Cobalt oxyhydroxide (CoOOH) nanoflakes, an emerging type of two-dimensional nanomaterial, show great potential for use in molecular detection. Previous assays utilizing such materials have largely ...been based on their outstanding fluorescence quenching ability and oxidizing power. Herein, we report the intrinsic peroxidase-like activity of cobalt oxyhydroxide (CoOOH) nanoflakes, and we show how this activity can be employed for glucose detection. We found that, in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H
2
O
2
), the nanoflakes accelerated the conversion of peroxidase substrates such as 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) into colored products. By combining the CoOOH nanoflakes with the biological enzyme glucose oxidase (GOx), we developed a colorimetric method for the detection of glucose within the concentration range 5.3–500 μM. The proposed method was applied to detect elevated blood glucose levels in diabetic patients, and the intense color change induced by elevated glucose levels was found to be readily apparent to the naked eye, proving the utility of our assay for point-of-care testing.
Graphical abstract
The intrinsic peroxidase-like activity of cobalt oxyhydroxide (CoOOH) nanoflakes was exploited to enable the direct visualization of elevated glucose levels in sera from diabetic patients
The intrinsic reduction method is extended for the synthesis of tungsten bronzes (TBs), and monoclinic phase hydrotungsten bronze (HWO), tetragonal phase sodium tungsten bronze (NaWO) and hexagonal ...phase potassium tungsten bronze (KWO) are obtained. The introduction of cations brought a large number of localized state free electrons, which endowed TBs with strong near‐infrared (NIR) absorption and achieved light energy utilization covering almost the entire solar spectrum in the form of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) and small polariton transfer. The strong NIR absorption enhanced the corrosion protection performance of tungsten bronze coatings, especially the HWO coating, which had an increased impedance value of 859.5% compared to the pure epoxy resin. The excellent corrosion resistance of TBs inhibitors can be derived from the strong NIR absorption enhanced photocathodic protection and local magnetic field, which improved the charge transfer resistance of the coating by nearly two orders of magnitude and greatly inhibited the charge movement in the electrochemical corrosion reaction. This study discovered the contribution of oxygen vacancy‐enhanced NIR absorption to the electrochemical anticorrosion properties, expanding the application area of TBs and making an important contribution to innovative anticorrosion strategies.
The strong near‐infrared (NIR) absorption endowed by oxygen vacancies enhances photocathode protection and local magnetic field, which greatly inhibits the charge movement in electrochemical corrosion reactions. At the same time, the formation of dense corrosion products plays a secondary protection role and enhances the shielding property of tungsten bronzes (TBs) coating.
Abstract
Rapid adaptation to novel environments may drive changes in genomic regions through natural selection. However, the genetic architecture underlying these adaptive changes is still poorly ...understood. Using population genomic approaches, we investigated the genomic architecture that underlies rapid parallel adaptation of Coilia nasus to fresh water by comparing four freshwater-resident populations with their ancestral anadromous population. Linkage disequilibrium network analysis and population genetic analyses revealed two putative large chromosome inversions on LG6 and LG22, which were enriched for outlier loci and exhibited parallel association with freshwater adaptation. Drastic frequency shifts and elevated genetic differentiation were observed for the two chromosome inversions among populations, suggesting that both inversions would undergo divergent selection between anadromous and resident ecotypes. Enrichment analysis of genes within chromosome inversions showed significant enrichment of genes involved in metabolic process, immunoregulation, growth, maturation, osmoregulation, and so forth, which probably underlay differences in morphology, physiology and behavior between the anadromous and freshwater-resident forms. The availability of beneficial standing genetic variation, large optimum shift between marine and freshwater habitats, and high efficiency of selection with large population size could lead to the observed rapid parallel adaptive genomic change. We propose that chromosomal inversions might have played an important role during the evolution of rapid parallel ecological divergence in the face of environmental heterogeneity in C. nasus. Our study provides insights into the genomic basis of rapid adaptation of complex traits in novel habitats and highlights the importance of structural genomic variants in analyses of ecological adaptation.
4-Isoxazolines are important motifs in various biologically interesting molecules and versatile synthons for the preparation of various cyclic and acyclic compounds. Herein, two green and facile ...protocols were reported for the synthesis of a wide range of polyfluoroalkanesulfinyl or alkylsulfinyl 4-isoxazolines. A variety of aldehyde and ketone derived nitrones reacted with α-alkynyl sulfoxides under catalyst- and solvent-free conditions at room temperature to provide a series of polyfluoroalkanesulfinyl or alkylsulfinyl 4-isoxazolines with high efficiency. The synthesis of these sulfinyl 4-isoxazolines was further improved to a one-pot process in aqueous medium starting from aldehydes and hydroxylamine hydrochlorides without the need for isolating the nitrones. The reactions developed in this work are easy to perform and demonstrate significant ecological advantages.
A solvent- and catalyst-free approach and a one-pot process in water were reported for the synthesis of polyfluoroalkanesulfinyl or alkylsulfinyl 4-isoxazolines. These reactions are easy to perform and demonstrate significant ecological advantages.
Predicting explosive spalling of concrete containing polypropylene (PP) fibers at elevated temperature is a challenging problem. It is difficult for traditional FEM or DEM methods to tackle this ...problem at the moment due to unclear mechanism of PP fibers in mitigating explosive spalling and difficulty to measure instantaneous hot permeability of concrete. This paper describes development of two Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models for assessment of explosive spalling risk of concrete. One model (ANN1) was concrete mix-based, the other model (ANN2) was concrete strength-based. A total of 306 and 300 test records collected from literature were used to train ANN1 and ANN2, respectively. Twenty groups of heated tests were conducted on high performance concrete and ultra-high performance concrete containing PP fibers to validate ANN1 and ANN2. The two ANN models were successfully trained and validated, with a prediction accuracy of 100% and 90% for ANN1 and ANN2, respectively. Excellent prediction performance demonstrated the feasibility of ANN models for predicting explosive spalling tendency of PP fiber reinforced concrete.
•Prediction of explosive spalling of PP fiber reinforced concrete using artificial neural networks.•Prediction performance of ANN models superior to that of traditional analytical model.•Enhanced prediction accuracy using concrete mix-based ANN model instead of concrete strength-based ANN model.
An ultraviolet‐assisted electrospinning (UVAES) method was investigated to improve the solvent stability of soluble polyimide (PI) electrospun ultrafine fibrous membranes (UFMs) to assist in the ...development of fibrous polymeric materials with improved resistance to harsh environmental conditions and to expand the potential applications for such soft filaments. A preimidized soluble negative photosensitive polyimide (PSPI) was synthesized via an one‐step thermal polycondensation from 3,3′,4,4′‐benzophenonetetracarboxylic dianhydride (BTDA) and 1,1′‐bis(4‐amino‐3,5‐dimethylphenyl)‐1‐(3′‐trifluoromethylphenyl)methane (TFMDA). The PI resin was then fabricated into UFMs by both conventional electrospinning (ES) and UVAES with N,N‐dimethylacetamide (DMAc) as the solvent. During spinning, photo crosslinking reaction occurred, accompanied by simultaneous micro‐jets of PI‐UV ultrafine fibers in the UVAES procedure. This created fibers that were thermally stable at higher than 500°C, reflection over 77% of the 457‐nm‐ wavelength light, whiteness index (WI) higher than 83, and enhanced solvent resistance in DMAc. Generally speaking, compared with the PI UFMs fabricated by conventional ES procedure, the PI‐UV UFMs obtained by the newly‐developed UVAES procedure showed much superior solvent resistance, comparable thermal stability, slightly decreased optical reflectance and WI values, and reduced fiber diameters. These properties are of great value to future applications in microelectronics and wearable technology.
The solvent resistance of the directly electrospun PI ultrafine fibrous membranes is tremendously improved by the combination of in‐situ photoinduced crosslinking with electrospinning methods. The ultrafine fibers are thermally stable at higher than 500°C and enhanced solvent resistance against organic solvent DMAc, which is of great value in applications under harsh conditions.
Chinese mahogany (Toona sinensis) is a woody plant that is widely cultivated in China and Malaysia. Toona sinensis is important economically, including as a nutritious food source, as material for ...traditional Chinese medicine and as a high‐quality hardwood. However, the absence of a reference genome has hindered in‐depth molecular and evolutionary studies of this plant. In this study, we report a high‐quality T. sinensis genome assembly, with scaffolds anchored to 28 chromosomes and a total assembled length of 596 Mb (contig N50 = 1.5 Mb and scaffold N50 = 21.5 Mb). A total of 34,345 genes were predicted in the genome after homology‐based and de novo annotation analyses. Evolutionary analysis showed that the genomes of T. sinensis and Populus trichocarpa diverged ~99.1–103.1 million years ago, and the T. sinensis genome underwent a recent genome‐wide duplication event at ~7.8 million years and one more ancient whole genome duplication event at ~71.5 million years. These results provide a high‐quality chromosome‐level reference genome for T. sinensis and confirm its evolutionary position at the genomic level. Such information will offer genomic resources to study the molecular mechanism of terpenoid biosynthesis and the formation of flavour compounds, which will further facilitate its molecular breeding. As the first chromosome‐level genome assembled in the family Meliaceae, it will provide unique insights into the evolution of members of the Meliaceae.
Background
Frontline intensification (including consolidative whole‐brain radiotherapy or high‐dose chemotherapy with autologous stem‐cell transplantation after induction therapy) has been proposed ...to treat primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL). However, no prospective randomized trials have answered whether frontline intensification can offer a survival benefit to PCNSL patients. We aim to clarify the outcomes and survival influence of frontline intensification on real‐world patients with different risk‐stratified PCNSLs.
Methods
Between January 2003 and December 2016, 110 PCNSL adults were retrospectively included, and 76 patients achieved at least PR after induction therapy, including 38 patients who received frontline intensification. The median follow‐up with the 31 survivors was 7.52 years.
Results
Of the 38 induction‐completed patients who had not received frontline intensification, 95% achieved post–induction therapy CR/CRu; however, all inevitably recurred. In the 38 who received frontline intensification, CR/CRu improved from 45% (pre‐frontline intensification) to 84% (post‐frontline intensification), and they achieved significantly better PFS (non‐reach vs. 522 days, p < 0.001) and OS (non‐reach vs. 899 days, p < 0.001). Additionally, patients had similar PFS and OS rates when receiving HDC‐ASCT and/or WBRT as frontline intensification. Frontline intensification significantly improved PFS and OS survival in higher‐risk patients (intermediate/high IELSG risk, MSKCC group 2/3, or Nottingham/Barcelona score ≥ 2 points) but did not improve OS in lower‐risk patients. Among the 38 patients who received frontline intensification, two had treatment‐related mortality; 14 recurred after frontline intensification. MTX‐based chemotherapy was the main salvage modality, and the median OS was 295 days after recurrence. Progressive disease and infection (especially pneumonia) are two major causes of mortality in patients who receive frontline intensification.
Conclusions
When achieving CR/CRu/PR after induction chemotherapy, frontline intensification should be adopted to improve PFS and OS in real‐world PCNSL patients, especially higher‐risk patients.
Frontline intensification significantly improves PFS and OS in induction‐completed PCNSL patients, especially those who are at higher risk. Progressive disease and infection (especially pneumonia) are two major causes of mortality in patients who receive frontline intensification.
The friction stir welding (FSW) of thermoplastic polymers is gradually receiving attention because of its advantages including high efficiency and pollution-free manufacturing. The extrusion-based ...additive manufacturing (EAM) of polymers has also become one of the main processing methods for thermoplastic parts. In this paper, a hybrid manufacturing method for the FSW process and EAM technology is proposed and explored. The effects of the FSW process using two different welding tools on the mechanical behaviors of 3D printing polymer parts were compared and investigated and the corresponding mechanism was analyzed. The results show that the appropriate welding tool is beneficial for eliminating the anisotropy and decreasing the porosity of 3D-printed parts. Therefore, the improving effects of the FSW process on the mechanical behaviors of the EAM parts are verified. The mechanism was attributed to the high-speed rotation of the welding tool with the appropriate shape, which can promote the flow of polymer melt in the welding region, leading to the formation of dense structures caused by the entanglement of the molecular chains. This study may provide some assistance in modern industrial manufacturing for the processing of large custom components.
Sketch-based image retrieval (SBIR) is a long-standing research topic in computer vision. Existing methods mainly focus on category-level or instance-level image retrieval. This paper investigates ...the fine-grained scene-level SBIR problem where a free-hand sketch depicting a scene is used to retrieve desired images. This problem is useful yet challenging mainly because of two entangled facts: 1) achieving an effective representation of the input query data and scene-level images is difficult as it requires to model the information across multiple modalities such as object layout, relative size and visual appearances, and 2) there is a great domain gap between the query sketch input and target images. We present SceneSketcher-v2, a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) based architecture to address these challenges. SceneSketcher-v2 employs a carefully designed graph convolution network to fuse the multi-modality information in the query sketch and target images and uses a triplet training process and end-to-end training manner to alleviate the domain gap. Extensive experiments demonstrate SceneSketcher-v2 outperforms state-of-the-art scene-level SBIR models with a significant margin.
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