The proposed IAsLS method is successfully applied to practical Raman spectral baseline correction.

Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a fingerprint spectral technique whose performance is highly dependent on the physicochemical properties of the substrate materials. In addition to the traditional plasmonic metal substrates that feature prominent electromagnetic enhancements, boosted SERS activities have been reported recently for various categories of non-metal materials, including graphene, MXenes, transition-metal chalcogens/oxides, and conjugated organic molecules. Although the structural compositions of these semiconducting substrates vary, chemical enhancements induced by interfacial charge transfer are often the major contributors to the overall SERS behavior, which is distinct from that of the traditional SERS based on plasmonic metals. Regarding charge-transfer-induced SERS enhancements, this short review introduces the basic concepts underlying the SERS enhancements, the most recent semiconducting substrates that use novel manipulation strategies, and the extended applications of these versatile substrates.

While the printed circuit board (PCB) has been widely considered as the building block of integrated electronics, the world is switching to pursue new ways of merging integrated electronic circuits with textiles to create flexible and wearable devices. Herein, as an alternative for PCB, we described a non-printed integrated-circuit textile (NIT) for biomedical and theranostic application via a weaving method. All the devices are built as fibers or interlaced nodes and woven into a deformable textile integrated circuit. Built on an electrochemical gating principle, the fiber-woven-type transistors exhibit superior bending or stretching robustness, and were woven as a textile logical computing module to distinguish different emergencies. A fiber-type sweat sensor was woven with strain and light sensors fibers for simultaneously monitoring body health and the environment. With a photo-rechargeable energy textile based on a detailed power consumption analysis, the woven circuit textile is completely self-powered and capable of both wireless biomedical monitoring and early warning. The NIT could be used as a 24/7 private AI “nurse” for routine healthcare, diabetes monitoring, or emergencies such as hypoglycemia, metabolic alkalosis, and even COVID-19 patient care, a potential future on-body AI hardware and possibly a forerunner to fabric-like computers.

Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) has the potential to disrupt the thyroid endocrine system, but the underlying mechanism is unknown. In this study, zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos were exposed to different concentrations of DEHP (0, 40, 100, 200, 400 μg/L) from 2 to 168 hours post fertilization (hpf). Thyroid hormones (THs) levels and transcriptional profiling of key genes related to hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis were examined. The result of whole-body thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3) indicated that the thyroid hormone homeostasis was disrupted by DEHP in the zebrafish larvae. After exposure to DEHP, the mRNA expressions of thyroid stimulating hormone (tshβ) and corticotrophin releasing hormone (crh) genes were increased in a concentration dependent manner, respectively. The expression level of genes involved in thyroid development (nkx2.1 and pax8) and thyroid synthesis (sodium/iodide symporter, nis, thyroglobulin, tg) were also measured. The transcripts of nkx2.1 and tg were significantly increased after DEHP exposure, while those of nis and pax8 had no significant change. Down-regulation of uridinediphosphate-glucuronosyl-transferase (ugt1ab) and up-regulation of thyronine deiodinase (dio2) might change the THs levels. In addition, the transcript of transthyretin (ttr) was up-regulated, while the mRNA levels of thyroid hormone receptors (trα and trβ) remained unchanged. All the results demonstrated that exposure to DEHP altered the whole-body thyroid hormones in the zebrafish larvae and changed the expression profiling of key genes related to HPT axis, proving that DEHP induced the thyroid endocrine toxicity and potentially affected the synthesis, regulation and action of thyroid hormones.