Dysbiosis, departure of the gut microbiome from a healthy state, has been suggested to be a powerful biomarker of disease incidence and progression
. Diagnostic applications have been proposed for ...inflammatory bowel disease diagnosis and prognosis
, colorectal cancer prescreening
and therapeutic choices in melanoma
. Noninvasive sampling could facilitate large-scale public health applications, including early diagnosis and risk assessment in metabolic
and cardiovascular diseases
. To understand the generalizability of microbiota-based diagnostic models of metabolic disease, we characterized the gut microbiota of 7,009 individuals from 14 districts within 1 province in China. Among phenotypes, host location showed the strongest associations with microbiota variations. Microbiota-based metabolic disease models developed in one location failed when used elsewhere, suggesting that such models cannot be extrapolated. Interpolated models performed much better, especially in diseases with obvious microbiota-related characteristics. Interpolation efficiency decreased as geographic scale increased, indicating a need to build localized baseline and disease models to predict metabolic risks.
N6‐Methyladenosine (m6A) modification has been implicated in many biological processes. However, its role in cancer has not been well studied. Here, we demonstrate that m6A modifications are ...decreased in hepatocellular carcinoma, especially in metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma, and that methyltransferase‐like 14 (METTL14) is the main factor involved in aberrant m6A modification. Moreover, METTL14 down‐regulation acts as an adverse prognosis factor for recurrence‐free survival of hepatocellular carcinoma and is significantly associated with tumor metastasis in vitro and in vivo. We confirm that METTL14 interacts with the microprocessor protein DGCR8 and positively modulates the primary microRNA 126 process in an m6A‐dependent manner. Further experiments show that microRNA 126 inhibits the repressing effect of METTL14 in tumor metastasis. Conclusion: These studies reveal an important role of METTL14 in tumor metastasis and provide a fresh view on m6A modification in tumor progression. (Hepatology 2017;65:529‐543).
Grain refining is a promising approach to improve mechanical properties of magnesium alloys, but how grain size and twins affect corrosion behaviour is not well understood. In this work, corrosion ...resistance of AZ31B alloy with different grain sizes is studied in 3.5% NaCl solution using immersion testing, evolved hydrogen gas measurement and potentiodynamic polarisation measurement. Intra-granular corrosion was predominant and the existence of twins further accelerated the corrosion. The effect of grain size was more pronounced in the corrosion of the untwinned microstructure. The corrosion rate significantly increased as the average grain size increased from 65 to 250
μm.
Periodontitis is an infection-driven inflammatory disease, which is characterized by gingival inflammation and bone loss. Periodontitis is associated with various systemic diseases, including ...cardiovascular, respiratory, musculoskeletal, and reproductive system related abnormalities. Recent theory attributes the pathogenesis of periodontitis to oral microbial dysbiosis, in which Porphyromonas gingivalis acts as a critical agent by disrupting host immune homeostasis. Lipopolysaccharide, proteases, fimbriae, and some other virulence factors are among the strategies exploited by P. gingivalis to promote the bacterial colonization and facilitate the outgrowth of the surrounding microbial community. Virulence factors promote the coaggregation of P. gingivalis with other bacteria and the formation of dental biofilm. These virulence factors also modulate a variety of host immune components and subvert the immune response to evade bacterial clearance or induce an inflammatory environment. In this chapter, our focus is to discuss the virulence factors of periodontal pathogens, especially P. gingivalis, and their roles in regulating immune responses during periodontitis progression.
The breaking of SU(6) symmetry to a more general flavor SU(3) symmetry could serve as a potential explanation for the “hyperon puzzle” of neutron stars by adjusting the hyperon potentials. ...Specifically, when the soft relativistic mean-field (RMF) Λ hyperon potentials fall within the domains of chiral SU(3) interactions NLO13 with two-body forces, the maximum mass of neutron stars is expected to be lower than 2.0 M⊙, whereas it can exceed 2.0M⊙ if the RMF Λ hyperon potentials are sufficiently stiff to be consistent with those from chiral SU(3) interactions NLO13 with three-body forces. In our investigation involving these two types of Λ hyperon potentials, we explore how the hyperon yields and flows are affected in heavy-ion collisions. We find that the inclusion of hyperon potentials results in better agreement of the Λ directed flows with data but without clear differentiation in the stiffness of the hyperon potentials. Similarly negligent is the disparity in the rapidity distributions of the Λ collective flows predicted by the stiff and soft hyperon potentials. In contrast, the Λ collective flows beyond the central rapidity region turn out to be sensitive to the stiffness of the RMF equation of state (EOS) with the preference of a soft RMF EOS to a stiff one. Notably, the transverse momentum distributions of Λ hyperon production are sensitive to both the stiffness of the RMF EOS and Λ hyperon potential at high transverse momenta.
Perovskite oxides hold great promise as efficient electrocatalysts for various energy‐related applications owing to their low cost, flexible structure, and high intrinsic catalytic activity. However, ...conventional synthetic methods can only obtain perovskite catalysts with large particle sizes, small surface areas, and few morphological features, leading to limited catalytic activity and thus posing a major challenge toward real‐world applications. Reducing the size of bulk perovskites down to the nanosize represents an efficient way to improve the electrocatalytic performance. A comprehensive overview of recent progress in the nanostructuring of perovskites for catalyzing several key reactions in metal–air batteries, water splitting, and solid oxide fuel cells is provided. A range of synthetic protocols for making perovskite nanostructures are summarized, followed by an emphasis on how each method can be tailored to obtain high‐performing perovskite nanocatalysts. These recent advances highlight the enormous potential of nanosized perovskites for facilitating the electrocatalytic reactions. The remaining challenges and future directions are pointed out for the development of next‐generation perovskite‐based nanostructured catalysts.
Nanostructured perovskite oxides have shown great promise as efficient electrocatalysts for various reactions including the oxygen reduction reaction, oxygen evolution reaction, hydrogen evolution reaction, and fuel oxidation reaction. A range of novel nanostructuring methods for making perovskites smaller are reviewed, offering tremendous opportunities for real‐world applications such as metal–air batteries, water splitting, and solid oxide fuel cells.
Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) represent a new family of porous polymers with highly ordered two or three-dimensional channels. Although numerous studies have been focused on the design and ...synthesis of COF in the form of powders, the development of COF-based separation membranes is still hampered by the challenges of COF particles agglomeration and harsh synthetic conditions. In this work, interfacial polymerization (IP) directly performed on polymeric substrates as employed in the traditional IP process of polyamide (PA) membranes is developed for the synthesis of COF-based membranes. With the moderate reaction rate between monomer pairs in corresponding aqueous and organic solutions, a conformal growth of COF crystallites directly composited with the polysulfone (PSF) ultrafiltration substrates can be realized within 1 min. The synthesis parameters including reaction time and precursor concentrations are optimized, and thus-synthesized COF/PSF membrane presents a stable rejection to dye (Congo red) of 99.5% with a high water permeance of up to 50 L m−2 h−1 bar−1, which is 2–10 times higher than that of many other membranes with similar rejection. This convenient IP process is expected to facilitate the up-scaling and real-world applications of COF-based membranes.
Display omitted
•COF-based membrane has been directly synthesized on polymeric substrates by IP.•TpPa amount is the critical factor to the performance of TpPa/PSF membrane.•TpPa/PSF membrane can effectively remove dye with a size above 1.5 nm from water.•The IP process is expected to facilitate the up-scaling of COF-based membranes.
We summarize our ongoing research endeavors to explore and discover porous MOFs for gas separation and purification.
Display omitted
•Our ongoing research endeavors to explore and discover porous ...MOFs for gas separation and purification are summarized.•Some of our breakthroughs on porous MOFs for gas separation and purification are described.•Strategies for pore and function engineering are discussed.
As a new generation of porous materials, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs, also known as porous coordination polymers) have shown great promise for gas separation and purification because of their unique pore structures and surfaces for their differential recognition of small gas molecules. In this review article, we summarize our ongoing research endeavors to explore and discover microporous MOFs for gas separation and purification. We have developed several approaches to systematically tune the pores and to immobilize functional sites, including (1) the primitive cubic net of interpenetrated microporous MOFs from the self-assembly of the paddle-wheel clusters, M2(CO2)4 (M = Cu2+, Zn2+…), with two types of organic dicarboxylic acid and pillar bidentate linkers; (2) microporous mixed-metal–organic frameworks (M′MOFs) through the metallo-ligands, and (3) microporous MOFs with dual functionalities. Such efforts have enabled us to make some breakthroughs on microporous MOFs for gas separation and purification, as demonstrated in the gas chromatographic separation of hexane isomers, kinetic D2/H2 separation, acetylene/ethylene separation, carbon dioxide capture, C2H2/CO2 and C3H4/C3H6 separation. Our group is one of the first groups who have envisioned the practical promise of microporous MOFs for the industrial gas separation and examined their separation capacities and efficiency using the fixed-bed adsorption and/or breakthrough experiments. Some of the very important and representative examples of these microporous MOFs for diverse gas separation and purification are highlighted in this review.
In this article, a structure based on one-dimensional photonic crystals that can be used for both angle sensing and refractive index sensing is proposed, which is achieved by optical Tamm state. ...Under Bragg scattering, its features are investigated by the transfer matrix method. This sensing structure is based on a multi-frequency absorption structure, which can achieve an absorption rate higher than 0.9 for three to four frequency points at the same time. The studied results demonstrate that the absorption peaks of such an absorption structure can be changed from three to four by adjusting the number of periods and silver layer thickness. Absorption peaks can occur red and blue shifts employing tailoring the thickness of defect and the angle of the incident light. By altering the thickness of the defect and the number of periods, the interval between the absorption peaks can be dominated. They are all with high-quality factors and can be used to bring about a high absorption sensor for the refractive index or angle. When it acts as a refractive index sensor, the operating range can cover from 2 to 2.7, whose sensitivity and average figure of merit are 32.3 THz/RIU and 100. If the presented device is used as an angle sensor, those values will become 0.5 THz/degree and 1.2, and its measuring range is from 25° to 70°. It can be said that the emergence of this special sensing structure will be possible to have a broad application prospect in the field of measurement.
PDF
