Water pollution and freshwater shortage have deteriorated the global water crisis. Developing sustainable methods to alleviate contaminated water has become an urgent affair. Herein, inspired by ...water transportation and transpiration of natural trees, the authors report an ultralong hydroxyapatite nanowires‐based biomimetic aerogel with vertically aligned channels and multiple functions for continuous flow catalysis, water disinfection, solar energy‐driven water purification, and seawater desalination. Ultralong hydroxyapatite nanowires act as carriers to immobilize catalyst nanoparticles and serve as building blocks to assemble with chitosan to form the biomimetic aerogel with structure‐function integration. Benefiting from the interconnected cellular structure, unidirectional aligned channels, nanowire‐interwoven networked pore wall, and evenly distributed catalyst nanoparticles, the biomimetic aerogel exhibits high catalytic activity (97.6% treatment efficiency) and permeability (1786 L m−2 h−1), excellent recyclability and stability in continuous flow catalytic degradation of methylene blue solely driven by gravity. The biomimetic aerogel exhibits excellent performance for bacteria removal and anti‐biofouling. The superior photothermal conversion and heat confinement properties enable the biomimetic aerogel with a high efficiency (86.7%) for solar energy‐driven seawater desalination and wastewater purification under one sun irradiation. The multifunctional biomimetic aerogel has promising applications in catalytic reactions, wastewater remediation, and environmental engineering.
A tree‐inspired multifunctional aerogel with vertically aligned channels is fabricated from ultralong hydroxyapatite nanowires, immobilized palladium nanoparticles, and chitosan through a unidirectional freeze‐drying approach. The biomimetic aerogel exhibits high performances in gravity‐driven continuous flow catalytic reactions, water disinfection, and solar energy‐driven water purification and seawater desalination.
The combined use of coagulant and flocculant can achieve excellent dewatering performance. In this study, we investigated the impact of dosing order of the coagulant and flocculant on sludge ...dewatering performance. The results showed that capillary suction time (CST) values during the coagulation-flocculation process decreased 20–25% compared to those during the flocculation-coagulation process using the same doses of additives. Moisture content of the sludge during the coagulation-flocculation process was lower. The dosing order of coagulants and flocculants during the conditioning process was clearly important for sludge dewatering, and the coagulant should be dosed before the flocculant. Furthermore, a mechanism for the different dewatering performance was proposed: larger agglomerated and destabilized colloid particles formed, and more bound water was released into the sludge bulk solution during the coagulation-flocculation process, compared with the flocculation-coagulation process, which resulted in better dewatering performance, as reflected in the CST value and moisture content of the sludge cake. These results enable a better understanding of combined conditioning with coagulants and flocculants on sludge dewatering.
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•The dosing order of coagulant and flocculant is important for sludge dewatering.•Coagulant shall be dosed prior to flocculant in sludge conditioning pretreatment.•Coagulation-flocculation achieves better sludge dewatering performance.•The mechanism of dewatering performance about different dosing orders is unraveled.
Hard carbon is regarded as a promising anode material for sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs). However, it usually suffers from the issues of low initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) and poor rate performance, ...severely hindering its practical application. Herein, a flexible, self‐supporting, and scalable hard carbon paper (HCP) derived from scalable and renewable tissue is rationally designed and prepared as practical additive‐free anode for room/low‐temperature SIBs with high ICE. In ether electrolyte, such HCP achieves an ICE of up to 91.2% with superior high‐rate capability, ultralong cycle life (e.g., 93% capacity retention over 1000 cycles at 200 mA g−1) and outstanding low‐temperature performance. Working mechanism analyses reveal that the plateau region is the rate‐determining step for HCP with a lower electrochemical reaction kinetics, which can be significantly improved in ether electrolyte.
A self‐supporting, flexible, additive‐free and scalable hard carbon paper (HCP) derived from tissue is rationally developed, and it achieves outstanding Na‐storage properties in terms of high initial Coulombic efficiency (91.2%), superior high‐rate capability, ultralong cyclic stability, as well as outstanding low‐T performance in ether electrolyte. More significantly, the Na‐storage and capacity attenuation mechanism of the HCP anode is revealed.
The earthworm is particularly fascinating to biologists because of its strong regenerative capacity. However, many aspects of its regeneration in nature remain elusive. Here we report ...chromosome-level genome, large-scale transcriptome and single-cell RNA-sequencing data during earthworm (Eisenia andrei) regeneration. We observe expansion of LINE2 transposable elements and gene families functionally related to regeneration (for example, EGFR, epidermal growth factor receptor) particularly for genes exhibiting differential expression during earthworm regeneration. Temporal gene expression trajectories identify transcriptional regulatory factors that are potentially crucial for initiating cell proliferation and differentiation during regeneration. Furthermore, early growth response genes related to regeneration are transcriptionally activated in both the earthworm and planarian. Meanwhile, single-cell RNA-sequencing provides insight into the regenerative process at a cellular level and finds that the largest proportion of cells present during regeneration are stem cells.
Postzygotic reproductive isolation, which results in the irreversible divergence of species, is commonly accompanied by hybrid sterility, necrosis/weakness, or lethality in the F
or other offspring ...generations. Here we show that the loss of function of HWS1 and HWS2, a couple of duplicated paralogs, together confer complete interspecific incompatibility between Asian and African rice. Both of these non-Mendelian determinants encode the putative Esa1-associated factor 6 (EAF6) protein, which functions as a characteristic subunit of the histone H4 acetyltransferase complex regulating transcriptional activation via genome-wide histone modification. The proliferating tapetum and inappropriate polar nuclei arrangement cause defective pollen and seeds in F
hybrid offspring due to the recombinant HWS1/2-mediated misregulation of vitamin (biotin and thiamine) metabolism and lipid synthesis. Evolutionary analysis of HWS1/2 suggests that this gene pair has undergone incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) and multiple gene duplication events during speciation. Our findings have not only uncovered a pair of speciation genes that control hybrid breakdown but also illustrate a passive mechanism that could be scaled up and used in the guidance and optimization of hybrid breeding applications for distant hybridization.
COVID-19 has posed an enormous threat to public health around the world. Some severe and critical cases have bad prognoses and high case fatality rates, unraveling risk factors for severe COVID-19 ...are of significance for predicting and preventing illness progression, and reducing case fatality rates. Our study focused on analyzing characteristics of COVID-19 cases and exploring risk factors for developing severe COVID-19.
The data for this study was disease surveillance data on symptomatic cases of COVID-19 reported from 30 provinces in China between January 19 and March 9, 2020, which included demographics, dates of symptom onset, clinical manifestations at the time of diagnosis, laboratory findings, radiographic findings, underlying disease history, and exposure history. We grouped mild and moderate cases together as non-severe cases and categorized severe and critical cases together as severe cases. We compared characteristics of severe cases and non-severe cases of COVID-19 and explored risk factors for severity.
The total number of cases were 12 647 with age from less than 1 year old to 99 years old. The severe cases were 1662 (13.1%), the median age of severe cases was 57 years Inter-quartile range(IQR): 46-68 and the median age of non-severe cases was 43 years (IQR: 32-54). The risk factors for severe COVID-19 were being male adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.3, 95% CI: 1.2-1.5; fever (aOR = 2.3, 95% CI: 2.0-2.7), cough (aOR = 1.4, 95% CI: 1.2-1.6), fatigue (aOR = 1.3, 95% CI: 1.2-1.5), and chronic kidney disease (aOR = 2.5, 95% CI: 1.4-4.6), hypertension (aOR = 1.5, 95% CI: 1.2-1.8) and diabetes (aOR = 1.96, 95% CI: 1.6-2.4). With the increase of age, risk for the severity was gradually higher 20-39 years (aOR = 3.9, 95% CI: 1.8-8.4), 40-59 years (aOR = 7.6, 95% CI: 3.6-16.3), ≥ 60 years (aOR = 20.4, 95% CI: 9.5-43.7), and longer time from symtem onset to diagnosis 3-5 days (aOR = 1.4, 95% CI: 1.2-1.7), 6-8 days (aOR = 1.8, 95% CI: 1.5-2.1), ≥ 9 days(aOR = 1.9, 95% CI: 1.6-2.3).
Our study showed the risk factors for developing severe COVID-19 with large sample size, which included being male, older age, fever, cough, fatigue, delayed diagnosis, hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney diasease, early case identification and prompt medical care. Based on these factors, the severity of COVID-19 cases can be predicted. So cases with these risk factors should be paid more attention to prevent severity.
With over 2 million new cases annually, stroke is associated with the highest disability-adjusted life-years lost of any disease in China. The burden is expected to increase further as a result of ...population ageing, an ongoing high prevalence of risk factors (eg, hypertension), and inadequate management. Despite improved access to overall health services, the availability of specialist stroke care is variable across the country, and especially uneven in rural areas. In-hospital outcomes have improved because of a greater availability of reperfusion therapies and supportive care, but adherence to secondary prevention strategies and long-term care are inadequate. Thrombolysis and stroke units are accepted as standards of care across the world, including in China, but bleeding-risk concerns and organisational challenges hamper widespread adoption of this care in China. Despite little supporting evidence, Chinese herbal products and neuroprotective drugs are widely used, and the increased availability of neuroimaging techniques also results in overdiagnosis and overtreatment of so-called silent stroke. Future efforts should focus on providing more balanced availability of specialised stroke services across the country, enhancing evidence-based practice, and encouraging greater translational research to improve outcome of patients with stroke.
In spite of the great success in device efficiency resulting from the excessive design of photovoltaic materials, the stability and cost issues concerning basic commercial requirements of organic ...solar cells (OSCs) remain unresolved or controversial, slowing down the introduction of market-ready applications. We proposed an exciting discovery that as the active layer thickness decreases, the thermal stability increases gradually, even exceeding 100% of the initial efficiency under 150°C thermal stress. This trend was further confirmed by investigating thermodynamics and kinetics of morphology evolution for PM6:Y6 as a reference example. Extended research found that there is a similar correlation between photo-thermal stability and blend thickness. Consequently, a new reliable industrial figure of merit (i-FOM2.0), including four main factors: efficiency, photo-thermal stability, synthesis complexity, and active layer thickness, is presented here. Our work provides a promising trade-off strategy for reducing efficiency-stability-cost gap and accelerates the commercialization of OSCs.
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•Even 100% thermal stability can be achieved by reducing active layer thickness•I-FoM2.0 is a reliable way to evaluate the true potential of OPV materials•Properly reducing active layer thickness is a promising LCOE trade-off strategy
Because of the vigorous design and development of organic photovoltaic materials, power conversion efficiency (PCE) is improved rapidly, approaching the threshold of 20%. However, the high costs and intrinsic operational instability of organic solar cells (OSCs) have slowed down its commercialization. In this work, we found that the thermal stability is greatly enhanced as thinner the thickness of active layer. Extended research found that the active layer thickness influences operational stability almost identically as thermal stability for the investigated systems. Thus, a new i-FoM model (i.e., i-FoM2.0) is introduced as a rational guideline for verifying the true potential of next-generation organic photovoltaic materials in real-world outdoor applications. This work provides a generally available strategy to minimize the efficiency-stability-cost gap and promised the economic prospects of OSCs.
Benefiting from the correlations that reducing the active layer thickness can greatly enhance its resistance to thermal stress and improve the photo-thermal stability of highly efficient organic photovoltaic systems, a new i-FOM model (i.e., i-FoM2.0) is introduced as a more effective and rational guideline for verifying the true potential of next-generation organic photovoltaic systems. Of note is that this work provides a promising trade-off strategy for reducing efficiency-stability-cost gap and accelerates the commercialization of organic solar cells.
The long‐term inflammatory microenvironment is one of the main obstacles to inhibit acute spinal cord injury (SCI) repair. The natural adipose tissue‐derived extracellular matrix hydrogel shows ...effective anti‐inflammatory regulation because of its unique protein components. However, the rapid degradation rate and removal of functional proteins during the decellularization process impair the lasting anti‐inflammation function of the adipose tissue‐derived hydrogel. To address this problem, adipose tissue lysate provides an effective way for SCI repair due to its abundance of anti‐inflammatory and nerve regeneration‐related proteins. Thereby, human adipose tissue lysate‐based hydrogel (HATLH) with an appropriate degradation rate is developed, which aims to in situ long‐term recruit and induce anti‐inflammatory M2 macrophages through sustainedly released proteins. HATLH can recruit and polarize M2 macrophages while inhibiting pro‐inflammatory M1 macrophages regardless of human or mouse‐originated. The axonal growth of neuronal cells also can be effectively improved by HATLH and HATLH‐induced M2 macrophages. In vivo experiments reveal that HATLH promotes endogenous M2 macrophages infiltration in large numbers (3.5 × 105/100 µL hydrogel) and maintains a long duration for over a month. In a mouse SCI model, HATLH significantly inhibits local inflammatory response, improves neuron and oligodendrocyte differentiation, enhances axonal growth and remyelination, as well as accelerates neurological function restoration.
Human adipose tissue lysate is utilized as raw material to prepare human adipose tissue lysate‐based hydrogel. This hydrogel has the unique ability to sustainably recruit and polarize M2 macrophages through slow degradation, while also inhibiting M1 macrophages. It induces a long‐term anti‐inflammatory microenvironment that significantly improves neural differentiation, enhances axon regeneration, and accelerates the recovery of neurological function after spinal cord injury.
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