The use of gold nanoparticles for in vitro diagnostic (IVF) testing is examined. Topics discussed include AuNP-based fluorescent assays, AuNP-based SERS assays and AuNP-based point-of-care assays.
The introduction of modal verbs in English textbooks across levels in China was surveyed and compared with Chinese learners’ use in writing to explore the potential impact of textbook introduction on ...learners’ real use. The results have revealed (1) divergences between the sequence of modal verb presentation in textbooks and their frequency order in native speakers’ use, the unusual lower coverage of WOULD and early introduction of SHALL in particular; (2) the imbalanced coverage of different forms and senses of modal verbs in textbooks, notwithstanding that learners deploy some senses or forms in writing even if these usages have not been introduced; and (3) the constrained way of introduction—English to Chinese translation in vocabulary, simple explanation and exemplification in sentence context. Core senses and fundamental forms introduced early in textbooks are used most frequently in learners’ writing. Modal verbs with the perfect aspect structure and their associated senses introduced in textbooks at university levels rarely occur in learners’ writing even at advanced levels. Limited agreement between textbook introduction and learners’ use has been detected.
There is increasing evidence that acute aerobic exercise is associated with improved cognitive function. However, neural correlates of its cognitive plasticity remain largely unknown. The present ...study examined the effect of a session of acute aerobic exercise on working memory task-evoked brain activity as well as task performance. A within-subjects design with a counterbalanced order was employed. Fifteen young female participants (M = 19.56, SD = 0.81) were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a working memory task, the N-back task, both following an acute exercise session with 20 minutes of moderate intensity and a control rest session. Although an acute session of exercise did not improve behavioral performance, we observed that it had a significant impact on brain activity during the 2-back condition of the N-back task. Specifically, acute exercise induced increased brain activation in the right middle prefrontal gyrus, the right lingual gyrus, and the left fusiform gyrus as well as deactivations in the anterior cingulate cortexes, the left inferior frontal gyrus, and the right paracentral lobule. Despite the lack of an effect on behavioral measures, significant changes after acute exercise with activation of the prefrontal and occipital cortexes and deactivation of the anterior cingulate cortexes and left frontal hemisphere reflect the improvement of executive control processes, indicating that acute exercise could benefit working memory at a macro-neural level. In addition to its effects on reversing recent obesity and disease trends, our results provide substantial evidence highlighting the importance of promoting physical activity across the lifespan to prevent or reverse cognitive and neural decline.
Methionine uptake and metabolism is involved in a host of cellular functions including methylation reactions, redox maintenance, polyamine synthesis and coupling to folate metabolism, thus ...coordinating nucleotide and redox status. Each of these functions has been shown in many contexts to be relevant for cancer pathogenesis. Intriguingly, the levels of methionine obtained from the diet can have a large effect on cellular methionine metabolism. This establishes a link between nutrition and tumour cell metabolism that may allow for tumour-specific metabolic vulnerabilities that can be influenced by diet. Recently, a number of studies have begun to investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie the interaction between nutrition, methionine metabolism and effects on health and cancer.
Although empathy for pain plays an important role in positive interpersonal relationships and encourages engagement in prosocial behavior, it remains largely unknown whether empathy for pain could be ...effectively altered by psychophysiological techniques. This study aimed to investigate the impact of a single session of diaphragmatic breathing practice on empathy for pain and examine the potential mechanism involving interoceptive awareness. A total of 66 healthy participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. The intervention group received a 15‐minute diaphragmatic breathing (DB) practice with real‐time biofeedback, while the control group was to gaze at a black screen at rest and not engaged in any other activities. Before and after the invention, all participants were instructed to evaluate the intensity and unpleasantness of empathy for pain while watching different pictures with pain or non‐pain conditions. The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) was then administered to measure interoceptive awareness. The results indicated a significant interaction between group and time with regard to empathy for pain and MAIA. The DB group showed a statistically significant decrease in both pain intensity and unpleasantness during the pain picture condition, as well as a noteworthy increase in MAIA scores. The control group did not demonstrate any substantial changes. More importantly, the regulation of attention, a dimension of MAIA, had a significant mediating effect on the impact of diaphragmatic breathing on reported unpleasantness. Diaphragmatic breathing could serve as a simple, convenient, and practical strategy to optimize human empathy for pain that warrants further investigation, which has important implications not only for individuals with impaired empathy for pain but also for the improvement of interoceptive awareness.
This is the first RCT study to adopt a single session of intervention to influence empathy for pain by using an experimental evaluation paradigm. The results showed that 15‐minute diaphragmatic breathing significantly decreased pain intensity and unpleasantness caused by empathy for pain, and interoceptive awareness mediated the effect of diaphragmatic breathing on the unpleasantness level of empathy for pain.
A monopolar patch antenna with a V-shaped slot for car-to-car (C2C) and wireless local area network (WLAN) communications is presented in this paper. To widen the impedance bandwidth of the antenna, ...techniques for adding a shorting pin and a V-shaped slot are applied to an equilateral triangular patch. By properly placing the shorting pins on an equilateral triangular patch, two operating modes, i.e., TM10 and TM20, are obtained. The presence of the V-shaped slot can generate an additional TM11 mode. These three resonances found in the operating frequency bandwidth resulted in a wideband characteristic. The proposed antenna can operate from 4.82 to 6.67 GHz for the reflection coefficient ≤ -10 dB with the gain of around 5.0 dBi. In addition, an omnidirectional radiation pattern is yielded by a coaxial center-fed probe excitation. The antenna has a thickness of 0.09λ g (at the center frequency of 5.5 GHz), which is easily hidden on the roof of a vehicle for C2C communication. This proposed design can also be used as indoor base-station antennas for WLAN communication.
This paper aims at quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing the use and distribution of informality features in a comparable corpus of research articles (rAs) written by L1 Chinese scholars (Css) ...and L1 English scholars (Ess) across four disciplines. The normalized frequencies of eleven informal features were calculated and compared first between Ess’ and Css’ rAs in the same discipline and then across the four disciplines. Four features, namely first person pronouns, pronominal anaphoric reference, sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs, and imperatives, were identified to be the contributing factors and analyzed qualitatively. The results demonstrate that: (i) there is significant difference in the use of informality features between Ess and Css with Css employing informality features less frequently than Ess; (ii) disciplinary variations are present with Physics rAs sounding more informal and Linguistics rAs more formal; (iii) the distribution of specific informality features presents a diversified picture: Css’ use of first person pronouns and pronominal anaphoric references is less frequent, and their use of imperatives and sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs is more frequent than Ess’. These findings shed light on teaching academic writing and provide writers with some guidance about stylistic choice
Depressive symptoms are common in patients with first‐episode psychosis. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the comorbid depression in schizophrenia are still unknown. The main purpose of this ...study was to characterize the structural abnormalities of first‐episodes drug‐naïve (FEDN) schizophrenia comorbid with depression by utilizing both volume‐based and surface‐based morphometric measurements. Forty‐two patients with FEDN schizophrenia and 29 healthy controls were recruited. The 24‐item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD‐24) was administrated to divide all patients into depressive patients (DP) and non‐depressive patients (NDP). Compared with NDP, DP had a significantly larger volume and surface area in the left isthmus cingulate cortex and also had a greater volume in the left posterior cingulate cortex. Correlation analysis showed that HAMD total score was positively correlated with the surface area of the left isthmus cingulate and gray matter volume of the left isthmus cingulate cortex. In addition, gray matter volume of the left isthmus cingulate was also correlated with the PANSS general psychopathology or total score. The findings suggest that prominent structural abnormalities of gray matter are mainly concentrated on the cingulate cortex in FEDN schizophrenia patients comorbid with depression, which may contribute to depressive symptoms and psychopathological symptoms.
This study firstly explored morphometric abnormalities in first‐episode drug‐naïve schizophrenia comorbid with depressive symptoms. Structural abnormalities in the cingulate cortex might partly unravel the neural mechanism of depressive symptoms and psychopathological symptoms in first‐episode drug‐naïve schizophrenia comorbid with depressive symptoms. It might provide meaningful consideration for treatment of schizophrenia with depressive symptoms.
Ferroptosis is a recently identified iron-dependent form of cell death as a result of increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) and lipid peroxidation. In this study, we investigated whether ...ferroptosis aggravated diabetic nephropathy (DN) and damaged renal tubules through hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α/heme oxygenase (HO)-1 pathway in db/db mice.
Db/db mice were administered with or without ferroptosis inhibitor Ferrostatin-1 treatment, and were compared with db/m mice.
Db/db mice showed higher urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) than db/m mice, and Ferrostatin-1 reduced UACR in db/db mice. Db/db mice presented higher kidney injury molecular-1 and neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin in kidneys and urine compared to db/m mice, with renal tubular basement membranes folding and faulting. However, these changes were ameliorated in db/db mice after Ferrostatin-1 treatment. Fibrosis area and collagen I were promoted in db/db mouse kidneys as compared to db/m mouse kidneys, which was alleviated by Ferrostatin-1 in db/db mouse kidneys. HIF-1α and HO-1 were increased in db/db mouse kidneys compared with db/m mouse kidneys, and Ferrostatin-1 decreased HIF-1α and HO-1 in db/db mouse kidneys. Iron content was elevated in db/db mouse renal tubules compared with db/m mouse renal tubules, and was relieved in renal tubules of db/db mice after Ferrostatin-1 treatment. Ferritin was increased in db/db mouse kidneys compared with db/m mouse kidneys, but Ferrostatin-1 reduced ferritin in kidneys of db/db mice. Diabetes accelerated nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase-derived ROS formation in mouse kidneys, but Ferrostatin-1 prevented ROS formation derived by NADPH oxidases in db/db mouse kidneys. The increased malondialdehyde (MDA) and the decreased superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidases (GSH-Px) were detected in db/db mouse kidneys compared to db/m mouse kidneys, whereas Ferrostatin-1 suppressed MDA and elevated SOD, CAT, and GSH-Px in db/db mouse kidneys. Glutathione peroxidase 4 was lower in db/db mouse kidneys than db/m mouse kidneys, and was exacerbated by Ferrostatin-1 in kidneys of db/db mice.
Our study indicated that ferroptosis might enhance DN and damage renal tubules in diabetic models through HIF-1α/HO-1 pathway.
Scientific experience is crucial for producing high-quality research, and the approach of acquisition can significantly impact its accumulation rate. We present a framework for scientific experience ...acquisition that outlines the dual dimensions of experience accumulation: self-accumulation and accumulation under senior expert guidance. To validate the framework, we conducted a case study using 2,957,700 papers from all 568 Chinese humanities and social science journals, taking into account the limitations of the international journal system. Our findings reveal that self-accumulation has been gradually declining, decreasing from 57.67% in 1980 to 4.55% in 2020. Conversely, accumulation under senior expert guidance has been steadily increasing, rising from 5.7% in 1980 to 28.69% in 2020. Furthermore, the proportion of the two approaches varies by discipline. Social sciences such as Psychology, Economics, and Management, which rely more on large teams and collaborative research, have a higher proportion of accumulation under senior expert guidance than humanities disciplines like Art, History, and Philosophy, which depend more on individual research. Finally, this research also offers a distinctive exploration of the question posed by the US National Science and Technology Council (2008): how and why do communities of innovation form and evolve.
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