Dielectric nanostructures exhibit low-loss electrical and magnetic resonance, making them ideal for quantum information processing. In this study, the periodic double-groove silicon nanodisk (DGSND) ...is used to support the anapole state. Based on the distribution properties of the electromagnetic field in anapole states, the anapoles are manipulated by cutting the dielectric metamaterial. Quantum dots (QDs) are used to stimulate the anapole and control the amplification of the photoluminescence signal within the QDs. By opening symmetrical holes in the long axis of the nanodisk in the dielectric metamaterial, the current distribution of Mie resonance can be adjusted. As a result, the toroidal dipole moment is altered, leading to an enhanced electric field ( E -field) and Purcell factor. When the dielectric metamaterial is deposited on the Ag substrate separated by the silicon dioxide (SiO 2 ) layer, the structure exhibits ultra-narrow perfect absorption with even higher E -field and Purcell factor enhancement compared to silicon (Si) nanodisks.
Metamaterial with hyperbolic dispersion properties can effectively manipulate plasmonic resonances. Here, we designed a hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) substrate with a near-zero dielectric constant in ...the near-infrared region to manipulate the plasmon resonance of the nano-antenna (NA). For NA arrays, tuning the equivalent permittivity of HMM substrate by modifying the thickness of Au/diamond, the wavelength range of plasmon resonance can be manipulated. When the size of the NA changes within a certain range, the spectral position of the plasmon resonance will be fixed in a narrow band close to the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) wavelength and produce a phenomenon similar to “pinning effect.” In addition, since the volume plasmon polaritons (VPP) mode is excited, it will couple with the localized surface plasmon (LSP) mode to generate a spectrum splitting. Therefore, the plasmon resonance is significantly affected and can be precisely controlled by designing the HMM substrate.
Triple‐negative breast cancer (TNBC), a disease with a poor prognosis and high mortality, is difficult to targeted therapy, due to the metastatic nature of TNBC cells and their lack of estrogen, ...progesterone, and Her‐2/Neu receptor targets. Here, a novel pretargeting strategy involving self‐assembled peptides and a bioorthogonal reaction are described. This process generates nanofibers on TNBC cell surface that prevent them migration and invasion and deliver untargeted anticancer drugs (e.g., doxorubicin) that synergistically eliminates TNBC cells. The self‐assembled peptide contains four modules: i) an aromatic group‐rich tetraphenylethylene (TPE) unit for promoting self‐assembly and nanofiber formation, ii) a GFFY peptide motif that supports self‐assembly of nanofibers into peptide scaffolds, iii) a targeting RGD motif that binding with the abundant integrin molecules present on TNBC cell surface, and iv) an azide group acting as the bioorthogonal reaction site that reacts with drugs or probes containing the dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO) group. Results of in vitro and in vivo experiments indicate that the self‐assembled peptide inhibits tumor invasion and metastasis, while also pretargeting and killing TNBC cells with superior effectiveness and lower toxicity to that of current chemotherapies. In conclusion, this novel bioorthogonal pretargeting strategy holds promise as an effective anticancer therapeutic approach.
A novel TNBC pretargeting strategy based on a bioorthogonal reaction and a self‐assembled peptide is developed. The self‐assembled peptides TPE‐GK‐N3 form networked structure that bind tightly to surface of TNBC cells. In addition, self‐assembled peptides carry numerous azide groups that support excellent pretargeting of tumor cells by DBCO‐probes and DBCO‐drugs through enhanced bioorthogonal click reaction.
A water-soluble polysaccharide, named NCSP-50, was obtained from natural Cordyceps sinensis by hot water extraction and ethanol fractionation precipitation. It was eluted as a single symmetrical peak ...and had an average molecular weight of 9.76 × 105 Da. The structure was determined by monosaccharide composition, methylation analysis, 1D/2D NMR spectroscopy, and enzymatic hydrolysis and characterization of the oligosaccharides by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. The repeating unit of this polysaccharide was proposed as follows: Display omitted
This glucan showed potent immunostimulatory activity on the basis of its significant abilities to promote macrophage proliferation, enhance NO production, as well as and cytokines (IL-1β and TNF-α) secretion.
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•A homogenous polysaccharide (NCSP-50) from natural Cordyceps sinensis was isolated and purified.•NCSP-50 is a 4-linked α-glucan substituted by α-glucose units attached to C-6.•The glucan showed a significant immunostimulatory effect on macrophages.
Mitophagy can selectively remove damaged mitochondria, which is critical in regulating mitochondrial homeostasis in diseases, such as cancer. Herein, we found that Aloe gel glucomannan (AGP) ...significantly inhibited the proliferation of colon cancer cells. RNA-seq analysis revealed that AGP upregulated autophagy, lysosome and mitochondrial fission signal pathways in colon cancer cell line CT26. Notably, AGP induced the accumulation of impaired and reactive oxygen species (ROS)-generating mitochondria, which triggered excessive mitophagy. Interestingly, the mitophagy activator enhanced AGP-induced mitophagy and cytotoxicity, whereas the mitophagy inhibitor reversed the influence of AGP. Furthermore, activation of PINK1/Parkin mitophagy pathway and transcription factor EB (TFEB) signaling was dependent on ROS overproduction. Taken together, these results indicated that AGP induced cytotoxic mitophagy through ROS-related PINK1/Parkin pathway and TFEB activation in CT26 cells. The research would provide theoretical basis for the development of AGP as a promising anticancer agent.
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•Person-centered dementia is socially and culturally relevant in developing countries with limited long-term care resource.•Facilitating person-centered communication should be a key domain when ...educators are designing training sessions for care aides.•Healthcare professionals need additional training to gain the skills needed to find formal and informal ways to interact more frequently with frontline staff.•Care aides’ mental models need to be altered by the sensemaking of person-centered care.•Care aides need to be encouraged to take more adaptive and active roles in leading case presentation and discussions.
Semi-skilled or unskilled nursing care aides primarily provide direct care to residents in long-term care (LTC) facilities in China and many other countries around the world. There has been a significantly increased commitment from nurses and other formally trained professionals to provide person-centered care (PCC) for people with dementia (PwD). However, it is still unclear how nursing care aides who provide direct care to older residents with dementia understand and adopt PCC in their daily work. It is of utmost importance to understand person-centered dementia care from the perspectives of care aides, and to identify implications to facilitate and sustain their efforts in providing quality care for older residents with dementia. We found that the seemingly beneficial mental models used by care aides in their work can hinder them from playing a more adaptive role in tailoring their care to the needs of older residents. Infantilizing older residents with dementia and labeling them using mother wit can prevent meaningful, equal, and person-centered conversations between both parties. Care aides do not have regular formal interactions and sensemaking with nurses and other professionals in nursing homes. Increasing interactions and communication between care aides and health care professionals in nursing homes can lead to insight for changing the approach to in-service training to achieve better acceptance by care aides. The current study derives implications for operationalizing and embedding the principles of PCC in daily care.
Edge enhancement, as an important part of image processing, has played an essential role in amplitude-contrast and phase-contrast object imaging. The edge enhancement of three-dimensional (3D) vortex ...imaging has been successfully implemented by Fresnel incoherent correlation holography (FINCH), but the background noise and image contrast effects are still not satisfactory. To solve these issues, the edge enhancement of FINCH by employing Bessel-like spiral phase modulation is proposed and demonstrated. Compared with the conventional spiral phase modulated FINCH, the proposed technique can achieve high-quality edge enhancement 3D vortex imaging with lower background noise, higher contrast and resolution. The significantly improved imaging quality is mainly attributed to the effective sidelobes' suppression in the generated optical vortices with the Bessel-like modulation technique. Experimental results of the small circular aperture, resolution target, and the Drosophila melanogaster verify its excellent imaging performance. Moreover, we also proposed a new method for selective edge enhancement of 3D vortex imaging by breaking the symmetry of the spiral phase in the algorithmic model of isotropic edge enhancement. The reconstructed images of the circular aperture show that the proposed method is able to enhance the edges of the given objects selectively in any desired direction.
In this work, a feasible way for perfect absorption in the whole solar radiance range is numerically demonstrated via the multiple resonances in a 600-nm-thick refractory prismoid. Under the standard ...AM 1.5 illumination, the measured solar energy absorption efficiency reaches 99.66% in the wavelength range from 280 nm to 4000 nm, which indicates only a rather small part of solar light (0.34%) escaped. The record harvesting efficiency directly results from the near-unity absorption for the multi-layer refractory resonators, which can simultaneously benefit from the multi-resonant behaviors of the structure and the broadband resonant modes by the material intrinsic features. The absorption including the intensity and frequency range can be adjusted via the structural features. These findings can hold wide applications in solar energy related optoelectronics such as the thermal-photovoltaics, photo-thermal technology, semiconductor assisted photo-detection, ideal thermal emitters, etc.
The development of new substrates for surface-enhanced spectroscopy is primarily motivated by the ability to design such substrates to provide the maximum signal enhancement. In this paper, we ...theoretically design and investigate a crisscross dimer array as a plasmonic substrate for enhancing coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS). The plasmonic film-crisscross dimer array system can excite multiple resonances at optical frequencies. By properly designing structure parameters, three plasmon resonances with large field enhancements and same spatial hot spot regions can spectrally match with the pump, Stokes and anti-Stokes beams, respectively. The CARS signals are strongly enhanced by multi-resonance plasmon field enhancements. The estimated CARS factor can reach as high order as ~10
over conventional CARS without the plasmonic substrate.
A water-soluble polysaccharide (JCP-40) from Dendrobium nobile Lindl. was extracted and purified. It was demonstrated as a single symmetrical peak based on HPSEC analysis and had an average molecular ...weight of 67.5 kDa. Combined with monosaccharide composition analysis, methylation analysis, 1D/2D NMR spectroscopy, the structural features of JCP-40 was proposed as follows: the major sugar residues of JCP-40 consisted of →4)-β-ᴅ-Manp-(1→ and →4)-β-ᴅ-Glcp-(1 → . Acetyl groups were found attached to the O-2 or O-3 positions on mannosyl residues based on NMR spectrum results. Rotational isomeric state (RIS)-Metropolis Monte Carlo method indicated that repeating unit increased from 30 to 120, the influence of Mw in this range affected chain flexibility. The conformational parameters (derived from Rg vs Mw and η vs Mw) from HPSEC suggested a random coil conformation for JCP-40.
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•A polysaccharide (JCP-40) was purified from Dendrobium nobile Lindl.•The structure features of JCP-40 were characterized.•JCP-40 was a linear glucomannan with O-acetyl group attached.•Computer modeling was applied for the conformational study of glucomannan from D. nobile Lindl.•RIS-Metropolis Monte Carlo (RMMC) method was applied.
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