Efficacy of genotype-matched vaccine against re-emerging genotype V Japanese encephalitis virus.

Japanese encephalitis (JE), caused by the Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), is a highly threatening disease with no specific treatment. Fortunately, the development of vaccines has enabled effective defense against JE. However, re-emerging genotype V (GV) JEV poses a challenge as current vaccines are genotype III (GIII)-based and provide suboptimal protection. Given the isolation of GV JEVs from Malaysia, China, and the Republic of Korea, there is a concern about the potential for a broader outbreak. Under the hypothesis that a GV-based vaccine is necessary for effective defense against GV JEV, we developed a pentameric recombinant antigen using cholera toxin B as a scaffold and mucosal adjuvant, which was conjugated with the E protein domain III of GV by genetic fusion. This GV-based vaccine antigen induced a more effective immune response in mice against GV JEV isolates compared to GIII-based antigen and efficiently protected animals from lethal challenges. Furthermore, a bivalent vaccine approach, inoculating simultaneously with GIII- and GV-based antigens, showed protective efficacy against both GIII and GV JEVs. This strategy presents a promising avenue for comprehensive protection in regions facing the threat of diverse JEV genotypes, including both prevalent GIII and GI as well as emerging GV strains.

CoFeBP Micro Flowers (MFs) for Highly Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Reaction and Oxygen Evolution Reaction Electrocatalysts.

Hydrogen is one of the most promising green energy alternatives due to its high gravimetric energy density, zero-carbon emissions, and other advantages. In this work, a CoFeBP micro-flower (MF) electrocatalyst is fabricated as an advanced water-splitting electrocatalyst by a hydrothermal approach for hydrogen production with the highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The fabrication process of the CoFeBP MF electrocatalyst is systematically optimized by thorough investigations on various hydrothermal synthesis and post-annealing parameters. The best optimized CoFeBP MF electrode demonstrates HER/OER overpotentials of 20 mV and 219 mV at 20 mA/cm2. The CoFeBP MFs also exhibit a low 2-electrode (2-E) cell voltage of 1.60 V at 50 mA/cm2, which is comparable to the benchmark electrodes of Pt/C and RuO2. The CoFeBP MFs demonstrate excellent 2-E stability of over 100 h operation under harsh industrial operational conditions at 60 °C in 6 M KOH at a high current density of 1000 mA/cm2. The flower-like morphology can offer a largely increased electrochemical active surface area (ECSA), and systematic post-annealing can lead to improved crystallinity in CoFeBP MFs.

MoS2 Nanoplatelets on Hybrid Core-Shell (HyCoS) AuPd NPs for Hybrid SERS Platform for Detection of R6G.

In this work, a novel hybrid SERS platform incorporating hybrid core-shell (HyCoS) AuPd nanoparticles (NPs) and MoS2 nanoplatelets has been successfully demonstrated for strong surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) enhancement of Rhodamine 6G (R6G). A significantly improved SERS signal of R6G is observed on the hybrid SERS platform by adapting both electromagnetic mechanism (EM) and chemical mechanism (CM) in a single platform. The EM enhancement originates from the unique plasmonic HyCoS AuPd NP template fabricated by the modified droplet epitaxy, which exhibits strong plasmon excitation of hotspots at the nanogaps of metallic NPs and abundant generation of electric fields by localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). Superior LSPR results from the coupling of distinctive AuPd core-shell NP and high-density background Au NPs. The CM enhancement is associated with the charge transfer from the MoS2 nanoplatelets to the R6G. The direct contact via mixing approach with optimal mixing ratio can effectively facilitate the charges transfer to the HOMO and LUMO of R6G, leading to the orders of Raman signal amplification. The enhancement factor (EF) for the proposed hybrid platform reaches ~1010 for R6G on the hybrid SERS platform.

Vanadium-Doped FeBP Microsphere Croissant for Significantly Enhanced Bi-Functional HER and OER Electrocatalyst.

Ultra-fine hydrogen produced by electrochemical water splitting without carbon emission is a high-density energy carrier, which could gradually substitute the usage of traditional fossil fuels. The development of high-performance electrocatalysts at affordable costs is one of the major research priorities in order to achieve the large-scale implementation of a green hydrogen supply chain. In this work, the development of a vanadium-doped FeBP (V-FeBP) microsphere croissant (MSC) electrocatalyst is demonstrated to exhibit efficient bi-functional water splitting for the first time. The FeBP MSC electrode is synthesized by a hydrothermal approach along with the systematic control of growth parameters such as precursor concentration, reaction duration, reaction temperature and post-annealing, etc. Then, the heteroatom doping of vanadium is performed on the best FeBP MSC by a simple soaking approach. The best optimized V-FeBP MSC demonstrates the low HER and OER overpotentials of 52 and 180 mV at 50 mA/cm2 in 1 M KOH in a three-electrode system. In addition, the two-electrode system, i.e., V-FeBP || V-FeBP, demonstrates a comparable water-splitting performance to the benchmark electrodes of Pt/C || RuO2 in 1 M KOH. Similarly, exceptional performance is also observed in natural sea water. The 3D MSC flower-like structure provides a very high surface area that favors rapid mass/electron-transport pathways, which improves the electrocatalytic activity. Further, the V-FeBP electrode is examined in different pH solutions and in terms of its stability under industrial operational conditions at 60 °C in 6 M KOH, and it shows excellent stability.

A QoS aware resource allocation strategy for 3D A/V streaming in OFDMA based wireless systems.

Three-dimensional (3D) video is expected to be a "killer app" for OFDMA-based broadband wireless systems. The main limitation of 3D video streaming over a wireless system is the shortage of radio resources due to the large size of the 3D traffic. This paper presents a novel resource allocation strategy to address this problem. In the paper, the video-plus-depth 3D traffic type is considered. The proposed resource allocation strategy focuses on the relationship between 2D video and the depth map, handling them with different priorities. It is formulated as an optimization problem and is solved using a suboptimal heuristic algorithm. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme provides a better quality of service compared to conventional schemes.

Coexistence of WiFi and WiMAX systems based on PS-request protocols.

We introduce both the coexistence zone within the WiMAX frame structure and a PS-Request protocol for the coexistence of WiFi and WiMAX systems sharing a frequency band. Because we know that the PS-Request protocol has drawbacks, we propose a revised PS-Request protocol to improve the performance. Two PS-Request protocols are based on the time division operation (TDO) of WiFi system and WiMAX system to avoid the mutual interference, and use the vestigial power management (PwrMgt) bit within the Frame Control field of the frames transmitted by a WiFi AP. The performance of the revised PS-Request protocol is evaluated by computer simulation, and compared to those of the cases without a coexistence protocol and to the original PS-Request protocol.