Retrograde cerebral embolism and pulmonary embolism caused by patent ductus arteriosus: a case report.

Background: Although rare, paradoxical embolism sometimes occurs with patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). This study presents a case of PDA-associated paradoxical embolism with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and pulmonary embolism (PE) following thoracoscopic surgery.

Case Presentation: A 65-year-old woman developed acute-onset aphasia and right hemiparesis on the third day following thoracoscopic resection for a right lung tumor.

Dual Regulation of Charge Separation and the Oxygen Reduction Pathway by Encapsulating Phosphotungstic Acid into the Cationic Covalent Organic Framework for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Peroxide Production.

Previous research on covalent organic framework (COF)-based photocatalytic HO synthesis from oxygen reduction focuses more on charge carrier separation but less on the electron utilization efficiency of O. Herein, we put forward a facile approach to simultaneously promote charge separation and tailor the oxygen reduction pathway by introducing phosphotungstic acid (PTA) into the cationic COF skeleton. Experiments verified that PTA, as an electron transport medium, establishes a fast electron transfer channel from the COF semiconductor conductor band to the substrate O; meanwhile, the reaction path is optimized by its catalytic cycle for preferable dioxygen capture and reduction in oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) kinetics.

Shape and stiffness memory ionogels with programmable pressure-resistance response.

Flexible pressure sensors usually require functional materials with both mechanical compliance and appropriate electrical performance. Most sensors based on materials with limited compressibility can hardly balance between high sensitivity and broad pressure range. Here, we prepare a heterophasic ionogel with shape and stiffness memory for adaptive pressure sensors.

Diffusion-Freezing-Induced Microphase Separation for Constructing Large-Area Multiscale Structures on Hydrogel Surfaces.

Hydrogels with multiscale structured surface have attracted significant attention for their valuable applications in diverse areas. However, current strategies for the design and fabrication of structured hydrogel surfaces, which suffer from complicated manufacturing processes and specific material modeling, are not efficient to produce structured hydrogel surfaces in large area, and therefore restrict their practical applications. To address this problem, a general and reliable method is reported, which relies on the interplay between polymer chain diffusion and the subsequent freezing-induced gelation and microphase separation processes.

High-speed transport of liquid droplets in magnetic tubular microactuators.

Magnetic field-induced droplet actuation has attracted substantial research interest in recent years. However, current magnetic-controlled liquids depend primarily on magnetic particles added to a droplet, which serves as the actuator on an open surface. These liquids inevitably suffer from droplet splitting with the magnetic particles or disengaging with the magnet, possibly leading to sample contamination, which severely limits their transport speed and practical applications.

Conductive Hydrogels as Smart Materials for Flexible Electronic Devices.

Flexible conductive materials have gained considerable research interest in recent years because of their potential applications in flexible energy storage devices, sensors, touch panels, electronic skins, etc. With excellent flexibility, outstanding electric properties and tunable mechanical properties, conductive hydrogels as conductive materials offer plentiful insights and opportunities for flexible electronic devices. Numerous synthetic strategies have been developed to obtain various conductive hydrogels, and high-performance flexible electronic devices based on these conductive hydrogels have been realized.

General Strategy to Fabricate Highly Filled Microcomposite Hydrogels with High Mechanical Strength and Stiffness.

Conventional synthetic hydrogels are intrinsically soft and brittle, which severely limits the scope of their applications. A variety of approaches have been proposed to improve the mechanical strength of hydrogels. However, a facile and ubiquitous strategy to prepare hydrogels with high mechanical strength and stiffness is still a challenge.

Bioinspired Nanocomposite Hydrogels with Highly Ordered Structures.

In the human body, many soft tissues with hierarchically ordered composite structures, such as cartilage, skeletal muscle, the corneas, and blood vessels, exhibit highly anisotropic mechanical strength and functionality to adapt to complex environments. In artificial soft materials, hydrogels are analogous to these biological soft tissues due to their "soft and wet" properties, their biocompatibility, and their elastic performance. However, conventional hydrogel materials with unordered homogeneous structures inevitably lack high mechanical properties and anisotropic functional performances; thus, their further application is limited.

Anti-freezing, Conductive Self-healing Organohydrogels with Stable Strain-Sensitivity at Subzero Temperatures.

Conductive hydrogels are a class of stretchable conductive materials that are important for various applications. However, water-based conductive hydrogels inevitably lose elasticity and conductivity at subzero temperatures, which severely limits their applications at low temperatures. Herein we report anti-freezing conductive organohydrogels by using an H O/ethylene glycol binary solvent as dispersion medium.

Construction of a superior visible-light-driven photocatalyst based on a CN active centre-photoelectron shift platform-electron withdrawing unit triadic structure covalent organic framework.

Herein, three functional factors inducing photocatalytic ability were artfully integrated into a covalent organic framework (COF), where triazine units served as photoactive centers, cyclic ketone units served as electron-withdrawing moieties, and the conjugated structure served as a photoelectron shift platform. This COF with segregated donor-acceptor alignments exhibits an excellent visible-light photocatalytic capacity for the decomposition of organic pollutants.

Covalent tethering of photo-responsive superficial layers on hydrogel surfaces for photo-controlled release.

The diffusion and transport of substances between a hydrogel and its environment have received tremendous research interest, due to the wide range of applications of hydrogel materials in fields related to drug carriers and drug delivery vehicles. To date, much research has been done to tailor the diffusion and transport of substances through hydrogels, where most efforts were focused on tuning the 3D network properties of the hydrogel including loop size, hydrophobicity of building blocks and the stimuli-responsive properties of backbones. These conventional strategies, however, usually suffer from complicated fabrication procedures and result in a homogeneous increase in hydrophobicity of the hydrogel network, leading to low efficiency control over the diffusion of substances through the hydrogel.

Polyhydroquinone-graphene composite as new redox species for sensitive electrochemical detection of cytokeratins antigen 21-1.

Polyhydroquinone-graphene composite as a new redox species was synthesized simply by a microwave-assisted one-pot method through oxidative polymerization of hydroquinone by graphene oxide, which exhibited excellent electrochemical redox activity at 0.124 V and can remarkably promote electron transfer. The as-prepared composite was used as immunosensing substrate in a label-free electrochemical immunosensor for the detection of cytokeratins antigen 21-1, a kind of biomarker of lung cancer.

Metal ions doped chitosan-poly(acrylic acid) nanospheres: Synthesis and their application in simultaneously electrochemical detection of four markers of pancreatic cancer.

In this work, a one-pot method was designed to synthesize copper ions, cadmium ions, lead ions and zinc ions doped chitosan-poly(acrylic acid) nanospheres. Those nanospheres can not only produce independent electrochemical signals, but also react with glutaraldehyde (GA) to immobilize different labeled antibodies. Using the modified nanospheres as immunoprobes, a sandwich-type immunosensor was fabricated to simultaneous detection of four tumor markers (CEA, CA199, CA125 and CA242) of pancreatic cancer.

Network nanostructured polypyrrole hydrogel/Au composites as enhanced electrochemical biosensing platform.

In this work, a new network nanocomposite composed of polypyrrole hydrogel (PPy hydrogel) loaded gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) was prepared. The PPy hydrogel was directly synthesized by mixing the pyrrole monomer and phytic acid, and the mixed solution can be gelated to form hydrogel at once. The three-dimensional network nanostructured PPy hydrogel not only provided a greater effective surface area for increasing the quantity of immobilized biomolecules and facilitated the transport of electrons and ions, but also exhibited an improved conductivity.

One-step synthesis of redox-active polymer/AU nanocomposites for electrochemical immunoassay of multiplexed tumor markers.

In this work, a simple and sensitive multiplexed immunoassay protocol for simultaneous electrochemical determination of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) was designed using redox-active nanocomposites. As the redox-active species, the poly(o-phenylenediamine) (POPD)/Au nanocomposite and poly(vinyl ferrocene-2-aminothiophenol) (poly(VFc-ATP))/Au nanocomposite were obtained by one-step method which HAuCl4 was used as the oxidant. With Au nanoparticles (AuNPs), the nanocomposites were successful to immobilize labeled anti-CEA and anti-AFP as the immunosensing probes.