A biomimetic gradient porous cage with a micro-structure for enhancing mechanical properties and accelerating osseointegration in spinal fusion.

Objectives: Spinal fusion is a widely employed treatment of patients with degenerative disc disease, in which a cage is used to replace the disc for spinal fusion. But it often fails for insufficient mechanical strength and poor osseointegration. Here, we designed a polyether-ether-ketone (PEEK)/tantalum (Ta) composite cage with a biomimetic gradient porous micro-structure, simultaneously enhancing mechanical properties and accelerating osseointegration in spinal fusion.

Manta Ray Inspired Soft Robot Fish with Tough Hydrogels as Structural Elements.

The design of soft robots capable of navigation underwater has received tremendous research interest due to the robots' versatile applications in marine explorations. Inspired by marine animals such as jellyfish, scientists have developed various soft robotic fishes by using elastomers as the major material. However, elastomers have a hydrophobic network without embedded water, which is different from the gel-state body of the prototypes and results in high contrast to the surrounding environment and thus poor acoustic stealth.

Digital Light Processing 3D Printing of Tough Supramolecular Hydrogels with Sophisticated Architectures as Impact-Absorption Elements.

Processing tough hydrogels into sophisticated architectures is crucial for their applications as structural elements. However, Digital Light Processing (DLP) printing of tough hydrogels is challenging because of the low-speed gelation and toughening process. Described here is a simple yet versatile system suitable for DLP printing to form tough hydrogel architectures.

3D printing of a tough double-network hydrogel and its use as a scaffold to construct a tissue-like hydrogel composite.

To mimic biological tissues with high toughness such as cartilage, it is highly desired to fabricate stable and tough hydrogels with intricate shapes to act as a structural support. Extrusion-based 3D printing is a promising method to fabricate 3D scaffolds with various architectures; however, printing tough hydrogel structures with high fidelity and resolution is still a challenge. In this work, we adopt the fast sol-to-gel transition of κ-carrageenan in the solution of acrylamide upon cooling to fix the printed scaffolds and polymerize the precursor solution to form the second network.

Engineering Tough Metallosupramolecular Hydrogel Films with Kirigami Structures for Compliant Soft Electronics.

A simple and effective approach is demonstrated to fabricate tough metallosupramolecular hydrogel films of poly(acrylic acid) by one-pot photopolymerization of the precursor solution in the presence of Zr ions that form coordination complexes with the carboxyl groups and serve as the physical crosslinks of the matrix. Both as-prepared and equilibrated hydrogel films are transparent, tough, and stable over a wide range of temperature, ionic strength, and pH. The thickness of the films can be easily tailored with minimum value of ≈7 μm.

Reversibly Transforming a Highly Swollen Polyelectrolyte Hydrogel to an Extremely Tough One and its Application as a Tubular Grasper.

Poly(2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid) and its copolymer hydrogels are typical polyelectrolyte gels with extremely high swelling capacity that are widely used in industry. It's common to consider these hydrogels as weak materials that are difficult to toughen. Reported here is a facile strategy to transform swollen and weak poly(acrylamide-co-2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid) [P(AAm-co-AMPS)] hydrogels to tough ones by forming strong sulfonate-Zr metal-coordination complexes.

[Evaluation and analysis of high-quality products of Liuwei Dihuang Pills].

Liuwei Dihuang Pills is a typical traditional Chinese medicine with "the same product made by many manufacturers". The quality and price of products made in various factories was different obviously. In this study, the quality differences of Liuwei Dihuang Pills were evaluated over multi-dimensions and throughout the whole production cycle involving raw materials, production process, quality control and post-marketing re-studies based on the "Chinese patent medicine evaluation standard with quality at the core" established earlier by our research group.

[Research on evaluation criteria over quality as core index of high grade Chinese patent medicine].

"One drug was produced by many companies" is common in Chinese patent medicines. The quality and price of products from different manufacturers varies widely, and the efficacy is inconsistency. In order to ensure the quality of Chinese patent medicines and promote "Healthy national program" implementation, it is necessary to study the current status of Chinese patent medicines and carry out the evaluation criteria over quality as the core management of high grade Chinese patent medicines, which is set up to reflect the evaluation strategy and method of Chinese patent medicines from raw material, production, quality control, reevaluation and competitive power to the whole chain of brand construction.

Ultrathin κ-Carrageenan/Chitosan Hydrogel Films with High Toughness and Antiadhesion Property.

Designing tough biopolymer-based hydrogels as structural biomaterials has both scientific and practical significances. We report a facile approach to prepare polysaccharide-based hydrogel films with remarkable mechanical performances and antiadhesion property. The hydrogel films with a thickness of 40-60 μm were prepared by mixing aqueous solutions of κ-carrageenan (κ-CG) and protonated chitosan (CS), evaporating the solvent, and then swelling the casted film in water to achieve the equilibrium state.

[Discrimination of Seven Species of Boletus with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy].

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, two-dimensional correlation infrared spectroscopy and principal component analysis were used to discriminate seven species of boletus belonging to the same genus. The results showed that the absorption bands of original spectra were similar, which were mainly composed of the absorption bands of protein and polysaccharides, but tiny differences were still observed at the position and intensities of peaks. Two-dimensional correlation infrared spectroscopy technology was applied to study the sample.

[Discrimination of Lactarius and Russula Mushrooms with FTIR and Two-Dimensional Correlation Infrared Spectroscopy].

Tri-step infrared spectroscopy method of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, second derivative infrared spectroscopy and two-dimensional correlation infrared spectroscopy was firstly used to discriminate six species of mushrooms belonging to the genus Lactarius and Russula. The absorption bands of the original spectrum were very similar, which were composed by protein and polysaccharides, but tiny differences were observed at the position, shape and absorption intensities of peaks. Second derivative infrared spectroscopy technology was applied to study 6 species of the samples, there were obvious differences in the range of 1 800～1 400 and 1 200～800 cm-1.