The formation of an atherosclerotic lesion is mediated by lipid-laden macrophages (foam cells), which also establish chronic inflammation associated with lesion progression. The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) γ promotes lipid uptake and efflux in these atherogenic cells. In contrast, we found that the closely related receptor PPARδ controls the inflammatory status of the macrophage. Deletion of PPARδ from foam cells increased the availability of inflammatory suppressors, which in turn reduced atherosclerotic lesion area by more than 50%. We propose an unconventional ligand-dependent transcriptional pathway in which PPARδ controls an inflammatory switch through its association and disassociation with transcriptional repressors. PPARδ and its ligands may thus serve as therapeutic targets to attenuate inflammation and slow the progression of atherosclerosis.

The annealing effects on structure and magnetism for Co-doped ZnO films under air, Ar, and Ar∕H2 atmospheres at 250°C have been systematically investigated. Room-temperature ferromagnetism has been observed for the as-deposited and annealed films. However, the saturation magnetization (Ms) varied drastically for different annealing processes with Ms∼0.5, 0.2, 0.9, and 1.5μB∕Co for the as-deposited, air-annealed, Ar-annealed, and Ar∕H2-annealed films, respectively. The x-ray absorption spectra indicate all these samples show good diluted magnetic semiconductor structures. By comparison of the x-ray near edge spectra with the simulation on Zn K edge, an additional preedge peak appears due likely to the formation of oxygen vacancies. The results show that enhancement (suppression) of ferromagnetism is strongly correlated with the increase (decrease) of oxygen vacancies in ZnO. The upper limit of the oxygen vacancy density of the Ar∕H2-annealed film can be estimated by simulation to be about 1×1021cm−3.

Alkali metal halide additives chelate with Pb²⁺ ions during film formation promoting homogeneous nucleation, which greatly enhances the power conversion efficiency (15.08%) and stability (over 50 days) of planar perovskite solar cells.

Beaded-stream-like nanoneedles array based on earth-abundant and inexpensive CoSe₂ efficiently splits water into hydrogen.