Shanghai University

About: Shanghai University is a education organization based out in Shanghai, Shanghai, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Microstructure & Catalysis. The organization has 59583 authors who have published 56840 publications receiving 753549 citations. The organization is also known as: Shànghǎi Dàxué.

Traditional Chinese herbal medicines for treatment of liver fibrosis and cancer: from laboratory discovery to clinical evaluation.

Abstract: Liver disease afflicts over 10% of the world population. This includes chronic hepatitis, alcoholic steatosis, fibrosis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which are the most health-threatening conditions drawing considerable attention from medical professionals and scientists. Patients with alcoholism or viral hepatitis are much more likely to have liver cell damage and cirrhosis, and some may eventually develop HCC, which is unfortunately, and very often, a fatal malignancy without cure. While liver surgery is not suitable in many of the HCC cases, patients are mostly given palliative support cares or transarterial chemoembolization or systemic chemotherapies. However, HCC is well known to be a highly chemoresistant tumour, and the response rate is <10-20%. To this end, alternative medicines are being actively sought from other sources with hopes to halt the disease's progression or even eliminate the tumours. Traditional Chinese herbal medicine has begun to gain popularity worldwide for promoting healthcare as well as disease prevention, and been used as conventional or complementary medicines for both treatable and incurable diseases in Asia and the West. In this article, we discuss the laboratory findings and clinical trial studies of Chinese herbal medicines (particularly small molecule compounds) for the treatment of liver disease ranging from fibrosis to liver cancer.

Hydrogen-bonding effects on infrared spectra from anharmonic computations: uracil-water complexes and uracil dimers

Abstract: Hydrogen-bonding interactions lead to significant changes in the infrared (IR) spectrum, like frequency shifts of the order of magnitude of hundreds of cm–1 and increases of IR intensity for bands related to vibrational modes of functional groups directly involved in the hydrogen-bonded bridges. We are actively developing a comprehensive and robust computational protocol aimed at the quantitative reproduction of the spectra of bio-organic and hybrid organic/inorganic molecular systems with a proper account of the variety of intra- and intermolecular interactions. We have resorted to fully anharmonic quantum mechanical computations within the generalized second-order vibrational perturbation theory (GVPT2) approach, combined with the B3LYP-D3 method, in conjunction with basis sets of double-ζ plus polarization quality. Such an approach has been validated in a previous work (Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2014, 16, 10112−10128) for simulating the IR spectra of the monomers of nucleobases and some of their dimers. ...

Comparison of amorphous, pseudohexagonal and orthorhombic Nb2O5 for high-rate lithium ion insertion

Abstract: Amorphous, pseudohexagonal and orthorhombic Nb2O5 nanoparticles were synthesized using a facile and green sol–gel process followed by thermal treatment at 450 °C, 600 °C and 800 °C for 3 h in air, respectively. The resulting materials have been subjected to a detailed experimental study and comparison of their structural, electrical and electrochemical properties. The experiments have demonstrated that the pseudohexagonal Nb2O5 (TT-Nb2O5) exhibited higher storage capacity, largely due to its high specific surface area and small crystallites, and better cycling performance than both amorphous Nb2O5 (a-Nb2O5) and orthorhombic Nb2O5 (T-Nb2O5); such experimental findings were found to be associated with and thus ascribed to the lower charge transfer resistance and higher lithium ion diffusion coefficient of TT-Nb2O5 than those of a-Nb2O5 and T-Nb2O5. This research contributes to a better fundamental understanding of the relationship between the crystal structure and the crystallinity and electrochemical properties, particularly Li-ion storage properties, and leads to a possible new advancement in the research field of lithium ion batteries and pseudocapacitors.

Highly Ordered Three-Dimensional Ni-TiO2 Nanoarrays as Sodium Ion Battery Anodes

Abstract: Sodium ion batteries (SIBs) represent an effective energy storage technology with potentially lower material costs than lithium ion batteries. Here, we show that the electrochemical performance of SIBs, especially rate capability, is intimately connected to the electrode design at the nanoscale by taking anatase TiO2 as an example. Highly ordered three-dimensional (3D) Ni-TiO2 core–shell nanoarrays were fabricated using nanoimprited AAO templating technique and directly used as anode. The nanoarrays delivered a reversible capacity of ∼200 mAh g–1 after 100 cycles at the current density of 50 mAh g–1 and were able to retain a capacity of ∼95 mAh g–1 at the current density as high as 5 A g–1 and fully recover low rate capacity. High ion accessibility, fast electron transport, and excellent electrode integrity were shown as great merits to obtain the presented electrochemical performance. Our work demonstrates the possibility of highly ordered 3D heterostructured nanoarrays as a promising electrode design fo...