A Review on 3D Zinc Anodes for Zinc Ion Batteries.

Zinc ion batteries (ZIBs) have been gradually developed in recent years due to their abundant resources, low cost, and environmental friendliness. Therefore, ZIBs have received a great deal of attention from researchers, which are considered as the next generation of portable energy storage systems. However, poor overall performance of ZIBs restricts their development, which is attributed to zinc dendrites and a series of side reactions. Constructing 3D zinc anodes has proven to be an effective way to significantly improve their electrochemical performance. In this review, the challenges of zinc anodes in ZIBs, including zinc dendrites, hydrogen evolution and corrosion, as well as passivation, are comprehensively summarized and the energy storage mechanisms of the zinc anodes and 3D zinc anodes are discussed. 3D zinc anodes with different structures including fiberous, porous, ridge-like structures, plated zinc anodes on different substrates and other 3D zinc anodes, are subsequently discussed in detail. Finally, emerging opportunities and perspectives on the material design of 3D zinc anodes are highlighted and challenges that need to be solved in future practical applications are discussed, hopefully illuminating the way forward for the development of ZIBs.

TIRSF: a web server for screening gene signatures to predict Tumor immunotherapy response.

Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy has been successfully applied to clinically therapeutics in multiple cancers, but its efficacy varies greatly among different patients and cancer types. Therefore, the construction of gene signatures to identify patients who could benefit from ICB therapy is particularly important for precision cancer treatment. However, due to the lack of a user-friendly platform, the construction of such gene signatures is a great challenge for clinical investigators who have limited programming skills. In light of this challenge, we developed a web server called Tumor Immunotherapy Response Signature Finder(TIRSF) for the construction of gene signatures to predict ICB therapy response in cancer patients. TIRSF consists of three functional modules. The first module is the Signature Discovery module which provides signature construction and performance evaluation functionalities. The second is a module for response prediction based on the TIRSF signatures, which enables response prediction and prognostic analysis of immunotherapy samples. The last is a module for response prediction based on existing signatures. This module currently integrates 24 published signatures for ICB therapy response prediction. Together, all of above features can be freely accessed at http://tirsf.renlab.org/.

Global perspective of health related edible plants from the agricultural point of view.

In knowledge-based economies, nutrition concepts evolve with advances in agriculture. As people around the world become more health conscious, national health becomes one of the main directives for agricultural policies, including that of functional foods and their global markets. This article evaluates the development of the functional food industry in Taiwan and other countries through analysis of R&D capacity and bibliometrics. It attempts to identify future trends in nutrition with technology foresight research. Taiwan has a wide variety of indigenous herbal plants, although its functional food related literature is not large compared with some other Asian countries. However, there are quality papers on the immunologic functions of edible plants Globally there is much interest in edible plants with antioxidant activity and those phyto-nutrients which might help reduce the burden of chronic illness as well as in the nutrigenomics that will lead to the design of foods with these properties. To make the most of available agricultural resources, countries like Taiwan should relate agricultural development to the nutritional status of their populations. This strategy will add significant value to global agriculture.