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Although several artificial nanotherapeutics have been approved for practical treatment of metastatic breast cancer, their inefficient therapeutic outcomes, serious adverse effects, and high cost of mass production remain crucial challenges. Herein, we developed an alternative strategy to specifically trigger apoptosis of breast tumors and inhibit their lung metastasis by using natural nanovehicles from tea flowers (TFENs). These nanovehicles had desirable particle sizes (131 nm), exosome-like morphology, and negative zeta potentials. Furthermore, TFENs were found to contain large amounts of polyphenols, flavonoids, functional proteins, and lipids. Cell experiments revealed that TFENs showed strong cytotoxicities against cancer cells due to the stimulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) amplification. The increased intracellular ROS amounts could not only trigger mitochondrial damage, but also arrest cell cycle, resulting in the in vitro anti-proliferation, anti-migration, and anti-invasion activities against breast cancer cells. Further mice investigations demonstrated that TFENs after intravenous (i.v.) injection or oral administration could accumulate in breast tumors and lung metastatic sites, inhibit the growth and metastasis of breast cancer, and modulate gut microbiota. This study brings new insights to the green production of natural exosome-like nanoplatform for the inhibition of breast cancer and its lung metastasis via i.v. and oral routes. Exosome-like nanovesicles from edible tea flowers induced mitochondrial damage, cell cycle arrest, cell apoptosis, microbiota modulation, and further inhibited the growth of breast tumors and their lung metastasis. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of an efficient electrochemical sensor for the detection of furazolidone antibiotics is important for drug analysis and environmental monitoring. In this work, we present a study reporting the detection of furazolidone by polyelectrolyte poly(diallyldimethyl-ammonium chloride) (PDDA) assembled GO and MXene composite (GM-P) modified screen printed electrodes. The GM-P composites were prepared utilizing an efficient and rapid ultrasound-assisted self-assembly strategy. The robust and stable GM-P consisting of two-dimensional MXene and GO flakes can effectively inhibit the aggregation of the two and increase the surface area, thus providing abundant active sites to promote the penetration of electrolytes, attachment of furazolidone (FZD), and thus improve the electrochemical detection performance. Based on this, the electrochemical sensor possesses favorable electrochemical sensing performance for FZD, including wide linear detection range, low detection limit and high sensitivity. In addition, the sensor was very successful in detecting FZDs in tap and river water, highly substantiating the potential of its application in real-world samples. Thus, this work not only provides a high-performance electrode for electrochemical sensing, but also a simple and practical strategy for constructing MXene or GO composites, which have great potential for supercapacitors or batteries. [Display omitted] • The composites were prepared using an efficient and fast ultrasound-assisted self-assembly strategy. • PDDA with positive charge bridged between MXene and Graphene oxide nanosheets. • The strong and stable graphene oxide-MXene-PDDA can effectively inhibit the re-accumulation or aggregation of both. • Reduced graphene oxide-MXene-PDDA electrochemical sensor has good electrochemical sensing performance for furazolidone (FZD). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-entropy perovskite thin films, as the prototypical representative of the high-entropy oxides with novel electrical and magnetic features, have recently attracted great attention. Here, we reported the electronic structure and charge transport properties of sol-gel-derived high-entropy Ba(Zr 0.2 Sn 0.2 Ti 0.2 Hf 0.2 Nb 0.2)O 3 thin films annealed at various temperatures. By means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and absorption spectrum, it is found that the conduction-band-minimum shifts downward and the valence-band-maximum shifts upward with the increase of annealing temperature, leading to the narrowed band gap. Electrical resistance measurements confirmed a semiconductor-like behavior for all the thin films. Two charge transport mechanisms, i.e. , the thermally-activated transport mechanism at high temperatures and the activation-less transport mechanism at low temperatures, are identified by a self-consistent analysis method. These findings provide a critical insight into the electronic band structure and charge transport behavior of Ba(Zr 0.2 Sn 0.2 Ti 0.2 Hf 0.2 Nb 0.2)O 3 , validating it as a compelling high-entropy oxide material for future electronic/energy-related technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The brain responds highly variably to identical sensory inputs, but there is no consensus on the nature of this variability. We explore this question using cortex-wide optical voltage imaging and whisker stimulation in awake mice. Clustering analysis reveals that the sensory-evoked activity propagates over the cortex via distinct pathways associated with distinct behavioral states. The pathway taken by each trial is independent of the level of primary sensory-evoked activation but is partially predictable by the spatiotemporal features of the preceding cortical spontaneous activity patterns. The sensory inputs reduce trial-to-trial variability in brain activity and alter temporal autocorrelation in spatial activity pattern evolutions, suggesting non-linear interactions between evoked activities and spontaneous activities. Further, evoked activities and spontaneous activities occupy different positions in the state space, suggesting that sensory inputs can intricately interact with the internal state to generate large-scale evoked activity patterns not frequented by spontaneous brain states. [Display omitted] • Sensory-evoked activity propagates over the cortex via distinct pathways • The evoked pathway relates to distinct behavior states • Activity pathways are partially predicted by preceding spontaneous activity • Evoked and spontaneous activities interact non-linearly and occupy distinct states Liu et al. investigate the interactions between spontaneous and sensory-evoked cortical electrical activities. They find that distinct cortical propagation trajectories are associated with distinct behavior states, that preceding spontaneous activity can partially predict the response activity trajectory, and that spontaneous and evoked activities occupy different regions in state space and interact non-linearly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge graph (KG) techniques have achieved successful results in many tasks, especially in semantic web and natural language processing domains. In recent years, representation learning on KG has been successfully applied to e-business applications, such as event-driven automatic investment strategies. However, there is still limited research about learning events' influence on KG for modern quantitative investment. In this paper, we propose a novel event influence learning framework to predict stock market trends, called ST-Trend, leveraging enterprise knowledge graph to represent company correlation relationships, for mining the deep background knowledge of web events, with three self-supervised learning tasks. In particular, we devise two jointly self-supervised tasks to identify the relations between web events and companies. The first task is for generating ground-truth event-company correlation labels based on the enterprise knowledge graph. The second task is used to train how to identify the correlated companies of an event based on the generated correlation labels, with the encoding of web events, company features, and technical sequential data. We then design the prediction network to infer an event's influence on stock price trends of the identified correlated companies based on the enterprise KG. Finally, we perform extensive experiments on a massive real-life dataset to validate the effectiveness of our proposed framework, and the experimental results demonstrate its superior performance in predicting stock market trends via considering events' influences with the enterprise knowledge graph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can RNA transcripts of granulosa cells be used to assess oocyte quality? The possibility of predicting the developmental competence of oocytes by RNA sequencing analysis of granulosa cells was evaluated. Granulosa cell samples were collected from 29 women undergoing assisted reproductive technology treatment and divided into two groups: 14 samples from the high blastocyst rate group and 15 from the low blastocyst rate group. Ten samples from each group were selected for RNA sequencing. A total of 129 differentially expressed genes associated with high developmental competence of oocytes were identified. COL1A2 , renin and COL1A1 were selected and further examined by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Expression levels of COL1A2 and renin by qRT-PCR were consistent with the results of RNA sequencing. RNA sequencing data could provide novel marker genes for the non-invasive evaluation of oocyte quality and embryo developmental competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the process and mechanism of synergistically assisted hydrogen production from tailings and coal slurry. We have identified the optimal tailings as lead-zinc tailings through experimentation with different tailings mixed with pulverized coal. Furthermore, we have analyzed the electrochemical properties of Fe2+ and Fe3+ at different concentration gradients in a hydrochloric acid environment and our results have confirmed that the presence of Fe3+ in the simplified environment does not affect the electrochemical processes. to determine the respective roles and effects of the extract and residue of the lead-zinc tailings slurry with equal amounts of coal dust added to them, which has confirmed that it is the lead-zinc tailings extract that has the primary influence. In addition, the electrocatalysis of Fe3+ in the presence of both lead-zinc tailings and coal results in a small increase in current density, and the improvement in current density due to direct and indirect oxidation of coal particles is also extremely limited. Based on our analysis, we have concluded that the increase in current density brought about by the synergistic hydrogen production from lead-zinc tailings-supported coal is mainly due to the different oxidation processes of Fe2+. [Display omitted] • For the first time, tailings was used for assisted coal electrolysis to produce H 2. • Adding lead-zinc tailings improved the efficiency of coal electrolysis by 133.3%. • The reason for the significant increase in efficiency is the acceleration of the reaction by Fe2+ as an electron donor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulcerative colitis (UC) with its rapidly increasing incidence has become an emerging challenge for public health. Therapeutic agents are required to be specifically delivered to colon epithelial cells and macrophages with controlled release in the cytoplasm for wound healing, inflammation alleviation, and microbiota rebalance. As a promising biomaterial for accomplishing this, Antheraea pernyi silk fibroin (ApSF) was selected and engineered to form nanoparticles (NPs) loaded with the anti-inflammatory drug, resveratrol (Res). The intrinsic features of these fabricated Res-ApNPs included targeting of colonic epithelial cells and macrophages, lysosomal escape capacity, and responsiveness to pH, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and glutathione, which were pertinent to their functional units such as arginine-glycine-aspartate tripeptides, α -helixes, β -sheets, and disulfide bonds, enabling on-demand release of Res molecules in the cytoplasm of target cells. The Res-ApNP treatment restored damaged colonic epithelial barriers, polarized macrophages to type M2, alleviated inflammatory reactions, and reduced the level of intracellular ROS. Oral treatment with chitosan-alginate hydrogels embedded with Res-ApNPs substantially relieved UC symptoms, as evidenced by decreased colonic inflammation, increased synthesis of tight-junction proteins, and rebalanced intestinal microbiota. Our findings suggest that these high-performance ApSF-based NPs can be developed as effective drug carriers for oral UC treatment. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]