Jingyao Cai

Liver fibrosis occurs in response to any etiology of chronic liver injury. Lack of appropriate clinical intervention will lead to liver cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), seriously affecting the quality of life of patients, but the current clinical treatments of liver fibrosis have not been developed yet. Recent studies have shown that hypoxia is a key factor promoting the progression of liver fibrosis. Hypoxia can cause liver fibrosis. Liver fibrosis can, in turn, profoundly further deepen the degree of hypoxia. Therefore, exploring the role of hypoxia in liver fibrosis will help to further understand the process of liver fibrosis, and provide the theoretical basis for its diagnosis and treatment, which is of great significance to avoid further deterioration of liver diseases and protect the life and health of patients. This review highlights the recent advances in cellular and molecular mechanisms of hypoxia in developments of liver fibrosis.

Liver fibrosis is a common pathway in most chronic liver diseases, characterized by excessive extracellular matrix accumulation. Without treatment, fibrosis will ultimately result in cirrhosis, portal hypertension, and even liver failure. It is considered that liver fibrosis is reversible while cirrhosis is not, making it significant to diagnose and evaluate liver fibrogenesis timely. As the gold standard, liver biopsy is imperfect due to its invasiveness and sampling error. Therefore, attempts at uncovering noninvasive tests have become a hot topic in liver fibrosis. Nowadays, as an important category of noninvasive tests, serum biomarkers, which are safer, convenient, repeatable, and more acceptable, are widely discussed and commonly used in clinical practice. Serum biomarkers of liver fibrosis can be divided into class I (direct) and classⅡ (indirect) markers. However, the diagnostic efficiency still varies among studies. This article summarizes the most established and newly discovered serum biomarkers for hepatic fibrogenesis.

Abstract Charge transfer at the electrode/electrolyte interface and mass transfer within the electrode are the two main factors affecting the high‐rate performance of O3‐type layered oxide cathodes for sodium‐ion batteries. Here a multidimensional lanthurization strategy is proposed to construct the surface LaCrO 3 heterostructure and create a Cr─O─La configuration for O3‐type NaCrO 2 . The electrified heterogeneous LaCrO 3 induces a built‐in electric field to accelerate charge transfer at the interface. Meanwhile, the Cr─O─La configuration in the transition metal layer leads to local charge aggregation, weakens the interaction force between Na─O, and reduces the Na + migration barrier. This strategy significantly improves the electrochemical reaction kinetics and the structural reversibility of the layered oxide cathode. As a result, the designed stoichiometric ratio Na 0.94 Cr 0.98 La 0.02 O 2 electrode exhibits remarkable rate performance (101.8 mAh g −1 at 40 C) as well as outstanding cycling stability (83.1% capacity retention at 20 C for 2000 cycles) in a half‐cell, along with a competitive full battery performance (89.3% after 500 cycles at 2 C). This study provides a promising route to achieve capacity presentation and retention of layered oxide cathode materials at high‐rate.

The feature of high theoretical capacity, long thermal stability, and low-cost fabrication offers the layered transition metal oxide NaCrO2 as an excellent candidate for sodium-ion batteries. Here, we show an effective method for electronic modulation of NaCrO2 by partial substitution of Cr3+ with low-valent Ni2+ to produce NaCr0.95Ni0.05O2 as an efficient cathode for these batteries. We found that Ni2+ substitution plays a critical role in the ionic character of transition metal-oxygen bonds, which increases the interlayer separation and thus improves sodium-ion diffusion kinetics. Furthermore, Ni2+ substitution reduces the deterioration of NaCrO2 throughout charge-discharge processes and thus boosts the cycle performance of the materials. The resultant NaCr0.95Ni0.05O2 cathode displays a remarkable rate performance with specific capacities of 91.2 mAh g-1 at 50 C and a high retention (~80%) of the initial capacity after cycling for 1,000 cycles at 10 C.

Low carbon ferrochrome slag (LCFS) is the metallurgical waste slag from the carbon ferrochrome alloy smelting process. Compared with high carbon ferrochrome slag, LCFS has great potential as cementitious material; the chemical compositions of the two types of slag are quite different. In this research, composite cementitious materials are prepared which use low carbon ferrochrome slag and granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) as the main raw material. Steel slag mud (SSM) and flue gas desulfurization gypsum (FGDG) are used as the activator. In order to find the variety rule of compressive strength on the composite cementitious materials, a three-factor three-level Box-Behnken design is used to discuss the following independent variables: LCFS content, GBFS content, and water-binder ratio. Moreover, the hydration characteristics of the LCFS-GBFS composite cementitious materials is studied in this paper in terms of hydration product, micromorphology, and hydration degree, based on multi-technical microstructural characterizations. The results show that the compressive strength of the LCFS-GBFS composite cementitious materials is significantly affected by single factors and the interaction of two factors. The mechanical property of the mortar samples at 3, 7, and 28 days are 26.6, 35.3, and 42.7 MPa, respectively, when the LCFS-GBFS-SSM-FGDG ratio is 3:5:1:1 and the water-binder ratio is 0.3. The hydration products of LCFS-GBFS composite cementitious materials are mainly amorphous gels (C-S-H gel), ettringite, and Ca(OH)2. With the increase of LCFS content, more hydration products are generated, and the microstructure of the cementitious system becomes more compact, which contributes to the compressive strength. The results of this research can provide a preliminary theoretical foundation for the development of LCFS-GBFS composite cementitious materials and promote the feasibility of its application in the construction industry. Deep hydration mechanism analysis and engineering applications should be studied in the future.