The increasingly intimate bond connecting soft actuation devices and emerging biomedical applications is triggering the development of novel materials with superb biocompatibility and a sensitive actuation capability that can reliably function as bio-use-oriented actuators in a human-friendly manner. Stimulus-responsive hydrogels are biocompatible with human tissues/organs, have sufficient water content, are similar to extracellular matrices in structure and chemophysical properties, and are responsive to external environmental stimuli, and these materials have recently attracted massive research interest for fabricating bioactuators. The great potential of employing such hydrogels that respond to various stimuli (e.g., pH, temperature, light, electricity, and magnetic fields) for actuation purposes has been revealed by their performances in real-time biosensing systems, targeted drug delivery, artificial muscle reconstruction, and cell microenvironment engineering. In this review, the material selection of hydrogels with multiple stimulusresponsive mechanisms for actuator fabrication is first introduced, followed by a detailed introduction to and discussion of the most recent progress in emerging biomedical applications of hydrogel-based bioactuators. Final conclusions, existing challenges, and upcoming development prospects are noted in light of the status quo of bioactuators based on stimulus-responsive hydrogels.

To eliminate nitrogen oxides (NOx), a series of highly ordered mesoporous WO3(χ)-CeO2 nanomaterials (χ represents the mole ratio of W/Ce) were synthesized by using KIT-6 as a hard template, which was used for selective catalytic reduction (SCR) to remove NOx with NH3 at low temperatures. Moreover, the nanomaterials were characterized by TEM, XRD, Raman, XPS, BET, H2-TPR, NH3-TPD and in situ DRIFTS. It can be found that all of the prepared mesoporous WO3(χ)-CeO2 (χ = 0, 0.5, 0.75, 1 and 1.25) showed highly ordered mesoporous channels. Furthermore, mesoporous WO3(1)-CeO2 exhibited the best removal efficiency of NOx, and its NOx conversion ratio could reach 100% from 225 ° C to 350 ° C with a gas hourly space velocity of 30 000 h−1, which was due to higher Ce3+ concentrations, abundant active surface oxygen species and Lewis acid sites based on XPS, H2-TPR, NH3-TPD and in situ DRIFTS. In addition, several key performance parameters of mesoporous WO3(1)-CeO2, such as superior water resistance, better alkali metal resistance, higher thermal stability and N2 selectivity, were systematically studied, indicating that the synthesized mesoporous WO3(1)-CeO2 has great potential for industrial applications.

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Our study indicated that miR-132 plays an important role in the invasion and metastasis of CRC.