There is a growing interest in using natural medicines to treat stroke as the leading cause of disability worldwide. Especially plant-derived natural medicines have multiple beneficial effects, ...including antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, antiapoptotic, suggesting their potential for stroke treatment. However, failure in clinical translation has created a substantial challenge for their use as stroke treatment. This review summarises the status of using natural medicinal formulations in stroke treatment, as well as the challenges. Although natural medicines have excellent prospects for ischaemic stroke treatment, several concerns need to be addressed for translating the success in animal research to humans. Specifically, there should be more considerations for investigating the precise mechanisms of natural medicines mediating the neuroprotective effects on stroke. Moreover, to further improve the prospects of clinical translation, further studies should be performed in aged animals rather than young adult animals.
Marine heatwaves (MHWs)-extremely warm, persistent sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies causing substantial ecological and economic consequences-have increased worldwide in recent decades. ...Concurrent increases in global temperatures suggest that climate change impacted MHW occurrences, beyond random changes arising from natural internal variability. Moreover, the long-term SST warming trend was not constant but instead had more rapid warming in recent decades. Here we show that this nonlinear trend can-on its own-appear to increase SST variance and hence MHW frequency. Using a Linear Inverse Model to separate climate change contributions to SST means and internal variability, both in observations and CMIP6 historical simulations, we find that most MHW increases resulted from regional mean climate trends that alone increased the probability of SSTs exceeding a MHW threshold. Our results suggest the need to carefully attribute global warming-induced changes in climate extremes, which may not always reflect underlying changes in variability.
In this paper, an ammonia-urea system was developed to induce the shedding of carboxymethylcellulose carbon aerogels to form defects, and the specific surface area of the aerogels was significantly ...increased after carbonization, and the three-dimensional disordered pore structure of cellulose was preserved. The material showed the selective adsorption of gadolinium ions using the carboxylate active sites provided by carboxymethylation and the microporous or mesoporous structures formed after carbon burning. The successful synthesis of the material was demonstrated by relevant characterization, and the results of static adsorption experiments showed that the material was more consistent with the quasi second-order kinetic model at pH = 5.0. The maximum adsorption capacity was 99.65 mg g
. The material showed a high adsorption capacity for gadolinium ions in the presence of competing ions and maintained 84.07% of the adsorption performance after five adsorption cycles. The simple use of urea ensured that the cellulose maintained its pore structure, and the specific surface area was greatly increased after carbonization, which provided a feasible direction for the industrial adsorption and recycling of rare-earth elements for reuse.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disorder that leads to systemic inflammation of diarthrodial joint, synovial hyperplasia, cartilage damage, and ultimately joint destruction and ...deformity. As the dominant non-immune cells in the synovium, fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLSs) significantly contribute to the deterioration of RA. Our study aimed to explore the regulatory role of long non-coding RNA FOXD2-AS1 in RA progression. Compared to patients with joint trauma, the expression of FOXD2-AS1 was elevated in serum and synovial tissue samples of RA patients. FOXD2-AS1 knockdown inhibited the proliferation and invasion of rheumatoid FLSs but restored their apoptotic ability. Furthermore, FOXD2-AS1 acted as a sponge for microRNA (miR)-331-3p. The expressions of FOXD2-AS1 and miR-331-3p in synovial tissues of RA patients were negatively correlated. Protein inhibitor of activated STAT 3 (PIAS3) was predicted as a downstream target of miR-331-3p. The expressions of FOXD2-AS1 and PIAS3 in synovial tissues of RA patients were positively correlated, whereas a negative correlation was observed between the levels of miR-331-3p and PIAS3. Moreover, increased proliferation and invasion of rheumatoid FLSs induced by FOXD2-AS1 overexpression was inhibited by the knockdown of PIAS3. In summary, this study demonstrated that FOXD2-AS1 promoted RA progression via regulating the miR-331-3p/PIAS3 pathway, suggesting that therapeutic strategies based on the FOXD2-AS1/miR-331-3p/PIAS3 axis may represent a promising treatment approach for RA patients.
Clonal plants play key roles in maintaining community productivity and stability in many ecosystems. Connected individuals (ramets) of clonal plants can translocate and share, for example, ...photosynthates, water and nutrients, and such physiological integration may affect performance of clonal plants both in heterogeneous and homogeneous environments. However, we still lack a general understanding of whether or how physiological integration in clonal plants differs across homogeneous versus heterogeneous environments.
We compiled data from 198 peer‐reviewed scientific studies conducted in 19 countries with 108 clonal plant species from 35 families, and carried out a meta‐analysis of effects of physiological integration on 16 traits related to plant growth, morphology, physiology or allocation. Our analyses evaluated these relationships in (A) heterogeneous environments where at least one resource essential for plant growth (e.g. light, soil water and mineral nutrients) or non‐resource factor (e.g. grazing, trampling and burial) is spatially non‐uniformly distributed and (B) homogeneous environments where all these factors are spatially uniformly distributed.
Physiological integration increased growth of whole clones in both homogeneous and heterogeneous environments due to its highly significant contribution to growth of recipient ramets. Integration did not affect growth of donor ramets in heterogeneous environments, but decreased it in homogeneous environments.
Integration affected physiological traits of donor ramets in neither homogeneous nor heterogeneous environments. It did not affect any physiological traits of recipient ramets in homogeneous environments, but increased most of them in heterogeneous environments. For donor ramets, integration increased height by 53% and internode length by 37% in heterogeneous environments, but had no effect in homogeneous environments. For recipient ramets, integration increased height by 73% in homogeneous environments and by 115% in heterogeneous environments, and increased internode length by 35% only under heterogeneous environments. In heterogeneous environments, integration increased biomass allocation to roots of donor ramets under high water/nutrient conditions and decreased it under high light.
Physiological integration plays a strong role in clonal plant physiology, morphology and growth, especially for recipient ramets in heterogeneous environments. Therefore, physiological integration may have contributed to the widespread of clonal plants in nature and their dominance in many ecosystems. It may also play important roles in invasion success of alien clonal plants and in maintaining functions and stability of ecosystems where clonal plants are abundant.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Due to the increasingly serious problem of offshore oil spills, research related to oil–water separation has attracted more and more attention. Here, we prepared a super-hydrophilic/underwater ...super-oleophobic membrane (hereinafter referred to as BTA) using poly-dopamine (PDA) to adhesive TiO2 nanoparticles on the surface of bacterial cellulose, coated with sodium alienate by vacuum-assisted filtration technique. This demonstrates its excellent underwater super-oleophobic property. Its contact angle is about 153°. Remarkably, BTA has 99% separation efficiency. More importantly, BTA still showed excellent anti-pollution property under ultraviolet light after 20 cycles. BTA has the advantages of low cost, environmentally friendliness and good anti-fouling performance. We believe it can play an important role in dealing with problems related to oily wastewater.
The novel NaYbF4:Nd3+@NaYF4:Yb3+ active-core/active-shell colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized, and their structures were studied by the XRD, TEM, and HRTEM techniques. Compared with ...NaYbF4:Nd3+ active-core NPs, the maximum 45-fold enhancement of total emission intensity is obtained in the active-core/active-shell NPs. The tunable green-white-yellow multicolor emissions are realized by tuning the Yb3+ concentration in NaYF4:Yb3+ active-shell. By using the fluorescence intensity ratio technology, the 4G9/2 and 4G7/2 levels of Nd3+ in NaYbF4:Nd3+ active-core is verified as thermally coupled levels. Based on the change of the intensity ratio of 523 nm–543 nm with temperature, a better behavior as a temperature sensor has been obtained with a maximum sensitivity of 0.0018 K−1 at 400 K. The resulting active-core/active-shell NPs show bifunctional property and have potential application in fluorescent and temperature nano-probes.
•Novel NaYbF4:Nd3+@NaYF4:Yb3+ core-shell nanoparticles were synthesized.•The maximum 45-fold enhancement of total emission intensity is realized.•The nanoparticles show tunable green-white-yellow multicolor emissions.•A maximum sensitivity of 0.0018 K−1 is obtained at 400 K for a temperature sensor.
•Bacterial richness increased while fungal richness decreased from non-degraded to degraded patch.•The ecotone between non-degraded and degraded patches was characterized by higher bacterial richness ...of abundant taxa.•Relative abundance of rare taxa for bacteria and fungi consistently decreased during patchy degradation process.•Microbial rare taxa could be a good ecological indicator in responding to grassland patchy degradation.
Patchy degradation is a typical characteristic of grassland degradation. However, little is known about the responses of soil microbial community composition and richness to patchy degradation process, although soil microbes play important roles in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Further, there is always a transitional area of vegetation between non-degraded and degraded patches (i.e. ecotone), but the characteristics of soil microbial communities at ecotone are not well understood. Here, we investigated spatial patterns of soil microbial composition and richness from non-degraded to degraded patch in a patchy degraded grassland of Northern China. The results showed that bacterial and fungal richness had contrast patterns during patchy degradation process. Bacterial richness increased while fungal richness decreased from non-degraded to degraded patch. Notably, soil bacteria had significant edge effects, characterized by more abundant bacterial taxa at ecotone compared with non-degraded and degraded patches, which was attributable to the release of competition from the lower dominant phylum-Actinobacteria abundance. Moreover, the relative abundance of rare taxa for bacteria and fungi consistently decreased during patchy degradation process, indicating a reduction of ecosystem function. Relative abundance of soil microbial rare taxa could be a good ecological indicator in responding to grassland degradation. Overall, our study revealed the spatial patterns of soil microbial community during patchy degradation process and the microbial characteristics at ecotone, which is crucial for mechanistic understanding of grassland degradation process, and also providing a theoretical basis for the development of grassland restoration strategy.
Installing different chemical entities onto crystalline frameworks with well-defined spatial distributions represents a viable approach to achieve ordered and complex synthetic materials. Herein, a ...covalent organic framework (COF-305) is constructed from tetrakis(4-aminophenyl)methane and 2,3-dimethoxyterephthalaldehyde, which has the largest unit cell and asymmetric unit among known COFs. The ordered complexity of COF-305 is embodied by nine different stereoisomers of its constituents showing specific sequences on topologically equivalent sites, which can be attributed to its building blocks deviating from their intrinsically preferred simple packing geometries in their molecular crystals to adapt to the framework formation. The insight provided by COF-305 supplements the principle of covalent reticular design from the perspective of non-covalent interactions and opens opportunities for pursuing complex chemical sequences in molecular frameworks.
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