SOC estimation of lead-carbon battery based on GA-MIUKF algorithm.

The paper proposes a SOC (State of Charge) estimation method for lead-carbon batteries based on the GA-MIUKF algorithm. The GA-MIUKF algorithm combines GA (Genetic Algorithm) for global search and optimization with the MI-UKF (Multi-innovation Unscented Kalman Filter) algorithm for estimating the SOC of lead-carbon batteries. By establishing an equivalent circuit model for the battery, the GA is employed to globally search and optimize the battery model parameters and the noise variance parameters in the MI-UKF algorithm. Comparative analyses with the UKF (Unscented Kalman Filter) algorithms and MI-UKF algorithms reveal that the SOC estimation method based on the GA-MIUKF algorithm yields more accurate results for lead-carbon battery SOC estimation, with an average estimation error of 2.0%. This highlights the efficacy of the proposed approach in enhancing SOC estimation precision.

Reinforcing Hydrogel by Nonsolvent-Quenching-Facilitated In Situ Nanofibrosis.

Nanofibrous hydrogels are pervasive in load-bearing soft tissues, which are believed to be key to their extraordinary mechanical properties. Enlighted by this phenomenon, a novel reinforcing strategy for polymeric hydrogels is proposed, where polymer segments in the hydrogels are induced to form nanofibers in situ by bolstering their controllable aggregation at the nanoscale level. Poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogels are chosen to demonstrate the virtue of this strategy. A nonsolvent-quenching step is introduced into the conventional solvent-exchange hydrogel preparation approach, which readily promotes the formation of nanofibrous hydrogels in the following solvent-tempering process. The resultant nanofibrous hydrogels demonstrate significantly improved mechanical properties and swelling resistance, compared to the conventional solvent-exchange hydrogels with identical compositions. This work validates the hypothesis that bundling polymer chains to form nanofibers can lead to nanofibrous hydrogels with remarkably enhanced mechanical performances, which may open a new horizon for single-component hydrogel reinforcement.

Rab26 restricts insulin secretion via sequestering Synaptotagmin-1.

Rab26 is known to regulate multiple membrane trafficking events, but its role in insulin secretion in pancreatic ß cells remains unclear despite it was first identified in the pancreas. In this study, we generated Rab26-/- mice through CRISPR/Cas9 technique. Surprisingly, insulin levels in the blood of the Rab26-/- mice do not decrease upon glucose stimulation but conversely increase. Deficiency of Rab26 promotes insulin secretion, which was independently verified by Rab26 knockdown in pancreatic insulinoma cells. Conversely, overexpression of Rab26 suppresses insulin secretion in both insulinoma cell lines and isolated mouse islets. Islets overexpressing Rab26, upon transplantation, also failed to restore glucose homeostasis in type 1 diabetic mice. Immunofluorescence microscopy revealed that overexpression of Rab26 results in clustering of insulin granules. GST-pulldown experiments reveal that Rab26 interacts with synaptotagmin-1 (Syt1) through directly binding to its C2A domain, which interfering with the interaction between Syt1 and SNAP25, and consequently inhibiting the exocytosis of newcomer insulin granules revealed by TIRF microscopy. Our results suggest that Rab26 serves as a negative regulator of insulin secretion, via suppressing insulin granule fusion with plasma membrane through sequestering Syt1.

Coordinatively Stiffen and Toughen Hydrogels with Adaptable Crystal-Domain Cross-Linking.

Conventional hydrogels usually suffer from the inherent conflict between stiffness and toughness, severely hampering their applications as load-bearing materials. Herein, an adaptable crystal-domain cross-linking design is reported to overcome this inherent trade-off for hydrogels by taking full advantage of both deformation-resisting and energy-dissipating capacities of cross-linking points. Through solvent exchange to homogenize the polymer network, followed by salting out to foster crystallization, a class of sal-exogels with high number densities of uniform crystalline domains embedded in homogeneous networks is constructed. During the deformation, those adaptive crystalline domains initially survive to arrest deformation, while later gradually disentangle to efficiently dissipate energy, crucial to the realization of the desirable compatibility between stiffness and toughness. The resultant sal-exogel achieves coordinatively enhanced stiffness (52.3 ± 2.7 MPa) and toughness (120.7 ± 11.7 kJ m-2 ), reconciling the challenging trade-off between them. This finding provides a practical and universal route to design stiff and tough hydrogels and has a profound impact on many applications requiring hydrogels with such combined mechanical properties.

Antibacterial and antioxidative biogenic films for room-temperature strawberry preservation.

The shelf life of strawberries is prone to be shortened by microbial infection and respiratory metabolism, significantly restricting its availability. Advanced preservation films hold considerable promise to overcome this problem. Herein, a biogenic ternary tannic acid/chitosan-citric acid (TA/CS-CA) preservation film was developed and demonstrated remarkable room-temperature strawberry preservation. CS dissolved in CA solution was able to form a fast in-situ film with TA owing to their strong hydrogen bonding. The excellent antibacterial activity (about 90 % for both E. coli and S. aureus) combined with superior oxidation resistance (the DPPH∙ scavenging activity of 90.0 %) were inherited from their ingredients. Consequently, the edible rate of TA/CS-CA film-coated strawberries upon storing at 19-25 °C for 7 days and the freshness lifetime increased to 74.1 % and 112.0 h, which were about twice those of uncoated strawberries, respectively. Moreover, this film exhibited favourable washability and inherent biocompatibility, making it promising as a high-performance preservation material.

Effective Antifogging Coating from Hydrophilic/Hydrophobic Polymer Heteronetwork.

Fogging on optical devices may severely impair vision, resulting in unacceptable adverse consequences. Hydrophilic coatings can prevent surface fogging by instantly facilitating pseudo-film water condensation but suffer from short antifogging duration due to water film thickening with further condensation. Here, an innovative strategy is reported to achieve longer antifogging duration via thickening the robust bonded hydrophilic/hydrophobic polymer heteronetwork coating to enhance its water absorption capacity. The combination of strong interfacial adhesion and hydrophilic/hydrophobic heteronetwork structure is key to this approach, which avoids interfacial failure and swelling-induced wrinkles under typical fogging conditions. The developed antifogging coating exhibits prolonged antifogging durations over a wide temperature range for repetitious usages. Eyeglasses coated with this coating successfully maintained fog-free vision in two typical scenarios. Besides, the coating recipes developed in this study also have potential as underwater glues as they demonstrate strong adhesions to both glass and polymer substrates in wet conditions.

Rab26 suppresses migration and invasion of breast cancer cells through mediating autophagic degradation of phosphorylated Src.

Rab proteins play crucial roles in membrane trafficking. Some Rab proteins are implicated in cancer development through regulating protein sorting or degradation. In this study, we found that the expression of Rab26 is suppressed in the aggressive breast cancer cells as compared to the levels in non-invasive breast cancer cells. Over-expression of Rab26 inhibits cell migration and invasion, while Rab26 knockdown significantly promotes the migration and invasion of breast cancer cells. Rab26 reduces focal adhesion association of Src kinase and induces endosomal translocation of Src. Further experiments revealed that Rab26 mediates the autophagic degradation of phosphorylated Src through interacting with ATG16L1, consequently, resulting in the suppression of the migration and invasion ability of breast cancer cells.

A Solvent-Exchange Strategy to Regulate Noncovalent Interactions for Strong and Antiswelling Hydrogels.

Physical hydrogels from existing polymers consisting of noncovalent interacting networks are highly desired due to their well-controlled compositions and environmental friendliness; and therefore, applied as adhesives, artificial tissues, and soft machines. Nevertheless, these gels have suffered from weak mechanical strength and low water resistance. Current methodologies used to fabricate these hydrogels mainly involve the freezing-thawing process (cryogels), which are complicated in preparation and short in adjustment of polymer conformation. Here, taking the merits of noncovalent bonds in adjustability and reversibility, a solvent-exchange strategy is developed to construct a class of exogels. Based on the exchange from a good solvent subsequently to a poor one, the intra- and interpolymer interactions are initially suppressed and then recovered, resulting in dissolving and cross-linking to polymers, respectively. Key to this approach is the good solvent, which favors of a stretched polymer conformation to homogenize the network, forming cross-linked hydrogel networks with remarkable stiffness, toughness, antiswelling properties, and thus underwater adhesive performance. The exogels highlight a facile but highly effective strategy of turning the solvent and consequently the noncovalent interactions to achieve the rational design of enhanced hydrogels and hydrogel-based soft materials.

Wrinkled double network hydrogel via simple stretch-recovery.

The wrinkled structures in biological tissues play a key role in nutrition transportation and organ protection and cannot be easily achieved in synthetic hydrogels using universal and convenient strategies. Wrinkles are highly desirable for the nascent applications of hydrogels in biomaterials and artificial organs. Here, we propose a strategy for inducing different viscoelastic behaviours inside a double network hydrogel to achieve regular wrinkles that are formed by the mass redistribution. The wrinkles can be designed on multiple dimensions and can be well reserved in repeated tensile loadings. These wrinkled hydrogels exhibit unusual characteristics, such as the anisotropy of mechanics and J type tensile curves. This strategy is particularly valuable for biomaterials and artificial organs and may become a universal method for designing the surface morphology of soft materials in large-scale preparation.

Bioactive Pore-Forming Bone Adhesives Facilitating Cell Ingrowth for Fracture Healing.

The effectiveness of commercial bone adhesives is known to be hampered by the weak efficacy of cell ingrowth. The strategy of macropore-forming, especially bioactive macropores, holds considerable promise to circumvent this problem, thereby promoting fracture healing. Herein, a class of bioactive glass-involved macropore-embedded bone adhesives is developed, which is capable of facilitating the migration of bone-derived mesenchymal stromal cells into the adhesive layer and differentiation into osteocytes. The integration of bioactive glass-particle-encapsulated porogens in the bone adhesives is key to this approach. A robust instant bonding on the bone adhesive and a high efficiency of bone regeneration on a mouse skull are observed, both of which are vital for clinical applications and personalized surgical procedures. This work represents a general strategy to design biomaterials with high cell-ingrowth efficacy.

Conjoined-network rendered stiff and tough hydrogels from biogenic molecules.

Hydrogels from biological sources are expected as potential structural biomaterials, but most of them are either soft or fragile. Here, a new strategy was developed to construct hydrogels that were both stiff and tough via the formation of the conjoined-network, which was distinct from improving homogeneity or incorporating energy dissipation mechanisms (double-network) approaches. Conjoined-network hydrogels stand for a class of hydrogels consisting of two or more networks that are connected by sharing interconnection points to collaborate and featured as follows: (i) All the composed networks had a similar or equal energy dissipation mechanism, and (ii) these networks were intertwined to effectively distribute stress in the whole system. As a specific example, a biogenic conjoined-network hydrogel was prepared by electrostatically cross-linking the chitosan-gelatin composite with multivalent sodium phytate. The combination of high compressive modulus and toughness was realized at the same time in the chitosan-gelatin-phytate system. Moreover, these physical hydrogels exhibited extraordinary self-recovery and fatigue resistance ability. Our results provide a general strategy for the design of biocompatible stiff and tough conjoined-network hydrogels due to a variety of potential cross-linking mechanisms available (e.g., electrostatic attraction, host-guest interaction, and hydrogen bonding).

Biomineralizing Dental Resin Empowered by Bioactive Amphiphilic Composite Nanoparticles.

Adhesive failure due to resin contraction is one of the major reasons for dental restoration failure, which leads to the exposure of dentinal tubules, and remineralization in saliva would provide a great solution for the above problem. In this study, bioactive amphiphilic raspberry-like composite nanoparticles were used as fillers for resin composites, which have good compatibility with the resin matrix and dispersed well in the matrix. Thus, the resin composites showed improved mechanical property and resistance to water sorption and solubility. Furthermore, the incorporation of bioactive nanoparticles endued the resin composites with bioactivity, forming apatite on resin composites upon reacting with artificial saliva within seven days, inducing denser mineral precipitation on the dentin surface and stimulating human dental pulp cell attachment and proliferation. Therefore, this bioactive nanoparticle filled composite resin may offer great benefits for dental restoration.

Sonication-Aided Formation of Hollow Hybrid Nanoparticles as High-Efficiency Absorbents for Dissolved Toluene in Water.

A surfactant-free emulsion polymerization process was developed to produce hollow hybrid nanoparticles (HHNP thereafter). Ultrasonication was found not only to help the generation of nanosized monomer droplets but also to generate surface active species through mediating the hydrolysis of the monomer, 3-(methacryloyloxy) propyltrimethoxysilane (MPS), thus stabilizing the oil/water interface. The hollow structure was formed based on a soft template approach, where the partially hydrolyzed monomer served as emulsifier and polymerized at the interface to form a hybrid shell. These HHNPs were used to absorb dissolved toluene in water and it was found they could reduce the toluene level down to zero, a level hardly being achieved by other methods. Combined with their good colloidal stability in water, these HHNPs are very promising colloidal collectors for dissolved organic solvents, in order to generate high quality water from contaminated water.