the models were strictly evaluated by the Y-randomization test and applicability domain analysis. Moreover, the group contribution model based on 110 atom types and the local models for different ionization states were also established and compared to the global models. The results demonstrated that the descriptor-based consensus model is superior to the group contribution method, and the local models have no advantage over the global models. Finally, matched molecular pair (MMP) analysis and descriptor importance analysis were performed to extract transformation rules and give some explanations related to log D7.4. In conclusion, we believe that the consensus model developed in this study can be used as a reliable and promising tool to evaluate log D7.4 in drug discovery.
Cell-associated HIV-1 infection has been proposed to play a pivotal role in the spread of HIV-1 infection. Granulocytes are a category of white blood cells, comprising mainly basophils, neutrophils, ...and eosinophils, and participate in various inflammatory reactions and defense against pathogens. Here, we investigated the role of human blood granulocytes in the dissemination of HIV-1. These cells were found to express a variety of HIV-1 attachment factors (HAFs). Basophils expressed HAFs dendritic cell (DC)-specific intercellular adhesion molecule 3 (ICAM3)-grabbing nonintegrin (DC-SIGN), DC immunoreceptor (DCIR), heparan sulfate proteoglycan (HSPG), and α4β7 integrin and mediated the most efficient capture of HIV-1 on the cell surface. Neutrophils were found to express DCIR and demonstrated limited efficiency of viral capture. Eosinophils expressed α4β7 integrin but exhibited little or no virus-binding capacity. Intriguingly, following direct contact with CD4+ T cells, viruses harbored on the surface of basophils were transferred to T cells. The contact between basophils and CD4+ T cells and formation of infectious synapses appeared necessary for efficient HIV-1 spread. In HIV-1-infected individuals, the frequency of basophils remained fairly stable over the course of disease, regardless of CD4+ T depletion or the emergence of AIDS-associated opportunistic infections. Collectively, our results provide novel insights into the roles of granulocytes, particularly basophils, in HIV-1 dissemination. Thus, strategies designed to prevent basophil-mediated viral capture and transfer may be developed into a new form of therapy.
Cell-associated HIV-1 infection has been proposed to play a pivotal role in the spread of HIV-1 infection. Here, we demonstrated that human blood-circulating granulocytes, particularly basophils, can capture HIV-1 and mediate viral trans-infection of CD4+ T cells. The expression of a variety of HIV-1 attachment factors, such as the C-type lectins, etc., facilitates viral capture and transfer. Intriguingly, the frequency of basophils in patients with different levels of CD4+ T counts remains fairly stable during the course of disease. Our results provide novel insights into the roles of granulocytes, particularly basophils, in HIV-1 dissemination. We suggest that strategies designed to prevent basophil-mediated viral capture and transfer may be a new direction for the development of anti-HIV therapy.
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