The prevalence of the feeling of cold hands and feet (FCHF) is high in the general population but the etiology of FCHF is largely unknown. The aim of the present study was to explore whether the FCHF is heritable. Eight hundred and ninety-four pairs of twins completed a question about FCHF. Tetrachoric correlations for FCHF were .58, .29, .67, .52, and .04 for monozygotic male, dizygotic male, monozygotic female, and dizygotic female twins, respectively. Model-fitting analyses suggested that in the best fitting model, additive genetic and nonshared environmental variance including measurement error were 64% (95% CI: 55%-72%) and 36% (28%-45%), respectively. Sex differences in genetic and environmental influences were not significant.

The microstructural evolution and piezoelectric properties of lead-free ceramics (0.98-x)(Na0.5Bi0.5)TiO3–x(Na0.5K0.5)NbO3–0.02BaTiO3 (0 ⩽ x ⩽ 0.98, abbreviated as (0.98-x)NBT–xNKN–0.02BT) were investigated. The effects of the amount of NKN on the crystal structure, microstructural evolution, and piezoelectric properties were examined. The 0.93NBT–0.05NKN–0.02BT ceramics having a lower NKN content gave good performances with piezoelectric properties of d33 = 140 pC/N and kp = 21%, because of the soft additive Nb5+ ions at the B sites. However, a paraelectric cubic phase was observed in the wide range of compositions between x = 0.1 and x = 0.9. At a higher NKN content of x > 0.9, a morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) between the tetragonal and orthorhombic phases was found in the 0.015NBT–0.965NKN–0.02BT ceramics, and the piezoelectric properties were enhanced (d33 = 135 pC/N, kp = 29%). The piezoelectric properties of this system were closely related to its crystal structure.

Tissue engineering aims at resolving problems such as donor shortage and immune rejection faced in transplantation. Scaffolds (artificial extracellular matrices) play critical roles in tissue engineering. Recently, we developed nano-fibrous poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) scaffolds under the hypothesis that synthetic nano-fibrous scaffolding, mimicking the structure of natural collagen fibers, could create a more favorable microenvironment for cells. This is the first report that the nano-fibrous architecture built in three-dimensional scaffolds improved the features of protein adsorption, which mediates cell interactions with scaffolds. Scaffolds with nano-fibrous pore walls adsorbed 4 times more serum proteins than scaffolds with solid pore walls. More interestingly, the nano-fibrous architecture selectively enhanced protein adsorption including fibronectin and vitronectin, even though both scaffolds were made from the same PLLA material. Furthermore, nano-fibrous scaffolds also allowed more than 1.7 times of osteoblastic cell attachment than scaffolds with “solid” pore walls. These results demonstrate that the biomimetic nano-fibrous architecture serves as superior scaffolding for tissue engineering.