Because of the aggressive and recurrent nature of cancers, repeated and multimodal treatments are often necessary. Traditional cancer therapies have a risk of serious toxicity and side effects. Hence, it is crucial to develop an alternative treatment modality that is minimally invasive, effectively treats cancers with low toxicity, and can be repeated as required. We developed a light-activatable microneedle (MN) system that can repeatedly and simultaneously provide photothermal therapy and chemotherapy to superficial tumors and exert synergistic anticancer effects. This system consists of embeddable polycaprolactone MNs containing a photosensitive nanomaterial (lanthanum hexaboride) and an anticancer drug (doxorubicin; DOX), and a dissolvable poly(vinyl alcohol)/polyvinylpyrrolidone supporting array patch. Because of this supporting array, the MNs can be completely inserted into the skin and embedded within the target tissue for locoregional cancer treatment. When exposed to near-infrared light, the embedded MN array uniformly heats the target tissue to induce a large thermal ablation area and then melts at 50 °C to release DOX in a broad area, thus destroying tumors. This light-activated heating and releasing behavior can be precisely controlled and switched on and off on demand for several cycles. We demonstrated that the MN-mediated synergistic therapy completely eradicated 4T1 tumors within 1 week after a single application of the MN and three cycles of laser treatment. No tumor recurrence and no significant body weight loss of mice were observed. Thus, the developed light-activatable MN with a unique embeddable feature offers an effective, user-friendly, and low-toxicity option for patients requiring long-term and multiple cancer treatments.

Background: China's coastal wetlands belong to some of the most threatened ecosystems worldwide. The loss and degradation of these wetlands seriously threaten waterbirds that depend on wetlands.

We performed elastic neutron-scattering and magnetization measurements on Fe 1.07 Te 0.75 Se 0.25 and FeTe 0.7 Se 0.3 . Short-range incommensurate magnetic order is observed in both samples. In the former sample with higher Fe content, a broad magnetic peak appears around ͑0.46,0,0.5͒ at low temperature, while in FeTe 0.7 Se 0.3 , the broad magnetic peak is found to be closer to the antiferromagnetic ͑AFM͒ wave vector ͑0.5,0,0.5͒. The incommensurate peaks are only observed on one side of the AFM wave vector for both samples, which can be modeled in terms of an imbalance of ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic correlations between nearest-neighbor spins. We also find that with higher Se ͑and lower Fe͒ concentration, the magnetic order becomes weaker while the superconducting temperature and volume increase.

This study presents near-infrared (NIR) light-responsive polymer-nanostructure composite microneedles used for on-demand transdermal drug delivery. Silica-coated lanthanum hexaboride (LaB6@SiO2) nanostructures were incorporated into polycaprolactone microneedles, serving as an NIR absorber. When the microneedles were irradiated with NIR light, light-to-heat transduction mediated by the LaB6@SiO2 nanostructures caused the microneedle melting at 50 °C. This increased the mobility of the polymer chains, enabling drug release from the matrix. Drug release from the microneedles was evaluated for four laser on/off cycles. In each cycle, the samples were irradiated until the temperature reached 50 °C for 3 min (laser on); the laser was then turned off for 30 min (laser off). The results showed that light-induced phase transition in the polymer triggered drug release from the melted microneedles. A stepwise drug-release behavior was observed after multiple cycles of NIR light exposure. No notable drug leakage was found in the off state. This NIR-light-triggerable device exhibits excellent reproducibility, low off-state leakage, and noninvasive triggerability and, thus, represents an advance in transdermal delivery technology.

Inelastic neutron scattering and susceptibility measurements have been performed on the optimally doped Fe-based superconductor FeTe 0.5 Se 0.5 , which has a critical temperature, T c of 14 K. The magnetic scattering at the stripe antiferromagnetic wave vector Q = ͑0.5, 0.5͒ exhibits a "resonance" at ϳ6 meV, where the scattering intensity increases abruptly when cooled below T c . In a 7-T magnetic field parallel to the a-b plane, T c is slightly reduced to ϳ12 K, based on susceptibility measurements. The resonance in the neutron-scattering measurements is also affected by the field. The resonance intensity under field cooling starts to rise at a lower temperature ϳ12 K, and the low-temperature intensity is also reduced from the zero-field value. Our results provide clear evidence for the intimate relationship between superconductivity and the resonance measured in magnetic excitations of Fe-based superconductors.