A new electrochemical method has been proposed for the simultaneous determination of butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and propyl gallate (PG) in food matrices based on enzymatic biosensors. Spiny Au-Pt ...nanotubes (SAP NTs) was first synthesized and demonstrated to exhibit intrinsic peroxidase and catalase-like activity. The structure of SAP NTs provides large surface area and favorable medium for electron transfer, on which HRP were immobilized and acted as enzymatic biosensor for the simultaneous detection of BHA and PG. The results revealed that BHA and PG both have well-defined oxidation waves with peak potentials of 624 and 655 mV, respectively. Under the optimal conditions, the method behaved satisfactory analytical performance towards BHA and PG with a wide linear range of 0.3–50 mg L−1 and 0.1–100 mg L−1, as well as a detection limit of 0.046 mg L−1 and 0.024 mg L−1 (3σ/slope), respectively. Besides, the proposed method exhibits good sensitivity, stability and reproducibility, providing an alternative to fabricate electrode and construct sensitive biosensors.
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•SAP NTs was synthesized and demonstrated to exhibit intrinsic peroxidase and catalase-like activity.•The structure of SAP NTs provides larger surface area and more favorable medium for electron transfer.•Horseradish peroxidase immobilized on Au-Pt nanotube/Au-graphene acted as enzymatic biosensor.•The simultaneous detection of BHA and PG in food matrices was achieved based on enzymatic biosensors.
BACKGROUNDThere is uncertainty with respect to SARS-CoV-2 transmission in children (0-19 years) with controversy on effectiveness of school-closures in controlling the pandemic. It is of equal ...importance to evaluate the risk of transmission in children who are often asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic carriers that may incidentally transmit SARS-CoV-2 in different settings. We conducted this review to assess transmission and risks for SARS-CoV-2 in children (by age-groups or grades) in community and educational-settings compared to adults.METHODSData for the review were retrieved from PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, WHO COVID-19 Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) Database, WanFang Database, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature (LILACS), Google Scholar, and preprints from medRixv and bioRixv) covering a timeline from December 1, 2019 to April 1, 2021. Population-screening, contact-tracing and cohort studies reporting prevalence and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in children were included. Data were extracted according to PRISMA guidelines. Meta-analyses were performed using Review Manager 5.3.RESULTSNinety studies were included. Compared to adults, children showed comparable national (risk ratio (RR) = 0.87, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.71-1.060 and subnational (RR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.66-1.01) prevalence in population-screening studies, and lower odds of infection in community/household contact-tracing studies (odds ratio (OR) = 0.62, 95% CI = 0.46-0.84). On disaggregation, adolescents observed comparable risk (OR = 1.22, 95% CI = 0.74-2.04) with adults. In educational-settings, children attending daycare/preschools (OR = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.38-0.72) were observed to be at lower-risk when compared to adults, with odds of infection among primary (OR = 0.85, 95% CI = 0.55-1.31) and high-schoolers (OR = 1.30, 95% CI = 0.71-2.38) comparable to adults. Overall, children and adolescents had lower odds of infection in educational-settings compared to community and household clusters.CONCLUSIONSChildren (<10 years) showed lower susceptibility to COVID-19 compared to adults, whereas adolescents in communities and high-schoolers had comparable risk. Risks of infection among children in educational-settings was lower than in communities. Evidence from school-based studies demonstrate it is largely safe for children (<10 years) to be at schools, however older children (10-19 years) might facilitate transmission. Despite this evidence, studies focusing on the effectiveness of mitigation measures in educational settings are urgently needed to support both public health and educational policy-making for school reopening.
More recently laparoscopic radical cystectomy (LRC) has increasingly been an attractive alternative to open radical cystectomy (ORC) and many centers have reported their early experiences in the ...treatment of bladder cancer. Evaluate the safety and efficacy of LRC compared with ORC in the treatment of bladder cancer.
A systematic search of Medline, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library was performed up to Mar 1, 2013. Outcomes of interest assessing the two techniques included demographic and clinical baseline characteristics, perioperative, pathologic and oncological variables, and post-op neobladder function and complications.
Sixteen eligible trials evaluating LRC vs ORC were identified including seven prospective and nine retrospective studies. Although LRC was associated with longer operative time (p<0.001), patients might benefit from significantly fewer overall complications (p<0.001), less blood loss (p<0.001), shorter length of hospital stay (p<0.001), less need of blood transfusion (p<0.001), less narcotic analgesic requirement (p<0.001), shorter time to ambulation (p = 0.03), shorter time to regular diet (p<0.001), fewer positive surgical margins (p = 0.006), fewer positive lymph node (p = 0.05), lower distant metastasis rate (p = 0.05) and fewer death (p = 0.004). There was no significant difference in other demographic parameters except for a lower ASA score (p = 0.01) in LRC while post-op neobladder function were similar between the two groups.
Our data suggest that LRC appears to be a safe, feasible and minimally invasive alternative to ORC with reliable perioperative safety, pathologic & oncologic efficacy, comparable post-op neobladder function and fewer complications. Because of the inherent limitations of the included studies, further large sample prospective, multi-centric, long-term follow-up studies and randomized control trials should be undertaken to confirm our findings.
Developing high-performance and cost-competitive electrocatalysts have great significance for the massive commercial production of water-splitting hydrogen. Ni-based electrocatalysts display ...tremendous potential for electrocatalytic water splitting. Herein, we synthesize a novel NiFe-layered double hydroxide (LDH) electrocatalyst in nanosheets array on high-purity Ni foam. By adjusting the Ni/Fe ratio, the microstructure, and even the behavior of the electrocatalyst in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), changes significantly. The as-obtained material shows a small overpotential of 223 mV at 10 mAcm
as well as a low Tafel slope of 48.9 mV·dec
in the 1 M KOH electrolyte. In addition, it can deliver good stability for at least 24 h of continuous working at 10 mAcm
. This work proposes a strategy for engineering catalysts and provides a method for the development of other Ni-based catalysts with excellent performance.
A novel actinobacterium, strain YIM 96748
, was isolated from a saline soil sample collected from the south bank of Aiding Lake in Xinjiang Province, Northwest China. Phylogenetic analysis based on ...16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that strain YIM 96748
is closely related to
BNT52
(98.9%) and
KLBMP 1262
(97.2%). The DNA-DNA relatedness between strain YIM 96748
and its closest type strain
BNT52
was 59.6%. The average nucleotide identity between strain YIM 96748
and its neighbor strain was 88.97%. Based on the genotypic and phenotypic characteristics, it is concluded that strain YIM 96748
represents a novel species of the genus
, whose name was proposed as
sp. nov. The type strain is YIM 96748
. To investigate the biosynthetic potential of producing secondary metabolites, the complete genome of YIM 96748
was sequenced and analyzed. The complete genome sequence of YIM 96748
consists of a 7,657,695-bp circular chromosome, comprising 7,162 predicted genes with a DNA G + C content of 70.21 mol%. Fifty-one putative biosynthetic gene clusters of secondary metabolites were found, including the antibacterial/antitumor agent TLN-05220, the antibacterial agent nocardicin A, the antifungal agent nystatin A1, and the osmolyte ectoine. The investigation of the secondary metabolites of
YIM96748
led to the discovery of two new phenylpropyl acetate enantiomers, amycoletates A (1) and B (2), and five known compounds: 4-hydroxy phenethyl acetate (3), 2-
-acetoxyphenylethanol (4), (
)-ethyl indole-3-lactate (5), (
)-ethyl indole-3-lactate (6), and
-hydroxybenzoic acid (7). One of the gene clusters 14, 36, and 43, which contain a single module of polyketide synthase, might be responsible for the biosynthesis of compounds 1 and 2 from compound 7 as a precursor. Further studies, including the one strain many compounds approach (OSMAC) and genetic modification, are needed to explore novel compounds from this talented halophilic
strain.
The safety and feasibility of robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) compared with retropubic radical prostatectomy(RRP) is debated. Recently, a number of large-scale and high-quality studies ...have been conducted.
To obtain a more valid assessment, we update the meta-analysis of RARP compared with RRP to assessed its safety and feasibility in treatment of prostate cancer.
A systematic search of Medline, Embase, Pubmed, and the Cochrane Library was performed to identify studies that compared RARP with RRP. Outcomes of interest included perioperative, pathologic variables and complications.
78 studies assessing RARP vs. RRP were included for meta-analysis. Although patients underwent RRP have shorter operative time than RARP (WMD: 39.85 minutes; P < 0.001), patients underwent RARP have less intraoperative blood loss (WMD = -507.67ml; P < 0.001), lower blood transfusion rates (OR = 0.13; P < 0.001), shorter time to remove catheter (WMD = -3.04day; P < 0.001), shorter hospital stay (WMD = -1.62day; P < 0.001), lower PSM rates (OR:0.88; P = 0.04), fewer positive lymph nodes (OR:0.45;P < 0.001), fewer overall complications (OR:0.43; P < 0.001), higher 3- and 12-mo potent recovery rate (OR:3.19;P = 0.02; OR:2.37; P = 0.005, respectively), and lower readmission rate (OR:0.70, P = 0.03). The biochemical recurrence free survival of RARP is better than RRP (OR:1.33, P = 0.04). All the other calculated results are similar between the two groups.
Our results indicate that RARP appears to be safe and effective to its counterpart RRP in selected patients.
A new salt of lithium trifluoro(perfluoro-
-butyloxyl)borate (LiTFPFB) which possesses a bulky fluoroalkoxyl functional group in the borate anion has been synthesized for high energy lithium metal ...batteries. The presence of the bulky fluoroalkoxyl group in the borate anion of LiTFPFB can facilitate ion dissociation and
generate a protective film on the Li anode. As a result, LiTFPFB possesses a dramatically improved ionic conductivity and LiFePO
/Li cells using 1.0 M LiTFPFB/PC electrolyte exhibit improved capacity retention especially upon cycling at elevated temperature (60 °C).
surface analysis reveals that a protective film is formed on the lithium metal anode, which can inhibit further decomposition of the electrolyte. Furthermore, the LiTFPFB based electrolyte also imparts an excellent cycling performance to LiCoO
/Li metal cells for 500 cycles. The outstanding performance of the LiTFPFB salt demonstrates that it is a very promising baseline salt for next generation lithium metal batteries.
Improving spectral efficiency under a certain energy limitation is an important design metric for future wireless communications as a response to the growing transmission demand of wireless devices. ...In order to improve spectral efficiency for communication systems without increasing energy consumption, this paper considers a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)–based cognitive radio network, with the assistance of a wireless-powered relay station (RS), and then analyzes the system outage performance under amplified-and-forward (AF) and decoded-and-forward (DF) cooperative transmission modes. Specifically, the base station (BS) has the opportunity to cooperate by transmitting information through the RS, depending on whether the RS can harvest sufficient RF energy for cooperative transmission. That is to say, when the energy stored by the RS is sufficient for cooperative transmission, the RS will assist the BS to forward information; otherwise, the BS will send information through direct links, while the RS converts the radio frequency (RF) signals sent by the BS into energy for future transmission. Moreover, the transmission power required by the RS for cooperative transmission is usually relatively large, while the amount of harvested energy by the RS in a transmission slot is usually low, so it takes several consecutive time slots to accumulate enough transmission energy. To this end, we utilize a discrete-time Markov chain to describe the processes of charging and discharging of the RS. Subsequently, we derive the closed-form outage probabilities of both the primary and secondary systems for the considered system in AF and DF modes through mathematical analysis, and verify the accuracy of the analyses through Monte Carlo simulation. The simulation results show that the two proposed cooperative transmission schemes with AF and DF relaying techniques outperform both direct transmission and other similar schemes in both the primary and secondary system, while the DF scheme can provide better performance than the AF scheme within the range of setting values.
Abstract
Background
Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) regulates multiple aspects of innate immunity and tissue inflammation. Recently, it has been reported that PTX3 deficiency enhances interleukin ...(IL)-17A–dominant pulmonary inflammation in an ovalbumin (OVA)-induced mouse asthma model. However, whether PTX3 treatment would provide protection against allergic airway inflammation has not been clearly elucidated. The goal of this study was to further investigate the effect of recombinant PTX3 administration on the phenotype of asthma.
Methods
C57BL/6 J mice were sensitized and challenged with OVA to induce eosinophilic asthma model, as well as sensitized with OVA plus LPS and challenged with OVA to induce neutrophilic asthma model. We evaluated effect of recombinant PTX3 on asthma phenotype through both asthma models. The bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) inflammatory cells and cytokines, airway hyperresponsiveness, and pathological alterations of the lung tissues were assessed.
Results
In both eosinophilic and neutrophilic asthma models, PTX3 treatment provoked airway hyperresponsiveness, concomitant with increased inflammatory cytokines IL-4, IL-17, eotaxin, and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 and aggravated airway accumulation of inflammatory cells, especially eosinophils and neutrophils. In histological analysis of the lung tissue, administration of PTX3 promoted inflammatory cells infiltration, mucus production, and collagen deposition. In addition, PTX3 also significantly enhanced STAT3 phosphorylation in lung tissue.
Conclusion
Our results show that exogenous PTX3 can exacerbate multiple asthmatic features by promoting both eosinophils and neutrophils lung infiltration and provide new evidence to better understand the complex role of PTX3 in allergic airway inflammation.
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