Overwhelming are a set of key stress-responsive kinases that mediate cell apoptosis, which is an important process for tumor suppression. However, JNKs have also been implicated in the malignant ...transformation and tumorigenesis of cells. This review attempts to reconcile these 2 contradictory functions of JNKs with recent discoveries on the role of JNKs in compensatory growth of neighboring cells and stem cells, which may provide new mechanistic understanding about the role of JNKs in the regulation of cancer stem cells and the pathogenesis of cancers.
Photocatalytic syngas (CO and H2) production with CO2 as gas source not only ameliorates greenhouse effect, but also produces valuable chemical feedstocks. However, traditional photocatalytic systems ...require noble metal or suffers from low yield. Here, we demonstrate that S vacancies ZnIn2S4 (VS‐ZnIn2S4) nanosheets are an ideal photocatalyst to drive CO2 reduction into syngas. It is found that building S vacancies can endow ZnIn2S4 with stronger photoabsorption, efficient electron–hole separation, and larger CO2 adsorption, finally promoting both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR). The syngas yield of CO and H2 is therefore significantly increased. In contrast to pristine ZnIn2S4, the syngas yield over VS‐ZnIn2S4 can be improved by roughly ≈4.73 times and the CO/H2 ratio is modified from 1:4.18 to 1:1. Total amount of syngas after 12 h photocatalysis is as high as 63.20 mmol g−1 without use of any noble metals, which is even higher than those of traditional noble metal‐based catalysts in the reported literatures. This work demonstrates the critical role of S vacancies in mediating catalytic activity and selectivity, and highlights the attractive ability of defective ZnIn2S4 for light‐driven syngas production.
Efficient syngas production from CO2 photoreduction is achieved by S vacancies ZnIn2S4 (VS‐ZnIn2S4) nanosheets. The critical role of S vacancies in tuning catalysis activity and selectivity is emphasized.
Efficient utilization of abundant solar energy for clean water generation is considered a sustainable and environment friendly approach to mitigate the global water crisis. For this purpose, this ...study reports a flexible fire‐resistant photothermal paper by combining carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and fire‐resistant inorganic paper based on ultralong hydroxyapatite nanowires (HNs) for efficient solar energy‐driven water steam generation and water purification. Benefiting from the structural characteristics of the HN/CNT photothermal paper, the black CNT surface layer exhibits a high light absorbability and photothermal conversion capability, the HN‐based inorganic paper acts as a thermal insulator with a high temperature stability, low thermal conductivity, and interconnected porous structure. By combining these advantages, high water evaporation efficiencies of 83.2% at 1 kW m−2 and 92.8% at 10 kW m−2 are achieved. In addition, the HN/CNT photothermal paper has a stable water evaporation capability during recycling and long‐time usage. The promising potential of the HN/CNT photothermal paper for efficient production of drinkable water from both actual seawater and simulative wastewater samples containing heavy metal ions, dyes, and bacteria is also demonstrated. The highly flexible HN/CNT photothermal paper is promising for application in highly efficient solar energy‐driven seawater desalination and wastewater purification.
Highly flexible fire‐resistant photothermal paper is fabricated using ultralong hydroxyapatite nanowires and carbon nanotubes for highly efficient solar energy‐driven seawater desalination and wastewater purification, it has a high performance in recycling and long‐time usage, and it has promising application in the production of clean drinkable water from seawater and wastewater to mitigate the water scarcity crisis.
Display omitted
•A kind of spatial distribution heterojunction based on g-C3N4 microtubes.•In situ growth of ZnIn2S4 nanosheets on g-C3N4 microtubes.•Microstructure of heterojunction greatly affects ...photocatalytic CO2 reduction.•Spatial distribution heterojunction is superior to bulk or 2D/2D heterojunction.
The graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is regarded as a powerful support for constructing heterojunction. How to rationally design high-performance g-C3N4-based heterojunction remains a great challenge. In this work, a kind of spatial distribution heterojunction is prepared by in situ growing ZnIn2S4 (ZIS) nanosheets on g-C3N4 microtubes (T-CN). To highlight the advantage of such a structure design, g-C3N4 bulk (B-CN) and g-C3N4 nanosheets (S-CN) are also used as the supports to obtain B-CN/ZIS bulk heterojunction and S-CN/ZIS 2D/2D heterojunction, respectively. T-CN/ZIS spatial distribution heterojunction combines the hierarchical core/shell structure of B-CN/ZIS and ultrathin structure of S-CN/ZIS, which is much favorable for photocatalytic CO2 reduction. It is found that the gas yield from CO2 reduction is highest over T-CN/ZIS, which is 3.5 and 1.5 times higher than B-CN/ZIS and S-CN/ZIS. The experimental results manifest that the spatial distribution of ZIS nanosheets on T-CN induces stronger photoabsorption, faster interfacial charge transfer, and larger CO2 adsorption, all of which are responsible for the best catalytic activity. It is expected that this work will provide an instructive guideline for designing g-C3N4-based heterojunction.
Arsenic exposure in contaminated drinking water is a global health issue, as more than 200 million people are affected globally. Arsenic has been known to cause skin, liver, lung, bladder and ...prostate cancers. Accordingly, it has been categorized as a group I human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Various natural and anthropogenic activities lead to the release of arsenic in the environment, contaminating air, water and food sources. Traditionally, genetic mutations have been the center of cancer research. However, emerging studies have now focused on the importance of epigenetics, metabolism and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in cancer. Arsenic is highly capable of inducing stress in the cells via the generation of free radicals causing oxidative stress, epigenetic and genetic alterations, mitochondrial dysfunction, activation of intracellular signaling pathways, and impairment of autophagy and DNA repair systems. The cancer cells are able to utilize the unfolded protein response (UPR) to overcome these internal stresses in various stages of arsenic-induced carcinogenesis, from cancer growth to immune responses. The UPR is an evolutionarily conserved stress response that has both survival and apoptotic outcomes. PERK, IRE1α and ATF6α are the three ER stress sensors that are activated to maintain cellular proteostasis, which can also promote apoptosis on prolonged ER stress. The dual nature of UPR in different cancer types and stages is a challenge for researchers. We must investigate the role and the connections among ER stress-associated UPR, mitochondrial dysfunction and autophagy in arsenic malignancies to identify key targets for cancer prevention and therapeutics.
Demand response (DR) has been widely recognized as an important approach to balance the power grid and reduce peak load of power systems. In order to better estimate the capability and the expense of ...peak load reduction through DR, we need to obtain the residential load profile and customers' attitudes toward DR programs. Based on a large-scale online survey collected among over 1500 customers from New York and Texas in the U.S., this paper investigates the relationships among household appliance activities (e.g., electric water heater and air conditioner), load profiles, and incentive-based DR (IBDR) participation for peak load curtailment through reward payment. The daily load profiles of major home appliances are developed. Additionally, this paper estimates the expense of reducing the yearly peak of the local grid load. Finally, this paper addresses the importance of investigating the multifaceted factors of affecting IBDR participation and provides useful suggestions to utility companies when implementing DR programs.
Display omitted
•Recent advances in smart fire alarm systems are overviewed.•Working mechanisms and preparation methods are summarized.•Design strategies of fire alarm systems are ...highlighted.•Current challenges and prospects are proposed.
The serious fire accidents happen frequently every year worldwide, which kill many lives and result in a significant property loss. The sensitive fire alarm systems (FASs) that can timely detect the early fire and immediately give the alarm are therefore urgently needed. The traditional FASs based on smoke and infrared heat detectors suffer from sluggish fire warning and susceptibility to external interference. How to make a sensitive and reliable FAS remains a big challenge. As such, a new-style FAS based on graphene oxide came into being in 2018. The fire response time could be as short as <1 s, indicating its intrinsic high sensitivity. Since then, diverse smart FASs have been extensively developed, including MXene-based, semiconductor-based, color change-based, shape change-based, thermoelectric material-based and nanogenerator-based FASs. During five-year development, this research field has witnessed a rapidly evolving trend. Up to date, there is still lacking in a comprehensive review of this research field. This article aims to provide a thorough review of recent advances in smart FASs, summarize the working mechanisms and mainstream preparation methods, and propose the challenges and future research directions. It is believed that this review article will provide an instructive guideline for designing smart FASs and stimulate extensive interest for materials scientists.
With the growing popularity of electrical communication equipment, high-performance electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials are widely used to deal with radiation pollution. However, ...the large thickness and poor mechanical properties of many EMI shielding materials usually limit their applications. In this study, ultrathin and highly flexible Ti3C2T x (d-Ti3C2T x , MXene)/cellulose nanofiber (CNF) composite paper with a nacre-like lamellar structure is fabricated via a vacuum-filtration-induced self-assembly process. By the interaction between one-dimensional (1D) CNFs and two-dimensional (2D) d-Ti3C2T x MXene, the binary strengthening and toughening of the nacre-like d-Ti3C2T x /CNF composite paper has been successfully achieved, leading to high tensile strength (up to 135.4 MPa) and fracture strain (up to 16.7%), as well as excellent folding endurance (up to 14 260 times). Moreover, the d-Ti3C2T x /CNF composite paper exhibits high electrical conductivity (up to 739.4 S m–1) and excellent specific EMI shielding efficiency (up to 2647 dB cm2 g–1) at an ultrathin thickness (minimum thickness 47 μm). The nacre-inspired strategy in this study offers a promising approach for the design and preparation of the strong integrated and flexible MXene/CNF composite paper, which may be applied in various fields such as flexible wearable devices, weapon equipment, and robot joints.
Given an unstable hybrid stochastic differential equation (SDE), can we design a feedback control, based on the discrete-time observations of the state at times <inline-formula><tex-math ...notation="LaTeX">0, \tau, 2\tau, \ldots</tex-math></inline-formula>, so that the controlled hybrid SDE becomes asymptotically stable? It has been proved that this is possible if the drift and diffusion coefficients of the given hybrid SDE satisfy the linear growth condition. However, many hybrid SDEs in the real world do not satisfy this condition (namely, they are highly nonlinear) and there is no answer to the question, yet if the given SDE is highly nonlinear. The aim of this paper is to tackle the stabilization problem for a class of highly nonlinear hybrid SDEs. Under some reasonable conditions on the drift and diffusion coefficients, we show how to design the feedback control function and give an explicit bound on <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">\tau</tex-math></inline-formula> (the time duration between two consecutive state observations), whence the new theory established in this paper is implementable.
Solar energy-driven water evaporation is a promising technique for clean water regeneration to tackle the world-wide water scarcity problem. Previous studies have revealed the important role of the ...bilayer structure in the solar energy-driven water evaporation, the top layer is the photothermal material, and the bottom porous material is used for water transportation and heat insulation. Herein, a new kind of the bilayer aerogel composed of hydrophilic ultralong hydroxyapatite (HAP) nanowire aergel and hydrophobic carbon nanotube (CNT) coating has been developed and demonstrated as a highly efficient self-floating evaporator for solar energy-driven photothermal water purification. The hydrophilic and highly porous HAP nanowire aerogel with a low thermal conductivity ensures excellent thermal management and high water evaporation rate, and the CNT coating layer enables highly efficient solar light absorption and energy conversion. With these structural merits, the as-prepared HAP/CNT bilayer aerogel has a high water evaporation rate of 1.34 kg m−2 h−1 and high water evaporation efficiency of 89.4% under solar light irradiation at a power density of 1 kW m−2. Additionally, the high-performance water purification function of the HAP/CNT bilayer aerogel is demonstrated by producing clean water from the actual seawater and simulated wastewater. The experimental results demonstrate the promising potential of the as-prepared HAP/CNT bilayer aerogel for high-performance solar energy-driven photothermal clean water regeneration.
Display omitted
PDF
