Hierarchical Self-assembly of G-Quadruplexes Based Hydrogel Consisting of Guanine and Peptide Epitope

Guanosine-based hydrogels have attracted considerable attention because of their simplicity and easy preparation.However,the sugar moiety limits its further applications because of the necessity of sugar in the hydrogel formation.This work reports a G-quadruplexes-based hydrogel consisting of guanine and peptide epitope to form a supramolecular hydrogel in the presence of metal cations.Using the metal ion-responsive peptide epitope from the ion channel to replace sugar motif at N9 position of guanosine results in a novel nucleopeptide.The results show that the gelation time,the diameter of nanofibers,the anisotropic property,and the mechanical property of the hydrogel can be simply controlled using metal cations.The magnesium and calcium ions direct the alignment of nanofibers to form anisotropic nano-bundles.The mechanistic studies indicate the formation of G-quadruplexes in the hydrogel.Compared to the storage modulus of nucleopeptide without the metal cation,adding zinc ions results in an over three-order increase in mechanical properties.Cytotoxicity experiment indicates the good biocompatibility of our hydrogel.Moreover,we demonstrate that the guanine-capped peptide could release STING agonist in a controlled manner.This work illustrates a simple way to modulate the property of the nucleopeptide hydrogel to develop soft materials.

Structure of National Science and Technology Competitiveness: A Methodological and Empirical Study

This paper clearly defines the concepts of the national competitiveness,the national S&T competitiveness,and the national S&T competitiveness structure.It develops an evaluation framework with three dimensions:the national S&T competitive potential,the national S&T competitive strength and the national S&T competitive effectiveness.This paper proposes a structure analysis method and depicts the national S&T competitiveness structure of 35 countries in an empirical research.Apart from the definitions and the structure analysis method,this paper mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)In the one-dimensional national S&T competitiveness structure,the top 5 countries were all developed countries in 2015,while the developing countries generally performed better than developed countries considering the average annual growth rate of the national S&T competitiveness index.The 35 countries are clustered into 4 categories using the two-dimensional structure analysis method.For example,based on the ranking of the national S&T competitive strength index and the national S&T competitive effectiveness index of the 35 countries in 2015,the 35 countries are clustered into four categories:high-strength and higheffectiveness,low-strength and high-effectiveness,low-strength and low-effectiveness,and high-strength and low-effectiveness.(2)To a large extent,there is a significant correlation between the national S&T competitiveness index score and the GDP per capita value.And to a certain extent,there is some correlation between the national S&T competitiveness index score and the GDP value.Moreover,under the background of strength and effectiveness combination,or under the background of strength and potential combination,the national S&T competitiveness structure and GDP or GDP per capita show significant relationship.

National Innovation Capacity Index: A Cross-Country Comparative Analysis

The national innovation capacity(NIC) has received increasingly more attention from academia and policy makers. This study develops a methodology for measuring NIC with a view to provide the evidence for policy-making concerning national innovation capacity-building, and conducts a crosscountry comparison based on the panel data of 2006-2015.(1) National innovation capacity index(NICI) is established to measure the performance of NIC from two perspectives, namely national innovation strength index(NISI) and national innovation effectiveness index(NIEI).(2) Developed countries usually perform better than developing countries in terms of the NICI if there is no huge gap in economic scale between two kinds of countries.(3) Emerging countries show greater imbalance between the NISI and the NIEI, and have generally higher average annual growth rate of the NISI and the NIEI than that of developed countries.(4) National innovation strength is closely related to national economic scale while national innovation effectiveness is closely related to national development level. Some theoretical considerations in this research may make contributions to innovation development studies.(1) NIC is regarded as the capacity for scientific discovery and technology invention, and for driving economic, social and environmental development, which emphasizes the driving effect and the influence of innovation on development.(2) The concepts such as the NISI and the NIEI are introduced to measure the NIC so as to distinguish the contribution of the size of innovation activities to the NIC and the contribution of the efficiency and efficacy of innovation-driven development to the NIC.(3) The indicator system of the NICI is designed from the perspective of the full spectrum of capacity-building process ranging from input to output by introducing the "innovation condition" as a broad sense "innovation input" and the "innovation outcome" as a broad sense "innovation output".

National Innovation Development Index: A Cross-country Comparison of Innovation Development Performance

Innovation development has received increasingly more attention from academia and policymakers. The policy-making for promoting it heavily relies on evidence provided by measuring national innovation development. This study tries to build a bridge between innovation development measurement and policy-making. The literature shows that there is very limited theoretical and methodological research on measuring national innovation development. This paper proposes a national innovation development index(NIDI) for measuring the performance of national innovation development by integrating the definition of innovation from five perspectives and the definition of development from four perspectives. The NIDI consists of five sub-indexes, science and technology development sub-index, innovation condition development sub-index, industrial innovation development sub-index, social innovation development sub-index, and green & low-carbon development sub-index, which is measured by the composite sub-index approach. This paper uses the NIDI methodology to investigate 40 countries based on the panel data from 2006 to 2015, which helps classify countries into three categories including leading, advanced and catching-up countries. The cross-analysis between sub-indexes of the NIDI brings new insights into the competitive advantage and disadvantage, which helps governments to choose more specific policies to overcome shortcomings resulted in the poor performance of sub-indexes of the NIDI so as to improve their innovation development performance systematically. Besides, the findings in this article indicate that the level of economic development in a country is to a large extent determined by the level of national innovation development.

Green Effectively Enhanced Extraction to Produce Yttrium(Ⅲ)in Slug Flow Microreactor

Process reinforcement research was carried out in Y-junction slug flow microreactors under variable conditions,using EHEHPA(2-ethylhexyl phosphonic acid mono-2-ethylhexyl)to extract yttrium(Ⅲ)from hydrochloric acid solution.The influence of pH and flow rate on the extraction-reaction efficiency,slug size,mass transfer performance was assessed.The experimental results showed that maximum extraction-reaction efficiency of 91.85%can be achieved in the smallest microreactor(residence time is 11.25 s),which was significantly higher than traditional extraction requiring more than 10 min.The slug length tended to decrease with the increase of pH and flow rate.Volumetric mass transfer coefficients for the slug flow microreactors were found to be in the range of 1.39×10^-1-1.642s^-1 that is several orders of magnitude higher as compared to traditional extractors,which testified the beneficial effects of Y-junction slug flow microreactor.Significant mass transfer reinforcement has prompted the use of microreactor as a suitable alternative to traditional extractors,which can advantageously improve the economic and environmental development of mineral processing.

Delphi Survey on China's Advanced Energy Technology towards 2035

Facing the multiple challenges of low-carbon transformation,China urgently needs to adopt a new energy development path.This study used the Delphi method combined with vision analysis to analyze the advanced energy fields and gain insights into the development trends of energy technology towards 2035.The Delphi survey convened 762 domestic experts to predict the development demands and trends of advanced energy technology,and to identify important technology topics.A key list,including 91 technology topics in 9 sub-fields,was analyzed with respect to promoting economic growth,improving quality of life,and safeguarding national security.Furthermore,we conducted a research on these technology topics in context of technology research and development(R&D)level,leading countries,technology realization possibility,and constraints.The results from the Delphi survey show that the R&D level of China’s advanced energy technology is still at an elementary stage,and China,significantly,lags behind the US and the EU in the fields of advanced energy.These results reveal that insufficient R&D investment is the primary factor restricting the technology development in China’s advanced energy,though human resources,infrastructure,regulations,policies and standards also play significant roles in restricting technology development.The results from the Delphi survey may serve as a reference and help in exploring the development path of low-carbon transformation and achieving goals for addressing climate change in China.