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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common and highly malignant tumor with poor outcomes, especially when it metastasizes. In this report, we present the case of a 64-year-old male patient diagnosed with recurrence and multiple metastases of HCC 7 years after surgery. As the tumor invaded the spinal canal and pressed on the spinal cord, the patient experienced paralysis in the lower limbs. After undergoing surgical resection for spinal decompression, the patient chose an innovative regimen: QL1604 200 mg every 3 weeks plus bevacizumab 675 mg every 3 weeks as first-line treatment. From July 2022 to February 2024, the patient has regularly received the treatment. During the treatment, the paralysis symptoms of the patient gradually improved, and the motor function of the lower limbs completely returned to normal. When re-evaluated his spinal cord injury, the Frankel grade of the patient was downgraded from C to E. The tumor shrank to reach a state of PR and lasted for one and a half years. QL1604 combined with bevacizumab demonstrated excellent efficacy and minimal side effects in this patient. This new combined therapy holds potential as a first-line treatment strategy.

Abstract Although cancer immunotherapy is a compelling approach against cancer, its effectiveness is hindered by the challenge of generating a robust and durable immune response against metastatic cancer cells. Nanovaccines, specifically engineered to transport cancer antigens and immune-stimulating agents to the lymph nodes, hold promise in overcoming these limitations and eliciting a potent and sustained immune response against metastatic cancer cells. This manuscript provides an in-depth exploration of the lymphatic system’s background, emphasizing its role in immune surveillance and tumor metastasis. Furthermore, it delves into the design principles of nanovaccines and their unique capability to target lymph node metastasis. The primary objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current advancements in nanovaccine design for targeting lymph node metastasis, while also discussing their potential to enhance cancer immunotherapy. By summarizing the state-of-the-art in nanovaccine development, this review aims to shed light on the promising prospects of harnessing nanotechnology to potentiate cancer immunotherapy and ultimately improve patient outcomes.

Bottom-blowing copper smelting is a bath smelting technology recently developed in China. It has the advantages of good adaptability of raw materials, high oxygen utilization and thermal efficiency, and flexible production capacity. Plume eye is a unique phenomenon observed in the bottom-blowing copper-smelting furnace where the slag on the surface of the bath is pushed away by the high-pressure gas injected from the bottom. The existence of plume eye was first confirmed by analyzing the quenched industrial samples collected above the gas injection area and then investigated by laboratory water model experiments. Combining the plant operating data and the smelting mechanism of the copper concentrate, the role of the plume eye in bottom-blowing-enhanced smelting is analyzed. It reveals that the direct dissolution of copper concentrate as a low-grade matte into the molten matte can significantly accelerate the reactions between the concentrate and oxygen. The productivity of the bottom-blowing furnace is therefore increased as a result. The effects of the gas flow rate and thickness of the matte and of the slag layer on the diameter of the plume eye were studied using water-model experiments. It was found that increasing the gas flow and the thickness of the matte and reducing the thickness of the slag can increase the diameter of the plume eye. This work is of great significance for further understanding the copper bottom-blowing smelting technology and optimizing industrial operations.

Copper smelting slag usually contains 1–6 wt% copper, which can be recovered by pyrometallurgical and flotation processes. However, the tailing slags still consist of 0.3–0.7 wt% Cu and 35–45 wt% Fe equivalents to those in the copper and iron ores, respectively. Most of the research was focused on the recovery of iron from the tailing slags. Copper can increase the mechanical strength, corrosion resistance and antibacterial property of some steels. A new process to recover copper and iron directly and fully from hot copper smelting slag is proposed to produce Cu-Fe alloy for steel production. Effects of flux, temperature, reaction time, reductant type and addition on the recovery of copper and iron were investigated by high-temperature experiments and thermodynamic calculations. It was found that, with 5% CaO and 13–16% carbon additions, most of the copper and iron can be recovered from copper smelting slag at 1350–1400 °C. The copper and iron contents of the reduced slag are lower than 0.1% and 0.5%, respectively, at optimum condition. The new process has the advantages of low energy consumption, low flux addition and high recovery of copper and iron.

Arsenic content in copper concentrates is continuously increasing worldwide. It is desirable to remove arsenic from copper in the earlier stages of copper making due to the deposition of arsenic to cathode copper during the electrorefining process. Effects of temperature, flux, and oxygen on the distribution of arsenic during copper converting and fire refining processes were studied using FactSage 8.2. The results showed that arsenic can be effectively removed by proper selection of converting and refining slags. The decrease in Fe/SiO2 or Fe/CaO ratio in the converting slag is favorable for arsenic distributed to slag. CaO is more effective than SiO2 in decreasing the liquidus temperature of the slag and arsenic content in the blister copper during the converting process. Na2O or CaO as a flux is effective to remove arsenic in the fire refining process.

The Clean Air Plan has been active in China since 2013 to mitigate severe PM2.5 pollution. In this study, we applied the air quality model WRF-Chem to simulate PM2.5 in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region of China in 2017, with the aim of assessing the air quality improvement and its associated health burden in the final year of the Clean Air Plan. To better describe the fate of various PM2.5 compositions, we updated the chemical mechanisms in the model beforehand, including heterogeneous sulfate reactions, aqueous secondary organic aerosol (SOA) uptake, and volatility basis set (VBS) based SOA production. Both the observation and simulation results agreed that the stringent clear air action effectively reduced the PM2.5 pollution levels by ∼ 30 %. The primary PM2.5 (−6 ∼ − 16 % yr−1) showed a more significant decreasing trend than the secondary PM2.5 (−2 ∼ − 8 % yr−1), which was mainly caused by the directivity of the clear air actions and the worsening ozone pollution in the recent years. The inconsistent decreasing trends of PM2.5 components subsequently led to an increasing proportion of secondary PM2.5. Nitrate particles, higher in the central and western YRD region, have replaced sulfate and have become the largest component of secondary inorganic aerosols year-round, except in summer, when strong ammonium nitrate evaporation occurs. In addition, SOA remains an important component (21 ∼ 22 %) especially in summer, most of which is produced from the oxidation and ageing of semi/intermediate volatile organic compounds (S/IVOC). Furthermore, we quantified the associated health impacts and found that the Clean Air Plan has largely reduced premature mortality due to PM2.5 exposure in the YRD region from 399.1 thousand to 295.7 thousand. Our study highlights the benefits of the Clean Air Plan and suggests that subsequent PM2.5 improvement should be geared more towards controlling secondary pollutants.

Surface ozone (O3) increased by ∼20% in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region of China during 2014–2020, but the aggravating trend is highly variable on interannual time and city-level space scales. Here, we employed multiple air quality observations and numerical simulation to describe the increasing but variable trend of O3 and to reveal the main driving factors behind it. In 2014–2017, the governmental air pollution control action plan was mostly against PM2.5 (mainly to control the emissions of SO2, NOx, and primary PM2.5) and effectively reduced the PM2.5 concentration by 18%–45%. However, O3 pollution worsened in the same period with an increasing rate of 4.9 μg m−3 yr−1, especially in the Anhui province, where the growth rate even reached 14.7 μg m−3 yr−1. After 2018, owing to the coordinated prevention and control of both PM2.5 and O3, volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions in the YRD region has also been controlled with a great concern, and the O3 aggravating trend in the same period has been obviously alleviated (1.1 μg m−3 yr−1). We further combined the precursor concentration and the corresponding O3 formation regime to explain the observed trend of O3 in 2014–2020. The leading O3 formation regime in 2014–2017 is diagnosed as VOC-limited (21%) or mix-limited (58%), with the help of a simulated indicator HCHO/NOy. Under such condition, the decreasing NO2 (2.8% yr−1) and increasing VOCs (3.6% yr−1) in 2014–2017 led to a rapid increment of O3. With the continuous reduction in NOx emission and further in ambient NOx/VOCs, the O3 production regime along the Yangtze River has been shifting from VOC-limited to mix-limited, and after 2018, the mix-limited regime has become the dominant O3 formation regime for 55% of the YRD cities. Consequently, the decreases of both NOx (3.3% yr−1) and VOCs (7.7% yr−1) in 2018–2020 obviously slowed down the aggravating trend of O3. Our study argues that with the implementation of coordinated regional reduction of NOx and VOCs, an effective O3 control is emerging in the YRD region.

This study analyzed the effectiveness of temporary emission control measures on air quality of Nanjing, China during the Jiangsu Development Summit (JDS). We employed a regional chemistry model WRF-Chem to simulate air pollutants in Nanjing and compared the results to surface observations and satellite retrievals. During the JDS, air pollutant emissions from industry and transportation sectors largely decreased by 50–67% due to the short-term emission control measures such as reducing coal combustions, shutting down factories, and partially limiting traffic. Benefiting from the emission control, the simulated concentrations of PM2.5, NO2, SO2, CO and VOCs in Nanjing decreased by 17%, 20%, 20%, 19%, and 15% respectively, consistent with the surface and satellite observations. However, both the observed and simulated O3 increased by 3–48% during the JDS, which was mainly due to the remarkable NOx emission reduction (26%) in the downtown of Nanjing where the O3 production regime was mainly VOC-controlled. In addition, the atmospheric oxidation capacity and further the sulfur oxidation ratio, were facilitated by the elevated O3, which led to variable mitigation efficiencies of different secondary PM2.5 compositions. Our study offers an opportunity for understanding the coordinated control of PM2.5 and O3 in typical city clusters, and can provide implications for future mitigation actions.

Satellite-based inverse modeling has the potential to drive aerosol precursor emissions, but its efficacy for improving chemistry transport models (CTMs) remains elusive because of its likely inherent dependence on the error characteristics of a specific CTM used for the inversion. This issue is quantitively assessed here by using three CTMs. We show that SO _2 emissions from global GEOS-Chem adjoint model and OMI SO _2 data, when combined with spatial variation of bottom-up emissions, can largely improve WRF-Chem and WRF-CMAQ forecast of SO _2 and aerosol optical depth (in reference to moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer data) in China. This suggests that the efficacy of satellite-based inversion of SO _2 emission appears to be high for CTMs that use similar or identical emission inventories. With the advent of geostationary air quality monitoring satellites in next 3 years, this study argues that an era of using top-down approach to rapidly update emission is emerging for regional air quality forecast, especially over Asia having highly varying emissions.

Work functions and magnetic moments of C adsorbed Cr/Fe(001) surfaces with different C coverages θ and magnetic alignments (parallel or antiparallel) between Cr and Fe atom moments are investigated using first-principles methods based on density functional theory. The calculated results reveal that the spin configuration plays a significant role in determining the work function of the systems. The work functions of the systems with parallel states are evidently larger than those with antiparallel states. Moreover, for θ≤0.5 ML, with increasing value of θ, the work function increases from 4.23 eV to 5.13 eV for antiparallel states and from 4.47 eV to 5.44 eV for parallel states. While for θ>0.5 ML, the work function decreases with increasing value of θ. It can be also found that, for θ≤0.5 ML, the smaller the Cr and Fe magnetic moments are, the lower the Fermi energy EF is and the larger the work functions of the systems are. Based on analysis and discussion, we conclude that the changes of the work functions and magnetic moments are mainly determined by those of Fermi level and density of state (DOS) induced by the spin polarization, the electron transfer and the surface structure. Our work strongly suggests that controlling the magnetic states is a promising way for modulating the work function of magnetic metal gate.