Sepsis is a common cause of death, but outcomes in individual patients are difficult to predict. Elucidating the molecular processes that differ between sepsis patients who survive and those who die may permit more appropriate treatments to be deployed. We examined the clinical features, and the plasma metabolome and proteome of patients with and without community-acquired sepsis, upon their arrival at hospital emergency departments and 24 hours later. The metabolomes and proteomes of patients at hospital admittance who would die differed markedly from those who would survive. The different profiles of proteins and metabolites clustered into fatty acid transport and β-oxidation, gluconeogenesis and the citric acid cycle. They differed consistently among several sets of patients, and diverged more as death approached. In contrast, the metabolomes and proteomes of surviving patients with mild sepsis did not differ from survivors with severe sepsis or septic shock. An algorithm derived from clinical features together with measurements of seven metabolites predicted patient survival. This algorithm may help to guide the treatment of individual patients with sepsis.

With over fivefold energy capacity, sulfur demonstrates superior advantages over current commercial intercalation compound (LiCoO 2 and LiFePO 4 ) cathode materials. [3][4][5] Despite its considerable advantages, the practical application of Li-S battery has been hindered by poor cycle life due to the shuttle effect, leading to quick capacity decay due to the loss of active materials and an low Coulombic efficiency. [6,7] Moreover, the insulating nature of S/Li 2 S and as large as 78% volume expansion of sulfur cathode when initial state S (2.03 g cm −3 ) is fully converted to final state Li 2 S (1.66 g cm −3 ) result in rapid capacity fading and short cycle life due to the low utilization of active materials and poor electrical contact between sulfur particles and conductive additives. [8,9] Aiming to address these negative impact of at least some of the detrimental processes described above for realizing commercial application of highenergy Li-S battery, various considerable strategies have been focused on cathode material modification including N-doped materials, [10][11][12] porous materials, [13] hierarchical materials, [14] metal oxides [15,16] transition metal disulfides, [17] and functional separator modification, [18,19] as well as employment of solid or As one of the important ingredients in lithium-sulfur battery, the binders greatly impact the battery performance. However, conventional binders have intrinsic drawbacks such as poor capability of absorbing hydrophilic lithium polysulfides, resulting in severe capacity decay. This study reports a new type of binder by polymerization of hydrophilic poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether with polyethylenimine, which enables strongly anchoring polysulfides for highperformance lithium sulfur batteries, demonstrating remarkable improvement in both mechanical performance for standing up to 100 g weight and an excellent capacity retention of 72% over 400 cycles at 1.5 C. Importantly, in situ micro-Raman investigation verifies the effectively reduced polysulfides shuttling from sulfur cathode to lithium anode, which shows the greatly suppressed shuttle effect by the polar-functional binder. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis into the discharge intermediates upon battery cycling reveals that the hydrophilic binder endows the sulfur electrodes with multidimensional Li-O, Li-N, and S-O interactions with sulfur species to effectively mitigate lithium polysulfide dissolution, which is theoretically confirmed by density-functional theory calculations.

High-resolution oxygen isotope records document the timing and magnitude of global warming across the Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) boundary. Oxygen isotope ratios measured on phosphate-bound oxygen in conodont apatite from the Meishan and Shangsi sections (South China) decrease by 2‰ in the latest Permian, translating into low-latitude surface water warming of 8 °C. The oxygen isotope shift coincides with the negative shift in carbon isotope ratios of carbonates, suggesting that the addition of isotopically light carbon to the ocean-atmosphere system by Siberian Traps volcanism and related processes resulted in higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming. The major temperature rise started immediately before the main extinction phase, with maximum and harmful temperatures documented in the latest Permian (Meishan: bed 27). The coincidence of climate warming and the main pulse of extinction suggest that global warming was one of the causes of the collapse of the marine and terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, very warm climate conditions in the Early Triassic may have played a major role in the delayed recovery in the aftermath of the Permian-Triassic crisis.

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