Synthesis of Gemini-type imidazoline quaternary ammonium salt using by-product fatty acid as corrosion inhibitor for Q235 steel.

Gemini-type imidazoline quaternary ammonium salt is a new type of environmentally friendly corrosion inhibitor has been widely used in engineering materials. However, most of them are hazardous/toxic compounds derived from petroleum-based products, which did harm to environment. In this work, an environmentally friendly Gemini-shaped imidazoline quaternary ammonium salt corrosion inhibitor (G211) was synthesized using cheap fatty acid recycled from dimer acid industry as feedstock. The corrosion inhibition effects of G211 on Q235 steel in 1 M HCl solution were investigated through weight loss experiments, potential polarization curves, and alternating current impedance spectroscopy experiments. The results show that the inhibition rate of G211 as a mixed-type inhibitor is up to 94.4% and the concentration drop as low as 500 ppm at 25 â„ƒ. The adsorption of G211 on Q235 surface follows Langmuir adsorption isothermal curve. The chemical composition of the Q235 steel surface was analyzed through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Furthermore, the possible corrosion inhibition mechanism of G211 on the surface of Q235 steel is proposed. This article not only presents an outstanding solution for safeguarding Q235 steel against corrosion but also introduces a feasible method for high-value utilization of monomer acid (MA).

Modulating the Structure and Optoelectronic Properties of Solution-Processed Bismuth-Based Nanocrystals.

Bismuth-based chalcogenides have emerged as promising candidates for next-generation, solution-processable semiconductors, mainly benefiting from their facile fabrication, low cost, excellent stability, and tunable optoelectronic properties. Particularly, the recently developed AgBiS2 solar cells have shown striking power conversion efficiencies. High performance bismuth-based photodetectors have also been extensively studied in the past few years. However, the fundamental properties of these Bi-based semiconductors have not been sufficiently investigated, which is crucial for further improving the device performance. Here, we introduce multiple time-resolved and steady-state techniques to fully characterize the charge carrier dynamics and charge transport of solution-processed Bi-based nanocrystals. It was found that the Ag-Bi ratio plays a critical role in charge transport. For Ag-deficient samples, silver bismuth sulfide thin films behave as localized state induced hopping charge transport, and the Ag-excess samples present band-like charge transport. This finding is crucial for developing more efficient Bi-based semiconductors and optoelectronic devices.

The relationship between the network of non-coding RNAs-molecular targets and N6-methyladenosine modification in tumors of urinary system.

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation, a prevalent eukaryotic post-transcriptional modification, is involved in multiple biological functions, including mediating variable splicing, RNA maturation, transcription, and nuclear export, and also is vital for regulating RNA translation, stability, and cytoplasmic degradation. For example, m6A methylation can regulate pre-miRNA expression by affecting both splicing and maturation. Non-coding RNA (ncRNA), which includes microRNAs (miRNAs), long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), and circular RNAs (circRNAs), does not encode proteins but has powerful impacts on transcription and translation. Conversely, ncRNAs may impact m6A methylation by affecting the expression of m6A regulators, including miRNAs targeting mRNA of m6A regulators, or lncRNAs, and circRNAs, acting as scaffolds to regulate transcription of m6A regulatory factors. Dysregulation of m6A methylation is common in urinary tumors, and the regulatory role of ncRNAs is also important for these malignancies. This article provides a systematic review of the role and mechanisms of action of m6A methylation and ncRNAs in urinary tumors.

Constructing Ultra-Shallow Near-Edge States for Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Cells.

Electronic band structure engineering of metal-halide perovskites (MHP) lies at the core of fundamental materials research and photovoltaic applications. However, reconfiguring the band structures in MHP for optimized electronic properties remains challenging. This article reports a generic strategy for constructing near-edge states to improve carrier properties, leading to enhanced device performances. The near-edge states are designed around the valence band edge using theoretical prediction and constructed through tailored material engineering. These states are experimentally revealed with activation energies of around 23 milli-electron volts by temperature-dependent time-resolved spectroscopy. Such small activation energies enable prolonged carrier lifetime with efficient carrier transition dynamics and low non-radiative recombination losses, as corroborated by the millisecond lifetimes of microwave conductivity. By constructing near-edge states in positive-intrinsic-negative inverted cells, a champion efficiency of 25.4% (25.0% certified) for a 0.07-cm2 cell and 23.6% (22.7% certified) for a 1-cm2 cell is achieved. The most stable encapsulated cell retains 90% of its initial efficiency after 1100 h of maximum power point tracking under one sun illumination (100 mW cm-2) at 65 °C in ambient air.

Precursor Engineering of Solution-Processed Sb2 S3 Solar Cells.

Antimony-based chalcogenides have emerged as promising candidates for next-generation thin film photovoltaics. Particularly, binary Sb2 S3 thin films have exhibited great potential for optoelectronic applications, due to the facile and low-cost fabrication, simple composition, decent charge transport and superior stability. However, most of the reported efficient Sb2 S3 solar cells are realized based on chemical bath deposition and hydrothermal methods, which require large amount of solution and are normally very time-consuming. In this work, Ag ions are introduced within the Sb2 S3 sol-gel precursors, and effectively modulated the crystallization and charge transport properties of Sb2 S3 . The crystallinity of the Sb2 S3 crystal grains are enhanced and the charge carrier mobility is increased, which resulted improved charge collection efficiency and reduced charge recombination losses, reflected by the greatly improved fill factor and open-circuit voltage of the Ag incorporated Sb2 S3 solar cells. The champion devices reached a record high power conversion efficiency of 7.73% (with antireflection coating), which is comparable with the best photovoltaic performance of Sb2 S3 solar cells achieved based on chemical bath deposition and hydrothermal techniques, and pave the great avenue for next-generation solution-processed photovoltaics.

Berberine alleviates inflammation and suppresses PLA2-COX-2-PGE2-EP2 pathway through targeting gut microbiota in DSS-induced ulcerative colitis.

Berberine, isolated from Coptis chinensis and Phellodendron amurense, can attenuate colonic injury and modulate gut microbiota disorders in ulcerative colitis (UC). However, the mechanism and causal relationship between gut microbiota and the efficacy of Berberine on UC are still unclear, which were investigated by pseudo-germ-free (PGF) mice, 16S rRNA gene analysis and transcriptome analysis in this study. The results demonstrated that Berberine improved gut microbiota disorders, colon damage, tight-junction proteins, inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines in DSS-induced colitis mice with intact gut microbiota but not in PGF mice. Besides, immune-related and inflammation-related pathways were closely related to the efficacy that Berberine alleviated colitis by regulating gut microbiota. Furthermore, Berberine reduced PGE2, PLA2, COX-2, Ptges, EP2 and p-Stat3 only in colitis mice with intact gut microbiota. In summary, our study confirms that Berberine inhibits PLA2-COX-2-PGE2-EP2 pathway in UC through gut microbiota, leading to the alleviation of inflammation in colon, which further elucidates the underlying mechanism and promotes the application of Berberine in UC.

Flexible all-organic photodetectors via universal water-assisted transfer printing.

Transfer printing of small-molecular organic semiconductors often faces challenges due to surface adhesion mismatch. Here, we developed a sacrificing-layer-assisted transfer printing technique for the deposition of small-molecular thin films. High-boiling-point ethylene glycol (EG) was doped in aqueous solution poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) as the sacrificing layer to manipulate residual water in film, which allowed chlorobenzene solution to spontaneously spread and form uniform film. The residual water guaranteed film delamination from the stamp, allowing for its transfer onto various substrates and seeding layers. As a proof of concept, laterally conductive organic photodetectors using recyclable EG-PEDOT:PSS electrodes and a small-molecular active layer were consecutively fabricated via transfer printing in ambient air. The resulting device exhibited a high on/off ratio of 711 and a fast rise time of 0.5 ms. Notably, the polymer electrode and the bulk heterojunction demonstrated unique repairability and recyclability.

Charge-Carrier Dynamics of Evaporated Bismuth-Based Chalcogenide Thin Films Probed with Time-Resolved Microwave Conductivity.

Chalcogenide-based semiconductors are emerging as a set of highly promising candidates for optoelectronic devices, owing to their low toxicity, cost-effectiveness, exceptional stability, and tunable optoelectronic properties. Nonetheless, the limited understanding of charge recombination mechanisms and trap states of these materials is impeding their further development. To fill this gap, we conducted a comprehensive study of bismuth-based chalcogenide thin films and systematically investigated the influence of post-treatments via time-resolved microwave conductivity and temperature-dependent photoluminescence. The key finding in this work is that post-treatment with Bi could effectively enhance the crystallinity and charge-carrier mobility. However, the carrier density also increased significantly after the Bi treatment. On the contrary, post-treatment of evaporated Bi2S3 thin films with sulfur could effectively increase the carrier lifetime and mobility by passivating the trap states on the grain boundaries, which is also consistent with the enhanced radiative recombination efficiency.

Densest subgraph-based methods for protein-protein interaction hot spot prediction.

BACKGROUND: Hot spots play an important role in protein binding analysis. The residue interaction network is a key point in hot spot prediction, and several graph theory-based methods have been proposed to detect hot spots. Although the existing methods can yield some interesting residues by network analysis, low recall has limited their abilities in finding more potential hot spots. RESULT: In this study, we develop three graph theory-based methods to predict hot spots from only a single residue interaction network. We detect the important residues by finding subgraphs with high densities, i.e., high average degrees. Generally, a high degree implies a high binding possibility between protein chains, and thus a subgraph with high density usually relates to binding sites that have a high rate of hot spots. By evaluating the results on 67 complexes from the SKEMPI database, our methods clearly outperform existing graph theory-based methods on recall and F-score. In particular, our main method, Min-SDS, has an average recall of over 0.665 and an f2-score of over 0.364, while the recall and f2-score of the existing methods are less than 0.400 and 0.224, respectively. CONCLUSION: The Min-SDS method performs best among all tested methods on the hot spot prediction problem, and all three of our methods provide useful approaches for analyzing bionetworks. In addition, the densest subgraph-based methods predict hot spots with only one residue interaction network, which is constructed from spatial atomic coordinate data to mitigate the shortage of data from wet-lab experiments.

lncRNA PVT1: a novel oncogene in multiple cancers.

Long noncoding RNAs are involved in epigenetic gene modification, including binding to the chromatin rearrangement complex in pre-transcriptional regulation and to gene promoters in gene expression regulation, as well as acting as microRNA sponges to control messenger RNA levels in post-transcriptional regulation. An increasing number of studies have found that long noncoding RNA plasmacytoma variant translocation 1 (PVT1) plays an important role in cancer development. In this review of a large number of studies on PVT1, we found that PVT1 is closely related to tumor onset, proliferation, invasion, epithelial-mesenchymal transformation, and apoptosis, as well as poor prognosis and radiotherapy and chemotherapy resistance in some cancers. This review comprehensively describes PVT1 expression in various cancers and presents novel approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

MHBSt167 induced autophagy promote cell proliferation and EMT by activating the immune response in L02 cells.

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis B virus can induce hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by inducing a host immune response against infected hepatocytes. C-terminally truncated middle surface protein (MHBSt) has been reported to contribute to HCC through transcriptional activation in epidemiology studies, while the underlying mechanism of MHBSt-induced HCC is unknown. METHODS: In this study, a premature stop at codon 167 in MHBS (MHBSt167) was investigated into eukaryotic expression plasmid pcDNA3.1(-). MHBSt167 expressed plasmid was transfected into the L02 cell line, cell proliferation was analyzed by CCK-8 and high-content screening assays, the cell cycle was analyzed by flow cytometry, and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and autophagy were analyzed by immunoblotting and immunofluorescence. NF-κB activation and the MHBSt167-induced immune response were analyzed by immunoblotting and immunofluorescence. IFN-α, IFN-ß and IL-1α expression were analyzed by qPCR. Autophagy inhibitors were used to analyze the relationship between the immune response and autophagy. RESULTS: The results showed that MHBSt167 promoted L02 cell proliferation, accelerated cell cycle progression from the S to G2 phase and promoted epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition through ER-stress, leading to autophagy and NF-κB activation and increased immune-related factor expression. The MHBSt167-induced acceleration of cell proliferation and the cell cycle was abolished by autophagy or NF-κB inhibitors. CONCLUSION: In summary, MHBSt167 could promote cell proliferation, accelerate cell cycle progression, induce EMT and activate autophagy through ER-stress to induce the host immune response, supporting a potential role of MHBSt167 in contributing to carcinogenesis.

Engineering the Non-Radiative Recombination of Mixed-Halide Perovskites with Optimal Bandgap for Indoor Photovoltaics.

Indoor photovoltaics have attracted increasing attention, since they can provide sustainable energy through the recycling of photon energy from household dim lighting. However, solar cells exhibiting high performance under sunlight may not perform well under indoor light conditions, mainly due to the mismatch of the irradiance spectrum. In particular, most of the indoor light sources emit visible photons with negligible near-infrared irradiance. According to the detailed balance theory, the optimal bandgap for indoor photovoltaics should be relatively larger, considering the trade-off between photocurrent and photovoltage losses. In this work, a systematic comparison of the theoretical limits of the conventional and indoor photovoltaics is presented. Then the non-radiative recombination losses are reduced by a synergetic treatment with Pb(SCN)2 and PEABr, resulting relatively high open circuit voltage of 1.29 V and power conversion efficiency of 17.32% under 1 sun illumination. Furthermore, the devices are fully characterized under weak indoor light (1000 lux, 4000 K LED) achieving a high efficiency of 37.18%, which is promising for real applications.

Interfacial Engineering of Perovskite Solar Cells with Evaporated PbI2 Ultrathin Layers.

Perovskite solar cells are one of the most promising thin-film photovoltaic techniques, which have an unprecedented progress in the last decade. It is well-recognized in the perovskite community that nonradiative recombination losses and the open-circuit voltage deficit are the dominant limiting factors to further improve the device efficiency. Recently, multiple groups have reported that lead iodide can effectively passivate both perovskite grain boundaries and the interfaces between perovskite and charge transport layers. However, most of the excess PbI2 was processed with solution methods and formed PbI2 grains, which cannot cover perovskite layers completely. It is also very challenging to spin-coat PbI2 layers directly on perovskites, which requires orthogonal solvents. In this work, we deposit additional PbI2 thin layers directly on perovskite thin films via thermal evaporation. The impact of PbI2 layers on the perovskite thin films and devices is systematically investigated. It was found that the evaporated PbI2 thin films can effectively reduce the nonradiative recombination and enhance the device performance. The optimized thickness of the PbI2 layer was determined to be around 10 nm, which results in a relatively high Voc of 1.18 V and power conversion efficiency of 21.52%.

Weighted minimum feedback vertex sets and implementation in human cancer genes detection.

BACKGROUND: Recently, many computational methods have been proposed to predict cancer genes. One typical kind of method is to find the differentially expressed genes between tumour and normal samples. However, there are also some genes, for example, 'dark' genes, that play important roles at the network level but are difficult to find by traditional differential gene expression analysis. In addition, network controllability methods, such as the minimum feedback vertex set (MFVS) method, have been used frequently in cancer gene prediction. However, the weights of vertices (or genes) are ignored in the traditional MFVS methods, leading to difficulty in finding the optimal solution because of the existence of many possible MFVSs. RESULTS: Here, we introduce a novel method, called weighted MFVS (WMFVS), which integrates the gene differential expression value with MFVS to select the maximum-weighted MFVS from all possible MFVSs in a protein interaction network. Our experimental results show that WMFVS achieves better performance than using traditional bio-data or network-data analyses alone. CONCLUSION: This method balances the advantage of differential gene expression analyses and network analyses, improves the low accuracy of differential gene expression analyses and decreases the instability of pure network analyses. Furthermore, WMFVS can be easily applied to various kinds of networks, providing a useful framework for data analysis and prediction.

Crystallization of CsPbBr3 single crystals in water for X-ray detection.

Metal halide perovskites have fascinated the research community over the past decade, and demonstrated unprecedented success in optoelectronics. In particular, perovskite single crystals have emerged as promising candidates for ionization radiation detection, due to the excellent opto-electronic properties. However, most of the reported crystals are grown in organic solvents and require high temperature. In this work, we develop a low-temperature crystallization strategy to grow CsPbBr3 perovskite single crystals in water. Then, we carefully investigate the structure and optoelectronic properties of the crystals obtained, and compare them with CsPbBr3 crystals grown in dimethyl sulfoxide. Interestingly, the water grown crystals exhibit a distinct crystal habit, superior charge transport properties and better stability in air. We also fabricate X-ray detectors based on the CsPbBr3 crystals, and systematically characterize their device performance. The crystals grown in water demonstrate great potential for X-ray imaging with enhanced performance metrics.

Layered Perovskites Enhanced Perovskite Photodiodes.

Recently, two-dimensional layered perovskites have emerged as effective additives for stabilizing conventional three-dimensional metal halide perovskites. With the addition of layered perovskites, the perovskite-based devices also exhibited enhanced optoelectronic properties, such as reduced nonradiative recombination and ionic migration, strengthened crystallinity, and anisotropic charge transport. However, the influence of the large organic cations on the performance metrics of the photodiodes is not fully understood. In this work, we systematically investigate the device performance and related optoelectronic features of the layered perovskite-enhanced perovskite photodiodes. In particular, with the addition of large organic cations to the FA0.83Cs0.17PbI3 perovskite matrix, the devices exhibited reduced dark current and noise, increased detectivity of >1013 Jones, and a consistent high speed of <100 ns. More importantly, the layered perovskite-enhanced photodiodes exhibited less hysteresis and higher breakdown voltages.

Evaporated Perovskite Thick Junctions for X-Ray Detection.

X-ray detection is widely utilized in our daily life, such as in medical diagnosis, security checking, and environmental monitoring. However, most of the commercial X-ray detectors are based on inorganic semiconductors, e.g., Si, CdTe, and Ge, which require complex and costly fabrication processes. Metal halide perovskites have recently emerged as a set of promising candidates for ionizing radiation detection, owing to the high attenuation coefficient, long carrier lifetime, and excellent charge transport properties. Perovskite single crystals have been successfully implemented in X-ray detection, but the fragile single crystals limit the device fabrication and the integration with a read-out circuit. In addition, it is hard to reach inch-size single crystals for real application. Flexible devices based on perovskite films or composite films have also been reported, but either the thickness or charge transport properties are limited by the solution processes. In this work, we introduced thermal co-evaporation to deposit highly efficient formamidinium lead iodide perovskite films. Considering the trade-off between X-ray absorption and charge transport, we optimized the active layer thickness and achieved large-area and flexible X-ray detectors with state-of-the-art device performance, including extremely low dark current and noise, fast response, and high sensitivity of 142.1 µC Gyair-1 cm-2.

Enhanced Stability of the Pharmacologically Active Lactone Form of 10-Hydroxycamptothecin by Self-Microemulsifying Drug Delivery Systems.

10-Hydroxycamptothecin (HCPT) is a DNA inhibitor of topoisomerase I and exerts antitumor activities against various types of cancer. However, reversible conversion from a pharmacologically active lactone form to an inactive carboxylate form of HCPT and poor water solubility hamper its clinical applications. To overcome these shortcomings, we designed a fine self-microemulsifying drug delivery system (SMEDDS) for HCPT to effectively protect HCPT in its active lactone form as well as improving dissolution rates. A formulation of HCPT-SMEDDS that contained ethyl oleate, D-α-tocopheryl polyethylene glycol 1000 succinate (TPGS), and polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG400) was optimized by using the central composite design and response surface methodology. Following 1:100 aqueous dilution of the optimized HCPT-SMEDDS, the droplet size of resulting microemulsions was 25.6 ± 0.7 nm, and the zeta potential was - 15.2 ± 0.4 mV. The optimized HCPT-SMEDDS appeared to stabilize the lactone moiety of HCPT with 73.6% being present in the pharmacologically active lactone forms in simulated intestinal fluid, but only 45.7% for free HCPT. Furthermore, the physically stable formulation showed the active lactone form predominated in HCPT-SMEDDS (> 95%) for 6 months under the accelerated storage condition. Meanwhile, the optimized SMEDDS formulation also significantly improved dissolution rates and membrane permeability of the lactone form of HCPT. Therefore, HCPT-SMEDDS involved designing for the ease of manufacture, and provided a potent oral dosage form for preserving its active lactone form as well as enhancing the dissolution rate.