Renewable, cost-effective and eco-friendly electrode materials have attracted much attention in the energy conversion and storage fields. Bagasse, the waste product from sugarcane that mainly contains cellulose derivatives, can be a promising candidate to manufacture supercapacitor electrode materials. This study demonstrates the fabrication and characterization of highly porous carbon aerogels by using bagasse as a raw material. Macro and mesoporous carbon was first prepared by carbonizing the freeze-dried bagasse aerogel; consequently, microporous structure was created on the walls of the mesoporous carbon by chemical activation. Interestingly, it was observed that the specific surface area, the pore size and distribution of the hierarchical porous carbon were affected by the activation temperature. In order to evaluate the ability of the hierarchical porous carbon towards the supercapacitor electrode performance, solid state symmetric supercapacitors were assembled, and a comparable high specific capacitance of 142.1 F g(-1) at a discharge current density of 0.5 A g(-1) was demonstrated. The fabricated solid state supercapacitor displayed excellent capacitance retention of 93.9% over 5000 cycles. The high energy storage ability of the hierarchical porous carbon was attributed to the specially designed pore structures, i.e., co-existence of the micropores and mesopores. This research has demonstrated that utilization of sustainable biopolymers as the raw materials for high performance supercapacitor electrode materials is an effective way to fabricate low-cost energy storage devices.

An electric field built inside a crystal was proposed to enhance photoinduced carrier separation for improving photocatalytic property of semiconductor photocatalysts. However, a static built-in electric field can easily be saturated by the free carriers due to electrostatic screening, and the enhancement of photocatalysis, thus, is halted. To overcome this problem, here, we propose sonophotocatalysis based on a new hybrid photocatalyst, which combines ferroelectric nanocrystals (BaTiO3) and semiconductor nanoparticles (Ag2O) to form an Ag2O-BaTiO3 hybrid photocatalyst. Under periodic ultrasonic excitation, a spontaneous polarization potential of BaTiO3 nanocrystals in responding to ultrasonic wave can act as alternating built-in electric field to separate photoinduced carriers incessantly, which can significantly enhance the photocatalytic activity and cyclic performance of the Ag2O-BaTiO3 hybrid structure. The piezoelectric effect combined with photoelectric conversion realizes an ultrasonic-wave-driven piezophototronic process in the hybrid photocatalyst, which is the fundamental of sonophotocatalysis.

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SUMMARYCD20 is an effective target for therapeutic B-cell depletion with monoclonal antibodies. One proposed mechanism of action is direct cytotoxicity mediated via tyrosine kinase-dependent signalling pathways activated upon CD20 cross-linking. The association of CD20 with membrane microdomains known as lipid rafts, enriched in src-family tyrosine kinases and other signalling effectors, suggests an indirect mechanism of anti-CD20-induced apoptosis in which activation of src-family kinases occurs as a consequence of lipid raft clustering.

The recurrence of malignant tumors is mostly caused by incompleted surgical resection. Especially, it is difficult for surgeons to detect and accurately remove metastatic tumors by predominantly using visual examination and palpation owing to the lack of effective means to specifically distinguish the boundary range between normal and tumor tissues. Thus, the development of activated fluorescent probe with superior tumor-to-normal (T/N) tissue ratios is particularly urgent in clinics. In view of CD13/aminopeptidase N (APN) regarded as a cancer-specific biomarker, mediating with progression, invasion, and migration of malignant tumor, herein, we reported an APN-responsive fluorescent probe YH-APN and demonstrated its application to distinguish cancer cells. Through in situ spraying manner, fluorescent superior tumor-to-normal (T/N) tissue ratios (subcutaneous transplantation tumor, 13.86; hepatic metastasis, 4.42 and 6.25; splenic metastasis, 4.99) were achieved. More importantly, we have demonstrated the ability to image metastasis tumor tissue less than 1 mm in diameter, highlighting the potential for this probe to be used as a tool in surgical resection. This research may spur the use of enzyme-activatable fluorescent probes for the progress of tumor diagnosis and image-guided surgery (IGS).