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Rational modulation of surface reconstruction in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) utilizing defect engineering to form efficient catalytic activity centers is a topical interest in the field of catalysis. The introduction of point defects has been demonstrated to be an effective strategy to regulate the electronic configuration of electrocatalysts, but the influence of more complex planar defects (e.g., twins and stacking faults), on their intrinsic activity is still not fully understood. This study harnesses ultrasonic cavitation for rapid and controlled introduction of different types of defects in the FeCoNi/FeAl2O4 hybrid coating, optimizing OER catalytic activity. Theoretical calculations and experiments demonstrate that the different defects optimize the coordination environment and facilitate the activation of surface reconstruction into true catalytic activity centers at lower potentials. Moreover, it demonstrates exceptional durability, maintaining stable oxygen production at a high current density of 300 mA cm−2 for over 120 hours. This work not only presents a novel pathway for designing advanced electrocatalysts but also deepens our understanding of defect‐engineered catalytic mechanisms, showcasing the potential for rapid and efficient enhancement of electrocatalytic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Vitiligo is an acquired autoimmune depigmented disorder characterized by the presence of white and well‐defined patches on the skin, mucous membrane, or both. It is associated with a significant disease burden and has a profoundly impacts patients' quality of life. Autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITDs) result from an autoimmune system dysregulation, leading to an erroneous immune attack on the thyroid gland. Previous observational and epidemiological studies have suggested the association between vitiligo and AITDs. However, the bidirectional cause‐effect relationship between vitiligo and AITDs has not been formally assessed. Method: Two‐sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was conducted to explore potential causal relationships between genetically increased risk of vitiligo and AITDs, using summary statistics from genome‐wide association studies in European populations. Causal effects were primarily estimated using the inverse variance weighted method, and additional quality control was performed using the MR‐Egger, weighted median, simple mode, and weight mode methods. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the robustness of the results. Results: The forward MR analysis showed a positive causal relationship between vitiligo and autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT), autoimmune hyperthyroidism (AIH), and Graves' disease (GD). The odds ratio (OR) were 1.17 (95% CI, 1.01–1.35; p = 0.04), 1.12 (95% CI, 1.03–1.22; p = 0.01), and 1.13 (95% CI, 1.06–1.20; p < 0.01), respectively. In the reverse MR analysis, a positive causal relationship was found between AIT and vitiligo, with an OR of 1.10 (95% CI, 1.01–1.35; p = 0.04). However, no causal relationship was observed between AIH (p = 0.10) or GD (p = 0.61) and vitiligo. Sensitivity analysis revealed no evidence of horizontal pleiotropy or heterogeneity. Conclusions: The genetic‐level investigation provides evidence of a genetic causal association between susceptibility to vitiligo and an increased risk of AITDs. Additionally, the results demonstrate a genetic causal association between susceptibility to AIT and an increased risk of vitiligo, while not indicating a similar association with susceptibility to AIH or GD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are more susceptible to endothelial dysfunction and cardiovascular disease (CV). Remote ischemic preconditioning (rIPC) has been proven efficient in improving endothelial function and lowering the risk of CV. However, the safety and effect of rIPC on endothelial function in patients with CKD have not been effectively assessed. Methods: 45 patients with CKD (average estimated glomerular filtration rate: 48.4 mL/min/1.73 m2) were randomly allocated to either 7‐day daily upper‐arm rIPC (4 × 5 min 200 mmHg, interspaced by 5‐min reperfusion) or control (4 × 5 min 60 mmHg, interspaced by 5‐min reperfusion). Vascular endothelial function was assessed by natural log–transformed reactive hyperemia index (LnRHI) before and after a 7‐day intervention. Arterial elasticity was assessed by augmentation index (AI). Results: The results showed that LnRHI could be improved by rIPC treatment (Pre = 0.57 ± 0.04 vs. Post = 0.67 ± 0.04, p =.001) with no changes relative to control (Pre = 0.68 ± 0.06 vs. Post = 0.64 ± 0.05, p =.470). Compared with the control group, the improvement of LnRHI was greater after rIPC treatment (rIPC vs. Control: 0.10 ± 0.03 vs. −0.04 ± 0.06, between‐group mean difference, −0.15 [95% CI, −0.27 to −0.02], p =.027), while there was no significant difference in the change of AI@75 bpm (p =.312) between the two groups. Conclusion: RIPC is safe and well tolerated in patients with CKD. This pilot study suggests that rIPC seems to have the potential therapeutic effect to improve endothelial function. Of note, further larger trials are still warranted to confirm the efficacy of rIPC in improving endothelial function in CKD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) faces challenges due to its sluggish kinetics, development of efficient and robust OER catalytic electrodes is critical for reducing the cost of hydrogen production through electrochemical water splitting. In this study, a biphasic CoNi/Zn(Fe,Al,Cr)2O4 coating, characterized by a densely organized stalagmite‐like microarray structure, is deposited on a commercial pure titanium plate, creating an exceptionally effective OER catalytic electrode. The formation of numerous metal/spinel oxide heterogeneous interfaces is demonstrated to enhance its electron transfer ability and conductivity. At high potentials, aluminum leaching and lattice oxygen consumption can facilitate deep surface reconstruction of highly active Fe‐doped CoNiOOH phase inducing electrochemical activation, further optimizing thermodynamic barrier of the fundamental reaction step. Ultimately, this electrode showcases exceptional OER catalytic performance (low overpotential of 248 and 335 mV to deliver the current density of 10 and 100 mA cm−2) compared to commercial IrO2 catalyst (overpotential of ≈310 mV at 10 mA cm−2). Moreover, it demonstrates high current stability sustaining a current density of 500 mA cm−2 for 100 h. This work deepens the comprehension of the surface reconstruction process in OER and, more broadly, introduces a new avenue for designing and enhancing the performance of catalytic materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the solution‐diffusion model of pervaporation (PV) technique, the development of thin‐film composite membranes (TFC) with a highly hydrophilic surface and hydrophobic internal structure is more conducive to the rapid adsorption and desorption of water molecules to overcome the trade‐off effect between flux and separation selectivity. Herein, the polyamide PV membrane was fabricated via interfacial polymerization (IP) with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) and polyethylenimine (PEI) as organic and aqueous phase monomer, respectively, on the hydrolyzed polyacrylonitrile (HPAN) substrate. Subsequently, the hydrophilic modification layer was prepared via sodium alginate (SA) crosslinking with Ca2+ to form the egg‐box network. The results indicated the optimized TFC membrane exhibited high separation factor of 525.1 with desirable permeation flux of 2083.9 g m−2 h−1 for the pervaporation dehydration 85 wt% ethanol/water solution at 70°C. The modification method of hydrophilic surface opens up new avenues for the preparation of PV membrane with high separation performance and low‐cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemical looping gasification (CLG) is a promising method to realize the resource utilization of solid waste. Chemical looping co‐gasification (CLCG) attracts much attention as it can fully utilize the synergistic effects between different types of fuels to improve the quality of gasification products. The CLCG characteristics of water hyacinth and different solid wastes, including straw, polypropylene, and sludge, are studied using lean iron ore as oxygen carriers (OCs). It is shown in the results that these solid wastes have synergistic effects on the CLG of water hyacinth to some extent. The addition of straw has a positive impact on gas production and H2/CO ratio, while the introduction of polypropylene and sludge focuses on improving gas production and H2/CO ratio, respectively. In addition, the optimal mixing ratios between water hyacinth and different solid waste are water hyacinth: straw = 50:50; water hyacinth: polypropylene 25:75; and water hyacinth: sludge = 75:25, respectively. The mixing of water hyacinth with polypropylene exhibits better gasification performance, in terms of the total gas yield of 1.27 Nm3 kg−1 and the H2/CO ratio of 1.76 at the mixing ratio of 25:75. This implies that the CLCG of biomass and polypropylene has better application prospect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste plastics represent major environmental and economic burdens due to their ubiquity, slow breakdown rates, and inadequacy of current recycling routes. Polyethylenes are particularly problematic, because they lack robust recycling approaches despite being the most abundant plastics in use today. We report a novel chemical and biological approach for the rapid conversion of polyethylenes into structurally complex and pharmacologically active compounds. We present conditions for aerobic, catalytic digestion of polyethylenes collected from post‐consumer and oceanic waste streams, creating carboxylic diacids that can then be used as a carbon source by the fungus Aspergillus nidulans. As a proof of principle, we have engineered strains of A. nidulans to synthesize the fungal secondary metabolites asperbenzaldehyde, citreoviridin, and mutilin when grown on these digestion products. This hybrid approach considerably expands the range of products to which polyethylenes can be upcycled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicle detection plays an important role in intelligent transportation systems and security. Using the original Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) directly for vehicle detection, lacks accuracy and stability. Moreover, most of the state‐of‐the‐art methods need cost a lot of time to inference. Vehicle detection is often used in complex traffic environments. Therefore, faster detection speed and higher detection accuracy are required. This study is aimed at developing a trade‐off between accuracy and speed vehicle detection framework based on the SSD algorithm. To improve the multi‐scale detection performance of SSD, semantic information, detailed features and receptive fields are combined to propose the feature pyramid enhancement strategy (FPES). On the other hand, the cascade detection mechanism is proposed to strengthen the positioning capability of SSD and an adaptive threshold acquisition method for object detection module (ODM) stage to improve model accuracy. Finally, a more efficient convolutional network is deployed through network slimming. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves state‐of‐the‐art performance on UA‐DETRAC and Udacity benchmarks. Interestingly, the inference time is the lowest for the proposed method than the state‐of‐the‐art methods, promising its application for fast and effective vehicle detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Heat‐induced composite gels were prepared with 30 mg mL−1 pork myofibrillar protein (MP) and chickpea protein isolate (CPI) (0, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 g kg−1) in 0.6 mol L−1 NaCl, at pH 7.0. The gel strength, water‐holding capacity, rheological properties, and microstructure of MP‐CPI composite gels were investigated. RESULTS: Chickpea protein isolate improved (P < 0.05) gel strength and water‐holding capacity of the MP composite gels. The rheological properties of MP‐CPI composite gels were improved significantly by the addition of CPI. Meanwhile, the effects of CPI on the storage modulus of composite gels were positively correlated with the increased addition of CPI. Furthermore, according to low‐field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF‐NMR) results, the addition of CPI reduced the relaxation time of the composite gels and the relaxation peak area of free water, indicating that CPI could improve the water‐holding capacity of MP‐CPI composite gels. The microstructure of MP‐CPI composite gels presented smaller and more uniform pores, which means that more water could be retained. CONCLUSION: The addition of chickpea protein isolate improved the gel strength, water‐holding capacity, rheological properties, and microstructure of MP gels, indicating that CPI could be a potential protein additive to improve the microstructure, texture, and functional quality of meat products. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cover Picture: Conversion of Polyethylenes into Fungal Secondary Metabolites (Angew. Polyethylenes are first cleaved into carboxylic diacids using catalytic oxidation. Polyethylenes are first cleaved into carboxylic diacids using catalytic oxidation. [Extracted from the article]

Keywords: Biosynthesis; Catalysis; Polyethylenes; Synthetic Biology; Upcycling EN Biosynthesis Catalysis Polyethylenes Synthetic Biology Upcycling 1 1 1 01/19/23 20230123 NES 230123 B A novel, two-step chemical-biological approach b converts post-consumer polyethylenes into structurally diverse and pharmacologically active fungal natural products, as reported by Travis J. Williams, Clay C. C. Wang et al. in their Research Article (e202214609). Polyethylenes are first cleaved into carboxylic diacids using catalytic oxidation. Polyethylenes are first cleaved into carboxylic diacids using catalytic oxidation. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper, a new scheme for generating a wide gamut of structural colors on the thin‐film‐stack‐based (TFSB) substrates is proposed. The TFSB surfaces consist of titanium/random gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and titanium/ random gold and copper nanoparticles (Au+CuNPs), which can trigger more resonance absorption and widen the color gamut. The electric fields in two designed structures are simulated, and the results showed that the random distribution of AuNPs and Au+CuNPs enhance the uniform local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) response. This enhancement is crucial in broadening the coverage of the reflection spectrum, which enables the generation of a wide range of colors, including green and red. The influence of laser parameters on the color of TFSB substrates and tested their durability in terms of time is analyzed. Finally, a color palette and made structural color patterns on TFSB by nanosecond pulsed laser are prepared. The proposed new scheme can be easily fabricated by magnetron sputtering without requiring additional procedures, which can open new perspectives in plasmonic colors. This work demonstrates that the promising potential of methods in creating a wide color gamut on metallic surfaces. Additionally, it serves as a means to store information for the preservation and protection of traditional cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]