Sodium ion batteries (NIBs) have become attractive promising alternatives to lithium ion batteries in a broad field of future energy storage applications. The development of high‐performance anode ...materials has become an essential factor and a great challenge toward satisfying the requirements for NIBs, advancement. This work is the first report on GeS2 nanocomposites uniformly distributed on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) as promising anode materials for NIBs prepared via a facile hydrothermal synthesis and a unique carbo‐thermal annealing. The results show that the GeS2/rGO hybrid anode yields a high reversible specific capacity of 805 mA h g−1 beyond the theoretical capacity, an excellent rate capability of 616 mA h g−1 at 5 A g−1, and a cycle retention of 89.4% after 100 cycles. A combined ex situ characterization study reveals that the electrochemically driven amorphization plays a key role in achieving efficient sodium storage by accommodating excess sodium ions in the electrode materials. Understanding the sequential conversion‐alloying reaction mechanism for GeS2/rGO hybrid anodes provides a new approach for developing high‐performance energy storage applications.
The novel‐designed GeS2/rGO hybrid anode materials are prepared via a facile hydrothermal synthesis and a unique carbo‐thermal annealing. The nanocomposites ensure the high reversible specific capacity of 805 mA h g−1 beyond the theoretical capacity and the excellent rate capability (562 mA h g−1 at 5 A g−1), revealing the best use of electrochemically driven amorphization.
Epidemiologic findings of low-volume alcohol consumption in relation to gastrointestinal cancers including gastric cancer are inconsistent.
The association between alcohol intake and esophageal, ...gastric and colorectal cancer risk was examined in a population-based prospective cohort of 23,323,730 adults in Korea who had undergone a biennial evaluation provided by the National Health Insurance Corporation between the years 2009 and 2012. After median 5.4 years of follow-up, 9,171 esophageal, 135,382 gastric and 154,970 colorectal cancer cases were identified. Cox regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95% CI).
Light drinking as well as moderate to heavy alcohol consumption significantly increased the risks of the three gastrointestinal cancers (HR 1.51; 95% CI, 1.43-1.60; HR 1.08; 95% CI, 1.06-1.09; HR 1.12; 95% CI, 1.11-1.14) compared with non-drinkers after adjusting for age, sex, smoking, exercise, income, body mass index, and diabetes. The synergistically increased cancer risk between excessive amount of alcohol consumption and currently smoking or underweight individuals was observed only in the esophageal cancers.
Light drinking including even one alcoholic drink a day is associated with increased risks of esophageal, gastric and colorectal cancer.
Streptomyces are important industrial bacteria that produce pharmaceutically valuable polyketides. However, mass production on an industrial scale is limited by low productivity, which can be ...overcome through metabolic engineering and the synthetic biology of the host strain. Recently, the introduction of an auto‐inducible expression system depending on microbial physiological state has been suggested as an important tool for the industrial‐scale production of polyketides. In this study, titer improvement by enhancing the pool of CoA‐derived precursors required for polyketide production was driven in a quorum sensing (QS)‐dependent manner. A self‐sustaining and inducer‐independent regulatory system, named the QS‐based metabolic engineering of precursor pool (QMP) system, was constructed, wherein the expression of genes involved in precursor biosynthesis was regulated by the QS‐responsive promoter, scbAp. The QMP system was applied for neoaureothin production in a heterologous host, Streptomyces coelicolor M1152, and productivity increased by up to 4‐fold. In particular, the engineered hyperproducers produced high levels of neoaureothin without adversely affecting cell growth. Overall, this study showed that self‐regulated metabolic engineering mediated by QS has the potential to engineer strains for polyketide titer improvement.
Summary
Background
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is accompanied by various extraintestinal manifestations including systemic inflammation and hypercoagulability, which may increase the risk of ...atherosclerosis and ischaemic heart disease.
Aim
To investigate whether IBD is associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction (MI), stroke or death
Methods
The International Classification of Disease, 10th edition codes and the claim codes for rare diseases were used to identify candidates from National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) of South Korea. Patients diagnosed with Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC) between 2006 and 2009 were age‐matched 1:3 with NHIS enrolees without IBD. The primary outcomes included newly developed MI, stroke and death. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using Cox regression models.
Results
We identified 10 708 patients diagnosed with CD and 26 769 with UC. MI risk was higher in CD patients than in controls (incidence ratio (IR) 1.64 per 1000 person‐years, HR, 1.80; 95% CI, 1.47‐2.21), and this trend was more prominent among patients aged <40 years (IR 0.69 per 1000 person‐years, HR, 2.96; 95% CI, 1.96‐4.47) and among female patients (IR 2.35 per 1000 person‐years, HR, 2.18; 95% CI, 1.61‐2.94). In contrast, only female patients with UC had an increased risk of MI (IR 2.01 per 1000 person‐years, HR, 1.33; 95% CI, 1.13‐1.56).
Conclusions
The risk of MI risk is higher in patients with CD than in the general population, and this trend is stronger in female patients and those aged <40 years.
Nanostructural design renders several breakthroughs for the construction of high-performance materials and devices including energy-storage systems. Although attempts made toward electrode ...engineering have improved the existing drawbacks, nanoengineering is still hindered by some issues. To achieve practical applications of lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries, it is difficult to attain a high areal capacity with stable cycling. Physical encapsulation via nanostructural design not only can resolve the issue of lithium polysulfide dissolution during the electrochemical cycling, but also can offer significant contact resistance, which in turn can decrease the kinetics, particularly at a high sulfur loading. Thus, we demonstrate an electrospun carbon nanofiber (CNF) matrix for a sulfur cathode. This simple design enables a high mass loading of 10.5 mg cm–2 with a high specific capacity and stable cycling. The CNF–sulfur complex can deliver a high areal capacity of greater than 7 mAh cm–2, which is related to the excellent electrical conductivity of one-dimensional species. Moreover, we have observed that the reacted sulfur species have adhered well to the junction of the CNF network with specific wetting angles, which are induced by the cohesive force between the narrow gaps in the matrix that trapped the viscous polysulfides during cycling. The results of this study open new avenues for the design of high-areal-capacity Li–S batteries.
•Composition differs amongst various grades of multi-layered zirconias, but similar among the layers within each material.•UTML has the highest cubic content, followed by STML and ML.•ML exhibits the ...lowest translucency, whereas UTML and STML show a similar level of translucency.•Only pigment composition differs among the layers of each material, resulting in different shades but similar translucency.•Only ML is susceptible to hydrothermal degradation.
To fully realize the range of indication and clinical advantages of the new multi-layered zirconias, a comprehensive understanding of their chemical composition, microstructure, low temperature degradation (LTD) resistance, and translucency properties is paramount.
A zirconia system (Katana, Kuraray Noritake), including 3 distinct grades of multi-layered zirconias, was selected for study: Ultra Translucent Multi-layered zirconia (UTML), Super Translucent Multi-layered zirconia (STML), and Multi-layered zirconia (ML). For different materials and their individual layers, the chemical composition, zirconia phase fractions, and microstructure were determined by X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). Also, their resistance to LTD and translucency properties were characterized.
Our findings revealed no major differences amongst layers, but the 3 materials were very distinct―UTML: 5Y-PSZ (5 mol% yttria-partially-stabilized zirconia) with ˜75 wt% cubic content and a 4.05 (±0.85) μm average grain size, STML: 4Y-PSZ with ˜65 wt% cubic content and a 2.81 (±0.17) μm average grain size, and ML: 3Y-PSZ with <50 wt% cubic content and a 0.63 (±0.03) μm average grain size. After water aging at 120 °C for 12 h, greater monoclinic content was found in ML. UTML and STML did not show detectable monoclinic phase. The translucency was similar among layers, and also between UTML and STML, which were superior to ML.
For each multi-layered zirconia grades, the layers are only differed in pigment types and contents, which yield remarkably natural shade gradients. Also, despite the significant compositional difference between STML and UTML, both materials showed similar translucencies.
Stroke is a complex neurodegenerative disorder with a clinically high prevalence and mortality. Despite many efforts to protect against ischemic stroke, its incidence and related permanent ...disabilities continue to increase. In this study, we found that pretreatment with phlorofucofuroeckol (PFF), isolated from brown algae species, significantly increased cell viability in glutamate-stimulated PC12 cells. Additionally, glutamate-stimulated cells showed irregular morphology, but PFF pretreatment resulted in improved cell morphology, which resembled that in cells cultured under normal conditions. We further showed that PFF pretreatment effectively inhibited glutamate-induced apoptotic cell death in a caspase-dependent manner. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) induced by oxidative stress are closely associated with ischemia-induced neurological diseases. Exposure of PC12 cells to glutamate induced abundant production of intracellular ROS and mitochondrial dysfunction, which was attenuated by PFF in a dose-dependent manner. In vivo studies revealed that PFF-mediated prevention was achieved predominantly through inhibition of apoptosis and mitochondrial ROS generation. Taken together, these results suggest the possibility of PFF as a neuroprotective agent in ischemic stroke.
Oviedomycin is one among several polyketides known for their potential as anticancer agents. The biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) for oviedomycin is primarily found in Streptomyces antibioticus. ...However, because this BGC is usually inactive under normal laboratory conditions, it is necessary to employ systematic metabolic engineering methods, such as heterologous expression, refactoring of BGCs, and optimization of precursor biosynthesis, to allow efficient production of these compounds. Oviedomycin BGC was captured from the genome of Streptomyces antibioticus by a newly constructed plasmid, pCBA, and conjugated into the heterologous strain, S. coelicolor M1152. To increase the production of oviedomycin, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system was utilized in an in vitro setting to refactor the native promoters within the ovm BGC. The target promoters of refactoring were selected based on examination of factors such as transcription levels and metabolite profiling. Furthermore, genome-scale metabolic simulation was applied to find overexpression targets that could enhance the biosynthesis of precursors or cofactors related to oviedomycin production. The combined approach led to a significant increase in oviedomycin production, reaching up to 670 mg/L, which is the highest titer reported to date. This demonstrates the potential of the approach undertaken in this study. The metabolic engineering approach used in this study led to the successful production of a valuable polyketide, oviedomycin, via BGC cloning, promoter refactoring, and gene manipulation of host metabolism aided by genome-scale metabolic simulation. This approach can be also useful for the efficient production of other secondary molecules encoded by 'silent' BGCs.
Temporal trends of the prevalence and incidence of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) have not been well established in Asian populations. Using the Korean National Health Insurance Services database, ...we identified patients with a confirmed diagnosis of HCM between 2010 and 2016. The annual prevalence and incidence of HCM, and their clinical characteristics were investigated. The prevalence of HCM has increased from 0.016% (n = 6313) in 2010 to 0.031% (n = 13,035) in 2016. During a 7-year period, 13,229 patients were newly diagnosed with HCM. The incidence rate increased from 4.15 (per 100,000 person-years) in 2010 to 5.6 in 2016. The prevalence and incidence of HCM increased with age and peaked during the 70s, with male predominance in all age groups. Chest pain is the most frequent clinical presentation followed by shortness of breath and syncope. Hypertension and dyslipidemia were the two most common comorbidities. Heart failure and atrial fibrillation was diagnosed in about 1/3 and 1/4 of patients with HCM, respectively. The prevalence and incidence of HCM gradually increased from 2010 to 2016, possibly due to heightened recognition of the disease. Given the progressively high incidence of HCM with age and high prevalence of coexisting modifiable risk factors, continued efforts are required to increase awareness regarding HCM-related symptoms and potential complications.
We investigated sex-related differences in the prognosis of patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) using the Korea National Health Insurance Service database. From 2010 to 2016, 9524 ...patients diagnosed with HCM and had more than 1-year follow-up period were analyzed. The primary endpoint was the composite of cardiovascular death or new-onset heart failure (HF) admission. Propensity score-matching analysis was performed to adjust for different baseline characteristics. With a 4.4-years' median follow-up interval (range 2.0-6.6 years) and male predominance (77.6%), women with HCM were older (52.6 ± 9.7 vs. 51.4 ± 9.1, p < 0.001), had lower incomes, more comorbidities based on Charlson comorbidity index. Women with HCM had a higher incidence of the primary endpoint than men (incidence rate: 34.15 vs. 22.83 per 1000 person-years, log-rank p < 0.001). Multivariable Cox analysis showed that female sex was a poor prognostic factor for the primary endpoint (HR 1.43, 95% CI 1.24-1.64, p < 0.001). This was mainly driven by a higher incidence of new-onset HF admission (HR 1.55, 95% CI 1.34-1.80). However, there was no difference in the incidence of cardiovascular death between the sexes. This result was concordant in the propensity score-matched cohort. In conclusion, women with HCM have worse prognosis, which was mainly driven by a higher new-onset HF admission.
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