A Strategy Inspired by the Cicada Shedding Its Skin for Synthesizing the Natural Material NaFe3 S5 ·2H2 O.

Sulfide minerals hold significant importance in both fundamental science and industrial advancement. However, certain natural sulfide minerals, such as NaFe3 S5 ·2H2 O (NFS), pose great challenges for exploitation and synthesis due to their high susceptibility to oxidation. To date, no successful precedent exists for synthesizing NFS. Here, a novel approach to synthesizing low-cost and pollution-free NFS with high stability using the high-pressure hydrothermal method based solely on knowledge of its chemical formula is presented. Moreover, an innovative strategy inspired by the cicada's molting process to develop unstable natural materials is proposed. The mechanical, thermal, optical, electrochemical, and magnetic properties of the NFS are thoroughly investigated. The storage of lithium, sodium, and potassium ions is primarily concentrated in the gap between (0 0 1) crystal planes. Additionally, as a catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) at 10 mA cm-2 , micron-sized NFS exhibits an excellent overpotential of 6.5 mV at 90 °C, surpassing those of reported HER catalysts of similar size. This research bridges the gap in the sulfide mineral family, overcomes limitations of the high-pressure hydrothermal method, and paves the way for future synthesis of natural minerals, lunar minerals, and Martian minerals.

Activating Lattice Oxygen in Layered Lithium Oxides through Cation Vacancies for Enhanced Urea Electrolysis.

Despite the fact that high-valent nickel-based oxides exhibit promising catalytic activity for the urea oxidation reaction (UOR), the fundamental questions concerning the origin of the high performance and the structure-activity correlations remain to be elucidated. Here, we unveil the underlying enhanced mechanism of UOR by employing a series of prepared cation-vacancy controllable LiNiO2 (LNO) model catalysts. Impressively, the optimized layered LNO-2 exhibits an extremely low overpotential at 10 mA cm-2 along with excellent stability after the 160 h test. Operando characterisations combined with the theoretical analysis reveal the activated lattice oxygen in layered LiNiO2 with moderate cation vacancies triggers charge disproportion of the Ni site to form Ni4+ species, facilitating deprotonation in a lattice oxygen involved catalytic process.

Report of RILEM TC 281-CCC: outcomes of a round robin on the resistance to accelerated carbonation of Portland, Portland-fly ash and blast-furnace blended cements.

Many (inter)national standards exist to evaluate the resistance of mortar and concrete to carbonation. When a carbonation coefficient is used for performance comparison of mixtures or service life prediction, the applied boundary conditions during curing, preconditioning and carbonation play a crucial role, specifically when using latent hydraulic or pozzolanic supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs). An extensive interlaboratory test (ILT) with twenty two participating laboratories was set up in the framework of RILEM TC 281-CCC 'Carbonation of Concrete with SCMs'. The carbonation depths and coefficients determined by following several (inter)national standards for three cement types (CEM I, CEM II/B-V, CEM III/B) both on mortar and concrete scale were statistically compared. The outcomes of this study showed that the carbonation rate based on the carbonation depths after 91 days exposure, compared to 56 days or less exposure duration, best approximates the slope of the linear regression and those 91 days carbonation depths can therefore be considered as a good estimate of the potential resistance to carbonation. All standards evaluated in this study ranked the three cement types in the same order of carbonation resistance. Unfortunately, large variations within and between laboratories complicate to draw clear conclusions regarding the effect of sample pre-conditioning and carbonation exposure conditions on the carbonation performance of the specimens tested. Nevertheless, it was identified that fresh and hardened state properties alone cannot be used to infer carbonation resistance of the mortars or concretes tested. It was also found that sealed curing results in larger carbonation depths compared to water curing. However, when water curing was reduced from 28 to 3 or 7 days, higher carbonation depths compared to sealed curing were observed. This increase is more pronounced for CEM I compared to CEM III mixes. The variation between laboratories is larger than the potential effect of raising the CO2 concentration from 1 to 4%. Finally, concrete, for which the aggregate-to-cement factor was increased by 1.79 in comparison with mortar, had a carbonation coefficient 1.18 times the one of mortar. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1617/s11527-022-01927-7.

Cation Crosslinking-Induced Stable Copper Nanoclusters Powder as Latent Fingerprints Marker.

Luminescent copper nanoclusters (Cu NCs) have shown great potential in light-emitting devices (LEDs), chemical sensing, catalysis and biological fields. However, their practical use has been restricted by poor stability, and study on the stability of Cu NCs solid powder along with the mechanism is absent. In this study, stablized Cu NCs powder was first obtained by cation crosslinking method. Compared with the powder synthesized by solvent precipitation method, the stability of Cu NCs powder crosslinked by ionic inducer Ce3+ was enhanced around 100-fold. The storage time when the fluorescence intensity decreased to 85% (T85) was improved from 2 h to 216 h, which is the longest so far. The results of characterizations indicated that the aggregation structure was formed by the binding of Ce3+ with the capping ligands of Cu NCs, which helped in obtaining Ce-Cu NCs powder from aggregate precipitation in solution. Furthermore, this compact structure could avoid the destruction of ambient moisture resulting in long-lasting fluorescence and almost unchanged physical form. This demonstrated that phosphor, with excellent characteristics of unsophisticated synthesis, easy preservation and stable fluorescence, showed great potential in light sources, display technology and especially in latent fingerprints visualization on different substrates for forensic science.

Emission tuning of highly efficient quaternary Ag-Cu-Ga-Se/ZnSe quantum dots for white light-emitting diodes.

With the blooming development of zero-dimensional nanomaterials, I-III-VI alloying quantum dots (QDs) with outstanding photoelectrical properties have emerged to attract much attention as promising environmentally-friendly substitutions for conventional binary Cd-based QDs. In this work, a facile one-pot method was introduced to synthesize unreported quaternary Ag-Cu-Ga-Se/ZnSe (ACGSe/ZnSe) QDs. A relatively high photoluminescence quantum yield (PL QY) of 71.9% and a tunable emission from 510 to 620 nm were successfully achieved. We explored the roles of alloying compositions in ACGSe/ZnSe QDs, inferring that increased Ag proportion would not only lower the Vdefect level which leads to the blue shift of emission, but also slow the ZnSe shelling process owing to the larger lattice distortion. At last, the white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) were fabricated with ACGSe/ZnSe QDs as the conversion layer, indicating that the as-prepared QDs are a promising candidate for further applications.

Branched In2O3 Mesocrystal of Ordered Architecture Derived from the Oriented Alignment of a Metal-Organic Framework for Accelerated Hydrogen Evolution over In2O3-ZnIn2S4.

It is fascinating yet challenging to assemble anisotropic nanowires into ordered architectures of high complexity and intriguing functions. We exploited a facile strategy involving oriented etching of a metal-organic fragment (MOF) to advance the rational design of highly ordered nanostructures. As a proof of concept, a microscale MIL-68(In) single crystal was etched with a K3[Co(CN)6] solution to give a microtube composed of aligned MIL-68(In) nanorods. Annealing such a MIL-68(In) microtube readily created an unprecedented branched In2O3 mesocrystal by assembly of In2O3 nanorods aligned in order. The derived ordered-In2O3-ZnIn2S4 is more efficient in catalyzing visible-light-driven H2 evolution (8753 µmol h-1 g-1) outperforming the disordered-In2O3-ZnIn2S4 counterpart (2700 µmol h-1 g-1) as well as many other state-of-the-art ZnIn2S4-based photocatalysts. The ordered architecture significantly boosts the short-range electron transfer in an In2O3-ZnIn2S4 heterojunction but has a negligible impact on the long-range electron transfer among In2O3 mesocrystals. The density functional theory (DFT) calculation reveals that the oriented etching is achieved by the selective binding of the [Co(CN)6]3- etchant on the (110) plane of MIL-68(In), which can drag the In atoms out of the framework in order. Our findings could broaden the technical sense toward advanced photocatalyst design and impose scientific impacts on unveiling how ordered photosystems operate.

[Diammonium glycyrrhizinate promotes the regeneration and repair of central nervous system in rats with severe traumatic brain injury by Wnt/ß-catenin signaling pathway].

OBJECTIVE: To observe the effects of diammonium glycyrrhizinate (DG) on nerve regeneration repair in rats with severe traumatic brain injury (STBI) from the perspective of Wnt/ß-catenin signaling pathway. METHODS: Seventy-two Sprague-Dawle (SD) male rats were randomly divided into normal group, STBI model group, ganglioside (GA) treatment group and DG treatment group. The STBI animal model was reproduced referring to modified Feeney free fall impact model. No injury was made in normal group. Six hours after modeling, monosialotetrahexosylganglioside sodium injection and DG injection were injected via tail vein of rats in GA treatment group and DG treatment group respectively, once a day for 7 days. Normal group and STBI model group were given the same amount of normal saline. Six rats in each group were sacrificed on the 1st, 3rd and 7th day after the challenge for neurological severity score (NSS), and then the blood of abdominal aorta was drawn and brain tissue was harvested. The contents of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and nerve growth factor (NGF) in serum were detected by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The pathological changes of sub-granular zone (SGZ) were observed under light microscope after hematoxylin eosin (HE) staining. Real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was used to detect the mRNA expressions of Wnt3a, ß-catenin, glycogen synthetase kinase-3ß (GSK-3ß) and Axin. RESULTS: (1) There was no neurological deficit in the normal group and NSS was 0. NSS score of rats increased significantly on the first day after modeling, and then decreased gradually over time. NSS of the rats treated with GA and DG were significantly lower than that of the STBI model rats (score: 7.33±2.07, 6.17±2.23 vs. 9.33±1.63, both P < 0.01). Though NSS gradually decreased over time, the differences were still statistically significant on the 7th day (score: 2.67±0.82, 1.00±0.00 vs. 6.17±2.23, both P < 0.01), and NSS of DG treatment group was significantly lower than that of GA treatment group. (2) In SGZ of rats, cells were arranged in a compact and orderly way in the normal group, but neurons and tissues were damaged and destroyed at different time points in the STBI model group. After either GA or DG treatment, the damage of nerve tissue was improved gradually over time, and the effect of DG was more obvious. (3) In the normal group, the mRNA expressions of Wnt3a and ß-catenin were almost not expressed, the mRNA expressions of GSK-3ß and Axin were higher, and the contents of BDNF and NGF in serum were less. On the 1st day after STBI, the mRNA expressions of Wnt3a and ß-catenin in hippocampus, the contents of BDNF and NGF in serum were significantly increased, and the mRNA expressions of GSK-3ß and Axin were significantly decreased. The mRNA expressions of Wnt3a and ß-catenin in the hippocampus and the contents of BDNF and NGF in serum were significantly higher than those in the model group 1 day after GA or DG was added, the mRNA expressions of GSK-3ß and Axin were significantly decreased, and the effect of DG was more significant than that of GA [Wnt3a mRNA (2-ΔΔCt): 3.51±0.14 vs. 2.93±0.05, ß-catenin mRNA (2-ΔΔCt): 1.90±0.08 vs. 1.75±0.04, BDNF (ng/L): 4.06±0.55 vs. 3.16±0.64, NGF (ng/L): 9.53±1.08 vs. 7.26±0.43, GSK-3ß mRNA (2-ΔΔCt): 0.75±0.01 vs. 0.79±0.01, Axin mRNA (2-ΔΔCt): 0.74±0.02 vs. 0.76±0.02, all P < 0.05]. It was gradually increasing or decreasing over time and the difference was still statistically significant up to the 7th day. CONCLUSIONS: DG can promote the recovery of nerve function in rats with STBI, and its mechanism may be related to the regeneration of nerve cells proliferation and differentiation by Wnt/ß-catenin signaling pathway and the reconstruction of nerve tissue in SGZ of hippocampus.

One-Step Electrospinning Method to Prepare Gold Decorated on TiO2 Nanofibers with Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity.

A gold doped titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanofiber was prepared by one-step electrospinning technique to control the DC high voltage and the following calcination. The crystal structures and morphology of Au-TiO2 nanofibers were characterized in detail by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive photoelectron spectroscopy (EDS), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). These results indicate that Au is successfully incorporated into TiO2 nanofibers without gold loss, while Au and TiO2 form a heterogeneous structure. It implied that the Schottky barrier existed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of 0.075% Au-TiO2. For 0.075% Au-TiO2 nanofibers, the rate of photocatalytic degradation of methylene (MB) was significantly higher than that of pure TiO2 nanofibers.

Current status of diagnosis and treatment of bladder cancer in China - Analyses of Chinese Bladder Cancer Consortium database.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate current status of diagnosis and treatment of bladder cancer in China. METHODS: A database was generated by Chinese Bladder Cancer Consortium (CBCC). From January 2007 to December 2012, 14,260 cases from 44 CBCC centers were included. Data of diagnosis, treatment and pathology were collected. RESULTS: The average age was 63.5 year-old and most patients were male (84.3%). The most common histologic types were urothelial carcinoma (91.4%), adenocarcinoma (1.8%), and squamous carcinoma (1.9%). According to 1973 and 2004 WHO grading system, 42.0%, 41.0%, and 17.0% of patients were grade 1, 2, and 3, and 16.0%, 48.7%, and 35.3% of patients were papillary urothelial neoplasms of low malignant potential, low, and high grade, respectively. Non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) and muscle invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) were 25.2% and 74.1%, respectively (0.8% not clear). Carcinoma in situ was only 2.4%. Most patients were diagnosed by white-light cystoscopy with biopsy (74.3%). Fluorescence and narrow band imaging cystoscopy had additional detection rate of 1.0% and 4.0%, respectively. Diagnostic transurethral resection (TUR) provided detection rate of 16.9%. Most NMIBCs were treated with TUR (89.2%). After initial TUR, 2.6% accepted second TUR, and 45.7%, 69.9%, and 58.7% accepted immediate, induced, and maintenance chemotherapy instillation, respectively. Most MIBCs were treated with radical cystectomy (RC, 59.7%). Laparoscopic RCs were 35.1%, while open RC 63.4%. Extended and standard pelvic lymph node dissection were 7% and 66%, respectively. Three most common urinary diversions were orthotopic neobladder (44%), ileal conduit (31%), and ureterocutaneostomy (23%). Only 2.3% of patients accepted neo-adjuvant chemotherapy and only 18% of T3 and T4 patients accepted adjuvant chemotherapy. CONCLUSION: Disease characteristics are similar to international reports, while differences of diagnosis and treatment exist. This study can provide evidences for revisions of the guideline on bladder cancer in China.