Macro Perspectives and New Directions in the Studies of Chinese Overseas

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Sclerotic injection in the treatment of lymphatic malformation in children: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Lymphatic malformation is a rare vascular malformation, which is more common in children. It was mainly treated by surgery in the past, but there were many side effects and the recurrence rate was high. Sclerosing agent injection therapy is another important treatment, which has been used in clinic, but the evaluation of its efficacy and safety is lack of reliable evidence-based medicine. This study aims to systematically study the efficacy and safety of sclerotherapy injection in the treatment of lymphatic malformations in children. Methods: CNKI, Wanfang, VIP and China Biomedical Database, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, will be searched by computer. Randomized controlled Trials (RCTs), Controlled clinical Trials (CCTs), cohort studies and case series studies will be searched from the establishment of the database to December 2020 for the treatment of lymphatic malformations in children. The language is limited to English and Chinese. Two researchers independently carry out data extraction and literature quality evaluation of the included studies, qualitatively and systematically evaluate the studies that cannot be analyzed by meta, and analyze the studies suitable by meta-analysis with Stata 14.0 software. Results: This study will evaluate the efficacy and safety of sclerosing agent injection in the treatment of lymphatic malformations in children by evaluating the total effective rate, incidence of adverse reactions and recurrence rate. Conclusion: This study will provide evidence-based evidence for the treatment of children with lymphatic malformations by sclerosing injectio

Bibliometric Analysis of Global Scientific Research on lncRNA: A Swiftly Expanding Trend

To investigate trends in long-noncoding (lnc) RNA research systematically, we compared the contribution of publications among different regions, institutions, and authors. Publications on lncRNA were retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) from 1975 to 2017. A total of 3879 papers were identified, and together they were cited 62967 times. The literature on lncRNA had been continuously growing since 2006, and the expansion might continue at a rapid pace until around 2021. China contributed the greatest proportion (63.47%) of lncRNA publications, and the USA ranked second in the number of publications (944 articles), while it had the highest citation frequency (43168 times) and H-index (97). The journal Oncotarget has the greatest number of publications on lncRNA research, with 305 papers. The keywords could be stratified into two clusters: cluster 1 (application) and cluster 2 (characteristics). Correspondingly, the “TNM stage,” “epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT),” “cell apoptosis,” and “overall survival” are research hotspots since 2015. Thus, research on lncRNA showed a swiftly expanding trend, with China making the largest contribution. The focus on lncRNA is gradually shifting from “characteristics” to “application.

Stretchable conductive fibers based on a cracking control strategy for wearable electronics

Stretchability plays an important role in wearable devices. Repeated stretching often causes the conductivity dramatically decreasing due to the damage of the inner conductive layer, which is a fatal and undesirable issue in this field. Herein, a convenient rolling strategy to prepare conductive fibers with high stretchability based on a spiral structure is proposed. With the simple rolling design, low resistance change can be obtained due to confined elongation nof the gold thin-film cracks, which is caused by the encapsulated effect in such a structure. When the fiber is under 50% strain, the resistance change (R/R0) is about 1.5, which is much lower than a thin film at the same strain (R/R0 ≈ 10). The fiber can even afford a high load strain (up to 100%), but still retain good conductivity. Such a design further demonstrates its capability when it is used as a conductor to confirm signal transfer with low attenuation, which can also be woven into textile to fabricate wearable electronics.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore

Exosome-Drug Conjugates Delivery: a Promising Strategy for Improving the Solubility and Bioavailability of Artesunate

Artesunate (ATS) is considered the most widely employed artemisnin derivative in the treatment of Plasmodium falciparum malaria. However, poor solubility and low bioavailability of ATS limit its further clinical application. Herein, we developed a new strategy based on the exosome-drug conjugation (EDC) using the milk-derived exosomes for ATS delivery. The exosome-ATS conjugates (EACs) which formed via a facile bio-conjugation of ATS to the exosomal surface, have been demonstrated to be able to boost the solubility and bioavailability of ATS. Maximal improvement of 71.4-fold in the solubility of ATS was attained using EACs. The corresponding entrapment efficiency and drug loading capacity were found to be 90.3% and 73.9% for EACs, respectively. Further, in vivo pharmacokinetics study manifested that a nearly 5-fold higher peak plasma concentration (Cmax) of ATS than the free ATS was achieved by oral administration of EACs, leading to maximum 2.6-fold improved bioavailability of ATS. Moreover, EACs displayed a distinct sustained-release profile of maximum 36.2-fold prolonged half-life of ATS via intravenous delivery. We reported that for the first time the administration of EACs could be a potential drug delivery strategy for ameliorating the pharmacokinetic profile of ATS based on our encouraging results and hoped that our work opened up a new avenue for the development of EDC delivery system

Enhanced Crystalline Phase Purity of CH₃NH₃PbI_3–<i>x</i>Cl<i>_x</i> Film for High-Efficiency Hysteresis-Free Perovskite Solar Cells

Despite rapid successful developments toward promising perovskite solar cells (PSCs) efficiency, they often suffer significant hysteresis effects. Using synchrotron-based grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) with different probing depths by varying the incident angle, we found that the perovskite films consist of dual phases with a parent phase dominant in the interior and a child phase with a smaller (110) interplanar space (<i>d</i>₍₁₁₀₎) after rapid thermal annealing (RTA), which is a widely used post treatment to improve the crystallization of solution-processed perovskite films for high-performance planar PSCs. In particular, the child phase composition gradually increases with decreasing depth till it becomes the majority on the surface, which might be one of the key factors related to hysteresis in fabricated PSCs. We further improve the crystalline phase purity of the solution-processed CH₃NH₃PbI_3–<i>x</i>Cl<i>_x</i> perovskite film (referred as <i>g</i>-perovskite) by using a facile gradient thermal annealing (GTA), which shows a uniformly distributed phase structure in pinhole-free morphology with less undercoordinated Pb and I ions determined by synchrotron-based GIXRD, grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Regardless of device structures (conventional and inverted types), the planar heterojunction PSCs employing CH₃NH₃PbI_3–<i>x</i>Cl<i>_x</i> <i>g</i>-perovskite films exhibit negligible hysteresis with a champion power conversion efficiency of 17.04% for TiO₂-based conventional planar PSCs and 14.83% for poly­(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene:poly­(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS)-based inverted planar PSCs. Our results indicate that the crystalline phase purity in CH₃NH₃PbI_3–<i>x</i>Cl<i>_x</i> perovskite film, especially in the surface region, plays a crucial role in determining the hysteresis effect and device performance

<i>In Situ</i> Observation of Thermal Proton Transport through Graphene Layers

Protons can penetrate through single-layer graphene, but thicker graphene layers (more than 2 layers), which possess more compact electron density, are thought to be unfavorable for penetration by protons at room temperature and elevated temperatures. In this work, we developed an <i>in situ</i> subsecond time-resolved grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction technique, which fully realizes the real-time observation of the thermal proton interaction with the graphene layers at high temperature. By following the evolution of interlayer structure during the protonation process, we demonstrated that thermal protons can transport through multilayer graphene (more than 8 layers) on nickel foil at 900 °C. In comparison, under the same conditions, the multilayer graphenes are impermeable to argon, nitrogen, helium, and their derived ions. Complementary <i>in situ</i> transport measurements simultaneously verify the penetration phenomenon at high temperature. Moreover, the direct transport of protons through graphene is regarded as the dominant contribution to the penetration phenomenon. The thermal activation, weak interlayer interaction between layers, and the affinity of the nickel catalyst may all contribute to the proton transport. We believe that this method could become one of the established approaches for the characterization of the ions intercalated with 2D materials <i>in situ</i> and in real-time