Aqueous potassium-ion batteries have emerged as a promising energy storage technology by combining the intrinsic safety of aqueous electrolytes with the high natural abundance of potassium. However, the narrow electrochemical stability window of water and the limited availability of suitable cathode and anode materials impose critical challenges on achieving high energy density and long-term cycling stability. In recent years, substantial progress has been achieved through electrolyte engineering strategies, which effectively suppress water activity, expand the operational voltage window, and stabilize electrode-electrolyte interfaces. On the cathode side, advances in materials such as Prussian blue analogs, transition-metal oxides, and polyanionic compounds have significantly improved structural robustness and K diffusion kinetics. On the anode side, increasing attention has been devoted to interfacial regulation, kinetic compatibility, and mechanical stability under aqueous conditions. Importantly, emerging insights into electrolyte-material interactions reveal that interfacial chemistry plays a decisive role in governing the reversibility and durability of aqueous potassium-ion batteries. This review systematically summarizes recent progress in electrolytes, cathode materials, and anode materials for aqueous potassium-ion batteries. It highlights the remaining challenges and future perspectives toward high-energy-density, durable, and practically viable aqueous potassium-ion batteries.
Certain polycations have been used to deliver materials into cells. Polyethylenimine (PEI) acts as a nonviral vector by forming complexes with DNA and RNA. Additionally, some cationic peptides, known as cell-penetrating peptides, promote the internalization of materials that are conjugated to them. However, these intracellular delivery agents damage plasma membranes due to their positive charges and are thus used at sufficiently low concentrations to prevent cytotoxicity. Recently, we developed an assay based on nonlinear optical processes, which revealed that the ordering of lipid molecules in the plasma membrane is perturbed at concentrations at which conventional methods cannot detect cytotoxicity. Thus, the present study was devoted to revealing the cellular responses to subtle perturbations in the plasma membrane. Branched and linear PEIs and a 10-mer arginine peptide, which have no payloads, were applied to living cells at a concentration where lipid ordering in the membrane was perturbed, but with almost no detectable cytotoxicity. The perturbed cells were found to repair their plasma membranes similar to those with an ordered lipid alignment when cultured in a growth medium. During recovery, a few enlarged and shrunken cells with peculiar shapes were temporarily observed. However, these cells did not senesce after exposure to subtle plasma membrane stress. The elucidation of these cellular responses, which have been overlooked thus far, is crucial not only to the biomedical application of intracellular delivery agents but also to the fundamental understanding of how cells manage subtle stress.
Since 2012, with the publication of our foundational work "Solvent structure improves docking prediction in lectin-carbohydrate complexes," our group has been devoted to the study of protein-ligand interactions using molecular simulation tools. Over the past decade, we have shown that protein-solvent interactions, particularly when simulated in mixed solvents containing probes such as ethanol, phenol, and isopropanol, often mimic the interactions observed in experimental protein-ligand complexes. This knowledge can be used to improve docking performance by guiding pose prediction and scoring. We termed this strategy-biased docking. Over the years, we demonstrated its applicability to pose prediction, virtual screening (VS), protein-protein docking, and metalloprotein docking. In this short review, we summarize our results and contextualize them within the broader literature, offering a concise description of how to implement the biased docking strategy using current docking software. We also explore the physicochemical rationale behind its effectiveness and discuss how this knowledge can inform emerging Machine Learning and AI-based methodologies.
At present, the power conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells has exceeded 27%, attracting increasing attention from both academia and industry. However, fabricating high-efficiency devices typically requires inert atmospheres, which inevitably increase manufacturing costs and hinder large-scale commercialization of perovskite solar cells. This review systematically summarizes recent progress in the fabrication of perovskite solar cells under ambient air conditions. The effects of ambient environmental factors on perovskite precursor solutions and perovskite films are discussed in detail. Special attention is devoted to systematically analyzing different strategies, including buried-interface, bulk, and top-surface treatments for perovskite films, and their impact on the performance of perovskite solar cells fabricated in ambient air. Finally, the current challenges associated with ambient-air fabrication are summarized, along with a feasibility analysis and a perspective on future development.
Carbonic anhydrases (CAs) are ubiquitous zinc metalloenzymes that catalyze the reversible hydration of carbon dioxide and play essential roles in numerous physiological and pathological processes. Over the past decades, carbonic anhydrase inhibitors (CAIs) have emerged as valuable therapeutic agents for the treatment of a variety of human disorders, including glaucoma, epilepsy, altitude sickness, and, more recently, cancer and infectious diseases. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the principles and strategies underlying the rational design and synthesis of CA inhibitors. The two fundamental medicinal chemistry approaches for CAI development, the "ring approach" and the "tail approach," are discussed in detail, emphasizing the versatility and effectiveness of these strategies in optimizing binding affinity and enhancing isoform selectivity. Both classical zinc-binding inhibitors, such as sulfonamides and related chemotypes, and nonclassical inhibitors acting through alternative mechanisms are discussed. Among nonclassical inhibitors, particular attention is devoted to natural product-derived scaffolds, such as coumarins and polyamines, which have gained considerable interest due to their selective inhibition of the tumor-associated isoforms hCA IX/hCA XII, and hCA IV, respectively. The chapter also evaluates the increasing number of recently reported nonclassical chemotypes for which X-ray crystal structures in adduct with the enzymes are however not available. Finally, an overview of the main synthetic methodologies employed for the preparation of the different classes of CA inhibitors is presented, providing practical insights into the chemical strategies most commonly used in this field.
Glucose dehydrogenases (GDHs) are oxidoreductases that catalyze the oxidation of d-glucose to glucono-δ-lactone and are widely used in industrial applications such as biosensors, bioelectrodes, and biocatalytic cofactor regeneration. In particular, NAD(P)+-dependent GDHs are frequently employed as NAD(P)H-regenerating enzymes, with extensive efforts devoted to improving their robustness. BmGDHM6, an engineered variant of the Bacillus megaterium GDH with enhanced chemical and organic solvent tolerance, was developed as a potent cofactor-regeneration enzyme. In parallel, enzyme condensation via liquid-liquid phase separation has attracted increasing attention as a potential mechanism for organizing enzyme-catalyzed reactions, and short peptides capable of promoting condensate formation. However, efficient screening and evaluation of such peptide tags using conventional cell-based expression systems have remained challenging. This study established a peptide tag screening strategy using the PURE system, a reconstituted cell-free protein synthesis platform, and applied it to BmGDHM6 as a model enzyme. A small library of metabolic enzymes transiently assembling (META) body-forming signal (METAfos) tags and intrinsically disordered region (IDR)-derived peptide tags was evaluated with respect to expression, solubility, and assembly behavior within a defined in vitro environment. From this library, a short peptide tag, K7G3, 10-amino-acids-long, was identified that conferred droplet-like assembly-forming properties on BmGDHM6 under specified crowding conditions. These results demonstrated that the PURE system provided a rapid and controllable platform for screening peptide tags and down-selection of candidates that modulate enzyme assembly behavior in vitro.
At present, extensive research efforts have been devoted to investigating network attacks on control systems. However, comparatively limited attention has been directed toward the resilience of multiagent systems (MASs) under such attacks, particularly in the case of replay attacks. Addressing the challenge of resilience analysis in strict-feedback nonlinear MASs under replay attacks, this article proposes a dynamic stability analysis method based on a classical distributed adaptive consensus control framework. To evaluate the resilience of the MASs in the context of aperiodic replay attacks, a dynamic compact set model is designed as a resilience metric. An iterative algorithm is then developed to compute the upper bound of tracking error jump at the beginning and end of the attack. In the scenario where the control signals under replay attacks cannot be explicitly modeled, this study derives an upper bound on the variation of the tracking error during the attack period using the Lyapunov stability analysis. It is proven that resilience can be maintained when the resting time between two consecutive replay attacks satisfies a given sufficient condition. Finally, simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed analysis method.
The article is devoted to topical issues of genetic biomechanics, which studies structural connections between molecular-genetic informatics and inherited physiological complexes. It is known that amino acid sequences of proteins are genetically inherited using code messages in DNA and RNA molecules based on the alphabet of 4 nucleotides. But, as Nobel laureate geneticist T. Steitz emphasizes, all knowledge about these biomolecules encoded in the genome in this biochemical alphabet will not tell us about the inheritance of biomechanical algorithms and functions by genetic automata. Thus, in modern science of biological inheritance, there is no knowledge about a bioinformation system capable of ensuring the inheritance of cooperative phenomena of algorithmic behavior of body parts. These inherited logical forms of algorithmic behavior in biosystems require the search for bioinformation alphabets that could form the basis for the operation of genetic automata and the algorithmic inheritance of biological structures. The article describes the genetic algebraic-operator alphabets, identified as a result of such a search, based on unitary Hadamard matrices, as well as cyclic power groups based on them, which make it possible to model inherited cyclic and biorhythmic structures in connection with the formalisms of quantum logic. The evolutionary paradigm of algebraic-alphabetic Darwinism has been formulated. Related issues of inherited brain mechanisms, artificial intelligence, and the functioning of operators in human-machine systems are discussed.
Chitosan films have attracted interest as flexible and biocompatible materials in health monitoring technologies due to their intrinsic piezoelectricity. This work studies, for the first time, the piezoelectric performances of solution-cast chitosan films in relation to their fabrication process and crystalline content. We investigate how processing parameters, such as solvent type, NaOH treatment duration, and thermal annealing, affect the crystalline content of chitosan films and its correlation with the overall piezoelectric behavior through comprehensive physico-chemical characterizations. Special care is devoted to a reliable determination of converse piezoelectricity, using constant-excitation frequency-modulation piezoresponse force microscopy (CE-FM-PFM), a scanning probe method specifically suited to suppress measurement artifacts that affect conventional PFM in the investigation of soft materials such as semicrystalline polymers. Our findings reveal that a post-processing strategy combining NaOH treatment and thermal annealing significantly enhances the piezoelectric response of chitosan, with a piezoelectric coefficient d 33 reaching 27 pm V-1, nearly twice as high as those previously reported in the literature. These results pave a promising path for the development of eco-friendly and functional piezoelectric materials for biomedical applications.
Understanding why some species are more often studied than others can provide valuable information on potential biases that research effort discrepancies can cause and help to direct future research to mitigate these biases. Turtles form an order of reptiles in which the majority of species (67%) are threatened with extinction, but they show high variation in the amount of research devoted to each species. We aimed to quantify this variation across all recognized extant species, and to decipher how the distribution of this research effort varied according to species taxonomy, phylogeny, distribution, ecology, life history and extinction risk. Using the number of references listed on the Web of Science for each species as a proxy for species research effort, we first show that this index is both robust to variation in search methods within WoS, and consistent with an index extracted from another online library (Scopus). The number of articles per species varied substantially, with 3441 articles for the green sea turtle alone, but only 475 total articles for all 50% least studied species taken together. This heterogeneity was consistent across time since the 1970s. Phylogenetic non-independence explained 66% of the variance in research effort (vs 58% for taxonomy). In addition, marine species, a group that only includes seven species, were particularly highly studied: five of the eight most studied Testudines are marine turtles. In contrast, freshwater and terrestrial species shared similar research effort values. Species occurring in Europe and North America were also more studied than species from, e.g., Central America or Africa, as were species that occur in the most scientifically active countries. In addition, species with a larger distribution range or introduced outside of their native range, as well as species with certain life history characteristics like larger clutches, smaller eggs or a longer longevity were more frequently investigated. In contrast, population trend and extinction risk did not predict research effort, although species that have not been assessed by the IUCN were characterized by a low research effort. This study underlines the importance of accounting for the heterogeneity in research effort across turtle species in global analyses and helps to identify taxa, regions, and life history strategies that should be the focus of more research.
The article is devoted to the study of the prospects of attracting medical tourists into Russia from the Persian Gulf countries. The Russian health care system has a number of competitive advantages to attract medical tourists from foreign countries: availability of highly qualified medical personnel, advanced technologies, high level of digitization of health care and possibility to provide high-tech medical care at relatively low prices for similar services. All this, in the aggregate, permits to meet the demand of the population of the Persian Gulf countries for medical care. The comparative analysis of the health care systems of the Persian Gulf countries and Russia demonstrated that Russian health care by many indicators surpasses health care systems of the Persian Gulf countries. The Russia has reputation of the country proposing the utmost modern methods of treatment by lower prices. However, and the level of qualification of medical workers, has a reputation as a country offering the most modern methods of treatment at lower prices. However, in our country, entrance medical tourism is developed insufficiently. The study of the prospects for attracting medical tourists from the Persian Gulf countries demonstrated availability of potential to develop entrance medical tourism. Статья посвящена исследованию перспектив привлечения медицинских туристов в Россию из стран Персидского залива. Российская система здравоохранения обладает рядом конкурентных преимуществ для привлечения медицинских туристов из зарубежных стран, среди которых наличие высококвалифицированного медицинского персонала, передовых технологий, высокий уровень цифровизации здравоохранения и возможность оказывать высокотехнологичную помощь по сравнительно низким ценам на аналогичные услуги, что в совокупности позволяет удовлетворять спрос населения стран Персидского залива на медицинскую помощь. Сравнительный анализ систем здравоохранения стран Персидского залива и России показал, что российское здравоохранение по многим показателям превосходит здравоохранение стран Персидского залива. Россия имеет репутацию страны, предлагающей самые современные методы лечения по более низким ценам. Однако въездной медицинский туризм в нашей стране развит недостаточно. Исследование перспектив привлечения медицинских туристов из стран Персидского залива показало наличие потенциала для развития въездного медицинского туризма.
2-Pyridone ligands have emerged as uniquely powerful promoters in transition-metal-catalyzed C-H functionalization, enabling transformations that are often inaccessible with conventional ligand classes. Despite their growing impact, their role is frequently treated only implicitly within broader ligand surveys. This review provides a focused analysis of 2-pyridone ligands as a distinct ligand design platform, emphasizing how they actively participate in C-H activation. We highlight the mechanistic roles of 2-pyridone ligands in key elementary steps, including concerted metalation-deprotonation, weak and dynamic metal coordination, and stabilization of reactive catalytic intermediates. Particular attention is devoted to structure-function relationships, illustrating how substitution patterns on the 2-pyridone scaffold govern basicity, coordination behavior, reactivity, and selectivity in C(sp2)-H functionalization. By extracting unifying design principles from diverse catalytic systems, this review aims to provide practical guidelines for the rational development of next-generation 2-pyridone ligands, with relevance to C-H functionalization.
Malaria, a life-threatening disease caused by protozoan parasite Plasmodium and transmitted by mosquitoes, remains a significant threat to health worldwide, especially in the face of emerging drug resistance. Despite extensive effort having been devoted to examining the asexual phase of the parasite, the sexual change biology is understudied. Lipid-binding proteins, like phosphatidylethanolamine-binding proteins (PEBPs), play significant roles in cell signal transduction and development in several organisms. In P. falciparum, PfPEBP is highly expressed in gametocytes and may be in involved parasite sexual reproduction. Our results showed that PfPEBP is expressed in sexual and asexual stages but is not essential for parasite growth, gametocyte development and gamete formation. However, anti-PfPEBP antibodies were found in malaria-endemic region individuals, suggesting it is immunogenic. Previous studies also indicate that PfPEBP can bind to the mosquito midgut, which indicates its possible role in transmission. Although PfPEBP is not seemingly essential for parasite development in the human host, its role in later stages of parasite development is a worthwhile area of research. To understand how it contributes to the parasite lifecycle could open new avenues for malaria transmission-blocking interventions.
Suicidal ideation and trauma exposure are significant health challenges worldwide, and their interaction increases their burden on individuals and communities. However, limited research has been devoted to these conditions in low- and middle-income countries, where the majority of the burden of these disorders exists. Additionally, unique cultural factors that may contribute to differential relationships in these symptoms and disorders make this an important area to explore. This study examines relationships between the number and types of adverse exposures, PTSD symptoms and severity, depression and suicidal ideation in a sample of Cambodian women with experiences of trauma using logistic and linear regressions. Overall, PTSD severity significantly contributes to suicidal ideation, with hyperarousal symptoms playing a particularly influential role in this association. Further, adverse experiences, including physical abuse and parental mental health problems, contributed significantly to increased suicidal ideation. Lastly, depression severity partially mediates the relationship between PTSD severity and suicidal ideation. These results illustrate the significant role of PTSD in the experience of suicidal ideation, particularly within regions like Cambodia with high trauma loads. These findings point to psychological constructs that may be especially important to include in suicidality screening tools and to target within prevention and intervention efforts.
Considerable effort has been devoted to the design of artificial magnetoelectric (ME) materials to address the challenges of high power consumption and switching reliability in spintronic devices. However, special attention must be paid to enhance the required efficiency in terms of achieving a large ME coefficient, non-volatility and 180oswitching. In this work, we demonstrate voltage-controlled, nonvolatile, hierarchical and 180oswitching of a perpendicularly magnetized [Cu/Ni] superlattice integrated with a ferroelectric [Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3]0.7-[PbTiO3]0.3(PMN-PT). A large value of the converse magnetoelectric coefficient (α = 1.8×10-6s/m) associated with 180oswitching of the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy is reported here. Distinct voltage induced polarization switching and associated lattice strain in the PMN-PT play an important role in the transient switching process of the perpendicular magnetization of the Ni layers. The obtained results, in particular the voltage induced nonvolatile switching and hierarchical magnetic states in the perpendicularly magnetized system will facilitate the applications of nonvolatile and energy-efficient next-generation information processing devices including neuromorphic computing.
Much attention has been devoted to exploring the similarities between schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autistic traits in schizophrenia have recently been assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for Schizophrenia Autism Severity Scale (PAUSS). Although studies on arginine-vasopressin (AVP) systems have focused on the etiology of ASD, there are no reports regarding AVP systems and autistic traits in schizophrenia. This study aimed to assess autistic traits in schizophrenia using the PAUSS and examine their associations with the PAUSS and AVP-related biological measures. This is a cross-sectional study. We recruited patients with schizophrenia (n = 80) and healthy controls (HCs; n = 27). Patients with schizophrenia were classified as having either an autistic phenotype schizophrenia (AU) or a non-autistic phenotype (NAU). All patients with schizophrenia underwent clinical assessments focusing on symptom severity, autistic traits, neurocognition, and social cognition. HCs were examined for neurocognition and social cognition. We also evaluated AVP-related biomarkers, including serum AVP levels, single-nucleotide polymorphisms, and promoter-region microsatellites. The AU group showed worse symptom severity and social cognition than the NAU group. The T allele of rs28632197 in the AVP receptor (AVPR)1b was associated with more severe autistic traits in patients with schizophrenia, while the short allele of RS1 in AVPR1a was associated with less severe autistic traits. Our results suggest that autistic traits in schizophrenia are linked to more severe symptoms and poorer social cognition and that AVP system dysfunction may contribute to their etiology. Clinicians should carefully evaluate autistic traits.
Lignocellulose stands as the Earth's most abundant renewable organic carbon resource, representing a key pillar for achieving future carbon neutrality and advancing green biomanufacturing. While significant efforts have been devoted to developing various bioconversion strategies, including pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis techniques aimed at overcoming biomass degradation barriers, as well as fermentation and separation purification processes to achieve high-value components. The biorefining of lignocellulose is the coupling and integration of a series of technical units. The core challenge lies in the complex interplay between upstream and downstream units, which can exhibit both synergistic and inhibitory effects. This review provides a comprehensive overview of partial and whole-process integration strategies within lignocellulose biorefining. It further examines the key challenges and underlying mechanisms of unit integration, and focuses on exploring new strategies for deep integration based on novel pretreatment technologies. Finally, it is pointed out that achieving the uniform molecular weight of the lignocellulosic depolymerization products and the efficient utilization of all components will provide a new development path and broad prospects for the construction of the next-generation biorefinery platform.
In the biodegradable metal class, Mg-based alloys are considered the most promising candidates for temporary implant manufacture. However, their high corrosion rate in physiological media is considered a main drawback for clinical translation. Conversion coatings address the limitations of Mg-based alloys and provide a strategy to control corrosion and improve surface biocompatibility. In this review paper, a detailed analysis of various conversion coating techniques, including ceramic conversion coatings based on metals, polymeric conversion coatings, bioactive conversion coatings, and hybrid conversion coatings, is performed. Attention is devoted to the corrosion process and parameters, as well as to the biological response in relation to bioactivity or biocompatibility. The main angiogenic and osteogenic signaling pathways are described based on the analyzed conversion coatings, and the evolution of the cellular response is estimated. Although significant progress has been made in the field, there are still challenges associated with synchronizing Mg alloy degradation with new bone formation and with precisely guiding cell signaling responses to achieve a desired biological response. An overall conclusion of the paper consists of the fact that conversion coatings are an important topic, as they can enhance the surface of Mg-based alloys, making them prone to clinical translation.
The research on interface engineering in Li-ion batteries by atomic layer deposition (ALD) is presently shifting from binary metal oxides toward Li-containing oxides, phosphates, and fluorides. In parallel, significant attention is devoted to the development of ALD processes based on volatile Li precursors, for future industrial process upscaling. In this work, we employ the novel Li precursor Lider, characterized by a vapor pressure of 1 Torr at 129 °C and Si-free ligands, for the ALD synthesis of lithium phosphate (LiPO). Combining Lider with an O2 plasma (O2*) or O3 as a coreactant results in the growth of Li2CO3 films with growth per cycle values of 0.25 and 0.29 Å, respectively, with differences in film crystallinity and mass density. Then, LiPO is synthesized by combining the O2*-based Lider process, leading to Li2CO3, with trimethyl phosphate (TMPO) in the supercycle approach, leading to a growth per supercycle of 0.6 Å and excellent uniformity over an 8 in. wafer. Remarkably, XPS shows that the Li2.7PO3.7 film does not contain carbonate impurities. The adoption of quadrupole mass spectrometry (QMS) reveals that a chemical vapor transformation reaction occurs between TMPO and the Li2CO3 surface: similarly to trimethyl aluminum (TMA), TMPO is shown to abstract surface carbonate species as CO2. This work demonstrates that this chemical vapor transformation mechanism, so far only investigated for surface cleaning of battery electrodes, can also be utilized in ALD supercycles of Li compounds to obtain films without carbonate impurities.
Reliable spectral quality is essential for extracting meaningful information from infrared reflectance data, particularly when using portable systems with limited scan numbers. This study presents a data-driven spectral enhancement workflow designed to improve the interpretability of portable macroscopic external reflection Fourier Transform Infrared (MA-rFT-IR) mapping systems developed by the Authors, operating in the near- and mid-infrared (NIR-MIR) ranges. Despite the growing use of reflectance imaging spectroscopy, limited attention has been devoted to the development of robust denoising strategies capable of minimizing noise and unwanted variability while preserving spectral quality and enabling more reliable and accurate data analysis. This study proposes a broadly applicable processing framework aimed at enhancing the efficiency and performance of reflectance-based spectral analysis. Denoising methods including Savitzky-Golay filtering and wavelet- and PCA-based denoising were tested and evaluated individually and in combination. Quantitative performance was assessed using arccosine similarity (ACOS) and derivative-based root-mean-square error (dRMSE) metrics across selected spectral regions of interest, with a derivative ACOS (dACOS) index applied to monitor band-shape variations. The evaluation results were integrated through Pareto analysis to identify the optimal trade-off between noise reduction and spectral-feature preservation. Application of the proposed approach to a multilayered painting mock-up demonstrated that the enhancing spectral data workflow preserves key diagnostic features revealing subtle spectral bands. Furthermore, applying multivariate curve resolution-alternating least-squares (MCR-ALS) to the denoised data enabled chemically meaningful separation of complex overlapping signals, improving the interpretability of compositional information compared with traditional denoising methods and data processing. The workflow strengthens the analytical reliability of low-scan reflection-mode data and provides a transferable framework for optimizing denoising strategies in portable infrared applications.