Publications by authors named "Meng K"

Lead halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have shown unprecedented development in efficiency and progressed relentlessly in improving stability. All the achievements have been accompanied by diverse passivation strategies to circumvent the pervasive defects in perovskite materials, which play crucial roles in the process of charge recombination, ion migration, and component degradation. Among the tremendous efforts made to solve these issues and achieve high-performance PSCs, we classify and review both well-established and burgeoning passivation strategies to provide further guidance for the passivation protocols in PSCs, including chemical passivation to eliminate defects by the formation of chemical bonds, physical passivation to eliminate defects by strain relaxation or physical treatments, energetic passivation to improve the stability toward light and oxygen, and field-effect passivation to regulate the interfacial carrier behavior.

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The immunoglobulin (Ig) is a crucial component of adaptive immune system in vertebrates including teleost fish. Here complete cDNA sequence of IgD heavy chain gene from common carp () was cloned and analyzed. The full-length cDNA of IgD heavy chain gene contained an open reading frame (ORF) of 2460 bp encoding 813 amino acids.

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Objective: The study explores challenges, competencies, and helpful support in coping with the disease of patients with breast cancer and gynaecological cancer and how patient competence as an interaction of these factors might be promoted.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 patients in acute care, 20 patients undergoing rehabilitation, and 16 participants in a self-help group and evaluated using qualitative content analysis.

Results: The challenges are summarised in the main categories - diagnosis processing, treatment/recurrence fears, illness processing and adaptation, worries about relatives, reactions of the social environment, and worries about the workplace.

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Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have become a promising therapeutic strategy for malignant tumors, improving patient prognosis, along with a spectrum of immune-related adverse events (irAEs), including gastrointestinal toxicity, ICI-related colitis (IRC), and diarrhea. The gut microbiota has been suggested as an important regulator in the pathogenesis of IRC, and microbiota modulations like probiotics and fecal microbiota transplantation have been explored to treat the disease. This review discusses the interaction between the gut microbiota and IRC, focusing on the potential pathogenic mechanisms and promising interventions.

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This study investigated the bioremediation of PAHs in soil by two different microbial inoculants prepared with Paracoccus aminovorans HPD-2 and the carrier humic acid (HA) or montmorillonite (Mont). After incubation for 42 d, the greatest removal of PAHs, 42.8 % or 41.

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Although microplastic pollution jeopardizes both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, the movement of plastic particles through terrestrial environments is still poorly understood. Agricultural soils exposed to different managements are important sites of storage and dispersal of microplastics. This study aimed to identify the abundance, distribution, and type of microplastics present in agricultural soils, water, airborne dust, and ditch sediments.

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Red-light phosphors with extraordinary and stable thermal luminous properties must urgently be explored under the circumstances that commercial phosphors are suffering from serious thermal quenching effects and a lack of red-light components. Synthesized by a one-step hydrothermal method, a new type of NaYF : 0.065Eu,0.

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Background: Elevated expression of human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) was previously described in connective tissue disease-associated interstitial lung diseases (CTD-ILDs) and cystic fibrosis (CF), but the clinical significance of HE4 has remained unknown in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which is a progressive fibrosing ILD with a heterogeneous course that is in urgent need of reliable biomarkers in its clinical practice.

Methods: A total of 27 IPF patients with acute exacerbation status (AE-IPF), 32 IPF patients with stable status (S-IPF), and 29 sex-age matched healthy controls were retrospectively included. The levels of serum HE4 and Krebs von den Lungen-6 (KL-6) of the 3 cohorts were measured.

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Intracellular bacteria have developed sophisticated strategies to subvert the host endomembrane system to establish a stable replication niche. Small GTPases are critical players in regulating each step of membrane trafficking events, such as vesicle biogenesis, cargo transport, tethering, and fusion events. Salmonella is a widely studied facultative intracellular bacteria.

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Background: Anti-melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 antibody-positive dermatomyositis with interstitial lung disease (anti-MDA5 DM-ILD) is a disease with high mortality. We sought to develop an effective and convenient prediction tool to estimate mortality risk in patients with anti-MDA5 DM-ILD and inform clinical decision-making early.

Methods: This prognostic study included Asian patients with anti-MDA5 DM-ILD hospitalized at the Nanjing Drum Hospital from December 2016 to December 2020.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Invertase plays a key role in breaking down sucrose into glucose and fructose, and reducing its activity can help alleviate osmotic stress on yeast.
  • * By creating specific mutations in yeast invertase (ScInV), researchers found that reduced enzyme activity improved dough fermentation by 52% under high-sucrose conditions, advancing yeast metabolic engineering.
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Resistant starch (RS) is beneficial for humans, especially for the diabetes. Raw potato had a great deal of RS, while most of which become digestible after gelatinization. Thus, few RS will be retained in potatoes after regular cooking.

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Introduction: Suprapectoral tenodesis is a common technique for the treatment of long head biceps tendon lesions. However, so far, there is no gold standard treatment in all-inside arthroscopy. The purpose of the present study was to introduce and evaluate the functional outcomes of an innovative, all-inside arthroscopic high resistance loop (H-loop, high resistance to tissue cutout and 360° grasping of the tendon) technique for long head of biceps (LHB) tenodesis.

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Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection has a global distribution with diverse hosts, including mammals and avians. In this study, an avian Hepatitis E virus (aHEV) strain with a high mortality rate of about 30%, designated as SDXT20, was obtained from the liver of 30-week-old Hubbard chickens with severe hepatosplenomegaly in 2020 in Eastern China and HEV was proved to be the only pathogen by next-generation sequencing. Its complete genome, which encodes three open reading frames (ORFs), is 6649 nt in length.

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Archaea constitute the third domain of life, distinct from bacteria and eukaryotes given their ability to tolerate extreme environments. To survive these harsh conditions, certain archaeal lineages possess unique genetic code systems to encode either selenocysteine or pyrrolysine, rare amino acids not found in all organisms. Furthermore, archaea utilize alternate tRNA-dependent pathways to biosynthesize and incorporate members of the 20 canonical amino acids.

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Objective: EGR3 is implicated in angiogenesis in rats with cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury (CIRI). This research aimed to explore the effect and in vivo and ex vivo mechanisms of EGR3 in CIRI.

Methods: CIRI rat models were established via middle cerebral artery occlusion.

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Alternative splicing is an important way of regulating gene functions in eukaryotes. Several key genes involved in sex determination and gonadal differentiation, such as and , have sex-biased transcripts between males and females, suggesting a potential regulatory role of alternative splicing in gonads. Currently, the sex-specific alternative splicing events and genes have not been comprehensively studied at the genome-wide level in zebrafish.

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Automated segmentation of brain tumors is a difficult procedure due to the variability and blurred boundary of the lesions. In this study, we propose an automated model based on Bendlet transform and improved Chan-Vese (CV) model for brain tumor segmentation. Since the Bendlet system is based on the principle of sparse approximation, Bendlet transform is applied to describe the images and map images to the feature space and, thereby, first obtain the feature set.

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Precise control of crystal orientation in two-dimensional (2D) layered perovskites (LPs) is vital for their optoelectronic applications due to the structure-induced anisotropy in optical and electrical properties. Herein, we directly observe and control the crystal orientation of the butylammonium-based 2D LP films. Employing the synchrotron-based in situ grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction technique, we reveal the orientation modulation mechanism of the Cl additive by following the crystallization dynamics and chemical conversion pathways during film formation.

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Organisms are colonized by microorganism communities and play a pivotal role in host function by influencing physiology and development. In mammals, bacterial community may alter gonadal maturation and drive sex-specific differences in gene expression and metabolism. However, bacterial microbiota diversity in the gonads of early vertebrates has not been fully elucidated.

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A Chinese Compilation of Physical Activities was compiled to estimate the energy costs of physical activities (PAs) using data on adults aged 18-64. Data were obtained from published articles and laboratory measurements. Databases, including PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Ebsco, Web of Science, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wan Fang Data, National Science and Technology Report Service, Public Health Scientific Data were searched to collect data from inception to January 2022, on energy expenditure associated with PA in the healthy Chinese population.

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Base-pair-driven toehold-mediated strand displacement (BP-TMSD) is a fundamental concept employed for constructing DNA machines and networks with a gamut of applications─from theranostics to computational devices. To broaden the toolbox of dynamic DNA chemistry, herein, we introduce a synthetic surrogate termed host-guest-driven toehold-mediated strand displacement (HG-TMSD) that utilizes bioorthogonal, cucurbit[7]uril (CB[7]) interactions with guest-linked input sequences. Since control of the strand-displacement process is salient, we demonstrate how HG-TMSD can be finely modulated via changes to the structure of the input sequence (including synthetic guest head-group and/or linker length).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated the relationship between portal vein pressure gradient (PPG) and hepatic vein pressure gradient (HVPG) in 752 patients with portal hypertension (PHT) who underwent transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) from January 2016 to December 2019.
  • * Statistical analyses, including paired t-tests and Pearson correlation tests, revealed significant differences between HVPG and PPG measurements, with 69.7% of cases showing a difference greater than 5 mmHg.
  • * Patients were categorized based on the presence of hepatic venous collaterals, highlighting notable differences in various pressure measurements between the two groups, all with statistically significant results (p < 0.001).*
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Metal corrosion can potentially cause catastrophic engineering accidents threatening personal safety; thus, coating protection is a tremendously valuable anti-corrosion initiative. Recently, biphenylene, a novel two-dimensional (2D) graphene-based material, has achieved a remarkable synthetic breakthrough; the anti-corrosion properties of biphenylene, with its specific pore structure, are predicted to be beneficial in applications of metal corrosion resistance. In this study, the anti-corrosion mechanism of biphenylene is deciphered utilizing first principles and molecular dynamics.

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Obesity has become a major social problem related to health and quality of life. Our previous work demonstrated that FRT10 alleviated obesity in high-fat diet (HFD)-fed mice by alleviating gut dysbiosis. However, the underlying functions of FRT10 in regulating liver and cecum contents metabolism remain unknown.

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