Electrochemical water splitting is a clean technology for H2 fuels, but greatly hindered by the slow kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, a series of spinel‐structured nanosheets ...with oxygen deficiencies and ultrathin thicknesses were designed to increase the reactivity and the number of active sites of the catalysts, which were then taken as an excellent platform for promoting the water oxidation process. Theoretical investigations showed that the oxygen vacancies confined in the ultrathin nanosheet could lower the adsorption energy of H2O, leading to increased OER efficiency. As expected, the NiCo2O4 ultrathin nanosheets rich in oxygen vacancies exhibited a large current density of 285 mA cm−2 at 0.8 V and a small overpotential of 0.32 V, both of which are superior to the corresponding values of bulk samples or samples with few oxygen deficiencies and even higher than those of most reported non‐precious‐metal catalysts. This work should provide a new pathway for the design of advanced OER catalysts.
Beneficial deficiencies: A series of spinel‐structured nanosheets with oxygen deficiencies (Ovac) and ultrathin thicknesses were synthesized for the first time. These features lead to an increase in the number of active sites and in the activity of the catalyst in water oxidation, which was confirmed by experimental and theoretical studies.
Low-cost, scalable preparation of high-quality graphene has been a critical challenge that hampers its large-scale application. We here propose a novel, scalable liquidphase exfoliation method in ...which the intercalation, expansion, and exfoliation of graphite are achieved all under ambient conditions, not involving any heating or high-temperature treatment. We demonstrate that such room-temperature liquid-phase intercalation and expansion allow graphite flakes to expand up to 1000 times. Significantly different from thermally expanded graphite, the resulting chemically expanded graphite (CEG) exhibits a uniform, open, porous structure with a specific surface area (847 m2/g) comparable to the theoretical value of three-layer graphene. The CEG obtained is able to be exfoliated under mild conditions to give high-quality graphene with a yield of 70% relative to the starting graphite. The exfoliated graphene sheets have very few defects, with an atomic ratio of carbon to oxygen (C/O ratio) of 28. The as-prepared graphene exhibits an electrical conductivity of 1.17 × 105 S/m and the corresponding transparent films also reveal superior optical and electrical performance.
Inflammasomes are multiprotein complexes orchestrating intracellular recognition of endogenous and exogenous stimuli, cellular homeostasis, and cell death. Upon sensing of certain stimuli, ...inflammasomes typically activate inflammatory caspases that promote the production and release of the proinflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-1α, and IL-18 and induce a type of inflammatory cell death known as “pyroptosis”. Pyroptosis is an important form of regulated cell death executed by gasdermin proteins, which is largely different from apoptosis and necrosis. Recently, several signaling pathways driving pyroptotic cell death, including canonical and noncanonical inflammasome activation, as well as caspase-3-dependent pathways, have been reported. While much evidence exists that pyroptosis is involved in the development of several inflammatory diseases, its contribution to inflammasome-related disorders (IRDs) has not been fully clarified. This article reviews molecular mechanisms leading to pyroptosis, and attempts to provide evidence for its possible role in inflammasome-related disorders, including NLR pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome disease, NLR containing a caspase recruitment domain 4 (NLRC4) inflammasome disease, and pyrin inflammasome disease. Although the specific mechanism needs further investigations, these studies have uncovered the role of pyroptosis in inflammasome-related disorders and may open new avenues for future therapeutic interventions.
Using a mouse model of multiple sclerosis (MS), experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE), we evaluated the role of gut microbiota in modulating chronic-progressive (CP) versus relapse-remitting ...(RR) forms of the disease. We hypothesized that clinical courses of EAE may be shaped by differential gut microbiota. Metagenomic sequencing of prokaryotic 16S rRNA present in feces from naïve mice and those exhibiting CP-EAE or RR-EAE revealed significantly diverse microbial populations. Microbiota composition was considerably different between naïve strains of mice, suggesting microbial components present in homeostatic conditions may prime mice for divergent courses of disease. Additionally, there were differentially abundant bacteria in CP and RR forms of EAE, indicating a potential role for gut microbiota in shaping tolerant or remittance-favoring, and pathogenic or pro-inflammatory-promoting conditions. Furthermore, immunization to induce EAE led to significant alterations in gut microbiota, some were shared between disease courses and others were course-specific, supporting a role for gut microbial composition in EAE pathogenesis. Moreover, using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) coupled with effect size measurement (LEfSe) to analyze microbial content, biomarkers of each naïve and disease states were identified. Our findings demonstrate for the first time that gut microbiota may determine the susceptibility to CP or RR forms of EAE.
Defect engineering is considered as one of the most efficient strategies to regulate the electronic structure of materials and involves the manipulation of the types, concentrations, and spatial ...distributions of defects, resulting in unprecedented properties. It is shown that a single‐layered MnO2 nanosheet with vacancies is a robust half‐metal, which was confirmed by theoretical calculations, whereas vacancy‐free single‐layered MnO2 is a typical semiconductor. The half‐metallicity of the single‐layered MnO2 nanosheet can be observed for a wide range of vacancy concentrations and even in the co‐presence of Mn and O vacancies. This work enables the development of half‐metals by defect engineering of well‐established low‐dimensional materials, which may be used for the design of next‐generation paper‐like spintronics.
A manganese dioxide monolayer was rendered half‐metallic by a defect engineering strategy, which was confirmed by calculations. These theoretical studies showed that the half‐metallicity of a single‐layered MnO2 nanosheet can be observed for a wide range of vacancy concentrations and even in the presence of both Mn and O vacancies.
•A lightweight pancreas segmentation model with spatial prior is presented.•A new prior propagation module is built to dynamically explore the spatial prior.•Our method has low computational cost and ...state-of-the-art performance.
Nowadays, pancreas segmentation in CT scans has gained more and more attention for computer-assisted diagnosis of inflammation (pancreatitis) or cancer. Despite the thrilling success of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) in automatic pancreas segmentation, the heavy computational complexity of such networks impedes the deployment in clinical applications. To alleviate this issue, this paper establishes a novel end-to-end DCNN model for pursuing high-accurate automatic pancreas segmentation but with low computational cost. Specifically, built upon a simplified FCN architecture, we propose two novel network modules, named as the scale-transferrable feature fusion module (STFFM) and prior propagation module (PPM), respectively, for pancreas segmentation. Equipped with the scale-transferrable operation, STFFM can learn rich fusion features but with very lightweight network architecture. By dynamically adapting the spatial prior to the input slice data as well as the deep feature maps, PPM enables the network model to explore informative spatial priors for pancreas segmentation. Comprehensive experiments on the NIH dataset and the MSD dataset are conducted to evaluate the proposed approach. The obtained experimental results demonstrate that our approach can effectively reduce the computational cost and simultaneously archive the outperforming performance when compared to the state-of-the-art methods.
Immunogenic cell death (ICD) is a form of regulated cell death (RCD) induced by various stresses and produces antitumor immunity
damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) release or exposure, ...mainly including high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), calreticulin (CRT), adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and heat shock proteins (HSPs). Emerging evidence has suggested that ionizing radiation (IR) can induce ICD, and the dose, type, and fractionation of irradiation influence the induction of ICD. At present, IR-induced ICD is mainly verified
in mice and there is few clinical evidence about it. To boost the induction of ICD by IR, some strategies have shown synergy with IR to enhance antitumor immune response, such as hyperthermia, nanoparticles, and chemotherapy. In this review, we focus on the molecular mechanisms of ICD, ICD-promoting factors associated with irradiation, the clinical evidence of ICD, and immunogenic forms of cell death. Finally, we summarize various methods of improving ICD induced by IR.
A hybrid composite material was fabricated by functionalizing rGO surface with TiO2 and attaching it to polymerized aniline to obtain a photocatalyst with a very efficient charge separation. The ...resulting PANI-TiO2/rGO photocatalysts were very thoroughly characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectra, Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR), UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectra, scanning electron microscopies (SEM), transmission electron microscopies (TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). TiO2 nanoparticles dispersed in rGO did not alter its structure. PANI-covered with rGO showed an improved charge separation efficiency. Our novel PANI-TiO2/rGO photocatalysts showed narrower bandgap energy and increased ability to absorb light in the visible region. The H2 production rate and the photodegradation efficiency of Rhodamine B (RhB) were 0.806 mmol h−1 g−1 and 90.5%, respectively, which were 1.8 and 10.1 times higher than the same values obtained under the assistance TiO2/rGO and TiO2 photocatalysts. The photocatalytic mechanism is also studied. Improvement in the photocatalytic performance can be attributed to the synergy between rGO, TiO2, and PANI, which allowed for an extended spectral response as well as for enhanced separation of photogenerated charge carriers. This work provides an effective method to develop photocatalytic systems for applications related to environmental pollution and hydrogen production.
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•A novel PANI-TiO2/rGO fabricated by coating TiO2 and PANI on the surface of rGO.•PANI-TiO2/rGO show highly photocatalytic degradation rate of RhB and H2 production.•Synergistic effect in the composite leads to enhanced photocatalytic activity.•rGO and PANI acts as a transmitter for e− and h+ to facilitate charge separation.
•About 4.7–10.3% school-aged children have behavioral problems in home quarantine.•Taking physical exercise is related to a reduced behavioral problems in children.•Anxiety of parents is associated ...with emotional symptoms in children.
To prevent spreading of the COVID-19 infection, many countries have implemented a nationwide school closure. We aimed to assess the prevalence of behavioral problems in school-aged children during home confinement.
We conducted an internet-based survey involving 1264 children (grades 2–6) and their parents from two primary schools between February 25 and March 8, 2020, in Hubei province, China. Behavioral problems were evaluated using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).
The prevalence of prosocial behaviors among children was 10.3%, followed by total difficulty (8.2%), conduct problems (7.0%), peer problems (6.6%), hyperactivity-inattention (6.3%) and emotional problems (4.7%). Compared with children who did not exercise, children with psychical activity had a lower hyperactivity-inattention risk (Odds Ratio (OR): 0.44 for 1–2 days/week; OR: 0.56 for more than 2 days/week) and less prosocial behaviors problems (OR: 0.65 for 1–2 days/week; OR: 0.55 for more than 2 days/week). Children of parents with anxious symptoms were associated with increased risks of emotional symptoms and total difficulty (OR: 5.64 and 3.78, respectively).
We adopted self-report questionnaires and did not collect baseline information before COVID-19 outbreak. The potential self-selection bias inherent in the study should be noted.
The prevalence of behavioral problems among school-aged children varied from 4.7% to 10.3% in home quarantine during the COVID-19 outbreak. Taking physical exercise may be an efficient measure to reduce behavioral problems for school-aged children in home confinement.
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