Boosting the Piezoelectric Sensitivity of Amino Acid Crystals by Mechanical Annealing for the Engineering of Fully Degradable Force Sensors.

Biodegradable piezoelectric force sensors can be used as implantable medical devices for monitoring physiological pressures of impaired organs or providing essential stimuli for drug delivery and tissue regeneration without the need of additional invasive removal surgery or battery power. However, traditional piezoelectric materials, such as inorganic ceramics and organic polymers, show unsatisfactory degradability, and cytotoxicity. Amino acid crystals are biocompatible and exhibit outstanding piezoelectric properties, but their small crystal size makes it difficult to align the crystals for practical applications.

Modulating the Electromechanical Response of Bio-Inspired Amino Acid-Based Architectures through Supramolecular Co-Assembly.

Supramolecular packing dictates the physical properties of bio-inspired molecular assemblies in the solid state. Yet, modulating the stacking modes of bio-inspired supramolecular assemblies remains a challenge and the structure-property relationship is still not fully understood, which hampers the rational design of molecular structures to fabricate materials with desired properties. Herein, we present a co-assembly strategy to modulate the supramolecular packing of N-terminally capped alanine-based assemblies (Ac-Ala) by changing the amino acid chirality and mixing with a nonchiral bipyridine derivative (BPA).

Effectiveness and safety of retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) vs. percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) in the treatment of isolated kidney stones.

Objective: To compare the effectiveness and safety of retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) and percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) in the treatment of isolated kidney stones.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed on 99 patients with isolated kidney stones treated in our hospital. Patients were divided into a flexible cystoscope group (FCG, n=48, receiving RIRS) and a nephoscopy group (NG, n=51, receiving PCNL) according to the operation methods.

Regulating the Homogeneity of Thiol-Maleimide Michael-Type Addition-Based Hydrogels Using Amino Biomolecules.

Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-based synthetic hydrogels based on Michael-type addition reaction have been widely used for cell culture and tissue engineering. However, recent studies showed that these types of hydrogels were not homogenous as expected since micro domains generated due to the fast reaction kinetics. Here, we demonstrated a new kind of method to prepare homogenous poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogels based on Michael-type addition using the side chain amine-contained short peptides.