Carbon dots (CDs), fluorescent carbon nanoparticles with particle sizes < 10 nm, are constantly being developed for potential large‐scale applications. Recently, methods allow CD synthesis to be ...carried out on large‐scale preparation in a controlled fashion are potentially important for multiple disciplines, including bottom‐up strategy, top‐down method. In this review, the recent progresses in the research of the methods for large‐scale production of CDs and their functionalization are summarized. Especially, the methods of CD synthesis, such as large‐scale preparation, hydrothermal/solvothermal, microwave‐assisted, magnetic hyperthermia microfluidic and other methods, along with functionalization of CDs, are summarized in detail. By promising applications of CDs, there are three aspects have been already reported, such as enhancing mechanical properties, flame retardancy, and energy storage. Also, future development of CDs is prospected.
This review offers an overview and an outlook on the large‐scale bottom‐up preparation methods of carbon dots and their functionalization as well as large‐scale applications, including enhancing mechanical properties, flame retardancy, and energy storage.
Compressed sensing (CS) has exhibited great potential for accelerating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In CS-MRI, we want to reconstruct a high-quality image from very few samples in a short time. ...In this paper, we propose a fast algorithm, called projected iterative soft-thresholding algorithm (pISTA), and its acceleration pFISTA for CS-MRI image reconstruction. The proposed algorithms exploit sparsity of the magnetic resonance (MR) images under the redundant representation of tight frames. We prove that pISTA and pFISTA converge to a minimizer of a convex function with a balanced tight frame sparsity formulation. The pFISTA introduces only one adjustable parameter, the step size, and we provide an explicit rule to set this parameter. Numerical experiment results demonstrate that pFISTA leads to faster convergence speeds than the state-of-art counterpart does, while achieving comparable reconstruction errors. Moreover, reconstruction errors incurred by pFISTA appear insensitive to the step size.
Objective: Improve the reconstructed image with fast and multiclass dictionaries learning when magnetic resonance imaging is accelerated by undersampling the k-space data. Methods: A fast orthogonal ...dictionary learning method is introduced into magnetic resonance image reconstruction to provide adaptive sparse representation of images. To enhance the sparsity, image is divided into classified patches according to the same geometrical direction and dictionary is trained within each class. A new sparse reconstruction model with the multiclass dictionaries is proposed and solved using a fast alternating direction method of multipliers. Results: Experiments on phantom and brain imaging data with acceleration factor up to 10 and various undersampling patterns are conducted. The proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art magnetic resonance image reconstruction methods. Conclusion: Artifacts are better suppressed and image edges are better preserved than the compared methods. Besides, the computation of the proposed approach is much faster than the typical K-SVD dictionary learning method in magnetic resonance image reconstruction. Significance: The proposed method can be exploited in undersampled magnetic resonance imaging to reduce data acquisition time and reconstruct images with better image quality.
Long-term efficacy of a hepatitis E vaccine Zhang, Jun; Zhang, Xue-Feng; Huang, Shou-Jie ...
The New England journal of medicine,
2015-Mar-05, Letnik:
372, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a leading cause of acute hepatitis. The long-term efficacy of a hepatitis E vaccine needs to be determined.
In an initial efficacy study, we randomly assigned healthy ...adults 16 to 65 years of age to receive three doses of either a hepatitis E vaccine (vaccine group; 56,302 participants) or a hepatitis B vaccine (control group; 56,302 participants). The vaccines were administered at 0, 1, and 6 months, and the participants were followed for 19 months. In this extended follow-up study, the treatment assignments of all participants remained double-blinded, and follow-up assessments of efficacy, immunogenicity, and safety were continued for up to 4.5 years.
During the 4.5-year study period, 60 cases of hepatitis E were identified; 7 cases were confirmed in the vaccine group (0.3 cases per 10,000 person-years), and 53 cases in the control group (2.1 cases per 10,000 person-years), representing a vaccine efficacy of 86.8% (95% confidence interval, 71 to 94) in the modified intention-to-treat analysis, rather than (95% confidence interval, 71 to 84) corrected. Of the participants who were assessed for immunogenicity and were seronegative at baseline, 87% of those who received three doses of the hepatitis E vaccine maintained antibodies against HEV for at least 4.5 years; HEV antibody titers developed in 9% in the control group. The rate of adverse events was similar in the two groups.
Immunization with this hepatitis E vaccine induced antibodies against HEV and provided protection against hepatitis E for up to 4.5 years. (Funded by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01014845.).
This is the first randomised controlled trial for assessment of the immunogenicity and safety of a candidate non-replicating adenovirus type-5 (Ad5)-vectored COVID-19 vaccine, aiming to determine an ...appropriate dose of the candidate vaccine for an efficacy study.
This randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial of the Ad5-vectored COVID-19 vaccine was done in a single centre in Wuhan, China. Healthy adults aged 18 years or older, who were HIV-negative and previous severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection-free, were eligible to participate and were randomly assigned to receive the vaccine at a dose of 1 × 1011 viral particles per mL or 5 × 1010 viral particles per mL, or placebo. Investigators allocated participants at a ratio of 2:1:1 to receive a single injection intramuscularly in the arm. The randomisation list (block size 4) was generated by an independent statistician. Participants, investigators, and staff undertaking laboratory analyses were masked to group allocation. The primary endpoints for immunogenicity were the geometric mean titres (GMTs) of specific ELISA antibody responses to the receptor binding domain (RBD) and neutralising antibody responses at day 28. The primary endpoint for safety evaluation was the incidence of adverse reactions within 14 days. All recruited participants who received at least one dose were included in the primary and safety analyses. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04341389.
603 volunteers were recruited and screened for eligibility between April 11 and 16, 2020. 508 eligible participants (50% male; mean age 39·7 years, SD 12·5) consented to participate in the trial and were randomly assigned to receive the vaccine (1 × 1011 viral particles n=253; 5 × 1010 viral particles n=129) or placebo (n=126). In the 1 × 1011 and 5 × 1010 viral particles dose groups, the RBD-specific ELISA antibodies peaked at 656·5 (95% CI 575·2–749·2) and 571·0 (467·6–697·3), with seroconversion rates at 96% (95% CI 93–98) and 97% (92–99), respectively, at day 28. Both doses of the vaccine induced significant neutralising antibody responses to live SARS-CoV-2, with GMTs of 19·5 (95% CI 16·8–22·7) and 18·3 (14·4–23·3) in participants receiving 1 × 1011 and 5 × 1010 viral particles, respectively. Specific interferon γ enzyme-linked immunospot assay responses post vaccination were observed in 227 (90%, 95% CI 85–93) of 253 and 113 (88%, 81–92) of 129 participants in the 1 × 1011 and 5 × 1010 viral particles dose groups, respectively. Solicited adverse reactions were reported by 183 (72%) of 253 and 96 (74%) of 129 participants in the 1 × 1011 and 5 × 1010 viral particles dose groups, respectively. Severe adverse reactions were reported by 24 (9%) participants in the 1 × 1011 viral particles dose group and one (1%) participant in the 5 × 1010 viral particles dose group. No serious adverse reactions were documented.
The Ad5-vectored COVID-19 vaccine at 5 × 1010 viral particles is safe, and induced significant immune responses in the majority of recipients after a single immunisation.
National Key R&D Programme of China, National Science and Technology Major Project, and CanSino Biologics.
Traditional Chinese medicine treatment of diseases has been recognized, but the material basis and mechanisms are not clear. In this study, target prediction of the antigastric cancer (GC) effect of ...Guiqi Baizhu (GQBZP) and the analysis of potential key compounds, key targets, and key pathways for the therapeutic effects against GC were carried out based on the method of network analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment. There were 33 proteins shared between GQBZP and GC, and 131 compounds of GQBZP had a high correlation with these proteins, indicating that the PI3K‐AKT signaling pathway might play a key role in GC. From these studies, we selected human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) and programmed cell death 1‐ligand 1 (PD‐L1) for docking; the results showed that 385 and 189 compounds had high docking scores with HER2 and PD‐L1, respectively. Six compounds were selected for microscale thermophoresis (MST). Daidzein/quercetin and isorhamnetin/formononetin had the highest binding affinity for HER2 and PD‐L1, with Kd values of 3.7 μmol/L and 490, 667, and 355 nmol/L, respectively. Molecular dynamics simulation studies based on the docking complex structures as the initial conformation yielded the binding free energy between daidzein/quercetin with HER2 and isorhamnetin/formononetin with PD‐L1, calculated by molecular mechanics Poisson‐Boltzmann surface area, of −26.55, −14.18, −19.41, and −11.86 kcal/mol, respectively, and were consistent with the MST results. In vitro experiments showed that quercetin, daidzein, and isorhamnetin had potential antiproliferative effects in MKN‐45 cells. Enzyme activity assays showed that quercetin could inhibit the activity of HER2 with an IC50 of 570.07 nmol/L. Our study provides a systematic investigation to explain the material basis and molecular mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine in treating diseases.
We are committed to establishing a systematic research method based on network pharmacology, multitarget molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation, and protein and experimental verification in vitro and in vivo, to establish a systematic analysis method for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatment of diseases. We aim to provide a possible theoretical and experimental basis for the standardization and internationalization of TCM.
Polymer materials have sparked considerable interest from both academic and industrial researchers due to their fantastic features and wide applications. The polymer synthetic method in a facile, ...rapid, energy-saving and environmentally-friendly fashion has been the goal of considerable researchers. In this regard, frontal polymerization (FP) has emerged as a promising strategy for various polymer materials. In this paper, we will present an overview of the current development of FP technology. Three traditional FP model and newly developed FP fashion are discussed, including thermal frontal polymerization (TFP), isothermal frontal polymerization (IFP) and photoinitiated frontal polymerization (PFP), as well as plasma-ignited FP, ultrasound-assisted FP, infrared laser-ignited FP, Magnetically-induced FP, Multichannel FP and the latest 3D printing FP. We also illustrate the applications of FP in the synthesis of nanocomposites, gradient materials, resins, interpenetrating polymer networks, functional gels and discuss the new development directions. We finally conclude with the challenges remained in this field and the future perspective on FP.
Display omitted
How to recover a clear image from a single motion-blurred image has long been a challenging open problem in digital imaging. In this paper, we focus on how to recover a motion-blurred image due to ...camera shake. A regularization-based approach is proposed to remove motion blurring from the image by regularizing the sparsity of both the original image and the motion-blur kernel under tight wavelet frame systems. Furthermore, an adapted version of the split Bregman method is proposed to efficiently solve the resulting minimization problem. The experiments on both synthesized images and real images show that our algorithm can effectively remove complex motion blurring from natural images without requiring any prior information of the motion-blur kernel.
The first microfluidic synthesis of ionomer‐based bifunctional Janus supraballs possessing two distinct magnetic‐nanoparticle‐dropped and quantum dots–polymer hemispheres within an anisotropic ...structure is reported. Based on such Janus supraballs with stable fluorescence and superparamagnetism, a magnetoresponsive fluorescent switch is developed to realize free‐writing under a magnetic field. This is a promising, simple way to fabricate novel flexible bead displays.