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With recent progress in photothermal materials, organic small molecules featured with flexibility, diverse structures, and tunable properties exhibit unique advantages but have been rarely applied in solar‐driven water evaporation owing to limited sunlight absorption resulting in low solar–thermal conversion. Herein, a stable croconium derivative, named CR‐TPE‐T, is designed to exhibit the unique biradical property and strong π–π stacking in the solid state, which facilitate not only a broad absorption spectrum from 300 to 1600 nm for effective sunlight harvesting, but also highly efficient photothermal conversion by boosting nonradiative decay. The photothermal efficiency is evaluated to be 72.7% under 808 nm laser irradiation. Based on this, an interfacial‐heating evaporation system based on CR‐TPE‐T is established successfully, using which a high solar‐energy‐to‐vapor efficiency of 87.2% and water evaporation rate of 1.272 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 sun irradiation are obtained, thus making an important step toward the application of organic‐small‐molecule photothermal materials in solar energy utilization.

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BackgroundSepsis is an important cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality; therefore, the early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis is essential.MethodOur aim was to compare the diagnostic accuracy of procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin combined with C-reactive protein (PCT + CRP) and presepsin in the diagnosis of neonatal sepsis. We searched seven databases to identify studies that met the inclusion criteria. Two independent reviewers performed data extraction. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR), area under curve (AUC), and corresponding 95% credible interval (95% CI) were calculated by true positive (TP), false positive (FP), false negative (FN), and true negative (TN) classification using a bivariate regression model in STATA 14.0 software. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, PLR, NLR, DOR, AUC, and corresponding 95% CI were the primary outcomes. Secondary outcomes included the sensitivity and specificity in multiple subgroup analyses.ResultsA total of 28 studies enrolling 2661 patients were included in our meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity of CRP (0.71 (0.63, 0.78)) was weaker than that of PCT (0.85 (0.79, 0.89)), PCT + CRP (0.91 (0.84, 0.95)) and presepsin (0.94 (0.80, 0.99)) and the pooled NLR of presepsin (0.06 (0.02, 0.23)) and PCT + CRP (0.10 (0.05, 0.19)) were less than CRP (0.33 (0.26, 0.42)), and the AUC for presepsin (0.99 (0.98, 1.00)) was greater than PCT + CRP (0.96 (0.93, 0.97)), CRP (0.85 (0.82, 0.88)) and PCT (0.91 (0.89, 0.94)). The results of the subgroup analysis showed that 0.5–2 ng/mL may be the appropriate cutoff interval for PCT. A cut-off value > 10 mg/L for CRP had high sensitivity and specificity.ConclusionsThe combination of PCT and CRP or presepsin alone improves the accuracy of diagnosis of neonatal sepsis. However, further studies are required to confirm these findings.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13054-018-2236-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Baculovirus infects insects in nature and is non-pathogenic to humans, but can transduce a broad range of mammalian and avian cells. Thanks to the biosafety, large cloning capacity, low cytotoxicity and non-replication nature in the transduced cells as well as the ease of manipulation and production, baculovirus has gained explosive popularity as a gene delivery vector for a wide variety of applications. This article extensively reviews the recent understandings of the molecular mechanisms pertinent to baculovirus entry and cellular responses, and covers the latest advances in the vector improvements and applications, with special emphasis on antiviral therapy, cancer therapy, regenerative medicine and vaccine.

High‐entropy (HE) oxides have become increasingly popular as electromagnetic wave‐absorbing materials owing to their customizable structure and unique HE effects. However, the weak loss property of single‐phase HE ceramics and the approaches implemented to improve them based on semi‐empirical rules severely limit their development. Herein, two biphasic HE oxides are prepared by simple sintering to realize accurate regulation of crystal phases and structural defects. It is verified that HE effects cause various defects that are beneficial for microwave dissipation within complex‐phase ceramics. In spinel/perovskite HE oxides, around the interface of spinel (111) and perovskite (110) planes, notable stress concentrations and lattice distortions are directly observed, inducing numerous point defects and stacking faults. Interestingly, besides the existing heterogeneous interface of rock salt (220)/spinel (220) plane and defects, rock salt/spinel HE oxides enabled synergistic effects via the precise regulation of components’ phase. Driven by structural defects and multi‐phases in HE complexes, the intense polarization is evidently found, confirmed by the first‐principles calculations. Accordingly, the two complex‐phase HE oxides demonstrate excellent microwave absorption performance, and the minimal reflection loss of −54.5 dB is achieved. Therefore, this study provides valuable guidelines for the design of microwave absorbers using HE oxides.

Core@shell structures have been attracting extensive attention to boost microwave absorption (MA) performance due to the unique interfacial polarization. However, it still remains a challenge to synthesize sophisticated 1D semiconductor‐based materials with excellent MA competence. Herein, a hierarchical cable‐like TiO2@Fe3O4@PPy is fabricated by a sequential process of solvothermal treatment and polymerization. The complex permittivity of ternary composites can be optimized by tunable PPy coating thickness to improve the loss ability. The maximum reflection loss can reach −61.8 dB with a thickness of 3.2 mm while the efficient absorption bandwidth can achieve over 6.0 GHz, which involves the X and Ku band at only a 2.2 mm thickness. Importantly, the heterojunction contacts constructed by PPy–Fe3O4 and Fe3O4–TiO2 contribute to the enhanced polarization loss. Besides, the configuration of magnetic Fe3O4 sandwiched between dielectric TiO2 and PPy facilitates the magnetic stray field to radiate into the TiO2 core and out of the PPy shell, which significantly promotes magnetic–dielectric synergy. Electron holography validates the distinct charge distribution and magnetic coupling. The new findings might shed light on novel structures for functional core@shell composites and the design of semiconductor‐based materials for microwave absorption.