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Recently, carbon dioxide capture and conversion, along with hydrogen from renewable resources, provide an alternative approach to synthesis of useful fuels and chemicals. People are increasingly interested in developing innovative carbon dioxide hydrogenation catalysts, and the pace of progress in this area is accelerating. Accordingly, this perspective presents current state of the art and outlook in synthesis of light olefins, dimethyl ether, liquid fuels, and alcohols through two leading hydrogenation mechanisms: methanol reaction and Fischer-Tropsch based carbon dioxide hydrogenation. The future research directions for developing new heterogeneous catalysts with transformational technologies, including 3D printing and artificial intelligence, are provided. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture and conversion provide an alternative approach to synthesis of useful fuels and chemicals. Here, Ye et al. give a comprehensive perspective on the current state of the art and outlook of CO 2 catalytic hydrogenation to the synthesis of light olefins, dimethyl ether, liquid fuels, and alcohols.

The chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technology has been widely used for surface modification of critical materials and components with high quality and efficiency. In a typical CMP process, the mechanical properties of abrasives play a vital role in obtaining the ultra-precision and damage-free surface of wafers for improvement of their performances. In this work, a series of fine structured rod-shaped silica (RmSiO2)-based abrasives with controllable sizes and diverse ordered mesoporous structures were synthesized via a soft template approach, and successfully applied in the sustainable polishing slurry for improving the surface quality of cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) wafers. Compared with commercial silica gel, solid and mesoporous silica spheres, the RmSiO2 abrasives present superior elastic deformation capacity and surface precision machinability on account of their mesoporous structures and rod shapes. Especially, ultra-precision surface roughness and relatively effective material removal speed were achieved by the CMP process using the RmSiO2 abrasives with a length/diameter (L/d) ratio of 1. In addition, a potential CMP mechanism of the developed polishing slurry to CZT wafer was elucidated by analyzing X-ray photoelectron spectra and other characterizations. The proposed interfacial chemical and mechanical effects will provide a new strategy for improving abrasives’ machinability and precision manufacture of hard-to-machine materials.

CO2 hydrogenation to methanol and methanol steam reforming (MSR) are regarded as two critical reactions for transportation and on‐site production of hydrogen, but it still lacks of efficient catalysts for both reactions. Herein, the CuZnSi‐ammonia evaporation method (AEM) catalyst prepared by AEM with extremely low metal loading and highly dispersed Cu/Zn species, in particular, high concentration of Cu+ species, exhibits an optimum space‐time yield of methanol (1888.3 g kgCu−1 h−1) and an exceptional specific activity of 282.6 molCO2 kgCu−1 h−1, which is higher than a majority of the reported catalysts. Furthermore, the CuZnSi‐AEM catalyst is also active for MSR reaction with low CO selectivity. The results reveal that the morphology, exposed Cu+ species, and synergistic Cu–ZnOx interaction are the key guiding factors for the successful utilization of methanol as a hydrogen carrier. Optimizing the preparation methods of Cu–ZnO/SiO2 catalysts for CO2 hydrogenation to methanol and its steam reforming: unlocking greenhouse conversion routes and hydrogen transportation via engineering catalysis. The ammonia evaporation method is found to be favorable and sustainable for the one‐pot catalyst preparation.

Recently, carbon dioxide capture and conversion, along with hydrogen from renewable resources, provide an alternative approach to synthesis of useful fuels and chemicals. People are increasingly interested in developing innovative carbon dioxide hydrogenation catalysts, and the pace of progress in this area is accelerating. Accordingly, this perspective presents current state of the art and outlook in synthesis of light olefins, dimethyl ether, liquid fuels, and alcohols through two leading hydrogenation mechanisms: methanol reaction and Fischer-Tropsch based carbon dioxide hydrogenation. The future research directions for developing new heterogeneous catalysts with transformational technologies, including 3D printing and artificial intelligence, are provided.

Programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)/PD-1 checkpoint extensively serves as a central mediator of immunosuppression. A tumor-promoting role for abundant PD-L1 in several cancers is revealed. However, the importance of PD-L1 and how the PD-L1 expression is controlled in breast cancer remains obscure. Here, the mechanisms of controlling PD-L1 at the transcription and protein acetylation levels in promoting breast cancer growth are presented. Overexpressed PD-L1 accelerates breast cancer growth in vitro and in vivo. RNA-seq uncovers that PD-L1 can induce some target genes affecting many cellular processes, especially cancer development. In clinical breast cancer tissues and cells, PD-L1 and HBXIP are both increased, and their expressions are positively correlated. Mechanistic exploration identifies that HBXIP stimulates the transcription of PD-L1 through co-activating ETS2. Specifically, HBXIP induces PD-L1 acetylation at K270 site through interacting with acetyltransferase p300, leading to the stability of PD-L1 protein. Functionally, depletion of HBXIP attenuates PD-L1-accelerated breast tumor growth. Aspirin alleviates breast cancer via targeting PD-L1 and HBXIP. Collectively, the findings display new light into the mechanisms of controlling tumor PD-L1 and broaden the utility for PD-L1 as a target in breast cancer therapy.

Mammalian hepatitis B X-interacting protein (HBXIP) is an 18-kDa protein that regulates a large number of transcription factors such as TF-IID, E2F1, SP1, STAT3, c-Myc, and LXR by serving as an oncogenic transcription coactivator and plays an important role in the development of breast cancer. We previously showed that HBXIP as an oncoprotein could enhance the promoter activity of MDM2 through coactivating p53, promoting the MDM2 transcription in breast cancer. In this study we investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying the modulation of MDM2/p53 interaction by HBXIP in human breast cancer MCF-7 cells in vitro and in vivo. We showed that HBXIP could up-regulate MDM2 through inducing DNA methylation of miR-18b, thus suppressing the miR-18b expression, leading to the attenuation of p53 in breast cancer cells. In addition, HBXIP could promote the phosphorylation of MDM2 by increasing the level of pAKT and bind to pMDM2, subsequently enhancing the interaction between MDM2 and p53 for the down-regulation of p53 in breast cancer cells. In MCF-7 breast cancer xenograft nude mice, we also observed that overexpression of HBXIP promoted breast cancer growth through the miR-18b/MDM2 and pAKT/MDM2 pathways. In conclusion, oncoprotein HBXIP suppresses miR-18b to elevate MDM2 and activates pAKT to phosphorylate MDM2 for enhancing the interaction between MDM2 and p53, leading to p53 degradation in promotion of breast cancer growth. Our findings shed light on a novel mechanism of p53 down-regulation during the development of breast cancer.

The standard k-ε turbulence model and discrete phase model (DPM) were used to simulate the heat and mass transfer in a liquid-desiccant evaporator driven by a heat pump using FLUENT software, and the temperature field and velocity field in the device were obtained. The performance of the liquid-desiccant evaporator was studied as the concentration of the inlet solution varied between 21% and 30% and the pipe wall temperature between 30 and 50 °C. Results show that the humidification rate and the humidification efficiency increased with the inlet air temperature, the solution flow rate, the solution temperature, and the pipe wall temperature. The humidification rate and humidification efficiency decreased with increasing moisture content in inlet air and the concentration of inlet solution. The humidification rate increased substantially but the humidification efficiency decreased as the inlet air flow rate increased. The error between the simulations and experimental results is acceptable, meaning that our model can provide a theoretical basis for optimizing the performance of a humidifying evaporator.