In this paper, Nickel–Cobalt layered double hydroxide (NiCo-LDH) nanosheets were first in situ synthesized on MXene (Ti3C2) via a simple hydrothermal method, then glucose sensing performance based on ...three-dimensional porous MXene/NiCo-LDH nanocomposite was explored. At a working potential of 0.45 V (vs. SCE), the glucose sensor exhibits a wide linearity range (0.002 mM–4.096 mM), a low limit of detection (0.53 μM) and a rapid response (<3 s). Moreover, good selectivity, reproducibility and stability were also obtained. And the excellent performance can attribute to large area of contact of materials surface with glucose, fast electron transfer rate and easy diffusion of electrolyte provided by the novel 3D porous NiCo-LDH nanosheets on the conductive MXene substrate. Therefore, MXene/NiCo-LDH composites will be a candidate for electrochemical detection of glucose.
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•NiCo-LDH nanosheets with high specific surface area grew on the surface of MXene and formed 3D porous structure.•The oxidation performance towards glucose between MXene/NiCo-LDH and NiCo-LDH was compared.•The MXene/NiCo-LDH/GCE was used for detection of glucose and the limit of detection is 0.53 μM.
To clarify the epidemiological, clinical, and therapeutic features of patients with severe COVID-19.
In this study, we enrolled 681 patients with confirmed cases of severe COVID-19. The ...epidemiological, demographic, clinical, laboratory, treatment, and outcome data were collected.
The median age of the study participants was 65 years, 53.2% were male, and 104 (15.3%) died. Age, Neutrophil-To-Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR), acute myocardial injury, and levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and CD3 T cells counts were independently associated with death, while arbidol and ribavirin were protective from death. The combination of NLR and acute myocardial injury on admission (AUC = 0.914) predicted mortality better than NLR, CRP, LDH, and acute myocardial injury. There were 312 (45.8%) patients with cardiovascular disease, of whom 23.4% died. β-blockers, ACEI/ARB, arbidol, and ribavirin might have a beneficial effect for severe COVID-19 patients with cardiovascular disease.
The combination of NLR and acute myocardial injury on admission was highly predictive of mortality and survival. Clinicians should adopt more aggressive strategies for patients with a high NLR (>6.66) combined with myocardial injury. β-blockers and ACEI/ARB, as well as arbidol and ribavirin, were effective in COVID-19 patients with cardiovascular disease.
•Combination of NLR and acute myocardial injury could predict mortality.•Patients combined with higher NLR and myocardial injury need aggressive strategies.•Arbidol and ribavirin may be benefit to severe COVID-19.•β-blockers and ACEI/ARB are effective for patients with cardiovascular disease.
Nanocarrier-based drug delivery systems hold impressive promise for biomedical application because of their excellent water dispersibility, prolonged blood circulation time, increased drug ...accumulation in tumors, and potential in combination therapeutics. However, most nanocarriers suffer from low drug-loading efficiency, poor therapeutic effectiveness, potential systematic toxicity, and unstable metabolism. As an alternative, carrier-free nanodrugs, completely formulated with one or more drugs, have attracted increasing attention in cancer therapy due to their advantage of improved pharmacodynamics/pharmacokinetics, reduced toxicity, and high drug-loading. In recent years, carrier-free nanodrugs have contributed to progress in a variety of therapeutic modalities. In this review, different common strategies for carrier-free nanodrugs preparation are first summarized, mainly including nanoprecipitation, template-assisted nanoprecipitation, thin-film hydration, spray-drying technique, supercritical fluid (SCF) technique, and wet media milling. Then we describe the recently reported carrier-free nanodrugs for cancer chemo-monotherapy or combination therapy. The advantages of anti-cancer drugs combined with other chemotherapeutic, photosensitizers, photothermal, immunotherapeutic or gene drugs have been demonstrated. Finally, a future perspective is introduced to highlight the existing challenges and possible solutions toward clinical application of currently developed carrier-free nanodrugs, which may be instructive to the design of effective carrier-free regimens in the future.
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising technique for the fifth generation mobile communication due to its high spectral efficiency. By applying superposition coding and successive ...interference cancellation techniques at the receiver, multiple users can be multiplexed on the same subchannel in NOMA systems. Previous works focus on subchannel assignment and power allocation to achieve the maximization of sum rate; however, the energy-efficient resource allocation problem has not been well studied for NOMA systems. In this paper, we aim to optimize subchannel assignment and power allocation to maximize the energy efficiency for the downlink NOMA network. Assuming perfect knowledge of the channel state information at base station, we propose a low-complexity suboptimal algorithm, which includes energy-efficient subchannel assignment and power proportional factors determination for subchannel multiplexed users. We also propose a novel power allocation across subchannels to further maximize energy efficiency. Since both optimization problems are non-convex, difference of convex programming is used to transform and approximate the original non-convex problems to convex optimization problems. Solutions to the resulting optimization problems can be obtained by solving the convex sub-problems iteratively. Simulation results show that the NOMA system equipped with the proposed algorithms yields much better sum rate and energy efficiency performance than the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiple access scheme.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an important and urgent threat to global health. Inflammation factors are important for COVID-19 mortality, and we aim to explore whether the baseline levels of ...procalcitonin (PCT), C-reaction protein (CRP) and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) are associated with an increased risk of mortality in patients with COVID-19. A retrospective study was conducted and a total of 76 patients with confirmed COVID-19 were included between January 17, 2020 to March 2, 2020, of these cases, 17 patients were dead. After adjusting covariates, PCT (≥ 0.10 ng/mL) and CRP (≥ 52.14 mg/L) exhibited independent increasing risks of mortality were used hazard ratio (HR) of 52.68 (95% confidence interval CI: 1.77-1571.66) and 5.47 (95% CI: 1.04-28.72), respectively. However, NRL (≥ 3.59) was not found to be an independent risk factor for death in our study. Furthermore, the elevated PCT levels were still associated with increasing risk of mortality in the old age group (age ≥ 60 y), and in the critically severe and severe patients after adjustment for complications. Thu Baseline levels of PCT and CRP have been addressed as independent predictors of mortality in patients with COVID-19.
Methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2) has crucial roles in transcriptional regulation and microRNA processing. Mutations in the MECP2 gene are found in 90% of patients with Rett syndrome, a severe ...developmental disorder with autistic phenotypes. Duplications of MECP2-containing genomic segments cause the MECP2 duplication syndrome, which shares core symptoms with autism spectrum disorders. Although Mecp2-null mice recapitulate most developmental and behavioural defects seen in patients with Rett syndrome, it has been difficult to identify autism-like behaviours in the mouse model of MeCP2 overexpression. Here we report that lentivirus-based transgenic cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) expressing human MeCP2 in the brain exhibit autism-like behaviours and show germline transmission of the transgene. Expression of the MECP2 transgene was confirmed by western blotting and immunostaining of brain tissues of transgenic monkeys. Genomic integration sites of the transgenes were characterized by a deep-sequencing-based method. As compared to wild-type monkeys, MECP2 transgenic monkeys exhibited a higher frequency of repetitive circular locomotion and increased stress responses, as measured by the threat-related anxiety and defensive test. The transgenic monkeys showed less interaction with wild-type monkeys within the same group, and also a reduced interaction time when paired with other transgenic monkeys in social interaction tests. The cognitive functions of the transgenic monkeys were largely normal in the Wisconsin general test apparatus, although some showed signs of stereotypic cognitive behaviours. Notably, we succeeded in generating five F1 offspring of MECP2 transgenic monkeys by intracytoplasmic sperm injection with sperm from one F0 transgenic monkey, showing germline transmission and Mendelian segregation of several MECP2 transgenes in the F1 progeny. Moreover, F1 transgenic monkeys also showed reduced social interactions when tested in pairs, as compared to wild-type monkeys of similar age. Together, these results indicate the feasibility and reliability of using genetically engineered non-human primates to study brain disorders.
Abstract
The electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is one of the most studied and promising processes for hydrogen fuel generation. Single-atom catalysts have been shown to exhibit ...ultra-high HER catalytic activity, but the harsh preparation conditions and the low single-atom loading hinder their practical applications. Furthermore, promoting hydrogen evolution reaction kinetics, especially in alkaline electrolytes, remains as an important challenge. Herein, Pt/C
60
catalysts with high-loading, high-dispersion single-atomic platinum anchored on C
60
are achieved through a room-temperature synthetic strategy. Pt/C
60
-2 exhibits high HER catalytic performance with a low overpotential (η
10
) of 25 mV at 10 mA cm
−2
. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the Pt-C
60
polymeric structures in Pt/C
60
-2 favors water adsorption, and the shell-like charge redistribution around the Pt-bonding region induced by the curved surfaces of two adjacent C
60
facilitates the desorption of hydrogen, thus favoring fast reaction kinetics for hydrogen evolution.
Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the major causes of end-stage renal disease, and previously we demonstrated that NALP3 inflammasome was involved in the pathogenesis of DN. Here we investigated ...the mechanisms of NALP3 inflammasome activation in podocyte injury during DN. We found that, besides the activation of NALP3 inflammasome and upregulated thioredoxin-interacting protein (TXNIP), the glomerular expression of gp 91 phox , a subunit of NADPH oxidase, was enhanced in DN mice simultaneously. Inhibiting NADPH oxidase abrogated NALP3 inflammasome activation, and IL-1β production and eventually protected podocytes from high glucose- (HG-) induced injury. TXNIP, an inhibitor of thioredoxin, acts as a suppressor for antioxidant defense system. Our observation indicated that in HG-exposed podocytes genetic deletion of TXNIP by shRNA reversed gp 91 phox overexpression and alleviated the injury of podocyte. Collectively, our findings proposed that HG-induced NADPH oxidase activation was driven by TXNIP which subsequently triggered NALP3 inflammasome activation in podocytes and ultimately led to podocyte injury, and blocking TXNIP/NADPH oxidase signaling may be a promising treatment for DN.
The construction of host–guest-binding-induced phosphorescent supramolecular assemblies has become one of increasingly significant topics in biomaterial research. Herein, we demonstrate that the ...cucurbit8uril host can induce the anthracene-conjugated bromophenylpyridinium guest to form a linear supramolecular assembly, thus facilitating the enhancement of red fluorescence emission by the host-stabilized charge-transfer interactions. When the anthryl group is photo-oxidized to anthraquinone, the obtained linear nanoconstructs can be readily converted into the homoternary inclusion complex, accompanied by the emergence of strong green phosphorescence in aqueous solution. More intriguingly, dual organelle-targeted imaging abilities have been also distinctively achieved in nuclei and lysosomes after undergoing photochemical reaction upon UV irradiation. This photooxidation-driven purely organic room-temperature phosphorescence provides a convenient and feasible strategy for supramolecular organelle identification to track specific biospecies and physiological events in the living cells.
Edges tend to be over-smoothed in total variation (TV) regularized under-sampled images. In this paper, symmetric residual convolutional neural network (SR-CNN), a deep learning based model, was ...proposed to enhance the sharpness of edges and detailed anatomical structures in under-sampled cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). For training, CBCT images were reconstructed using TV-based method from limited projections simulated from the ground truth CT, and were fed into SR-CNN, which was trained to learn a restoring pattern from under-sampled images to the ground truth. For testing, under-sampled CBCT was reconstructed using TV regularization and was then augmented by SR-CNN. Performance of SR-CNN was evaluated using phantom and patient images of various disease sites acquired at different institutions both qualitatively and quantitatively using structure similarity (SSIM) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). SR-CNN substantially enhanced image details in the TV-based CBCT across all experiments. In the patient study using real projections, SR-CNN augmented CBCT images reconstructed from as low as 120 half-fan projections to image quality comparable to the reference fully-sampled FDK reconstruction using 900 projections. In the tumor localization study, improvements in the tumor localization accuracy were made by the SR-CNN augmented images compared with the conventional FDK and TV-based images. SR-CNN demonstrated robustness against noise levels and projection number reductions and generalization for various disease sites and datasets from different institutions. Overall, the SR-CNN-based image augmentation technique was efficient and effective in considerably enhancing edges and anatomical structures in under-sampled 3D/4D-CBCT, which can be very valuable for image-guided radiotherapy.
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