Evaluation of SARS-COV-2 transmission and infection in airliner cabins.

Commercial airliners have played an important role in spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. This study used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 on a flight from London to Hanoi and another from Singapore to Hangzhou. The dispersion of droplets of different sizes generated by coughing, talking, and breathing activities in a cabin by an infected person was simulated by means of the Lagrangian method. The SARS-CoV-2 virus contained in expiratory droplets traveled with the cabin air distribution and was inhaled by other passengers. Infection was determined by counting the number of viral copies inhaled by each passenger. According to the results, our method correctly predicted 84% of the infected/uninfected cases on the first flight. The results also show that wearing masks and reducing conversation frequency between passengers could help to reduce the risk of exposure on the second flight.

Insights from label free-based proteomic analysis into inhibitory effects ε-Poly-lysine against Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

Vibrio parahaemolyticus is one of the most common pathogenic bacteria that pose a threat to human health. The purpose of this study was to investigate antibacterial mechanisms of ε-poly-lysine (ε-PL) against V. parahaemolyticus using a lable free-based proteomic analysis. The differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were subjected to bioinformatics analysis. The results indicated that a total of 196 DEPs, including 118 up-regulated and 78 down-regulated, were identified in the ε-PL-treated cells compared with control group. Upon Go functional enrichment, 13, 9, and 8 specific Go terms in biological processes, molecular functions and cellular components were identified, respectively. KEGG pathways analysis indicated that the DEPs were mainly involved in bacterial chemotaxis, RNA transport and two-component system, which were significantly enriched (P < 0.05). In PPI analysis, Che R and Che V, both involved in bacterial chemotaxis and RNA transport pathways, are closely related to other DEPs. Therefore, the down-regulation of Che R and Che V in ε-PL-treated cells resulted in the reduction or even loss of bacterial adaptability, and they were the critical action sites of ε-PL to inactivate V. parahaemolyticus.

Ni2 P Interlayer and Mn Doping Synergistically Expedite the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Kinetics of Co2 P.

Transition metal phosphide is regarded as one of the most promising candidates to replace noble-metal hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts. Nevertheless, the controllable design and synthesis of transition metal phosphide electrocatalysts with efficient and stable electrochemical performance are still very challenging. Herein, a novel hierarchical HER electrocatalyst consisting of three-dimensional (3D) coral-like Mn-doped Co2 P@an intermediate layer of Ni2 P generated in situ by phosphorization on Ni foam (MnCoP/NiP/NF) is reported. Notably, both the incorporation of Mn and introduction of the Ni2 P interlayer promote Co atoms to carry more electrons, which is beneficial to reduce the force of the Co-H bond and optimize the adsorption energy of hydrogen intermediate (|ΔGH* |), thereby making MnCoP/NiP/NF exhibit outstanding HER performance with onset overpotential and Tafel slope as low as 31.2 mV and 61 mV dec-1 , respectively, in 1 m KOH electrolyte.

Rational Design and Controlled Synthesis of V-Doped Ni3 S2 /Nix Py Heterostructured Nanosheets for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction.

Rational construction of high-efficiency and low-cost catalysts is one of the most promising ways to produce hydrogen but remains a huge challenge. Herein, interface engineering and heteroatom doping were used to synthesize V-doped sulfide/phosphide heterostructures on nickel foam (V-Ni3 S2 /Nix Py /NF) by phosphating treatment at low temperature. The incorporation of V can adjust the electronic structure of Ni3 S2 , expose more active sites, and protect the 3D structure of Ni foam from damage. Meanwhile, the heterogeneous interface formed between Ni3 S2 and Nix Py can provide abundant active sites and accelerate electron transfer. As a result, the V-Ni3 S2 /Nix Py /NF nanosheet catalyst exhibits outstanding activity in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) with an extremely low overpotential of 90 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 and stable durability in alkaline solution, which exceeds those most of the previously reported Ni-based materials. This work shows that rational design by interfacial engineering and metal-atom incorporation has a significant influence for efficient hydrogen evolution.

A Framework for an Indoor Safety Management System Based on Digital Twin.

With the development of the next generation of information technology, an increasing amount of attention is being paid to smart residential spaces, including smart cities, smart buildings, and smart homes. Building indoor safety intelligence is an important research topic. However, current indoor safety management methods cannot comprehensively analyse safety data, owing to a poor combination of safety management and building information. Additionally, the judgement of danger depends significantly on the experience of the safety management staff. In this study, digital twins (DTs) are introduced to building indoor safety management. A framework for an indoor safety management system based on DT is proposed which exploits the Internet of Things (IoT), building information modelling (BIM), the Internet, and support vector machines (SVMs) to improve the level of intelligence for building indoor safety management. A DT model (DTM) is developed using BIM integrated with operation information collected by IoT sensors. The trained SVM model is used to automatically obtain the types and levels of danger by processing the data in the DTM. The Internet is a medium for interactions between people and systems. A building in the bobsleigh and sled stadium for the Beijing Winter Olympics is considered as an example; the proposed system realises the functions of the scene display of the operation status, danger warning and positioning, danger classification and level assessment, and danger handling suggestions.

Knockdown of ARL4C inhibits osteogenic differentiation of human adipose-derived stem cells through disruption of the Wnt signaling pathway.

ADP-ribosylation factor-like 4C (ARL4C) has been shown to play an important role in cholesterol secretion, microtubule dynamics, and cell morphological changes. However, its role in osteogenesis has not been explored. In this study, we found that ARL4C is downregulated during the osteogenic differentiation of human adipose derived stem cells (hASCs). Knockdown of ARL4C suppresses osteogenesis of hASCs in vitro and in vivo. We demonstrate that ARL4C knockdown likely attenuates osteogenesis of hASCs through inhibition of the Wnt signaling pathway. These results provide new insights into the mechanisms of osteogenic differentiation and provide a potential molecular target for bone tissue engineering.

Tensor-Based Angle Estimation Approach for Strictly Noncircular Sources with Unknown Mutual Coupling in Bistatic MIMO Radar.

In the paper, the estimation of joint direction-of-departure (DOD) and direction-of-arrival (DOA) for strictly noncircular targets in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar with unknown mutual coupling is considered, and a tensor-based angle estimation method is proposed. In the proposed method, making use of the banded symmetric Toeplitz structure of the mutual coupling matrix, the influence of the unknown mutual coupling is removed in the tensor domain. Then, a special enhancement tensor is formulated to capture both the noncircularity and inherent multidimensional structure of strictly noncircular signals. After that, the higher-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) technology is applied for estimating the tensor-based signal subspace. Finally, the direction-of-departure (DOD) and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is obtained by utilizing the rotational invariance technique. Due to the use of both noncircularity and multidimensional structure of the detected signal, the algorithm in this paper has better angle estimation performance than other subspace-based algorithms. The experiment results verify that the method proposed has better angle estimation performance.

RAI3 knockdown promotes adipogenic differentiation of human adipose-derived stem cells by decreasing ß-catenin levels.

Retinoic acid-induced protein 3 (RAI3) has been found to play significant roles in embryonic development, cellular proliferation and differentiation, but its role in adipogenesis has not been explored. In this study, we discovered RAI3 was downregulated during the adipogenic differentiation of human adipose derived stem cells (hASCs). Moreover, we demonstrated that knockdown of RAI3 promoted adipogenic differentiation of hASCs both in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, our findings showed that inhibition of RAI3 in hASCs reduced the expression of ß-catenin, and lithium chloride which can activate the ß-catenin pathway abolished the effect of RAI3 knockdown on the adipogenesis. These results suggest RAI3 plays an important role in adipogenesis of hASCs and may have a potential use in the future application.

KDM5B regulates embryonic stem cell self-renewal and represses cryptic intragenic transcription.

Although regulation of histone methylation is believed to contribute to embryonic stem cell (ESC) self-renewal, the mechanisms remain obscure. We show here that the histone H3 trimethyl lysine 4 (H3K4me3) demethylase, KDM5B, is a downstream Nanog target and critical for ESC self-renewal. Although KDM5B is believed to function as a promoter-bound repressor, we find that it paradoxically functions as an activator of a gene network associated with self-renewal. ChIP-Seq reveals that KDM5B is predominantly targeted to intragenic regions and that it is recruited to H3K36me3 via an interaction with the chromodomain protein MRG15. Depletion of KDM5B or MRG15 increases intragenic H3K4me3, increases cryptic intragenic transcription, and inhibits transcriptional elongation of KDM5B target genes. We propose that KDM5B activates self-renewal-associated gene expression by repressing cryptic initiation and maintaining an H3K4me3 gradient important for productive transcriptional elongation.

Mental Health Utilization in a Pediatric Emergency Department.

OBJECTIVE: Mental health complaints are frequent in the pediatric emergency department (PED). The objective of this study was to describe trends over time in PED utilization for mental health care at in a single pediatric tertiary care hospital. It is our hypothesis that the resources used by this patient population are high and that mental health-related visits have increased over the most recent decade. METHODS: This was a retrospective study of all pediatric mental health presentations to the PED from January 2009 to July 2013 at a single pediatric hospital. All patients aged 1 to 19 years with an International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision code of 291, 292, 295 to 309, and 311 to 314 were included. Data collected included demographic data, medications received, restraint use, suicidality, length of stay (LOS), charges incurred, final disposition, and daily PED operation variables. Trends over time in presentation, charges, and LOS were analyzed using multiple mixed effects regression models after adjusting for potential patient and PED level confounding variables and clustering of multiple visits within patients. RESULTS: A total of 732 PED visits from 2009 to 2013 were identified representing 646 unique patients. The average age was 13.8 years, and 53% were male. Approximately 25% of the patients expressed suicidal ideation, and 44% of those had attempted suicide before arrival. Behavioral or chemical restraints were used in 33% of patients during their PED visit. There were statistically significant increases in annual visits, LOS, and charges over this period (P < 0.05). Increased charges were significantly associated with longer LOS (P = 0.0062). Charges (P = 0.46) and LOS (P = 0.62) were not significantly different between suicidal and nonsuicidal patients. Approximately 21% of patients were admitted or transferred to another facility. CONCLUSIONS: In this single-center study, we found evidence that the resources required to care for pediatric patients with mental health complaints have increased significantly over time both by increased number of annual visits and an increasing LOS. Further research is necessary to determine if our data are consistent with national trends to further our understanding of the problem and improve resource allocation.

[Quantitative evaluation of aortic regurgitation by general imaging three-dimensional quantification].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the feasibility and application value of AR-Vol measured by GI3DQ method directly. METHODS: One hundred and two patients with aortic regurgitation who underwent echocardiographic examination in Tianjin Chest Hospital from February 2014 to October 2014 were selected randomly and divided into two groups: the eccentric group included forty cases with eccentric aortic regurgitation; the central group included sixty and two cases with central aortic regurgitation. AR-Vol were directly measured by GI3DQ method, and then it was calculated by PISA method as the reference standard. RESULTS: (1) In the eccentric group, the AR-Vol measured by GI3DQ method and PISA method were respectively (44±11) ml and (48±10) ml. In the central group, the AR-Vol measured by GI3DQ method and PISA method were respectively (34±13) ml and (33±13) ml. (2) Paired t test analysis showed significant difference in two methods of the eccentric group (P<0.01); no significant difference was found in two methods of the central group (P=0.202). (3) The correlation coefficients of the AR-Vol measurement by GI3DQ method and PISA method are relatively in two groups: r=0.835, r=0.913; consistency analysis showed differences between the two methods of the eccentric group had statistical significance, and differences between the two methods of the central group had no statistical significance. CONCLUSION: In the central aortic regurgitation, AR-Vol measured by GI3DQ method is feasible and accurate compared with the PISA method, which can be used for routine application.

Bioactive MXene Promoting Angiogenesis and Skeletal Muscle Regeneration through Regulating M2 Polarization and Oxidation Stress.

Complete repair of skeletal muscles caused by severe mechanical damage and muscle-related diseases remains a challenge. 2D Ti3 C2 Tx (MXene) possesses special photoelectromagnetic properties and has attracted considerable attention in materials science and engineering. However, the bioactive properties and potential mechanism of MXene in tissue engineering, especially in skeletal muscle regeneration, are unclear. Herein, the antioxidation and anti-inflammation activities of MXene and its effects on myogenic differentiation and regeneration of skeletal muscle in vivo are investigated. In vitro studies have shown that MXene has excellent antioxidation and anti-inflammatory properties, and promotes myogenic differentiation and angiogenesis. MXene can remove excess reactive oxygen species in macrophage cells to alleviate oxidative stress and induce the transformation of M1 macrophages into M2 macrophages to reduce excessive inflammation, which can significantly promote the proliferation and differentiation of myoblasts, as well as the proliferation, migration, and tube formation of endothelial cells. Animal experiments with rat tibial anterior muscle defects show that MXene can promote angiogenesis, muscle fiber formation, and skeletal muscle regeneration by regulating the cell microenvironment through anti-inflammatory and antioxidant pathways. The findings suggest that MXene can be used as a multifunctional bioactive material to enhance tissue regeneration through robust antioxidation, anti-inflammation, and angiogenesis activities.

Automatic identification of harmful algae based on multiple convolutional neural networks and transfer learning.

The monitoring of harmful phytoplankton is very important for the maintenance of the aquatic ecological environment. Traditional algae monitoring methods require professionals with substantial experience in algae species, which are time-consuming, expensive, and limited in practice. The automatic classification of algae cell images and the identification of harmful phytoplankton images were realized by the combination of multiple convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and deep learning techniques based on transfer learning in this work. Eleven common harmful and 31 harmless phytoplankton genera were collected as input samples; the five CNNs classification models of AlexNet, VGG16, GoogLeNet, ResNet50, and MobileNetV2 were fine-tuned to automatically classify phytoplankton images; and the average accuracy was improved 11.9% when compared to models without fine-tuning. In order to monitor harmful phytoplankton which can cause red tides or produce toxins severely polluting drinking water, a new identification method of harmful phytoplankton which combines the recognition results of five CNN models was proposed, and the recall rate reached 98.0%. The experimental results validate that the recognition performance of harmful phytoplankton could be significantly improved by transfer learning, and the proposed identification method is effective in the preliminary screening of harmful phytoplankton and greatly reduces the workload of professional personnel.

Transcriptomic Responses of Salmonella enterica Serovars Enteritidis in Sodium Hypochlorite.

Salmonella enterica serovars Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis) can survive extreme food processing environments including bactericidal sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) treatments generally recognized as safe. In order to reveal the molecular regulatory mechanisms underlying the phenotypes, the overall regulation of genes at the transcription level in S. Enteritidis after NaClO stimulation were investigated by RNA-sequencing. We identified 1399 differentially expressed genes (DEG) of S. Enteritidis strain CVCC 1806 following treatment in liquid culture with 100 mg/L NaClO for 20 min (915 upregulated and 484 downregulated). NaClO stress affects the transcription of genes related to a range of important biomolecular processes such as membrane damage, membrane transport function, energy metabolism, oxidative stress, DNA repair, and other important processes in Salmonella enterica. First, NaClO affects the structural stability of cell membranes, which induces the expression of a range of outer and inner membrane proteins. This may lead to changes in cell membrane permeability, accelerating the frequency of DNA conversion and contributing to the production of drug-resistant bacteria. In addition, the expression of exocytosis pump genes (emrB, yceE, ydhE, and ydhC) was able to expel NaClO from the cell, thereby increasing bacterial tolerance to NaClO. Secondly, downregulation of genes related to the Kdp-ATPase transporter system (kdpABC) and the amino acid transporter system (aroP, brnQ and livF) may to some extent reduce active transport by bacterial cells, thereby reducing their own metabolism and the entry of disinfectants. Downregulation of genes related to the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle may drive bacterial cells into a viable but non-culturable (VBNC) state, resisting NaClO attack by reducing energy metabolism. In addition, significant upregulation of genes related to oxidative stress could mitigate damage caused by disinfectants by eliminating alkyl hydroperoxides, while upregulation of genes related to DNA repair could repair damage to bacterial cells caused by oxidative stress. Therefore, this study indicated that S. Enteritidis has genomic mechanisms to adapt to NaClO stress.

Impacts of Regional Speed Control Strategy Based on Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram on Energy Consumption and Traffic Emissions: A Case Study of Beijing.

Numerous studies shown that particulate matter in the ambient environment has a significant impact on the health of the respiratory system. To understand the interrelationships between urban built environment, transportation operations and health, this study proposes an innovative approach that uses real-world GPS datasets to calculate energy consumption and emissions from transportation. The experiment used the traffic operation state in the Fourth Ring Road of Beijing as the research object and tested the impact of using the Regional speed optimization (RSO) strategy based on Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) on energy consumption and emissions during peak hours. The impact of traffic emission on the health of roadside pedestrians is also considered. Changes in PM2.5 concentrations around four different built-up areas were calculated and compared. The computational experiments indicate that the PM2.5 pollutants exhausted by the traffic on the Ring Road during peak hours can reach up to 250 µg/m3, while the traffic emission on general roads near residential areas is only 50 µg/m3. Adopting Regional speed optimization can reduce the energy consumption of the road network by up to 18.8%. For roadside runners, the PM2.5 inhalation caused by night running in commercial and recreational areas is about 1.3-2.6 times that of night running in residential areas. Compared with morning or night running, the risk of respiratory disease caused by PM2.5 inhalation was about 10.3% higher than commuter running behavior. The research results provide a useful reference for energy conservation and emission reduction control strategies for different road types in cities and help existing cities to establish a traveler health evaluation system caused by traffic operation.

Bioactive anti-inflammatory antibacterial metformin-contained hydrogel dressing accelerating wound healing.

Highly efficient wound healing and skin regeneration remain a challenge. Long-term inflammation and bacterial infection can inhibit the healing process and lead to the scar formation. Here, we report a hydrogel (FEM) formed by self-assembly of ε-poly-l-lysine-F127-ε-poly-l-lysine (EPL-F127-EPL) and metformin for wound repair. Especially, the role of metformin-based antibacterial hydrogel in wound healing and repair was investigated for the first time. FEM has inherent multifunctional properties, including controlled metformin release, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial activity, temperature responsiveness, injectable and self-healing capabilities. The in vivo results showed that FEM dressings accelerated the wound healing by stimulating the angiogenesis process of the wound tissue and anti-inflammation. This study shows that the multifunctional metformin-contained hydrogel scaffolds could enhance the wound repair through the anti-inflammation and accelerated angiogenesis, which could also expand the biomedical applications of metformin-based biomaterials.

A Neural Recording and Stimulation Chip with Artifact Suppression for Biomedical Devices.

This paper presents chip implementation of the integrated neural recording and stimulation system with stimulation-induced artifact suppression. The implemented chip consists of low-power neural recording circuits, stimulation circuits, and action potential detection circuits. These circuits constitute a closed-loop simultaneous neural recording and stimulation system for biomedical devices, and a proposed artifact suppression technique is used in the system. Moreover, this paper also presents the measurement and experiment results of the implemented 4-to-4 channel neural recording and stimulation chip with 0.18 µm CMOS technology. The function and efficacy of simultaneous neural recording and stimulation is validated in both in vivo and animal experiments.

(Ni,Co)Se@Ni(OH)2 heterojunction nanosheets as an efficient electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction.

A heterogeneous structure formed by coupling two or more phases can reinforce the activity of active sites and expedite electron transfer, which is conducive to boosting its electrocatalytic activity. Herein, we designed nickel foam supported (NiCo2)Se@Ni(OH)2 (NCS@NH) heterojunction nanosheets by a two-step method. First of all, the NiCo2S4@Ni(OH)2 (NiCo2S4@NH) nanosheets coated on nickel foam were acquired via a hydrothermal method. In the selenization treatment that followed, NiCo2S4@NH was converted into NCS@NH heterogeneous nanosheets in which the selenide nanoparticles decorated on the surface of the Ni(OH)2 nanosheets formed heterojunction interfaces, and the heterogeneous structure could accelerate electron transfer, thus improving the catalytic activity. The Ni(OH)2 nanosheets can adequately contact the electrolyte and promote the decomposition of water. Meanwhile, the thickness of the Ni(OH)2 nanosheets gradually decreases with the increase of Co doping (1.5-2.5 mmol), consequently affecting the HER properties. Notably, when the amount of Co salt added is 2 mmol, NCS@NH exhibited superior HER properties (with a voltage of 253 mV at 100 mA cm-2) and excellent stability for 24 h.

New use for spent coffee ground as an adsorbent for tetracycline removal in water.

Spent coffee grounds (SCG-1 and SCG-2) were used to study the adsorption of tetracycline (TC) antibiotics and the effects of adsorption time, initial pH, amount of adsorbent and ionic strength were detected. The TC adsorption isotherm on SCG-1 was compared with SCG-2. The results showed that the removal efficiencies of TC (50 mg/L) of SCG-1 and SCG-2 were 83.1% and 97.2%, respectively, shake for 2 h. The probability of adsorption is high and balances in about 20 min. The estimate of parameters got for TC from the Langmuir isotherm saturated adsorption quantity and adsorption balance constant were 64.89 mg/g, 0.0557 L/mg, respectively for SCG-1 and 123.46 mg/g, 0.4735 L/mg, respectively for SCG-2. The adsorption mechanism might be a π-π interaction that occurs in the interface by hydrogen bonding and the between the TC molecular and the SCGs. At last, we found that SCG has a high adsorption size for TC.

Utilizations of agricultural waste as adsorbent for the removal of contaminants: A review.

In recent years, various industrial activities have caused serious pollution to the environment. Due to the low operating costs and high flexibility, adsorption is considered as one of the most effective technologies for pollutant management. Agricultural waste has loose and porous structures, and contains functional groups such as the carboxyl group and hydroxyl group, so it can be invoked as biological adsorption material. Agricultural waste gets the advantages of a wide range of sources, low cost, and renewable. It has a good prospect for the comprehensive utilization of resources when used for environmental pollution control. This article summarized the current research status of agricultural waste in adsorbing pollutants, which pointed out the influencing factors of adsorption, expounded the adsorption mechanism of biological adsorption and introduced the related parameters of adsorption, proposed the application of adsorbents in engineering including adsorption in liquid and gas phases, at the same time it gave the future development prospect of agricultural waste as adsorbent.