Fermionic time-reversal symmetry (Formula: see text)-protected quantum spin Hall (QSH) materials feature gapless helical edge states when adjacent to arbitrary trivial cladding materials. However, ...due to symmetry reduction at the boundary, bosonic counterparts usually exhibit gaps and thus require additional cladding crystals to maintain robustness, limiting their applications. In this study, we demonstrate an ideal acoustic QSH with gapless behaviour by constructing a global T
on both the bulk and the boundary based on bilayer structures. Consequently, a pair of helical edge states robustly winds several times in the first Brillouin zone when coupled to resonators, promising broadband topological slow waves. We further reveal that this ideal QSH phase behaves as a topological phase transition plane that bridges trivial and higher-order phases. Our versatile multi-topology platform sheds light on compact topological slow-wave and lasing devices.
Solution‐gated graphene transistors with graphene as both channel and gate electrodes are fabricated for the first time and used as dopamine sensors with the detection limit down to 1 nM, which is ...three orders of magnitude better than that of conventional electrochemical measurements. The sensing mechanism is attributed to the change of effective gate voltage applied on the transistors induced by the electro‐oxidation of dopamine at the graphene gate electrodes. The interference from glucose, uric acid, and ascorbic acid on the dopamine sensor is characterized. The selectivity of the dopamine sensor is dramatically improved by modifying the gate electrode with a thin Nafion film by solution process. This work paves the way for developing many other biosensors based on the solution‐gated graphene transistors by specifically functionalizing the gate electrodes. Because the devices are mainly made of graphene, they are potentially low cost and ideal for high‐density integration as multifunctional sensor arrays.
Whole graphene solution‐gated transistors with graphene as both channel and gate are fabricated for the first time and used as dopamine sensors with a detection limit down to 1 nM and excellent selectivity. The sensing mechanism is attributed to the change of effective gate voltage applied on the transistors induced by the electro‐oxidation of dopamine at the graphene gate.
Abstract
Background
socioeconomic inequity in mortality and life expectancy remains inconclusive in low- and middle-income countries, and to what extent the associations are mediated or modified by ...lifestyles remains debatable.
Methods
we included 21,133 adults from China Health and Nutrition Survey (1991–2011) and constructed three parameters to reflect participants’ overall individual- (synthesising income, education and occupation) and area-level (urbanisation index) socioeconomic status (SES) and lifestyles (counting the number of smoking, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet and bodyweight). HRs for mortality and life expectancy were estimated by time-dependent Cox model and life table method, respectively.
Results
during a median follow-up of 15.2 years, 1,352 deaths were recorded. HRs (95% CIs) for mortality comparing low versus high individual- and area-level SES were 2.38 (1.75–3.24) and 1.84 (1.51–2.24), respectively, corresponding to 5.7 (2.7–8.6) and 5.0 (3.6–6.3) life-year lost at age 50. Lifestyles explained ≤11.5% of socioeconomic disparity in mortality. Higher lifestyle risk scores were associated with higher mortality across all socioeconomic groups. HR (95% CI) for mortality comparing adults with low individual-level SES and 3–4 lifestyle risk factors versus those with high SES and 0–1 lifestyle risk factors was 7.06 (3.47–14.36), corresponding to 19.1 (2.6–35.7) life-year lost at age 50.
Conclusion
this is the first nationwide cohort study reporting that disadvantaged SES was associated with higher mortality and shorter life expectancy in China, which was slightly mediated by lifestyles. Risk lifestyles were related to higher mortality across all socioeconomic groups, and those with risk lifestyles and disadvantaged SES had much higher mortality risks.
Tumour‐associated macrophage (TAM) polarization is associated with hepatocellular carcinoma but the molecular mechanism of this polarization is still unknown. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were ...induced to differentiate into M0, M1 and M2 macrophages and TAMs. TAMs were transfected with pcDNA3.1‐GAS5, pcDNA3.1‐NC, si‐GAS5, si‐PTEN or si‐Ctrl. A human liver cancer cell line (SMCC‐7721) was incubated with the modified TAM supernatant. Quantitative real‐time PCR and Western blot were performed to detect gene and protein expression. The cell proliferation and invasion properties of the SMCC‐7721 cells were detected by MTT and Transwell assays. GAS5 is up‐regulated in M1 macrophages and down‐regulated in M2 macrophages and TAMs. GAS5 overexpression promoted M1‐like polarization of TAMs and inhibited M2‐like polarization of TAMs. Moreover, GAS5 promoted the expression of PTEN in TAMs. PTEN‐silenced TAM supernatant treatment promoted cell proliferative and invasive properties of the SMCC‐7721 cells and diminished the effect of GAS5‐overexpressed TAM supernatant on the cell proliferation and invasion by SMCC‐7721 cells. Our results demostrared that GAS5 overexpression inhibited M2‐like polarization of TAMs by enhancing PTEN expression, thereby inhibiting cell proliferation and invasion by SMCC‐7721 cells. Thus, our results suggest that GAS5 may be a new therapeutic target for HCC treatment.
Though neurotransmitters are essential elements in neuronal signal transduction, techniques for
analysis are still limited. Here, we describe an organic electrochemical transistor array (OECT-array) ...technique for monitoring catecholamine neurotransmitters (CA-NTs) in rat brains. The OECT-array is an
sensor with intrinsic amplification capability, allowing real-time and direct readout of transient CA-NT release with a sensitivity of nanomolar range and a temporal resolution of several milliseconds. The device has a working voltage lower than half of that typically used in a prevalent cyclic voltammetry measurement, and operates continuously
for hours without significant signal drift, which is inaccessible for existing methods. With the OECT-array, we demonstrate simultaneous mapping of evoked dopamine release at multiple striatal brain regions in different physiological scenarios, and reveal a complex cross-talk between the mesolimbic and the nigrostriatal pathways, which is heterogeneously affected by the reciprocal innervation between ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra pars compacta.
Deep-learning (DL)-based object detection algorithms can greatly benefit the community at large in fighting fires, advancing climate intelligence, and reducing health complications caused by ...hazardous smoke particles. Existing DL-based techniques, which are mostly based on convolutional networks, have proven to be effective in wildfire detection. However, there is still room for improvement. First, existing methods tend to have some commercial aspects, with limited publicly available data and models. In addition, studies aiming at the detection of wildfires at the incipient stage are rare. Smoke columns at this stage tend to be small, shallow, and often far from view, with low visibility. This makes finding and labeling enough data to train an efficient deep learning model very challenging. Finally, the inherent locality of convolution operators limits their ability to model long-range correlations between objects in an image. Recently, encoder–decoder transformers have emerged as interesting solutions beyond natural language processing to help capture global dependencies via self- and inter-attention mechanisms. We propose Nemo: a set of evolving, free, and open-source datasets, processed in standard COCO format, and wildfire smoke and fine-grained smoke density detectors, for use by the research community. We adapt Facebook’s DEtection TRansformer (DETR) to wildfire detection, which results in a much simpler technique, where the detection does not rely on convolution filters and anchors. Nemo is the first open-source benchmark for wildfire smoke density detection and Transformer-based wildfire smoke detection tailored to the early incipient stage. Two popular object detection algorithms (Faster R-CNN and RetinaNet) are used as alternatives and baselines for extensive evaluation. Our results confirm the superior performance of the transformer-based method in wildfire smoke detection across different object sizes. Moreover, we tested our model with 95 video sequences of wildfire starts from the public HPWREN database. Our model detected 97.9% of the fires in the incipient stage and 80% within 5 min from the start. On average, our model detected wildfire smoke within 3.6 min from the start, outperforming the baselines.
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) represent a novel group of noncoding RNA whose functions are little known in plants. Genetic manipulation is necessary for studying the biological function of specific ...circRNA. Here, we describe strategies to study the function of plant circRNAs including artificial microRNA-mediated circRNA knockdown, gain-of-function study, full-length circRNA identification, and circRNA-protein interaction. These methods can be applied to functional characterization of circRNAs in plants and would be promising to facilitate the research on plant circRNAs.
Demulsifiers are considered the key materials for oil/water separation. Various works in recent years have shown that demulsifiers with polyoxypropylen epolyoxyethylene branched structures possess ...better demulsification effects. In this work, inspired by the chemical structure of demulsifiers, a novel superhydrophilic/underwater superoleophobic membrane modified with a polyoxypropylene polyoxyethylene block polymer was fabricated for enhanced separation of O/W emulsion. First, a typical polyoxypropylene polyoxyethylene triblock polymer (Pluronic F127) was grafted onto the poly styrene-maleic anhydride (SMA). Then, the Pluronic F127-grafted SMA (abbreviated as F127@SMA) was blended with polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) for the preparation of the F127@SMA/PVDF ultrafiltration membrane. The obtained F127@SMA/PVDF ultrafiltration membrane displayed superhydrophilic/underwater superoleophobic properties, with a water contact angle of 0° and an underwater oil contact angle (UOCA) higher than 150° for various oils. Moreover, it had excellent separation efficiency for SDS-stabilized emulsions, even when the oil being emulsified was crude oil. The oil removal efficiency was greater than 99.1%, and the flux was up to 272.4 L·m
·h
. Most importantly, the proposed F127@SMA/PVDF membrane also exhibited outstanding reusability and long-term stability. Its UOCA remained higher than 150° in harsh acidic, alkaline, and high-salt circumstances. Overall, the present work proposed an environmentally friendly and convenient approach for the development of practical oil/water separation membranes.
Without insight into the correlation between the structure and properties, anion exchange membranes (AEMs) for fuel cells are developed usually using the empirical trial and error method or ...simulation methods. Here, a virtual module compound enumeration screening (V‐MCES) approach, which does not require the establishment of expensive training databases and can search the chemical space containing more than 4.2×105 candidates was proposed. The accuracy of the V‐MCES model was considerably improved when the model was combined with supervised learning for the feature selection of molecular descriptors. Techniques from V‐MCES, correlating the molecular structures of the AEMs with the predicted chemical stability, generated a ranking list of potential high stability AEMs. Under the guidance of V‐MCES, highly stable AEMs were synthesized. With understanding of AEM structure and performance by machine learning, AEM science may enter a new era of unprecedented levels of architectural design.
A virtual module compound enumeration screening (V‐MCES) model was used to automatically search the chemical space containing over 420 000 candidates and identified promising AEMs with highly chemical stability.
PDF
