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deposit Si nanoparticles or Si nanowires (SiNWs) with dimension less than 100 nm. [ 7,8 ] However, high temperature growth, expensive precursors, and complex conducting layer coating are required. [8][9][10][11] On the other hand, top-down approaches are mostly based on expensive electronic grade silicon (EG-Si, purity > 99.999999%) and involve the use of templates or lithography and thus, lose their competence due to the increased process complexity. [ 12,13 ] Recently, metal-assisted chemical etching (MaCE) has emerged as a new, batch-processable top-down method to overcome these technical obstacles. [ 14,15 ] The technology is a room-temperature, wet chemical process that can produce nanostructured Si on a large scale and quantity. In addition, it spontaneously forms a unique internal mesoporosity, which has been recently recognized as the crucial aspect to maintain long-term cyclability. [ 12,16,17 ] The mesoporosity provides suffi cient inner space for the volume expansion of silicon. Moreover, the internal porosity provides good access to the electrolyte allowing fast charge transfer and full lithiation even when the silicon is completely amorphized. [ 18,19 ] Till date, Si particles and nanowires with mesoporosity have been synthesized via MaCE by the use of commercially available Si particles [ 18,19 ] and degenerated EG-Si wafers of high purity. [ 16,17,20 ] The porosity development strongly relies on heavy doping (dopant concentration > ≈10 19 cm −3 ). However, in both cases, the starting material costs are still high and at least in the order of $100 kg −1 . It is therefore highly desirable to explore inexpensive Si feedstock for meeting the needs of practical LIB applications. We have recently shown that MaCE can also be successfully applied to inexpensive metallurgical silicon. [ 21,22 ] In addition to the nanostructuring effect, MaCE also removes the impurities inside the metallurgical nanowires by complex redox reactions, thereby purifying the silicon by more than one order of magnitude. [ 21 ] In this communication, we present the large-area preparation of mesoporous SiNW from metallurgical silicon (MG-Si, purity ≈99.74%) with adjustable porosity by MaCE and their application as LIB anode. We demonstrate that this system has an encouraging cycling stability as the LIB anode. It exhibits a reversible capacity of about 2111 mAh g −1 at a current rate of 0.2 C, a promising stability of over 50 cycles, as well as a good rate capability, which is similar to a recent report on stainetched samples of ball-milled metallurgical-Si particles in ironcontaining HF solutions. [ 23 ] In comparison to recent reports on pillared silicon particle approaches (e.g., Nexeon's technology in the commercialization stage), [24][25][26] our technology requires no carbon coating and energy-intensive ball milling process, which can be easily upscaled in the industry and is compatible with roll-to-roll process. [ 27 ] Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are currently dominating the market of portable electronic devices as well as t...

Background Previous studies have suggested that metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its component conditions are linked to the development of many benign or malignant diseases. Some studies have described relationships among metabolic syndrome or diabetes and liver cancer, but not many articles described the relationships between MetS and cirrhosis, acute hepatic failure, end-stage liver disease, and even death. However, liver cancers, cirrhosis, acute hepatic failure, end-stage liver disease, and liver-related mortality—collectively described as liver-related events (LREs)—may have different relationships with MetS. We undertook this meta-analysis to examine the association between MetS and LREs, and to determine whether geographic region or hepatitis B virus (HBV) positivity might influence the association. Methods Relevant studies were identified from PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane database. Two reviewers independently searched records from January 1980 to December 2017. The search terms included ‘metabolic syndrome’, ‘diabetes mellitus’, ‘insulin resistance syndrome’, and ‘metabolic abnormalities’, combined with ‘cirrhosis’, ‘hepatic fibrosis ’, ‘hepatocellular carcinoma’, ‘complication’, ‘LRE’, ‘HCC’, ‘liver-related events’, and ‘liver cancer’. No language restriction was applied to the search. We chose the studies reporting an association between MetS and LREs. We used Begg’s and Egger’s tests and visually examined a funnel plot to assess publication bias. All analyses were conducted in Stata 14.0 software. Results There were 19 studies (18 cohort and 1 case-control) included in the analysis, with a total of 1,561,457 participants. The subjects’ ages ranged from 18 to 84 years. The combined analysis showed an overall 86% increase risk of LREs in cases with MetS (RR: 1.86,95% CI: 1.56–2.23). The funnel plot was asymmetrical, and the Egger’s test p values showed a publication bias in this meta analysis. However, through the trim and fill method, we obtained a new RR value for LREs with MetS of 1.49 (95% CI: 1.40–1.58, p = 0.000). There was no obvious difference with the two answers, so we concluded that the results were robust. For hepatitis B positive patients, the RR for MetS and LREs was 2.15 (95% CI:1.02–4.53, p = 0.038), but for the hepatitis B negative patients, the RR was 1.85 (95% CI:1.53–2.24, p = 0.000). And for non-Asians, the RR for MetS and LREs was 2.21 (95% CI: 1.66–2.69, p = 0.000), while for Asians, the RR was 1.73 (95% CI: 1.35–2.22, p = 0.000). Conclusions This meta-analysis showed that MetS is associated with a moderately increased risk of LREs prevalence. Patients with MetS together with hepatitis B are more likely to develop hepatic events. For non-Asians, MetS is more likely to increase the incidence of LREs.

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