Novel functional hydrogels based on lignin‑silver nanoparticles with adhesion, antimicrobial, antioxidant and anti-freezing properties for wound dressings and pressure strain sensors.

As wound dressings and wearable electronics advance, it is critical to develop an efficacious strategy for integrating a variety of powerful functions into hydrogels. In this work, sodium lignosulfonate‑silver nanoparticles and the functional [2-(methacryloyloxy) ethyl] dimethyl-(3-sulfopropyl) ammonium hydroxide structure (SBMA) are introduced into the multifunctional lignin-based hydrogel system. The sodium lignosulfonate‑silver nanoparticles, by catalyzing multiple redox reactions, facilitate the swift curing of hydrogels at room temperature.

Standardly Trained Peer Volunteer-Led, Social App Recruiting-Based Human Immunodeficiency Virus Testing Strategy Using Rapid Testing Kits (SPARK) Among Men Who Have Sex With Men: A Population-Based Survey Evaluation.

Background: Social app recruiting-based and peer-led testing strategies have been proven effective in increasing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing among men who have sex with men (MSM), though their combination remains underevaluated. We aimed to assess the efficiency of a combined strategy named "standardly trained peer volunteer-led, social app recruiting-based HIV testing strategy using rapid testing kits" (SPARK).

Methods: Between March 2020 and December 2021, 177 trained peer volunteers tested 7256 eligible MSM testers.

Knowledge mining of brain connectivity in massive literature based on transfer learning.

Motivation: Neuroscientists have long endeavored to map brain connectivity, yet the intricate nature of brain networks often leads them to concentrate on specific regions, hindering efforts to unveil a comprehensive connectivity map. Recent advancements in imaging and text mining techniques have enabled the accumulation of a vast body of literature containing valuable insights into brain connectivity, facilitating the extraction of whole-brain connectivity relations from this corpus. However, the diverse representations of brain region names and connectivity relations pose a challenge for conventional machine learning methods and dictionary-based approaches in identifying all instances accurately.

Ultrahard and Ultraflexible Supramolecular Hydrogel with Superenergy Dissipating Structure for Biomimetic Skin.

How to integrate the "soft" (flexibility and self-healing properties) and "hard" (shape retention) into the supramolecular hydrogel system is an attractive challenge. In this work, a supramolecular hydrogel with an energy dissipation structure is designed and prepared for intelligent biomimetic skin. Lignin molecules with disulfide bonds of fracture and healing activities are introduced into the hydrogel system through covalent bonds.

Distributed Temporal Coding of Visual Memory Categories in Human Hippocampal Neurons.

The hippocampus is crucial for forming new episodic memories. While the encoding of spatial and temporal information (where and when) in the hippocampus is well understood, the encoding of objects (what) remains less clear due to the high dimensions of object space. Rather than encoding each individual object separately, the hippocampus may instead encode categories of objects to reduce this dimensionality.

Casticin inhibits proliferation of Non-small cell lung cancer cells through regulating reprogramming of glucose metabolism.

Background: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer, with poor prognosis due to its rapid progression and resistance to existing therapies. Metabolic reprogramming, particularly alterations in glucose metabolism, is a key mechanism underlying tumor growth and progression, providing potential targets for novel therapeutic strategies. Casticin (CAS), a bioactive flavonoid, has shown anticancer effects in various cancers, but its specific role in NSCLC metabolism remains unclear.

A Novel Method for Mitochondrial Membrane Potential Detection in Heart Tissue Following Ischemia-reperfusion in Mice.

Objective: Myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury is associated with a significant reduction in the mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP, ΔΨm). Fluorescence-based assays are effective for labelling active mitochondria in living cells; their application in heart tissue, however, represents a challenge because of a low yield of viable cardiomyocytes after cardiac perfusion. This study aimed to examine a novel method for detecting the changes in the MMP of mouse heart tissue following I/R injury.

Effect of inoculated sludge concentration on start-up of anammox reactor: Nitrogen removal performance and metabolic pathways.

The anammox process is efficient for nitrogen removal but faces challenges due to slow bacterial growth and limited inoculated sludge supply. This study examined the effects of different inoculated sludge concentrations (3.5, 7, and 14 g/L) on start-up and nitrogen metabolism in anammox reactors.

Neuronal diversity and stereotypy at multiple scales through whole brain morphometry.

We conducted a large-scale whole-brain morphometry study by analyzing 3.7 peta-voxels of mouse brain images at the single-cell resolution, producing one of the largest multi-morphometry databases of mammalian brains to date. We registered 204 mouse brains of three major imaging modalities to the Allen Common Coordinate Framework (CCF) atlas, annotated 182,497 neuronal cell bodies, modeled 15,441 dendritic microenvironments, characterized the full morphology of 1876 neurons along with their axonal motifs, and detected 2.

HIV incidence and recreational drug use among men who have sex with men aged 18-24 years in Tianjin, China: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Recreational drug use has been identified as a significant risk factor for the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This behavior is particularly prevalent among young men who have sex with men (YMSM). However, limited research has been conducted to investigate the correlation between recreational drug use and HIV incidence within this population.

Imaging quality enhancement in photon-counting single-pixel imaging via an ADMM-based deep unfolding network in small animal fluorescence imaging.

Photon-counting single-pixel imaging (SPI) can image under low-light conditions with high-sensitivity detection. However, the imaging quality of these systems will degrade due to the undersampling and intrinsic photon-noise in practical applications. Here, we propose a deep unfolding network based on the Bayesian maximum a posterior (MAP) estimation and alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm.

Dual optimization in anaerobic digestion of rice straw: Effects HRT and OLR coupling on methane production in one-stage and two-stage systems.

This experiment reports an energy-saving, cost-effective and environmental-friendly method to recover energy from high-cellulose waste: anaerobic digestion (AD) by extending hydraulic residence time (HRT) from 50d to 70d with ultra-high organic loading rate (OLR) of 2.28-2.80 g TS·L d.

Depicting Primate-Like Granular Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in the Chinese Tree Shrew.

It remains unknown whether the Chinese tree shrew, regarded as the closest sister of primate, has evolved a dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) comparable with primates that is characterized by a fourth layer (L4) enriched with granular cells and reciprocal connections with the mediodorsal nucleus (MD). Here, we reported that following AAV-hSyn-EGFP expression in the MD neurons, the fluorescence micro-optical sectioning tomography revealed their projection trajectories and targeted brain areas, such as the hippocampus, the corpus striatum, and the dlPFC. Cre-dependent transsynaptic viral tracing identified the MD projection terminals that targeted the L4 of the dlPFC, in which the presence of granular cells was confirmed via cytoarchitectural studies by using the Nissl, Golgi, and vGlut2 stainings.

Start-up of a full-scale two-stage partial nitritation/anammox (PN/A) process treating reject water from high solid anaerobic sludge digestion (HSAD).

High solid anaerobic digestion (HSAD) achieves the benefits of high volumetric loading rates and lower reject water production, which, however, results in much more concentrated reject water with a remarkable increase in organics and nitrogen compared with that from conventional AD with low solid content. The high concentrations of ammonium (2000-3500 mg/L) and COD (3000-4000 mg/L) were reported to exert inhibition on anammox bacteria (AnAOB), posing challenges to the application of the partial nitritation/anammox (PN/A). To date, no cases of PN/A process start-up for sludge HSAD reject water were reported.

From Individual to Population: Circuit Organization of Pyramidal Tract and Intratelencephalic Neurons in Mouse Sensorimotor Cortex.

The sensorimotor cortex participates in diverse functions with different reciprocally connected subregions and projection-defined pyramidal neuron types therein, while the fundamental organizational logic of its circuit elements at the single-cell level is still largely unclear. Here, using mouse Cre driver lines and high-resolution whole-brain imaging to selectively trace the axons and dendrites of cortical pyramidal tract (PT) and intratelencephalic (IT) neurons, we reconstructed the complete morphology of 1,023 pyramidal neurons and generated a projectome of 6 subregions within the sensorimotor cortex. Our morphological data revealed substantial hierarchical and layer differences in the axonal innervation patterns of pyramidal neurons.

Long-term intermittent oral administration of selective COX-2 inhibitor improved the clinical outcomes of COVID-19 in patients with cirrhosis.

Objectives: Patients with cirrhosis are more susceptible to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) due to immune dysfunction. In this retrospective study we aimed to investigate whether suppression of mild systemic inflammation with selective cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor (COX-2-I) during chronic care of cirrhotic patients would reduce the occurrence of acute decompensated events and improve patient prognosis of COVID-19.

Methods: Medical records of cirrhotic patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection were sequentially reviewed.

A retrospective study of the safety and efficacy of clopidogrel versus aspirin monotherapy one year after coronary stent implantation.

Background: The ideal single antiplatelet therapy for long-term maintenance after coronary stenting remains uncertain. In a head-to-head comparison, we aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety profile of aspirin and clopidogrel as monotherapies in this patient cohort.

Method: We reviewed 1044 patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug-eluting stents (DES) at the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Jinshan Hospital of Fudan University, between January 2019 and December 2021 and completed a 12-month Dual Antiplatelet Therapy (DAPT) treatment.

Amino-rich silicon quantum dots as efficient activator with intrinsic chemiluminescence for the detection of peroxydisulfate.

The specific detection of peroxydisulfate (SO, PDS) is significant and challenging due to the rapid development of PDS-related technologies and their widespread application in multiple fields. However, traditional analytical methods are mainly based on their strong oxidizing properties, making it difficult to simultaneously achieve specific identification and high sensitivity for PDS detection in complex water environments. Here, we purposely prepared amino-rich SiQDs (N-SiQDs) as an effective catalyst and introduced HO acts as a co-reactant for PDS activation and determination with strong intrinsic chemiluminescence (CL) emission.

Spatial and temporal dynamics of sewage sludge phosphorus recovery potential in the cities of Yangtze River Zone in China: Implications for regional recycling policies.

Sewage sludge phosphorus (P) recovery presents opportunities to sustainably recycle P from cities to agriculture and alleviate global P scarcity. However, limited research explores sustainable recovery targets considering spatial-temporal variations in sludge generation and implications based on city-level local P demand. This study analyzed sludge production form 2009-2021 across 130 cities in China's Yangtze River Zone, which increased by almost 35 % from 2009 to 2021.

A brainstem circuit amplifies aversion.

Dynamic gain control of aversive signals enables adaptive behavioral responses. Although the role of amygdalar circuits in aversive processing is well established, the neural pathway for amplifying aversion remains elusive. Here, we show that the brainstem circuit linking the interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) with the nucleus incertus (NI) amplifies aversion and promotes avoidant behaviors.

A hierarchically annotated dataset drives tangled filament recognition in digital neuron reconstruction.

Reconstructing neuronal morphology is vital for classifying neurons and mapping brain connectivity. However, it remains a significant challenge due to its complex structure, dense distribution, and low image contrast. In particular, AI-assisted methods often yield numerous errors that require extensive manual intervention.