Search

An ultrasensitive and high-throughput visualized colorimetric method has been initially developed with a wettable microwells array for probing guanine base-containing anthrax DNAs in blood based on silver deposition amplified by the synergic TiO2 photocatalysis and guanine photoreduction under visible light. Hydrophilic microwells were first created on the hydrophobic slides to yield the wettable microwells array, on which photocatalytic titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles were deposited with dopamine (DA) to yield TiO2@DA for anchoring single strand DNA (ssDNA) capture probes without guanine bases. After the hybridization of the targeted anthrax DNAs, exonuclease I (Exo I) was introduced into the microwells to selectively digest the unhybridized ssDNA probes. The silver deposition was further conducted by the synergic photocatalysis of TiO2@DA and photoreduction of guanine bases of anthrax DNAs, thus achieving the amplified silver signals for the visualized colorimetric assays. Moreover, benefitting from the wettability feature of the hydrophilic–hydrophobic interfaces of the microwells array so fabricated, DNA analytes could be accumulated from the sample droplets through the condensing enrichment process to realize the ultrasensitive detection, in addition to circumventing any crossover contaminants between the sample droplets. The developed visualized colorimetric method with the microwells array was subsequently applied for probing anthrax DNAs in blood with levels down to 1.0 fM. DNAs with single-base and double-base mutations could also be identified accurately. Importantly, such a biosensing design route of a wettable microwells array, in combination with the photocatalytic silver deposition and specific Exo I-catalytic probe digestion, may promise extensive applications for the high-throughput, ultrasensitive, and selective detection of guanine-containing DNA targets with ultra-trace levels in complicated samples like blood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a valuable tool for text understanding, semantic similarity measurement enables discriminative semantic-based applications in the fields of natural language processing, information retrieval, computational linguistics and artificial intelligence. Most of the existing studies have used structured taxonomies such as WordNet to explore the lexical semantic relationship, however, the improvement of computation accuracy is still a challenge for them. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose a hybrid WordNet-based approach CSSM-ICSP to measuring concept semantic similarity, which leverage the information content(IC) of concepts to weight the shortest path distance between concepts. To improve the performance of IC computation, we also develop a novel model of the intrinsic IC of concepts, where a variety of semantic properties involved in the structure of WordNet are taken into consideration. In addition, we summarize and classify the technical characteristics of previous WordNet-based approaches, as well as evaluate our approach against these approaches on various benchmarks. The experimental results of the proposed approaches are more correlated with human judgment of similarity in term of the correlation coefficient, which indicates that our IC model and similarity detection approach are comparable or even better for semantic similarity measurement as compared to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the quasilinear attraction–repulsion chemotaxis system with logistic source u t = ∇ ⋅ (D (u) ∇ u) − ∇ ⋅ (Φ (u) ∇ v) + ∇ ⋅ (Ψ (u) ∇ w) + f (u) , (x , t) ∈ Ω × (0 , ∞) , 0 = Δ v + α u − β v , (x , t) ∈ Ω × (0 , ∞) , 0 = Δ w + γ u − δ w , (x , t) ∈ Ω × (0 , ∞) under Neumann boundary conditions in a bounded domain Ω ⊂ R N (N ≥ 1) , where D , Φ , Ψ ∈ C 2 [ 0 , ∞) are nonnegative functions with D (s) ≥ (s + 1) p for s ≥ 0 , Φ (s) ≤ χ s q , ξ s r ≤ Ψ (s) ≤ ζ s r for s > 1 , and the smooth function f satisfies f (s) ≤ μ s (1 − s k) for s > 0 , f (0) ≥ 0. Tian et al. (2016) proved that when q = m a x { r , k } and q − p ≥ 2 N , if one of the following assumptions holds: (i) q = r = k , μ > (α χ − γ ξ) (1 − 2 N (q − p) ) / (1 + 2 (q − 1) N (q − p) ) ; (ii) q = r > k , α χ − γ ξ < 0 ; (iii) q = k > r , μ > α χ (1 − 2 N (p − q) ) / (1 + 2 (q − 1) N (p − q) ) , then the solution of the equations is globally bounded. The present work further shows that the same conclusion still holds for the critical cases: (a) q = r = k , μ = (α χ − γ ξ) (1 − 2 N (q − p) ) / (1 + 2 (q − 1) N (q − p) ) ; (b) q = r > k , α χ − γ ξ = 0 with q − p < 1 N m i n { 4 (N + 1) N + 2 , N + 2 } ; (c) q = k > r , μ = α χ (1 − 2 N (p − q) ) / (1 + 2 (q − 1) N (p − q) ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In summary, we have developed a decarboxylative oxidation reaction of carboxylic acids through visible-light-induced photocatalysis. [26] For examples, Itami and co-workers developed a [Ru(bpy) SB 3 sb ]Cl SB 2 sb (bpy = 2,2'-bipyridyl)-catalyzed decarboxylative oxidation reaction of arylacetic acids. Graph Decarboxylative oxidation is an important and powerful reaction because it can provide one-carbon-shorter ketones or aldehydes directly from readily available and bench-stable carboxylic acids. [34] Various carboxylic acids were successfully employed as substrates, including phenylacetic acid-type substrates and aliphatic carboxylic acids. [Extracted from the article]

This 3-month randomized psychoeducation-controlled trial (RCT) of exercise was undertaken in young adolescents with subthreshold depression to examine the impact on gut microbiota. Participants (aged 12–14 years) were randomly assigned to an exercise or a psychoeducation-controlled group. The exercise intervention arm took moderate-intensity exercise, comprised of 30 min of running per day, 4 days a week for 3 months. Psychoeducation intervention consisted of 6 sessions of group activity including gaming, reading, and singing. The gut microbiota was assessed by metagenomic sequencing. After 3-month moderate-intensity exercise, the intervention group increased the relative abundance of Coprococcus, Blautia, Dorea, Tyzzerella at the genus level, as well as Tyzzerella nexilis, Ruminococcus obeum at species level when compared to the psychoeducation-controlled group. Moreover, EggNOG analyses showed that the defense and signal transduction mechanism were highly enriched after the active intervention, and changes were correlated with improvements in depressive symptoms measured by Chinese Patient Depression Questionnaire 9. The KEGG pathway of neurodegenerative diseases was depleted in the microbiome in young adolescents with subthreshold depression after exercise intervention. This 3-month RCT suggests that at both the genus and species levels, aerobic group exercise intervention improved in depressive symptoms and revealed changes in gut microbiota suggesting beneficial effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extraction of molybdenum (Mo) and tungsten (W) from waste alloy significantly impacts the alleviation of resource shortage and ecological environment. In this study, Mn additive was utilized as a recyclable roasting aid to convert Mo and W for facilitating extraction, by considering thermodynamic calculations. The effect of β-MnO 2 as a roasting additive on the phase evolution of Mo, W, and Mn elements and the optimal process conditions were evaluated by XRD, SEM-EDS, thermal analysis, and alkali leaching experiments. Notably, Mo and W in the alloy waste got oxidized and converted into soluble MnMoO 4 and MnWO 4 , respectively, under the conditions of roasting temperature of 750 °C, β-MnO 2 amount of 75% of waste alloy mass, and time of 1 h. During alkaline leaching, 100.00% Mo and 99.59% W in the roasted product were extracted, which was accompanied with the precipitation of leached residue of α-MnO 2 , Mn 3 O 4 , and Mn 2 O 3 from Mn present in the leach liquor (NaOH concentration 2 mol⋅L−1, solid–liquid ratio 10% (w/v), time 5 h, temperature 90 °C). When the recycled leached residue was employed in the next roasting process, the leaching efficiency of Mo and W was maintained above 98.56%. Moreover, the reaction mechanisms of roasting and leaching were investigated by kinetics study. Roasting with β-MnO 2 fundamentally reduced the production cost with the high extraction efficiency of Mo and W, and the flue gas recovery process was no longer required, which is beneficial to industrial application. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypertension is a major disease of burden worldwide. Previous studies have indicated that air pollution might be a risk factor for hypertension, but the results were controversial. To fill this gap, we performed a meta-analysis of epidemiological studies to investigate the associations of short-term and long-term exposure to ambient air pollutants with hypertension. We searched all of the studies published before September 1, 2015, on the associations of ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxide (NO2 and NOX), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) with hypertension in the English electronic databases. A pooled odds ratio (OR) for hypertension in association with each 10 μg/m(3) increase in air pollutant was calculated by a random-effects model (for studies with significant heterogeneity) or a fixed-effect model (for studies without significant heterogeneity). A total of 17 studies examining the effects of short-term (n=6) and long-term exposure (n=11) to air pollutants were identified. Short-term exposure to SO2 (OR=1.046, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.012-1.081), PM2.5 (OR=1.069, 95% CI: 1.003-1.141), and PM10 (OR=1.024, 95% CI: 1.016-1.032) were significantly associated with hypertension. Long-term exposure (a 10 μg/m(3) increase) to NO2 (OR=1.034, 95% CI: 1.005-1.063) and PM10 (OR=1.054, 95% CI: 1.036-1.072) had significant associations with hypertension. Exposure to other ambient air pollutants (short-term exposure to NO2, O3, and CO and long-term exposure to NOx, PM2.5, and SO2) also had positive relationships with hypertension, but lacked statistical significance. Our results suggest that short-term or long-term exposure to some air pollutants may increase the risk of hypertension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of electrochemical performance between LiFeMnCrPO/C and LiMnPO/C cathode materials was conducted in this paper. The cathode samples were synthesized by a nano-milling-assisted solid-state process using caramel as carbon sources. The prepared samples were investigated by XRD, SEM, TEM, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDAX), powder conductivity test (PCT), carbon-sulfur analysis, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and galvanostatic charge-discharge cycling. The results showed that LiFeMnCrPO/C exhibited high specific capacity and high energy density. The initial discharge capacity of LiFeMnCrPO/C was 163.6 mAh g at 0.1C (1C = 160 mA g), compared to 112.3 mAh g for LiMnPO/C. Moreover, the Fe/Cr-substituted sample showed good cycle stability and rate performance. The capacity retention of LiFeMnCrPO/C was 98.84 % over 100 charge-discharge cycles, while it was only 86.64 % for the pristine LiMnPO/C. These results indicated that Fe/Cr substitution enhanced the electronic conductivity for the prepared sample and facilitated the Li diffusion in the structure. Furthermore, LiFeMnCrPO/C composite presented high energy density (606 Wh kg) and high power density (574 W kg), thus suggested great potential application in lithium ion batteries (LIBs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic-oriented service matching is one of the challenges in automatic Web service discovery. Service users may search for Web services using keywords and receive the matching services in terms of their functional profiles. A number of approaches to computing the semantic similarity between words have been developed to enhance the precision of matchmaking, which can be classified into ontology-based and corpus-based approaches. The ontology-based approaches commonly use the differentiated concept information provided by a large ontology for measuring lexical similarity with word sense disambiguation. Nevertheless, most of the ontologies are domain-special and limited to lexical coverage, which have a limited applicability. On the other hand, corpus-based approaches rely on the distributional statistics of context to represent per word as a vector and measure the distance of word vectors. However, the polysemous problem may lead to a low computational accuracy. In this paper, in order to augment the semantic information content in word vectors, we propose a multiple semantic fusion (MSF) model to generate sense-specific vector per word. In this model, various semantic properties of the general-purpose ontology WordNet are integrated to fine-tune the distributed word representations learned from corpus, in terms of vector combination strategies. The retrofitted word vectors are modeled as semantic vectors for estimating semantic similarity. The MSF model-based similarity measure is validated against other similarity measures on multiple benchmark datasets. Experimental results of word similarity evaluation indicate that our computational method can obtain higher correlation coefficient with human judgment in most cases. Moreover, the proposed similarity measure is demonstrated to improve the performance of Web service matchmaking based on a single semantic resource. Accordingly, our findings provide a new method and perspective to understand and represent lexical semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) have been the subject of extensive research due to their potential biomedical applications. In the present investigation, superparamagnetic FA-PEI-Fe3O4were successfully prepared and evaluated as a targeted MRI contrast agent. FTIR characteristics, TGA, VSM, and MR imaging confirmed the composition and magnetic properties of the synthesized nanoparticles. TEM showed that FA-PEI-Fe3O4were spherical in shape and well dispersed. The nanoparticles were superparamagnetic at room temperature with a saturation magnetization value of 67.1 emu/g. The nanoparticles showed higher uptake efficiency due to receptor-mediated endocytosis. Moreover, specificity of FA-PEI-Fe3O4to target tumor cells was demonstrated by the increased nanoparticle uptake and significant contrast enhancement of KB cells over MCF7 cells. The competitive inhibition of FA-PEI-Fe3O4by free FA further confirmed the specific interaction of this conjugate with FA receptors.In vivoMR imaging studies showed a decreased signal intensity and enhanced tumor contrast post-injection of FA-PEI-Fe3O4. These results indicate that FA-PEI-Fe3O4can be used as a promising tumor-targeting agent as well as aT2negative-contrast agent in MR imaging applications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]