(1) Background: Many studies have shown that microgravity experienced by astronauts or long-term bedridden patients results in increased oxidative stress and bone loss. Low-molecular-weight ...chondroitin sulfates (LMWCSs) prepared from intact chondroitin sulfate (CS) have been demonstrated to possess good antioxidant and osteogenic activities in vitro. This study aimed to assess the antioxidant activity of the LMWCSs in vivo and evaluate their potential in preventing microgravity-induced bone loss. (2) Methods: we used hind limb suspension (HLS) mice to simulate microgravity in vivo. We investigated the effects of LMWCSs against oxidative stress damage and bone loss in HLS mice and compared the findings with those of CS and a non-treatment group. (3) Results: LMWCSs reduced the HLS-induced oxidative stress level, prevented HLS-induced alterations in bone microstructure and mechanical strength, and reversed changes in bone metabolism indicators in HLS mice. Additionally, LMWCSs downregulated the mRNA expression levels of antioxidant enzyme- and osteogenic-related genes in HLS mice. The results showed that overall effect of LMWCSs was better than that of CS. (4) Conclusions: LMWCSs protect against the bone loss caused by simulated microgravity, which may be related to their ability to reduce oxidative stress. LMWCSs can be envisaged as potential antioxidants and bone loss protective agents in microgravity.
This research aimed to investigate the effects of three LED spectra on growth, gas exchange, antioxidant activity and nutritional quality of three vegetable species. The compressible vegetable ...facilities (CVF) were developed and three kinds of typical LED lights (spectra) were set, including white LED light (W), red-blue-green LED light (RBG), and red-blue-white LED light (RBW). Three vegetable species, i.e. lettuce (Lactuca sativa L. cv. Rome), cherry radish (Raphanus sativas L. cv. Hongxin) and cherry tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum M. cv. Mosite), were chosen and grown (matrix culture) in the three LED lights for 40, 40 and 100 days, respectively. The results indicated that the vegetable plants grew well and were compact in the RBG and RBW treatments. There was the highest biomass or fruit (tomato) in the RBG treatment and the least one in the W treatment for three vegetable species. There were no significant differences in harvest index, ratio of shoot to root, and water content among three treatments. The production efficiency values of 9.0-9.7, 9.9-13.5 and 11.8-12.5 g DW d−1 m−2 for lettuce, radish and tomato plants in the RBG and the RBW treatments were higher than those in the W treatment. The photosynthetic and transpiration rates of three vegetable species in the RBG treatment were the highest among three treatments and the W treatment had the least one. There were significant effects of three spectra on antioxidant activities of three vegetable species. Higher PPFD percentages of blue in the RBG light and the RBW light increased the antioxidant activities of all vegetable plants compared the W light. But it had no significant difference between the RBG light and the RBW. The organic components including soluble sugar (SS) and protein (Prt) of lettuce and radish plants were affected significantly by three spectra, but not for tomato plants. The contents of Mg and Zn of radish plants in the RBG treatment were higher than those in other treatments. There were significant positive effects of RBW treatment on the contents of N and Mg of tomato plants. The different spectra did not affect the contents of N-NO3 and Cu of vegetable plants. This study demonstrated that the RBG light (spectrum) significantly enhanced the growth, gas exchange, antioxidant activity of the lettuce, radish, and tomato cultivars used in this study, and there are significant effects of different LED spectra on the nutritional quality (including organic components and several mineral elements) of the different species.
The effect of mixed light quality with red, blue, and green LED lamps on the growth of
Arthrospira platensis
was studied, so as to lay the theoretical and technical basis for establishing a ...photo-bioreactor lighting system for application in space. Meanwhile, indexes, like morphology, growth rate, photosynthetic pigment compositions, energy efficiency, and main nutritional components, were measured respectively. The results showed that the blue light combined with red light could decrease the tightness of filament, and the effect of green light was opposite. The combination of blue light or green light with red light induced the filaments to get shorter in length. The 8R2B treatment could promote the growth of
Arthrospira platensis
significantly, and its dry weight reached 1.36 g L
−1
, which was 25.93% higher than the control. What’s more, 8R2B treatment had the highest contents of carbohydrate and lipid, while 8R2G was rich in protein. 8R0.5G1.5B had the highest efficiency of biomass production, which was 161.53 mg L
−1
kW
−1
h
−1
. Therefore, the combination of red and blue light is more conducive to the growth of
Arthrospira platensis
, and a higher biomass production and energy utilization efficiency can be achieved simultaneously under the mixed light quality with the ratio of 8R0.5G1.5B.
In the recent years, the spiking neural network (SNN) has attracted increasing attention due to its low energy consumption and online learning potential. However, the design of SNN processor has not ...been thoroughly investigated in the past, resulting in limited performance and energy consumption. In this work, a fast and energy-efficient SNN processor with adaptive clock/event-driven computation scheme and online learning capability has been proposed. Several techniques have been proposed to reduce the computation time and energy consumption, including Adaptive Clock- and Event-Driven Computing Scheme, Neighboring PE Borrowing Technique, Compressed Spike Routing Technique and Reconfigurable PE for Inference and Learning. Implemented on a Virtex-7 FPGA, the proposed design achieves computation time of 3.15 ms/image, inference energy consumption of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">0.028~\mu </tex-math></inline-formula> J/synapse/image and online learning energy consumption of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">0.297~\mu </tex-math></inline-formula> J/synapse/image for the MNIST 10-class dataset, which outperform several state-of-the-art SNN processors. The proposed SNN processor is suitable for real-time and energy-constrained applications.
The ECG classification processor is a key component in wearable intelligent ECG monitoring devices which monitor the ECG signals in real time and detect the abnormality automatically. The ...state-of-the-art ECG classification processors for wearable intelligent ECG monitoring devices are faced with two challenges, including ultra-low energy consumption demand and high classification accuracy demand against patient-to-patient variability. To address the above two challenges, in this work, an ultra-energy-efficient ECG classification processor with high classification accuracy is proposed. Several design techniques have been proposed, including a reconfigurable SNN/ANN inference architecture for reducing energy consumption while maintaining classification accuracy, a reconfigurable on-chip learning architecture for improving the classification accuracy against patent-to-patient variability, and a dual-purpose binary encoding scheme of ECG heartbeats for further reducing the energy consumption. Fabricated with a 28nm CMOS technology, the proposed design consumes extremely low classification energy (0.3μJ) while achieving high classification accuracy (97.36%) against patient-to-patient variability, outperforming several state-of-the-art designs.
•The physicochemical characteristics and nutrients adsorption were investigated with four substrates.•Substrates P and V have better physicochemical characteristics and stronger nutrient ...adsorption.•Substrates P and V are more suitable for plant growth in space.
The primary physicochemical characteristics and the nutrient adsorption of different substrates were carried out, to select suitable cultivation substrates for plant cultivation in space. Four types of plant cultivation substrates (Profile substrate (P), black ceramsite (B), white ceramsite (W), and vermiculite (V)) were used to test and compare the primary physicochemical characteristics, such as micropore, bulk density, total porosity, specific surface area and available nutrient content, as well as the nutrients adsorption for NH4+, NO3–, PO43– and K+ with seven concentration gradients respectively. Substrate P contained more micropores, with higher parameter values of total porosity, cation exchange capacity, electrical conductivity, and specific surface area, moderate bulk density and pH, and more mineral nutrients such as potassium, magnesium, and sulfur; substrate B was porous, with smaller parameter values of total porosity, cation exchange capacity and specific surface area, minimum electrical conductivity, moderate bulk density, alkaline and smaller content of mineral elements (excepting for calcium); substrate W had smaller micropore size, the highest value of bulk density and contents of NO3– and PO43–. Other physicochemical parameters were equivalent to those of substrate B; substrate V was flaky, with the smallest values of bulk density, and the highest values of total porosity and cation exchange capacity. The values of electrical conductivity and specific surface area were smaller than those of substrate P. It contained more mineral nutrients of calcium and sulfur. Substrate V had the highest adsorption capacity for NH4+, NO3–, PO43– and K+, followed by substrate P, while substrate B and substrate W had relatively weak adsorption capacity. The adsorption capacity of four substrates for cations (NH4+ and K+) was significantly higher than that for anions (NO3– and PO43–). The orders of average adsorption amount for NH4+, NO3–, PO43– and K+ by four substrates were respectively: V > P > B > W, P > V > W > B, V > P > B > W and V > P > W > B. In comparison, substrate P and substrate V had better physicochemical characteristics, and stronger adsorption capacity for NH4+, NO3–, PO43–, and K+.
Efficient magnesium-lithium separation is key to extracting lithium resources from salt lake brines. However, efficient magnesium-lithium separation is constrained by the high magnesium-to-lithium ...ratios on the nanofiltration separation performance due to the weakened Donnan effect and inherent permeability-selectivity trade-off behaviour. To address this challenge, a dual methylpiperidinium ionic liquid was designed in this work and incorporated into polyamide networks to manipulate the structural properties of polyamide membrane for improved magnesium/lithium separation. We demonstrate that the piperidinium modification of polyamide networks not only modulated and enhanced the morphology, hydrophilicity, free volume and electropositivity, but also synergized the steric hindrance differentiation inside the membrane nanochannels. These structural advantages enabled the modified membrane to achieve high-separation performance with enhanced water permeance of 37.3 L m−2 h−1 bar−1 and Mg2+/Li+ selectivity of 30.6 (for Mg/Li mass ratio of 31.2). Molecular dynamics simulations further confirmed that the fast water transport and the difference in the ion separation behaviour are strongly correlated to the enhanced structural properties of membranes. We expect this work to provide insightful guidance for engineering high-performance membranes and make contributions in the application of nanofiltration in lithium mining from high Mg/Li ratio brines.
Synopsis: A new dual methylpiperidinium ionic liquid was integrated into polyamide nanofilm to develop nanofiltration membrane with high free volume and steric hindrance differentiation for magnesium/lithium separation. The resultant membrane achieved enhanced permeance combined with improved Li+/Mg2+ selectivity, which was corroborated by molecular dynamics simulations studies. Display omitted
•Novel dual methylpiperidinium based ionic liquid was designed and synthesized.•Polyamide nanofilm composite membrane with tuned network structures and properties fabricated.•Piperidinium-modification endowed high free volume, enhanced electropositivity and specific surface area properties.•Membrane exhibited enhanced water permeance of ∼37.3 Lm−2 h−1 bar−1 and improved Mg2+/Li+ selectivity of 30.6•Molecular fundamental insights were provided on membrane structure and water and ion trans-membrane transport.
Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) show great potential in various separation applications. However, fast nucleation rate and crystallization of MOFs, produce non-uniform and uncontrollable sized ...crystals, which are not suitable for the formation of MOF-based membranes. Herein, we propose the concept of utilizing protein polyphenol nanoassemblies (PPNs) as the building blocks for the confined growth of MOFs to fabricate zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIF-67)-based membranes. We first demonstrated that colloidal PPNs as modulators in solution enables the formation of ZIF-67 MOFs with uniform and controllable crystal sizes. Subsequently, we utilized the metal salt coordinated PPNs (Co2+@PPN) as the precursor layer matrix deposited on porous polymeric support to fabricate ZIF-67 membranes via in-situ growth strategy at room temperature. The resultant membrane features a robust heterogeneous and well-integrated ZIF-67-reinforced PPN (ZIF-67@PPN) microporous networks. Benefiting from the rigid and multidimensional micropores of ZIF-67, the optimized ZIF-67@PPN1 composite membrane with improved water stability exhibited good water permeance (45.68 L m−2 h−1 bar−1), excellent dye desalination performance (Na2SO4/Congo red selectivity of 1271.47), and good antibiotic desalination performance (NaCl/Erythromycin selectivity of 21.46). The findings in this work provide important engineering concepts for the development of MOF-based membranes using sustainable nature-derived building blocks for emergent environment-relevant desalination applications in the chemical process industry.
Colloidal protein-polyphenol nanoassemblies were employed as building blocks for the in situ growth of ZIF-67-based nanofiltration membrane on polymeric substrates. The protein-polyphenol nanoassemblies not only modulated the size and crystal morphology of the ZIF-67 but also facilitates the fabrication of ZIF-67@PPN nanoconfined membrane with multidimensional rigid micropores, which exhibited efficient dye desalination performance. Display omitted
•Metal ion pre-anchoring platform on polymeric substrate facilitates MOF membrane fabrication.•Protein-polyphenol nanoassemblies renders unform metal ion pre-anchoring platform on substrate.•Metal ion@PPN precursor layer promotes the modulated nucleation and confined growth of MOF crystals.•ZIF-67@PPN1 membrane achieved efficient dye desalination performance with Na2SO4/CR selectivity of 1271.47.•ZIF-67@PPN1 membrane exhibited good antibiotic desalination performance with NaCl/Erythromycin selectivity of 21.46.
Purpose
The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of mind-body therapy (MBT) and/or physical training in alleviating depressive symptoms among adult cancer patients through a ...meta-analysis.
Methods
PubMed, Embase, EBSCO, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library databases were searched from up to October 21, 2023. Effect sizes, 95% confidence intervals, and other pertinent values were computed utilizing a random-effects model with Review Manager 5.3 and StataMP 14. The reporting of findings adhered to the guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The PROSPERO registration code for this review is 4,203,477,316.
Results
10 randomized controlled trials (11 datasets) involving a total of 620 participants were selected for analysis. The results demonstrated that complementary therapies, encompassing MBT and physical training, were effective in alleviating depressive symptoms in adult cancer patients (SMD= -0.47; 95%CI: -0.87, -0.08;
P
= 0.02). Subgroup analysis indicate that physical training may effectively alleviate depressive symptoms (SMD= -0.72; 95%CI: -1.31, -0.13;
P
= 0.02), demonstrating moderate effect sizes. Conversely, MBT does not seem to significantly influence depressive symptoms (
P
= 0.69).
Conclusions
Complementary therapy lasting four weeks or more, incorporating physical training and MBT, has been shown to alleviate depressive symptoms in adult cancer patients. And physical training has a significant effect on depressive symptoms, while MBT has no effect. Nevertheless, given the constraints of the included studies, further research is required in the future to provide more robust evidence.
