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Molybdenum carbide (Mo2CTxMXene) did not possess suitable properties for supercapacitors. Herein, a short oxidation method of Mo2CTxin air at moderately high temperatures is proposed for fabricating a Mo2C/MoO3heterostructure. The stability of Mo2CTxin air up to 700 °C and the phase transition at higher temperatures are confirmed. Such a heterostructure is beneficial in reducing the diffusion energy barrier of H+. In the aqueous system, the Mo2C/MoO3electrode delivers a capacitance of up to 811 F g–1. A fully assembled symmetric solid-state supercapacitor delivers 224 F g–1with an excellent retention rate of 91.05% after 7500 cycles. Besides, the supercapacitor can work at the low temperature of −60°, showing good low-temperature properties. The approach presented in this work opens a promising way to turn a neglected MXene, assumed to be unsuitable for supercapacitors, into one of the top-performing supercapacitor electrodes.

The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources in distribution networks has caused great challenges to the reliable operation of the conventional overcurrent protection schemes. In particularly, serious underreach and overreach problems of protection scope may occur under the ever growing application of mobile energy storage (MES) devices. To improve the adaptability to the connection of MES devices under distribution networks, this paper proposes an adaptive overcurrent protection scheme, which can avoid the unfavorable effects caused by infeed currents and out flowing currents. Firstly, the effects of MES device on the protection scope of the overcurrent protection strategy are investigated, considering the charging, discharging, and backup operation modes of MES device. Secondly, to adapt to the different operation modes, the equivalent impedance of MES device is calculated, and then it is introduced to determine the adaptive settings of fast current protection and time-critical fast current protection. Finally, the constructed adaptive overcurrent protection scheme can adapt to varied fault conditions, including different operation modes and output power of MES device, connection locations, fault locations, and fault types. Large amounts of simulation results show that the proposed adaptive overcurrent method can overcome the underreach and overreach problems of protection scope, demonstrating its good application prospects.

As a novel protein knockdown tool, proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) can induce potent degradation of target proteins by hijacking E3 ubiquitin ligases. However, the uncontrollable protein disruption of PROTACs is prone to cause “off-target” toxicity after systemic administration. Herein, we designed a photocaged-PROTAC (phoBET1) and loaded it in UCNPs-based mesoporous silica nanoparticles (UMSNs) to construct a NIR light-activatable PROTAC nanocage (UMSNs@phoBET1) for controllable target protein degradation. Upon NIR light (980 nm) irradiation, UMSNs@phoBET1 nanocages could be activated to release active PROTAC viaa controlled pattern for degrading bromodomain-containing protein 4 (BRD4) and inducing MV-4-11 cancer cell apoptosis. In vivoexperiments demonstrated that UMSNs@phoBET1 nanocages were capable of responding to NIR light in tumor tissues to achieve BRD4 degradation and effectively suppress tumor growth. This NIR light-activatable PROTAC nanoplatform compensates for the current shortcomings of short-wavelength light-controlled PROTACs and presents a paradigm for the precise regulation of PROTACs in living tissues.

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as a promising class of catalysts due to their large specific surface area, high porosity, and dispersed metal sites. However, the inherent low electrical conductivity of organic ligands limits their application as electrocatalysts. Herein, we constructed a trimetal FeCoNi MOF/NF catalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) on nickel foam substrates by electrodeposition and hydrothermal methods. The FeCoNi MOF/NF catalyst shows a unique self-optimization phenomenon, which originates from the increase in the pore structure on the topography, the increase in the valence state of Co and Ni ions, and the formation of crystalline/amorphous interfaces. The self-optimizing stabilized FeCoNi MOF/NF has excellent electrocatalytic performance, which achieves a low overpotential of 267 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm–2in 1 M KOH with a small Tafel slope of 37.6 mV dec–1. The self-optimization transformation process proposed in this work provides a new insight for the understanding and application of the active center of MOFs during the OER catalytic process.

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging enables people to see a hidden scene based on multiple interaction information between the object and the carrier. There have been numerous studies focusing on the physical modeling of photon scattering, but few have explored the detection process, which also plays a vital role. In this paper, we put forward a novel, to the best of our knowledge, detection methodology for NLOS imaging based on time-sequential first photon (TSFP) data. We verify the method with both synthetic and experimental data, showing a dramatic reduction in acquisition time cost compared with traditional methods for the same reconstruction quality. This work may contribute to real-time and photon-starved NLOS imaging for practical applications.

•pH and calcium chloride affect chlorophyllase activity and thermal stability.•The thermal inactivation kinetics of chlorophyllase followed two-fraction kinetics.•Weak acidity obviously promoted the thermal inactivation of chlorophyllase.•Weakly alkaline and calcium chloride increased thermal stability of chlorophyllase.

Chronic diabetic wound injury is a serious syndrome of diabetes, and the treatment of this syndrome is of great significance. Owing to metabolic abnormalities, diabetic wounds are difficult to heal due to chronic inflammation, immune dysfunction, impaired angiogenesis and bacterial reproduction. However, most traditional treatments can only play a limited role in dealing with unhealed wounds, and the overall healing effect is not ideal. We designed a novel bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosome (MSC-Exo)-loaded carboxyethyl chitosan (CEC)-dialdehyde carboxymethyl cellulose (DCMC) hydrogel (MSC-Exos@CEC-DCMC HG) for chronic diabetic wound healing. The results demonstrated that CEC can be cross-linked with DCMC through Schiff base reactions to form antibacterial and self-healing hydrogels. The inherent MSC-Exos not only promoted angiogenesis but also enhanced the transformation of M1-type macrophages to the M2 type to reduce inflammatory effects. Finally, MSC-Exos@CEC-DCMC HG, as an effective therapeutic agent, synergistically adjusted the wound inflammation microenvironment, promoted neovascularization, and accelerated wound healing in type 1 diabetic rats.

Previously, it has been demonstrated that aging is associated with nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB)-mediated hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) decrease. The hypothalamus is one of the brain regions that are vulnerable to ischemia-reperfusion injury. However, it is unclear whether ischemia-reperfusion has an influence on the hypothalamic GnRH release. In the current study, GT1-7 cells, which are a cell line of hypothalamic GnRH neurons, were subjected to hypoxia-reoxygenation to mimic ischemia-reperfusion. The effect of hypoxia-reoxygenation on the hypothalamic GnRH release was investigated. It was found that GnRH secretion from GT1-7 cells was decreased under the hypoxia-reoxygenation condition. Mechanistic studies revealed that hypoxia-reoxygenation activated nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) via the protein kinase B (Akt)/forkhead box protein O1 (FOXO1) pathway, thereby inhibiting gnrh1gene. The results of the current study suggested that hypoxia-reoxygenation injury may facilitate the hypothalamic programming of system aging through impairment of hypothalamic GnRH release.

In recent years, photocatalytic technologies have been extensively studied and diffusely used in water splitting, decomposition of organic pollutants, reduction of carbon dioxide, etc. As a type of eye-catching semiconductors, BiVO 4 , Bi 2 WO 6 , and Bi 2 MoO 6 (denoted as Bi a AO b) have become a hotspot in photocatalytic researches due to their crystal structure stability, high light quantum and electronic transmission efficiency, and outstanding energy utilization capacity. However, pristine Bi a AO b (A = V, W, and Mo) possesses several drawbacks, such as low separation efficiency of photo-excited electron-hole pairs, low specific surface area, as well as the poor quantum utilization, which restrict their photocatalytic performance. Considerable efforts, such as nanostructure modification, surface engineering, and heterojunction/homojunction fabrication, have been conducted to solve these problems. This integrated review aims to sum up recent advances in current studies on fabrication of high efficiency Bi a AO b photocatalysts to accelerate the developments of Bi a AO b -based materials in the photocatalysis (PC) field. The current challenges and prospects of Bi a AO b are emphasized which stretches the existing fundamental theories of PC as well as provide a promising strategy to fabricate high efficiency Bi a AO b catalysts to control environmental pollution and assist the sustainable development of energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sumoylation is the Post-translational modification gaining most of the research interest recently. Sumoylation is involved in various crucial functions of the cell such as regulation of cell cycle, DNA damage repair, apoptosis, etc. Oncology is advancing in radiotherapy, targeted chemotherapy, various forms of immunotherapy and targeted gene therapy. Researches are being conducted to prove its connotation with a variety of cancers and inhibitors are being developed to obstruct the fatal effect caused by misbalance of the SUMO-catalytic cycle. It has been shown that up-regulation of certain enzymes of Sumoylation correlates with cancer incidence in most of the cases. However, in some cases, down-regulation also associates with cancer invasion such as underexpression of UBC9 in initial stage breast cancer. This can aid in future study, treatment, and diagnosis of a variety of cancers including breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung adenocarcinoma, melanoma, multiple myeloma, etc. Various mechanistic assays are being developed and used to identify potential inhibitors against the dysregulated proteins of Sumoylation. This review summarizes the normal roles of the enzymes involved in the SUMOcatalytic cycle, their misbalanced regulation leading to tumorigenesis and nearly all the potent inhibitors identified to date, while after detailed studied it was observed that ML-792 could be a promising inhibitor in treating cancers by inhibiting Sumoylation enzymes.

Previously, it has been demonstrated that aging is controlled by the hypothalamus, and that hypothalamus-driven programmatic aging is associated with nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB)-mediated gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) decrease. Abundant accumulation of β-amyloid (Aβ) has been observed in brains of cognitively normal elderly. However, it is unclear whether Aβ neurotoxicity is involved in aging-associated hypothalamic GnRH decline. GT1-7 cells, which are a cell line of hypothalamic GnRH neurons, were used in the current study to investigate whether and how Aβ decreased GnRH release. The results of the current study demonstrated that Aβ impaired the release of GnRH through activation of NF-κB. Mechanistic studies revealed that Aβ activated NF-κB via Forkhead box protein O3a, thereby inhibiting gnrh1gene. The results of the present study provided novel insights into the mechanisms underlying aging-dependent hypothalamic GnRH decline.

ABSTRACTThe evolution of the microstructure of cold-rolled pure Ni during annealing at 300–800°C for 120 min with and without a high magnetic field of 10 T was investigated. When the direction of the field was either parallel or perpendicular to the sample rolling direction (RD), the average grain size of the cube grains decreased, and abnormally grown grains with random orientation were observed. The migration of different kinds of grain boundaries, including Cube–Cube (C–C) grain boundaries, Cube–Non-cube (C–N) grain boundaries, and Cube–Abnormal (C–A) grain boundaries, was also investigated. The driving force produced by the magnetic field accelerated the migration of C–A grain boundaries, which reasonably explained the formation of abnormal growth.

The evolution of the microstructure of cold-rolled pure Ni during annealing at 300–800°C for 120?min with and without a high magnetic field of 10?T was investigated. When the direction of the field was either parallel or perpendicular to the sample rolling direction (RD), the average grain size of the cube grains decreased, and abnormally grown grains with random orientation were observed. The migration of different kinds of grain boundaries, including Cube–Cube (C–C) grain boundaries, Cube–Non-cube (C–N) grain boundaries, and Cube–Abnormal (C–A) grain boundaries, was also investigated. The driving force produced by the magnetic field accelerated the migration of C–A grain boundaries, which reasonably explained the formation of abnormal growth.

Sjögren’s syndrome(SS) is an autoimmune disease characterized as the impairment of salivary secretion mediated by abnormal aquaporin 5(AQP5). Here we used AQP5 promoter as the target to screen the effective components from natural drugs. Panax quinquefoliusand its specific ingredient, Rb1, were identified to increase the AQP5 transcriptional activity and AQP5 expression. Then we investigated the possibility of Rb1 binding to sex hormone receptors and demonstrated that Rb1 bound specifically to estrogen receptor alpha(ERα), but not to androgen receptor. Next, we found that ERαoverexpression magnified the effect of Rb1 induced AQP5 transcription, and the silence of ERαblocked this effect, demonstrating that Rb1 activated AQP5 transcription viaERαpathway. Importantly, we constructed SS mouse model and investigated the effects of Rb1 on salivary secretion in vivo. SS mice exhibited significant impairment in salivary secretion and decreased AQP5 expression in the submandibular gland. Intriguingly, SS mice administered with Rb1 exhibited dramatically increased salivary secretion, followed by decreased diary water consumption. In particular, Rb1 up-regulated AQP5 expression localized in the submandibular gland, almost similar to the SS mice administered with estrogen. Our data demonstrated that Rb1 bound with ERαto up-regulate AQP5 to increase saliva secretion, thus functioned as a potential natural phytoestrogen for the therapy of salivary secretion impairment in SS patients.

In this study, we constructed the recombinant plasmid of pGL2/Aquaporin5(AQP5) promoter (pGL2/AQP5p) luciferase reporter, then found estradiol(E2) induced AQP5 promoter activation in a dose-dependent manner. Further, we identified endogenous estrogen receptors(ER), including ERαand ERβ, expressed in human submandibular gland(HSG) cells, which responded to E2. Then demonstrated by the stimulation of E2, AQP5 was upregulated in protein level, meanwhile AQP5 located in cytomembrane was elevated in immunofluorescence. Furthermore, we revealed the roles of ERαand ERβin AQP5 upregulation by E2. When ERαand ERβwere overexpressed, the AQP5 transcription level and protein expression were augmented obviously. While when knockdown ER by ERα-shRNA or ERβ-shRNA, AQP5 transcription and expression attenuated. Moreover, we detected the effect of E2 in Sjogren’s syndrome(SS) mice model in vivo. SS mice models were constructed by injecting submandibular gland antigen immune induction combined with estrogen deprivation, which were administrated with saline and E2. The salivary secretion was decreased, and the AQP5 expression downregulated in the submandibular gland in the SS model group. When SS mice were administrated with E2, the salivary secretion was significantly increased, and the AQP5 expression upregulated in the submandibular gland. These results suggest E2 activates AQP5p transcription and upregulates AQP5 protein expression, and E2 promotes salivary secretion in SS model in vivo. Taken together, we provided the evidence that E2 increased salivary secretion by activating AQP5 transcription and expression.

In this study, we amplified aquaporin 1(AQP1) promoter sequence with polymerase chain reaction(PCR), then AQP1 promoter fragment and pGL2 basic vector were linked to create an artificial pGL2/AQP1 promoter re-porter system. A certain concentration of 17β-estradiol(E2) activated pGL2/AQP1p, which demonstrated the pGL2/AQP1p transcriptional system effective. The pGL2/AQP1 promoter reporter system was applied to evaluate the activate effect on AQP1 of different kinds of phytoestrogens. Dual luciferase reporter gene activity assay showed that a certain concentration phytoestrogens including daidzein and genistein can increase AQP1 promoter transcription activity. In addition, E2, daidzein and genistein can make AQP1 protein endoge- nous expression level increase and promote the function of water scretion. The result can guide the clinical application to treat the Sjogren’s syndrome and provide a necessary molecular tool for the subsequent drug screening.

ABSTRACTThe aim of this work was to demonstrate the feasibility of nisin and lactic acid production from corn stover through simultaneous saccharification and fermentation using Lactococcus lactissubsp. lactisATCC 11454. The optimum conditions for nisin and lactic acid production were cellulose concentration of 30 g/L, a cellulase loading of 25 FPU/g cellulose and an initial pH of 6.0 in a 10 g/L yeast extract and 10 g/L peptone broth. The optimized bioprocess achieved nisin titer of 1635 IU/mL and lactic acid concentration of 15.2 g/L. The results indicated that simultaneous saccharification and fermentation with corn stover is a promising bioprocess for the economic production of nisin and lactic acid simultaneously.

In this study, the relationship of polymerization and photocatalytic performance was systematically studied by investigating a series of Ag2O·x(MoO3) (x= 1, 2, 3, 4) samples. Characterization results indicated that two decisive factors of photocatalytic performance, light harvesting and the separation of charge carriers, were significantly influenced by polymerization. UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS) illustrated that the visible light absorption range was significantly increased with the increase of polymerization degree. Photocurrent measurement showed that the separation of charge carriers increased until the polymerization degree increased to three, and further increase of polymerization degree restrained the separation of charge carriers because of the narrow band gap. The degradation experiment showed that the photocatalytic performance was significantly enhanced by polymerization, and the degradation rates of Ag2Mo3O10and Ag2Mo4O13reached a maximum and were nearly the same. Density functional theory (DFT) calculation was applied to explain the enhancement mechanism of light harvesting and photocurrent properties. This study strongly suggests that polymerization must be taken into account for design and exploitation of efficient photocatalysts.

Heteroatom-doped graphene materials have emerged as highly efficient and inexpensive and variations of graphene doping structures; however, there is still a lack of fundamental understanding of the trend and mechanisms in their ORR activity, which greatly hinders the development of highly active graphene-based catalysts. Here we use density-functional calculations to study the ORR activity and mechanism of nonmetal-element doped graphene catalysts with different doping configurations. Our results demonstrate that binding energies of ORR intermediates (i.e., *OH) on the catalysts can serve as a good descriptor for the ORR activity, attaining the optimal value at the vicinity of ∼2.6 eV. The analysis of electronic structures indicates that the ORR activity of doped graphene catalysts depends on the abundance of electronic states at the Fermi level, which dominates the charge transfer between ORR intermediates and the catalysts. Using binding energy as a descriptor, we predict the realization of highly active graphene-based electrocatalysts by the dual-doping scheme, which is supported by recent experimental reports. Moreover, we find that the catalytic activity of graphene basal planes can be activated by the B–Sb and B–N codoping approaches. This work elucidates the inherent correlation between the ORR activity of nonmetal-doped graphene catalysts and the dopant type and doping configurations, opening a route to design highly active graphene-based ORR electrocatalysts.

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Unpredicted human organ level toxicity remains one of the major reasons for drug clinical failure. There is a critical need for cost-efficient strategies in the early stages of drug development for human toxicity assessment. At present, artificial intelligence methods are popularly regarded as a promising solution in chemical toxicology. Thus, we provided comprehensive in silicoprediction models for eight significant human organ level toxicity end points using machine learning, deep learning, and transfer learning algorithms. In this work, our results showed that the graph-based deep learning approach was generally better than the conventional machine learning models, and good performances were observed for most of the human organ level toxicity end points in this study. In addition, we found that the transfer learning algorithm could improve model performance for skin sensitization end point using source domain of in vivoacute toxicity data and in vitrodata of the Tox21 project. It can be concluded that our models can provide useful guidance for the rapid identification of the compounds with human organ level toxicity for drug discovery.

A new conception of redox heterojunction was proposed through coupled Ln2O3(Ln: Sm, Eu, Tb) on the surface of BiVO4to illustrate the situation of multivalence elements appearance. Some subtle characteristics of photoreaction procedure behind the apparent photocatalytic activity were captured through a quenching experiment and electron paramagnetic resonance technology. Significantly, except for suppressing the recombination of electrons and holes, the redox cycle reaction of Sm3+/Sm2+and Eu3+/Eu2+in redox heterojunction dominated the production of the •O2–active radical during the photoreaction, and the redox cycle reaction of Tb4+/Tb3+can only produce the •OH active radical. This evidence provided solid indication that the self-redox cycle reaction of multivalence elements with appropriate redox potential made a significant influence on photoreaction.

Superior catalytic activity and high chemical stability of inexpensive electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) are crucial to the large-scale practical application of fuel cells. The nonprecious metal/N modified graphene electrocatalysts are regarded as one of potential candidates, and the further enhancement of their catalytic activity depends on improving active reaction sites at not only graphene edges but also its basal plane. Herein, the ORR mechanism and reaction pathways of Co–N co-doping onto the graphene basal plane have been studied by using first-principles calculations and ab initiomolecular dynamics simulations. Compared to singly N-doped and Co-doped graphenes, the Co–N co-doped graphene surface exhibits superior ORR activity and the selectivity toward a four-electron reduction pathway. The result originates from catalytic sites of the graphene surface being modified by the hybridization between Co 3d states and N 2p states, resulting in the catalyst with a moderate binding ability to oxygenated intermediates. Hence, introducing the Co–N4complex onto the graphene basal plane facilitates the activation of O2dissociation and the desorption of H2O during the ORR, which is responsible for the electrocatalyst with a smaller ORR overpotential (∼1.0 eV) that is lower than that of Co-doped graphene by 0.93 eV. Our results suggest that the Co–N co-doped graphene is able to compete against platinum-based electrocatalysts, and the greater efficient electrocatalysts can be realized by carefully optimizing the coupling between transition metal and nonmetallic dopants in the graphene basal plane.