Caspase-6 Is a Key Regulator of Innate Immunity, Inflammasome Activation, and Host Defense.

Caspases regulate cell death, immune responses, and homeostasis. Caspase-6 is categorized as an executioner caspase but shows key differences from the other executioners. Overall, little is known about the functions of caspase-6 in biological processes apart from apoptosis. Here, we show that caspase-6 mediates innate immunity and inflammasome activation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that caspase-6 promotes the activation of programmed cell death pathways including pyroptosis, apoptosis, and necroptosis (PANoptosis) and plays an essential role in host defense against influenza A virus (IAV) infection. In addition, caspase-6 promoted the differentiation of alternatively activated macrophages (AAMs). Caspase-6 facilitated the RIP homotypic interaction motif (RHIM)-dependent binding of RIPK3 to ZBP1 via its interaction with RIPK3. Altogether, our findings reveal a vital role for caspase-6 in facilitating ZBP1-mediated inflammasome activation, cell death, and host defense during IAV infection, opening additional avenues for treatment of infectious and autoinflammatory diseases and cancer.

Efficient Compressive Strength Prediction of Alkali-Activated Waste Materials Using Machine Learning.

This study explores the integration of machine learning (ML) techniques to predict and optimize the compressive strength of alkali-activated materials (AAMs) sourced from four industrial waste streams: blast furnace slag, fly ash, reducing slag, and waste glass. Aimed at mitigating the labor-intensive trial-and-error method in AAM formulation, ML models can predict the compressive strength and then streamline the mixture compositions. By leveraging a dataset of only 42 samples, the Random Forest (RF) model underwent fivefold cross-validation to ensure reliability. Despite challenges posed by the limited datasets, meticulous data processing steps facilitated the identification of pivotal features that influence compressive strength. Substantial enhancement in predicting compressive strength was achieved with the RF model, improving the model accuracy from 0.05 to 0.62. Experimental validation further confirmed the ML model's efficacy, as the formulations ultimately achieved the desired strength threshold, with a significant 59.65% improvement over the initial experiments. Additionally, the fact that the recommended formulations using ML methods only required about 5 min underscores the transformative potential of ML in reshaping AAM design paradigms and expediting the development process.

Atomic Aerogel Materials (or Single-Atom Aerogels): An Interesting New Paradigm in Materials Science and Catalysis Science.

The concept of "single-atom catalysis" is first proposed by Tao Zhang, Jun Li, and Jingyue Liu in 2011. Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have a very high catalytic activity and greatly improved atom utilization ratio. At present, SACs have become frontier materials in the field of catalysis. Aerogels are highly porous materials with extremely low density and extremely high porosity. These pores play a key role in determining their surface reactivity and mechanical stability. The alliance of SACs and aerogels can fully reflect their structural advantages and lead to new enhancement effects. Herein, a general concept of "atomic aerogel materials" (AAMs) (or single-atom aerogels (SAAs)) is proposed to describe this interesting new paradigm in both material and catalysis fields. Based on the basic units of "gel," the AAMs can be divided into two categories: carrier-level AAMs (with micro-, nano-, or sub-nanometer pore structures) and atomic-level AAMs (with atomic-defective or oxygen-bridged sub-nanopore structures). The basic unit of the former (i.e., single-atom-functionalized aerogels) is the carrier materials in nanostructures, and the latter (i.e., single-atom-built aerogels) is the single metal atoms in atomic structures. The atomic-defective or oxygen-bridged AAMs will be important development directions in versatile heterogeneous catalytic or noncatalytic fields. The design proposals, latent challenges, and coping strategies of this new "atomic nanosystem" in applications are pointed out as well.

Extensive use of waste glass in one-part alkali-activated materials: Towards sustainable construction practices.

The feasibility of the extensive recycling of waste glass in alkali-activated materials (AAMs) was evaluated. The waste glass was utilised in AAMs for two purposes: a partial activator and a mineral precursor. The waste glass was blended with commercial sodium hydroxide and then heated to produce the solid activator powder. The technical performance of waste glass-based activator was investigated to replace commercial sodium silicate, a common alkali-activator used in AAMs. The effect of waste glass using only as the activator (WGA) and using as both activator and precursor (WGAP) in fly ash/slag-based one-part AAMs was studied using strength and microstructure characterisations. A mass-cost and emission analysis of waste glass-based AAMs (WGA and WGAP) was conducted, comparing the results with ordinary Portland cement (OPC). Characterisation tests of waste glass-based activator showed the effective formation of sodium silicate minerals with the adequate dissolution of activator in water by releasing reactive alkali and silica. Both WGA and WGAP showed comparable strengths at 56 days with a denser microstructure under ambient curing. According to mass analysis, waste glass could be utilised up to 17% by mass of total binder. Based on the analysis of cost and CO2 emissions, WGA and WGAP are around 23% and 15% cheaper and 84% and 82% greener than OPC. The dual role of waste glass in AAMs as an activator and as a precursor broadens the recycling of glass waste in the cement industry by favouring technical and environmental outcomes.

Alkali-Activation of Synthetic Aluminosilicate Glass With Basaltic Composition.

Alkali-activated materials (AAMs) are a potential alternative to Portland cement because they can have high strength, good durability and low environmental impact. This paper reports on the structural and mechanical characteristics of aluminosilicate glass with basalt-like compositions, as a feedstock for AAMs. The alkali-activation kinetics, microstructure, and mechanical performance of the alkali activated glass were investigated. The results show that AAMs prepared from basalt glass have high compressive strength (reaching up to 90 MPa after 7 days of hydration) compared to those made using granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS). In addition, calorimetry data show that the hydrolysis of the developed glass and subsequent polymerization of the reaction product occur at a faster rate compared to GBFS. Furthermore, the obtained results show that the alkali activation of the developed glass formed sodium aluminosilicate hydrate (N-A-S-H) intermixed with Ca aluminosilicate hydrate gel (C-A-S-H), while the alkali activation of GBFS resulted in predominantly C-A-S-H gel. The developed glass can be formed from carbonate-free and abundant natural resources such as basalt rocks or mixtures of silicate minerals. Therefore, the glass reported herein has high potential as a new feedstock of AAMs.

Combined effect of coal chemical wastewater and PC on preparing of coal-to-liquids residue-based alkali activated materials.

Aimed to achieve "waste control by waste" of coal-to-liquids (CTL) industry, coal gasification residue (CGR), the most typical CTL residue, and coal chemical wastewater (CCW) were used as aluminosilicate precursor and auxiliary activator respectively to prepare alkali activated materials (AAMs). CGR-based AAMs using a less concentrated NaOH solution than conventional, with CCW as mixing water were synthesized. The results showed that CCW benefited the compressive strength of CGR-based AAMs significantly, but demonstrating slight reduction over time. The combined effect of CCW and Portland cement (PC) supplied continuous increase of strength and eliminated the strength reduction with age. The mechanisms behind the improved performance of the AAMs due to the introduction of CCW and PC were discussed by XRD, FTIR, TG-DSC, MIP and ESEM. It was found that the increased alkali content due to the introduction of the CCW, supplied more extensive dissolution of active aluminosilicate and progressive geopolymerization of CGR. The coexistence of both N-A-S-H gel and C-A-S-H gel (originated from the introduced PC) in hardened AAM pastes reduced the proportion of pores larger than 100 nm to less than 30%, and provided denser structure.

Automatic detection of pain intensity.

Previous efforts suggest that occurrence of pain can be detected from the face. Can intensity of pain be detected as well? The Prkachin and Solomon Pain Intensity (PSPI) metric was used to classify four levels of pain intensity (none, trace, weak, and strong) in 25 participants with previous shoulder injury (McMaster-UNBC Pain Archive). Participants were recorded while they completed a series of movements of their affected and unaffected shoulders. From the video recordings, canonical normalized appearance of the face (CAPP) was extracted using active appearance modeling. To control for variation in face size, all CAPP were rescaled to 96×96 pixels. CAPP then was passed through a set of Log-Normal filters consisting of 7 frequencies and 15 orientations to extract 9216 features. To detect pain level, 4 support vector machines (SVMs) were separately trained for the automatic measurement of pain intensity on a frame-by-frame level using both 5-folds cross-validation and leave-one-subject-out cross-validation. F1 for each level of pain intensity ranged from 91% to 96% and from 40% to 67% for 5-folds and leave-one-subject-out cross-validation, respectively. Intra-class correlation, which assesses the consistency of continuous pain intensity between manual and automatic PSPI was 0.85 and 0.55 for 5-folds and leave-one-subject-out cross-validation, respectively, which suggests moderate to high consistency. These findings show that pain intensity can be reliably measured from facial expression in participants with orthopedic injury.