Dual-Steric Hindrance Modulation of Interface Electrochemistry for Potassium-Ion Batteries.

Electrolyte chemistry regulation is a feasible and effective approach to achieving a stable electrode-electrolyte interface. How to realize such regulation and establish the relationship between the liquid-phase electrolyte environment and solid-phase electrode remains a significant challenge, especially in solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) for metal-ion batteries. In this work, solvent/anion steric hindrance is regarded as an essential factor in exploring the electrolyte chemistry regulation on forming ether-based K-dominated SEI interface through the cross-combination strategy.

Association between plasma maresin 1 and the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in Chinese adults: A community-based cohort study.

Background And Aims: It has been reported that maresin 1 (MaR1) is able to protect against the development of atherogenesis in cellular and animal models. This study was performed to investigate whether plasma MaR1 is associated with the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) at the population level.

Methods And Results: The study included 2822 non-ASCVD participants from a community-based cohort who were followed for about 8 years.

Inverted U-Shaped Association of Plasma Resolvin D2 With Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease and the Mediation Effects of Serum Cholesterol: A Chinese Community-Based Study.

Background: Resolvin D2 (RvD2) has been reported to protect against the development of atherosclerosis in animal models. The objective of this study was to examine the prospective association between plasma RvD2 and the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) at the population level.

Methods And Results: A cohort of 2633 community-dwelling individuals aged 35-60 years was followed for 8 years in this study.

Pervasive polygenicity of complex traits inflates false positive rates in transcriptome-wide association studies.

Transcription-wide association studies (TWAS) and related methods (xWAS) have been widely adopted in genetic studies to understand molecular traits as mediators between genetic variation and disease. However, the effect of polygenicity on the validity of these mediator-trait association tests has largely been overlooked. Given the widespread polygenicity of complex traits, it is necessary to assess the validity and accuracy of these mediator-trait association tests.

Efficient K-Storage of Fe-Coupled Organic Molecule Anode in Ether-Based Electrolytes.

Given these advantages of widely designable structures and environmentally friendly characteristics, organic electrode materials (OEMs) are considered to be promising electrode materials for alkaline metal-ion batteries. However, their large-scale application is hampered by insufficient specific capacity and rate performance. Here, Fe is coupled to the anhydride molecule NTCDA to form a novel K-storage anode Fe-NTCDA.

Screening Nickel-Doped Mo C Nanorod Arrays for Ultrastable and Efficient Hydrogen Evolution over a Wide pH Range.

Green hydrogen, using sustainable energy to decompose water to produce hydrogen, is regarded as the ideal and effective connection to convert electricity into chemical energy. Herein, well designed Ni-doped Mo C nanorod electrodes self-supported on three types of substrates (Ni foam, Cu foam and stainless steel wire mesh) with outstanding gas resistance and prominent corrosion resistance were assembled together to build up a wide pH applicable electrode for Hydrogen Evolution. In particular, Ni-doped Mo C nanorod arrays on stainless steel wire mesh donated as Ni-Mo C@SSW exhibited remarkable electrocatalytic properties towards hydrogen evolution reaction with superior overpotentials both in 1 M KOH and 0.

Molecular Simulation of Electron Traps in Epoxy Resin/Graphene Oxide Nanocomposites.

Trapped space charges in epoxy composite distort the electric field, which will induce the failure of the insulation system, and nano graphene oxide may inhibit the curing behavior of epoxy resin matrix. This paper analyzes how the two interfaces affect the electron traps of epoxy resin/graphene oxide systems with different nanofiller contents. The electron affinity energy of epoxy resin matrix and nano filler molecules in the epoxy resin/graphene oxide system is calculated based on quantum chemistry.

Decoupling layer metal-organic frameworks ligand regulation to achieve ultra-thin carbon nanosheets for oxygen reduction electrocatalysis.

2D imidazole MOFs are considered to be ideal carbon precursors for oxygen reduction reactions owing to their adjustable ligand components and durable coordination mode. Due to the massive electron delocalization in the lamella, the conjugative effect among 2D MOF layers immensely restricts the exposure of catalytic sites after carbonization, which makes the decoupling layer extremely important on the premise of ensuring activity. Herein, atomic thickness ultra-thin zinc-imidazole MOF precursors were prepared through a bottom-up ligand regulated strategy to achieve the aim of lamellar decoupling.

Polygenic transcriptome risk scores (PTRS) can improve portability of polygenic risk scores across ancestries.

Background: Polygenic risk scores (PRS) are valuable to translate the results of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) into clinical practice. To date, most GWAS have been based on individuals of European-ancestry leading to poor performance in populations of non-European ancestry.

Results: We introduce the polygenic transcriptome risk score (PTRS), which is based on predicted transcript levels (rather than SNPs), and explore the portability of PTRS across populations using UK Biobank data.

Balance of N-Doping Engineering and Carbon Chemistry to Expose Edge Graphitic N Sites for Enhanced Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysis.

Nitrogen-doped nanocarbon materials (NCMs) have been developed as promising metal-free oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts. However, insufficient attention on the balance of N-doping engineering and carbon chemistry significantly suppressed the revelation of the real active configurations as well as the ORR mechanism for NCMs. Herein, 1,4-phenylenediurea (BDU) with multifunctional blocks was designed for the synthesis of NCMs, realizing synchronous manipulation of N-doping engineering and carbon chemistry.

A scalable unified framework of total and allele-specific counts for cis-QTL, fine-mapping, and prediction.

Genetic studies of the transcriptome help bridge the gap between genetic variation and phenotypes. To maximize the potential of such studies, efficient methods to identify expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) and perform fine-mapping and genetic prediction of gene expression traits are needed. Current methods that leverage both total read counts and allele-specific expression to identify eQTLs are generally computationally intractable for large transcriptomic studies.

Exploiting the GTEx resources to decipher the mechanisms at GWAS loci.

The resources generated by the GTEx consortium offer unprecedented opportunities to advance our understanding of the biology of human diseases. Here, we present an in-depth examination of the phenotypic consequences of transcriptome regulation and a blueprint for the functional interpretation of genome-wide association study-discovered loci. Across a broad set of complex traits and diseases, we demonstrate widespread dose-dependent effects of RNA expression and splicing.

Fine-mapping and QTL tissue-sharing information improves the reliability of causal gene identification.

The integration of transcriptomic studies and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) via imputed expression has seen extensive application in recent years, enabling the functional characterization and causal gene prioritization of GWAS loci. However, the techniques for imputing transcriptomic traits from DNA variation remain underdeveloped. Furthermore, associations found when linking eQTL studies to complex traits through methods like PrediXcan can lead to false positives due to linkage disequilibrium between distinct causal variants.

PhenomeXcan: Mapping the genome to the phenome through the transcriptome.

Large-scale genomic and transcriptomic initiatives offer unprecedented insight into complex traits, but clinical translation remains limited by variant-level associations without biological context and lack of analytic resources. Our resource, PhenomeXcan, synthesizes 8.87 million variants from genome-wide association study summary statistics on 4091 traits with transcriptomic data from 49 tissues in Genotype-Tissue Expression v8 into a gene-based, queryable platform including 22,515 genes.

Atomic-Scale Dispersed Fe-Based Catalysts Confined on Nitrogen-Doped Graphene for Li-S Batteries: Polysulfides with Enhanced Conversion Efficiency.

Lithium-sulfur batteries have been considered as potential electrochemical energy-storage devices owing to their satisfactory theoretical energy density. Nonetheless, the inferior conversion efficiency of polysulfides in essence leads to fast capacity decay during the discharge/charge cycle. In this work, it is successfully demonstrated that the conversion efficiency of lithium polysulfides is remarkably enhanced by employing a well-distributed atomic-scale Fe-based catalyst immobilized on nitrogen-doped graphene (Fe@NG) as a coating of separator in lithium-sulfur batteries.

Transformation of ZIF-8 nanoparticles into 3D nitrogen-doped hierarchically porous carbon for Li-S batteries.

Li-S batteries have been attracting increasing interest owing to their remarkable advantages of low cost, high theoretical capacity and high theoretical energy density. Nevertheless, the severe "shuttle effects" of lithium polysulfides have markedly limited the performance of the cells and further hindered their commercial applications. Herein, a novel scheme combining a transformation strategy with ammonia treatment was developed to fabricate ZIF-8-derived nitrogen-doped hierarchically porous carbon (NHPC/NH).

Optimal Configuration of N-Doped Carbon Defects in 2D Turbostratic Carbon Nanomesh for Advanced Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysis.

The charge redistribution strategy driven by heteroatom doping or defect engineering has been developed as an efficient method to endow inert carbon with significant oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity. The synergetic effect between the two approaches is thus expected to be more effective for manipulating the charge distribution of carbon materials for exceptional ORR performance. Herein we report a novel molecular design strategy to achieve a 2D porous turbostratic carbon nanomesh with abundant N-doped carbon defects (NDC).

Gold Nanoparticle-Induced Photocurrent Quenching and Recovery of Polymer Dots: Toward Signal-On Energy-Transfer-Based Photocathodic Bioanalysis of Telomerase Activity in Cell Extracts.

Energy transfer (ET) in photoelectrochemical (PEC) bioanalysis is usually generated between noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) and traditional inorganic quantum dots (QDs). Using the innovative polymer dot (Pdot)-involved ET, this work reports the first signal-on and cathodic PEC bioanalysis toward telomerase (TE) activity in cell extracts. Specifically, the sequential binding of capture DNA (cDNA), telomerase primer sequence (TS), and Au NP-labeled probe DNA (Au NP-pDNA) on the electrode would place the Au NPs in close proximity of the Pdots, leading to obvious quenching of the cathodic photocurrent.

Binding-induced formation of DNAzyme on an Au@Ag nanoparticles/TiO nanorods electrode: Stimulating biocatalytic precipitation amplification for plasmonic photoelectrochemical bioanalysis.

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) DNA bioanalysis has been drawing more attention in recent years due to the advantages of PEC technique and the vital importance of DNA biomolecules. DNAzymes are unique catalytic nucleic acid molecules that are capable of catalyzing specific biochemical reactions. Using the target-binding-induced conformation change of hairpin DNA probe to hemin/G-quadruplex-based DNAzyme and a plasmonic Au@Ag nanoparticles (NPs)/TiO nanorods (NRs)/fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) heterostructured photoelectrode, this work reported a novel and sensitive PEC DNA analysis on the basis of a DNAzyme-stimulated biocatalytic precipitation (BCP) strategy.

Stepwise Fabrication of Co-Embedded Porous Multichannel Carbon Nanofibers for High-Efficiency Oxygen Reduction.

A novel nonprecious metal material consisting of Co-embedded porous interconnected multichannel carbon nanofibers (Co/IMCCNFs) was rationally designed for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysis. In the synthesis, ZnCoO was employed to form interconnected mesoporous channels and provide highly active CoO/Co core-shell nanoparticle-based sites for the ORR. The IMC structure with a large synergistic effect of the N and Co active sites provided fast ORR electrocatalysis kinetics.

A Statistical Framework for Mapping Risk Genes from De Novo Mutations in Whole-Genome-Sequencing Studies.

Analysis of de novo mutations (DNMs) from sequencing data of nuclear families has identified risk genes for many complex diseases, including multiple neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Most of these efforts have focused on mutations in protein-coding sequences. Evidence from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) strongly suggests that variants important to human diseases often lie in non-coding regions.

Semiconducting CuO Nanotubes: Synthesis, Characterization, and Bifunctional Photocathodic Enzymatic Bioanalysis.

This work reports the synthesis, characterization, and application of bifunctional semiconducting CuO nanotubes (NTs) electrode for innovative synergized cathodic photoelectrochemical (PEC) enzymatic bioanalysis. Specifically, CuO NTs electrode was fabricated by surface oxidation of the copper foil in an alkaline aqueous solution with (NH)SO and then annealed in air at 200 °C. After the subsequent coupling with the model enzyme of xanthine oxidase (XOD), the resulted photocathodic enzyme biosensor exhibited good analytical performance of rapid response, high stability, and good sensitivity.

Hierarchical CuInS-based heterostructure: Application for photocathodic bioanalysis of sarcosine.

In this study, on the basis of hierarchical CuInS-based heterostructure, a novel cathodic photoelectrochemical (PEC) enzymatic bioanalysis of the sarcosine detection was reported. Specifically, heterostructured CuInS/NiO/ITO photocathode was prepared and sarcosine oxidases (SOx) were integrated for the construction of the enzymatic biosensor. In the bioanalysis, the O-dependent suppression of the cathodic photocurrent can be observed due to the competition between the as-fabricated O-sensitive photocathode and the SOx-catalytic event toward O reduction.