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A method is reported for in-situ detection of the antibiotic tetracycline (TC). It is based on a combination of extraction of TC by magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers nanoparticles (MMIPs NPs) and detection by surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The TC-captured MMIPs NPs were flowed over the surface of the SPR chip that was modified with mercaptoethylamine. The SPR signal undergoes a strong increase through the use of MMIPs NPs. It increases linearly in the 5.0–100 pg·mL−1 TC concentration range, and the detection limit is as low as 1.0 pg·mL−1 (at S/N = 3). This method shows selectivity to TC compared with structurally analogues. In order to demonstrate the power of the method, it was applied to the analysis of milk spiked with TC. These results were validated by comparing them to those of an enzyme-linked immunoassay. The average recovery is in the range of 95.7–104.6%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circularly polarized light (CPL) detection is required in various fields such as drug screening, security surveillance and quantum optics. Conventionally, CPL photodetector needs the installation of optical elements, imposing difficulties for integrated and flexible devices. The established CPL detectors without optical elements rely on chiral organic semiconductor and metal metamaterials, but they suffer from extremely low responsivity. Organic-inorganic hybrid materials combine CPL-sensitive absorption induced by chiral organics and efficient charge transport of inorganic frameworks, providing an option for direct CPL detection. Here we report the CPL detector using chiral organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites, and obtain a device with responsivity of 797 mA W-1, detectivity of 7.1 × 1011 Jones, 3-dB frequency of 150 Hz and one-month stability, a competitive combined feature for circularly polarized light detection. Thanks to the solution processing, we further demonstrate flexible devices on polyethylene terephthalate substrate with comparable performance. Optics-free circularly-polarized light detection has suffered from extremely low responsivity. Here Chen et al. demonstrate chiral organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite based detectors to distinguish circularly-polarized light with high responsivity of 797 mA/W. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chicken feather waste is generally insufficiently utilized despite its high content of protein, constituting an environmental issue. Biodegradation of the waste with enabling microbes provides an advantageous option among the available solutions. In this study, an efficient whole feather–degrading strain was strategically isolated from a soil sample taken from a local tea plantation that has little or nothing to do with feathers. The strain was identified as Bacillus thuringiensis (designated as FDB-10) according to the cloned complete 16S rRNA sequence. The FDB-10 could efficiently degrade briefly heat-treated whole feather (102 °C, 5 min; up to 90% of a maximum concentration of 30 g/L) in a salt medium supplemented with 0.1 g/L yeast extract within 24 h (37 °C, 150 rpm). Addition of carbon sources (glycerol, glucose, starch, Tween 20, Tween 80, 1.25 g/L as glycerol) to the fermentation medium could improve the degradation. However, significant inhibition could be observed when the added carbon source reached the amount usually adopted in the investigation of carbon source preference (1%). Nitrogen source (NH4Cl, (NH4)2SO4, peptone) adversely influenced the performance of the strain. When the molar concentrations of NH4+ were equal for the two salt, the inhibitory effect on degradation of whole feathers was similar. Entirely different from other reported feather-degrading strains showing a preference to melanin-free feather substrates, the strain isolated in this study could degrade melanin-containing feather equally efficiently, and higher protease activity could be detected in the digest mix. As a plus, the strain could degrade feathers in rice wash produced in daily cooking, indicating its potential use in the simultaneous treatment of rice cooker wastewater produced by a rice processing plant. All these results imply that the FDB-10 is a strain with great potential in the biodegradation of feather waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]