•Doping an electron donor onto the anode allowed quicker power generation and a higher maximum power.•However, when we compared long-term performances, we found that the improvements were ...temporary.•The differences in community structure made no difference in power generation.
Sediment microbial fuel cells (SMFCs) are expected to be used as a renewable power source for remote environmental monitoring; therefore, evaluation of their long-term power performance is critical for their usability. In this paper, we present novel data needed to understand the long-term performance of SMFCs. We used 3-D Microemulsion (3DMe)™ doped anodes, which slowly release lactate and its fermented products. During our tests, anode-limited SMFCs with and without 3DMe-doped anodes were operated for more than 18months with a load simulating a sensor operation. We found that doping an anode with an electron donor reduced startup time and increased maximum power (55±2μW compared to 46±2μW) in the control systems. We found that the long-term steady power performance is approximately 33% of the maximum power (∼18μW). Finally, our small-sized SMFCs generated higher power densities than those in the literature (28mW/m2 versus 4mW/m2). Using electron donor doped anodes can be practical when a short startup time and initial high power are needed. However, if long-term power is critical, the addition of an electron donor does not provide a practical advantage. In addition, in long-term operation enrichment of the anode surface with electrochemically active bacteria does not provide any advantage.
Sediment microbial fuel cells (SMFCs) are used as renewable power sources to operate remote sensors. However, increasing the electrode surface area results in decreased power density, which ...demonstrates that SMFCs do not scale up with size. As an alternative to the physical scale-up of SMFG, we proposed that it is possible to scale up power by using smaller-sized individually operated SMFCs connected to a power management system that electrically isolates the anodes and cathodes. To demonstrate our electronic scale-up approach, we operated one 0.36-m super(2) SMFC (called a single-equivalent SMFC) and four independent SMFCs of 0.09 m super(2) each (called scaled-up SMFCs) and managed the power using an innovative custom-developed power management system. We found that the single-equivalent SMFC and the scaled-up SMFCs produced similar power for the first 155 days. However, in the long term (>155 days) our scaled-up SMFCs generated significantly more power than the single-equivalent SMFC (2.33 mW vs. 0.64 mW). Microbial community analysis of the single-equivalent SMFC and the scaled-up SMFCs showed very similar results, demonstrating that the difference in operation mode had no significant effect on the microbial community. When we compared scaled-up SMFCs with parallel SMFCs, we found that the scaled-up SMFCs generated more power. Our novel approach demonstrates that SMFCs can be scaled up electronically.
Genome-wide association studies have been successful in identifying genes involved in polygenic traits and are valuable for crop improvement. Tomato (Solarium lycopersicum) is a major crop and is ...highly appreciated worldwide for its health value. We used a core collection of 163 tomato accessions composed of S. lycopersicum, S. lycopersicum var cerasiforme, and Solarium pimpinellifolium to map loci controlling variation in fruit metabolites. Fruits were phenotyped for a broad range of metabolites, including amino acids, sugars, and ascorbate. In parallel, the accessions were genotyped with 5,995 single-nucleotide polymorphism markers spread over the whole genome. Genome-wide association analysis was conducted on a large set of metabolic traits that were stable over 2 years using a multilocus mixed model as a general method for mapping complex traits in structured populations and applied to tomato. We detected a total of 44 loci that were significantly associated with a total of 19 traits, including sucrose, ascorbate, malate, and citrate levels. These results not only provide a list of candidate loci to be functionally validated but also a powerful analytical approach for finding genetic variants that can be directly used for crop improvement and deciphering the genetic architecture of complex traits.
Oral lichen planus (OLP) is one of the most prevalent oral mucosal diseases, but there is no cure for OLP yet. The aim of this study was to gain insights into the role of barrier dysfunction and ...infection in OLP pathogenesis through analysis of transcriptome datasets available in public databases. Two transcriptome datasets were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus database and analyzed as whole and as partial sets after removing outliers. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) upregulated in the dataset of OLP versus healthy epithelium were significantly enriched in epidermal development, keratinocyte differentiation, keratinization, responses to bacterial infection, and innate immune response. In contrast, the upregulated DEGs in the dataset of the mucosa predominantly reflected chemotaxis of immune cells and inflammatory/immune responses. Forty-three DEGs overlapping in the two datasets were identified after removing outliers from each dataset. The overlapping DEGs included genes associated with hyperkeratosis (upregulated LCE3E and TMEM45A), wound healing (upregulated KRT17, IL36G, TNC, and TGFBI), barrier defects (downregulated FRAS1 and BCL11A), and response to infection (upregulated IL36G, ADAP2, DFNA5, RFTN1, LITAF, and TMEM173). Immunohistochemical examination of IL-36γ, a protein encoded by one of the DEGs IL36G, in control (n = 7) and OLP (n = 25) tissues confirmed the increased expression of IL-36γ in OLP. Collectively, we identified gene signatures associated with hyperkeratosis, wound healing, barrier defects, and response to infection in OLP. IL-36γ, a cytokine involved in both wound repair and antimicrobial defense, may be a possible therapeutic target in OLP.
One of significant tasks in autonomous vehicle technology is traffic signs recognizing. It helps to avoid traffic violations on the road. However, recognition of traffic signs becomes more ...complicated in bad weather such as lack of light, rain, fog. Those bad weather conditions cause low accuracy of detecting and recognizing. In this paper, we aim to build a model to recognize and classify the traffic signs in different bad weather conditions by applying deep learning technique. Weather data are collected from variety types as well as generated from different techniques. Collected data are trained on the YOLOv5s, YOLOv7 model. In order to increase the accuracy, those YOLOv5s are improved on different models by replacing Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) attention module or Global Context(GC) block. On the test set: the accuracy of YOLOv5s is 76.8%, the accuracy of YOLOv7 is 78% the accuracy of YOLOv5s+SE attention module is 78.4% and the accuracy of YOLOv5s+C3GC is 79.2%. The results show that YOLOv5s+C3GC model significantly improves the accuracy in recognition of blurred-distant-objects.
Abstract
It has long been considered that the oral microbiome is tightly connected to oral health and that dysbiotic changes can be detrimental to the occurrence and progression of dysplastic oral ...mucosal lesions or oral cancer. Improved understanding of the concepts of microbial dysbiosis together with advances in high‐throughput molecular sequencing of these pathologies have charted in greater microbiological detail the nature of their clinical state. This review discusses the bacteriome and mycobiome associated with oral mucosal lesions, oral candidiasis, and oral squamous cell carcinoma, aiming to delineate the information available to date in pursuit of advancing diagnostic and prognostic utilities for oral medicine.
To evaluate the association between oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) and oral health indicators including dental status, total occlusion force (TOF), number of natural and rehabilitated ...teeth (NRT), number of natural teeth (NT), and to explore the effect modification on the association by gender among Korean elders.
A total of 675 participants aged 65 or above recruited by a cluster-based stratified random sampling were included in this cross-sectional study. The 14-items Korean version of the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP) was used to measure OHRQoL. The responses about OHIP were dichotomized by the cut-off point of 'fairly often' to determine the 'poor' versus 'fair' OHRQoL. Age, gender, education level, alcohol drinking, smoking, metabolic syndrome, frailty, and periodontitis were considered as confounders. Multiple multivariable logistic regression analyses were applied to assess the adjusted association between oral health indicators and OHRQoL. Gender stratified analysis was also applied to explore the effect modification of the association.
The prevalence of poor OHRQoL was 43.0%, which was higher in women, less-educated elders, alcohol non-drinkers and frailty elders (p < 0.05). Elders with poor OHRQoL also showed lower values of oral health indicators than elders with fair OHRQoL (p < 0.05). Those with NRT ≤ 24, NT ≤ 14, and TOF < 330 N increased the risk of poor OHRQoL by 2.3 times (OR = 2.26, confidence interval CI 1.54-3.31), 1.5 times (OR = 1.45, CI 1.02-2.07), and 1.5 times (OR = 1.47, CI 1.06-2.04), respectively. In women, the association of NRT ≤ 24 with poor OHRQoL increased from OR of 2.3 to OR of 2.4, while, in men, the association of TOF < 330 N with poor OHRQoL increased from OR of 1.5 to OR of 3.2.
Oral health indicators consisting of TOF, NRT, and NT were independently associated with poor OHRQoL among Korean elders. Gender modified the association of TOF and NRT. Preventive and/or curative management for keeping natural teeth and the rehabilitation of missing teeth to recover the occlusal force may be essential for reducing poor OHRQoL.
•The vector’s physiology is altered by the presence of the pathogen.•Infected psyllids had lower hemolymph oxygen tension (33.99% ± 1.35%).•Healthy psyllids had higher hemolymph oxygen tension ...(67.83% ± 2.03%).•A linear relationship was observed between pH and GE/insect in infected psyllids.
Many bacterial and viral plant pathogens are transmitted by insect vectors, and pathogen-mediated alterations of plant physiology often influence insect vector behavior and fitness. It remains largely unknown for most plant pathogens whether, and how, they might directly alter the physiology of their insect vectors in ways that promote pathogen transmission. Here we examined whether the presence of “Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum” (“Ca. L. solanacearum”), an obligate bacterial pathogen of plants and of its psyllid vector alters the physiochemical environment within its insect vector, the potato psyllid (Bactericera cockerelli). Microelectrodes were used to measure the local pH and oxygen tension within the abdomen of “Ca. L. solanacearum”-free psyllids and those infected with “Ca. L. solanacearum”. The hemolymph of infected psyllids had higher pH at 9.09 ± 0.12, compared to “Ca. L. solanacearum”-free psyllids (8.32 ± 0.11) and a lower oxygen tension of 33.99% vs. 67.83%, respectively. The physicochemical conditions inside “Ca. L. solanacearum”-free and –infected psyllids body differed significantly with the infected psyllids having a higher hemolymph pH and lower oxygen tension than “Ca. L. solanacearum”-free psyllids. Notably, the bacterial titer increased under conditions of higher pH and lower oxygen tension values. This suggests that the vector’s physiology is altered by the presence of the pathogen, potentially, resulting in a more conducive environment for “Ca. L. solanacearum” survival and subsequent transmission.
Lead halide perovskites open great prospects for optoelectronics and a wealth of potential applications in quantum optical and spin-based technologies. Precise knowledge of the fundamental optical ...and spin properties of charge-carrier complexes at the origin of their luminescence is crucial in view of the development of these applications. On nearly bulk Cesium-Lead-Bromide single perovskite nanocrystals, which are the test bench materials for next-generation devices as well as theoretical modeling, we perform low temperature magneto-optical spectroscopy to reveal their entire band-edge exciton fine structure and charge-complex binding energies. We demonstrate that the ground exciton state is dark and lays several millielectronvolts below the lowest bright exciton sublevels, which settles the debate on the bright-dark exciton level ordering in these materials. More importantly, combining these results with spectroscopic measurements on various perovskite nanocrystal compounds, we show evidence for universal scaling laws relating the exciton fine structure splitting, the trion and biexciton binding energies to the band-edge exciton energy in lead-halide perovskite nanostructures, regardless of their chemical composition. These scaling laws solely based on quantum confinement effects and dimensionless energies offer a general predictive picture for the interaction energies within charge-carrier complexes photo-generated in these emerging semiconductor nanostructures.
Sleep disturbance is a common complaint among critically ill patients in intensive care units and after hospitalisation. However, the prevalence of sleep disturbance among critically ill patients ...varies widely.
To estimate the prevalence of sleep disturbance among critically ill patients in the intensive care unit and after hospitalisation.
Electronic databases were searched from their inception until 15 August 2022. Only observational studies with cross-sectional, prospective, and retrospective designs investigating sleep disturbance prevalence among critically ill adults (aged ≥ 18 years) during intensive care unit stay and after hospitalisation were included.
We found 13 studies investigating sleep disturbance prevalence in intensive care units and 14 investigating sleep disturbance prevalence after hospitalisation, with 1,228 and 3,065 participants, respectively. The prevalence of sleep disturbance during an ICU stay was 66 %, and at two, three, six and ≥ 12 months after hospitalisation was 64 %, 49 %, 40 %, and 28 %, respectively. Studies using the Richards–Campbell Sleep Questionnaire detected a higher prevalence of sleep disturbance among patients in intensive care units than non-intensive care unit specific questionnaires; studies reported comparable sleep disturbance prevalence during intensive care stays for patients with and without mechanical ventilation.
Sleep disturbance is prevalent in critically ill patients admitted to an intensive care unit and persists for up to one year after hospitalisation, with prevalence ranging from 28 % to 66 %. The study results highlight the importance of implementing effective interventions as early as possible to improve intensive care unit sleep quality.
PDF
