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As a promising candidate in the construction industry, iron-based shape memory alloy (Fe-SMA) has attracted lots of attention in the engineering and metallography communities because of its foreseeable benefits including corrosion resistance, shape recovery capability, excellent plastic deformability, and outstanding fatigue resistance. Pilot applications have proved the feasibility of Fe-SMA as a highly efficient functional material in the construction sector. This paper provides a review of recent developments in research and design practice related to Fe-SMA. The basic mechanical properties are presented and compared with conventional structural steel, and some necessary explanations are given on the metallographic transformation mechanism. Newly emerged applications, such as Fe-SMA-based prestressing/strengthening techniques and seismic-resistant components/devices, are discussed. It is believed that Fe-SMA offers a wide range of applications in the construction industry but there still remains problems to be addressed and areas to be further explored. Some research needs at material-level, component-level, and system-level are highlighted in this paper. With the systematic information provided, this paper not only benefits professionals and researchers who have been working in this area for a long time and wanting to gain an in-depth understanding of the state-of-the-art, but also helps enlighten a wider audience intending to get acquainted with this exciting topic.

Background Prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) is part of standard care in limited-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC) at present. As evidence from retrospective studies increases, the benefits of PCI for limited-stage SCLC are being challenged. Methods A multicenter, prospective, randomized controlled study was designed. The key inclusion criteria were: histologically or cytologically confirmed small cell carcinoma, age ≥ 18 years, KPS ≥ 80, limited-stage is defined as tumor confined to one side of the chest including ipsilateral hilar, bilateral mediastinum and supraclavicular lymph nodes, patients have received definitive thoracic radiotherapy (regardless of the dose-fractionation of radiotherapy used) and chemotherapy, evaluated as complete remission (CR) of tumor 4–6 weeks after the completion of chemo-radiotherapy. Eligible patients will be randomly assigned to two arms: (1) PCI and brain MRI surveillance arm, receiving PCI (2.5 Gy qd to a total dose of 25 Gy in two weeks) followed by brain MRI surveillance once every three months for two years; (2) brain MRI surveillance alone arm, undergoing brain MRI surveillance once every three months for two years. The primary objective is to compare the 2-year brain metastasis-free survival (BMFS) rates between the two arms. Secondary objectives include 2-year overall survival (OS) rates, intra-cranial failure patterns, 2-year progression-free survival rates and neurotoxicity. In case of brain metastasis (BM) detect during follow-up, stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) will be recommended if patients meet the eligibility criteria. Discussion Based on our post-hoc analysis of a prospective study, we hypothesize that in limited-stage SCLC patients with CR after definitive chemoradiotherapy, and ruling out of BM by MRI, it would be feasible to use brain MRI surveillance and omit PCI in these patients. If BM is detected during follow-up, treatment with SRS or whole brain radiotherapy does not appear to have a detrimental effect on OS. Additionally, this approach may reduce potential neurotoxicity associated with PCI.

With the success of immunotherapy in advanced esophageal cancer, neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy (CIT) is being increasingly used for local staged esophageal cancer, especially in the context of clinical trials, which brings similar pCR with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and shows promising results. However, there is still a part of potentially operable patients can't undergo surgery after neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy. The follow-up treatment and prognosis of this population remain unclear. Patients pathologically diagnosed with ESCC, clinical stage T1-3N+M0 or T3-4aNanyM0 (AJCC 8th), PS 0–1 were retrospectively enrolled from 1/2020 to 6/2021 in Zhejiang Cancer Hospital. All patients firstly received PD-1 inhibitors plus chemotherapy (albumin paclitaxel, 260 mg/m 2 on day 1 plus carboplatin AUC = 5 on day 1) every 3 weeks for 2–4 cycles. For those patients who did not receive surgery, definitive radiotherapy with 50.4 Gy/28F or 50 Gy/25F was adopted using VMAT, concurrent with chemotherapy or alone. The concurrent chemotherapy regimens included weekly TC (paclitaxel 50 mg/m 2 , d1, carboplatin AUC = 2, d1) or S1 (60 mg bid d1–14, 29–42). The survival outcomes and treatment toxicity were recorded and analyzed. A total of 56 eligible patients were finally identified from 558 patients who were treated in department of thoracic surgery, among all the patients, 25 (44.6%) received radiotherapy alone, and 31 (55.4%) received chemoradiotherapy after neoadjuvant CIT. The median follow-up was 20.4 months (interquartile range [IQR] 8.7–27 months). The median PFS and OS were 17.9 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 11.0–21.9 months) and 20.5 months (95% CI 11.8–27.9 months), respectively. In the subgroup analysis, the median OS was 26.3 months (95% CI 15.33–NA) for patients exhibiting partial response (PR) to CIT, compared to 17 months (95% CI 8.77–26.4) for those with stable disease (SD) or progressive disease (PD), yielding a hazard ratio (HR) of 0.54 (95% CI 0.27–1.06, P = 0.07). No significant difference was observed for patients received radiotherapy alone or chemoradiotherapy with HR = 0.73 (95% CI 0.72–2.6, P = 0.33). The most common Adverse events (AEs) observed during this study were anemia (98.2%), leukopenia (83.9%), thrombocytopenia (53.6%). AEs of grade ≥ 3 radiation-induced pneumonitis and esophagitis were 12.5% and 32.1%, especially, 6 patients (10.7%) died from esophageal fistula and 2 patients (3.6%) died from grade 5 pneumonitis. For local advanced ESCC patients after neoadjuvant CIT who did not receive surgery, definitive radiotherapy was an optional treatment strategy. However, those patients with no response to CIT also showed poor response to radiotherapy, and particular attention should be paid to treatment related toxicity, especially esophageal fistula.

Fibrous air filtration materials are highly desirable for particle removal from high-temperature emission sources. However, the existing commercial filter materials suffer from either low filtration efficiency or high pressure drop, due to the difficulty in achieving small fiber diameter and high porosity simultaneously. Herein, we report a facile strategy to fabricate mechanical robust fibrous aerogels by using dual-scale sized PAI/BMI filaments and fibers, which are derived from wet spinning and electrospinning technologies, respectively. The creativity of this design is that PAI/BMI filaments can serve as the enhancing skeleton and PAI/BMI fibers can assemble into high-porosity interconnected networks, enabling the improvement of both mechanical property and air filtration performance. The resultant dual-scale sized PAI/PBMI fibrous aerogels show a compressive stress of 8.36 MPa, a high filtration efficiency of 90.78% (particle diameter of 2.5 μm); for particle diameter over 5 μm, they have 99.99% ultra-high filtration efficiency, a low pressure drop of 20 Pa, and high QF of 0.12 Pa−1, as well as thermostable and fire-retardant properties (thermal decomposition temperature up to 342.7 °C). The successive fabrication of this material is of great significance for the govern of industrial dust.

Prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) is part of standard care in limited-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC) at present. As evidence from retrospective studies increases, the benefits of PCI for limited-stage SCLC are being challenged. A multicenter, prospective, randomized controlled study was designed. The key inclusion criteria were: histologically or cytologically confirmed small cell carcinoma, age [greater than or equal to] 18 years, KPS [greater than or equal to] 80, limited-stage is defined as tumor confined to one side of the chest including ipsilateral hilar, bilateral mediastinum and supraclavicular lymph nodes, patients have received definitive thoracic radiotherapy (regardless of the dose-fractionation of radiotherapy used) and chemotherapy, evaluated as complete remission (CR) of tumor 4-6 weeks after the completion of chemo-radiotherapy. Eligible patients will be randomly assigned to two arms: (1) PCI and brain MRI surveillance arm, receiving PCI (2.5 Gy qd to a total dose of 25 Gy in two weeks) followed by brain MRI surveillance once every three months for two years; (2) brain MRI surveillance alone arm, undergoing brain MRI surveillance once every three months for two years. The primary objective is to compare the 2-year brain metastasis-free survival (BMFS) rates between the two arms. Secondary objectives include 2-year overall survival (OS) rates, intra-cranial failure patterns, 2-year progression-free survival rates and neurotoxicity. In case of brain metastasis (BM) detect during follow-up, stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) will be recommended if patients meet the eligibility criteria. Based on our post-hoc analysis of a prospective study, we hypothesize that in limited-stage SCLC patients with CR after definitive chemoradiotherapy, and ruling out of BM by MRI, it would be feasible to use brain MRI surveillance and omit PCI in these patients. If BM is detected during follow-up, treatment with SRS or whole brain radiotherapy does not appear to have a detrimental effect on OS. Additionally, this approach may reduce potential neurotoxicity associated with PCI.

Mobility is the urgent requisite of post spinal cord injury (SCI) patient. Since the alternative and compensatory approach is considered as the major function of mobility assistive device for post-SCI patients, the device should possess capability to acclimate to the 'abnormal' gait generate by the patients who usually undergo alternative and compensatory rehabilitation in their neural circuit. The functional ability of individual should be taking into account. Yet according to the requirement of neuro-protective treatment in post-SCI rehabilitation processing, locomotor-like activity is still an essential factor to patient. This study presents a novel concept and prototype of assistive technology base on foot control strategy to take an equilibrium between mobility and gait realization. To demonstrate that foot-induced over-ground locomotor assistive method is capable of achieving locomotor-like activity (dragging step), simulation analysis and prototype preliminary experiment have been conducted. Simulation analysis show that foot-induced assistance can allow more volitional activity compare to the hip-knee-induced assistive device. Yet the input and disturbance act on such kind of device may be increased. Surface electromyography (sEMG) from muscles of lower limb (right rectus femoris, right biceps femoris and right gluteus maximus) have been recorded during the preliminary experiment, and the mean of integrated EMG (iEMG) was used as evaluation of muscle activity. The result of the testing show that the mean of iEMG in the right gluteus maximus was reduced in the swing phase when the subject moving ahead with the prototype, but no significant change in the right rectus femoris. It may imply that foot-induced over-ground locomotor assistive device can reduce the muscle activity when patient complete locomotor-like movement and retain some amount of residual recruitment of lower limb, instead of substituting arbitrarily.