Mechanistic studies of Ca-induced classical pyroptosis pathway promoting renal adhesion on calcium oxalate kidney stone formation.

This study aims to investigate the role of hypercalciuria and pyroptosis in the formation of calcium oxalate kidney stones. Bioinformatics analysis was performed to compare the correlation of pyroptosis scores and cell adhesion scores between Randall's plaques and normal tissues from kidney stone patients. For the in vitro experiments, we investigated the effects of high concentrations of Ca on the pyroptosis and adhesion levels of renal tubular epithelial cells and examined the adhesion levels and crystal aggregation of the cells in high Ca concentrations environment by knockdown and overexpression of the key pyroptosis gene, GSDMD, and we verified the effects of Ca concentration on pyroptosis and adhesion levels, kidney injury, and crystal deposition by in vivo experiments.

The improved photoresponse properties of self-powered NiO/ZnO heterojunction arrays UV photodetectors with designed tunable Fermi level of ZnO.

Self-powered ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors (PDs) based on ZnO heterojunctions have attracted more attention due to the simple preparation and excellent photoresponse performance without any power supply. The self-powered UV PDs based on NiO nanoflakes/ZnO nanorod arrays (NRs) heterojunctions were fabricated by a low-cost, simple chemical bath deposition (CBD) method. The crystal quality, optical and electronic properties of ZnO NRs is modified by Al ions additions in the precursor solution.