Encoded sewing soft textile robots.

Incorporating soft actuation with soft yet durable textiles could effectively endow the latter with active and flexible shape morphing and motion like mollusks and plants. However, creating highly programmable and customizable soft robots based on textiles faces a longstanding design and manufacturing challenge. Here, we report a methodology of encoded sewing constraints for efficiently constructing three-dimensional (3D) soft textile robots through a simple 2D sewing process. By encoding heterogeneous stretching properties into three spatial seams of the sewed 3D textile shells, nonlinear inflation of the inner bladder can be guided to follow the predefined spatial shape and actuation sequence, for example, tendril-like shape morphing, tentacle-like sequential manipulation, and bioinspired locomotion only controlled by single pressure source. Such flexible, efficient, scalable, and low-cost design and formation methodology will accelerate the development and iteration of soft robots and also open up more opportunities for safe human-robot interactions, tailored wearable devices, and health care.

Efficacy and safety of roxadustat for anaemia in dialysis-dependent and non-dialysis-dependent chronic kidney disease patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

AIMS: Renal anaemia is a common complication of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Roxadustat is the first-in-class oral hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor for the treatment of anaemia. In this systematic review, we aimed to investigate the efficacy and safety of roxadustat in the treatment of anaemia in CKD patients. METHODS: PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and ClinicalTrials.gov databases were searched from their inception to February 2021 for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that compared the efficacy and safety of roxadustat to those of an erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA) or a placebo in treating anaemia in CKD patients. RESULTS: Nine RCTs involving 2743 patients were found. The meta-analysis showed that roxadustat increased haemoglobin (Hb) level by 0.91 g/dL (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.47-1.34, P < .05), transferrin level by 0.50 mg/dL (95% CI: 0.34-0.65, P < .05), and total iron-binding capacity by 50.64 µg/dL (95% CI: 36.21-65.07, P < .05) in CKD patients. Decreases in hepcidin (mean difference [MD] = -23.16, 95% CI: -37.12 to -9.19, P < .05) and ferritin (MD = -38.35, 95% CI: -67.41 to -9.29, P < .05) levels were also observed. There was no significant difference in the incidence of adverse events (AEs) (OR: 1.12, 95% CI: 0.95-1.32, P = .17) between the roxadustat and control groups; however, the incidence of serious AEs in the roxadustat group was significantly higher than that in the ESA group (OR: 1.33, 95% CI: 1.06-1.68, P < .05). CONCLUSION: Roxadustat can significantly improve renal anaemia in CKD patients by increasing Hb level and iron metabolism. However, attention must be paid to the risk of SAEs during treatment.

A study of the microwave actuation of a liquid crystalline elastomer.

We present a method for actuating LCE materials by microwave radiation. The microwave actuation performance of a polysiloxane-based nematic liquid crystalline elastomer (LCE) was investigated. The microwave-material interaction caused a dipolar loss, which created a heating effect to trigger the nematic-isotropic transition of the LCE matrix, thus leading to the deformation actuation of the LCE material. This energy conversion from radiant energy to thermal energy provided a contactless pathway to actuate the LCE material without the aid of other components acting as energy converters. The LCE demonstrated rapid maximum contraction upon microwave irradiation, and this microwave-stimulated response was fully reversible when the microwave irradiation was switched off. More importantly, the microwave actuation exhibited superiority relative to photo-actuation, which is the usual method of contactless actuation. The microwaves can penetrate the opaque thick barriers to effectively actuate the LCE due to their strong penetrability; they can also penetrate multiple LCE samples and actuate them almost simultaneously. By taking advantage of the salient features of microwave actuation, a microwave detector system, implementing the LCE as an actuator material, was fabricated. This demonstrated the performance of monitoring microwave irradiation intensities with good sensitivity and convenient manipulation.

Variable-Temperature Electron Transport and Dipole Polarization Turning Flexible Multifunctional Microsensor beyond Electrical and Optical Energy.

Humans are undergoing a fateful transformation focusing on artificial intelligence, quantum information technology, virtual reality, etc., which is inseparable from intelligent nano-micro devices. However, the booming of "Big Data" brings about an even greater challenge by growing electromagnetic radiation. Herein, an innovative flexible multifunctional microsensor is proposed, opening up a new horizon for intelligent devices. It integrates "non-crosstalk" multiple perception and green electromagnetic interference shielding only in one pixel, with satisfactory sensitivity and fast information feedback. Importantly, beneficial by deep insight into the variable-temperature electromagnetic response, the microsensor tactfully transforms the urgent threat of electromagnetic radiation into "wealth," further integrating self-power. This result will refresh researchers' realization of next-generation devices, ushering in a new direction for aerospace engineering, remote sensing, communications, medical treatment, biomimetic robot, prosthetics, etc.

Thermally Driven Transport and Relaxation Switching Self-Powered Electromagnetic Energy Conversion.

Electromagnetic energy radiation is becoming a "health-killer" of living bodies, especially around industrial transformer substation and electricity pylon. Harvesting, converting, and storing waste energy for recycling are considered the ideal ways to control electromagnetic radiation. However, heat-generation and temperature-rising with performance degradation remain big problems. Herein, graphene-silica xerogel is dissected hierarchically from functions to "genes," thermally driven relaxation and charge transport, experimentally and theoretically, demonstrating a competitive synergy on energy conversion. A generic approach of "material genes sequencing" is proposed, tactfully transforming the negative effects of heat energy to superiority for switching self-powered and self-circulated electromagnetic devices, beneficial for waste energy harvesting, conversion, and storage. Graphene networks with "well-sequencing genes" (w = Pc /Pp > 0.2) can serve as nanogenerators, thermally promoting electromagnetic wave absorption by 250%, with broadened bandwidth covering the whole investigated frequency. This finding of nonionic energy conversion opens up an unexpected horizon for converting, storing, and reusing waste electromagnetic energy, providing the most promising way for governing electromagnetic pollution with self-powered and self-circulated electromagnetic devices.

Thermal frequency shift and tunable microwave absorption in BiFeO3 family.

Tunable frequency is highly sought-after task of researcher, because of the potential for applications in selecting frequency, absorber, imaging and biomedical diagnosis. Here, we report the original observation of thermal frequency shift of dielectric relaxation in La/Nd doped BiFeO3 (BFO) in X-band from 300 to 673 K. It exhibits an unexpected result: the relaxation shifts to lower frequency with increasing temperature. The relaxation maximally shifts about a quarter of X-band. The nonlinear term of lattice vibration plays an important role in the frequency shift. The frequency shift leads to tuning microwave absorption, which almost covers the whole X-band by changing temperature. Meanwhile, the great increase of dielectric loss of La/Nd doped BFO due to thermal excited electron hopping enhances microwave absorption above ~460 and ~480 K, respectively. The microwave absorption of La/Nd doped BFO surpasses -20 dB at 673 K, and the minimum reflection loss of La doped BFO reaches -39 dB. These results open a new pathway to develop BFO-based materials in electromagnetic functional materials and devices for tunable frequency, stealth and thermal imaging at long wavelength.

Reduced graphene oxides: light-weight and high-efficiency electromagnetic interference shielding at elevated temperatures.

Chemical graphitized r-GOs, as the thinnest and lightest material in the carbon family, exhibit high-efficiency electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding at elevated temperature, attributed to the cooperation of dipole polarization and hopping conductivity. The r-GO composites show different temperature-dependent imaginary permittivities and EMI shielding performances with changing mass ratio.

Electronic scattering leads to anomalous thermal conductivity of n-type cubic silicon carbide in the high-temperature region.

This study simulates thermal conductivity via a carrier scattering mechanism and the related parameters are obtained based on first principles for intrinsic and doped silicon carbide (SiC) over a temperature range of 300-1450 K. The theoretical analysis results show that the thermal conductivity decreases with increasing temperature along each orientation for both cubic SiC (3C-SiC) and doped SiC. Compared with traditional calculations, the thermal conductivity of doped SiC is larger than that of intrinsic SiC in the high-temperature region. In particular, the n-type thermal conductivity is higher than the p-type thermal conductivity because of the scattering probability between electrons and the ionization impurity increasing with the temperature. Our studies are important to a further understanding of thermal transportation.

Combination of apoptin with photodynamic therapy induces nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell death in vitro and in vivo.

Photodynamic therapy has been developed as a viable treatment for cancer, while apoptin is an apoptosis-inducing protein. This study was undertaken to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of apoptin with photodynamic therapy (PDT) in the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). RT-PCR and western blotting were used to detect the expression of apoptin in CNE-2 NPC cells. MTT and flow cytometry analysis were used to detect cell proliferation and cell apoptosis, respectively. Transmission electron microscopy was used to observe cell structures. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was used to observe the xenograft morphology. The expression of apoptin was analyzed by RT-PCR and western blotting in CNE-2 cells stably transfected with PVP3 plasmid. Apoptin restrained cell proliferation and enhanced cell apoptosis compared to controls. Furthermore, we demonstrated that apoptin augmented the effect of PDT with stronger cell proliferation restraint and cell apoptosis and induced severe ultrastructural morphology changes compared to controls. Additionally, we found that the combination of apoptin and PDT produced the strongest inhibition of xenograft growth and tumor necrosis in in vivo experiments. Collectively, we show that apoptin in combination with PDT has a better therapeutic effect in NPC than PDT therapy or apoptin gene therapy alone.

Beta-MnO2/SiO2 core-shell nanorods: synthesis and dielectric properties.

Large-scale beta-MnO2/SiO2 core-shell nanorods were synthesized by hydrolysis process. The product was characterized by XRD, EDS, SEM and TEM. The thickness of the SiO2 shell layer is about 3 nm approximately 5 nm, which can be tuned by changing the amount of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and the reaction time. The dielectric properties of the synthesized core-shell nanorods at the temperature range from 373 K to 773 K in X-band were investigated in detail and the mechanism of the dielectric response was discussed. The dielectric loss of the SiO2-coated MnO2 nanorods at 773 K was about twice than that at 373 K. The high dielectric loss is mainly attributed to the interfacial polarization and the electromagnetic impedance match between the SiO2 shell layer and MnO2 core layer. The quantitative formula between the permittivity of beta-MnO2/SiO2 core-shell nanorods and the thickness of the SiO2 shell is established, which can be used to tune the dielectric properties of the core-shell nanorods through controlling the thickness of the SiO2 shell layer.

DNA word set design based on minimum free energy.

The problem of data and information encoding on DNA bears an increasing interest for both biological and nonbiological applications of biomolecular computing. Recent experimental and theoretical advances have produced and tested to obtain large code sets of oligonucleotides to support virtually any kind of application. In this paper, we have developed an algorithm to design DNA short-word sets based on minimum free energy (MFE) criteria. The MFE constraint is the minimum value among free energies of all the possible structures and the effective approach to control the generation of unexpected secondary structure of DNA sequences may cause error. The algorithm is constructive and directly produces the actual DNA words of the sets, unlike other academic and statistical numbers. According to the previous values, our experimental results can succeed in generating better DNA word sets based on MFE constraint. More importantly, using our results could decrease the emergence of false hybridization reaction, and improve the reliability and the scale of DNA computing.

[Predicting RNA secondary structures including pseudoknots by covariance with stacking and minimum free energy].

Prediction of RNA secondary structures including pseudoknots is a difficult topic in RNA field. Current predicting methods usually have relatively low accuracy and high complexity. Considering that the stacking of adjacent base pairs is a common feature of RNA secondary structure, here we present a method for predicting pseudoknots based on covariance with stacking and minimum free energy. A new score scheme, which combined stacked covariance with free energy, was used to assess the evaluation of base pair in our method. Based on this score scheme, we utilized an iterative procedure to compute the optimized RNA secondary structure with minimum score approximately. In each interaction, helix of high covariance and low free energy was selected until the sequences didn't form helix, so two crossing helixes which were selected from different iterations could form a pseudoknot. We test our method on data sets of ClustalW alignments and structural alignments downloaded from RNA databases. Experimental results show that our method can correctly predict the major portion of pseudoknots. Our method has both higher average sensitivity and specificity than the reference algorithms, and performs much better for structural alignments than for ClustalW alignments. Finally, we discuss the influence on the performance by the factor of covariance weight, and conclude that the best performance is achieved when lambda1 : lambda2 = 5 : 1.

Improving the prediction of RNA secondary structure by detecting and assessing conserved stems.

The prediction of RNA secondary structure can be facilitated by incorporating with comparative analysis of homologous sequences. However, most of existing comparative methods are vulnerable to alignment errors and thus are of low accuracy in practical application. Here we improve the prediction of RNA secondary structure by detecting and assessing conserved stems shared by all sequences in the alignment. Our method can be summarized by: 1) we detect possible stems in single RNA sequence using the so-called position matrix with which some possibly paired positions can be uncovered; 2) we detect conserved stems across multiple RNA sequences by multiplying the position matrices; 3) we assess the conserved stems using the Signal-to-Noise; 4) we compute the optimized secondary structure by incorporating the so-called reliable conserved stems with predictions by RNAalifold program. We tested our method on data sets of RNA alignments with known secondary structures. The accuracy, measured as sensitivity and specificity, of our method is greater than predictions by RNAalifold.