Sensitivity is an important parameter of molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors, and various methods have been extensively investigated to improve this parameter. This review focuses on recent ...reports about different methods that can enhance the sensitivity of these sensors. To a great extent, the sensitivity of the molecularly imprinted sensor is limited by the number of cavities formed in a molecularly imprinted polymer on an electrode after elution. To enhance sensitivity and fabricate sensing devices, researchers employ signal amplification by labels, amplification by functional materials doped in imprinted membranes, sensitive film amplification, and other methods. Some perspectives in this research area, current problems, and challenges are also outlined.
Sensitivity is a critical issue of the performance of molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors. This review focuses on recent reports of methods that can enhance their sensitivity. Perspectives in this research area, current problems, and challenges are also outlined. Display omitted
•Different methods for improving sensitivity of molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors were overviewed.•Amplification strategies were discussed and divided into three categories.•Inherent advantages and limitations of these strategies for bioanalysis were discussed.•Prospects of highly sensitive molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors were assessed.
The current study aimed to examine the moderating effects of girls’ agency and communion in the links between both fathers’ and mothers’ corporal punishment and girls’ self-esteem in China. Chinese ...girls (
n
= 302) enrolled in grades 4–8 were instructed to independently complete the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (CTSPC), the Children’s Sex Role Inventory (CSRI), the Global Self-Worth subscale of Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC), and demographic items. Results indicated that both fathers’ and mothers’ corporal punishment were not directly associated with girls’ self-esteem, whereas both agency and communion were positively associated with girls’ self-esteem. In addition, both fathers’ and mothers’ corporal punishment were significantly and negatively associated with self-esteem for girls with lower levels of agency but not for the girls with higher levels of agency. The current results extend the growing evidence against using corporal punishment as a child-rearing practice and highlight that intervention programs need to focus on eliminating, or at least decreasing, both mothers’ and fathers’ corporal punishment. Additionally, parents and educators need to move from the traditional gender-related attributes to encourage the development of both agency and communion in girls.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a serious developmental disorder of the brain. Recently, various deep learning methods based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data have been developed ...for the classification of ASD. Among them, graph neural networks, which generalize deep neural network models to graph structured data, have shown great advantages. However, in graph neural methods, because the graphs constructed are homogeneous, the phenotype information of the subjects cannot be fully utilized. This affects the improvement of the classification performance. To fully utilize the phenotype information, this paper proposes a heterogeneous graph convolutional attention network (HCAN) model to classify ASD. By combining an attention mechanism and a heterogeneous graph convolutional network, important aggregated features can be extracted in the HCAN. The model consists of a multilayer HCAN feature extractor and a multilayer perceptron (MLP) classifier. First, a heterogeneous population graph was constructed based on the fMRI and phenotypic data. Then, a multilayer HCAN is used to mine graph-based features from the heterogeneous graph. Finally, the extracted features are fed into an MLP for the final classification. The proposed method is assessed on the autism brain imaging data exchange (ABIDE) repository. In total, 871 subjects in the ABIDE I dataset are used for the classification task. The best classification accuracy of 82.9% is achieved. Compared to the other methods using exactly the same subjects in the literature, the proposed method achieves superior performance to the best reported result. The proposed method can effectively integrate heterogeneous graph convolutional networks with a semantic attention mechanism so that the phenotype features of the subjects can be fully utilized. Moreover, it shows great potential in the diagnosis of brain functional disorders with fMRI data.
Since the mid 80’ies, the western palliative care philosophy has influenced the development of palliative care in mainland China. However, it has caused several challenges.
To explore the ...understanding of the ‘good death’ among authorities, professionals, patients, and their relatives in end-of-life care settings in mainland China.
Scoping review. The PRISMA-ScR checklist was used. The study is not registered.
End-of-life care settings, Mainland China
Authorities, healthcare professionals, adult patients, and general population in mainland China.
Literature searches were performed through Medline, CINAHL, PsycInfo, and Web of Sciences from 2001-2021, last search 21.4.2021. Inclusion criteria were: Empirical research studies investigating ‘good death’ or political documents about ‘good death’, perspectives from authorities, professionals, patients, and/or relatives, and studies following the Declaration of Helsinki. Exclusion criteria were: Literature reviews, languages other than English and Chinese, editorials, letters, comments, and children's death/dying.The analysis consisted of analysing the data including a descriptive numerical summary analysis and a qualitative thematic analysis.
Nineteen articles and two political documents were included. The 19 studies were carried out from 2003-2020, with data collected from 1999 to 2019. The political documents were written in 2012 and 2017, respectively. The thematic analysis resulted in three themes: ‘Medicalisation of death’, ‘Communication about death - a clash between two philosophies’, and ‘Dying and death were socially dependent’. The medicalisation of death meant the understanding of the ‘good death’ primarily focused on physical symptoms and treatments. The good death was understood as painless and symptom-free, where all symptoms could be measured and assessed. Dignity and shared decision-making were connected to the understanding of the ‘good death’. However, the contents of the ‘good death’ varied across the different actors. The understanding of the ‘good death’ in mainland China was a negotiation between Chinese traditional philosophy and contemporary western medicine practice. There was a tension between openness and silence about death, which reflected the importance of death education. The understanding of the ‘good death’ consisted partly of a timely and practical preparation for the death and afterlife, partly of a matter of social and financial issues.
There seemed to be a clash between two different cultures in the understanding of a good death in Mainland China, where western philosophy seemed to rule the political medical actors while traditional Chinese philosophy seemed to rule parts of the population.
Photocatalytic oxidation of methanol on various anatase TiO2 nanocrystals was studied by in situ and time‐resolved characterizations and DFT calculations. Surface site and resulting surface ...adsorbates affect the surface band bending/bulk‐to‐surface charge migration processes and interfacial electronic structure/interfacial charge transfer processes. TiO2 nanocrystals predominantly enclosed by the {001} facets expose a high density of reactive fourfold‐coordinated Ti sites (Ti4c) at which CH3OH molecules dissociate to form the CH3O adsorbate (CH3O(a)Ti4c). CH3O(a)Ti4c localized density of states are almost at the valence band maximum of TiO2 surface, facilitating the interfacial hole transfer process; CH3O(a)Ti4c with a high coverage promotes upward surface band bending, facilitating bulk‐to‐surface hole migration. CH3O(a)Ti4c exhibits the highest photocatalytic oxidation rate constant. TiO2 nanocrystals enclosed by the {001} facets are most active in photocatalytic methanol oxidation.
Surface sites and resulting methanol adsorbates strongly affect the surface band bending/bulk‐to‐surface charge migration processes and the interfacial electronic structure/interfacial charge transfer processes, and consequently play a key role in the photocatalytic efficiency.
Autoimmune glial fibrillary acidic protein astrocytopathy (GFAP-A) is a newly defined meningoencephalomyelitis. The pathogenesis of GFAP-A is not well understood. The present study measured the ...expression levels of 200 serological cytokines in GFAP-A patients, NMOSD patients and healthy controls (HCs). The correlations between serum cytokine levels and clinical information in GFAP-A patients were analyzed. A total of 147 serological proteins were differentially expressed in GFAP-A patients compared to HCs, and 33 of these proteins were not observed in NMOSD patients. Serum levels of EG-VEGF negatively correlated with GFAP antibody titers, MIP-3 alpha positively correlated with clinical severity in GFAP-A patients, and LIGHT positively correlated with WBC counts and protein levels in the CSF of GFAP-A patients. These results suggest that GFAP and AQP4 astrocytopathy share some common pathology related to TNF signaling. Serum MIP 3 alpha may be a biomarker to assess clinical severity and a potential target for therapy of autoimmune GFAP astrocytopathy.
An analytical method is proposed in this paper to achieve complete energy conversion in sum frequency generation based on the Lewis-Riesenfeld invariants theory. In the proposed scheme, a ...quasi-adiabatic single control parameter model is established, and the value of single control parameter is selected to make the initial eigenstate perfectly converted to the final eigenstate as needed. Corresponding to the nonlinear frequency conversion process, a nonlinear crystal structure is designed by inverse engineering using the optimal control theory. It is robust against perturbations of the coupling coefficient and phase mismatch, including variations in the pump intensity and crystal polarization period, and achieves almost 100% conversion efficiency at any crystal length. Theoretical simulations show that frequency conversion can be achieved in the wavelength range of 2.6 µm-3.6 µm, and the spectral bandwidth of conversion efficiency exceeds 50% and approaches 400 nm when the crystal length L = 1 mm.
Abstract
H
2
O
2
is widely used as an oxidant for photocatalytic methane conversion to value-added chemicals over oxide-based photocatalysts under mild conditions, but suffers from low utilization ...efficiencies. Herein, we report that O
2
is an efficient molecular additive to enhance the utilization efficiency of H
2
O
2
by suppressing H
2
O
2
adsorption on oxides and consequent photogenerated holes-mediated H
2
O
2
dissociation into O
2
. In photocatalytic methane conversion over an anatase TiO
2
nanocrystals predominantly enclosed by the {001} facets (denoted as TiO
2
{001})-C
3
N
4
composite photocatalyst at room temperature and ambient pressure, O
2
additive significantly enhances the utilization efficiency of H
2
O
2
up to 93.3%, giving formic acid and liquid-phase oxygenates selectivities respectively of 69.8% and 97% and a formic acid yield of 486 μmol
HCOOH
·g
catalyst
−1
·h
−1
. Efficient charge separation within TiO
2
{001}-C
3
N
4
heterojunctions, photogenerated holes-mediated activation of CH
4
into ·CH
3
radicals on TiO
2
{001} and photogenerated electrons-mediated activation of H
2
O
2
into ·OOH radicals on C
3
N
4
, and preferential dissociative adsorption of methanol on TiO
2
{001} are responsible for the active and selective photocatalytic conversion of methane to formic acid over TiO
2
{001}-C
3
N
4
composite photocatalyst.
The high incidence of heart failure secondary to myocardial infarction (MI) has been difficult to effectively address. MI causes strong aseptic inflammation, and infiltration of different immune ...cells and changes in the local inflammatory microenvironment play a key regulatory role in ventricular remodeling. Therefore, the possibility of improving the prognosis of MI through targeted immunity has been of interest and importance in MI. However, previously developed immune-targeted therapies have not achieved significant success in clinical trials. Here, we propose that the search for therapeutic targets from different immune cells may be more precise and lead to better clinical translation. Specifically, this review summarizes the role and potential therapeutic targets of various immune cells in ventricular remodeling after MI, especially monocytes/macrophages and neutrophils, as a way to demonstrate the importance and potential of immunomodulatory therapies for MI. In addition, we analyze the reasons for the failure of previous immunomodulatory therapies and the issues that need to be addressed, as well as the prospects and targeting strategies of using immune cells to drive novel immunomodulatory therapies, hoping to advance the development of immunomodulatory therapies by providing evidence and new ideas.
Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of polishing press-on force on surface roughness and gloss of computer-aided design-computer-aided manufacturing (CAD-CAM) ...composites.Methods: The materials evaluated included a CAD-CAM ceramic, a polymer-infiltrated ceramic, and three filler-based CAD-CAM composites. The CAD-CAM blocks were sectioned, embedded in self-cured resin, finished with abrasive papers and ultrasonically cleaned. Specimens were subsequently polished using the Sof-Lex disk system with 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 N press-on force by means of a custom-made apparatus. Contour arithmetic mean deviation (Ra) and gloss value (GU) data were acquired with a profilometer and glossmeter, respectively, and analyzed using ANOVA/Bonferroni post hoc test and Pearson’s correlation (α = 0.05). Representative samples of the various materials at baseline and after each polishing step were examined under scanning electron microscope.Results: Mean Ra and GU values ranged from 0.096 ± 0.004 μm to 0.295 ± 0.045 μm and 13.4 ± 1.9 to 67.6 ± 11.3 correspondingly for the various material-force combinations. Surface roughness and gloss were found to be press-on force and material dependent. A moderately strong and negative correlation (rs = −0.69) existed between Ra and GU values.Conclusion: For optimal smoothness and gloss, ceramic and polymer-infiltrated ceramic CAD-CAM materials must be polished with a 2.0 N force, while filler-based CAD-CAM composites should, in general, be polished using a 1.0 to 1.5 N force.
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