Perovskite CoSn(OH)6 nanocubes with tuned d-band states towards enhanced oxygen evolution reactions.

The CoSn(OH)6 perovskite hydroxide is a structure stable and inexpensive electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). However, the OER activity of CoSn(OH)6 is still unfavorable due to its limited active sites. In this work, an Fe3+ doping strategy is used to optimize the d-band state of the CoSn(OH)6 perovskite hydroxide. The CoSn(OH)6 catalyst with slightly Fe3+ doped nanocubes is synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. Structure characterization shows that Fe3+ ions are incorporated into the crystal structure of CoSn(OH)6. Owing to the regulation of the electronic structure, CoSn(OH)6-Fe1.8% exhibits an OER overpotential of 289 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 in OER electrochemical tests. In situ Raman spectroscopy shows that no obvious re-construction occurred during the OER for both CoSn(OH)6 and CoSn(OH)6-Fe1.8%. DFT calculations show that the introduction of Fe3+ into CoSn(OH)6 can shift the d-band center to a relatively high position, thus promoting the OER intermediates' adsorption ability. Further DFT calculations suggest that incorporation of an appropriate amount of Fe3+ into CoSn(OH)6 significantly reduces the rate-determining Gibbs free energy during the OER. This work offers valuable insights into tuning the d-band center of perovskite hydroxide materials for efficient OER applications.

Transesterification Induced Multifunctional Additives Enable High-Performance Lithium Metal Batteries.

The electrolyte chemistry is crucially important for promoting the practical application of lithium metal batteries (LMBs). Here, we demonstrate for the first time that 1,3-dimethylimidazolium dimethyl phosphate (DIDP) and trimethylsilyl trifluoroacetate (TMSF) can undergo in situ transesterification in carbonate electrolyte to generate dimethyl trimethylsilyl phosphate (DTMSP) and 1,3-dimethylimidazolium trifluoroacetate (DITFA) as multifunctional additives for LMBs. H2O and HF can be removed by the Si-O group in DTMSP to improve the moisture resistance of electrolyte and the stability of cathode. Furthermore, the dissolution of lithium nitrate (LiNO3) in carbonate electrolyte can be promoted by the trifluoroacetate anion (TFA-) in DITFA, thereby optimizing the solvation structure and transport kinetics of Li+. More importantly, both DTMSP and DITFA tend to preferential redox decomposition due to the low lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) and high highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO). Consequently, a thin and robust layer rich in P/N/Si on the cathode and an inorganic-rich layer (e.g. Li3N/Li3P) on the anode can be constructed and superior electrochemical performances are achieved. This artificial transesterification strategy to introduce favorable additives paves an efficient and ingenious route to high-performance electrolyte for LMBs.

Nigella sativa and health outcomes: An overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Background: Nigella sativa (N. sativa) consumption has been associated with various health outcomes; however, the results are not completely consistent. Objectives: This overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses aimed to evaluate the reporting and methodological quality, and to grade the available evidence of associations between N. sativa and health outcomes. Methods: PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Scopus databases were searched from their inception to September 30, 2022. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2009 statement, Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) 2 checklist, and Grades of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE) systems were used to assess the reporting, methodological, and evidence quality for each meta-analysis, respectively. The results were synthesized in a narrative form. Results: This overview included 20 eligible meta-analyses published in peer-reviewed journals between 2013 and 2021. The overall methodological quality was relatively poor, with only one moderate quality, four low quality, and 15 critically low quality studies. For reporting quality, items two, five, eight, nine, 15, and 24 need to improve. Among the 110 outcome indicators of the quality of evidence, five were graded as moderate, 17 as low, and 88 as very low. Risk of bias, inconsistency, and imprecision were the main downgrading factors. Conclusion: This overview suggests that N. sativa is beneficial for various clinical outcomes. However, there are certain limitations to reporting and methodological quality. The clinical efficacy of N. sativa requires confirmation in high-quality, large-sample, randomized controlled trials.

Berberine and health outcomes: An umbrella review.

Berberine is a plant extract widely used in clinical practice. This review aimed to summarize and to grade the available evidence on the association between berberine consumption and health-related outcomes. The PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases were searched for meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the efficacy and safety of berberine from inception to June 30, 2022. The AMSTAR-2 and GRADE system were used to assess the methodological quality and evidence level of the included meta-analyses. A total of 11 eligible meta-analyses were identified from 235 publications, which were published in peer-reviewed journals between 2013 and 2022. The results revealed that berberine significantly affects blood glucose levels, insulin resistance, blood lipids, body parameters and composition, inflammatory markers, colorectal adenomas, and Helicobacter pylori infections as compared to controls. Common side effects of berberine consumption include gastrointestinal symptoms, such as constipation and diarrhea. Berberine is a safe medicinal plant ingredient that improves various clinical outcomes; however, there is a need for improvement of methodological quality in published meta-analyses. Additionally, the clinical effects of berberine need to be confirmed in high-quality RCTs.

Sustainable Production and Activity Determination of Serum-Free Conditioned Medium from Menstrual Blood-Derived Endometrial Stem Cells.

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have exhibited great potential as a regenerative medicine, and MSC-derived paracrine effects, mainly including the secretion of various bioactive factors, play critical roles in MSC-based therapies. MSC-derived serum-free conditioned medium (MSC-CM) is defined as the secretome of MSC-derived bioactive factors and is considered a new cell-free therapeutic agent for disease treatment. However, the MSC-CM used in previous studies was prepared by a nearly disposable method that the MSCs were discarded after preparing MSC-CM, and the preparation time was variable; simultaneously, the viability changes of MSCs after MSC-CM preparation are still unknown. Therefore, this study takes MenSCs as a research project and aims to explore the suitable period of sustainable MenSC-CM preparation rather than using a disposable method. As expected, our results confirmed that MenSC-CM improves viability of both naïve targeted cells and H2O2-injured targeted cells, and suggested that 36 h is suitable for sustainable MenSC-CM preparation in which the angiogenic factors almost reach to the peak. Simultaneously, the MenSCs used to prepare the MenSC-CM for 36 h also maintained preferable cell viability and could be sustainably used for further MenSC-CM preparation. Moreover, the in vivo results further confirmed the improvement of MenSC-CM on promoting skin wound healing. Consequently, our results not only provide support for optimizing MSC-CM sustainable preparation based on various MSCs but also promote the comprehensive application of MenSCs in the clinic.

Enrichment of heavy metals from spent printed circuit boards by microwave pyrolysis.

This study reports the enrichment behaviors of heavy metals, including copper, tin, lead and zinc, in the process of microwave pyrolysis of spent printed circuit boards (SPCBs). The SPCB had good microwave absorptivity. Under the optimal conditions of microwave power of 700 W, pyrolysis temperature of 400 °C, dwell time of 5 min, N2 gas flow rate of 1.2 L/min, and load mass of 5 g, the yield of pyrolyzed SPCB was 79.16%. The contents of copper, tin, lead, and zinc in the pyrolyzed SPCB were increased to 28.52 wt%, 7.15 wt%, 1.31 wt%, and 1.13 wt%, respectively, with the corresponding retention percentages of 99.98%, 85.89%, 92.59% and 82.06%. The loss of metals was attributed to volatilization of the elements, which was affected by metal discharge due to excitation of electrons in the metals under microwave irradiation. Little copper loss was found because of the difficult reaction between copper and hydrogen bromide and the very high temperature required by the volatilization of copper. Tin, lead and zinc were mainly volatilized in the form of their metal bromides, including SnBr4, ZnBr2, and PbBr2. By controlling the pyrolysis conditions and metal discharge induced in the microwave field, the metals could be effectively enriched for subsequent treatment with high efficiency.

Approximate geodesic distance tree filter for cost aggregation.

The computation of the disparity for the pixels in the weak texture area has always been a difficult task in stereo vision. The non-local method based on a minimum spanning tree (MST) provides a solution to construct content-adaptive support regions to perform cost aggregation. However, it always introduces error disparity in slanted surfaces and is sensitive to noise and highly textural regions. The window-based methods are not effective for information dissemination. To overcome the problem mentioned above, this paper proposes an approximate geodesic distance tree filter, which utilizes geodesic distance as a pixels similarity metric and recursive techniques to perform the filtering process. The filtering process is performed recursively in four directions (namely from top-left, top-right, and vice versa), which make our filter with linear complexity. Our filter has advantages in the sense that: (1) the pixel similarity metric is approximated geodesic distance; (2) the computational complexity is linear to the image pixel. Due to these reasons, the proposed method can properly cope with cost aggregation in the textureless regions and preserve the boundary of disparity maps. We demonstrate the strength of our filter in several applications.

Collaborative semi-global stereo matching.

Efficiency and accuracy of semi-global matching (SGM) make it outperform many stereo matching algorithms and is widely used under challenging occasions. However, SGM only incorporates information along a scanline in each pass and lacks interaction between scanlines, resulting in streak artifacts in the disparity image. We introduce a local edge-aware filtering method to SGM to enhance the interaction of neighboring scanlines, since streak artifacts can be avoided. We use bilateral weights based on intensity similarity and spatial affinity between pixels to build connections among scanlines. In each pass, we recursively estimate the aggregated cost of SGM and compute the weighted average of aggregated costs for pixels in the orthogonal direction to obtain the output of our method along each scanline. As one-dimensional bilateral filtering is used in our method, the extra computation is linear to image resolution and label space, which is a small fraction of that needed by SGM. We present ablation studies using stereo pairs under both constrained and natural conditions to verify the effectiveness of our method. Extensive experiments on Middlebury and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Toyota Technology Institute datasets demonstrate that our method removes all streak artifacts, improves the quality of the disparity image, and outperforms many other non-local cost aggregation approaches.

Genome-Wide Identification and Transcriptional Expression Analysis of Annexin Genes in Capsicum annuum and Characterization of CaAnn9 in Salt Tolerance.

Annexin (Ann) is a polygenic, evolutionarily conserved, calcium-dependent and phospholipid-binding protein family, which plays key roles in plant growth, development, and stress response. However, a comprehensive understanding of CaAnn genes of pepper (Capsicum annuum) at the genome-wide level is limited. Based on the available pepper genomic information, we identified 15 members of the CaAnn gene family. Phylogenetic analysis showed that CaAnn proteins could be categorized into four different orthologous groups. Real time quantitative RT-PCR analysis showed that the CaAnn genes were tissue-specific and were widely expressed in pepper leaves after treatments with cold, salt, and drought, as well as exogenously applied MeJA and ABA. In addition, the function of CaAnn9 was further explored using the virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) technique. CaAnn9-silenced pepper seedlings were more sensitive to salt stress, reflected by the degradation of chlorophyll, the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and the decrease of antioxidant defense capacity. This study provides important information for further study of the role of pepper CaAnn genes and their coding proteins in growth, development, and environmental responses.

Enzymolysis peptides from Mauremys mutica plastron improve the disorder of neurotransmitter system and facilitate sleep-promoting in the PCPA-induced insomnia mice.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGY RELEVANCY: For many centuries, Mauremys mutica is highly valued as a food homologous Chinese herbal medicine. It has been considered useful to sedate, nourish brain and promote sleep. However, the animal experimental evidence of its sleep-promoting activity is missing in literature. AIM OF THE STUDY: In this study, PCPA-induced insomnia model was used to explore the sleep-promoting mechanism of enzymolysis peptides from PMM, and its main composition and chemical structure were analyzed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Experiments were performed using PCPA-induced insomnia model, all animals were intraperitoneally injected with PCPA (350 mg/kg·d) for two days. The sleep-promoting effect evaluated using measuring content of 5-HT, GABA, DA, IL-1, BDNF and expression of 5-HT1A receptor and GABAA receptor α1-subunit in mice brain. Primary structure of peptides was identified by HPLC-ESI-QqTOF-MS/MS. RESULTS: Compared with the model group, the content of 5-HT, GABA, IL-1, BDNF in mice brain of PMM peptide groups was increased to varying degrees, the content of DA was decreased, and the gene transcription and protein expression of 5-HT1A receptor and GABAA receptor α1-subunit were almost all returned to normal levels. In addition, the primary structures of most abundant nine typical peptides in PMM peptides were identified. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that PMM peptides could improve the disorder of neurotransmitter system, restore compensatory over-expression 5-HT1A receptor and GABAA receptor α1-subunit, and have a good sleep-promoting effect. The specific amino acid composition, sequence and glycosylation modification of PMM peptides may be the key reason for their activity, which lays a foundation for the subsequent development of sleep-promoting peptide products.

Proteomic analysis by iTRAQ-PRM provides integrated insight into mechanisms of resistance in pepper to Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius).

BACKGROUND: The Bemisia tabaci is a major leaf feeding insect pest to pepper (Capsicum annuum), causing serious damage to pepper growth and yield. It is particularly important to study the mechanism of pepper resistance to B. tabaci, and to breed and promote the varieties of pepper resistant to B. tabaci. However, very limited molecular mechanism is available about how plants perceive and defend themselves from the destructive pest. Proteome technologies have provided an idea method for studying plant physiological processes in response to B. tabaci. RESULTS: Here, a highly resistant genotype and a highly susceptible genotype were exposed to B. tabaci feeding for 48 h to explore the defense mechanisms of pepper resistance to B. tabaci. The proteomic differences between both genotypes were compared using isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ). The quantitative data were validated by parallel reaction monitoring (PRM). The results showed that 37 differential abundance proteins (DAPs) were identified in the RG (resistant genotype), while 17 DAPs were identified in the SG (susceptible genotype) at 48 h after B. tabaci feeding. 77 DAPs were identified when comparing RG with SG without feeding. The DAP functions were determined for the classification of the pathways, mainly involved in redox regulation, stress response, protein metabolism, lipid metabolism and carbon metabolism. Some candidate DAPs are closely related to B. tabaci resistance such as annexin D4-like (ANN4), calreticulin-3 (CRT3), heme-binding protein 2-like (HBP1), acidic endochitinase pcht28-like (PR3) and lipoxygenase 2 (LOX2). CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, this study indicates complex resistance-related events in B. tabaci interaction, provides novel insights into the molecular mechanism underlying the response of plant to B. tabaci, and identifies some candidate proteins against B. tabaci attack.

Development of a Highly Sensitive, Broad-Range Hierarchically Structured Reduced Graphene Oxide/PolyHIPE Foam for Pressure Sensing.

Highly sensitive pressure sensors are usually made from soft materials that allow large deformations to be obtained when very small pressures are applied. Unfortunately, this current paradigm limits the ability to create sensors capable of high sensitivities and broad dynamic ranges as these materials are prone to saturation responses when attempting to obtain measurements involving high pressures. In this paper, we detail a piezoresistive pressure sensor that is capable of high sensitivity over a pressure range spanning from 0.6 Pa (a mosquito touching a surface) to 200 kPa (an elephant standing on the surface). The sensor's ability to cover such a broad dynamic range is made possible by the fairly hard foam used in its construction as this material is capable of propagating strain in a highly effective manner due to its hierarchical porous structure. The material was fabricated by using high-internal-phase emulsion (HIPE) as a template to generate a highly porous material consisting of small pores packed between larger ones whose inner walls are lined with reduced graphene oxide. The developed foam exhibits very fast response times (less than 15.4 ms) and excellent cyclic stability (at least 10,000 cycles). Furthermore, it is capable of responding to the entire tactile pressure range, and it can be formatted as pixelated arrays, which makes it highly suitable for integration into wearable electronic devices. Such arrays were built and used to identify and render the shape of objects with different geometries, including a sphere, a triangle, a square, and two nearly identical rods differing only by 0.4 mm in diameter.

Complete genome sequence of a street rabies virus isolated from a rabid dog in China.

A rabies virus (RABV) was isolated from a dog in Anhui Province, China, in 2008. The virus was designated DRV-AH08. Its entire genome was sequenced and found to be closely related to RABV recently isolated in China and other Asian countries (homology of 87 to 98%) but distantly related to RABV in the "cosmopolitan" group (homology of 84 to 85%) in the clade I of RABV.