Trehalose, a disaccharide of glucose, has been reported to accumulate in many organisms that can withstand extended periods of inanimation. Since this discovery, the properties of trehalose have been ...examined extensively to understand its role and abundance in nature. The unique features of this sugar became clearer with each new finding which demonstrated its ability to sustain and preserve a wide array of biological molecules. Trehalose has been used in a variety of research applications and is contained in several commercially available therapeutic products, including Herceptin®, Avastin®, Lucentis®, and Advate®. Currently, there is a growing interest in the use of trehalose in solid dosage formulations, most notably in quick-dissolving tablets. Furthermore, trehalose has found its use in several food and cosmetic products, and new applications capitalizing on its unique properties are being developed and implemented in everyday-use products. As trehalose is an approved ingredient in all major markets, there is no significant barrier to its use. Extensive work with trehalose has been conducted in the three major industries, however with little overlap. Further understanding of the role of trehalose in the various applications may lead to an increase in the number of trehalose-containing products.
Major depressive disorder is a chronic debilitating mental illness. Its pathophysiology at cellular and molecular levels is incompletely understood. Increasing evidence supports a pivotal role of the ...mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), in particular the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) subclass of MAPKs, in the pathogenesis, symptomatology, and treatment of depression. In humans and various chronic animal models of depression, the ERK signaling was significantly downregulated in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, two core areas implicated in depression. Inhibiting the ERK pathway in these areas caused depression-like behavior. A variety of antidepressants produced their behavioral effects in part via normalizing the downregulated ERK activity. In addition to ERK, the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), an immediate upstream regulator of ERK, the cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB), a transcription factor downstream to ERK, and the MAPK phosphatase (MKP) are equally vulnerable to depression. While BDNF and CREB were reduced in their activity in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of depressed animals, MKP activity was enhanced in parallel. Chronic antidepressant treatment readily reversed these neurochemical changes. Thus, ERK signaling in the depression-implicated brain regions was disrupted during the development of depression, which contributes to the long-lasting and transcription-dependent neuroadaptations critical for enduring depression-like behavior and the therapeutic effect of antidepressants.
To address the worldwide energy challenges, advanced energy storage and conversion systems with high comprehensive performances, as the promising technologies, are inevitably required on a timely ...basis. The performance of these energy systems is intimately dependent on the properties of their electrodes. In addition to the electrode materials selection and their compositional optimization, materials fabrication with the designed nanostructure also provides significant benefits for their performances. In the past decade, considerable efforts have been made to promote the search for multidimensional nanostructures containing both one‐dimensional (1D) and two‐dimensional (2D) nanostructures in synergy, namely, 1D‐2D synergized nanostructures. By developing the freestanding electrodes with such unique nanoarchitectures, the structural features and electroactivities of each component can be manifested, where the synergistic properties among them can be simultaneously obtained for further enhanced properties, such as the increased number of active sites, fast electronic/ionic transport, and so forth. This review overviews the state‐of‐the‐art on the 1D‐2D synergized nanostructures, which can be broadly divided into three groups, namely, core/shell, cactus‐like, and sandwich‐like nanostructures. For each category, we introduce them from the aspects of structural features, fabrication methodologies to their successful applications in different types of energy storage/conversion devices, including rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors, water splitting, and so forth. Finally, the main challenges faced by and perspectives on the 1D‐2D synergized nanostructures are discussed.
A proper combination of one‐dimensional (1D) and two‐dimensional (2D) materials in assembling of an electrode with 1D‐2D synergized nanostructure is an effective pathway to achieve outstanding electrochemical performance. In a timely follow up to this exciting development, this review focuses on the 1D‐2D synergized nanostructures, which can be divided into three groups, namely, core@shell, cactus‐like, and sandwich‐like nanostructures. For each category, we highlight their unique nano/meso‐features, electrochemical behavior and recent advances for energy storage and conversion applications. The main challenges faced by and perspectives on the 1D‐2D synergized nanostructures are also discussed.
Electrocatalytic performance can be enhanced by engineering a purposely designed nanoheterojunction and fine‐tuning the interface electronic structure. Herein a new approach of developing atomic ...epitaxial in‐growth in Co‐Ni3N nanowires array is devised, where a nanoconfinement effect is reinforced at the interface. The Co‐Ni3N heterostructure array is formed by thermal annealing NiCo2O4 precursor nanowires under an optimized condition, during which the nanowire morphology is retained. The epitaxial in‐growth structure of Co‐Ni3N at nanometer scale facilitates the electron transfer between the two different domains at the epitaxial interface, leading to a significant enhancement in catalytic activities for both hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions (10 and 16 times higher in the respective turn‐over frequency compared to Ni3N‐alone nanorods). The interface transfer effect is verified by electronic binding energy shift and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. This nanoconfinement effect occurring during in situ atomic epitaxial in‐growth of the two compatible materials shows an effective pathway toward high‐performance electrocatalysis and energy storages.
Co‐Ni3N nanorod arrays with an atomic epitaxial interface are synthesized, which exhibit significant enhancement in catalytic activities for both hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions. A nanoconfinement effect is proposed to facilitate the interface charge transfer.
AprilTags and other passive fiducial markers require specialized algorithms to detect markers among other features in a natural scene. The vision processing steps generally dominate the computation ...time of a tag detection pipeline, so even small improvements in marker detection can translate to a faster tag detection system. We incorporated lessons learned from implementing and supporting the AprilTag system into this improved system. This work describes AprilTag 2, a completely redesigned tag detector that improves robustness and efficiency compared to the original AprilTag system. The tag coding scheme is unchanged, retaining the same robustness to false positives inherent to the coding system. The new detector improves performance with higher detection rates, fewer false positives, and lower computational time. Improved performance on small images allows the use of decimated input images, resulting in dramatic gains in detection speed.
The graphene-based materials are promising for applications in supercapacitors and other energy storage devices due to the intriguing properties, i.e., highly tunable surface area, outstanding ...electrical conductivity, good chemical stability and excellent mechanical behavior. This review summarizes recent development on graphene-based materials for supercapacitor electrodes, based on their macrostructural complexity, i.e., zero-dimensional (0D) (e.g. free-standing graphene dots and particles), one-dimensional (1D) (e.g. fiber-type and yarn-type structures), two-dimensional (2D) (e.g. graphenes and graphene-based nanocomposite films), and three-dimensional (3D) (e.g. graphene foam and hydrogel-based nanocomposites). There are extensive and on-going researches on the rationalization of their structures at varying scales and dimensions, development of effective and low cost synthesis techniques, design and architecturing of graphene-based materials, as well as clarification of their electrochemical performance. It is indicated that future studies should focus on the overall device performance in energy storage devices and large-scale process in low costs for the promising applications in portable and wearable electronic, transport, electrical and hybrid vehicles.
Of the transition metals, Mn has the greatest number of different oxides, most of which have a special tunnel structure that enables bulk redox reactions. The high theoretical capacitance and ...capacity results from a greater number of accessible oxidation states than other transition metals, wide potential window, and the high natural abundance make MnOx species promising electrode materials for energy storage applications. Although MnOx electrode materials have been intensely studied over the past decade, their electrochemical performance is still insufficient for practical applications. Currently, there is a trade‐off between specific capacitance and loading mass. MnOx species have intrinsically poor electrical conductivity, and current structural designs are not sophisticated enough to accommodate enough redox‐active sites. Recent studies have certainly made progress in increasing capacitance through making use of electrically conductive components and controlling the morphology of the MnOx species to expose more surface area. To increase the capacitance of MnOx electrodes to the largest extent without limiting loading mass, further structural design at the nanoscale and manipulation of the electrically conductive component are required. An ideal nanostructure is proposed to guide future research toward closing the gap between achieved and theoretical capacitance, without limiting the loading mass.
The latest development and key issues on MnOx‐based electrodes for energy storage are reviewed. Considerable progress has been made toward the theoretical capacitance/capacity over the past decade. However, there is still a significant gap. Strategies in both structure designs and fabrication controls are elaborated. The future perspectives are discussed, toward fully utilizing the potential of MnOx in high‐performance energy storage.
Among the different types of multiferroic compounds, bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3; BFO) stands out because it is perhaps the only one being simultaneously magnetic and strongly ferroelectric at room ...temperature. Therefore, in the past decade or more, extensive research has been devoted to BFO-based materials in a variety of different forms, including ceramic bulks, thin films and nanostructures. Ceramic bulk BFO and their solid solutions with other oxide perovskite compounds show excellent ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties and are thus promising candidates for lead-free ferroelectric and piezoelectric devices. BFO thin films, on the other hand, exhibit versatile structures and many intriguing properties, particularly the robust ferroelectricity, the inherent magnetoelectric coupling, and the emerging photovoltaic effects. BFO-based nanostructures are of great interest owing to their size effect-induced structural modification and enhancement in various functional behaviors, such as magnetic and photocatalytic properties. Although to date several review papers on BFO and BFO-based materials have been published, they were each largely focused on one particular form of BFO. There have been very few papers addressing the different forms of BFO in a comprehensive manner and providing a comparison across the different forms. As BFO has been extensively studied over the past more than one decade especially in the past several years, there have been new phenomena arising more recently. Naturally they were not included in the early reviews. Here, we provide an updated comprehensive review on the progress of BFO-based materials made in the past fifteen years in the different forms of ceramic bulks, thin films and nanostructures, focusing on the pathways to modify different structures and to achieve enhanced physical properties and new functional behavior. We also prospect the future potential development for BFO-based materials in the cross disciplines and for multifunctional applications. We hope that this comprehensive review will serve as a timely updating and reference for researchers who are interested in further exploring bismuth ferrite-based materials.
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A critical review on current status and future perspectives of ceramic-based membranes for water and wastewater treatment is given. Common ceramic membranes made of alumina, zirconia, ...titania, silica and zeolite are described, and their advantages and disadvantages are compared and discussed. Composite-type ceramic membranes, including those of ceramic/ceramic, ceramic incorporated with nanoparticles, ceramic-metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and ceramic-polymer are analysed in terms of the improvement and the added functionalities for water and wastewater treatment. A summary on the manufacturing technologies of ceramic-based membranes is presented, where it has gone much beyond the conventional ceramic processing. Though polymeric membranes are currently still the dominant, the development of ceramic membranes is rapidly growing owing to their apparent advantages, such as high stability, long lifetime, high flux and low fouling, while there is constant driving towards the reduction in production cost. With the newly emerging advances in both materials and processing, ceramic-based membranes are promising and will soon become key players in water technology.
Metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising porous precursors for the construction of various functional materials for high‐performance electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Herein, a ...facile two‐step solution method to rational design of a novel electrode of hollow NiCo2O4 nanowall arrays on flexible carbon cloth substrate is reported. Uniform 2D cobalt‐based wall‐like MOFs are first synthesized via a solution reaction, and then the 2D solid nanowall arrays are converted into hollow and porous NiCo2O4 nanostructures through an ion‐exchange and etching process with an additional annealing treatment. The as‐obtained NiCo2O4 nanostructure arrays can provide rich reaction sites and short ion diffusion path. When evaluated as a flexible electrode material for supercapacitor, the as‐fabricated NiCo2O4 nanowall electrode shows remarkable electrochemical performance with excellent rate capability and long cycle life. In addition, the hollow NiCo2O4 nanowall electrode exhibits promising electrocatalytic activity for oxygen evolution reaction. This work provides an example of rational design of hollow nanostructured metal oxide arrays with high electrochemical performance and mechanical flexibility, holding great potential for future flexible multifunctional electronic devices.
A novel hollow and porous NiCo2O4 nanowall array on carbon cloth is fabricated and utilized as an efficient electrode for flexible supercapacitor and oxygen evolution reaction catalysis.
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