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Recent advances in ZBP1-derived PANoptosis against viral infections
No full textInnate immunity is an important first line of defense against pathogens, including viruses. These pathogen- and damage-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs and DAMPs, respectively), resulting in the induction of inflammatory cell death, are detected by specific innate immune sensors. Recently, Z-DNA binding protein 1 (ZBP1), also called the DNA-dependent activator of IFN regulatory factor (DAI) or DLM1, is reported to regulate inflammatory cell death as a central mediator during viral infection. ZBP1 is an interferon (IFN)-inducible gene that contains two Z-form nucleic acid-binding domains (Z alpha 1 and Z alpha 2) in the N-terminus and two receptor-interacting protein homotypic interaction motifs (RHIM1 and RHIM2) in the middle, which interact with other proteins with the RHIM domain. By sensing the entry of viral RNA, ZBP1 induces PANoptosis, which protects host cells against viral infections, such as influenza A virus (IAV) and herpes simplex virus (HSV1). However, some viruses, particularly coronaviruses (CoVs), induce PANoptosis to hyperactivate the immune system, leading to cytokine storm, organ failure, tissue damage, and even death. In this review, we discuss the molecular mechanism of ZBP1-derived PANoptosis and pro-inflammatory cytokines that influence the double-edged sword of results in the host cell. Understanding the ZBP1-derived PANoptosis mechanism may be critical for improving therapeutic strategies
Asymmetric Alloy Acceptor Strategy Guided by Similarity Principle Enables Highly Efficient and Stable Organic Solar Cells
No full textIntroducing the guest materials into binary active layer to construct ternary organic solar cells (OSCs) is widely used to improve device performance. Nevertheless, designing the guest materials is a challenging task. Herein, asymmetric alloy acceptor strategy guided by similarity principle to design the guest materials is employed. Two small molecular acceptors (ZH1 with symmetric end groups and ZH2 with asymmetric end groups) with the same skeleton to the host acceptor are synthesized and compared. Compared to symmetric ZH1, asymmetric ZH2 delivers a remarkably higher efficiency (3.86% vs 13.03%) when paired with PM6, benefiting from the larger dipole moment to facilitate charge dynamics and more favorable morphology. More importantly, by introducing ZH1 and ZH2 as the guest materials into the PM6:BTP-eC9 blend, both ZH1 and ZH2 well alloy with acceptor BTP-eC9 due to the similar skeleton, not only providing a complementary absorption, but also optimizing and stabilizing the blend morphology. Notably, the asymmetric alloy acceptor distinctly outperforms symmetric alloy acceptor, PM6:BTP-eC9:ZH2-based device achieves an outstanding efficiency of 18.75% with better stability and reduced non-radiative energy loss. Therefore, developing asymmetric alloy acceptor is an effective strategy to develop high-performance and stable OSCs. In this study, two novel small molecular of ZH1 and ZH2 are developed for organic solar cells (OSCs). It is observed that precise manipulation of end groups of acceptors can simultaneously optimize the morphology and improve the efficiency, stability, promoting the development of the high-performance OSCs.imag
Rational Approach for High-Efficiency Dopant-Free Solar Cells Characterized with Key Parameters
No full textCrystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells have dominated the photovoltaic market due to their superior mechanical and thermal robustness, nonhazardous nature, optimal energy bandgap, and the availability of established manufacturing techniques. However, conventional c-Si solar cells fabricated through thermal doping processes present challenges such as high recombination rates and increased production costs. Recently, dopant-free solar cells have emerged as a promising next-generation approach; they offer numerous advantages, such as reduced recombination, cost-effectiveness, environmental friendliness, and applicability to nano- and submicrometer structures. This review evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of dopant-free passivating contact materials for emitters, tracing the development of dopant-free solar cells from the earliest reports to the current state-of-the-art. A systematic evaluation of these materials based on their electrical and optical properties, coating conformality, stability, and overall photovoltaic performance is presented. Moreover, the limitations of dopant-free solar cells are identified and strategies to further enhance their efficiency are proposed. Dopant-free crystalline silicon solar cells exhibit multiple advantages, including reduced recombination, cost-effectiveness, environmental friendliness, and applicability to nano- and submicrometer structures. This review discusses the evolution of dopant-free solar cells, operating principles underlying their functioning, key characteristics of materials used to form junctions in the cells, and strategies for improving their efficiencies.image (c) 2023 WILEY-VCH Gmb
Development of an artificial intelligence bacteremia prediction model and evaluation of its impact on physician predictions focusing on uncertainty
No full textPrediction of bacteremia is a clinically important but challenging task. An artificial intelligence (AI) model has the potential to facilitate early bacteremia prediction, aiding emergency department (ED) physicians in making timely decisions and reducing unnecessary medical costs. In this study, we developed and externally validated a Bayesian neural network-based AI bacteremia prediction model (AI-BPM). We also evaluated its impact on physician predictive performance considering both AI and physician uncertainties using historical patient data. A retrospective cohort of 15,362 adult patients with blood cultures performed in the ED was used to develop the AI-BPM. The AI-BPM used structured and unstructured text data acquired during the early stage of ED visit, and provided both the point estimate and 95% confidence interval (CI) of its predictions. High AI-BPM uncertainty was defined as when the predetermined bacteremia risk threshold (5%) was included in the 95% CI of the AI-BPM prediction, and low AI-BPM uncertainty was when it was not included. In the temporal validation dataset (N = 8,188), the AI-BPM achieved area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.754 (95% CI 0.737-0.771), sensitivity of 0.917 (95% CI 0.897-0.934), and specificity of 0.340 (95% CI 0.330-0.351). In the external validation dataset (N = 7,029), the AI-BPM's AUC was 0.738 (95% CI 0.722-0.755), sensitivity was 0.927 (95% CI 0.909-0.942), and specificity was 0.319 (95% CI 0.307-0.330). The AUC of the post-AI physicians predictions (0.703, 95% CI 0.654-0.753) was significantly improved compared with that of the pre-AI predictions (0.639, 95% CI 0.585-0.693; p-value < 0.001) in the sampled dataset (N = 1,000). The AI-BPM especially improved the predictive performance of physicians in cases with high physician uncertainty (low subjective confidence) and low AI-BPM uncertainty. Our results suggest that the uncertainty of both the AI model and physicians should be considered for successful AI model implementation
Tailoring exciton dynamics in TMDC heterobilayers in the ultranarrow gap-plasmon regime
No full textControl of excitons in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and their heterostructures is fundamentally interesting for tailoring light-matter interactions and exploring their potential applications in high-efficiency optoelectronic and nonlinear photonic devices. While both intra- and interlayer excitons in TMDCs have been heavily studied, their behavior in the quantum tunneling regime, in which the TMDC or its heterostructure is optically excited and concurrently serves as a tunnel junction barrier, remains unexplored. Here, using the degree of freedom of a metallic probe in an atomic force microscope, we investigated both intralayer and interlayer excitons dynamics in TMDC heterobilayers via locally controlled junction current in a finely tuned sub-nanometer tip-sample cavity. Our tip-enhanced photoluminescence measurements reveal a significantly different exciton-quantum plasmon coupling for intralayer and interlayer excitons due to different orientation of the dipoles of the respective e-h pairs. Using a steady-state rate equation fit, we extracted field gradients, radiative and nonradiative relaxation rates for excitons in the quantum tunneling regime with and without junction current. Our results show that tip-induced radiative (nonradiative) relaxation of intralayer (interlayer) excitons becomes dominant in the quantum tunneling regime due to the Purcell effect. These findings have important implications for near-field probing of excitonic materials in the strong-coupling regime
Role of hydrogen-doping for compensating oxygen-defect in non-stoichiometric amorphous In2O3???<i>x</i>: Modeling with a machine-learning potential
No full textTransparent amorphous oxide semiconductors (TAOSs) are essential materials and ushering in information and communications technologies. The performance of TAOS depends on the microstructures relating to the defects and dopants. Density functional theory (DFT) is a powerful tool to understand the structure-property relationship relating to electronic state; however, the computation of DFT is expensive, which often hinders appropriate structural modeling of amorphous materials. This study, thus, applied machine-learning potential (MLP) to reproduce the DFT level of accuracy with enhanced efficiency, to model amorphous In2O3 (a-In2O3), instead of expensive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with DFT. MLP-MD could reproduce a-In2O3 structure closer to the experimental data in comparison with DFT-MD and classical MD simulations with an analytical force field. Using the relatively large models obtained by the MLP-MD simulations, it was unraveled that the anionic hydrogen atoms bonding to indium atoms attract electrons instead of the missing oxygen and remedy the optical transparency of the oxygen deficient a-In2O3. The preferential formation of metal-H bonding through the reaction of oxygen vacancy was demonstrated as analogous to InGaZnOx thin films [Joonho et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 110, 232105 (2017)]. The present simulation suggests that the same mechanism works in a-In2O3, and our finding on the structure-property relationship is informative to clarify the factors affecting the optical transparency of In-based TAOS thin films
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No full textPioneering a Novel Perovskite Oxide Substrate and Developing Emergent Electronics of Reversibly Controlled Ternary Polar States
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Macrophage transcription factor TonEBP promotes systemic lupus erythematosus and kidney injury via damage-induced signaling pathways
No full textSystemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disorder characterized by autoreactive B cells and dysregulation of many other types of immune cells including myeloid cells. Lupus nephritis (LN) is a common target organ manifestations of SLE. Tonicity-responsive enhancer-binding protein (TonEBP, also known as nuclear factor of activated T-cells 5 (NFAT5)), was initially identified as a central regulator of cellular responses to hypertonic stress and is a pleiotropic stress protein involved in a variety of immunometabolic diseases. To explore the role of TonEBP, we examined kidney biopsy samples from patients with LN. Kidney TonEBP expression was found to be elevated in these patients compared to control patients ??? in both kidney cells and infiltrating immune cells. Kidney TonEBP mRNA was elevated in LN and correlated with mRNAs encoding inflammatory cytokines and the degree of proteinuria. In a pristane-induced SLE model in mice, myeloid TonEBP deficiency blocked the development of SLE and LN. In macrophages, engagement of various toll-like receptors (TLRs) that respond to damage-associated molecular patterns induced TonEBP expression via stimulation of its promoter. Intracellular signaling downstream of the TLRs was dependent on TonEBP. Therefore, TonEBP can act as a transcriptional cofactor for NF-??B, and activated mTOR-IRF3/7 via protein-protein interactions. Additionally, TonEBP-deficient macrophages displayed elevated efferocytosis and animals with myeloid deficiency of TonEBP showed reduced Th1 and Th17 differentiation, consistent with macrophages defective in TLR signaling. Thus, our data show that myeloid TonEBP may be an attractive therapeutic target for SLE and LN