Nanomaterial-doped conducting polymers represent a unique class of composite materials that synergizes the advantageous features of nanomaterials and organic conductors, and they have been used in ...many applications such as electrochemical sensors and energy storage devices. Conducting polymers can be controllably synthesized from various monomers, and during the polymerization process, different nanomaterials offering unique physical and chemical properties can be doped into the formed conducting polymer composites. In this review, we focus on recent advances in electrochemical sensors and biosensors based on conducting polymers doped with various nanomaterials, including carbon nanomaterials, metal or metal oxide nanoparticles and quantum dots. Approaches to fabrication of films of these materials are described and sensing applications for different targets are summarized.
This review summarizes recent advances in the development of electrochemical sensors and biosensors based on nanomaterial doped conducting polymers.
Abstract
It is well accepted that Forkhead box protein L2 (Foxl2) and aromatase (Cyp19a1; the enzyme responsible for estrogen synthesis) are critical for ovarian development in vertebrates. Knockouts ...of Foxl2 and Cyp19a1 in goat, mouse, and zebrafish have revealed similar but not identical functions across species. Functional analyses of these two genes in other animals are needed to elucidate their conserved roles in vertebrate sexual development. In this study, we established foxl2 and cyp19a1a mutant lines in Nile tilapia. Both foxl2
−/− and cyp19a1a
−/− XX fish displayed female-to-male sex reversal. Sf1, Dmrt1, and Gsdf were upregulated in the foxl2
−/− and the cyp19a1a
−/− XX gonads. Downregulation of Cyp19a1a and serum estradiol-17β level, and upregulation of Cyp11b2 and serum 11-ketotestosterone level were observed in foxl2
−/− XX fish. The mutant phenotype of foxl2
−/− XX individuals could be rescued by 17β-estradiol treatment from 5 to 30 days after hatching (dah). Upregulation of Star1, the enzyme involved in androgen production in tilapia, was also observed in the foxl2
−/− XX gonad at 30 and 90 dah. In vitro promoter analyses consistently demonstrated that Foxl2 could suppress the transcription of star1 in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, compared with the control XX gonad, fewer germ cells were detected in the foxl2
−/− XX, cyp19a1a
−/− XX, and control XY gonads 10 dah. These results demonstrate that Foxl2 promotes ovarian development by upregulating Cyp19a1a expression and repressing male pathway gene expression. These results extend the study of Foxl2 and Cyp19a1a loss of function to a commercially important fish species.
Loss-of-function study showed that Foxl2 promoted ovarian development by upregulating Cyp19a1a expression, increasing germ cell number, and repressing male pathway gene expression in Nile tilapia.
Crowdsensing applications utilize the pervasive smartphone users to collect large-scale sensing data efficiently. The quality of sensing data depends on the participation of highly skilled users. To ...motivate these skilled users to participate, they should receive enough rewards for compensating their resource consumption. Available incentive mechanisms mainly consider the truthfulness of the mechanism, but mostly ignore the issues of security and privacy caused by a "trustful" center. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving blockchain incentive mechanism in crowdsensing applications, in which a cryptocurrency built on blockchains is used as a secure incentive way. High quality contributors will get their payments that are recorded in transaction blocks. The miners will verify the transaction according to the sensing data assessment criteria published by the server. As the transaction information can disclose users' privacy, a node cooperation verification approach is proposed to achieve <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">k </tex-math></inline-formula>-anonymity privacy protection. Through theoretical analysis and simulation experiments, we show the feasibility and security of our incentive mechanism.
The objective of this study is to explore the value of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) radiomics models based on enhanced computed tomography (CT) images in predicting BRCA gene ...mutations in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer.
The clinical and imaging data of 106 patients with ovarian cancer confirmed by surgery and pathology were retrospectively analyzed and genetic testing was performed. Radiomics features extracted from the 2D and 3D regions of interest of the patients' primary tumor lesions were selected in the training set using the maximum correlation and minimum redundancy method. Then, the best features were selected through Lasso tenfold cross-validation. Feature subsets were employed to establish a radiomics model. The model's performance was evaluated via area under the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and its clinical validity was assessed by using the model's decision curve.
On the validation set, the area under the curve values of the 2D, 3D, and 2D + 3D combined models were 0.78 (0.61-0.96), 0.75 (0.55-0.92), and 0.82 (0.61-0.96), respectively. However, the DeLong test P values between the three pairs of models were all > 0.05. The decision curve analysis showed that the radiomics model had a high net benefit across all high-risk threshold probabilities.
The three radiomics models can predict the BRCA gene mutation in ovarian cancer, and there were no statistically significant differences between the prediction performance of the three models.
The purpose of this study was to explore the cultivation of innovation and entrepreneurship of university students as well as its influence on talent training and cultural diversity. First, based on ...the combination of theoretical analysis and practical investigation, the entrepreneurship of college students and the basic situation of cultural diversity cultivation were discussed. The research objects involve students of different genders, grades, majors, and family backgrounds. Second, the reliability and validity of the scale were tested, and the survey data were analyzed after eliminating the invalid items. It is found that the average score of entrepreneurship of college students is 3.428; the score of innovation spirit dimension is 3.61, which is the highest in the dimensions; the score of forward-looking dimension is 3.25, which is the lowest; and the variance of leadership dimension is the lowest. The variance of the forward-looking dimension is the greatest. According to the analysis of the scores of different types of students, freshmen score lower in innovation dimension and challenge dimension, challenge spirit of female students is slightly higher than that of male students, and the leadership dimension score of science students is higher. Based on the survey results of cultural diversity training in colleges and universities, the average score is 3.343, the scores of course teaching and educational achievement are lower, and the score of cultural activity dimension is the highest. Liberal arts students have higher scores in cultural diversity, and senior students have low scores in cultural diversity cultivation due to the limited time. This study has been considered in a comprehensive manner. It provides a scientific theoretical basis for carrying out innovation and entrepreneurship education as well as cultural or nutritional activities in colleges and universities and thus has a significant practical value.
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•Effect of fabric architecture on the traditional stab impact was investigated.•Repeated and multi-angle stabbing impacts were studied targeting the stab mechanism.•Double-pass ...stabbing impacts of 3D structural fabrics were developed and analyzed.•Orthogonal/through-the-thickness interlock fabric has a good stab resistance.•Better condition of stab resistance occurs with identical stab angles in each pass.
This paper presents the influence of fabric structures and stab angles on single-pass stab impact and the repeated and multi-angle stabbings of 3-dimensional (3D) warp interlock structural fabrics based on the high-molecular-weight polyethylene (HMWPE) yarns. Five kinds of samples with different structures were experimentally tested using the drop weight stabbing impact equipment at the same impact energy. Radar charts are plotted to demonstrate the differences among different parameters to a better understanding and a more global characterization of single-pass stabbing impact. An image analysis methodology of Structure From Motion (SFM) is used to compare the fabric deformation in Z direction after the stabbing tests. Results indicated that fabric structures have significant effects on the stab impact property that the orthogonal/through-the-thickness interlock fabric has a good stab impact resistance. Besides, the fabric with stab angle of 90° exhibited better single-pass stab impact property than the counterparts with stab angle of 0°. More importantly, the double-pass stabbing tests are compared to the ones of the single-pass stabbing which shows that a better condition occurs when the stab angles are identical in each pass.
Studies of gene function in non-model animals have been limited by the approaches available for eliminating gene function. The CRISPR/Cas9 ( C: lustered R: egularly I: nterspaced S: hort P: ...alindromic R: epeats/ C: RISPR AS: sociated) system has recently become a powerful tool for targeted genome editing. Here, we report the use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to disrupt selected genes, including nanos2, nanos3, dmrt1, and foxl2, with efficiencies as high as 95%. In addition, mutations in dmrt1 and foxl2 induced by CRISPR/Cas9 were efficiently transmitted through the germline to F1. Obvious phenotypes were observed in the G0 generation after mutation of germ cell or somatic cell-specific genes. For example, loss of Nanos2 and Nanos3 in XY and XX fish resulted in germ cell-deficient gonads as demonstrated by GFP labeling and Vasa staining, respectively, while masculinization of somatic cells in both XY and XX gonads was demonstrated by Dmrt1 and Cyp11b2 immunohistochemistry and by up-regulation of serum androgen levels. Our data demonstrate that targeted, heritable gene editing can be achieved in tilapia, providing a convenient and effective approach for generating loss-of-function mutants. Furthermore, our study shows the utility of the CRISPR/Cas9 system for genetic engineering in non-model species like tilapia and potentially in many other teleost species.
Facial beauty prediction (FBP) is a significant visual recognition problem to make assessment of facial attractiveness that is consistent to human perception. To tackle this problem, various ...data-driven models, especially state-of-the-art deep learning techniques, were introduced, and benchmark dataset become one of the essential elements to achieve FBP. Previous works have formulated the recognition of facial beauty as a specific supervised learning problem of classification, regression or ranking, which indicates that FBP is intrinsically a computation problem with multiple paradigms. However, most of FBP benchmark datasets were built under specific computation constrains, which limits the performance and flexibility of the computational model trained on the dataset. In this paper, we argue that FBP is a multi-paradigm computation problem, and propose a new diverse benchmark dataset, called SCUT-FBP5500, to achieve multi-paradigm facial beauty prediction. The SCUT-FBP5500 dataset has totally 5500 frontal faces with diverse properties (male/female, Asian/Caucasian, ages) and diverse labels (face landmarks, beauty scores within 1, 5, beauty score distribution), which allows different computational models with different FBP paradigms, such as appearance-based/shape-based facial beauty classification/regression model for male/female of Asian/Caucasian. We evaluated the SCUT-FBP5500 dataset for FBP using different combinations of feature and predictor, and various deep learning methods. The results indicates the improvement of FBP and the potential applications based on the SCUT-FBP5500.
ASXL2, as a transcription regulator, is a research hotspot for tumor detection. The aberrant expression of ASXL2 protein has been mainly implicated in malignant hematological and heart diseases. To ...further explore the predictive value of ASXL2 in diseases, we reviewed the structure and function of ASXL2 protein, the post-translational modification mechanism, and the expression of ASXL2 protein in the pathogenesis of different diseases to provide a theoretical basis and support for the development of future treatments.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignant tumor. It is estimated that approximately 50-80% of HCC cases worldwide are caused by hepatitis b virus (HBV) infection, and other pathogenic factors ...have been shown to promote the development of HCC when coexisting with HBV. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of HBV-induced hepatocellular carcinoma (HBV-HCC) is crucial for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease. In this study, we analyzed the molecular mechanisms of HBV-induced HCC by combining bioinformatics and deep learning methods. Firstly, we collected a gene set related to HBV-HCC from the GEO database, performed differential analysis and WGCNA analysis to identify genes with abnormal expression in tumors and high relevance to tumors. We used three deep learning methods, Lasso, random forest, and SVM, to identify key genes RACGAP1, ECT2, and NDC80. By establishing a diagnostic model, we determined the accuracy of key genes in diagnosing HBV-HCC. In the training set, RACGAP1(AUC:0.976), ECT2(AUC:0.969), and NDC80 (AUC: 0.976) showed high accuracy. They also exhibited good accuracy in the validation set: RACGAP1(AUC:0.878), ECT2(AUC:0.731), and NDC80(AUC:0.915). The key genes were found to be highly expressed in liver cancer tissues compared to normal liver tissues, and survival analysis indicated that high expression of key genes was associated with poor prognosis in liver cancer patients. This suggests a close relationship between key genes RACGAP1, ECT2, and NDC80 and the occurrence and progression of HBV-HCC. Molecular docking results showed that the key genes could spontaneously bind to the anti-hepatocellular carcinoma drugs Lenvatinib, Regorafenib, and Sorafenib with strong binding activity. Therefore, ECT2, NDC80, and RACGAP1 may serve as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of HBV-HCC and as targets for the development of targeted therapeutic drugs.
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