Microwave‐driven strategy shows many advantages including selective energization, uniform heating, and high penetration depth, which is a hot topic in wireless actuators. Understanding microwave ...stimulus‐response mechanisms is the key to developing universal construction strategies for advanced microwave‐driven actuators. Herein, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) with specified dielectric genes and thermal properties is implanted into the shape memory polymer, liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) as an example, to construct soft, reversible, and sensitive microwave actuators. Based on the analysis of microstructure and dielectric properties, LCE‐rGO composites exhibit excellent polarization relaxation‐dominated dielectric loss and electromagnetic (EM) energy conversion ability. The maximum dielectric loss factor (ε″) and loss tangent (tan δe) of LCE‐rGO are dramatically increased by 216% and 87.5% compared to pure LCE, respectively, and the optimum apparent energy harvest efficiency is 19.4 times higher than that of LCE. In addition, the implantation of rGO significantly lowers the microwave actuation threshold of LCE‐rGO composites and reinforces their stimulus‐response capacity. Response time under 750 W microwave irradiation of LCE‐rGO is shortened to <10s. These findings can provide a solid basis for the design and fabrication of highly efficient microwave stimuli‐responsive polymers and enlighten a new approach to wireless actuated smart devices.
Graphene‐implanted shape memory polymer (LCE‐rGO) is prepared, which can convert microwave energy into thermal energy through enhanced polarization genes dominated dielectric loss properties. Synergistic with excellent conduct heat capability of rGO, it triggers the inherent nematic‐isotropic phase transition of the LCE. As microwave‐driven composites, The LCE‐rGO is expected to act as kinetic components to provide mechanical energy for wireless drive equipment.
In the study, papain was chosen from five proteases to hydrolyze proteins of monkfish swim bladders for effectively utilizing monkfish (
) processing byproducts, and the hydrolysis conditions of ...papain were optimized as hydrolysis temperature of 65 °C, pH 7.5, enzyme dose 2.5% and time 5 h using single-factor and orthogonal experiments. Eighteen peptides were purified from the swim bladder hydrolysate of monkfish by ultrafiltration and gel permeation chromatography methods and identified as YDYD, QDYD, AGPAS, GPGPHGPSGP, GPK, HRE, GRW, ARW, GPTE, DDGGK, IGPAS, AKPAT, YPAGP, DPT, FPGPT, GPGPT, GPT and DPAGP, respectively. Among eighteen peptides, GRW and ARW showed significant DPPH· scavenging activities with EC
values of 1.053 ± 0.003 and 0.773 ± 0.003 mg/mL, respectively; YDYD, QDYD, GRW, ARW and YPAGP revealed significantly HO· scavenging activities with EC
values of 0.150 ± 0.060, 0.177 ± 0.035, 0.201 ± 0.013, 0.183 ± 0.0016 and 0.190 ± 0.010 mg/mL, respectively; YDYD, QDYD, ARW, DDGGK and YPAGP have significantly O2-· scavenging capability with EC
values of 0.126 ± 0.0005, 0.112 ± 0.0028, 0.127 ± 0.0002, 0.128 ± 0.0018 and 0.107 ± 0.0002 mg/mL, respectively; and YDYD, QDYD and YPAGP showed strong ABTS
· scavenging ability with EC
values of 3.197 ± 0.036, 2.337 ± 0.016 and 3.839 ± 0.102 mg/mL, respectively. YDYD, ARW and DDGGK displayed the remarkable ability of lipid peroxidation inhibition and Ferric-reducing antioxidant properties. Moreover, YDYD and ARW can protect Plasmid DNA and HepG2 cells against H
O
-induced oxidative stress. Furthermore, eighteen isolated peptides had high stability under temperatures ranging from 25-100 °C; YDYD, QDYD, GRW and ARW were more sensitive to alkali treatment, but DDGGK and YPAGP were more sensitive to acid treatment; and YDYD showed strong stability treated with simulated GI digestion. Therefore, the prepared antioxidant peptides, especially YDYD, QDYD, GRW, ARW, DDGGK and YPAGP from monkfish swim bladders could serve as functional components applied in health-promoting products because of their high-antioxidant functions.
Abstract
The tumor ecosystem of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is poorly characterized. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, we profile transcriptomes of 158,577 cells from 11 patients’ paratumors, ...localized/advanced tumors, initially-treated/recurrent lymph nodes and radioactive iodine (RAI)-refractory distant metastases, covering comprehensive clinical courses of PTC. Our data identifies a “cancer-primed” premalignant thyrocyte population with normal morphology but altered transcriptomes. Along the developmental trajectory, we also discover three phenotypes of malignant thyrocytes (follicular-like, partial-epithelial-mesenchymal-transition-like, dedifferentiation-like), whose composition shapes bulk molecular subtypes, tumor characteristics and RAI responses. Furthermore, we uncover a distinct
BRAF
-like-B subtype with predominant dedifferentiation-like thyrocytes, enriched cancer-associated fibroblasts, worse prognosis and promising prospect of immunotherapy. Moreover, potential vascular-immune crosstalk in PTC provides theoretical basis for combined anti-angiogenic and immunotherapy. Together, our findings provide insight into the PTC ecosystem that suggests potential prognostic and therapeutic implications.
RNA sequencing (RNAseq) can reveal gene fusions, splicing variants, mutations/indels in addition to differential gene expression, thus providing a more complete genetic picture than DNA sequencing. ...This most widely used technology in genomics tool box has evolved from classic bulk RNA sequencing (RNAseq), popular single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) to newly emerged spatial RNA sequencing (spRNAseq). Bulk RNAseq studies average global gene expression, scRNAseq investigates single cell RNA biology up to 20,000 individual cells simultaneously, while spRNAseq has ability to dissect RNA activities spatially, representing next generation of RNA sequencing. This article highlights these technologies, characteristic features and suitable applications in precision oncology.
Most organic polymeric materials have high flammability, for which the large amounts of smoke, toxic gases, heat, and melt drips produced during their burning cause immeasurable damages to human life ...and property every year. Despite some desirable results having been achieved by conventional flame‐retardant methods, their application is encountering more and more difficulties with the ever‐increasing high flame‐retardant requirements such as high flame‐retardant efficiency, great persistence, low release of heat, smoke, and toxic gases, and more importantly not deteriorating or even enhancing the overall properties of polymers. Under such condition, some advanced flame‐retardant methods have been developed in the past years based on “all‐in‐one” intumescence, nanotechnology, in situ reinforcement, intrinsic char formation, plasma treatment, biomimetic coatings, etc., which have provided potential solutions to the dilemma of conventional flame‐retardant methods. This review briefly outlines the development, application, and problems of conventional flame‐retardant methods, including bulk‐additive, bulk‐copolymerization, and surface treatment, and focuses on the raise, development, and potential application of advanced flame‐retardant methods. The future development of flame‐retardant methods is further discussed.
Flame‐retardant methods for polymeric materials are reviewed with particular focus on advanced flame‐retardant methods developed in recent years. Both the advantages and drawbacks of these methods are discussed, and prospects for the future development of flame‐retardant methods are presented. It is hoped that this review will guide the development of flame‐retardant polymeric materials.
The stable node‐based smoothed particle finite element method (SNS‐PFEM) reduces spatial numerical oscillation from direct nodal integration in NS‐PFEM but leads to a severe volumetric locking effect ...when modeling nearly incompressible materials‐related boundary value problems. This study proposes an improved locking‐free SNS‐PFEM to investigate the performance of the bubble function and selective integration scheme in circumventing volumetric locking. Three locking‐free variants of SNS‐PFEM: (1) SNS‐PFEM with a cubic bubble function (bSNS‐PFEM), (2) SNS‐PFEM with a selective integration scheme (selective SNS‐PFEM), and (3) SNS‐PFEM with a cubic bubble function and selective integration scheme (selective bSNS‐PFEM)—were gradually developed for comparison. The performance of these three approaches was first successively examined using two examples with elastic materials, that is, an infinite plate with a circular hole and Cook's membrane. The comparisons show that the cubic bubble function and selective integration scheme are both necessary as a locking‐free approach for modeling nearly incompressible materials, and the proposed selective bSNS‐PFEM performs best among the three variants in terms of accuracy and convergence. Two examples of slope stability analysis and footing penetration on elastoplastic materials were then conducted by SNS‐PFEM and the proposed selective bSNS‐PFEM. The results indicate that the proposed selective bSNS‐PFEM is stable and accurate, even when accompanied by significant deformation. All obtained results indicate that the locking‐free selective bSNS‐PFEM is a powerful approach for modeling nearly incompressible materials with both material and geometric nonlinearity.
The node‐based smoothed particle finite element method (NS‐PFEM) offers high computational efficiency but is numerically unstable due to possible spurious low‐energy mode in direct nodal integration ...(NI). Moreover, the NS‐PFEM has not been applied to hydromechanical coupled analysis. This study proposes an implicit stabilised T3 element‐based NS‐PFEM (stabilised node‐based smoothed particle finite element method SNS‐PFEM) for solving fully hydromechanical coupled geotechnical problems that (1) adopts the stable NI based on multiple stress points over the smooth domain to resolve the NI instability of NS‐PFEM, (2) implements the polynomial pressure projection (PPP) technique in the NI framework to cure possible spurious pore pressure oscillation in the undrained or incompressible limit and (3) expresses the NI for assembling coefficient matrices and calculating internal force in SNS‐PFEM with PPP as closed analytical expressions, guaranteeing computational accuracy and efficiency. Four classical benchmark tests (1D Terzaghi's consolidation, Mandel's problem, 2D strip footing consolidation and foundation on a vertical cut) are simulated and compared with analytical solutions or results from other numerical methods to validate the correctness and efficiency of the proposed approach. Finally, penetration of strip footing into soft soil is investigated, showing the outstanding performance the proposed approach can offer for large deformation problems. All results demonstrate that the proposed SNS‐PFEM with PPP is capable of tracking hydromechanical coupled geotechnical problems under small and large deformation with different drainage capacities.
Objective: This study proposes and evaluates a novel data-driven spatial filtering approach for enhancing steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) detection toward a high-speed brain-computer ...interface (BCI) speller. Methods: Task-related component analysis (TRCA), which can enhance reproducibility of SSVEPs across multiple trials, was employed to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of SSVEP signals by removing background electroencephalographic (EEG) activities. An ensemble method was further developed to integrate TRCA filters corresponding to multiple stimulation frequencies. This study conducted a comparison of BCI performance between the proposed TRCA-based method and an extended canonical correlation analysis (CCA)-based method using a 40-class SSVEP dataset recorded from 12 subjects. An online BCI speller was further implemented using a cue-guided target selection task with 20 subjects and a free-spelling task with 10 of the subjects. Results: The offline comparison results indicate that the proposed TRCA-based approach can significantly improve the classification accuracy compared with the extended CCA-based method. Furthermore, the online BCI speller achieved averaged information transfer rates (ITRs) of 325.33 ± 38.17 bits/min with the cue-guided task and 198.67 ± 50.48 bits/min with the free-spelling task. Conclusion: This study validated the efficiency of the proposed TRCA-based method in implementing a high-speed SSVEP-based BCI. Significance: The high-speed SSVEP-based BCIs using the TRCA method have great potential for various applications in communication and control.
This study is the first to demonstrate that ferroelectric R3c LiNbO3‐type ZnSnO3 nanowires (NWs), through the piezocatalysis and piezophototronic process, demonstrate a highly efficient hydrogen ...evolution reaction (HER). The polarization and electric field curves indicate that ZnSnO3 NWs exhibit typical ferroelectric hysteresis loops. Time‐resolved photoluminescence spectra reveal that the relaxation time increases with the increasing concentration of oxygen vacancies. Moderated 3H‐ZnSnO3 NWs (thermally annealed for 3 h in a hydrogen environment) have the longest extended carrier lifetime of approximately 8.3 ns. The piezoelectricity‐induced HER, via the piezocatalysis process (without light irradiation), reaches an optimal H2‐production rate of approximately 3453.1 µmol g−1 h−1. Through the synergistic piezophototronic process, the HER reaches approximately 6000 µmol g−1 in 7 h. Crucially, the mechanical force–induced spontaneous polarization functions as a carrier separator, driving the electron and hole in opposite directions in ferroelectric ZnSnO3 NWs; this separation reduces the recombination rate, enhancing the redox process. This theoretical analysis indicates that the photocatalytic and piezocatalytic effects can synergistically enhance piezophototronic performance through capitalizing on well‐modulated oxygen vacancies in ferroelectric semiconductors. This study demonstrates the essential role of this synergy in purifying water pollutants and converting water into hydrogen gas through the piezophototronic process.
The well‐controlled oxygen vacancies of ferroelectric R3c ZnSnO3 nanowires show that a highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) reaches approximately 6000 mol g−1 in 7 h through the synergistic piezophototronic process. This is the first study to investigate how the oxygen vacancy concentration can be tuned in ferroelectric crystals to enhance the performance of piezodegradation and HER through the piezophotoelectric effect.
Food futurists accept that sustainability-minded humanity will increasingly incorporate insects as alternative protein. The most studied and easily reared species are not necessarily the most ...sustainable, acceptable, or delicious. Here, we review the literature on the black soldier fly,
which is capable of efficiently converting a wide variety of organic materials, from food waste to manure, into insect biomass. They can be grown and harvested without dedicated facilities and are not pestiferous. Their larvae are 42% crude protein and 29% fat, although they are higher in saturated fats than most insects. They do not concentrate pesticides or mycotoxins. They are already grown and recommended for use as animal feed, but with regional legal restrictions on how this is done. For commercial use in human foods, larvae could potentially be milled and converted into a textured protein with a strong flavor. Their biggest advantage over other insects is their ability to convert waste into food, generating value and closing nutrient loops as they reduce pollution and costs. This general advantage is also their greatest disadvantage, for the social stigmas and legal prohibitions against eating organisms that eat waste are added to extant taboos facing insect consumption.
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