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Background Empathy is an important element of the physician-patient relationship and is a critical personality trait for medical students. However, research has shown that it declines during undergraduate medical education. It is still unclear how empathy interrelates with the psychological elements of medical students, in particular, self-esteem. This study examined the relationship between empathy and self-esteem to explore other possible methods to improve medical students’ empathy. Methods A stratified sampling strategy was used to select 1690 medical students from 3 medical institutions in Shanghai as study participants. The questionnaires used to collect data included the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy-Student Version (JSPE-S), the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (RSES), and a self-made inventory on personal information. Descriptive analysis, independent t -test, One-Way ANOVA, and linear regression were used to analyze the data. Results The mean empathy score among medical students was 102.73 with SD = 12.64. Multiple regression analysis revealed that, “age,” “perception of the importance of empathy,” “academic pressure,” “desire to be a doctor after graduation,” and “self-esteem” were significant predictors of empathy ( P < 0.05) and the adjusted R 2 was 0.462. The correlation matrix between empathy and self-esteem was significant ( r = 0.510, P < 0.01). Self-esteem explained 15.5% of the variation of empathy in the final regression model. Conclusion There was a positive association between self-esteem and empathy. Self-esteem is one of many factors which contribute to medical students’ empathy. Age, academic pressure, attitude toward empathy and future career also play a critical role in medical student empathy. Enhancing medical students’ self-esteem may be an efficacious way to improve medical students’ empathy.

are extremely reactive, metal centers are commonly stabilized on supports via coordination of nonmetal dopants. In this regard, excess dopants are employed to optimize the loading content of SACs on the carbon. Such an excess content of dopants can in turn lead to inevitable interference on the catalytic performance of SACs, [2] which may hamper the mechanism study on the catalytic reaction. Taking nitrogen (N, the most commonly explored dopant for preparation of carbonbased SACs) for instance, with various metallic loading of single-atom catalysts, [3] most of the N dopants do not take part in coordinating with SACs through formation of M-N x species (M, metallic atom and x , coordination number). The other N dopants remained in the form of pyrrole N, pyridine N, graphitic N, and N-O on the carbon-based SACs. During the catalytic reaction, these N species can possibly induce various unfavorable effects on the carbon-supported SACs. In many cases, enormous property differences have been observed on the SACs that were reported to have similar or even the same structure, concluding contradict relationship between coordination and selectivity. [4] For example, similar Ni-N x SACs showed different potential window of CO selectivity in electrocatalytic CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR). [1c,5] As a consequence, it remains a huge gap between the understanding on the correlation of the Carbon-supported single-atom catalysts (SACs) are extensively studied because of their outstanding activity and selectivity toward a wide range of catalytic reactions. Amidst its development, excess dopants (e.g., nitrogen) are always required to ensure the high loading content of SACs on the carbon support. However, the use of excess dopants is accompanied by formation of miscellaneous structures (particularly the uncoordinated N species) on catalysts, leading to adverse effects on their performance. Herein, the synthesis of carbon-supported Ni SACs with precisely controlled single-atom structure via joule heating strategy, showing the coordination of 80% of N dopants with metal elements, is reported. The preclusion of the unfavorable N species is confirmed to be the main reason for the superior performance of optimized Ni SACs in electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction reaction, which demonstrates unprecedented activity, selectivity, and stability under an exceptionally broad voltage range (>92% CO selectivity in the range of −0.7 to −1.9 V reversible hydrogen electrode). Such a synthetic strategy is further applicable for the design of SACs with various metals. This work demonstrates a facile method for preclusion of unfavorable dopants in the SACs and its importance in catalytic application.The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202104090.

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The herbaceous perennial energy crops miscanthus, giant reed, and switchgrass, along with the annual crop residue corn stover, were evaluated for their bioconversion potential. A co-hydrolysis process, which applied dilute acid pretreatment, directly followed by enzymatic saccharification without detoxification and liquid-solid separation between these two steps was implemented to convert lignocellulose into monomeric sugars (glucose and xylose). A factorial experiment in a randomized block design was employed to optimize the co-hydrolysis process. Under the optimal reaction conditions, corn stover exhibited the greatest total sugar yield (glucose + xylose) at 0.545 g g(-1) dry biomass at 83.3% of the theoretical yield, followed by switch grass (0.44 g g(-1) dry biomass, 65.8% of theoretical yield), giant reed (0.355 g g(-1) dry biomass, 64.7% of theoretical yield), and miscanthus (0.349 g g(-1) dry biomass, 58.1% of theoretical yield). The influence of combined severity factor on the susceptibility of pretreated substrates to enzymatic hydrolysis was clearly discernible, showing that co-hydrolysis is a technically feasible approach to release sugars from lignocellulosic biomass. The oleaginous fungus Mortierella isabellina was selected and applied to the co-hydrolysate mediums to accumulate fungal lipids due to its capability of utilizing both C5 and C6 sugars. Fungal cultivations grown on the co-hydrolysates exhibited comparable cell mass and lipid production to the synthetic medium with pure glucose and xylose. These results elucidated that combining fungal fermentation and co-hydrolysis to accumulate lipids could have the potential to enhance the utilization efficiency of lignocellulosic biomass for advanced biofuels production.

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Even rechargeable aqueous Zn-ion batteries are regarded as one of the promising secondary batteries due to their high safety and low cost, their practical applications are still hampered by the...