Aqueous thermocells that are eco-friendly and capable of converting lowgrade heat into electricity continuously are promising candidates to power flexible and wearable devices in various application scenarios. However, challenges remain in their limited working temperatures, mechanical fragility, and poor thermoelectric performance, mainly due to the reduced entropy of both polymer chains and thermogalvanic ions at low temperatures. In this work, the challenges are addressed by introducing a synergistic chaotropic effect to destruct strong hydrogen bonds, increase polymers' entropic elasticity, and enlarge the entropy difference of thermogalvanic ions. An organohydrogel thermocell is designed with a chaotropic comonomer and a chaotropic cosolvent. The maximum normalized power density of the thermocell achieves 0.1 mW m −2 K −2 , which is in the same order of magnitude as the highest record in current quasi-solid thermocells. Even at −30 °C, the thermocell maintains the elongation at a break of more than 100% and a relatively high power density of 0.012 mW m −2 K −2 . Furthermore, the thermocell shows the potential to light up a light-emitting diode and stably works when compressed, bent, and stretched in a wide temperature range. This work provides insights on developing reliable power sources to drive flexible electronics continually in extremely cold environments.

Bone metastasis is the major cause of death in breast cancer. The lack of effective treatment suggests that disease mechanisms are still largely unknown. As a key component of the tumor microenvironment, macrophages promote tumor progression and metastasis. In this study, we found that macrophages are abundant in human and mouse breast cancer bone metastases. Macrophage ablation significantly inhibited bone metastasis growth. Lineage tracking experiments indicated that these macrophages largely derive from Ly6C+CCR2+ inflammatory monocytes. Ablation of the chemokine receptor, CCR2, significantly inhibited bone metastasis outgrowth and prolonged survival. Immunophenotyping identified that bone metastasis–associated macrophages express high levels of CD204 and IL4R. Furthermore, monocyte/macrophage-restricted IL4R ablation significantly inhibited bone metastasis growth, and IL4R null mutant monocytes failed to promote bone metastasis outgrowth. Together, this study identified a subset of monocyte-derived macrophages that promote breast cancer bone metastasis in an IL4R-dependent manner. This suggests that IL4R and macrophage inhibition can have potential therapeutic benefit against breast cancer bone disease.

Microfluidic systems with splitting structures are excellent for increasing emulsion production. However, traditional two-dimensional (2D) lithographic systems require complex modification of the microchannel surfaces and achieve only 2D splitting of the droplets. Herein, we present new glass capillary microfluidic devices that perform three-dimensional (3D) splitting of droplets. These devices are simply constructed using different structural glass capillaries as the collection microchannels of the droplet microfluidic systems. We demonstrate that the devices are able to produce a 3D split of both single emulsions and double emulsions into two and three portions, respectively. These emulsions, after the splitting process, still have high monodispersity. We believe that this new technique for 3D splitting could be widely used, not only in the field of microfluidics but also in chemical/biological applications (e.g., drug delivery, micro-dispersion, etc.).

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