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A facile and effective method for preparing bifunctional electrocatalysts with enhanced activity and stability is desired for hydrogen and oxygen production. In this paper, ion-liquid-like (ILL) nickel–urea (Ni–U) was designed and applied to prepare 2D N-doped carbon/NiS2 (N–C/NiS2) nanohybrids by a one-step in situ pyrolysis synthesis strategy. The fluidity of ILL Ni–U benefits the interface coupling of the 2D N–C/NiS2 nanohybrid. Due to the synergistic effect between NiS2 and N–carbon with high conductivity, the H2O splitting performance of 2D N–C/NiS2 nanohybrids was significantly enhanced in alkaline media. The corresponding two-electrode cell only needed 1.53 V to undertake 10 mA cm−2 for H2O splitting. Moreover, the resultant 2D N–C/NiS2 nanohybrids exhibited lasting electrochemical endurance with the maintenance of its stability for more than 48 h. The synthetic strategy not only provides a simple and scalable route for constructing 2D hybrid electrocatalysts, but also paves a way to improve the HER/OER activity of sulphides via the surface/interface engineering strategy.

In the present study, a novel biodegradable Zn-0.8Cu coronary artery stent was fabricated and implanted into porcine coronary arteries for up to 24 months. Micro-CT analysis showed that the implanted stent was able to maintain structural integrity after 6 months, while its disintegration occurred after 9 months of implantation. After 24 months of implantation, approximately 28 ± 13 vol% of the stent remained. Optical coherence tomography and histological analysis showed that the endothelialization process could be completed within the first month after implantation, and no inflammation responses or thrombosis formation was observed within 24 months. Cross-section analysis indicated that the subsequent degradation products had been removed in the abluminal direction, guaranteeing that the strut could be replaced by normal tissue without the risk of contaminating the circulatory system, causing neither thrombosis nor inflammation response. The present work demonstrates that the Zn-0.8Cu stent has provided sufficient structural supporting and exhibited an appropriate degradation rate during 24 months of implantation without degradation product accumulation, thrombosis, or inflammation response. The results indicate that the Zn-0.8Cu coronary artery stent is promising for further clinical applications. Statement of Significance Although Zn and its alloys have been considered to be potential candidates of biodegradable metals for vascular stent use, by far, no Zn-based stent with appropriate medical device performance has been reported because of the low mechanical properties of zinc. The present work presents promising results of a Zn-Cu biodegradable vascular stent in porcine coronary arteries. The Zn-Cu stent fabricated in this work demonstrated adequate medical device performance both in vitro and in vivo and degraded at a proper rate without safety problems induced. Furthermore, large animal models have more cardiovascular similarities as humans. Results of this study may provide further information of the Zn-based stents for translational medicine research. This work was supported by the National Key Research & Development Program of China (No. 2016YFC1102500 ), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31700819 ), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 06500098 ), and the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST (YESS, No. 2018QNRC001 ). As chief scientist, Professor Haijun-Zhang initiated the study and also participated in key details of the experimental processes. Scopus

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to conduct a network meta-analysis of treatments for small vessels coronary artery disease between drug-eluting balloon (DEB) and drug-eluting stent (DES).METHOD: A meta-analysis comparing DEB and DES outcomes was performed using the Medline, Embase, and Cochrane databases. The primary outcome was target lesion revascularization (TLR) or target vessel revascularization (TVR), and myocardial infarction (MI), death and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) were secondary outcomes. A total of six studies on 1813 patients were included.RESULTS: There was no significant difference in rates of TLR or TVR in the patients treated with the DEB strategy compares with the DES strategy [odds ratio (OR) = 0.96, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.57-1.61, P = 0.89] within a follow-up period of 9-24 months. There was a significant reduction in rates of MI and death in the patients treated with a DCB strategy compared with those treated with a DES strategy (3.7%, 17 of 460 vs 6.1%, 36 of 595; 2.4%, 11 of 460 vs 6.1%, 36 of 595, respectively), and this difference was statistically significant (OR = 0.53, 95% CI 0.29-0.96, P = 0.04; OR = 0.44, 95% CI 0.22-0.88, P = 0.02, respectively). There was no difference between DEB and DES strategies in rates of MACE (OR = 0.94, 95% CI 0.66-1.33, P = 0.73).CONCLUSION: In summary, this study demonstrates that treatment of small vessel (diameter ≤ 3 mm) coronary artery disease (CAD) with DEB may lead to improving outcomes compared with the use of DES within a follow-up period of 9-24 months. Further large clinical trials are needed to verify this conclusion.

The Cordimax stent has proved non-inferior to the Cypher Select durable polymer sirolimus-eluting stent for the primary endpoint of angiographic in-stent late luminal loss and in-stent mean diameter stenosis at 9 months. The trial was designed to compare the efficacy and safety of the Cordimax stent with the Xience V stent in patients undergoing coronary revascularization. This randomized, multicenter trial enrolled 3697 patients treated with Cordimax stent (2460 patients) and Xience V stent (1237 patients). The primary efficacy endpoint was a target-lesion failure (TLF) at 1 year and the primary safety endpoint was a composite of death or myocardial infarction (MI) at 3 years. 3399 patients (91.9%) completed 3-year follow-up. At 1 year, the primary efficacy endpoint occurred in 86 (3.5%) patients in the Cordimax group versus 40 (3.2%) patients in the Xience V group (0.3% absolute risk difference, 95% CI −1.0–1.5%, Pnon-inferiority Pnon-inferiority P = 0.03). There were no differences between Cordimax and Xience V in terms of Cardiac death (0.3% versus 0.4%, P = 0.70), myocardial infarction (1.2% versus 0.9%, P = 0.37), and the stent thrombosis (0.4% versus 0.6%, P = 0.61). In conclusion, safety and efficacy outcomes of Cordimax stent were non-inferior to the Xience V stent 3 years after stent implantation.

Coronary stents made of zinc (Zn)-0.8 copper (Cu) (in wt%) alloy were developed as biodegradable metal stents (Zn-Cu stents) in this study. The mechanical properties of the Zn-Cu stents and the possible gain effects were characterized by in vitro and in vivo experiments compared with 316L stainless steel stents (316L stents). Young’s modulus of the as-extruded Zn-0.8Cu alloy and properties of the stents, including their intrinsic elastic recoil, stent trackability were evaluated compared with 316L stents. In vivo study was also conducted to evaluate restoration of pulsatility of vessel segment implanted stents. Both Zn-Cu stents and 316L stents have good acute lumen gain. By comparison, the advantages of Zn-Cu stents are as follows: (I) Zn-Cu stents have less intrinsic elastic recoil than 316L stents; (II) stent trackability indicates that Zn-Cu stents have a smaller push force when passing through curved blood vessels, which may cause less mechanical stimulation to blood vessels; (III) in vivo study suggests that Zn-Cu stents implantation better facilitates the recovery of vascular pulsatility.

Exploring novel tactic to synthesize transition-metal-based electrocatalysts with high activity is crucial to renewable gaseous fuel production. Herein, a simple and efficient synthesis strategy has been successfully developed to in-situ synthesize unique catalysts via embed a graphene oxide (GO) shell membrane in the core of NiS2 employing an ionic liquid-like NiCl2-malonic acid (IL Ni-MA). The elaborately designed IL Ni-MA liquid favors the in-situ growth of breathing GO shell membrane on the surface of NiS2 along with the formation of gas channel. The moderate breathing GO shell membrane and tightly coupled interface gain the optimum electrocatalysis hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution performance in 1.0 M KOH. It just demands 57 and 294 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2 toward HER and OER, respectively. Moreover, the optimum NiS2@GO catalysts can be applied for superior bifunctional catalyst for overall splitting of H2O. A cell voltage of 1.52 V and a stable operation for more than 48 h can be gained. The synthetic route may find application in the surface/interfaces engineering of other embedded catalysts toward new energy and environment applications.

A complete document analysis system involves multiple techniques and indifferent processing steps. Even a character recognition or word recognition module (subsystem) needs techniques combining a few algorithms. To exemplify how the techniques are practically used and how they are performing, some concrete examples of using multiple techniques to build practical recognition systems are presented, and experimental results on real image data are showed. In the paper, evolutionary generation of pattern recognizers will be discussed and a co evolution algorithm in the image recognition system will be researched. This result shows that competitive co evolution and camouflage are expected to aid in the problem of over fitting and reliability without expert tuning, and also in the generation of a larger and more diverse data set.