A Mechanistic Analysis of Phase Evolution and Hydrogen Storage Behavior in Nanocrystalline Mg(BH4)2 within Reduced Graphene Oxide.

Magnesium borohydride (Mg(BH4)2, abbreviated here MBH) has received tremendous attention as a promising onboard hydrogen storage medium due to its excellent gravimetric and volumetric hydrogen storage capacities. While the polymorphs of MBH-alpha (α), beta (β), and gamma (γ)-have distinct properties, their synthetic homogeneity can be difficult to control, mainly due to their structural complexity and similar thermodynamic properties. Here, we describe an effective approach for obtaining pure polymorphic phases of MBH nanomaterials within a reduced graphene oxide support (abbreviated MBHg) under mild conditions (60-190 °C under mild vacuum, 2 Torr), starting from two distinct samples initially dried under Ar and vacuum. Specifically, we selectively synthesize the thermodynamically stable α phase and metastable β phase from the γ-phase within the temperature range of 150-180 °C. The relevant underlying phase evolution mechanism is elucidated by theoretical thermodynamics and kinetic nucleation modeling. The resulting MBHg composites exhibit structural stability, resistance to oxidation, and partially reversible formation of diverse [BH4]- species during de- and rehydrogenation processes, rendering them intriguing candidates for further optimization toward hydrogen storage applications

Quantitative analysis of contrast-enhanced ultrasound in neoadjuvant treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer: a retrospective study

PurposeTo explore the clinical value of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) quantitative analysis in the evaluation and prognosis of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).MethodsEighty-three consecutive patients undergoing neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and total mesorectal excision for LARC were retrospectively included. According to pathological results, patients were categorized into complete or incomplete response groups. Differences in ultrasonic parameters, pathological results, and clinical data between groups were evaluated. The cutoff point for a complete response as determined by quantitative analysis of CEUS was assessed using a receiver operating characteristic curve; additionally, overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were analyzed.ResultsOf the 83 patients, 12 (14.5%) achieved a complete response and 71 (85.5%) did not. There were significant between-group differences in carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels, differentiation degree, proportion of tumor occupying the lumen, anterior-posterior and superior-inferior diameters of the lesion, and intensity of enhancement (P<0.05). CEUS quantitative analysis showed significant between-group differences in peak intensity (PI) and area under the curve (AUC) values (P<0.05). The OS and PFS of patients with high PI, high AUC value, and poorly differentiated cancer were significantly worse than those with low PI, low AUC values, and moderately to highly differentiated cancer (P<0.05). High CEA levels (hazard ratio: 1.02, 95% confidence interval: 1.01–1.04; P=0.002) and low differentiation (2.72, 1.12–6.62; P=0.028) were independent risk factors for PFS and OS.ConclusionsCEUS can predict the response to neoadjuvant treatment in patients with LARC. CEUS quantitative analysis is helpful for clinical prognosis

Atomic-layered Au clusters on α-MoC as catalysts for the low-temperature water-gas shift reaction

The water-gas shift (WGS) reaction (where carbon monoxide plus water yields dihydrogen and carbon dioxide) is an essential process for hydrogen generation and carbon monoxide removal in various energy-related chemical operations. This equilibrium-limited reaction is favored at a low working temperature. Potential application in fuel cells also requires a WGS catalyst to be highly active, stable, and energy-efficient and to match the working temperature of on-site hydrogen generation and consumption units. We synthesized layered gold (Au) clusters on a molybdenum carbide (α-MoC) substrate to create an interfacial catalyst system for the ultralow-temperature WGS reaction. Water was activated over α-MoC at 303 kelvin, whereas carbon monoxide adsorbed on adjacent Au sites was apt to react with surface hydroxyl groups formed from water splitting, leading to a high WGS activity at low temperatures

RAGE Deficiency Improves Postinjury Sciatic Nerve Regeneration in Type 1 Diabetic Mice

Peripheral neuropathy and insensate limbs and digits cause significant morbidity in diabetic individuals. Previous studies showed that deletion of the receptor for advanced end-glycation products (RAGE) in mice was protective in long-term diabetic neuropathy. Here, we tested the hypothesis that RAGE suppresses effective axonal regeneration in superimposed acute peripheral nerve injury attributable to tissue-damaging inflammatory responses. We report that deletion of RAGE, particularly in diabetic mice, resulted in significantly higher myelinated fiber densities and conduction velocities consequent to acute sciatic nerve crush compared with wild-type control animals. Consistent with key roles for RAGE-dependent inflammation, reconstitution of diabetic wild-type mice with RAGE-null versus wild-type bone marrow resulted in significantly improved axonal regeneration and restoration of function. Diabetic RAGE-null mice displayed higher numbers of invading macrophages in the nerve segments postcrush compared with wild-type animals, and these macrophages in diabetic RAGE-null mice displayed greater M2 polarization. In vitro, treatment of wild-type bone marrow–derived macrophages with advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which accumulate in diabetic nerve tissue, increased M1 and decreased M2 gene expression in a RAGE-dependent manner. Blockade of RAGE may be beneficial in the acute complications of diabetic neuropathy, at least in part, via upregulation of regeneration signals

Single-molecule sequencing and optical mapping yields an improved genome of woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) with chromosome-scale contiguity

Background: Although draft genomes are available for most agronomically important plant species, the majority are incomplete, highly fragmented, and often riddled with assembly and scaffolding errors. These assembly issues hinder advances in tool development for functional genomics and systems biology. Findings: Here we utilized a robust, cost-effective approach to produce high-quality reference genomes. We report a near-complete genome of diploid woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) using single-molecule real-time sequencing from Pacific Biosciences (PacBio). This assembly has a contig N50 length of similar to 7.9 million base pairs (Mb), representing a similar to 300-fold improvement of the previous version. The vast majority (>99.8%) of the assembly was anchored to 7 pseudomolecules using 2 sets of optical maps from Bionano Genomics. We obtained similar to 24.96 Mb of sequence not present in the previous version of the F. vesca genome and produced an improved annotation that includes 1496 new genes. Comparative syntenic analyses uncovered numerous, large-scale scaffolding errors present in each chromosome in the previously published version of the F. vesca genome. Conclusions: Our results highlight the need to improve existing short-read based reference genomes. Furthermore, we demonstrate how genome quality impacts commonly used analyses for addressing both fundamental and applied biological questions.Peer reviewe

Radiation and temperature dominate the spatiotemporal variability in resilience of subtropical evergreen forests in China

Forest resilience is crucial to the mitigation of climate change, due to the enormous potential of forests to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the possible conversion of forests from net carbon sinks into carbon sources following external disturbances. Subtropical forests are suffering the highest rates of forest change, but how they are evolving in response to climate change is little known. In this study, we estimated the spatial pattern and temporal trend of the resilience of subtropical evergreen forests in China by applying the lag-one autocorrelation (AC1) method to satellite kernel normalized difference vegetation index (kNDVI) data over the past two decades and identified the influential environmental factors that affect the ecosystem resilience by developing random forest (RF) regression models. The computed long-term AC1 based on kNDVI for the 2001–2020 period depicts considerable spatial variability in the resilience of the subtropical evergreen forests in China, with lower resilience at lower latitudes. The RF regression analysis suggests that the spatial variability in the forest resilience can be re-established by forest and climatic variables, and is largely affected by climate, with the three most influential variables being solar radiation (SR, %incMSE = 20.7 ± 1.8%), vapor pressure deficit (VPD, %incMSE = 13.8 ± 0.2%) and minimum temperature (Tmin, %incMSE = 13.3 ± 1.2%). Higher forest resilience is more likely to be located in areas with less radiation stress, adequate water availability, and less warming. Trend analysis shows a declining trend for the resilience of subtropical evergreen forests in China since the 2000s but an increasing forest resilience in the last decade, which is mainly dominated by temperature changes, including average and minimum temperatures. Considering the expected warming-dominated period in times of rapid climatic change, we suggest potential critical responses for subtropical forest productivity to the disturbances should be of greater concern in the future

Single-molecule sequencing and optical mapping yields an improved genome of woodland strawberry (\u3ci\u3eFragaria vesca\u3c/i\u3e) with chromosome-scale contiguity

Background: Although draft genomes are available for most agronomically important plant species, the majority are incomplete, highly fragmented, and often riddled with assembly and scaffolding errors. These assembly issues hinder advances in tool development for functional genomics and systems biology. Findings: Here we utilized a robust, cost-effective approach to produce high-quality reference genomes.We report a near-complete genome of diploid woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) using single-molecule real-time sequencing from Pacific Biosciences (PacBio). This assembly has a contig N50 length of ~7.9 million base pairs (Mb), representing a ~300-fold improvement of the previous version. The vast majority (\u3e99.8%) of the assembly was anchored to 7 pseudomolecules using 2 sets of optical maps from Bionano Genomics. We obtained ~24.96 Mb of sequence not present in the previous version of the F. vesca genome and produced an improved annotation that includes 1496 new genes. Comparative syntenic analyses uncovered numerous, large-scale scaffolding errors present in each chromosome in the previously published version of the F. vesca genome. Conclusions: Our results highlight the need to improve existing short-read based reference genomes. Furthermore, we demonstrate how genome quality impacts commonly used analyses for addressing both fundamental and applied biological questions

Canvass: a crowd-sourced, natural-product screening library for exploring biological space

NCATS thanks Dingyin Tao for assistance with compound characterization. This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health (NIH). R.B.A. acknowledges support from NSF (CHE-1665145) and NIH (GM126221). M.K.B. acknowledges support from NIH (5R01GM110131). N.Z.B. thanks support from NIGMS, NIH (R01GM114061). J.K.C. acknowledges support from NSF (CHE-1665331). J.C. acknowledges support from the Fogarty International Center, NIH (TW009872). P.A.C. acknowledges support from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH (R01 CA158275), and the NIH/National Institute of Aging (P01 AG012411). N.K.G. acknowledges support from NSF (CHE-1464898). B.C.G. thanks the support of NSF (RUI: 213569), the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. C.C.H. thanks the start-up funds from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for support. J.N.J. acknowledges support from NIH (GM 063557, GM 084333). A.D.K. thanks the support from NCI, NIH (P01CA125066). D.G.I.K. acknowledges support from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (1 R01 AT008088) and the Fogarty International Center, NIH (U01 TW00313), and gratefully acknowledges courtesies extended by the Government of Madagascar (Ministere des Eaux et Forets). O.K. thanks NIH (R01GM071779) for financial support. T.J.M. acknowledges support from NIH (GM116952). S.M. acknowledges support from NIH (DA045884-01, DA046487-01, AA026949-01), the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs through the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program (W81XWH-17-1-0256), and NCI, NIH, through a Cancer Center Support Grant (P30 CA008748). K.N.M. thanks the California Department of Food and Agriculture Pierce's Disease and Glassy Winged Sharpshooter Board for support. B.T.M. thanks Michael Mullowney for his contribution in the isolation, elucidation, and submission of the compounds in this work. P.N. acknowledges support from NIH (R01 GM111476). L.E.O. acknowledges support from NIH (R01-HL25854, R01-GM30859, R0-1-NS-12389). L.E.B., J.K.S., and J.A.P. thank the NIH (R35 GM-118173, R24 GM-111625) for research support. F.R. thanks the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) for financial support. I.S. thanks the University of Oklahoma Startup funds for support. J.T.S. acknowledges support from ACS PRF (53767-ND1) and NSF (CHE-1414298), and thanks Drs. Kellan N. Lamb and Michael J. Di Maso for their synthetic contribution. B.S. acknowledges support from NIH (CA78747, CA106150, GM114353, GM115575). W.S. acknowledges support from NIGMS, NIH (R15GM116032, P30 GM103450), and thanks the University of Arkansas for startup funds and the Arkansas Biosciences Institute (ABI) for seed money. C.R.J.S. acknowledges support from NIH (R01GM121656). D.S.T. thanks the support of NIH (T32 CA062948-Gudas) and PhRMA Foundation to A.L.V., NIH (P41 GM076267) to D.S.T., and CCSG NIH (P30 CA008748) to C.B. Thompson. R.E.T. acknowledges support from NIGMS, NIH (GM129465). R.J.T. thanks the American Cancer Society (RSG-12-253-01-CDD) and NSF (CHE1361173) for support. D.A.V. thanks the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the National Science Foundation (CHE-0353662, CHE-1005253, and CHE-1725142), the Beckman Foundation, the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, the John Stauffer Charitable Trust, and the Christian Scholars Foundation for support. J.W. acknowledges support from the American Cancer Society through the Research Scholar Grant (RSG-13-011-01-CDD). W.M.W.acknowledges support from NIGMS, NIH (GM119426), and NSF (CHE1755698). A.Z. acknowledges support from NSF (CHE-1463819). (Intramural Research Program of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health (NIH); CHE-1665145 - NSF; CHE-1665331 - NSF; CHE-1464898 - NSF; RUI: 213569 - NSF; CHE-1414298 - NSF; CHE1361173 - NSF; CHE1755698 - NSF; CHE-1463819 - NSF; GM126221 - NIH; 5R01GM110131 - NIH; GM 063557 - NIH; GM 084333 - NIH; R01GM071779 - NIH; GM116952 - NIH; DA045884-01 - NIH; DA046487-01 - NIH; AA026949-01 - NIH; R01 GM111476 - NIH; R01-HL25854 - NIH; R01-GM30859 - NIH; R0-1-NS-12389 - NIH; R35 GM-118173 - NIH; R24 GM-111625 - NIH; CA78747 - NIH; CA106150 - NIH; GM114353 - NIH; GM115575 - NIH; R01GM121656 - NIH; T32 CA062948-Gudas - NIH; P41 GM076267 - NIH; R01GM114061 - NIGMS, NIH; R15GM116032 - NIGMS, NIH; P30 GM103450 - NIGMS, NIH; GM129465 - NIGMS, NIH; GM119426 - NIGMS, NIH; TW009872 - Fogarty International Center, NIH; U01 TW00313 - Fogarty International Center, NIH; R01 CA158275 - National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH; P01 AG012411 - NIH/National Institute of Aging; Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation; Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation; Scripps Institution of Oceanography; P01CA125066 - NCI, NIH; 1 R01 AT008088 - National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health; W81XWH-17-1-0256 - Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs through the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program; P30 CA008748 - NCI, NIH, through a Cancer Center Support Grant; California Department of Food and Agriculture Pierce's Disease and Glassy Winged Sharpshooter Board; American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC); University of Oklahoma Startup funds; 53767-ND1 - ACS PRF; PhRMA Foundation; P30 CA008748 - CCSG NIH; RSG-12-253-01-CDD - American Cancer Society; RSG-13-011-01-CDD - American Cancer Society; CHE-0353662 - National Science Foundation; CHE-1005253 - National Science Foundation; CHE-1725142 - National Science Foundation; Beckman Foundation; Sherman Fairchild Foundation; John Stauffer Charitable Trust; Christian Scholars Foundation)Published versionSupporting documentatio