Central South University

This review covers key technological developments and scientific challenges for a broad range of Li-ion battery electrodes. Periodic table and potential/capacity plots are used to compare many families of suitable materials. Performance characteristics, current limitations, and recent breakthroughs in the development of commercial intercalation materials such as lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NCM), lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA), lithium iron phosphate (LFP), lithium titanium oxide (LTO) and others are contrasted with that of conversion materials, such as alloying anodes (Si, Ge, Sn, etc.), chalcogenides (S, Se, Te), and metal halides (F, Cl, Br, I). New polyanion cathode materials are also discussed. The cost, abundance, safety, Li and electron transport, volumetric expansion, material dissolution, and surface reactions for each type of electrode materials are described. Both general and specific strategies to overcome the current challenges are covered and categorized.

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is thatthere is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure flux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the completeprocess including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defined as increasedautophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the field understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in manycases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as forreviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multipleassays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation, it is imperative to target by gene knockout or RNA interference more than one autophagyrelated protein. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways implying that not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field.

Accurate and real-time traffic forecasting plays an important role in the intelligent traffic system and is of great significance for urban traffic planning, traffic management, and traffic control. However, traffic forecasting has always been considered an “open” scientific issue, owing to the constraints of urban road network topological structure and the law of dynamic change with time. To capture the spatial and temporal dependences simultaneously, we propose a novel neural network-based traffic forecasting method, the temporal graph convolutional network (T-GCN) model, which is combined with the graph convolutional network (GCN) and the gated recurrent unit (GRU). Specifically, the GCN is used to learn complex topological structures for capturing spatial dependence and the gated recurrent unit is used to learn dynamic changes of traffic data for capturing temporal dependence. Then, the T-GCN model is employed to traffic forecasting based on the urban road network. Experiments demonstrate that our T-GCN model can obtain the spatio-temporal correlation from traffic data and the predictions outperform state-of-art baselines on real-world traffic datasets. Our tensorflow implementation of the T-GCN is available at https://www.github.com/lehaifeng/T-GCN.

BACKGROUND: Because of the rapid change in lifestyle in China, there is concern that diabetes may become epidemic. We conducted a national study from June 2007 through May 2008 to estimate the prevalence of diabetes among Chinese adults. METHODS: A nationally representative sample of 46,239 adults, 20 years of age or older, from 14 provinces and municipalities participated in the study. After an overnight fast, participants underwent an oral glucose-tolerance test, and fasting and 2-hour glucose levels were measured to identify undiagnosed diabetes and prediabetes (i.e., impaired fasting glucose or impaired glucose tolerance). Previously diagnosed diabetes was determined on the basis of self-report. RESULTS: The age-standardized prevalences of total diabetes (which included both previously diagnosed diabetes and previously undiagnosed diabetes) and prediabetes were 9.7% (10.6% among men and 8.8% among women) and 15.5% (16.1% among men and 14.9% among women), respectively, accounting for 92.4 million adults with diabetes (50.2 million men and 42.2 million women) and 148.2 million adults with prediabetes (76.1 million men and 72.1 million women). The prevalence of diabetes increased with increasing age (3.2%, 11.5%, and 20.4% among persons who were 20 to 39, 40 to 59, and > or = 60 years of age, respectively) and with increasing weight (4.5%, 7.6%, 12.8%, and 18.5% among persons with a body-mass index [the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters] of < 18.5, 18.5 to 24.9, 25.0 to 29.9, and > or = 30.0, respectively). The prevalence of diabetes was higher among urban residents than among rural residents (11.4% vs. 8.2%). The prevalence of isolated impaired glucose tolerance was higher than that of isolated impaired fasting glucose (11.0% vs. 3.2% among men and 10.9% vs. 2.2% among women). CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that diabetes has become a major public health problem in China and that strategies aimed at the prevention and treatment of diabetes are needed.

Because undesirable pharmacokinetics and toxicity of candidate compounds are the main reasons for the failure of drug development, it has been widely recognized that absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity (ADMET) should be evaluated as early as possible. In silico ADMET evaluation models have been developed as an additional tool to assist medicinal chemists in the design and optimization of leads. Here, we announced the release of ADMETlab 2.0, a completely redesigned version of the widely used AMDETlab web server for the predictions of pharmacokinetics and toxicity properties of chemicals, of which the supported ADMET-related endpoints are approximately twice the number of the endpoints in the previous version, including 17 physicochemical properties, 13 medicinal chemistry properties, 23 ADME properties, 27 toxicity endpoints and 8 toxicophore rules (751 substructures). A multi-task graph attention framework was employed to develop the robust and accurate models in ADMETlab 2.0. The batch computation module was provided in response to numerous requests from users, and the representation of the results was further optimized. The ADMETlab 2.0 server is freely available, without registration, at https://admetmesh.scbdd.com/.

autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field.

Graphics are widely used to provide summarization of complex data in scientific publications. Although there are many tools available for drawing graphics, their use is limited by programming skills, costs, and platform specificities. Here, we presented a freely accessible easy-to-use web server named SRplot that integrated more than a hundred of commonly used data visualization and graphing functions together. It can be run easily using all Web browsers and there are no strong requirements on the computing power of users' machines. With a user-friendly graphical interface, users can simply paste the contents of the input file into the text box according to the defined file format. Modification operations can be easily performed, and graphs can be generated in real-time. The resulting graphs can be easily downloaded in bitmap (PNG or TIFF) or vector (PDF or SVG) format in publication quality. The website is updated promptly and continuously. Functions in SRplot have been improved, optimized and updated depend on feedback and suggestions from users. The graphs prepared with SRplot have been featured in more than five hundred peer-reviewed publications. The SRplot web server is now freely available at http://www.bioinformatics.com.cn/SRplot.

Currently, pyroptosis has received more and more attention because of its association with innate immunity and disease. The research scope of pyroptosis has expanded with the discovery of the gasdermin family. A great deal of evidence shows that pyroptosis can affect the development of tumors. The relationship between pyroptosis and tumors is diverse in different tissues and genetic backgrounds. In this review, we provide basic knowledge of pyroptosis, explain the relationship between pyroptosis and tumors, and focus on the significance of pyroptosis in tumor treatment. In addition, we further summarize the possibility of pyroptosis as a potential tumor treatment strategy and describe the side effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy caused by pyroptosis. In brief, pyroptosis is a double-edged sword for tumors. The rational use of this dual effect will help us further explore the formation and development of tumors, and provide ideas for patients to develop new drugs based on pyroptosis.

The Wnt/β-catenin pathway comprises a family of proteins that play critical roles in embryonic development and adult tissue homeostasis. The deregulation of Wnt/β-catenin signalling often leads to various serious diseases, including cancer and non-cancer diseases. Although many articles have reviewed Wnt/β-catenin from various aspects, a systematic review encompassing the origin, composition, function, and clinical trials of the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway in tumour and diseases is lacking. In this article, we comprehensively review the Wnt/β-catenin pathway from the above five aspects in combination with the latest research. Finally, we propose challenges and opportunities for the development of small-molecular compounds targeting the Wnt signalling pathway in disease treatment.

Although current high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have taken over the commercial rechargeable battery market, increasing concerns about limited lithium resources, high cost, and insecurity of organic electrolyte scale-up limit their further development. Rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs), an alternative battery chemistry, have paved the way not only for realizing environmentally benign and safe energy storage devices but also for reducing the manufacturing costs of next-generation batteries. This Review underscores recent advances in aqueous ZIBs; these include the design of a highly reversible Zn anode, optimization of the electrolyte, and a wide range of cathode materials and their energy storage mechanisms. We also present recent advanced techniques that aim at overcoming the current issues in aqueous ZIB systems. This Review on the future perspectives and research directions will provide a guide for future aqueous ZIB study.

Commercial lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries suffer from low energy density and do not meet the growing demands of the energy storage market. Therefore, building next-generation rechargeable Li and Li-ion batteries with higher energy densities, better safety characteristics, lower cost and longer cycle life is of outmost importance. To achieve smaller and lighter next-generation rechargeable Li and Li-ion batteries that can outperform commercial Li-ion batteries, several new energy storage chemistries are being extensively studied. In this review, we summarize the current trends and provide guidelines towards achieving this goal, by addressing batteries using high-voltage cathodes, metal fluoride electrodes, chalcogen electrodes, Li metal anodes, high-capacity anodes as well as useful electrolyte solutions. We discuss the choice of active materials, practically achievable energy densities and challenges faced by the respective battery systems. Furthermore, strategies to overcome remaining challenges for achieving energy characteristics are addressed in the hope of providing a useful and balanced assessment of current status and perspectives of rechargeable Li and Li-ion batteries.

We retrospect recent advances in rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries system and the facing challenges of aqueous zinc-ion batteries. Importantly, some concerns and feasible solutions for achieving practical aqueous zinc-ion batteries are discussed in detail.

Some patients with positive chest CT findings may present with negative results of real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In this study, the authors present chest CT findings from five patients with COVID-19 infection who had initial negative RT-PCR results. All five patients had typical imaging findings, including ground-glass opacity (five patients) and/or mixed ground-glass opacity and mixed consolidation (two patients). After isolation for presumed COVID-19 pneumonia, all patients were eventually confirmed to have COVID-19 infection by means of repeated swab tests. A combination of repeated swab tests and CT scanning may be helpful for individuals with a high clinical suspicion of COVID-19 infection but negative findings at RT-PCR screening.

Ferroptosis is a novel type of cell death with distinct properties and recognizing functions involved in physical conditions or various diseases including cancers. The fast-growing studies of ferroptosis in cancer have boosted a perspective for its usage in cancer therapeutics. Here, we review the current findings of ferroptosis regulation and especially focus on the function of ncRNAs in mediating the process of cell ferroptotic death and on how ferroptosis was in relation to other regulated cell deaths. Aberrant ferroptosis in diverse cancer types and tissues were summarized, and we elaborated recent data about the novel actors of some "conventional" drugs or natural compounds as ferroptosis inducers in cancer. Finally, we deliberate future orientation for ferroptosis in cancer cells and current unsettled issues, which may forward the speed of clinical use of ferroptosis induction in cancer treatment.

All highly-efficient organic-inorganic halide perovskite (OIHP) solar cells to date are made of polycrystalline perovskite films which contain a high density of defects, including point and extended imperfections. The imperfections in OIHP materials play an important role in the process of charge recombination and ion migration in perovskite solar cells (PSC), which heavily influences the resulting device energy conversion efficiency and stability. Here we review the recent advances in passivation of imperfections and suppressing ion migration to achieve improved efficiency and highly stable perovskite solar cells. Due to the ionic nature of OIHP materials, the defects in the photoactive films are inevitably electrically charged. The deep level traps induced by particular charged defects in OIHP films are major non-radiative recombination centers; passivation by coordinate bonding, ionic bonding, or chemical conversion have proven effective in mitigating the negative impacts of these deep traps. Shallow level charge traps themselves may contribute little to non-radiative recombination, but the migration of charged shallow level traps in OIHP films results in unfavorable band bending, interfacial reactions, and phase segregation, influencing the carrier extraction efficiency. Finally, the impact of defects and ion migration on the stability of perovskite solar cells is described.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease that primarily affects the lining of the synovial joints and is associated with progressive disability, premature death, and socioeconomic burdens. A better understanding of how the pathological mechanisms drive the deterioration of RA progress in individuals is urgently required in order to develop therapies that will effectively treat patients at each stage of the disease progress. Here we dissect the etiology and pathology at specific stages: (i) triggering, (ii) maturation, (iii) targeting, and (iv) fulminant stage, concomitant with hyperplastic synovium, cartilage damage, bone erosion, and systemic consequences. Modern pharmacologic therapies (including conventional, biological, and novel potential small molecule disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs) remain the mainstay of RA treatment and there has been significant progress toward achieving disease remission without joint deformity. Despite this, a significant proportion of RA patients do not effectively respond to the current therapies and thus new drugs are urgently required. This review discusses recent advances of our understanding of RA pathogenesis, disease modifying drugs, and provides perspectives on next generation therapeutics for RA.

Pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) are a class of receptors that can directly recognize the specific molecular structures on the surface of pathogens, apoptotic host cells, and damaged senescent cells. PRRs bridge nonspecific immunity and specific immunity. Through the recognition and binding of ligands, PRRs can produce nonspecific anti-infection, antitumor, and other immunoprotective effects. Most PRRs in the innate immune system of vertebrates can be classified into the following five types based on protein domain homology: Toll-like receptors (TLRs), nucleotide oligomerization domain (NOD)-like receptors (NLRs), retinoic acid-inducible gene-I (RIG-I)-like receptors (RLRs), C-type lectin receptors (CLRs), and absent in melanoma-2 (AIM2)-like receptors (ALRs). PRRs are basically composed of ligand recognition domains, intermediate domains, and effector domains. PRRs recognize and bind their respective ligands and recruit adaptor molecules with the same structure through their effector domains, initiating downstream signaling pathways to exert effects. In recent years, the increased researches on the recognition and binding of PRRs and their ligands have greatly promoted the understanding of different PRRs signaling pathways and provided ideas for the treatment of immune-related diseases and even tumors. This review describes in detail the history, the structural characteristics, ligand recognition mechanism, the signaling pathway, the related disease, new drugs in clinical trials and clinical therapy of different types of PRRs, and discusses the significance of the research on pattern recognition mechanism for the treatment of PRR-related diseases.

fertilization effect. Six Earth system models have consistently projected continuous increases of VPD throughout the current century. Our results highlight that the impacts of VPD on vegetation growth should be adequately considered to assess ecosystem responses to future climate conditions.

Circular RNAs, a novel class of endogenous noncoding RNAs, are characterized by their covalently closed loop structures without a 5' cap or a 3' Poly A tail. Although the mechanisms of circular RNAs' generation and function are not fully clear, recent research has shown that circular RNAs may function as potential molecular markers for disease diagnosis and treatment and play an important role in the initiation and progression of human diseases, especially in tumours. This review summarizes some information about categories, biogenesis, functions at the molecular level, properties of circular RNAs and the possibility of circular RNAs as biomarkers in cancers.

Alloy design based on single-principal-element systems has approached its limit for performance enhancements. A substantial increase in strength up to gigapascal levels typically causes the premature failure of materials with reduced ductility. Here, we report a strategy to break this trade-off by controllably introducing high-density ductile multicomponent intermetallic nanoparticles (MCINPs) in complex alloy systems. Distinct from the intermetallic-induced embrittlement under conventional wisdom, such MCINP-strengthened alloys exhibit superior strengths of 1.5 gigapascals and ductility as high as 50% in tension at ambient temperature. The plastic instability, a major concern for high-strength materials, can be completely eliminated by generating a distinctive multistage work-hardening behavior, resulting from pronounced dislocation activities and deformation-induced microbands. This MCINP strategy offers a paradigm to develop next-generation materials for structural applications.