Improved Fog Collection on a Hybrid Surface with Acylated Cellulose Coating.

Fog collection serves as an efficient method to alleviate water scarcity in foggy, water-stressed regions. Recent research has focused on constructing a hybrid surface to enhance fog collection efficiency, with one approach being the prevention of liquid film formation at hydrophilic sites. Inspired by the desert beetle, a coating (10-MCC) made by partially acylating microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) exhibits hydrophilic sites alongside a hydrophobic skeleton enabling rapid droplet capture despite its overall hydrophobicity. The captured droplets quickly coalesce into a large droplet driven by the wetting gradient created by the hydrophobic backbone and hydrophilic sites. To achieve greater fog collection efficiency, a hydrophobic-superhydrophobic hybrid surface is formed by combining a coating of 10-MCC with a superhydrophobic surface. The construction of superhydrophobic surfaces typically involves creating a rough surface with a distinctive structure produced by the anodization technique and modifying it with stearic acid. The superhydrophobic surface exhibits excellent corrosion resistance and mechanical stability. Moreover, the hybrid surface shows high efficiency in fog collection, with a tested maximum efficiency of approximately 1.5092 g/cm2/h, 1.77 times that of the original Al sheets. The results demonstrate a remarkable enhancement in fog collection capacity. Furthermore, this work serves as an inspiration for the low-cost and innovative design of engineered surfaces for efficient fog collection.

Antibacterial coatings on orthopedic implants.

With the aging of population and the rapid improvement of public health and medical level in recent years, people have had an increasing demand for orthopedic implants. However, premature implant failure and postoperative complications frequently occur due to implant-related infections, which not only increase the social and economic burden, but also greatly affect the patient's quality of life, finally restraining the clinical use of orthopedic implants. Antibacterial coatings, as an effective strategy to solve the above problems, have been extensively studied and motivated the development of novel strategies to optimize the implant. In this paper, a variety of antibacterial coatings recently developed for orthopedic implants were briefly reviewed, with the focus on the synergistic multi-mechanism antibacterial coatings, multi-functional antibacterial coatings, and smart antibacterial coatings that are more potential for clinical use, thereby providing theoretical references for further fabrication of novel and high-performance coatings satisfying the complex clinical needs.

Effect of adenoviral delivery of prodynorphin gene on experimental inflammatory pain induced by formalin in rats.

Circumstantial evidences suggest that dynorphins and their common precursor prodynorphin (PDYN) are involved in antinociception and neuroendocrine signaling. DREAM knockout mice had increased levels of PDYN and dynorphin expression, and reduced sensitivity to painful stimuli. However, some data support the notion that the up-regulation of spinal dynorphin expression is a common critical feature in neuropathic pain. It is not clear whether the production of dynorphin A can be increased when more PDYN is present. In this study we investigated the changes in pain behaviors, spinal PDYN mRNA expression and dynorphin A production on formalin-induced pain in rats receiving the pretreatment of adenoviral delivery of PDYN. Our results showed that the adenoviral transfer of PDYN gene was sufficient to reduce pain behaviors resulting from formalin injection, and the antinociceptive effect after receiving the pretreatment of adenoviral delivery of PDYN was mediated at the level of the spinal cord via KOR.