SnO2/Au Microelectromechanical Systems Modified by Oxygen Vacancies for Enhanced Sensing of Dioctyl Phthalate.

Dioctyl phthalate (DOP) serves as a characteristic gas utilized in early electrical fire detection, its detection offers promising prospects for the prevention of electrical fires. In this study, we employed a modified photodeposition method to prepare Tin dioxide (SnO2) materials co-modified with Au and oxygen vacancies. Subsequently, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) gas sensor for DOP detection were fabricated, utilizing 0.5 %Au/SnO2-I as the sensing material. Characterization results reveal the presence of abundant oxygen vacancies in 0.5 %Au/SnO2-I. The synergistic interplay of Au and oxygen vacancies resulted in a remarkable response of 9.98 to 20 ppm of DOP at operational temperature of 250 °C. This represents a significant 96 % enhancement in comparison to the response value of 4.50 exhibited by pure SnO2 at 300 °C. Notably, this gas sensor boasts low power consumption and demonstrates a quick response in the detection of overheating polyvinyl chloride (PVC) cables under simulated conditions.

Nitric oxide detection using principal component analysis spectral structure matching to the UV derivative spectrum.

Ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy is widely applied in real-time environmental monitoring, especially in diesel vehicle nitrogen monoxide (NO) emissions. However, in field experiments, UV absorption spectrum may exist for different degrees of drifts. Spectral jitters may exist for various reasons such as optical power variation, electrical signal drift, and the refractive index jitters of the optical path for an extended period of time, which causes the detection system to be calibrated. And the pulse xenon lamps as the UV source are characterized by specific emission lines that interfere in spectral analysis directly. For these problems, we proposed the spectral structure matching method based on principal component analysis (PCA), which was compared with the conventional polynomial fitting method to observe feasibility and variability. Further, the UV derivative spectrum was applied to the system appropriately, due to the variation of the absorption peak, and was only related to the target gas by using the above method. We validated our method experimentally by performing the NO UV detection system with the calibration and the comparison test. The results suggested that the calibration relative error was less than 9% and the measurement relative error was less than 6% for this wide range by the proposed processes, which optimized the interference of spectral structures and fluctuation to the system and therefore provided better monitoring. This study may provide an alternative spectral analysis method that is unaffected on the specific emission lines of lamps and is not limited to the spectral region and the target gas.

Targeted isolation of new polycyclic tetramate macrolactams from the deepsea-derived Streptomyces somaliensis SCSIO ZH66.

With a combined strategy of bioinformatics analysis, gene manipulation coupled with variation of growth conditions, the targeted activation of polycyclic tetramate macrolactams (PTMs) in the deepsea-derived Streptomyces somaliensis SCSIO ZH66 was conducted, which afforded a new (1) PTM, named somamycin A, along with three enol-type tetramic acid tautomers (2-4, somamycins B-D) of 10-epi-hydroxymaltophilin, 10-epi-maltophilin and 10-epi-HSAF, respectively. The structures of compounds 1-4 were elucidated by extensive spectroscopic analyses together with ECD calculations. Compound 1 exhibited notable growth inhibition against plant pathogenic fungi Fusariumoxysporum MHKW and Alternariabrassicae BCHB with the MIC values of 1.6 and 3.1 µg/mL, respectively, which were more potent than those of the positive control nystatin; and compounds 3 and 4 displayed moderate antifungal activities. Moreover, compounds 1-4 exhibited moderate cytotoxicity against the human cancer cell lines of HCT116 and K562.

Correlation between single nucleotide polymorphisms of DACH1 gene microRNA binding site and susceptibility of patients with endometrial cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To study the relationship between single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of the 3 primer untranslated region (UTR) variants of the cell fate determination factor Dachshund 1(DACH1) gene and the susceptibility of patients with endometrial cancer (EC). METHODS: Genomic DNA was extracted from the peripheral venous blood of 235 EC patients and 235 healthy controls, and the DACH1 gene rs9285274, rs9529895, rs17088351, and rs59352399 loci were analyzed by Sanger sequencing. Patients progression-free survival (PFS) was recorded after 3 years follow-up from October 2016 to October 2019. RESULTS: Carriers of the C allele of the DACH1 gene rs9529895 locus had a significantly lower risk for EC than T allele carriers (odds ratio = 0.56, 95%confidence interval: 0.38-0.84, P < .01). The correlation between DACH1 gene rs9529895 locus SNP and the risk for EC was affected by age, body mass index, smoking, drinking, and diabetes. Age, and rs9285274, rs9529895, and rs59352399 locus SNP were the best models for predicting the risk for EC. The accuracy rate was 57.02%, and the Cross-validation Consistency was 10/10 (x = 4.33, P = .04). The DACH1 gene rs9529895 locus C allele (TC+CC) carriers had significantly higher PFS than the TT genotype carriers (P = .04). The DACH1 gene was expressed in decreased amounts in the cancer tissues of EC patients, and the DACH1 mRNA expression level in the CC genotype, TC genotype, and TT genotype of rs9529895 locus was also decreased (P = .02). CONCLUSION: DACH1 gene rs9529895 locus SNP is significantly related to the risk for EC and PFS of EC patients. The possible mechanism behind this relationship is that the DACH1 gene rs9529895 locus SNP affects DACH1 expression level.

Adaptive monostable stochastic resonance for processing UV absorption spectrum of nitric oxide.

When ultraviolet (UV) absorption spectroscopy technology is used for nitric oxide (NO) detection, the background noise will directly affect the accuracy of concentration inversion, especially in low concentrations. Traditional processing methods attempt to eliminate background noise, which damages the absorption spectrum characteristics. However, stochastic resonance (SR) can utilize the noise to extract a weak characteristic signal. This paper reports a monostable stochastic resonance (MSR) model for processing an UV NO absorption spectrum. By analyzing the characteristics of UV absorption spectrum of NO, the evaluation indexes were constructed, thereby an adaptive MSR method was designed for parameter optimization. The numerical simulation confirmed the absorbance peak can be amplified and spectral signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be in the stable range of the proposed method, when noise intensity increased. Finally, this experiment obtained a NO detection limit (3σ) of 1.456 ppm and the maximum relative deviation of concentration is 6.32% by this proposed method, which is satisfactory for processing of the UV NO absorption spectrum.

Automatic and Fast Recognition of On-Road High-Emitting Vehicles Using an Optical Remote Sensing System.

Optical remote sensing systems (RSSs) for monitoring vehicle emissions can be installed on any road and provide non-contact on-road measurements, that allow law enforcement departments to monitor emissions of a large number of on-road vehicles. Although many studies in different research fields have been performed using RSSs, there has been little research on the automatic recognition of on-road high-emitting vehicles. In general, high-emitting vehicles and low-emitting vehicles are classified by fixed emission concentration cut-points, that lack a strict scientific basis, and the actual cut-points are sensitive to environmental factors, such as wind speed and direction, outdoor temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, and so on. Besides this issue, single instantaneous monitoring results from RSSs are easily affected by systematic and random errors, leading to unreliable results. This paper proposes a method to solve the above problems. The automatic and fast-recognition method for on-road high-emitting vehicles (AFR-OHV) is the first application of machine learning, combined with big data analysis for remote sensing monitoring of on-road high-emitting vehicles. The method constructs adaptively updates a clustering database using real-time collections of emission datasets from an RSS. Then, new vehicles, that pass through the RSS, are recognized rapidly by the nearest neighbor classifier, which is guided by a real-time updated clustering database. Experimental results, based on real data, including the Davies-Bouldin Index (DBI) and Dunn Validity Index (DVI), show that AFR-OHV provides faster convergence speed and better performance. Furthermore, it is not easily disturbed by outliers. Our classifier obtains high scores for Precision (PRE), Recall (REC), the Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC), and the Area Under the Curve (AUC). The rates of different classifications of excessive emissions and self-adaptive cut-points are calculated automatically in order to provide references for law enforcement departments to establish evaluation criterion for on-road high-emitting vehicles, detected by the RSS.

Photo-mediated co-loading of highly dispersed MnOx-Pt on g-C3N4 boosts the ambient catalytic oxidation of formaldehyde.

Exploration of effective metal/support combinations and new fabrication approaches is attractive in the catalytic oxidation of HCHO. In this study, we proposed graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) as a non-metal oxide based support to co-load Pt and MnOx through room-temperature photodeposition and in turn applied for HCHO oxidation. Here, Pt was the active component, while MnOx was the cocatalyst to compensate the shortage of active oxygen on g-C3N4. g-C3N4 was found as a promising support for the high dispersion of Pt and MnOx. Well dispersed Pt nanoparticles with an average diameter of 1.8 nm were obtained, which were highly favorable for the loading of MnOx as MnOx-Pt/g-C3N4. Catalytic performance results indicated that the limited HCHO conversion over g-C3N4 and Pt/g-C3N4 was significantly promoted with the introduction of MnOx, with an optimum MnOx amount of 3.0 wt%. The developed catalysts remained highly stable for 30 h. The enhanced catalytic activity of MnOx-Pt/g-C3N4 was due to the increased number of active oxygen species with the introduction of MnOx and the efficient transfer of electrons from g-C3N4 to Pt. Compared to the traditional impregnation, photodeposition process avoids the application of H2 and high temperatures, scoring in favor of its green and safe nature. This study can concomitantly provide a new way for the design and fabrication of a non-metal oxide based support for the efficient HCHO catalytic oxidation and the application of the photocatalytic process in catalyst fabrication.

Research on the spectral phase correction method for the atmospheric detection in open space.

During the atmospheric detection process in open space, the excessive phase noise is introduced into the signal, due to the atmospheric turbulence, which causes the intensity and phase fluctuation. In the previous study, a spectral data processing method based on the co-frequency and dual-wave has been used to reduce the influence of the scintillation noise from the atmospheric turbulence in open space, while the influence of the phase noise remains to be solved. So the wavelength modulated signal is theoretically analyzed at first. On studying the relationship between the dual-waves in one cycle to eliminate the phase fluctuation and reduce the phase fluctuation caused by the atmospheric turbulence, a new method of the spectral phase correction for the open space atmospheric detection has been proposed. An atmospheric detection experiment on the phase correction in the open space based on co-frequency and dual-wave has been carried out. The results show that the maximum fluctuation of the spectral signal processed with this method is 1.06%, while the power spectral density fluctuation is suppressed below 50Hz, and the Allan analysis result is 8.8 × 10-8(1s). Compared with the traditional concentration inversion method using 2f-wavelength modulation and the classical light intensity elimination, the proposed phase correction method can effectively reduce the fluctuation of random noise caused by the short-term atmospheric turbulence and the laser flashing to improve the stability of the concentration measurement, which has practical engineering value.

Negligible Isotopic Effect on Dissociation of Hydrogen Bonds.

Isotopic effects on the formation and dissociation kinetics of hydrogen bonds are studied in real time with ultrafast chemical exchange spectroscopy. The dissociation time of hydrogen bond between phenol-OH and p-xylene (or mesitylene) is found to be identical to that between phenol-OD and p-xylene (or mesitylene) in the same solvents. The experimental results demonstrate that the isotope substitution (D for H) has negligible effects on the hydrogen bond kinetics. DFT calculations show that the isotope substitution does not significantly change the frequencies of vibrational modes that may be along the hydrogen bond formation and dissociation coordinate. The zero point energy differences of these modes between hydrogen bonds with OH and OD are too small to affect the activation energy of the hydrogen bond dissociation in a detectible way at room temperature.

Henoch-Schönlein purpura following high-voltage electric burn injury: A case report and review of the literature.

Henoch-Schönlein Purpura (HSP) is a systemic vasculitis of unknown cause, with immune-mediated inflammation of the small vessels, which is characterized by a series of clinical symptoms, such as purpuric rash, colicky abdominal pain, arthritis and acute glomerulonephritis. Twenty-one days following a high-voltage electrical burn injury, a 40-year-old man developed classic clinical symptoms of HSP, including purpuric rash on bilateral lower extremities and abdominal pain. The patient was diagnosed with HSP associated with high-voltage burn injury, which is an extremely rare phenomenon. The diagnosis was based on the clinical manifestations of purpuric rash, abdominal pain and arthralgia, as well as the findings of laboratory examinations [increased levels of serum immunoglobulin A (11.6g/l) and complements C3 (9.6 g/l) and C4 (7.6 g/l), and a positive fecal occult blood test]. The patient was treated with antihistamines (loratadine tablets; 10 mg/day), anti-inflammatory medication (methylprednisolone sodium succinate; 40 mg/day) and oral omeprazole magnesium. The symptoms gradually decreased within 2 weeks from treatment and no abnormality was observed at the 3-, 6- and 12-month follow-ups. In patients who have suffered an electrical burn injury, this autoimmune disease may be caused by long-term inflammation. Therefore, examination of the liver and kidney functions of such patients is important in order to decrease the risk of post-traumatic immune system dysfunction.

Aplasia cutis congenita: A case report and literature review.

Aplasia cutis congenita (ACC) is a rare condition with an unclear pathogenic mechanism, although the condition has been suggested to occur as a result of the disrupted development or degeneration of skin in utero. ACC associated with fetus papyraceus has been described in numerous studies. Although there have been several reports of ACC, surgical treatment of ACC using the head as a site of donor skin is rarely reported. The present study describes the case of a 1-week-old patient with ACC that was healed by skin grafting, using the scalp as the donor site. The outcome of the procedure showed that the use of the scalp as a donor skin site for grafting is an effective treatment for large and deep ACC lesions arising on sites other than the head.

Controlled growth of semiconductor nanofilms within TiO2 nanotubes for nanofilm sensitized solar cells.

Anodized TiO2 nanotubes were decorated by II-VI semiconductor nanofilms via atomic layer deposition (ALD) and further employed as photoanodes of semiconductor nanofilm sensitized solar cells (NFSCs) exhibiting superior photovoltaic performance.

microRNA-103 regulates the growth and invasion of endometrial cancer cells through the downregulation of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 3.

Despite improvements in treatment over the past few decades, endometrial cancer remains one of the most common causes of mortality in women and there is an urgent need for the development of targeted therapies. The aim of this study was to confirm the target gene of miR-103 in human endometrial cancer and investigate the biological functions in which miR-103 is involved through the regulation of the expression of its target gene. This study may provide useful data to gain a better understanding of the effect of miR-103 in tumor formation. miR-103 expression levels were measured using real-time quantitative PCR. The effect of miR-103 on tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 3 (TIMP-3) expression was assessed in endometrial cancer cell lines with a miR-103 inhibitor to decrease the level of miR-103 expression. Furthermore, the roles of miR-103 in cell growth and invasion were analyzed using miR-103 inhibitor-transfected cells. The level of expression of miR-103 decreased following transfection with the miR-103 inhibitor. miR-103 inhibitor transfection increased the activity of the luciferase reporter assay containing the TIMP-3 3'-untranslated region (UTR) construct and increased the levels of the TIMP-3 protein but not its mRNA in endometrial cancer cell lines. Finally, miR-103 inhibitor-transfected cells exhibited reduced cell growth and invasive characteristics. Our data suggested that miR-103 post-transcriptionally downregulates the expression of the tumor suppressor TIMP-3 and stimulates growth and invasion in endometrial cancer cell lines. This provides a possible therapeutic target that may upregulate TIMP-3 in endometrial cancer.

Temperature and composition dependent excitonic luminescence and exciton-phonon coupling in CdSeS nanocrystals.

The yellow- and red-emitting CdSeS nanocrystals (NCs) synthesized through one-step organometallic synthesis method are uniformly assembled in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). A higher-energy emission band originates from band-edge excitonic state appeared at low temperature. With the Se dopant concentration increasing, the luminescent spectra of CdSeS NCs have a red-shifted emission peak and a shorter luminescent lifetime, which is attributed to the existence of trapping state caused by surface defect and Se dopant. CdSeS NC shows a shorter luminescence lifetime and higher energy emission peak in PMMA matrix than that in toluene, indicating that the former is more favorable to transfer energy through exciton-phonon coupling. The upconversion luminescence (UCL) is observed using 800 nm femtosecond laser excitation. The pump power dependence demonstrated UCL spectra of yellow-emitting CdSeS NCs has a slope of 2.2, while that of red-emitting CdSeS NCs has a slope of 1.4. The results demonstrate that the two-photon absorption plays a dominating role when Se concentration of CdSeS NCs is lower, while phonon-assisted UCL by one-photon excitation gradually takes place with the amount of Se dopants increasing.

microRNA-30c negatively regulates endometrial cancer cells by targeting metastasis-associated gene-1.

It is well known that microRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in cancer development by targeting oncogenes or tumor-suppressor genes. However, little is known regarding the mechanisms of miR-30c action in endometrial cancer. In this study, we aimed to determine whether miR-30c targets metastasis-associated gene-1 (MTA1) and acts as a tumor suppressor in endometrial cancer cell lines Ishikawa (estrogen receptor-positive, ER+) and HEC-1-B (ER-) by down-regulating MTA1. As a result, in both Ishikawa and HEC-1-B cells, real-time PCR demonstrated that overexpression of miR-30c led to the down-regulation of MTA1 mRNA (P<0.05), while Western blotting confirmed the reduced expression levels of MTA1 protein (P<0.01). A dual-luciferase reporter assay demonstrated that miR-30c was directly bound to the 3'-untranslated regions of MTA1. Then we studied the biological mechanisms of endometrial cancer cells transfected with the Pre-miR-30c plasmid. MTT assay and growth curves revealed that miR-30c inhibits both Ishikawa and HEC-1-B cell proliferation. However, we did not see obvious differences in rates of apoptosis between miR-30c-overexpressing and the negative control cells. Then using wound-healing and Matrigel invasion assays, we found that the migratory and invasive abilities of cells transfected with the Pre-miR-30c plasmid were significantly suppressed compared with the control cells (P<0.01). Overall, our study, for the first time, showed that MTA1 is negatively regulated by miR-30c and that overexpression of miR-30c inhibits the proliferative, migratory and invasive abilities of endometrial cancer cells. These results suggest that miR-30c acts as a tumor suppressor and negatively regulates endometrial cancer cells by targeting MTA1.