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Two new species, Liu, and Liu, , are described from Hainan Island, China. Adult males and females of both species, including their genitalia, are figured and compared to closely related species.

Two and a half years into the COVID-19 pandemic, we have gained many insights into the human antibody response to the causative SARS-CoV-2 virus. In this Review, we summarize key observations of humoral immune responses in people with COVID-19, discuss key features of infection- and vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies, and consider vaccine designs for inducing antibodies that are broadly protective against different variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Highlights Inspired by the photoreception mechanisms of urchins, the urchin-like Ti 3 C 2 T x @ZnO hollow spheres are rationally designed as high-performance microwave absorbents by constructing ZnO nanoarrays onto the surface of Ti 3 C 2 T x hollow spheres. Both experimental and theoretical simulation results demonstrate that the microstructure of urchin-like possesses giant advantages in electromagnetic wave absorption performance, which is superior to most absorbers with similar components. Ingenious microstructure design and rational composition selection are effective approaches to realize high-performance microwave absorbers, and the advancement of biomimetic manufacturing provides a new strategy. In nature, urchins are the animals without eyes but can “see”, because their special structure composed of regular spines and spherical photosensitive bodies “amplifies” the light-receiving ability. Herein, inspired by the above phenomenon, the biomimetic urchin-like Ti 3 C 2 T x @ZnO hollow microspheres are rationally designed and fabricated, in which ZnO nanoarrays (length: ~ 2.3 μm, diameter: ~ 100 nm) as the urchin spines are evenly grafted onto the surface of the Ti 3 C 2 T x hollow spheres (diameter: ~ 4.2 μm) as the urchin spherical photosensitive bodies. The construction of gradient impedance and hierarchical heterostructures enhance the attenuation of incident electromagnetic waves. And the EMW loss behavior is further revealed by limited integral simulation calculations, which fully highlights the advantages of the urchin-like architecture. As a result, the Ti 3 C 2 T x @ZnO hollow spheres deliver a strong reflection loss of − 57.4 dB and broad effective absorption bandwidth of 6.56 GHz, superior to similar absorbents. This work provides a new biomimetic strategy for the design and manufacturing of advanced microwave absorbers.

Plasmon-mediated chemical reactions (PMCRs) constitute a vibrant research field, advancing such goals as using sunlight to convert abundant precursors such as CO and water to useful fuels and chemicals. A key question in this burgeoning field which has not, as yet, been fully resolved, relates to the precise mechanism through which the energy absorbed through plasmonic excitation, ultimately drives such reactions. Among the multiple processes proposed, two have risen to the forefront: plasmon-increased temperature and generation of energetic charge carriers. However, it is still a great challenge to confidently separate these two effects and quantify their relative contribution to chemical reactions. Here, we describe a strategy based on the construction of a plasmonic electrode coupled with photoelectrochemistry, to quantitatively disentangle increased temperature from energetic charge carriers effects. A clear separation of the two effects facilitates the rational design of plasmonic nanostructures for efficient photochemical applications and solar energy utilization.

Adrenomedullin (ADM) exerts anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects in Leydig cells. However, the role and mechanism of ADM in the pyroptosis of Leydig cells are poorly understood. This study first showed the protective effects of ADM on the pyroptosis and biological functions of Leydig cells exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) by promoting autophagy. Primary rat Leydig cells were treated with various concentrations of LPS and ADM, together with or without N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) or 3-methyladenine (3-MA). Cell proliferation was detected through CCK-8 and BrdU incorporation assays, and ROS level was measured with the DCFDA assay. Real-time PCR, western blot, immunofluorescence, transmission electron microscopy, TUNEL and flow cytometry were performed to examine ADM's effect on the pyroptosis, autophagy and steroidogenic enzymes of Leydig cells and AMPK/mTOR signalling. Like NAC, ADM dose-dependently reduced LPS-induced cytotoxicity and ROS overproduction. ADM also dose-dependently ameliorated LPS-induced pyroptosis by reversing the increased expression of NLRP3, ASC, caspase-1, IL-1β, IL-18, GSDMD, caspase-3, caspase-7, TUNEL-positive and PI and active caspase-1 double-stained positive rate, DNA fragmentation and LDH concentration, which could be rescued via co-incubation with 3-MA. ADM dose-dependently increased autophagy in LPS-induced Leydig cells, as confirmed by the increased expression of LC3-I/II, Beclin-1 and ATG-5; decreased expression of p62 and autophagosomes formation; and increased LC3-II/LC3-I ratio. However, co-treatment with 3-MA evidently decreased autophagy. Furthermore, ADM dose-dependently rescued the expression of steroidogenic enzymes, including StAR, P450scc, 3β-HSD and CYP17, and testosterone production in LPS-induced Leydig cells. Like rapamycin, ADM dose-dependently enhanced AMPK phosphorylation but reduced mTOR phosphorylation in LPS-induced Leydig cells, which could be rescued via co-incubation with 3-MA. In addition, pyroptosis was further decreased, and autophagy was further promoted in LPS-induced Leydig cells upon co-treatment with ADM and rapamycin. ADM may protect the steroidogenic functions of Leydig cells against pyroptosis by activating autophagy via the ROS-AMPK-mTOR axis.

Bacteria mediated infections may cause various acute or chronic illnesses and antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria has become a serious health problem around the world due to their excessive use or misuse. Replacement of existing antibacterial agents with a novel and efficient alternative is the immediate demand to alleviate this problem. Graphene-based materials have been exquisitely studied because of their remarkable bactericidal activity on a wide range of bacteria. Graphene-based materials provide advantages of easy preparation, renewable, unique catalytic properties, and exceptional physical properties such as a large specific surface area and mechanical strength. However, several queries related to the mechanism of action, significance of size and composition toward bacterial activity, toxicity criteria, and other issues are needed to be addressed. This review summarizes the recent efforts that have been made so far toward the development of graphene-based antibacterial materials to face current challenges to combat against the bacterial targets. This review describes the inherent antibacterial activity of graphene-family and recent advances that have been made on graphene-based antibacterial materials covering the functionalization with silver nanoparticles, other metal ions/oxides nanoparticles, polymers, antibiotics, and enzymes along with their multicomponent functionalization. Furthermore, the review describes the biosafety of the graphene-based antibacterial materials. It is hoped that this review will provide valuable current insight and excite new ideas for the further development of safe and efficient graphene-based antibacterial materials.

Pseudocapacitance holds great promise for improving energy densities of electrochemical supercapacitors, but state-of-the-art pseudocapacitive materials show capacitances far below their theoretical values and deliver much lower levels of electrical power than carbon-based materials due to poor cation accessibility and/or long-range electron transferability. Here we show that in situ corundum-to-rutile phase transformation in electron-correlated vanadium sesquioxide can yield nonstoichiometric rutile vanadium dioxide layers that are composed of highly sodium ion accessible oxygen-deficiency quasi-hexagonal tunnels sandwiched between conductive rutile slabs. This unique structure serves to boost redox and intercalation kinetics for extraordinary pseudocapacitive energy storage in hierarchical isomeric vanadium oxides, leading to a high specific capacitance of ~1856 F g (almost sixfold that of the pristine vanadium sesquioxide and dioxide) and a bipolar charge/discharge capability at ultrafast rates in aqueous electrolyte. Symmetric wide voltage window pseudocapacitors of vanadium oxides deliver a power density of ~280 W cm together with an exceptionally high volumetric energy density of ~110 mWh cm as well as long-term cycling stability.

In recent years, the nations of the world have presented the development strategy of manufacturing. Manufacturing is the foundation of a country. However, with the increasing global resource constraints and market heterogeneity, the variety of individual demands, and the long-term goals of sustainable development, with the support of emerging information and communication technologies such as Internet, cyber-physical system, Internet of Things, cloud computing, and big data, industrial value creation is causing a paradigm shift in manufacturing. This paper studies a range of new manufacturing paradigms and presents a state-of-the-art survey of published works. It explores the corresponding current manufacturing concepts, technologies, framework features, application effects, resource optimization, and future challenges in these new paradigms. The integration of various manufacturing paradigms is also analyzed. Through this survey, the developments of these new manufacturing paradigms are explained and the future prospects are also discussed.

Metal oxide gas sensors are predominant solid-state gas detecting devices for domestic, commercial and industrial applications, which have many advantages such as low cost, easy production, and compact size. However, the performance of such sensors is significantly influenced by the morphology and structure of sensing materials, resulting in a great obstacle for gas sensors based on bulk materials or dense films to achieve highly-sensitive properties. Lots of metal oxide nanostructures have been developed to improve the gas sensing properties such as sensitivity, selectivity, response speed, and so on. Here, we provide a brief overview of metal oxide nanostructures and their gas sensing properties from the aspects of particle size, morphology and doping. When the particle size of metal oxide is close to or less than double thickness of the space-charge layer, the sensitivity of the sensor will increase remarkably, which would be called \"small size effect\", yet small size of metal oxide nanoparticles will be compactly sintered together during the film coating process which is disadvantage for gas diffusion in them. In view of those reasons, nanostructures with many kinds of shapes such as porous nanotubes, porous nanospheres and so on have been investigated, that not only possessed large surface area and relatively mass reactive sites, but also formed relatively loose film structures which is an advantage for gas diffusion. Besides, doping is also an effective method to decrease particle size and improve gas sensing properties. Therefore, the gas sensing properties of metal oxide nanostructures assembled by nanoparticles are reviewed in this article. The effect of doping is also summarized and finally the perspectives of metal oxide gas sensor are given.

Abstract Long-read sequencing is promising for the comprehensive discovery of structural variations (SVs). However, it is still non-trivial to achieve high yields and performance simultaneously due to the complex SV signatures implied by noisy long reads. We propose cuteSV, a sensitive, fast, and scalable long-read-based SV detection approach. cuteSV uses tailored methods to collect the signatures of various types of SVs and employs a clustering-and-refinement method to implement sensitive SV detection. Benchmarks on simulated and real long-read sequencing datasets demonstrate that cuteSV has higher yields and scaling performance than state-of-the-art tools. cuteSV is available at https://github.com/tjiangHIT/cuteSV .