the best candidate for prospective application on account of their low cost, easy synthesis, and renewability. Although already commercialized in LIBs, graphite cannot be formed binary intercalation compounds with sodium unless appropriate electrolyte, like diglyme-based [10] or etherbased [11] electrolyte, is employed.Therefore, hard carbon as a typical nongraphitic carbon has become a research hotspot. Normally, the capacities of hard carbon in SIBs originate from two parts: slope capacity above 0.1 V and plateau capacity below 0.1 V. As first proposed by Stevens and Dahn, the sodium storage behaviors of hard carbons were defined as "house of cards" model. [12] Namely, the slope and plateau capacities correspond to Na intercalation between graphene layers and nanopore filling/nanoplating, respectively. However, Cao et al. [13] indicated that the slope capacity is due to adsorption of Na at vacancies and the plateau capacity is attributed to Na + deintercalation behavior between graphite layers, which was further verified by other researchers. [14] In a word, the Na + storage mechanism can be summarized as (1) intercalation between the graphene layers, (2) storage in the defective turbostratic structure, (3) adsorption on the surface, and (4) filling in nanopores. Based on these mechanisms, tremendous efforts, including optimizing calcination temperature, [5,15] expanding interlayer lattice distance, [16] increasing specific surface area, [17] have been used to improve the electrochemical performance of hard carbon. In addition, doping covalent heteroatom (e.g., N, [18] S, [16,19] and F [20] ) is another efficient way to elevate sodium storage capacity by enhancing Na adsorption capability and electronic conductivity. However, these carbon anodes generally have two characteristics, namely the large specific surface area and high voltage plateau, which lead to the formation of excess and undesirable solid electrolyte interface (SEI) and thus limiting the practical utilization.To avoid these issues, we adopt electrospinning technology to fabricate phosphorous-functionalized hard carbon with low specific surface area and low operation potential, aiming at maximizing the desodiation capacity and further improving the energy density. Phosphorous as a nonmetallic chemical element has already been used in SIBs reported by Yang and co-workers [9a] due to its high theoretical specific capacity of 2596 mA h g −1 . Similar to N or S atoms, P can also serve as electron donors doped into carbon to induce a shift of the Fermi level to the conducting band. Nevertheless, it is very difficult Hard carbon as a typical anode material for sodium ion batteries has received much attention in terms of its low cost and renewability. Herein, phosphorusfunctionalized hard carbon with a specific "honeycomb briquette" shaped morphology is synthesized via electrospinning technology. When applied as an anode material for Na + storage, it exhibits an impressively high reversible capacity of 393.4 mA h g −1 with the capacity retention up to 9...

Engineered nanoparticles (NPs) have broad applications in industry and nanomedicine. When NPs enter the body, interactions with the immune system are unavoidable. The innate immune system, a non-specific first line of defense against potential threats to the host, immediately interacts with introduced NPs and generates complicated immune responses. Depending on their physicochemical properties, NPs can interact with cells and proteins to stimulate or suppress the innate immune response, and similarly activate or avoid the complement system. NPs size, shape, hydrophobicity and surface modification are the main factors that influence the interactions between NPs and the innate immune system. In this review, we will focus on recent reports about the relationship between the physicochemical properties of NPs and their innate immune response, and their applications in immunotherapy.

The rapid emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial "superbugs" with concomitant treatment failure and high mortality rates presents a severe threat to global health. The superbug risk is further exacerbated by chronic infections generated from antibiotic-resistant biofilms that render them refractory to available treatments. We hypothesized that efficient antimicrobial agents could be generated through careful engineering of hydrophobic and cationic domains in a synthetic semirigid polymer scaffold, mirroring and amplifying attributes of antimicrobial peptides. We report the creation of polymeric nanoparticles with highly efficient antimicrobial properties. These nanoparticles eradicate biofilms with low toxicity to mammalian cells and feature unprecedented therapeutic indices against red blood cells. Most notably, bacterial resistance toward these nanoparticles was not observed after 20 serial passages, in stark contrast to clinically relevant antibiotics where significant resistance occurred after only a few passages.

An effective path planning or route planning algorithm is essential for guiding unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) between way points or along a trajectory. The A* algorithm is one of the most efficient algorithms for calculating a safe route with the shortest distance cost. However, the route generated by the conventional A* algorithm is constrained by the resolution of the map and it may not be compatible with the nonholonomic constraint of the USV. In this paper an improved A* algorithm has been proposed and applied to the Springer USV. A new path smoothing process with three path smoothers has been developed to improve the performance of the generated route, reducing unnecessary 'jags', having no redundant waypoints and offering a more continuous route. Both simulation and experimental results show that the smoothed A* algorithm outperforms the conventional algorithm in both sparse and cluttered environments that have been uniformly rasterised. It has been demonstrated that the proposed improved A* route planning algorithm can be applied to the Springer USV providing promising results when tracking trajectories.

a b s t r a c tUnmanned surface vehicles (USVs) have been deployed over the past decade. Current USV platforms are generally of small size with low payload capacity and short endurance times. To improve effectiveness there is a trend to deploy multiple USVs as a formation fleet. This paper presents a novel computer based algorithm that solves the problem of USV formation path planning. The algorithm is based upon the fast marching (FM) method and has been specifically designed for operation in dynamic environments using the novel constrained FM method. The constrained FM method is able to model the dynamic behaviour of moving ships with efficient computation time. The algorithm has been evaluated using a range of tests applied to a simulated area and has been proved to work effectively in a complex navigation environment.