The rapidly expanding demand for sustainable and clean energy systems has inspired continuous innovation on energy storage technologies and devices. [1,2] Lithium-sulfur

Nanostructured carbon materials have been extensively used for encapsulating sulfur and improving cyclic stability of lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries, but high carbon content and low packing density greatly limit their volumetric energy density. Herein, we present MXene-based Ti3C2T x (T x stands for the surface terminations) nanodots-interspersed Ti3C2T x nanosheet (TCD-TCS) to accomplish spatial immobilization and conversion of high-loaded sulfur species. Rich surface polar sites in TCD-TCS enhance structural integrity of the resultant electrode, while the absence of the carbon-based materials and conductive additives results in high tap density of the cathode materials. The TCD-TCS/S electrode exhibits an almost theoretical discharge capacity at a medium sulfur loading of 1.8 mg cm–2. Notably, ultrahigh volumetric capacity (1957 mAh cm–3) and high areal capacity (13.7 mAh cm–2) are synchronously achieved at a high sulfur loading of 13.8 mg cm–2. The mechanism study of sulfur evolution during discharge process highlights the importance of the integration of MXene-based nanodots and nanosheets in Li–S batteries. This proposed methodology holds great promise for the development of various high-performance energy storage materials.

The areal and volumetric capacities are important metrics in practical deployment of advanced energy storage systems with the imposed constraints of device volume and chip area. Conductive carbons are promising sulfur host materials for improving areal capacity in lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries, but they face a few congenital deficiencies, such as low tap density and weak polysulfide entrapment ability, resulting in poor volumetric performance. Here, we report one type of cathode system based on flower-like porous Ti3C2T x (FLPT) without the incorporation of any carbon hosts or conductive additives. The resultant FLPT-S electrode synchronously acquires a high areal capacity of 10.04 mAh cm–2 and ultrahigh volumetric capacity of 2009 mAh cm–3. Furthermore, ex situ electron paramagnetic resonance and UV–visible spectra have demonstrated that FLPT enables a fast dynamic equilibrium between S6 2– anion and S3 •– radical during cycling, which promotes the redox reactions of sulfur species.

The applications of MXene-based materials in cathodes, anodes and separators of lithium–sulfur batteries have been summarized, and their superiority for suppressing polysulfide shuttling and improving sulfur utilization has been demonstrated.

Growing evidence suggests that inflammation is a significant contributor to different cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Mendelian randomization (MR) was performed to assess the causal inference between plasma soluble IL6 receptor (sIL6R), a negative regulator of IL6 signaling, and different cardiovascular and immune-related disorders. Cis-MR with multiple instrumental variables showed an inverse association of sIL6R with rheumatoid arthritis, atrial fibrillation, stroke, coronary artery disease, and abdominal aortic aneurysm. However, genetically-determined sIL6R level was positively associated with atopic dermatitis and asthma. Also, sIL6R level was associated with longevity, as evaluated by parental age at death, a heritable trait. Gene-based association analysis with S-PrediXcan by using tissues from GTExV7 showed that IL6R tissue expression-disease pair associations were consistent with the directional effect of IL6 signaling identified in MR. Genetically-determined reduced IL6 signaling lowers the risk of multiple CVDs and is associated with increased longevity, but at the expense of higher atopic risk.

Hollow nanostructures are one of promising sulfur host materials for lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries, but the ineffective contact among discrete particles usually generates overall poor electrical conductivity and low volumetric energy density. A new interfused hollow nitrogen‐doped carbon (HNPC) material, derived from imidazolium‐based ionic polymer (ImIP)‐encapsulated zeolitic imidazolate framework‐8 (ZIF‐8), is reported. A novel method for ZIF‐8 disassembly induced by the decomposition of the ImIP shell is proposed. The unique structural superiority gives the resultant electrodes remarkable cycling stability, high rate capability, and large volumetric energy density. A stable reversible discharge capacity over 562 mA h g−1 at 2 C is achieved after prolonged cycling for 800 cycles and the average capacity decay per cycle is as low as 0.035%. The electrochemical performance achieved greatly surpasses that of ZIF‐8‐derived carbon matrices and conventional nitrogen‐doped carbon materials. This proposed methodology opens a new avenue for the design of hollow‐structured carbon nanoarchitectures with target functionalities.

Hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) is a major challenge for liver surgery and specific severe conditions of chronic liver disease. Current surgical and pharmacological strategies are limited to improve liver function after hepatic I/R injury. Thus, an in-depth understanding of the liver I/R mechanism is pivotal to develop new therapeutic methods. The cellular repressor of E1A-stimulated genes (CREG), a key regulator of cellular proliferation, exerts protective roles in cardiovascular diseases and participates in lipid accumulation and inflammatory response in the liver. However, the role of CREG in hepatic I/R remains largely unknown. A genetic engineering technique was employed to explore the function of CREG in hepatic I/R injury. Hepatocyte-specific Creg knockout (Creg ) and transgenic (HTG) mice were generated and subjected to hepatic I/R injury, as were the controls. CREG in hepatocytes prevented against liver I/R injury by suppressing cell death and inflammation. In vitro studies were performed using primary hepatocytes isolated from Creg that were challenged by hypoxia/reoxygenation insult. These cells exhibited more cell death and inflammatory cytokines production similar to observations in vivo. Moreover, further molecular experiments showed that CREG suppressed MAPK signaling by inhibiting TAK1 phosphorylation. Inhibiting TAK1 by 5Z-7-ox or mutating the TAK1-binding domain of CREG abolished the protective role of CREG, indicating that CREG binding to TAK1 was required for prevention against hepatic I/R injury. Conclusion These data demonstrated that CREG prevents hepatocytes from liver I/R injury. The CREG-TAK1 interaction inhibited the phosphorylation of TAK1 and the activation of MAPK signaling, which protected against cell death and inflammation during hepatic I/R injury. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

However, practical implementations of Li-S batteries are still impeded by several intrinsic problems, such as the insulating nature of sulfur/lithium sulfide (Li 2 S), inevitable shuttle effect of soluble polysulfides, and volume variation upon cycling. [5][6][7][8] Considerable efforts have been made to tackle these intractable issues, one of the common techniques is the use of the nanostructured carbon materials with high electrical conductivity, desirable porous structure, and controllable dimensions as sulfur hosts. [9][10][11][12][13] Despite fruitful progress achieved in this direction, the insufficient interactions between these carbonaceous materials and polysulfides greatly limit the loading of sulfur active material, thus compromising energy density of the cells. It is a still formidable challenge to develop new electrode materials that synchronously achieve high gravimetric, areal, and volumetric capacities together with high rate and cyclic stability performance.The integration of conductive carbon-based materials with transition metal oxides, sulfides, carbides, and nitrides (MX) is one appealing approach for enhancing trapping ability of polysulfides and/or exerting positive electrocatalytic effects on the interconversion of sulfur species, which facilitates the upspring of sulfur cathodes with high energy density and cyclic stability. [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] The dual lithiophilic and sulfiphilic interactions between MX and soluble polysulfides based on Lewis acid-base principles have been identified as the interactive modes for mitigating polysulfides shuttling, [22,23] but lithiophilic interaction of these composite materials could delay the electron transfer to polysulfides and the lithium ions diffusion, thus retarding the redox kinetics. [24] When sulfur content and sulfur loading are enough high in the cathode, the massively generated polysulfides are difficult to be immobilized due to the adsorption saturation of MX. Different from the amphipathic mode of MX-based materials, metal borides (MB) have been proposed to chemically adsorb polysulfides through Co-polysulfides and B-polysulfides interactions. [25] The binary sulfiphilic interactions based on metal and B element increase the density of chemical anchoring sites for mitigating polysulfide shuttling. In the meantime, high conductivity and the electrocatalytic effects of MB could expedite redox kinetics and nucleation High gravimetric, areal and volumetric capacities together with long lifetime are key indexes for the applications of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries in compact space. The sulfur host materials play pivotal roles in the practical deployment. Herein, one type of new heterostructure nanosheets composed of cobalt boride (CoB) on nitrogen, boron-codoped porous carbon (NBC), which is constructed through molten salt-assisted strategy using ZIF-67-encapsulated ZIF-8 as precursors is reported on. Benefiting from strong interfacial electronic interactions between binary sulfiphilic CoB and porous NBC, the CoB/NBC-S electrode...