An optimized method of culturing neurons based on polyacrylamide gel.

Substrate stiffness is a microenvironment with a certain stiffness constructed by the extracellular matrix and adjacent cells, which plays an important role in the growth and development of cells and tissue formation. Studies have indicated that the stiffness of the brain is about 0.1-1 kPa. The physiological and pathological processes of the nervous system are mediated by the substrate stiffness that the neurons suffer. However, how substrate stiffness regulates these processes remains to be studied. Culturing neurons on substrates with different stiffness in vitro is one of the best methods to study the role of stiffness in regulating neuronal development and activity. In this study, by changing the preparation time and the activation time of polyacrylamide gel, we provide an improved method that achieves a low toxic substrate environment for better primary neuron adhesion and development. Hope that this method is convenient for those studying the role of substrate stiffness in neurons.

Theory-Guided Experimental Design of Covalent Triazine Frameworks for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production.

The high crystalline covalent triazine framework-1 (CTF-1), composed of alternating triazine and phenylene, has emerged as an efficient photocatalyst for solar-driven hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). However, it is of great challenge to further improve photocatalytic HER performance via increasing crystallinity due to its near-perfect crystallization. Herein, an alternative strategy of scaffold functionalization is employed to optimize the energy band structure of crystalline CTF-1 for boosting hydrogen-evolving activity. Guided by the computational predictions, versatile CTF-based polymer photocatalysts are prepared with different functional groups (OH, NH2, COOH) using binary polymerization for practical hydrogen production. Experiment evidence verifies that the introduction of a limited number of electron-donating groups is sufficient to maintain high crystallinity in CTF, modulate the band structure, broaden visible light absorption, and consequently enhance its photophysical properties. Notably, the functionalization with OH exhibits the most positive effect on CTF-1, delivering a photocatalytic activity with a hydrogen-producing rate exceeding 100 µmol h-1.

Real-world evidence on treatment pattern, effectiveness, and safety of blinatumomab in Chinese patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Blinatumomab is efficacious in patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), yet limited real-world data exists in this context. This retrospective study provided real-world data on the treatment pattern, effectiveness, and safety of blinatumomab in Chinese patients with newly diagnosed (ND) and relapsed/refractory (R/R) B-ALL. Patients with B-ALL who received at least one dose of blinatumomab in frontline or R/R settings between August 2021 and June 2023 were included. The primary outcome was the treatment pattern of blinatumomab. Key secondary outcomes included complete remission (CR)/CR with incomplete blood cell recovery (CRi) rate, minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity, median event-free survival (EFS), and safety. The study included 96 patients with B-ALL; 53 (55.2%) patients were in the ND group and 43 (44.8%) patients were in the R/R group. The median treatment duration was one cycle (range: 1-5). Most patients underwent chemotherapies, allo-HSCT, or experimental CAR-T following blinatumomab. The ND patients using blinatumomab induction therapy achieved 100% CR/CRi rate; 87.2% achieved MRD negativity within two cycles of blinatumomab. In R/R re-induction patients, the CR/CRi rate was 50%; MRD negativity rate was 64.2%. In R/R patients using blinatumomab for consolidation, MRD negativity rate was 90.9%. The median EFS was not reached in both ND and R/R patients; 1-year EFS rate was 90.8% (95% CI: 67%, 97%) and 55.1% (95% CI: 30%, 74%), respectively. Grade ≥ 3 adverse events were observed in 12.5% patients. Blinatumomab was found to be effective with a tolerable safety profile in real world setting.

Near telomere-to-telomere genome assemblies of two Chlorella species unveil the composition and evolution of centromeres in green algae.

BACKGROUND: Centromeres play a crucial and conserved role in cell division, although their composition and evolutionary history in green algae, the evolutionary ancestors of land plants, remains largely unknown. RESULTS: We constructed near telomere-to-telomere (T2T) assemblies for two Trebouxiophyceae species, Chlorella sorokiniana NS4-2 and Chlorella pyrenoidosa DBH, with chromosome numbers of 12 and 13, and genome sizes of 58.11 Mb and 53.41 Mb, respectively. We identified and validated their centromere sequences using CENH3 ChIP-seq and found that, similar to humans and higher plants, the centromeric CENH3 signals of green algae display a pattern of hypomethylation. Interestingly, the centromeres of both species largely comprised transposable elements, although they differed significantly in their composition. Species within the Chlorella genus display a more diverse centromere composition, with major constituents including members of the LTR/Copia, LINE/L1, and LINE/RTEX families. This is in contrast to green algae including Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Coccomyxa subellipsoidea, and Chromochloris zofingiensis, in which centromere composition instead has a pronounced single-element composition. Moreover, we observed significant differences in the composition and structure of centromeres among chromosomes with strong collinearity within the Chlorella genus, suggesting that centromeric sequence evolves more rapidly than sequence in non-centromeric regions. CONCLUSIONS: This study not only provides high-quality genome data for comparative genomics of green algae but gives insight into the composition and evolutionary history of centromeres in early plants, laying an important foundation for further research on their evolution.

ZIF-67-Derived Flexible Sulfur Cathode with Improved Redox Kinetics for High-Performance Li-S Batteries.

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have received much attention due to their high energy density and low price. In recent years, alleviating the volume expansion and suppressing the shuttle effect during the charge and discharge processes of Li-S batteries have been widely addressed. However, the slow conversion kinetics from polysulfide (LiPSs) to Li2S2/Li2S still limits the application of Li-S batteries. Therefore, we designed a ZIF-67 grown on cellulose (named ZIF-67@CL) as an electrocatalyst to improve the interconversion kinetics from LiPSs to Li2S2/Li2S for Li-S batteries. Based on the results of adsorption experiments of LiPSs, ZIF-67@CL and CL hosts were immersed in Li2S4 solution to adsorb LiPSs, and the UV-Vis test was conducted on the supernatant after adsorption. The results showed that the ZIF-67@CL had a stronger adsorption for LiPSs compared with the cellulose (CL). Furthermore, in the Li2S nucleation tests, the fabricated cells were galvanostatically discharged to 2.06 V at 0.112 mA and then potentiostatically discharged at 2.05 V. Based on the results of Li2S nucleation tests, the catalytic effect of ZIF-67 was further verified. As a result, the sulfur cathode used a ZIF-67 catalyst (named S/ZIF-67@CL) and delivered an initial capacity of 1346 mAh g-1 at a current density of 0.2 C. Even at a high current density of 2 C, it exhibited a high-capacity performance of 1087 mAh g-1 on the first cycle and maintained a capacity output of 462 mAh g-1 after 150 cycles, with a Coulombic efficiency of over 99.82%.

High SEC61A1 expression predicts poor outcome of acute myeloid leukemia.

The malfunction of SEC61A1 has been linked to several types of cancers, but its role in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains poorly understood. In this study, we used a series of bioinformatics analysis techniques, including gene expression profiling and proteomic analysis. Our findings were subsequently validated through a series of in vitro experiments, such as SEC61A1 knockdown in cell lines and RT-qPCR. We discovered a significant up-regulation of SEC61A1 in AML patients compared to healthy controls. AML patients with elevated SEC61A1 expression exhibited reduced overall survival compared to those with lower expression. Moreover, SEC61A1 expression emerged as an independent risk factor for predicting the survival of AML patients undergoing allo-HSCT. Our analysis also revealed an association between high SEC61A1 expression and increased signaling pathways related to cell growth. Our study underscores the importance of SEC61A1 expression as a novel prognostic indicator for predicting survival among AML patients, while also identifying it as a promising therapeutic target.

Nickel-catalysed regio- and stereoselective hydrocyanation of alkynoates and its mechanistic insights proposed by DFT calculations.

We have developed a nickel-catalysed regio- and stereoselective hydrocyanation of alkynoates that gives syn-ß-cyanoalkenes. DFT calculations suggest that a favored transition state promotes Cα-H bond formation for determining regio- and stereoselectivity of the products.

Real-Time Reconstruction of HIFU Focal Temperature Field Based on Deep Learning.

Objective and Impact Statement: High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) therapy is a promising noninvasive method that induces coagulative necrosis in diseased tissues through thermal and cavitation effects, while avoiding surrounding damage to surrounding normal tissues. Introduction: Accurate and real-time acquisition of the focal region temperature field during HIFU treatment marked enhances therapeutic efficacy, holding paramount scientific and practical value in clinical cancer therapy. Methods: In this paper, we initially designed and assembled an integrated HIFU system incorporating diagnostic, therapeutic, and temperature measurement functionalities to collect ultrasound echo signals and temperature variations during HIFU therapy. Furthermore, we introduced a novel multimodal teacher-student model approach, which utilizes the shared self-expressive coefficients and the deep canonical correlation analysis layer to aggregate each modality data, then through knowledge distillation strategies, transfers the knowledge from the teacher model to the student model. Results: By investigating the relationship between the phantoms, in vitro, and in vivo ultrasound echo signals and temperatures, we successfully achieved real-time reconstruction of the HIFU focal 2D temperature field region with a maximum temperature error of less than 2.5 °C. Conclusion: Our method effectively monitored the distribution of the HIFU temperature field in real time, providing scientifically precise predictive schemes for HIFU therapy, laying a theoretical foundation for subsequent personalized treatment dose planning, and providing efficient guidance for noninvasive, nonionizing cancer treatment.

A Novel Three-Point Localization Method for Bladder Volume Estimation.

The measurement of bladder volume is crucial for the diagnosis and treatment of urinary system diseases. Ultrasound imaging, with its non-invasive, radiation-free, and repeatable scanning capabilities, has become the preferred method for measuring residual urine volume. Nevertheless, it still faces some challenges, including complex imaging methods leading to longer measurement times and lower spatial resolution. Here, we propose a novel three-point localization method that does not require ultrasound imaging to calculate bladder volume. A corresponding triple-element ultrasound probe has been designed based on this method, enabling the ultrasound probe to transmit and receive ultrasound waves in three directions. Furthermore, we utilize the Hilbert Transform algorithm to extract the envelope of the ultrasound signal to enhance the efficiency of bladder volume measurements. The experiment indicates that bladder volume estimation can be completed within 5 s, with a relative error rate of less than 15%. These results demonstrate that this novel three-point localization method offers an effective approach for bladder volume measurement in patients with urological conditions.

Construction of an Au12Cd2 nanocluster with circularly polarized luminescence by a metal- and ligand-exchange strategy.

Excellent luminescence properties and unique chiral structures enable nanoclusters to be a novel class of circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials, and their precise structures facilitate the clarification of structure-activity relationships. However, efficiently preparing nanoclusters with CPL properties is still a great challenge. In this work, the luminescent properties as well as the molecular symmetry were simultaneously manipulated to transform the centrosymmetric Au14Cd1 into a chiral Au12Cd2 nanocluster, which has CPL properties. In detail, Cd doping and chiral-ligand exchange were performed simultaneously on the Au14Cd1 nanocluster to realize its photoluminescence enhancement and chiral-framework construction by increasing the alloying degree which is defined as deep-alloying and chiral ligand induction at the same time, resulting in the formation of an Au12Cd2 nanocluster with CPL properties. Further investigations revealed an increased alloying degree in the structure-maintained M6 kernel of Au12Cd2, which results in a 15-fold enhancement in quantum yield.

Pt nanoparticles anchored by oxygen vacancies in MXenes for efficient electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction.

The improvement of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance of nanomaterials is associated with the interfacial synergistic interaction and their hydrogen adsorption kinetics. Nevertheless, it is still a challenge to accelerate the proton transfer and optimize the HER kinetics by constructing Pt-supported heterostructures based on the hydrogen spillover phenomenon. Herein, oxygen vacancies on the surface of MXene nanosheets were constructed via a high-temperature annealing method, which was employed to anchor/stabilize Pt nanoparticles and fabricate a Pt/MXene heterostructure. EPR and XPS analyses verified the presence of oxygen vacancies, which could enhance the intrinsic HER activity of the MXene. The HER catalytic performance was investigated by taking into account the surface structure of the MXene affected by the annealing temperature, the concentration of Pt and the number of deposition cycles. Electrochemical results showed that Pt/MXene with higher utilization of Pt was obtained at 900 °C and 0.05 mgPt mL-1. The 0.05-Pt/MXene-900 obtained at deposition of 60 cycles in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution exhibited the optimized HER activity. The overpotential was 22 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 and the Tafel slope was 42.41 mV dec-1. Furthermore, the accelerated HER kinetics was mainly due to the electron trapping ability of the MXene, small particles of Pt, as well as the enhanced charge transfer between the oxygen vacancies of the MXene and Pt. This strategy for constructing Pt-supported heterostructures based on the vacancy anchoring effects provides new ideas for the design of well-defined electrocatalysts toward the HER.

Diverse adolescents' transcendent thinking predicts young adult psychosocial outcomes via brain network development.

Developmental scientists have long described mid-adolescents' emerging capacities to make deep meaning about the social world and self, here called transcendent thinking, as a hallmark developmental stage. In this 5-years longitudinal study, sixty-five 14-18 years-old youths' proclivities to grapple psychologically with the ethical, systems-level and personal implications of social stories, predicted future increases in the coordination of two key brain networks: the default-mode network, involved in reflective, autobiographical and free-form thinking, and the executive control network, involved in effortful, focused thinking; findings were independent of IQ, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. This neural development predicted late-adolescent identity development, which predicted young-adult self-liking and relationship satisfaction, in a developmental cascade. The findings reveal a novel predictor of mid-adolescents' neural development, and suggest the importance of attending to adolescents' proclivities to engage agentically with complex perspectives and emotions on the social and personal relevance of issues, such as through civically minded educational approaches.

Reduced-dose chemotherapy followed by blinatumomab in induction therapy for newly diagnosed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

BACKGROUND: Blinatumomab early-line treatment in B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) might improve clinical outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective real-world cohort analysis in 20 newly diagnosed B-ALL patients who received reduced-dose chemotherapy (idarubicin, vindesine, and dexamethasone) for 1-3 weeks, followed by blinatumomab for 1-4 weeks as an induction therapy. RESULTS: At the end of the induction therapy, a complete remission rate of 100% was achieved; 17 (85%) patients were minimal residual disease (MRD) negative (<1 × 10-4 ). Adverse events (AEs) were reported in 12 (60%) patients-43.8% were grade 1-2 and 56.2% were grade 3-4. No incidence of neurotoxicity or grade ≥3 cytokine release syndrome was reported. CONCLUSIONS: Blinatumomab demonstrated a significant improvement in clinical outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed B-ALL irrespective of their poor-risk factor status and the pretreatment blast burden.

Oxygen-Vacancy-Induced Formation of Pt-Based Intermetallics on MXene with Strong Metal-Support Interactions for Efficient Oxygen Reduction Reaction.

The Pt-based alloys can moderate the binding energies of oxygenated species on the catalytic surface, endowing the superior catalytic performance towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Nevertheless, it is still challenging to explore general methods to synthesize structurally ordered intermetallics with uniform distributions. Herein, the strong metal-support interaction is employed to facilitate the interdiffusion of Pt/M atoms by establishing a tunnel of oxygen vacancy on ultrathin Ti3 C2 Tx (MXene) sheets, synthesizing the ordered PtFe, PtCo, PtZn, PdFe, PdZn intermetallics loaded onto Ti3 C2 Tx . Furthermore, the in-situ generation of Ti-O from Ti3 C2 Tx could be bonded with Pt and forming Pt-O-Ti, resulting in charge redistribution through Pt-O-Ti structure. Theoretical calculations demonstrate that the valuable charge redistribution can be observed at the interface and extended even to at the distance of two nanometers from the interface, which can modulate the Pt-Pt distance, optimize Pt-O binding energy and enhance intrinsic activity towards ORR. The strong coupling interaction between PtFe and Ti3 C2 Tx containing the titanium oxide layer endows the high stability of the composites. This work not only presents a general synthesis strategy for intermetallics but also provides a new insight that metal-support interaction is essential for the structural evolution of intermetallics on materials with oxygen vacancies.

Antihyperglycemic effects of triterpenoid saponins from the seeds of Aesculus chinensis Bge.

Six undescribed triterpenoid saponins, namely aescuchinosides A-F, along with seven known triterpenoid saponins, were isolated from the seeds of Aesculus chinensis. Barrigenol-like triterpenoids (BATs) constitute these saponins. Protoaescigenin serves as their aglycone, with various oxygen-containing groups, including acetyl, isobutyryl, tigloyl, and angeloyl groups situated at C-21, C-22, and C-28. Various techniques, including 1D and 2D-NMR spectroscopy, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and acid hydrolysis, were employed to determine the structures of these compounds. The antihyperglycemic effects of the isolated compounds were examined in insulin -resistant HepG2 cells induced by palmitic acid treatment. At a concentration of 6 µM, aesculinoside F exhibited a significant increase in glucose consumption. In addition, aesculinoside F demonstrated the potential to improve insulin resistant by upregulating the PI3K/AKT pathway. These results indicate that the seeds of A.chinensis hold promising potential for preventing insulin resistant related disease.

Organo-Ptii Complexes for Potent Photodynamic Inactivation of Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria and the Influence of Configuration.

PtII based organometallic photosensitizers (PSs) have emerged as novel potent photodynamic inactivation (PDI) reagents through their enhanced intersystem crossing (ISC) processes. Currently, few PtII PSs have been investigated as antibacterial materials, with relatively poor performances reported and with structure-activity relationships not well described. Herein, a pair of configurational isomers are reported of Bis-BODIPY (4,4-difluoro-boradizaindacene) embedded PtII PSs. The cis-isomer (cis-BBP) displayed enhanced 1O2 generation and better bacterial membrane anchoring capability as compared to the trans-isomer (trans-BBP). The effective PDI concentrations (efficiency > 99.9%) for cis-BBP in Acinetobacter baumannii (multi-drug resistant (MDR)) and Staphylococcus aureus are 400 nM (12 J cm-2) and 100 nM (18 J cm-2), respectively; corresponding concentrations and light doses for trans-BBP in the two bacteria are 2.50 µM (30 J cm-2) and 1.50 µM (18 J cm-2), respectively. The 50% and 90% minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC50 and MIC90) ratio of trans-BBP to cis-BBP is 22.22 and 24.02 in A. baumannii (MDR); 21.29 and 22.36 in methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA), respectively. Furthermore, cis-BBP displays superior in vivo antibacterial performance, with acceptable dark and photoinduced cytotoxicity. These results demonstrate cis-BBP is a robust light-assisted antibacterial reagent at sub-micromolecular concentrations. More importantly, configuration of PtII PSs should be an important issue to be considered in further PDI reagents design.

A multi-modal vision-language pipeline strategy for contour quality assurance and adaptive optimization.

Objective.Accurate delineation of organs-at-risk (OARs) is a critical step in radiotherapy. The deep learning generated segmentations usually need to be reviewed and corrected by oncologists manually, which is time-consuming and operator-dependent. Therefore, an automated quality assurance (QA) and adaptive optimization correction strategy was proposed to identify and optimize 'incorrect' auto-segmentations.Approach.A total of 586 CT images and labels from nine institutions were used. The OARs included the brainstem, parotid, and mandible. The deep learning generated contours were compared with the manual ground truth delineations. In this study, we proposed a novel contour quality assurance and adaptive optimization (CQA-AO) strategy, which consists of the following three main components: (1) the contour QA module classified the deep learning generated contours as either accepted or unaccepted; (2) the unacceptable contour categories analysis module provided the potential error reasons (five unacceptable category) and locations (attention heatmaps); (3) the adaptive correction of unacceptable contours module integrate vision-language representations and utilize convex optimization algorithms to achieve adaptive correction of 'incorrect' contours.Main results. In the contour QA tasks, the sensitivity (accuracy, precision) of CQA-AO strategy reached 0.940 (0.945, 0.948), 0.962 (0.937, 0.913), and 0.967 (0.962, 0.957) for brainstem, parotid and mandible, respectively. The unacceptable contour category analysis, the(FI,AccI,Fmicro,Fmacro)of CQA-AO strategy reached (0.901, 0.763, 0.862, 0.822), (0.855, 0.737, 0.837, 0.784), and (0.907, 0.762, 0.858, 0.821) for brainstem, parotid and mandible, respectively. After adaptive optimization correction, the DSC values of brainstem, parotid and mandible have been improved by 9.4%, 25.9%, and 13.5%, and Hausdorff distance values decreased by 62%, 70.6%, and 81.6%, respectively.Significance. The proposed CQA-AO strategy, which combines QA of contour and adaptive optimization correction for OARs contouring, demonstrated superior performance compare to conventional methods. This method can be implemented in the clinical contouring procedures and improve the efficiency of delineating and reviewing workflow.

All-in-one Janus covalent organic frameworks separator as fast Li nucleator and polysulfides catalyzer in lithium-sulfur batteries.

The shuttle effect, sluggish conversion kinetics, and uncontrollable lithium dendrites seriously hinder the practical application of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. Among many modified materials, covalent organic frameworks (COFs) stand out for their excellent ability to inhibit the shuttle effect, while their role in promoting lithium nucleation and catalyzing the conversion of sulfur species has been largely ignored. In this study, an integrated COF separator (TpPa@2400) is developed as a rapid lithium nucleator and sulfur species catalyst in fast-charging Li-S batteries. According to the adsorption energy and Bader charge results, Li atoms preferentially adsorb onto the surface of the TpPa@2400 separator, and the larger Bader charge value (0.52 |e|) of the TpPa@2400 separator also signifies faster lithium transport, promoting the nucleation of Li ions. Furthermore, density functional theory (DFT) theoretically demonstrates that the TpPa@2400 separator exhibits lower free energy for sulfur species interconversion. As a result, the TpPa@2400 separator enables the Li-Li symmetric cell with an extended cycle life of 6000 h at a current density/capacity of 10 mA cm-2/10 mAh cm-2. The Li-S battery assembled using the TpPa@2400 separator delivers a high capacity of 1636.4 mAh/g at 0.1C and a rapid sulfur species conversion capacity of 513.8 mAh/g at 2C.

Interfacial Solar Evaporation: From Fundamental Research to Applications.

In the last decade, interfacial solar steam generation (ISSG), powered by natural sunlight garnered significant attention due to its great potential for low-cost and environmentally friendly clean water production in alignment with the global decarbonization efforts. This review aims to share the knowledge and engage with a broader readership about the current progress of ISSG technology and the facing challenges to promote further advancements toward practical applications. The first part of this review assesses the current strategies for enhancing the energy efficiency of ISSG systems, including optimizing light absorption, reducing energy losses, harvesting additional energy, and lowering evaporation enthalpy. Subsequently, the current challenges faced by ISSG technologies, notably salt accumulation and bio-fouling issues in practical applications, are elucidated and contemporary methods are discussed to overcome these challenges. In the end, potential applications of ISSG, ranging from initial seawater desalination and industrial wastewater purification to power generation, sterilization, soil remediation, and innovative concept of solar sea farm, are introduced, highlighting the promising potential of ISSG technology in contributing to sustainable and environmentally conscious practices. Based on the review and in-depth understanding of these aspects, the future research focuses are proposed to address potential issues in both fundamental research and practical applications.