The co-utilization of silicon (Si) and graphite (G) has been considered as the preferred strategy to achieve high energy density anode materials, but the effective synergistic integration of Si and ...graphite is still a challenge and it is necessary to find a scheme to accommodate the large-scale production of Si/graphite anodes. In this work, silicon cutting waste from the photovoltaic industry was used as raw material, mixed with graphite, pitch, and polyvinylpyrrolidone, and subjected to high-energy ball milling. The mixture was then heated in an Ar atmosphere for the carbon coating, and the resulting Si/graphite/carbon (Si/G/C) composite was etched to remove the thicker SiO
x
layer formed on the Si surface to allow the pores between the Si and the carbon matrix to obtain Si@voids/G@C. Benefiting from the integrated structural design and the significantly enhanced electronic conductivity, the Si/G@voids@C composite exhibited the first discharge-specific capacity of 2530 mAh·g
−1
with an initial coulombic efficiency (ICE) of 86.7%, and the remaining capacity exceeded 1000 mAh·g
−1
after 550 cycles at 1.5 A·g
−1
. Notably, full lithium-ion batteries with a Si/G@voids@C anode and LiFePO
4
cathode delivered a stable capacity of 140 mAh·g
−1
. The synthesis method is facile and cost-effective, providing an integration strategy for Si and G with a potential scheme for large-scale commercial applications.
Graphical abstract
With tens of thousands of plant species on earth, we are endowed with an enormous wealth of medicinal remedies from Mother Nature. Natural products and their derivatives represent more than 50% of ...all the drugs in modern therapeutics. Because of the low success rate and huge capital investment need, the research and development of conventional drugs are very costly and difficult. Over the past few decades, researchers have focused on drug discovery from herbal medicines or botanical sources, an important group of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapy. With a long history of herbal usage for the clinical management of a variety of diseases in indigenous cultures, the success rate of developing a new drug from herbal medicinal preparations should, in theory, be higher than that from chemical synthesis. While the endeavor for drug discovery from herbal medicines is “experience driven,” the search for a therapeutically useful synthetic drug, like “looking for a needle in a haystack,” is a daunting task. In this paper, we first illustrated various approaches of drug discovery from herbal medicines. Typical examples of successful drug discovery from botanical sources were given. In addition, problems in drug discovery from herbal medicines were described and possible solutions were proposed. The prospect of drug discovery from herbal medicines in the postgenomic era was made with the provision of future directions in this area of drug development.
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in China. This study aimed to develop a hyaluronic acid (HA) decorated, pH sensitive lipid-polymer hybrid ...nanoparticles (LPH NPs) to co-deliver erlotinib (ERL) and bevacizumab (BEV) (HA-ERL/BEV-LPH NPs) for targeting and suppressing NSCLC. HA contained pH sensitive nano-materials were synthesized by acylation reaction. HA-ERL/BEV-LPH NPs were prepared using a sonication method. To explore the efficiency of the system, we evaluated the physicochemical parameters and performed a release study, a cellular uptake assay, a cytotoxicity evaluation, and several in vivo anti-tumor studies in comparison with free drugs and single drug systems. All LPH NPs samples have particle sizes of about 100−120 nm, polydispersity index values range from 0.12 to 0.15, and negative zeta potentials. HA-ERL/BEV-LPH NPs contained pH sensitive adipic acid dihydrazide (ADH) showed fast drug release at pH 5.5 than pH 7.4. After 21 days, the tumor volume of the HA-ERL/BEV-LPH NPs group (229.2 ± 13.1 mm3) was significantly smaller than 0.9 % NaCl control group (1126.3 ± 39.4 mm3), with a tumor inhibition rate of 79.7 ± 3.2 %. The maximum plasma ERL concentrations, half life period, and area under the curve of HA-ERL/BEV-LPH NPs were 21.6 μg/mL, 7.57 h, and 290.3 mg/L·h). With the highest tumor tissue accumulation concentration (25.3 μg/mL) and low system toxicity, HA-ERL/BEV-LPH NPs. HA-ERL/BEV-LPH NPs could be used as a promising system for the combination therapy of NSCLC.
Stroke is one of the major devastating diseases with no effective medical therapeutics. Because of the high rate of disability and mortality among stroke patients, new treatments are urgently ...required to decrease the brain damage following stroke. In recent years, the inflammasome is a novel breakthrough point that play an important role in the stroke, and the inhibition of inflammasome may be an effective method for stroke treatment. Briefly, inflammasome is a multi-protein complex that causes activation of caspase-1 and subsequent production of pro-inflammatory factors including interleukin (IL)-18 and IL-1β. Among them, the NLRP3 inflammasome is the most typical inflammasome, which can detect cell damage and mediate inflammatory response to tissue damage in ischemic stroke. The NLRP3 inflammasome has become a key mediator of post-ischemic inflammation, leading to a cascade of inflammatory reactions and cell death eventually. Thus, NLRP3 inflammasome is an ideal therapeutic target due to its important role in the inflammatory response after ischemic stroke. In this review, we will summarize the structure, assembly and regulation of NLRP3 inflammasome, the role of NLRP3 inflammasome in ischemic stroke, and several treatments targeting NLRP3 inflammasome in ischemic stroke. The further understanding of the mechanism of NLRP3 inflammasome in patients with ischemic stroke will provide novel targets for the treatment of cerebral ischemic stroke patients.
Abstract
Silicon (Si) is considered to be the promising candidate anode for the next generation of high‐energy‐density batteries. However, the poor initial coulombic efficiency (ICE) and rate ...performance severely hinder its commercial development. Here, fully exploits the 2D structure of photovoltaic silicon waste (PV‐WSi), combining with the advantage of controllable depositing layers offered by fluidized bed atomic layer deposition (FBALD), to simultaneously achieve high ICE and highrate performance of Si‐based anodes. The characteristic of Li
+
embedding vertically into the plane direction of the 2D sheet‐like structure of PV‐WSi helps shorten the diffusion distance, alleviating the pulverization problem caused by volume expansion. FBALD is utilized to controllably deposit Li
2
O (≈1 nm) and TiO
2
(≈4 nm) layers to compensate for the loss of Li sources, further suppressing the volume expansion of Si and isolating the side reactions between Si and electrolyte. The prepared Si@Li
2
O@TiO
2
demonstrates ultrahigh ICE (90.9%) and outstanding rate performance (>900 mAh g
−1
at a rate of 20 A g
−1
). Full cells with the Si@Li
2
O@TiO
2
anode and LiFePO
4
cathode deliver a stable capacity of 100 mAh g
−1
after 300 cycles at 0.5 C. This work provides new ideas for the development of high ICE, high‐rate Si‐based anodes based on low‐cost photovoltaic waste.
In an ageing society, neurodegenerative diseases have attracted attention because of their high incidence worldwide. Despite extensive research, there is a lack of conclusive insights into the ...pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, which limit the strategies for symptomatic treatment. Therefore, better elucidation of the molecular mechanisms involved in neurodegenerative diseases can provide an important theoretical basis for the discovery of new and effective prevention and treatment methods. The innate immune system is activated during the ageing process and in response to neurodegenerative diseases. Inflammasomes are multiprotein complexes that play an important role in the activation of the innate immune system. They mediate inflammatory reactions and pyroptosis, which are closely involved in neurodegeneration. There are different types of inflammasomes, although the nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is the most common inflammasome; NLRP3 plays an important role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. In this review, we will discuss the mechanisms that are involved in the activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome and its crucial role in the pathology of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple sclerosis. We will also review various treatments that target the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway and alleviate neuroinflammation. Finally, we will summarize the novel treatment strategies for neurodegenerative disorders.
As one of the alternatives to replace precious metal catalysts, transition‐metal–nitrogen–carbon (M–N–C) electrocatalysts have attracted great research interest due to their low cost and good ...catalytic activities. Despite nanostructured M–N–C catalysts can achieve good electrochemical performances, they are vulnerable to aggregation and insufficient catalytic sites upon continuous catalytic reaction. In this work, metal–organic frameworks derived porous single‐atom electrocatalysts (SAEs) were successfully prepared by simple pyrolysis procedure without any further posttreatment. Combining the X‐ray absorption near‐edge spectroscopy and electrochemical measurements, the SAEs have been identified with superior oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity and stability compared with Pt/C catalysts in alkaline condition. More impressively, the SAEs also show excellent ORR electrocatalytic performance in both acid and neutral media. This study of nonprecious catalysts provides new insights on nanoengineering catalytically active sites and porous structures for nonprecious metal ORR catalysis in a wide range of pH.
Fe‐doped metal organic framework‐derived nonprecious nanocatalysts with single active sites are obtained by a simple pyrolysis procedure. The obtained Fe–N–C single‐atom electrocatalysts possess superior oxygen reduction reaction performance in a wide range of pH.
Second language (L2) speakers with foreign accents are well-known to face disadvantages in terms of language processing; however, recent research has demonstrated possible social benefits for ...foreign-accented L2 speakers. While previous research has focused on the ways in which first language (L1) speakers of English comprehend L2 speech, the present article contributes to this line of research by exploring the ways in which comprehenders from a different culture and linguistic background perceive L2 speech narratives. This study investigates this issue by exploring how comprehenders with Mandarin Chinese as the first language interpret underinformative utterances containing scalar and ad hoc implicature in L1, accent-free L2, and foreign-accented L2 speech narratives. The sentence judgment task with a guise design used written sentences rather than oral utterances as stimuli in order to isolate the role of intelligibility factors. The results indicate that foreign accent confers social benefits on L2 speakers in that their omission of information in communication is tolerated and they are viewed as more likely to possess positive attributes. More importantly, we find that the bilingual characteristics of Chinese participants, as well as the different linguistic complexity of deriving scalar and ad hoc implicature, affect Chinese participants' explanations of underinformative sentences of L2 speakers. This study contributes to our understanding of L2 language processing.
Along with the progress of natural language processing technology and deep learning, the subjectivity, slow feedback, and long grading time of traditional English essay grading have been addressed. ...Intelligent English automatic scoring has been widely concerned by scholars. Given the limitations of topic relevance feature extraction methods and traditional automatic grading methods for English compositions, a topic decision model is proposed to calculate the topic relevance score of the topic richness in English composition. Then, based on the Score of Relevance Based on Topic Richness (TRSR) calculation method, an intelligent English composition scoring method combining artificial feature extraction and deep learning is designed. From the findings, the Topic Decision (TD) model achieved the best effect only when it was iterated 80 times. The corresponding accuracy, recall and F1 value were 0.97, 0.93 and 0.95 respectively. The model training loss finally stabilized at 0.03. The Intelligent English Composition Grading Method Integrating Deep Learning (DLIECG) method has the best overall performance and the best performance on dataset P. To sum up, the intelligent English composition scoring method has better effectiveness and reliability.
Several epidemiological studies have identified diabetes as a risk factor for colorectal cancer (CRC). The potential pathophysiological mechanisms of this association include hyperinsulinemia, ...insulin-like growth factor (IGF) axis, hyperglycemia, inflammation induced by adipose tissue dysfunction, gastrointestinal motility disorder, and impaired immunological surveillance. Several studies have shown that underlying diabetes adversely affects the prognosis of patients with CRC. This review explores the novel anticancer agents targeting IGF-1R and receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE), both of which play a vital role in diabetes-induced colorectal tumorigenesis. Inhibitors of IGF-1R and RAGE are expected to become promising therapeutic choices, particularly for CRC patients with diabetes. Furthermore, hypoglycemic therapy is associated with the incidence of CRC. Selection of appropriate hypoglycemic agents, which can reduce the risk of CRC in diabetic patients, is an unmet issue. Therefore, this review mainly summarizes the current studies concerning the connections among diabetes, hypoglycemic therapy, and CRC as well as provides a synthesis of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. Our synthesis provides a theoretical basis for rational use of hypoglycemic therapies and early diagnosis and treatment of diabetes-related CRC.
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