Environmental Friendly Fabrication of Porous Cement Membranes via Reusable Camphene-Based Freeze-Casting Method

Inorganic membranes have been developed rapidly in recent years because of excellent anti-fouling performance, high mechanical strength and outstanding resistances to acid and alkali. However, the high production cost still restricts its large-scale industrial application. In this work, an environmental friendly unidirectional freezing method via introducing camphene as a reusable template was adapted to prepare porous cement membranes (PCMs). The naturally formed and highly aligned porous structures of PCMs could be divided into three parts: a dense layer, a transition layer and a supporting layer. With the solid content rising from 40 wt.% to 60 wt.%, the pore size of the PCMs decreased from 3.34 nm to 3.62 nm, the bovine serum albumin (BSA) rejection increased from 81.3% to 93.5% and water flux decreased from 346.8 L·m−2·h−1 to 167.3 L·m−2·h−1 (0.2 MPa). Significantly, the performance of PCMs was maintained; even the camphene was reused 20 times. Additionally, the recovery rate of camphene could be reached up to 97.16%. Therefore, this method is cost effective and environmental friendly, which endowed the PCMs great potential in water treatment

Improvement of the safe transmission distance via optimization of the photon number distribution for the faint optical pulse in practical quantum key distribution systems

With practical quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, estimating the safe transmission distance and the safe bit rate under some transmission distance is quite important. For the practical QKD setup, with decoy states, the photon count distribution of the faint laser pulse with signal states can be optimized to acquire the maximum transmission distance. With this goal, we implement a method combining mathematical derivation and numerical simulation to find the optimal photon count distribution under realistic conditions; the numerical simulation results show that the new distributions can be employed in the decoy QKD system to reach safe transmission distances farther than those reached by systems with the Poisson distribution

Special spherical mobile robot for planetary surface exploration: A review

Considering the requirements of high scientific return, low cost, less complexity, and more reliability for the robot proposed by the extreme environment exploration task on the planet surface, this article comprehensively reviews the history of the special spherical robot used for extraterrestrial surface exploration and summarizes the environmental characteristics and task difficulties of different planet surface. This article compares the advantages of different types of ground spherical robots and points out the superiority of special spherical robots, such as omni-direction, airtightness, zero-radius turning, under-actuated, swarming, and lightweight. In addition, the research progress of special spherical robots for extraterrestrial exploration, such as wind ball, jumping ball, fly ball, ball with leg, pendulum driven ball, tensegrity structure, are reviewed respectively. Finally, the performance characteristics of all these robots are analyzed, their application scope given

Photodynamic-Chemodynamic Cascade Reactions for Efficient Drug Delivery and Enhanced Combination Therapy

10.1002/advs.202002927Advanced Science810200292

Tumor‐Specific Drug Release and Reactive Oxygen Species Generation for Cancer Chemo/Chemodynamic Combination Therapy

The combination of chemotherapeutic drugs and reactive oxygen species (ROS) is a promising strategy to achieve improved anticancer effect. Herein, a nanomedicine (LaCIONPs) that can achieve tumor‐specific chemotherapeutic drug release and ROS generation is developed for cancer chemo/chemodynamic combination therapy. The LaCIONPs are constructed by encapsulation of iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) and β‐lapachone (La) in nanostructure assembled by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)‐responsive polyprodrug and pH‐responsive polymer. Through the enhanced permeability and retention effect, the nanosized LaCIONPs can accumulate in tumor tissue. After the LaCIONPs are internalized by tumor cells, the structure of LaCIONPs is disintegrated in acidic intracellular environment, leading to rapid release of La and iron ions. Then the released La generates massive H2O2 through tumor specific catalysis. On the one hand, H2O2 further reacts with iron ions to produce highly toxic hydroxyl radicals for chemodynamic therapy. On the other hand, H2O2 also activates the release of camptothecin from the polyprodrug for chemotherapy. The potent antitumor effect of the LaCIONPs is demonstrated by both in vitro and in vivo results. Therefore, the LaCIONP is a promising nanomedicine for tumor‐specific chemo/chemodynamic combination therapy. A pH and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) dual‐responsive nanomedicine is developed for tumor‐specific chemo/chemodynamic combination therapy. Once the nanomedicines enter cancer cells through endocytosis, their structure is disintegrated, resulting in rapid release of β‐lapachone and iron ions. The β‐lapachone generates H2O2 inside cells, which further produces highly toxic hydroxyl radicals through the Fenton reaction and activates chemotherapeutic drug release

Étude des événements précipitants intenses en Méditerranée (approche par la modélisation climatique régionale)

TOULOUSE3-BU Sciences (315552104) / SudocSudocFranceF

Zwitterionic-to-cationic charge conversion polyprodrug nanomedicine for enhanced drug delivery

Zwitterionic surface modification is a promising strategy for nanomedicines to achieve prolonged circulation time and thus effective tumor accumulation. However, zwitterion modified nanoparticles suffer from reduced cellular internalization efficiency. A polyprodrug-based nanomedicine with zwitterionic-to-cationic charge conversion ability (denoted as ZTC-NMs) was developed for enhanced chemotherapeutic drug delivery. The polyprodrug consists of pH-responsive poly(carboxybetaine)-like zwitterionic segment and glutathione-responsive camptothecin prodrug segment. The ZTC-NMs combine the advantages of zwitterionic surface and polyprodrug. Compared with conventional zwitterionic surface, the ZTC-NMs can respond to tumor microenvironment and realize ZTC surface charge conversion, thus improve cellular internalization efficiency of the nanomedicines. This ZTC method offers a strategy to promote the drug delivery efficiency and therapeutic efficacy, which is promising for the development of cancer nanomedicines

Metal ion assisted interface re-engineering of a ferritin nanocage for enhanced biofunctions and cancer therapy

The bottom-up self-assembly of protein subunits into supramolecular nanoarchitectures is ubiquitously exploited to recapitulate and expand the features of natural proteins to advance nanoscience in medicine. Various chemical and biological re-engineering approaches are available to render diverse functions in the given proteins. They are, unfortunately, capable of compromising protein integrity and stability after extensive modifications. In this study, we introduce a new protein re-engineering method, metal ion assisted interface re-engineering (MAIR), to serve as a robust and universal strategy to extend the functions of self-assembly proteins by boosting structural features to advance their diverse biomedical applications. In particular, the MAIR strategy was applied to a widely used natural protein, ferritin, as a model protein to coordinate with copper ions in its mutagenic artificial metal binding domain. Structure directed rational protein mutagenesis was carried out at the C2 interface amino acid residues of the ferritin subunit for metal ion coordination site optimization. Copper binding at the artificial binding pocket was highly specific over the other divalent ions present in physiological fluids, and the structurally embedded copper ion in turn strengthened the overall protein integrity and stability. In the presence of isotopic copper-64, the interface re-engineered ferritin worked as a chelator-free molecular nanoprobe with an extraordinarily high specific activity to allow PET imaging of tumors in live animals. We also found that the re-engineered ferritin coordinating with copper ions demonstrates high drug loading capacity of a widely used anti-cancer agent, doxorubicin (DOX), to achieve significant drug retention at the tumor site and enhance tumor regression for improved anti-cancer effects. The MAIR approach, thus, exploited the copper ion to facilitate efficient one-step labeling of mutant ferritin derivatives for simultaneous molecular imaging and drug delivery. The reported interface re-engineering strategy provides an unparalleled opportunity to expand protein biofunctions to serve as a new theranostic agent in cancer research