Publications by authors named "Ni Xiang"

The American Heart Association has updated the cardiovascular health (CVH) assessment tool, referred to as the Life's Essential 8 (LE8). Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is now the most common chronic liver disease worldwide and is linked to an elevated risk of mortality. We aimed to explore the association of LE8 with all cause and cause-specific mortality in MASLD in a prospective cohort study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Targeted protein degradation (TPD) technologies, particularly proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs), have emerged as a promising branch of targeted therapy. Current ubiquitin-proteasome-dependent TPD technologies are limited to targeting intracellular proteins. Although the blockade of immune checkpoints has achieved great clinical success, most immune checkpoints are transmembrane proteins, which are difficult to be ubiquitinated and degraded by PROTACs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The blockers of programmed cell death-1 (PD-1)/programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) pathway have achieved great clinical success. However, the limited efficacy and low tumor response rate of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 monotherapy limit the clinical application of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors. V-domain immunoglobulin suppressor of T-cell activation (VISTA), a novel checkpoint regulator, exhibits potential synergy with PD-1/PD-L1 in enhancing antitumor immunity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Congenital contractural arachnodactyly (CCA) is a rare autosomal dominant disorder caused by pathogenic variants of Fibrillin-2 () gene. This study aimed to investigate the variants in three Chinese families with CCA.

Methods: Next-generation sequencing analysis and Sanger sequencing of exons 24-35 of (NM_001999.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Non-van der Waals two-dimensional materials containing exposed transition metal atoms are promising catalysts for green energy storage and conversion. For instance, hematene and ilmenene have been successfully applied as catalysts. Building on these reports, this work is the first investigation of recently synthesized magnetene towards the Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER) and Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To determine the imaging details and diagnostic information of the treatment response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) of rectal adenocarcinoma at 9.4T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) by ex vivo.

Methods: Fifteen cases with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) followed by radical surgery after nCRT between September 2022 and February 2023 were recruited.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogen polysulfides (HS) have emerged as critical physiological mediators that are closely associated with hydrogen sulfide (HS) signaling. HS exhibit greater nucleophilicity than HS while also having electrophilic characteristics, enabling unique activities such as protein S-persulfidation. Despite their physiological importance, mechanisms and reactivities of HS remain inadequately explored due to their inherent instability in aqueous environments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Polar dielectrics with low crystal symmetry and sharp phonon resonances can support hyperbolic shear polaritons, which are highly confined surface modes with frequency-dependent optical axes and asymmetric dissipation features. So far, these modes have been observed only in bulk natural materials at midinfrared frequencies, with properties limited by available crystal geometries and phonon resonance strength. Here, we introduce hyperbolic shear metasurfaces, which are ultrathin engineered surfaces supporting hyperbolic surface modes with symmetry-tailored axial dispersion and loss redistribution that can maximally enhance light-matter interactions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The higher-order topological phases have attracted intense attention in the past years, which reveals various intriguing topological properties. Meanwhile, the enrichment of group symmetries with projective symmetry algebras redefines the fundamentals of topological matter and makes Stiefel-Whitney (SW) classes in classical wave systems possible. Here, we report the experimental realization of higher-order topological nodal loop semimetal in an acoustic system and obtain the inherent SW topological invariants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A general strategy for confining Pd, Ti-bimetallic sites in the MFI zeolite by crystal epitaxy was developed. The tailored spatial intimacy of the bimetallic sites demonstrated distinct catalytic performance for the oxidation of benzylalcohol. The related mechanism was clarified and afforded a valuable pathway for rational catalyst design.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Photocatalytic technology is an attractive option for environmental remediation because of its green and sustainable nature. However, the inefficient utilization of solar energy and powder morphology currently impede its practical application. Here, we designed a floatable photocatalyst by anchoring 0D Cu(OH)PO (CHP) nanoparticles on 2D graphene to construct 0D/2D CHP/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) aerogels.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Infertility affects approximately 10-15% of couples worldwide who are attempting to conceive, with male infertility accounting for 50% of infertility cases. Male infertility is related to various factors such as hormone imbalance, urogenital diseases, environmental factors, and genetic factors. Owing to its relationship with genetic factors, male infertility cannot be diagnosed through routine examination in most cases, and is clinically called 'idiopathic male infertility.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The discovery of higher-order topological insulator metamaterials, in analogy with their condensed-matter counterparts, has enabled various breakthroughs in photonics, mechanics, and acoustics. A common way of inducing higher-order topological wave phenomena is through pseudo-spins, which mimic the electron spins as a symmetry-breaking degree of freedom. Here, this work exploits degenerate orbitals in acoustic resonant cavities to demonstrate versatile, orbital-selective, higher-order topological corner states.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

SMARCA4-deficient undifferentiated thoracic tumor is extremely invasive. This tumor with poor prognosis is easily confused with SMARCA4-deficent non-small cell lung cancer or sarcoma. Standard and efficient treatment has not been established.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Parity-time (PT) symmetry has been unveiling new photonic regimes in non-Hermitian systems, with opportunities for lasing, sensing and enhanced light-matter interactions. The most exotic responses emerge at the exceptional point (EP) and in the broken PT-symmetry phase, yet in conventional PT-symmetric systems these regimes require large levels of gain and loss, posing remarkable challenges in practical settings. Floquet PT-symmetry, which may be realized by periodically flipping the effective gain/loss distribution in time, can relax these requirements and tailor the EP and PT-symmetry phases through the modulation period.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogen sulfide (H S) is an endogenous gasotransmitter that plays important roles in redox signaling. H S overproduction has been linked to a variety of disease states and therefore, H S-depleting agents, such as scavengers, are needed to understand the significance of H S-based therapy. It is known that elevated H S can induce oxidative stress with elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation, such as in H S acute intoxication.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Topological phases of matter have attracted significant attention in recent years, due to the unusual robustness of their response to defects and disorder. Various research efforts have been exploring classical and quantum topological wave phenomena in engineered materials, in which different degrees of freedom (DoFs) - for the most part based on broken crystal symmetries associated with pseudo-spins - induce synthetic gauge fields that support topological phases and unveil distinct forms of wave propagation. However, spin is not the only viable option to induce topological effects.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Modulating anisotropic phonon polaritons (PhPs) can open new avenues in infrared nanophotonics. Promising PhP dispersion engineering through polariton hybridization has been demonstrated by coupling gated graphene to single-layer α-MoO. However, the mechanism underlying the gate-dependent modulation of hybridization has remained elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A 51-year-old woman with a history of IgA nephropathy was found to have a mass in the right lobe of the liver by abdominal ultrasound. The PET/CT scan revealed elevated 68 Ga-FAPI-04 uptake in the aforementioned lesion, indicating the potential presence of liver cancer. However, subsequent histopathological analysis confirmed it to be an arteriovenous malformation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Achilles tendon (AT) injury is one of the most common tendon injuries, especially in athletes, the elderly, and working-age people. In AT injury, the biomechanical properties of the tendon are severely affected, leading to abnormal function. In recent years, many efforts have been underway to develop effective treatments for AT injuries to enable patients to return to sports faster.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Poly(1,3-trimethylene carbonate) (PTMC) is a flexible amorphous polymer with good degradability and biocompatibility. The degradation of PTMC is critical for its application as a degradable polymer, more convenient and easy-to-control cross-linking strategies for preparing PTMC are required. The blends of poly(trimethylene carbonate) (PTMC) and cross-linked poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) were prepared by mixing photoactive PEGDA and PTMC and subsequently photopolymerizing the mixture with uv light.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogel adhesion that can be easily modulated in magnitude, space, and time is desirable in many emerging applications ranging from tissue engineering and soft robotics to wearable devices. In synthetic materials, these complex adhesion behaviors are often achieved individually with mechanisms and apparatus that are difficult to integrate. Here, we report a universal strategy to embody multifaceted adhesion programmability in synthetic hydrogels.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Structural anisotropy in crystals affects how light travels, especially in the infrared region, where it interacts with phonon polaritons (PhPs), which are quasiparticles formed by light and lattice vibrations.
  • Recent research on the monoclinic crystal β-GaO (bGO) reveals that PhPs can exhibit highly asymmetric propagation, which researchers studied using advanced techniques like scanning near-field optical microscopy.
  • The study demonstrates that adjusting the laser orientation, the size of nano-antennas, and the frequency of light can significantly influence the behavior of these phonon polaritons, paving the way for practical applications in low-symmetry crystals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Meso- or micro-scale(or insect-scale) robots that are capable of realizing flexible locomotion and/or carrying on complex tasks in a remotely controllable manner hold great promise in diverse fields, such as biomedical applications, unknown environment exploration, operation in confined spaces, and so on. However, the existing design and implementation approaches for such multifunctional, on-demand configurable insect-scale robots are often focusing on their actuation or locomotion, while matched design and implementation with synergistic actuation and function modules under large deformation targeting varying task/target demands are rarely investigated. In this study, through systematical investigations on synergistical mechanical design and function integration, we developed a matched design and implementation method for constructing multifunctional, on-demand configurable insect-scale soft magnetic robots.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF