Early-life exposure to five biodegradable plastics impairs eye development and visually-mediated behavior through disturbing hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis in zebrafish larvae.

Biodegradable plastics have been commonly developed and applied as an alternative to traditional plastics, which cause environmental plastic pollution. However, biodegradable plastics still present limitations such as stringent degradation conditions and slow degradation rate, and may cause harm to the environment and organisms. Consequently, in this study, zebrafish was used to evaluate the effects of five biodegradable microplastics (MPs), polyglycolic acid (PGA), polylactic acid (PLA), polybutylene succinate (PBS), polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) and polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT) exposure on the early development, retina morphology, visually-mediated behavior, and thyroid signaling at concentrations of 1 mg/L and 100 mg/L. The results indicated that all MPs induced decreased survival rate, reduced body length, smaller eyes, and smaller heads, affecting the early development of zebrafish larvae. Moreover, the thickness of retinal layers, including inner plexiform layer (IPL), outer nuclear layer (ONL), and retinal ganglion layer (RGL) was decreased, and the expression of key genes related to eye and retinal development was abnormally altered after all MPs exposure. Exposure to PBS and PBAT led to abnormal visually-mediated behavior, indicating likely affected the visual function. All MPs could also cause thyroid system disorders, among which alterations in the thyroid hormone receptors (TRs) genes could affect the retinal development of zebrafish larvae. In summary, biodegradable MPs exhibited eye developmental toxicity and likely impaired the visual function in zebrafish larvae. This provided new evidence for revealing the effects of biodegradable plastics on aquatic organism development and environmental risks to aquatic ecosystems.

Axial Symptoms and Spinal-pelvic Parameters After Degenerative Lumbar Spondylolisthesis.

Context: Degenerative spondylolisthesis (DS) is a prevalent degenerative condition affecting the lumbar spine. Local spinal parameters play a pivotal role in surgical complications and in the QoL that adults with spinal deformities experience. Treatment can effectively alleviate radicular symptoms, but it doesn't significantly mitigate postoperative axial symptoms (AS). Objective: The study intended to investigate the correlation between postoperative axial symptoms (AS) and spinal-pelvic parameters for patients with DS of the lumbar spine. Design: The research team conducted a prospective cohort study. Setting: The study took place at the Huai'an Hospital of Huai'an City in the Huai'an District of Huai'an City in JiangSu Province, China. Participants: Participants were 120 patients with DS who had been admitted to the department of orthopedics at the hospital between January 2016 and December 2022 and 120 healthy volunteers during the same period. Intervention: The research team created two groups, each with 120 participants: (1) the intervention group with DS who received posterior laminar decompression + pedicle-screw internal fixation + intervertebral-space bone grafting and fusion, and (2) the control group, the healthy volunteers. Outcome Measures: The research team: (1) measured both group's spinal-pelvic parameters at baseline and at 6 months postintervention, (2) evaluated both group's motor functions at baseline and at 6 months postintervention, using the Japanese Orthopedic Association (OAS) scale and the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), (3) examined the intervention group's postoperative AS, and (4) analyzed the correlation between the intervention group's spinal-pelvic parameters and its postoperative AS and motor function. Results: At 6 months postintervention, the intervention group's spinal-pelvic parameters-lumbar lordosis (LL) and sacral slope (SS) were significantly lower-and-pelvic incidence (PI), pelvic tilt (PT), thoracic kyphosis (TK), segmental lumbar lordosis (SLL), and sagittal vertical axis (SVA) were significantly higher than those of the control group (all P = .000). The intervention group's JOA and ODI scores were significantly lower than those of the control group postintervention (both P = .000). Postintervention compared to the non-AS group, the AS group's LL (P = .000), PI (P = .000), and SS (P = .020) were significantly lower and PT (P = .002), TK (P = .000), SLL (P = .002), and SVA (P = .000) were significantly higher. Postoperative AS was negatively correlated with LL, PI, SS, and positively correlated with PT, TK, SLL, and SVA (all P = .000). The JOA and ODI scores were positively correlated with LL, PI, and SS, and negatively correlated with PT, TK, SLL, and SVA (all P = .000). Conclusions: Postoperative AS in patients with DS is significantly correlated with spinal-pelvic parameters, providing convincing evidence for the evaluation of postoperative dysfunction. However, generalizing to other patients is limited due to the small sample size, which might have resulted in bias in spinal-pelvic parameters. Hence, ongoing trials with large samples are warranted.

Supramolecular-mediated dual-functional DNA nanocomposites for programmable cancer therapy.

Programmable cancer therapies may perfectly prevent mutual drug restrictions, however, developing an efficient codelivery system with such an ability remains challenging. We herein first demonstrate the use of supramolecular-mediated dual-functional DNA nanocomposites for programmable chemodynamic therapy (CDT) and chemotherapy (CT), in which a water-soluble cyclodextrin-resveratrol (CD-Res) complex can be facilely encapsulated during the coassembly of Fe2+ and DNA to form the desired spherical nanocomposites. After endocytosis, the released Fe2+ can immediately trigger an endogenous Fenton reaction, inducing ferroptosis for CDT and ˙OH depletion, followed by the sustained release of the protected Res from the CD cavity. This process improves the efficacy of CT by preventing Res from the oxidation of ˙OH. The as-prepared nano-composites can sufficiently accumulate in the tumor, demonstrating an adequate programmable therapeutic performance without serious toxicity. Thus, a facile, fresh and changeable strategy for the design of antitumor therapies is presented.

Porous multifunctional phenylcarbamoylated-ß-cyclodextrin polymers for rapid removal of aromatic organic pollutants.

In this work, polymers containing a large number of benzene rings and multiple functional groups were designed to remove aromatic organic pollutants. Using tetrafluoroterephthalonitrile (TFTPN) as a rigid crosslinking agent to crosslink different functionalized phenylcarbamoylated-ß-cyclodextrin derivatives to prepare a series of porous multifunctional cyclodextrin (CD) polymerizations, including three preliminary polymerized adsorption materials and a mix ß-cyclodextrin polymer (X-CDP) prepared via a secondary crosslinking procedure of the above three materials. The X-CDP preparation process connects the pre-formed nanoparticles and increases the presence of linkers inside the particles. At the same time, X-CDP exhibited porous structure with various functional groups such as nitro, chlorine, fluorine, and hydroxyl. Those special characteristics render this material with good adsorption ability towards various aromatic organic pollutants in water, including tetracycline, ibuprofen, dichlorophenol, norfloxacin, bisphenol A, and naphthol. Especially, the maximum adsorption capacity for tetracycline at equilibrium reached 110.56 mg·g-1, which is competitive with the adsorption capacities of other polysaccharide adsorbents. X-CDP removed organic contaminants much more quickly than other adsorbents, reaching almost ~95% of its equilibrium in only 30 s, and the rate constant reaches 2.32 g·mg-1·min-1. The main adsorption process of the pollutants by X-CDP fitted the pseudo-second-order kinetic and Langmuir isotherm well, indicating that the adsorption process is monolayer adsorption. Moreover, X-CDP possessed the good reusability where the pollutant removal rate was only reduced 8.3% after five cycles. Such advantages render the polymer great potential in the rapid treatment of organic pollutants in water bodies.

Self-Assembly of Copper-DNAzyme Nanohybrids for Dual-Catalytic Tumor Therapy.

Despite the great efforts of using DNAzyme for gene therapy, its clinical success is limited by the lack of simple delivery systems and limited anticancer efficacy. Here, we develop a simple approach for the synthesis of hybrid nanostructures that exclusively consist of DNAzyme and Cu2+ with ultra-high loading capacity. The Cu-DNAzyme nanohybrids allow to effectively co-deliver DNAzyme and Cu2+ into cancer cells for combinational catalytic therapy. The released Cu2+ can be reduced to Cu+ by glutathione and then catalyze endogenous H2 O2 to form cytotoxic hydroxyl radicals for chemodynamic therapy (CDT), while the 10-23 DNAzyme enables the catalytic cleavage of VEGFR2 mRNA and activates gene silencing for gene therapy. We demonstrate that the system can efficiently accumulate in the tumor and exhibit amplified cascade antitumor effects with negligible systemic toxicity. Our work paves an extremely simple way to integrate DNAzyme with CDT for the dual-catalytic tumor treatment.

Hierarchical Lateral Control Scheme for Autonomous Vehicle with Uneven Time Delays Induced by Vision Sensors.

Vision-based sensors are widely used in lateral control of autonomous vehicles, but the large computational cost of the visual algorithms often induces uneven time delays. In this paper, a hierarchical vision-based lateral control scheme is proposed, where the upper controller is designed by robust H∞-based linear quadratic regulator (LQR) algorithm to compensate sensor-induced delays, and the lower controller is based on logic threshold method, in order to achieve strong convergence of the steering angle. Firstly, the vehicle lateral model is built, and the nonlinear uncertainties induced by time delays are linearized with Taylor expansion. Secondly, the state space of the system is augmented to describe such uncertainties with polytopic inclusions, which is controlled by an H∞-based LQR controller with a low cost of online computation. Then, a lower controller is designed for the control of the steering motor. According to the results of the vehicle experiment as well as the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experiment, the proposed control scheme shows good performance in vehicle's lateral control task, and exhibits better robustness compared with a conventional LQR controller. The proposed control scheme provides a feasible solution for the lateral control of autonomous driving.

Porous cellulose spheres: Preparation, modification and adsorption properties.

Porous cellulose spheres (PCS) were fabricated by precipitating the spheres from a cellulose ionic liquid solution, followed by freezing, solvent exchange, and drying. PCS had low crystallinity and a large surface area that facilitated modification with trisodium trimetaphosphate (STMP) to introduce phosphate ester groups into the porous structure of the heterogeneous system. The STMP-modified PCS (SPCS) were used to remove heavy metal ions from aqueous solution. With increasing STMP dosage, the adsorption capacity of SPCS obviously improved due to chelation between Pb2+ and phosphate ester groups. The kinetic adsorption and isotherm data matched the pseudo-second order model and the Langmuir model well. The maximum adsorption capacity reached 150.6 mg g-1 for SPCS. SPCS were competitive with other absorbents because the phosphate ester groups and porous structure contributed to Pb2+ adsorption. Moreover, SPCS can be regenerated with ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid disodium salt (EDTA) solution for repetitious adsorption of Pb2+.