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To receive a greater power and to demonstrate the soft bellows-shaped actuator’s wireless actuation, micro inductors were built for wireless power transfer and realized in a three-dimensional helical structure, which have previously been built in two-dimensional spiral structures. Although the three-dimensional helical inductor has the advantage of acquiring more magnetic flux linkage than the two-dimensional spiral inductor, the existing microfabrication technique produces a device on a two-dimensional plane, as it has a limit to building a complete three-dimensional structure. In this study, by using a three-dimensional printed soluble mold technique, a three-dimensional heater with helical coils, which have a larger heating area than a two-dimensional heater, was fabricated with three-dimensional receiving inductors for enhanced wireless power transfer. The three-dimensional heater connected to the three-dimensional helical inductor increased the temperature of the liquid and gas inside the bellows-shaped actuator while reaching 176.1% higher temperature than the heater connected to the two-dimensional spiral inductor. Thereby it enables a stroke of the actuator up to 522% longer than when it is connected to the spiral inductor. Therefore, three-dimensional micro coils can offer a significant approach to the development of wireless micro soft robots without incurring heavy and bulky parts such as batteries.

Typical pneumatic soft micro actuators can be manufactured without using heavy driving components such as pumps and power supplies by adopting an independent battery-powered mechanism. In this study, a thermopneumatically operated soft micro bellows actuator was manufactured, and the standalone operation of the actuator was experimentally validated. Thermopneumatic actuation is based on heating a sealed cavity inside the elastomer of the actuator to raise the pressure, leading to deflection of the elastomer. The bellows actuator was fabricated by casting polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using the 3D-printed soluble mold technique to prevent leakage, which is inherent in conventional soft lithography due to the bonding of individual layers. The heater, manufactured separately using winding copper wire, was inserted into the cavity of the bellows actuator, which together formed the thermopneumatic actuator. The 3D coil heater and bellows allowed immediate heat transfer and free movement in the intended direction, which is unachievable for conventional microfabrication. The fabricated actuator produced a stroke of 2184 μm, equivalent to 62% of the body, and exerted a force of 90.2 mN at a voltage of 0.55 V. A system in which the thermopneumatic actuator was driven by alkaline batteries and a control circuit also demonstrated a repetitive standalone operation.

Oxide ceramic electrolytes for realization of high-energy lithium metal batteries typically require high-temperature processes to achieve the desired phase formation and inter-particle sintering. However, such high-temperature processing can lead to compositional changes or mechanical deformation, compromising material reliability. Here, we introduce a disorder-driven, sintering-free approach to synthesize garnet-type solid electrolyte via the creation of an amorphous matrix followed by a single-step mild heat-treatment. The softened mechanical property (yield pressure, P y  = 359.8 MPa) of disordered base materials enables the facile formation of a dense amorphous matrix and the preserving of inter-particle connectivity during crystallization. The formation of the cubic-phase garnet is triggered at a lowered temperature of 350 °C, achieving a Li + ionic conductivity of 1.8 × 10 –4 S/cm at 25 °C through a single-step mild heat treatment at 500 °C. The disorder-driven garnet solid electrolyte exhibits electrochemical performance comparable to conventional garnet solid electrolyte sintered at >1100 °C. These findings will promote the fabrication of uniform, thin, and wide solid electrolyte membranes, which is a significant hurdle in the commercialization of oxide-based lithium metal batteries, and demonstrate the untapped capabilities of garnet-type oxide solid electrolytes. Oxide ceramic electrolytes for Li-metal batteries often require high-temperature processing, which can compromise material reliability. Here, the authors present a sintering-free approach to synthesize disorder-driven garnet-type solid electrolytes, achieving performance comparable to traditional sintered materials.

Intrarenal robust inflammatory response following ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) is a major factor in the pathogenesis of renal injury in ischemic acute kidney injury (AKI). Although numerous studies have investigated various agents of immune modulation or suppression for ischemic AKI, few showed reproducible effects. We hypothesized that poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor may favorably change post-ischemic intrarenal immunologic micromilieu by reducing damage-associated molecular pattern (DAMP) signals and improve renal outcome in ischemic AKI. The effects of JPI-289 (a PARP inhibitor) on early renal injury in a murine IRI model and hypoxic HK-2 cell model were investigated. Bilateral IRI surgery was performed in three groups of 9-week-old male C57BL/6 mice (control, JPI-289 50 mg/kg, and JPI-289 100 mg/kg; n = 9-10 in each group). Saline or JPI-289 was intraperitoneally injected. Renal function deterioration was significantly attenuated in the JPI-289 treatment groups in a dose-dependent manner. Inflammatory cell infiltration and proinflammatory cytokine/chemokine expressions in the post-ischemic kidneys were also attenuated by JPI-289 treatment. JPI-289 treatment at 0.5 and 0.75 μg/ml facilitated the proliferation of hypoxic HK-2 cells. PARP inhibition with JPI-289 treatment showed favorable effects in ischemic AKI by attenuating intrarenal inflammatory cascade in a murine model and facilitating proliferation of hypoxic HK-2 cells.

A systemic inflammatory response can contribute to poor outcomes in an advanced stage of cardiogenic shock (CS). We investigated the efficacy of extracorporeal endotoxin and cytokine adsorption using oXiris in patients with CS undergoing venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO). In this prospective, single-center, randomized, open-label pilot trial, 40 patients with CS who were undergoing VA-ECMO were randomly assigned to receive either oXiris for 24 h (n = 20) or usual care (n = 20). The primary endpoint was endotoxin levels at 48 h. Secondary endpoints included changes in inflammatory cytokines, vasoactive-inotropic score (VIS), ECMO weaning success, and in-hospital and 30-day mortality. The median endotoxin levels at 48 h were 0.5 (IQR 0.4-1.0) in the oXiris group and 0.4 (IQR 0.2-0.5) in the control group, with no significant difference between them (P = 0.097). The oXiris group showed significant temporal reductions in GDF-15 and IL-6 levels, with IL-6 revealing significant reductions from baseline to 24 h (P = 0.020) and from baseline to 7 days (P = 0.003). VIS decreased significantly from baseline to 48 h (-13.63, 95% CI: -20.90 - -6.34, P < 0.001) and 7 days (-12.19, 95% CI: -21.0 - -3.31, P = 0.007) in the oXiris group, but intergroup differences were insignificant. ECMO weaning success, duration of ECMO support, and mortality rates were similar between the groups. In this pilot study conducted on CS patients requiring VA-ECMO, oXiris treatment did not significantly reduce endotoxin levels or improve patient centered clinical outcomes.

Background A systemic inflammatory response can contribute to poor outcomes in an advanced stage of cardiogenic shock (CS). We investigated the efficacy of extracorporeal endotoxin and cytokine adsorption using oXiris in patients with CS undergoing venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO). Methods In this prospective, single-center, randomized, open-label pilot trial, 40 patients with CS who were undergoing VA-ECMO were randomly assigned to receive either oXiris for 24 h ( n  = 20) or usual care ( n  = 20). The primary endpoint was endotoxin levels at 48 h. Secondary endpoints included changes in inflammatory cytokines, vasoactive-inotropic score (VIS), ECMO weaning success, and in-hospital and 30-day mortality. Results The median endotoxin levels at 48 h were 0.5 (IQR 0.4–1.0) in the oXiris group and 0.4 (IQR 0.2–0.5) in the control group, with no significant difference between them ( P  = 0.097). The oXiris group showed significant temporal reductions in GDF-15 and IL-6 levels, with IL-6 revealing significant reductions from baseline to 24 h ( P  = 0.020) and from baseline to 7 days ( P  = 0.003). VIS decreased significantly from baseline to 48 h (-13.63, 95% CI: -20.90 – -6.34, P  < 0.001) and 7 days (-12.19, 95% CI: -21.0 – -3.31, P  = 0.007) in the oXiris group, but intergroup differences were insignificant. ECMO weaning success, duration of ECMO support, and mortality rates were similar between the groups. Conclusion In this pilot study conducted on CS patients requiring VA-ECMO, oXiris treatment did not significantly reduce endotoxin levels or improve patient centered clinical outcomes. Trial registration NCT05642273, registered 8 December 2022.

The effector function of tumor-infiltrated CD4+ T cells is readily suppressed by many types of immune regulators in the tumor microenvironment, which is one of the major mechanisms of immune tolerance against cancer. Cathelicidin-related antimicrobial peptide (CRAMP), the mouse analog of LL-37 peptide in humans, is a cationic antimicrobial peptide belonging to the cathelicidin family; however, its secretion by cancer cells and role in the tumor microenvironment (TME) remain unclear. In this study, we explored the possibility of an interaction between effector CD4+ T cells and CRAMP using in vitro-generated mouse Th17 cells. We found that CRAMP stimulates Th17 cells to express the ectonucleotidase CD73, while simultaneously inducing cell death. This finding suggested that CD73-expressing Th17 cells may function as immune suppressor cells instead of effector cells. In addition, treatment of pharmacological inhibitors of the transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) signaling pathway showed that induction of CD73 expression is mediated by the p38 signaling pathway. Overall, our findings suggest that tumor-derived LL-37 likely functions as an immune suppressor that induces immune tolerance against tumors through shaping effector Th17 cells into suppressor Th17 cells, suggesting a new intervention target to improve cancer immunotherapy.

In this work, we tackle the challenging problem of unsupervised video domain adaptation (UVDA) for action recognition. We specifically focus on scenarios with a substantial domain gap, in contrast to existing works primarily deal with small domain gaps between labeled source domains and unlabeled target domains. To establish a more realistic setting, we introduce a novel UVDA scenario, denoted as Kinetics->BABEL, with a more considerable domain gap in terms of both temporal dynamics and background shifts. To tackle the temporal shift, i.e., action duration difference between the source and target domains, we propose a global-local view alignment approach. To mitigate the background shift, we propose to learn temporal order sensitive representations by temporal order learning and background invariant representations by background augmentation. We empirically validate that the proposed method shows significant improvement over the existing methods on the Kinetics->BABEL dataset with a large domain gap. The code is available at https://github.com/KHUVLL/GLAD.