High-performance Marangoni hydrogel rotors with asymmetric porosity and drag reduction profile.

Miniaturized rotors based on Marangoni effect have attracted great attentions due to their promising applications in propulsion and power generation. Despite intensive studies, the development of Marangoni rotors with high rotation output and fuel economy remains challenging. To address this challenge, we introduce an asymmetric porosity strategy to fabricate Marangoni rotor composed of thermoresponsive hydrogel and low surface tension anesthetic metabolite. Combining enhanced Marangoni propulsion of asymmetric porosity with drag reduction of well-designed profile, our rotor precedes previous studies in rotation output (~15 times) and fuel economy (~34% higher). Utilizing thermoresponsive hydrogel, the rotor realizes rapid refueling within 33 s. Moreover, iron-powder dopant further imparts the rotors with individual-specific locomotion in group under magnetic stimuli. Significantly, diverse functionalities including kinetic energy transmission, mini-generator and environmental remediation are demonstrated, which open new perspectives for designing miniaturized rotating machineries and inspire researchers in robotics, energy, and environment.

LINC00958 may be a new prognostic biomarker in various cancers: A meta-analysis and bioinformatics analysis.

Background: There have been many studies on long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) as tumor markers. LINC00958 is a lncRNA that has been studied in a variety of tumor types. This meta-analysis aims to explore the relationship between LINC00958 and clinical prognosis and pathological characteristics in various cancers. Methods: We searched for related studies from PubMed, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library and Embase (up to October 2021). The association of LINC00958 expression with clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis was evaluated using the pooled odds ratios (ORs) or hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: 16 studies (1,121 patients) were included in this meta-analysis, we found that overexpression of LINC00958 was associated with poor overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.84; 95% CI: 1.36-2.49; p < 0.001). We also found that LINC00958 overexpression was correlated with positive lymph node metastasis (LNM) (OR = 1.91; 95% CI: 1.39-2.63; p < 0.001), advanced degree of infiltration (OR = 1.64; 95% CI: 1.11-2.41; p = 0.013), advanced tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (OR = 2.80; 95% CI: 1.48-5.33; p = 0.002). Other clinicopathological characteristics have no obvious correlation, such as age, sex, tumor size, distant metastasis, and differentiation grade (p > 0.05). Conclusion: In summary, the overexpression of LINC00958 is significantly correlated with poor OS, positive LNM, advanced degree of infiltration, and advanced TNM stage. LINC00958 might serve as a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for a variety of cancers. However, rigorous studies with large sample sizes are still needed for further research and demonstration.

Rate-Dependent Pattern Evolution in Peeling Adhesive Tape Driven by Cohesive Failure.

In the case of low-rate peeling, an adhesive can undergo a large tensile deformation through the viscous flow and form the fingering pattern at the peeling interface, resulting in homogeneous stripes on the peeled surface. In the case of high-rate peeling, no larger viscous deformation occurs, and no surface patterns will be generated. However, it is still unclear how the surface pattern evolves when an adhesive is peeled from a relatively low rate to a high rate. Here, by peeling an adhesive tape at 180° over a wide range of rates, we find that the adhesive tape can undergo a steady peeling. As the peeling rate increases, it is observed that the surface pattern in the peeled adhesive tape tends to evolve from the initial striped pattern to a crescent pattern, then to a spotted pattern. Even in the case of the stick-slip peeling at a small angle, the patterned region also presents the same evolutionary trend. By exploiting a high-speed camera to track the deformation process of the adhesive, it is found that this evolution is actually driven by the cohesive failure of the peeling adhesive. We describe the failure process, revealing the formation mechanism of the crescent pattern. We also discuss the effect of the peeling rate on the interface instability morphology by combining the finite element simulations, elucidating how the surface pattern evolves with the peeling rate.

Reconfigurable Magnetic Liquid Metal Robot for High-Performance Droplet Manipulation.

Droplet manipulation is crucial for diverse applications ranging from bioassay to medical diagnosis. Current magnetic-field-driven manipulation strategies are mainly based on fixed or partially tunable structures, which limits their flexibility and versatility. Here, a reconfigurable magnetic liquid metal robot (MLMR) is proposed to address these challenges. Diverse droplet manipulation behaviors including steady transport, oscillatory transport, and release can be achieved by the MLMR, and their underlying physical mechanisms are revealed. Moreover, benefiting from the magnetic-field-induced active deformability and temperature-induced phase transition characteristics, its droplet-loading capacity and shape-locking/unlocking switching can be flexibly adjusted. Because of the fluidity-based adaptive deformability, MLMR can manipulate droplets in challenging confined environments. Significantly, MLMR can accomplish cooperative manipulation of multiple droplets efficiently through on-demand self-splitting and merging. The high-performance droplet manipulation using the reconfigurable and multifunctional MLMR unfolds new potential in microfluidics, biochemistry, and other interdisciplinary fields.

Sustaining Robust Cavities with Slippery Liquid-Liquid Interfaces.

The formation of a stable gas cavity on the surfaces of solid bodies is essential for many practical applications, such as drag reduction and energy savings, owing to the transformation of the originally sticky solid-liquid interface into a free-slip liquid-vapor interface by the creation of either liquid repellency or a Leidenfrost state on the surfaces. Here, it is shown that the simple infusion of a textured sphere with a smooth, slippery liquid layer can more easily create and sustain a stable gas cavity in a liquid at lower impact velocities compared to a dry solid sphere with the same contact angle. With a key parameter of curvature ratio, the early lamella dynamics during water entry of spheres and drops impact on planes are first unified. With the perspective of wetting transition, the unforeseen phenomenon of prone to cavity formation are successfully explained, which is the preferential lamella detachment from a slippery surface due to the higher viscosity of the lubricant relative to air. It is envisioned that the findings will provide an important and fundamental contribution to the quest for energy-efficient transport.

A droplet reactor on a super-hydrophobic surface allows control and characterization of amyloid fibril growth.

Methods to produce protein amyloid fibrils, in vitro, and in situ structure characterization, are of primary importance in biology, medicine, and pharmacology. We first demonstrated the droplet on a super-hydrophobic substrate as the reactor to produce protein amyloid fibrils with real-time monitoring of the growth process by using combined light-sheet microscopy and thermal imaging. The molecular structures were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and X-ray scattering. We demonstrated that the convective flow induced by the temperature gradient of the sample is the main driving force in the growth of well-ordered protein fibrils. Particular attention was devoted to PHF6 peptide and full-length Tau441 protein to form amyloid fibrils. By a combined experimental with the molecular dynamics simulations, the conformational polymorphism of these amyloid fibrils were characterized. The study provided a feasible procedure to optimize the amyloid fibrils formation and characterizations of other types of proteins in future studies.

High Performance Bubble Manipulation on Ferrofluid-Infused Laser-Ablated Microstructured Surfaces.

Manipulation of gas bubbles in an aqueous ambient environment is fundamental to both academic research and industrial settings. Present bubble manipulation strategies mainly rely on buoyancy or Laplace gradient forces arising from the sophisticated terrain of substrates. However, these strategies suffer from limited manipulation flexibility such as slow horizontal motion and unidirectional transport. In this paper, a high performance manipulation strategy for gas bubbles is proposed by utilizing ferrofluid-infused laser-ablated microstructured surfaces (FLAMS). A typical gas bubble (<2 µL) can be accelerated at >150 mm/s2 and reach an ultrafast velocity over 25 mm/s on horizontal FLAMS. In addition, diverse powerful manipulation capabilities are demonstrated including antibuoyancy motion, "freestyle writing", bubble programmable coalescence, three-dimensional (3-D) controllable motion and high towing capacity of steering macroscopic object (>500 own mass) on the air-water interface. This strategy shows terrain compatibility, programmable design, and fast response, which will find potential applications in water treatment, electrochemistry, and so on.