Nanocellulose has been widely used as a reinforcing agent for hydrogel systems, but its functions on thermal responsive hydrogels are rarely investigated. In this study, we extracted cellulose ...nanofibers (CNFs) from coconut biomass (coir fibers and piths, respectively) and aimed to study their effects on the material properties on a new class of thermogel (poly(PCL/PEG/PPG urethane). The CNFs extracted from fiber (FF) and piths (FP) showed different morphology and fiber lengths. FF are uniformed individual fibrous networks with a fiber length of 664 ± 416 nm, while FP display a hybrid structure consisting of individual fiber and large bundles with a relative shorter fiber length of 443 ± 184 nm. Integrating both CNFs into thermogels remained the thermal-responsive characteristics with an enhanced rheological property. The results showed that gels with FF resulted in a higher storage modulus and lower Tan δ value compared to those with FP, indicating that the CNFs with a longer length could form a more intertwined network interacting with the thermogel matrix. Furthermore, we demonstrated the improved capabilities of the nanocomposite thermogels for sustained drug delivery in vitro. This study not only value-adds lignocellulose valorization but also elevates the versatility of thermogels.
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In this study, we develop a nano-composite nickel oxide (NNO) film on the indium tin oxide (ITO)-coated glass substrate for electrochromic applications. The NNO film is composed of the core–shell ...structure of NiO/conducting ITO nano-particles. High porosity in the NNO film offers large active surface area for redox reaction. Electrochromic electrodes fabricated with the NNO films produce high transmittance variation (66.2% at a wavelength of 550
nm), fast switching speed (coloring: 3.5
s; bleaching: 4
s) and good durability, which are much better than those of ones made with the traditional nickel oxide films. The structure, morphology, and electrochromic properties are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and UV–vis spectroscopy.
This paper investigates the mode conversion in ridge waveguides. Based on the adiabatic mode evolution, several compact adiabatic mode converters with optimized waveguide shapes are proposed. Three ...types of adiabatic mode conversion from TM to TE modes are proposed. It is found that the designed adiabatic device is greatly shorter than the one based on the linear shape case, but is capable of achieving the same power mode conversion efficiency. Furthermore, an adiabatic TM 0 mode maintaining waveguide taper is proposed to guide the TM 0 mode from narrow waveguide to wide waveguide. The efficiency of the designed adiabatic TM 0 mode maintaining waveguide taper considerably exceeds that obtained with the parabolic design. Then, combining the TE 1 mode to TM 0 mode adiabatic mode converter and TM 0 mode to TE 3 mode adiabatic mode converter, a TE 1 mode to TE 3 mode adiabatic mode converter (which is difficult to design and cannot be achieved even with a linear-shape connection) with a total length of 760 μm and 94% power mode conversion is proposed.
Background/Aims: Approximately 20-30% of small bowel capsule endoscopies (SBCEs) do not reach the cecum at the completion of the examination. We aimed to determine whether hypokalemia influences the ...completion rate and small bowel transit time (SBTT) of SBCE.
Patients and Methods: From January to December 2017, 112 patients (18-75 years old) who underwent SBCE were assessed consecutively for enrolment in our study. On the day of the procedure, a blood test was performed prior to capsule ingestion. The completion rate, gastric transit time (GTT), SBTT, and diagnostic yield were recorded for each SBCE.
Results: The SBCE completion rate was lower in the hypokalemia group than that in the normal potassium group (55.6% (15/27) vs. 76.5% (65/85), P = 0.036). The median GTT was 55.5 ± 47.1 min in the hypokalemia group and 46.7 ± 44.5 min in the normal potassium group (P > 0.05). The median SBTT was 412.8 ± 123.3 min in the hypokalemia group and 367.3 ± 172.5 min in the normal potassium group (P > 0.05). The diagnostic yields of the hypokalemia and normal potassium groups were 74.1% and 78.8%, respectively (P = 1.00).
Conclusion: Hypokalemia may decrease the SBCE completion rate. Physicians should consider the possibility of hypokalemia after bowel preparation because this condition is not rare. Potassium deficiencies should be rectified prior to performing SBCE procedures to increase the SBCE completion rate.
Autophagy inducers represent new promising agents for the treatment of a wide range of medical illnesses. However, safe autophagy inducers for clinical applications are lacking. Inhibition of ...cdc2-like kinase 1 (CLK1) was recently found to efficiently induce autophagy. Unfortunately, most of the known CLK1 inhibitors have unsatisfactory selectivity. Herein, we report the discovery of a series of new CLK1 inhibitors containing the 1H-1,2,3triazolo4,5-cquinoline scaffold. Among them, compound 25 was the most potent and selective, with an IC50 value of 2 nM against CLK1. The crystal structure of CLK1 complexed with compound 25 was solved, and the potency and kinase selectivity of compound 25 were interpreted. Compound 25 was able to induce autophagy in in vitro assays and displayed significant hepatoprotective effects in the acetaminophen (APAP)-induced liver injury mouse model. Collectively, due to its potency and selectivity, compound 25 could be used as a chemical probe or agent in future mechanism-of-action or autophagy-related disease therapy studies.
DNA N4-methylcytosine(4mC) plays an important role in numerous biological functions and is a mechanism of particular epigenetic importance. Therefore, accurate identification of the 4mC sites in DNA ...sequences is necessary to understand the functional mechanism. Although some effective calculation tools have been proposed to identifying DNA 4mC sites, it is still challenging to improve identification accuracy and generalization ability. Therefore, there is a great need to build a computational tool to accurately identify the position of DNA 4mC sites. Hence, this study proposed a novel predictor XGB4mcPred, a predictor for the identification of 4mC sites trained using an extreme gradient boosting algorithm (XGBoost) and DNA sequence information. Firstly, we used the One-Hot encoding on adjacent and spaced nucleotides, dinucleotides, and trinucleotides of the original 4mC site sequences as feature vectors. Then, the importance values of the feature vectors pre-trained by the XGBoost algorithm were used as a threshold to filter redundant features, resulting in a significant improvement in the identification accuracy of the constructed XGB4mcPred predictor to identify 4mC sites. The analysis shows that there is a clear preference for nucleotide sequences between 4mC sites and non-4mC site sequences in six datasets from multiple species, and the optimized features can better distinguish 4mC sites from non-4mC sites. The experimental results of cross-validation and independent tests from six different species show that our proposed predictor XGB4mcPred significantly outperformed other state-of-the-art predictors and was improved to varying degrees compared with other state-of-the-art predictors. Additionally, the user-friendly webserver we used to developed the XGB4mcPred predictor was made freely accessible.
Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a common cancer, and extensive research suggests that microRNA may play an important role in the progression of RCC. The emphasis of this article was to reveal the ...function and mechanism of microRNA-1293(miR-1293) in the development of RCC tumors. First, the authors carried out bioinformatics analysis. The differential expression of miR-1293 in RCC tumor and normal cells was analyzed using the data from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was carried out to test the survival rate. Subsequently, the miR-1293 expression in RCC cell lines was examined by quantitative real-time PCR. Then Cell counting kit-8 and Transwell assays were executed to detect the function of miR-1293 in RCC. Bioinformatics prediction, western blotting, and dual-luciferase reporter assay were set to check the target gene of miR-1293. Finally, they conducted rescue experiments to verify whether the regulation of miR-1293 on the biological function of RCC cells was achieved by regulating hydrocyanic oxidase 2 (HAO2). Bioinformatics results showed that miR-1293 was highly expressed in RCC, and the miR-1293 high-expression group showed a lower survival rate than the miR-1293 low-expression group, which suggested that the high expression of miR-1293 was related to unfavorable prognosis in RCC. Subsequent assays evidenced that upregulation of miR-1293 expression significantly increased the cell viability and promoted cell migration and invasion in RCC. Silencing miR-1293 expression showed opposite results. Furthermore, HAO2 was confirmed to be a direct target gene of miR-1293 by dual-luciferase reporter assay, and miR-1293 negatively regulated the expression of HAO2. Moreover, rescue experiments evidenced that miR-1293 reduced the cell viability, invasion, and migration of RCC by regulating HAO2. In sum, miR-1293 can regulate the viability, invasion, and migration of RCC tumor cells by targeting HAO2, suggesting that miR-1293 can be used as a new biomarker for clinical treatment of RCC.
Drought is the abiotic factor that adversely affects plant growth, development survival, and crop productivity, posing a substantial threat to sustainable agriculture worldwide, especially in warm ...and dry areas. However, the extent of damage depends upon the crop growth stage, severity and frequency of the stress. In general, the reproductive growth phase is more sensitive to stresses causing a substantial loss in crop productivity.
Saccharum spontaneum
(L.) is the most variable wild relative of sugarcane with potential for use in sugarcane crop improvement programs. In the present study addresses the transcriptomic analysis of drought stress imposed by polyethylene glycol-6000 (PED-6000; w/v- 25%) on the root tip tissues of
S. spontaneum
GX83-10. The analysis of microarrays of drought-stressed roots was performed at 0 (CK), 2 (T
2
), 4 (T
4
), 8 (T
8
) and 24 h (T
24
). The analyzed data were compared with the gene function annotations of four major databases, such as Nr, KOG/COG, Swiss-Prot, and KEGG, and a total of 62,988 single-gene information was obtained. The differently expressed genes of 56237 (T
4
), 59319 (T
8
), and 58583 (T
24
), among which CK obtained the most significant number of expressed genes (35920) as compared to T
24
, with a total of 53683 trend genes. Gene ontology (GO) and KEGG analysis were performed on the 6 important trends, and a total of 598 significant GO IDs and 42 significantly enriched metabolic pathways. Furthermore, these findings also aid in the selection of novel genes and promoters that can be used to potentially produce crop plants with enhanced stress resistance efficiency for sustainable agriculture.
Many available intelligent monitoring devices and applications only perform passive monitoring of the environment and notify the user when events occur, lacking the integration of viable ...technologies. In this work, we propose a multipurpose monitoring device that integrates cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and mobile applications to implement an unmanned mobile monitoring system for real-time monitoring and manipulation. The proposed system utilizes a self-balancing car as a stabilizing vehicle and a micro video camera that records images for AI facial tracking and recognition, combined with an infrared thermal imager to obtain forehead temperature. The recognized results are sent to a mobile device via a live video stream. The video stream can be recorded and images can be captured through a mobile application and uploaded to a cloud storage for playback and examination later. If the streamed video lacks sufficient illumination and cannot be viewed clearly, the system can be switched to infrared thermography to capture thermal images for monitoring the environment. The system can also be used as a mobile body temperature detector for the detection of abnormal body temperatures at a border control for quarantine inspections during the outbreak of contagious diseases. Furthermore, the system is equipped with four gas sensors to detect up to 12 different kinds of gaseous substances or particulate matter so that the user can be aware of the environmental quality around the self-balancing car. The outcome of this work can be applied to public health monitoring, dynamic crowd monitoring at airports and harbors, and the monitoring of hazardous or disaster-affected locations for search and rescue to reduce the costs associated with manual monitoring and the risk of exposure to hazards.
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