Structure-stabilizing effect of glycerol on amylose promotes the formation of V-type starch with controlled digestibility.

This study presents a simple approach to preparing V-type starch with low digestibility by inducing the conformation variation of amylose. Differential scanning calorimetry revealed that when the glycerol concentration was increased, the peak temperature of starch increased from 72.75 to 135.

Boosting Solar Methanol Production over Hierarchical Carbon Nanocage-Supported InO via Photoenhanced Electron Buffering Effect.

Solar methanol production represents a key technology meaningful for the production of liquid fuels as well as carbon neutralization. However, it is faced with the crucial challenge of limited reaction rate, selectivity, and stability. In this study, we develop a hierarchical carbon nanocage (hCNC)-supported InO synergistic catalyst for robust methanol production driven solely by sunlight.

Effects of water distribution on physicochemical properties and digestibility of inherent starch in rice noodles.

Water distribution considerably affects the quality of rice noodles, yet its effects on their physicochemical properties and digestibility remain unclear. In this study, as the water-to-powder ratio of rice noodles was increased from 5:10 to 10:10, low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR) analysis revealed an increase in the proportion of free water in rice noodles. Meanwhile, the hardness, gumminess, and chewiness of the rice noodles significantly decreased, whereas the water absorption rate slightly increased.

Optical-Electronic Skin Based on Tea Polyphenol for Dual Signal Wearable Sensing.

The rapid development of smart electronic skin has led researchers to design a variety of flexible and stretchable devices that can be used to monitor physiological and environmental signals. In this work, we successfully demonstrate a color-adjustable and conductive wearable optical-electronic skin (OE-skin) based on photonic crystal hydrogel that is capable of delivering both optical and electrical signal responses synchronously. The OE-skin is fabricated by incorporating a structural colored layer, composed of periodically aligned magnetic nanoparticles, into a polyacrylamide hydrogel matrix that contains tea polyphenols and borax.

Hierarchical Carbon Nanocage-Enabled Electron Buffering to Indium Oxide for Efficient CO Hydrogenation to Methanol.

The hydrogenation of CO to methanol over InO-based catalysts is highly sensitive to the concentration of surface oxygen vacancies (O). While increasing the O concentration can enhance the catalytic performance, it also increases the risk of over-reduction during CO hydrogenation, leading to a trade-off between activity and stability. Here, we demonstrate that hierarchical carbon nanocages (hCNCs) act as effective "electron buffering agents" for InO, mitigating this trade-off and thereby enhancing the methanol yield, with nitrogen doping of hCNCs further amplifying this effect.

Nature-Inspired Nanoarray Catalyst toward Balanced Heat and Mass Transport in Photothermal Catalysis.

Photothermal catalysis represents a clean, efficient, and sustainable approach to harnessing solar energy to drive chemical reactions. However, the inherent trade-off between mass and heat transport efficiencies poses significant challenges to its applicability. Herein, a nature-inspired hollow silica nanocone array catalyst (HSNCA/Co) is developed to address this limitation by enhancing the heat management and sunlight-absorptive ability, while maintaining the exposure of active sites.

Key role of macrophyte-dominated habitats over cyanobacteria-dominated habitats in stability of microbial sulfur cycling in freshwater lakes.

Despite extensive studies on sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) and sulfur-oxidizing bacteria (SOB) in marine and deep stratified ecosystems, their spatiotemporal dynamics and ecological roles in shallow freshwater lakes remain poorly understood, especially with habitat shifts driven by eutrophication and climate change. Here, we monitored seasonal changes in sediment and porewater chemical parameters, and applied high-throughput sequencing and co-occurrence network analysis to compare SRB and SOB communities in surface sediments from cyanobacteria-dominated (ZSB) and macrophyte-dominated (XKB) habitats of Lake Taihu across four seasons. In ZSB, seasonal variations in acid volatile sulfide (AVS), dissolved sulfide (∑HS), and Fe(II) were the primary drivers of sulfur bacterial communities.

Dynamic failure characteristics and acoustic emission response mechanism of coal mass with various coal burst liabilities.

Coal burst liability is a key influencing factor for the occurrence of impact rock burst disaster. Uniaxial compression tests were conducted on coal bodies with various coal burst liabilities to analyze the dynamic failure characteristics of typical coal bodies, dimension (fractal dimension is a measure to describe the irregular shape of complex body), and acoustic emission (AE) energy characteristics after the coal and rock failure under loading and to investigate the failure characteristics of coal bodies with various coal burst liabilities and their AE response laws. The results show that (1) the stronger the coal burst liability, the more transient and intense the failure, the faster the kinetic energy of the crushed particles, and the more apparent the brittle failure characteristics, (2) the fractal dimension values of the crushed particles of the coal specimens have a positive correlation with coal burst liability; the stronger the coal burst liability of the coal body, the higher the degree of specimen fragmentation, and the larger the fractal dimension value, and (3)the cumulative AE energy of coal bodies with various coal burst liabilities increases significantly and evolves in a "step" pattern before the stress approaches its peak.

Photobiomodulation regulates inflammation and autophagy in spinal cord injury through NLRP3/Caspase-1/IL-1β pathway by targeting TLR2.

After spinal cord injury (SCI), peripherally derived macrophages infiltrated the injury area to exert inflammatory effects, causing barriers to the repair of spinal cord injury. Our previous study confirmed that photobiomodulation (PBM) could promote the motor function recovery and inhibit the secretion of inflammatory cytokines after SCI, moreover, PBM also has a role in promoting autophagy, but the mechanism is not clear. Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether PBM promotes autophagy by regulating the inflammatory response of macrophages, which in turn regulates functional repair after SCI.

Quantifying the distinct role of plasmon enhancement mechanisms in prototypical antenna-reactor photocatalysts.

Plasmonic photocatalysis enabled by the unique localized surface plasmon resonance represents a promising approach for efficient solar energy conversion. Elucidating the distinct plasmonic catalytic mechanisms and quantification of their effect is crucial yet highly challenging, due to their complex and synergistic nature. Herein, we achieve the differentiation and quantification of thermal as well as various non-thermal reaction mechanisms in prototypical Au-[Fe(bpy)] antenna-reactor photocatalysts using water splitting as test reaction.

Environmental policy-driven electricity consumption prediction: A novel buffer-corrected Hausdorff fractional grey model informed by two-stage enhanced multi-objective optimization.

In the global quest for carbon neutrality, electricity is a critical sector for carbon reduction, for electricity consumption and carbon emissions are closely associated. Electricity consumption forecasts are divided into short-term and long-term, but previous studies have focused more on the former, while the latter is the foundation of power system planning and directly relates to urban development. To address the issue, this research proposed an innovative hybrid Hausdorff fractional grey model (HfGM) for electricity consumption prediction, weakening buffer operator (WBo) was incorporated to minimize interference of external shocks to original data, the optimal core parameters of HfGM were searched by a newly developed multi-objective enhanced version of slime mould algorithm in two stages, achieving Pareto optimal solutions theoretically.

Starch nanoparticles regulate the steric conformation of soy protein isolate to stabilize high internal phase Pickering emulsions for curcumin encapsulation.

This study aimed to the fabrication of high internal phase Pickering emulsions (HIPEs) via regulating the complexation of starch nanoparticles (SNPs) with soy protein isolate (SPI) at the oil-water interface. The formation of SNPs-SPI complexes was driven by the electrostatic adsorption and hydrogen bond interactions, which enhanced the biphasic wettability and reduced the interfacial tension. The SNPs-SPI complexes exhibited the superior emulsifying properties compared to those of SPI, with the SNPs3-SPI achieving the highest emulsion activity index (EAI, 65.

Heterogeneous amylopectin delays short-term retrogradation via fabricating a binary gel network within steamed cold noodles.

This study aimed to investigate the influence of heterogeneous amylopectin (waxy corn starch, WCS) on the retrogradation of wheat starch (WS), hoping to provide a new idea for alleviating the retrogradation of steamed cold noodles. The chain length distribution data confirmed the formation of a binary gel network resulting from the heterogeneous amylopectin structure between WCS and WS. With the increase of WCS concentration, the modulus and setback value of WS-WCS binary gel decreased, which was attributed to the newly built network structure hindering the aggregation of WS molecules.

Formation of the rosette-like starch with enhanced V-type crystallization via modified solvent-shifting method.

This research investigated the effect modified solvent-shifting method on the formation, ordered structure, and morphology of V-type starch. Ionic liquid (IL) dissolution and hot ethanol aqueous incubation in gradient concentrations from 30 % to 80 % (v/v) were applied to optimize the relative crystallinity of V-type starch. The results showed that this new method worked in producing V-type conformation, and higher ethanol concentration tended to yield V-type starch with higher crystallinity and more disk-like shape structure within the ethanol range of 30-50 % (v/v).

Modulation of V-type starch structures using aqueous ethanol solutions of different polarities for controlled curcumin encapsulation and release.

This study investigated the effect of different-polarity aqueous ethanol solutions on the formation of V-type starch originating from corn starch. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the morphology of starch transformed from a random lamellar structure to a granular structure with decreasing solution polarity. When the ethanol concentration increased from 40 % to 60 %, the crystallinity and single-helix ratio of V-type starch increased from 9.

Magneto-Photonic Effect of FeO@SiO Nanorods for Visualizing the Direction of Magnetic Fields with High Spatiotemporal Resolution.

In this work, we demonstrate the visualization of the complex magnetic fields by utilizing the magneto-photonic effect of FeO@SiO nanorod suspension with one-to-one correspondence between the visible colors and magnetic field directions. The selected anisotropic nanorods possess appropriate saturated magnetization and high electrostatic repulsion, which is magnetically direction-responsive but strength-insensitive, accurately detecting the field direction while eliminating the influence from intensity. The combined experiment-simulation study validates the accuracy of the simulation, allowing us to further determine the intensity distribution of the magnetic field.

Mechanism underlying V-type structure formation in maize starch through glycerol-ethanol thermal substitution method.

V-type starches have been widely used in food science, agriculture, and biomedical science, but their mechanism of formation in nonaqueous solvents remains unclear. This study performed glycerol-ethanol thermal substitution to prepare V-type starch at atmospheric pressure. Scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy revealed that breakage of starch particles began in the hilum region and rapidly spread to the periphery with the temperature increased from 100 °C to 130 °C.

Astrocyte-derived lipocalin 2 promotes inflammation and scarring after spinal cord injury by activating SMAD in mice.

Background: The inflammatory response and scar formation after spinal cord injury (SCI) limit nerve regeneration and functional recovery. Our research group has previously shown that the expression of astrocyte-derived lipocalin 2 (Lcn2) is upregulated after SCI, which correlates with neuronal apoptosis and functional recovery. Therefore, we speculate that astrocyte-specific knockdown of Lcn2 after SCI may lead to a better prognosis.

Hierarchical Carbon Nanocages as Superior Supports for Photothermal CO Catalysis.

The exploitation of hierarchical carbon nanocages with superior light-to-heat conversion efficiency, together with their distinct structural, morphological, and electronic properties, in photothermal applications could provide effective solutions to long-standing challenges in diverse areas. Here, we demonstrate the discovery of pristine and nitrogen-doped hierarchical carbon nanocages as superior supports for highly loaded, small-sized Ru particles toward enhanced photothermal CO catalysis. A record CO production rate of 3.

Robust and Durable Photonic Crystal with Liquid-Repellent Property for Self-Cleaning Coatings and Structural Colored Textiles.

Photonic crystal coatings with unique structural colors and self-cleaning properties have been providing an efficient way for substrate coloration. However, the enhancement of the robustness and durability of structural colored coatings to meet the requirements in diverse environments remains a challenging task. Here, to realize the application of photonic crystal films under various kinds of conditions, we present a poly(fluoroalkyl acrylate)-based colloidal photonic crystal (fCPC) coating.

Photobiomodulation Increases M2-Type Polarization of Macrophages by Inhibiting Versican Production After Spinal Cord Injury.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a catastrophic accidence with little effective treatment, and inflammation played an important role in that. Previous studies showed photobiomodulation (PBM) could effectively downregulate the process of inflammation with modification of macrophage polarization after SCI; however, the potential mechanism behind that is still unclear. In the presented study, we aimed to investigate the effect of PBM on the expression level of versican, a matrix molecular believed to be associated with inflammation, and tried to find the mechanism on how that could regulate the inflammation process.