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Solar-driven water evaporation has been proposed as a renewable and sustainable strategy for the generation of clean water from seawater or wastewater. To enable such technologies, development of photothermal materials that enable efficient solar steam generation is essential. The current challenge is to manufacture such photothermal materials cost-effectively and at scale. Furthermore, the photothermal materials should be strongly hydrophilic and environmentally stable. Herein, we demonstrate facile and scalable fabrication of carbon nanotube (CNT)-based photothermal nanocomposite foam by igniting an ethanol solution of ferric acetylacetonate [Fe(acac) 3 ] absorbed within nickel (Ni) foam under ambient conditions. The Fe(acac) 3 precursor provides carbon and the zero-valent iron catalyst for growing CNTs on the Ni foam, while ethanol facilitates the dispersion of Fe(acac) 3 on the Ni foam and supplies heat energy for the growth of CNTs by its burning. A forest of dense and uniform CNTs decorated with Fe 2 O 3 nanoparticles is generated within seconds. The resultant Fe 2 O 3 /CNT/Ni nanocomposite foam exhibits "superhydrophilicity" and high light absorption capacity, ensuring rapid transport and fast evaporation of water within the entire foam. Efficient light-to-heat conversion causes the surface temperature of the foam to reach ∼83.1 °C under 1 sun irradiation. The average water evaporation rates of such foam are as high as ∼1.48 and ∼4.27 kg m −2 h −1 with light-to-heat conversion efficiencies of ∼81.3 and ∼93.8% under 1 sun and 3 sun irradiation, respectively. Moreover, the versatile and scalable combustion synthesis strategy presented here can be realized on various substrates, exhibiting high adaptability for different applications.

Many attempts have been made to repair the defects of articular cartilage, including mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-based tissue engineering strategies. Optimizing MSC sources and their delivery approaches still remain clinically challenging. Recent studies determined that MSCs derived from synovium and synovial fluid exhibited superior chondrogenic potential. However, no feasible methods to harvest these human tissues and cells have been impeding them for clinical application. Hereby, we explored a simple and easy accessible approach to obtain a new stem cell source from arthroscopic flushing fluid (AFF-MSCs), which probably contains plenty of MSCs from synovium and synovial fluid. Further experiments demonstrated that encapsulation of these stem cells with one-step rapid cross-linked polyPEGDA/HA hydrogel held very encouraging potential for cartilage regeneration.

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The adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector has been used in preclinical and clinical trials of gene therapy for central nervous system (CNS) diseases. One of the biggest challenges of effectively delivering AAV to the brain is to surmount the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Herein, we identified several potential BBB shuttle peptides that significantly enhanced AAV8 transduction in the brain after a systemic administration, the best of which was the THR peptide. The enhancement of AAV8 brain transduction by THR is dose-dependent, and neurons are the primary THR targets. Mechanism studies revealed that THR directly bound to the AAV8 virion, increasing its ability to cross the endothelial cell barrier. Further experiments showed that binding of THR to the AAV virion did not interfere with AAV8 infection biology, and that THR competitively blocked transferrin from binding to AAV8. Taken together, our results demonstrate, for the first time, that BBB shuttle peptides are able to directly interact with AAV and increase the ability of the AAV vectors to cross the BBB for transduction enhancement in the brain. These results will shed important light on the potential applications of BBB shuttle peptides for enhancing brain transduction with systemic administration of AAV vectors.