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The complex and lengthy protocol of current viral nucleic acid extraction processes limits their use outside laboratory settings. Here, we describe a rapid and reliable method for extracting nucleic acids from viral samples using a rotating blade and magnetic beads. The viral membrane can be instantly lysed using a high-speed rotating blade, and nucleic acids can be immediately isolated using a silica magnetic surface. The process was completed within 60 s by this method. Routine washing and eluting processes were subsequently conducted within 5 min. The results achieved by this method were comparable to those of a commercially available method. When the blade-based lysis and magnetic bead adsorption processes were performed separately, the RNA recovery rate was very low, and the Ct value was delayed compared to simultaneous lysis and RNA adsorption. Overall, this method not only dramatically shortens the conventional extraction time but also allows for its convenient use outside the laboratory, such as at remote field sites and for point-of-care testing.

This essay looks at the content of the Tenement Museum’s newest exhibit, the museum as an employer, and the position of the museum in a rapidly changing neighborhood in Manhattan. The museum’s new tour at their newest exhibition space in 103 Orchard Street–Under One Roof–revealed some of the ironies of the Tenement Museum’s displays of labor’s recent pasts. Throughout the 2000s, museum educators mounted unionization campaigns for better wages, job security, and safer working conditions. Educators were also concerned with the new building’s development, as tenants of 103 Orchard Street had to move out to make room for historical interpretation. But the 2008 unionization campaign ended abruptly. The Tenement Museum’s upper management effectively discouraged educators from signing their union cards. The author asks in the essay, “Does recounting the lived experiences of working-class families justify the museum’s ongoing gentrification of its own neighborhood? And further, what about the museum educators and their labor rights as they convey these stories to visitors?” New York’s museum world has undergone several transformations since the 2008 unionization drive. In April 2019, the frontline museum workers of the Tenement Museum successfully won their union bids, and this essay studies some of the contexts and implications for the public humanities, more broadly.

The ability to express and recognize emotion via facial expressions is well known to change with age. The present study investigated the differences in the facial recognition and facial expression of the elderly (n = 57) and the young (n = 115) and measure how each group uses different facial muscles for each emotion with Facial Action Coding System (FACS). In facial recognition task, the elderly did not recognize facial expressions better than young people and reported stronger feelings of fear and sad from photographs. In making facial expression task, the elderly rated all their facial expressions as stronger than the younger, but in fact, they expressed strong expressions in fear and anger. Furthermore, the elderly used more muscles in the lower face when making facial expressions than younger people. These results help to understand better how the facial recognition and expression of the elderly change, and show that the elderly do not effectively execute the top-down processing concerning facial expression.

Since its discovery in circulating blood seven decades ago, cell-free DNA (cfDNA) has become a highly focused subject in cancer management using liquid biopsy. Despite its clinical utility, the extraction of cfDNA from blood has many technical difficulties, including a low efficiency of recovery and long processing times. We introduced a magnetic bead-based cfDNA extraction method using homobifunctional crosslinkers, including dimethyl suberimidate dihydrochloride (DMS). Owing to its bifunctional nature, DMS can bind to DNA through either covalent or electrostatic bonding. By adopting amine-conjugated magnetic beads, DMS–DNA complexes can be rapidly isolated from blood plasma. Using standard washing and eluting processes, we successfully extracted cfDNA from plasma within 10 min. This method yielded a 56% higher extraction efficiency than that of a commercial product (QIAamp kit). Furthermore, the instant binding mechanism of amine coupling between the microbeads and DMS–DNA complexes significantly reduced the processing time. These results highlight the potential of this magnetic bead-based homobifunctional crosslinker platform for extraction of cfDNA from blood plasma.