Microgel Encapsulated Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Releasing Wnt16 to Synergistically Treat Temporomandibular Joint Osteoarthritis.

Temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis (TMJOA) is a commonly encountered degenerative joint disease in oral and maxillofacial surgery. Recent studies have shown that the excessive unbalanced activation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling is connected with the pathogenesis of TMJOA and due to the inability to inhibit the over-activated Wnt pathway, while Wnt16-deficient mice has a more severe Knee OA. However, the efficacy of direct intra-TMJ injection of Wnt16 for the relief of TMJOA is still not directly confirmed.

Atomic Cu Sites Engineering Enables Efficient CO Electroreduction to Methane with High CH/CH Ratio.

Electrochemical reduction of CO into high-value hydrocarbons and alcohols by using Cu-based catalysts is a promising and attractive technology for CO capture and utilization, resulting from their high catalytic activity and selectivity. The mobility and accessibility of active sites in Cu-based catalysts significantly hinder the development of efficient Cu-based catalysts for CO electrochemical reduction reaction (CORR). Herein, a facile and effective strategy is developed to engineer accessible and structural stable Cu sites by incorporating single atomic Cu into the nitrogen cavities of the host graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) as the active sites for CO-to-CH conversion in CORR.

A Novel Framework to Facilitate User Preferred Tuning for a Robotic Knee Prosthesis.

The tuning of robotic prosthesis control is essential to provide personalized assistance to individual prosthesis users. Emerging automatic tuning algorithms have shown promise to ease the device personalization procedure. However, very few automatic tuning algorithms consider the user preference as the tuning goal, which may limit the adoptability of the robotic prosthesis.

Altering Ligand Microenvironment of Atomically Dispersed CrN by Axial Ligand Sulfur for Enhanced Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Alkaline and Acidic Medium.

Because of the instability and Fenton reactivity of non-precious metal nitrogen-carbon based catalyst when processing the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), seeking for electrocatalysts with highly efficient performance becomes very highly desired to speed up the commercialization of fuel cell. Herein, chromium (Cr)-N  electrocatalyst containing extraterrestrial S formed axial S -Cr N  bonds (S Cr N C) is achieved via an assembly polymerization and confined pyrolysis strategy. Benefiting from the adjusting  coordination configuration and electronic structure of the metal center through axial coordination, S Cr N C exhibits enhanced the intrinsic activity (half-wave potential (E ) is 0.

Human-prosthesis cooperation: combining adaptive prosthesis control with visual feedback guided gait.

Background: Personalizing prosthesis control is often structured as human-in-the-loop optimization. However, gait performance is influenced by both human control and intelligent prosthesis control. Hence, we need to consider both human and prosthesis control, and their cooperation, to achieve desired gait patterns.

Hierarchical Optimization for Control of Robotic Knee Prostheses Toward Improved Symmetry of Propulsive Impulse.

Automatically personalizing complex control of robotic prostheses to improve gait performance, such as gait symmetry, is challenging. Recently, human-in-the-loop (HIL) optimization and reinforcement learning (RL) have shown promise in achieving optimized control of wearable robots for each individual user. However, HIL optimization methods lack scalability for high-dimensional space, while RL has mostly focused on optimizing robot kinematic performance.

Engineering Surface Oxophilicity of Copper for Electrochemical CO Reduction to Ethanol.

Copper-based materials are known for converting CO into deep reduction products via electrochemical reduction reaction (CO RR). As the major multicarbon products (C ), ethanol (C H OH) and ethylene (C H ) are believed to share a common oxygenic intermediate according to theoretical studies, while the key factors that bifurcate C H OH and C H pathways on Cu-based catalysts are not fully understood. Here, a surface oxophilicity regulation strategy to enhance C H OH production in CO RR is proposed, demonstrated by a Cu-Sn bimetallic system.

Hypoxia-related LncRNAs signature predicts prognosis and is associated with immune infiltration and progress of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Background: Disclosing prognostic information is necessary to enable good treatment selection and improve patient outcomes. Previous studies suggest that hypoxia is associated with an adverse prognosis in patients with HNSCC and that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) show functions in hypoxia-associated cancer biology. Nevertheless, the understanding of lncRNAs in hypoxia related HNSCC progression remains confusing.

Fusion of Human Gaze and Machine Vision for Predicting Intended Locomotion Mode.

Predicting the user's intended locomotion mode is critical for wearable robot control to assist the user's seamless transitions when walking on changing terrains. Although machine vision has recently proven to be a promising tool in identifying upcoming terrains in the travel path, existing approaches are limited to environment perception rather than human intent recognition that is essential for coordinated wearable robot operation. Hence, in this study, we aim to develop a novel system that fuses the human gaze (representing user intent) and machine vision (capturing environmental information) for accurate prediction of the user's locomotion mode.

A Universal Single-Atom Coating Strategy Based on Tannic Acid Chemistry for Multifunctional Heterogeneous Catalysis.

Here, we report a universal single-atom coating (SAC) strategy by taking advantage of the rich chemistry of tannic acid (TA). TA units not only self-assemble into a cross-linked porous polyphenolic framework, but also can grip on different substates via multiple binding modes. Benefiting from the diverse chelating ability of TA, a series of mono-, and bi-metallic SACs can be formed on substrates of different materials (e.

Taking Both Sides: Seeking Symbiosis Between Intelligent Prostheses and Human Motor Control during Locomotion.

Robotic lower-limb prostheses aim to replicate the power-generating capability of biological joints during locomotion to empower individuals with lower-limb loss. However, recent clinical trials have not demonstrated clear advantages of these devices over traditional passive devices. We believe this is partly because the current designs of robotic prothesis controllers and clinical methods for fitting and training individuals to use them do not ensure good coordination between the prosthesis and user.

Reinforcement Learning Control of Robotic Knee With Human-in-the-Loop by Flexible Policy Iteration.

We are motivated by the real challenges presented in a human-robot system to develop new designs that are efficient at data level and with performance guarantees, such as stability and optimality at system level. Existing approximate/adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) results that consider system performance theoretically are not readily providing practically useful learning control algorithms for this problem, and reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms that address the issue of data efficiency usually do not have performance guarantees for the controlled system. This study fills these important voids by introducing innovative features to the policy iteration algorithm.

Residual Chlorine Induced Cationic Active Species on a Porous Copper Electrocatalyst for Highly Stable Electrochemical CO Reduction to C.

Electrochemical carbon dioxide (CO ) reduction reaction (CO RR) is an attractive approach to deal with the emission of CO and to produce valuable fuels and chemicals in a carbon-neutral way. Many efforts have been devoted to boost the activity and selectivity of high-value multicarbon products (C ) on Cu-based electrocatalysts. However, Cu-based CO RR electrocatalysts suffer from poor catalytic stability mainly due to the structural degradation and loss of active species under CO RR condition.

Cobalt-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks and Their Derivatives for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction.

Hydrogen has been considered as a promising alternative energy to replace fossil fuels. Electrochemical water splitting, as a green and renewable method for hydrogen production, has been drawing more and more attention. In order to improve hydrogen production efficiency and lower energy consumption, efficient catalysts are required to drive the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).

Heterogeneous Single-Atom Catalysts for Electrochemical CO Reduction Reaction.

The electrochemical CO reduction reaction (CO RR) is of great importance to tackle the rising CO concentration in the atmosphere. The CO RR can be driven by renewable energy sources, producing precious chemicals and fuels, with the implementation of this process largely relying on the development of low-cost and efficient electrocatalysts. Recently, a range of heterogeneous and potentially low-cost single-atom catalysts (SACs) containing non-precious metals coordinated to earth-abundant elements have emerged as promising candidates for the CO RR.

Wearer-Prosthesis Interaction for Symmetrical Gait: A Study Enabled by Reinforcement Learning Prosthesis Control.

With advances in robotic prostheses, rese-archers attempt to improve amputee's gait performance (e.g., gait symmetry) beyond restoring normative knee kinematics/kinetics.

Gaze Fixation Comparisons Between Amputees and Able-bodied Individuals in Approaching Stairs and Level-ground Transitions: A Pilot Study.

This paper aims to investigate the visual strategy of transtibial amputees while they are approaching the transition between level-ground and stairs and compare it with that of able-bodied individuals. To this end, we conducted a pilot study where two transtibial amputee subjects and two able-bodied subjects transitioned from level-ground to stairs and vice versa while wearing eye tracking glasses to record gaze fixations. To investigate how vision functioned to both populations for preparing locomotion on new terrains, gaze fixation behavior before the new terrains were analyzed and compared between two populations across all transition cases in the study.

Encapsulation of core-satellite silicon in carbon for rational balance of the void space and capacity.

The void space is widely used in anode materials for relieving the volume expansion during lithium insertion and extraction processes. Generally, the void is randomly generated or exceeded the expansion to ensure the structural stability, which thus sacrifices the capacity and energy density. In this research, a core-satellite architecture was constructed with an elaborate structural design to obtain a rational balance of the void space and capacity.

Hollow-Carbon-Templated Few-Layered VS Nanosheets Enabling Ultrafast Potassium Storage and Long-Term Cycling.

Due to the abundant potassium resource on the Earth's crust, researchers now have become interested in exploring high-performance potassium-ion batteries (KIBs). However, the large size of K would hinder the diffusion of K ions into electrode materials, thus leading to poor energy/power density and cycling performance during the depotassiation/potassiation process. So, few-layered VS nanosheets wrapping a hollow carbon sphere fabricated a facile hollow carbon template induced method could reversibly accommodate K storage and maintain the structure stability.

Mesoporous WO Nanofibers With Crystalline Framework for High-Performance Acetone Sensing.

Semiconducting metal oxides with abundant active sites are regarded as promising candidates for environmental monitoring and breath analysis because of their excellent gas sensing performance and stability. Herein, mesoporous WO nanofibers with a crystalline framework and uniform pore size is successfully synthesized in an aqueous phase using an electrospinning method, with ammonium metatungstate as the tungsten sources, and SiO nanoparticles and polyvinylpyrrolidone as the sacrificial templates. The obtained mesoporous WO nanofibers exhibit a controllable pore size of 26.

Spatially Confined Tuning the Interfacial Synergistic Catalysis in Mesochannels toward Selective Catalytic Reduction.

Low-temperature selective catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxides (NO ) with NH (NH-SCR) has been identified as a promising strategy to mitigate the pollution of NO . The fine control of synergistic effect and the suppression of aggregation of the active component, however, are still the challenge because of the weak interaction between the active component and matrix. In this work, a series of Ce-promoted Mn-based heterogeneous catalysts supported on mesoporous silica (SBA-15) with different Mn contents were prepared by two separated impregnation processes.