Porous PLGA microparticles prepared with nanosized/micronized sugar particles as porogens.

The objective of this study was to explore the use of nanosized/micronized sugar particles as porogens for preparing porous poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) microparticles by a solid-in-oil-in-water (S/O/W) solvent evaporation method. Porous PLGA microparticles containing dexamethasone were prepared with different nanosized/micronized sugars (sucrose, trehalose and lactose), types of PLGA, and osmogens (NaCl or sucrose) in the external water phase. The microparticles were characterized for morphology, thermal properties, particle size, surface area, encapsulation efficiency and drug release/swelling during release. The addition of nanosized/micronized sugar particles resulted in porous PLGA microparticles with high encapsulation efficiencies. The porosity of the microparticles was caused both by the influx of water into the polymer droplets and the encapsulation and subsequent dissolution of sugar particles during the manufacturing process. The porosity (pore size) of the microparticles and, as a result, the drug release pattern could be well controlled by the particle size and weight fraction of the sugar particles. Because of a larger inner surface area, nanosized sugar particles were more efficient porogen than micronized sugar particles to obtain porous PLGA microparticles with flexible release patterns.

Early Postoperative Rapid Rehabilitation Yields More Favorable Short-term Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Patellar Realignment Surgery for Recurrent Patellar Dislocation: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Study.

BACKGROUND: Use of a rapid rehabilitation protocol for postoperative recovery after recurrent patellar dislocation (RPD) has gradually gained attention; nonetheless, evidence of its safety and effectiveness is lacking. PURPOSE: To compare the short-term postoperative outcomes of early rapid rehabilitation with those of conservative rehabilitation in patients with RPD. STUDY DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial; Level of evidence, 2. METHODS: A total of 50 patients with RPD who underwent tibial tubercle osteotomy combined with medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction were enrolled between January 2018 and February 2019. Postoperatively, the patients were randomly assigned to either the early rapid group (rapid group; n = 25 patients) or the conservative group (control group; n = 25 patients) for rehabilitation training. The rapid group underwent faster progression in weightbearing and range of motion (ROM) training. Knee joint functional scores, ROM, bilateral thigh circumference differences, and imaging data were recorded preoperatively and at 6 weeks and 3, 6, 12, and 24 months postoperatively for comparison. Postoperative complications were recorded over the 24-month follow-up period. RESULTS: The baseline data did not significantly differ between the 2 groups. Postoperatively, compared with the control group, the rapid group had higher Tegner scores at 6 weeks and 3 months; higher Lysholm scores at 3 and 6 months; higher International Knee Documentation Committee scores at 6 weeks, 3 months, and 12 months; better ROM; and smaller bilateral thigh circumference differences at 24 months (P < .05 for all). However, no differences were observed in the Tegner, Lysholm, and International Knee Documentation Committee scores at 24 months postoperatively. At the 6-week and subsequent follow-up visits, the Caton and Insall indices were lower in the control group than in the rapid group (P < .01 for all). Moreover, compared with the control group, the rapid group had a lower incidence of patella baja at 24 months (0% vs 17%) and fewer complications during the whole follow-up period (P < .01). CONCLUSION: Early rapid postoperative rehabilitation appears to be safe and effective for patients who undergo tibial tubercle osteotomy combined with medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction to treat RPD. In the short term, this approach was shown to be more advantageous than conservative rehabilitation in improving functional scores, allowing an earlier return to daily activities, although the lack of difference at 24 months implies no long-term benefits. In addition, it potentially helped to prevent the occurrence of complications, including patella baja. REGISTRATION: ChiCTR1800014648 (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier).

Quantum information scrambling and chemical reactions.

The ultimate regularity of quantum mechanics creates a tension with the assumption of classical chaos used in many of our pictures of chemical reaction dynamics. Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) provide a quantum analog to the Lyapunov exponents that characterize classical chaotic motion. Maldacena, Shenker, and Stanford have suggested a fundamental quantum bound for the rate of information scrambling, which resembles a limit suggested by Herzfeld for chemical reaction rates. Here, we use OTOCs to study model reactions based on a double-well reaction coordinate coupled to anharmonic oscillators or to a continuum oscillator bath. Upon cooling, as one enters the tunneling regime where the reaction rate does not strongly depend on temperature, the quantum Lyapunov exponent can approach the scrambling bound and the effective reaction rate obtained from a population correlation function can approach the Herzfeld limit on reaction rates: Tunneling increases scrambling by expanding the state space available to the system. The coupling of a dissipative continuum bath to the reaction coordinate reduces the scrambling rate obtained from the early-time OTOC, thus making the scrambling bound harder to reach, in the same way that friction is known to lower the temperature at which thermally activated barrier crossing goes over to the low-temperature activationless tunneling regime. Thus, chemical reactions entering the tunneling regime can be information scramblers as powerful as the black holes to which the quantum Lyapunov exponent bound has usually been applied.

The BTB-ZF gene Bm-mamo regulates pigmentation in silkworm caterpillars.

The color pattern of insects is one of the most diverse adaptive evolutionary phenotypes. However, the molecular regulation of this color pattern is not fully understood. In this study, we found that the transcription factor Bm-mamo is responsible for black dilute (bd) allele mutations in the silkworm. Bm-mamo belongs to the BTB zinc finger family and is orthologous to mamo in Drosophila melanogaster. This gene has a conserved function in gamete production in Drosophila and silkworms and has evolved a pleiotropic function in the regulation of color patterns in caterpillars. Using RNAi and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) technology, we showed that Bm-mamo is a repressor of dark melanin patterns in the larval epidermis. Using in vitro binding assays and gene expression profiling in wild-type and mutant larvae, we also showed that Bm-mamo likely regulates the expression of related pigment synthesis and cuticular protein genes in a coordinated manner to mediate its role in color pattern formation. This mechanism is consistent with the dual role of this transcription factor in regulating both the structure and shape of the cuticle and the pigments that are embedded within it. This study provides new insight into the regulation of color patterns as well as into the construction of more complex epidermal features in some insects.

Reusable Architecture Growth for Continual Stereo Matching.

The remarkable performance of recent stereo depth estimation models benefits from the successful use of convolutional neural networks to regress dense disparity. Akin to most tasks, this needs gathering training data that covers a number of heterogeneous scenes at deployment time. However, training samples are typically acquired continuously in practical applications, making the capability to learn new scenes continually even more crucial. For this purpose, we propose to perform continual stereo matching where a model is tasked to 1) continually learn new scenes, 2) overcome forgetting previously learned scenes, and 3) continuously predict disparities at inference. We achieve this goal by introducing a Reusable Architecture Growth (RAG) framework. RAG leverages task-specific neural unit search and architecture growth to learn new scenes continually in both supervised and self-supervised manners. It can maintain high reusability during growth by reusing previous units while obtaining good performance. Additionally, we present a Scene Router module to adaptively select the scene-specific architecture path at inference. Comprehensive experiments on numerous datasets show that our framework performs impressively in various weather, road, and city circumstances and surpasses the state-of-the-art methods in more challenging cross-dataset settings. Further experiments also demonstrate the adaptability of our method to unseen scenes, which can facilitate end-to-end stereo architecture learning and practical deployment.

Arc discharge method to fabricate large concave structures for open-access fiber Fabry-Pérot cavities.

We present a novel micro-fabrication technique for creating concave surfaces on the endfacets of photonic crystal fibers. A fiber fusion splicer is used to generate arc discharges to melt and reshape the fiber endfacet. This technique can produce large spherical concave surfaces with roughness as low as 0.12 nm in various types of photonic crystal fibers. The deviation of fabricated surface and a spherical profile in the region of 70 µm in diameter is less than 50 nm. The center of the concave surface and the fiber mode field are highly coincident with a deviation less than 500 nm. Finesse measurements have shown that a Fabry-Pérot cavity composed of the fiber fabricated using this method and a plane mirror maintains finesse of 20000. This method is easy to replicate, making it a practical and efficient approach to fabricate concave surface on fibers for open-access fiber Fabry-Pérot cavities.

Resistance to Cholesterol Gallstone Disease: Hepatic Cholesterol Metabolism.

Cholesterol gallstone disease (CGD) is one of the most common digestive diseases, and it is closely associated with hepatic cholesterol metabolism. Cholesterol gallstones may be caused by abnormal hepatic cholesterol metabolism, such as excessive cholesterol biosynthesis within the liver, interfering with the uptake or export of cholesterol in the liver, and abnormal hepatic cholesterol esterification. In this review, we begin with a brief overview of the clinical diagnosis and treatment of gallstone disease (GSD). Then, we briefly describe the major processes of hepatic cholesterol metabolism and summarize the key molecular expression changes of hepatic cholesterol metabolism in patients with gallstones. We review and analyze the recent advances in elucidating the relationships between these key molecules and CGD, and some targets significantly impacting on CGD via hepatic cholesterol metabolism are also listed. We also provide a significant discussion on the relationship between CGD and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Finally, the new discoveries of some therapeutic strategies associated with hepatic cholesterol metabolism to prevent and treat CGD are summarized.

Single cell RNA sequencing reveals emergent notochord-derived cell subpopulations in the postnatal nucleus pulposus.

Intervertebral disc degeneration is a leading cause of chronic low back pain. Cell-based strategies that seek to treat disc degeneration by regenerating the central nucleus pulposus (NP) hold significant promise, but key challenges remain. One of these is the inability of therapeutic cells to effectively mimic the performance of native NP cells, which are unique amongst skeletal cell types in that they arise from the embryonic notochord. In this study, we use single cell RNA sequencing to demonstrate emergent heterogeneity amongst notochord-derived NP cells in the postnatal mouse disc. Specifically, we established the existence of progenitor and mature NP cells, corresponding to notochordal and chondrocyte-like cells, respectively. Mature NP cells exhibited significantly higher expression levels of extracellular matrix (ECM) genes including aggrecan, and collagens II and VI, along with elevated transforming growth factor-beta and phosphoinositide 3 kinase-protein kinase B signaling. Additionally, we identified Cd9 as a novel surface marker of mature NP cells, and demonstrated that these cells were localized to the NP periphery, increased in numbers with increasing postnatal age, and co-localized with emerging glycosaminoglycan-rich matrix. Finally, we used a goat model to show that Cd9+ NP cell numbers decrease with moderate severity disc degeneration, suggesting that these cells are associated with maintenance of the healthy NP ECM. Improved understanding of the developmental mechanisms underlying regulation of ECM deposition in the postnatal NP may inform improved regenerative strategies for disc degeneration and associated low back pain.

Active Disparity Sampling for Stereo Matching With Adjoint Network.

The sparse signals provided by external sources have been leveraged as guidance for improving dense disparity estimation. However, previous methods assume depth measurements to be randomly sampled, which restricts performance improvements due to under-sampling in challenging regions and over-sampling in well-estimated areas. In this work, we introduce an Active Disparity Sampling problem that selects suitable sampling patterns to enhance the utility of depth measurements given arbitrary sampling budgets. We achieve this goal by learning an Adjoint Network for a deep stereo model to measure its pixel-wise disparity quality. Specifically, we design a hard-soft prior supervision mechanism to provide hierarchical supervision for learning the quality map. A Bayesian optimized disparity sampling policy is further proposed to sample depth measurements with the guidance of the disparity quality. Extensive experiments on standard datasets with various stereo models demonstrate that our method is suited and effective in different stereo architectures and outperforms existing fixed and adaptive sampling methods under different sampling rates. Remarkably, the proposed method makes substantial improvements when generalized to heterogeneous unseen domains.

Uptake, accumulation and toxicity of short chain chlorinated paraffins to wheat (Triticum aestivum L.).

Short chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) are ubiquitous persistent organic pollutants. They have been widely detected in plant-based foods and might cause adverse impacts on humans. Nevertheless, uptake and accumulation mechanisms of SCCPs in plants remain unclear. In this study, the soil culture data indicated that SCCPs were strongly absorbed by roots (root concentration factor, RCF>1) yet limited translocated to shoots (translocation factor<1). The uptake mechanism was explored by hydroponic exposure, showing that hydrophobicity and molecular size influenced the root uptake and translocation of SCCPs. RCFs were significantly correlated with logKow values and molecular weights in a parabolic curve relationship. Besides, it was extremely difficult for SCCPs to translocate from shoots back to roots via phloem. An active energy-dependent process was proposed to be involved in the root uptake of SCCPs, which was supported by the uptake inhibition by the low temperature and metabolic inhibitor. Though SCCPs at environmentally relevant concentrations had no negative impacts on root morphology and chlorophyll contents, it caused obvious changes in cellular ultrastructure of root tip cells and induced a significant increase in superoxide dismutase activity. This information may be beneficial to moderate crop contamination by SCCPs, and to remedy soils polluted by SCCPs with plants.

A moderate method for in situ growing Fe-based LDHs on Ni foam for catalyzing the oxygen evolution reaction.

Fe-based LDHs have been proven to be an excellent class of catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). To achieve industrial applications of water splitting, it is critical to develop a cost-effective and simple strategy to achieve large-area catalytic electrodes. Herein, we present a moderate in situ method for growing Fe-based layered double hydroxide nanosheets on a Ni foam (LDH@NF) substrate at room temperature. Through systematic experimental design characterization, it is found that this in situ growth process is mainly driven by moderate oxidation of Fe2+ in an O2-dissolved solution, the consequent local alkaline environment, and abundant TM2+ ions (Ni2+, Co2+, Ni2+/Co2+). Compared with other in situ methods, this method is not accompanied by violent redox reactions and is favorable for the uniform growth of LDHs, and the composition of the catalyst can be easily regulated. Specifically, the optimized NiFe-LDH@NF catalyst demonstrates excellent catalytic performance in the alkaline water oxidation reaction with a low overpotential of 206/239 mV at a current density of 10/100 mA cm-2, respectively.

Direct drug milling in organic PLGA solution facilitates the encapsulation of nanosized drug into PLGA microparticles.

The objective of this study was to prepare poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) microparticles loaded with nanosized drug by combining non-aqueous wet bead milling and microencapsulation. 200-300 nm dexamethasone, hydrocortisone and dexamethasone sodium phosphate nanosuspensions were successfully prepared by wet bead milling the drug in dichloromethane using PLGA as a stabilizer. PLGA microparticles loaded with nanosized drugs were then prepared by a solid-in-oil-in-water (S/O/W) solvent evaporation method or solid-in-oil-in-oil (S/O/O) organic phase separation method. The microparticles were characterized by laser diffraction (LD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) and in vitro drug release. The nanosized drugs were homogeneously distributed within the microparticle matrix and remained crystalline, however, with a decrease in crystallinity. High drug encapsulation efficiencies >80 % were achieved at theoretical drug loadings between 5 and 30 %. Drug release profiles could be controlled by varying PLGA grades/blends, microparticle size and drug loadings. Quasi-linear release profiles without the PLGA-typical slow release phase were achieved with PLGA encapsulated nanosized drug.

Single-cell transcriptional profiling reveals immunomodulatory properties of stromal and epithelial cells in periodontal immune milieu with diabetes in rats.

Periodontitis is the sixth major complication of diabetes. Gingiva, as an important component of periodontal tissues, serves as the first defense barrier against infectious stimuli. However, relatively little is known about cellular heterogeneity and cell-specific changes in gingiva in response to diabetes-associated periodontitis. To characterize molecular changes linking diabetes with periodontitis, we profiled single-cell transcriptome analyses of a total of 45,259 cells from rat gingiva with periodontitis under normoglycemic and diabetic condition. The single-cell profiling revealed that stromal and epithelial cells of gingiva contained inflammation-related subclusters enriched in functions of immune cell recruitment. Compared to normoglycemic condition, diabetes led to a reduction in epithelial basal cells, fibroblasts and smooth muscle cells in gingiva with periodontitis. Analysis of differentially expressed genes indicated that stromal and epithelial populations were reprogrammed towards pro-inflammatory phenotypes promoting immune cell recruitment in diabetes-related periodontitis. In aspect of immune cells, diabetes prominently enhanced neutrophil and M1 macrophage infiltration in periodontitis lesions. Cell-cell communications revealed enhanced crosstalk between stromal/epithelial cells and immune cells mediating by chemokine/chemokine receptor interplay in diabetes-associated periodontitis. Our findings deconvolved cellular heterogeneity of rat gingiva associated with periodontitis and diabetes, uncovered altered immune milieu caused by the disease, and revealed immunomodulatory functions of stromal and epithelial cells in gingival immune niche. The present study improves the understanding of the link between the diabetes and periodontitis and helps in formulating precise therapeutic strategies for diabetes-enhanced periodontitis.

Genome-Wide Epistasis Study of Cerebrospinal Fluid Hyperphosphorylated Tau in ADNI Cohort.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the main cause of dementia worldwide, and the genetic mechanism of which is not yet fully understood. Much evidence has accumulated over the past decade to suggest that after the first large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were conducted, the problem of "missing heritability" in AD is still a great challenge. Epistasis has been considered as one of the main causes of "missing heritability" in AD, which has been largely ignored in human genetics. The focus of current genome-wide epistasis studies is usually on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that have significant individual effects, and the amount of heritability explained by which was very low. Moreover, AD is characterized by progressive cognitive decline and neuronal damage, and some studies have suggested that hyperphosphorylated tau (P-tau) mediates neuronal death by inducing necroptosis and inflammation in AD. Therefore, this study focused on identifying epistasis between two-marker interactions at marginal main effects across the whole genome using cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) P-tau as quantitative trait (QT). We sought to detect interactions between SNPs in a multi-GPU based linear regression method by using age, gender, and clinical diagnostic status (cds) as covariates. We then used the STRING online tool to perform the PPI network and identify two-marker epistasis at the level of gene-gene interaction. A total of 758 SNP pairs were found to be statistically significant. Particularly, between the marginal main effect SNP pairs, highly significant SNP-SNP interactions were identified, which explained a relatively high variance at the P-tau level. In addition, 331 AD-related genes were identified, 10 gene-gene interaction pairs were replicated in the PPI network. The identified gene-gene interactions and genes showed associations with AD in terms of neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration, neuronal cells activation and brain development, thereby leading to cognitive decline in AD, which is indirectly associated with the P-tau pathological feature of AD and in turn supports the results of this study. Thus, the results of our study might be beneficial for explaining part of the "missing heritability" of AD.

Free energy dissipation enhances spatial accuracy and robustness of self-positioned Turing pattern in small biochemical systems.

Accurate and robust spatial orders are ubiquitous in living systems. In 1952, Turing proposed a general mechanism for pattern formation exemplified by a reaction-diffusion model with two chemical species in a large system. However, in small biological systems such as a cell, the existence of multiple Turing patterns and strong noise can lower the spatial order. Recently, a modified reaction-diffusion model with an additional chemical species is shown to stabilize the Turing pattern. Here, we study non-equilibrium thermodynamics of this three-species reaction-diffusion model to understand the relationship between energy cost and the performance of self-positioning. By using computational and analytical approaches, we show that beyond the onset of pattern formation the positioning error decreases as energy dissipation increases. In a finite system, we find that a specific Turing pattern exists only within a finite range of total molecule number. Energy dissipation broadens this range, which enhances the robustness of Turing pattern against molecule number fluctuations in living cells. The generality of these results is verified in a realistic model of the Muk system underlying DNA segregation in Escherichia coli, and testable predictions are made for the dependence of the accuracy and robustness of the spatial pattern on the ATP/ADP ratio.

Single Cell RNA Sequencing Reveals Emergent Notochord-Derived Cell Subpopulations in the Postnatal Nucleus Pulposus.

Intervertebral disc degeneration is a leading cause of chronic low back pain. Cell-based strategies that seek to treat disc degeneration by regenerating the central nucleus pulposus hold significant promise, but key challenges remain. One of these is the inability of therapeutic cells to effectively mimic the performance of native nucleus pulposus cells, which are unique amongst skeletal cell types in that they arise from the embryonic notochord. In this study we use single cell RNA sequencing to demonstrate emergent heterogeneity amongst notochord-derived nucleus pulposus cells in the postnatal mouse disc. Specifically, we established the existence of early and late stage nucleus pulposus cells, corresponding to notochordal progenitor and mature cells, respectively. Late stage cells exhibited significantly higher expression levels of extracellular matrix genes including aggrecan, and collagens II and VI, along with elevated TGF-ß and PI3K-Akt signaling. Additionally, we identified Cd9 as a novel surface marker of late stage nucleus pulposus cells, and demonstrated that these cells were localized to the nucleus pulposus periphery, increased in numbers with increasing postnatal age, and co-localized with emerging glycosaminoglycan-rich matrix. Finally, we used a goat model to show the Cd9+ nucleus pulposus cell numbers decrease with moderate severity disc degeneration, suggesting that these cells are associated with maintenance of the healthy nucleus pulposus extracellular matrix. Improved understanding of the developmental mechanisms underlying regulation of ECM deposition in the postnatal NP may inform improved regenerative strategies for disc degeneration and associated low back pain.

Associations of healthful and unhealthful plant-based diets with plasma markers of cardiometabolic risk.

PURPOSE: Plant-based diets, particularly when rich in healthy plant foods, have been associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. However, the impact of plant-based diets that distinguish between healthy and unhealthy plant foods on cardiometabolic biomarkers remains unclear. METHODS: Dietary information was collected by two 24-h recalls among 34,785 adults from a nationwide cross-sectional study. Plasma levels of insulin, C-peptide, glucose, C-reactive protein (CRP), white blood cell (WBC) count, triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were measured. Linear regression was used to evaluate the percentage difference in plasma marker concentrations by three plant-based diet indices, namely the overall plant-based diet index (PDI), the healthful PDI (hPDI), and the unhealthful PDI (uPDI). RESULTS: Greater hPDI-adherence scores (comparing extreme quartiles) were associated with lower levels of insulin, Homeostatic Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR), TG/HDL-C ratio, CRP, WBC count, and TG, and higher levels of HDL-C, with the percentage differences of - 14.55, - 15.72, - 11.57, - 14.95, - 5.26, - 7.10, and 5.01, respectively (all Ptrend ≤ 0.001). Conversely, uPDI was associated with higher levels of insulin, C-peptide, HOMA-IR, TG/HDL-C ratio, CRP, WBC count, and TG, but lower HDL-C, with the percentage differences of 13.71, 14.00, 14.10, 10.43, 3.32, 8.00, and - 4.98 (all Ptrend ≤ 0.001), respectively. Overall PDI was only associated with lower levels of CRP and WBC count (all Ptrend ≤ 0.001). CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that hPDI may have positive, whereas uPDI may have negative impacts on multiple cardiometabolic risk markers, and underscore the need to consider the quality of plant foods in future PDI studies.

Radiation synthesis of MXene/Ag nanoparticle hybrids for efficient photothermal conversion of polyurethane films.

Flexible conductive films based on light-to-heat conversion are promising for the next-generation electronic devices. A flexible waterborne polyurethane composite film (PU/MA) with excellent photothermal conversion performance was obtained by combination of PU and silver nanoparticle decorated MXene (MX/Ag). The silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) uniformly decorated on the MXene surface by γ-ray irradiation induced reduction. Because of the synergistic effect of MXene with outstanding light-to-heat conversion efficiency and the AgNPs with plasmonic effect, the surface temperature of the PU/MA-II (0.4%) composite with lower MXene content increased from room temperature to 60.7 °C at 5 min under 85 mW cm-2 light irradiation. Besides, the tensile strength of PU/MA-II (0.4%) increased from 20.9 MPa (pure PU) to 27.5 MPa. The flexible PU/MA composite film shows great potential in the field of thermal management of flexible wearable electronic devices.

Target identification and acaricidal activity difference of amitraz and its metabolite DPMF in Tetranychus cinnabarinus (Boisduval).

BACKGROUND: Amitraz is a broad-spectrum formamidine acaricide proven to be effective against mites in all development stages. Under acidic conditions, amitraz is hydrolyzed to N2 -(2,4-dimethylphenyl)-N1 -methyformamidine (DPMF), an active metabolite for mite control. Octopamine and tyramine receptors are well known targets of amitraz. Until now, no research has been conducted about the amitraz target in Tetranychus cinnabarinus. This study aimed to identify the target genes of amitraz in T. cinnabarinus and reveal the mechanisms behind the differential acaricidal activities of amitraz and DPMF. RESULTS: Analysis of the toxicity, stress expression, target sensitivity and binding site of amitraz against T. cinnabarinus showed that TcOctß2R was the main target gene of amitraz. DPMF had more potent acaricidal activity against T. cinnabarinus and was more effective at activating TcOctß2R than amitraz. Furthermore, the three synergists had no significant effect on amitraz and DPMF, indicating that the detoxification metabolism was not related to the difference in acaricidal activity. CONCLUSION: In this study, TcOctß2R was identified as the main target gene of amitraz against T. cinnabarinus. The divergence of target binding was responsible for the difference in acaricidal activity between amitraz and DPMF. The results also revealed the physiological and pharmacological functions of octopamine receptors (OARs) in T. cinnabarinus and could provide a basis for the design of new acaricides, with OARs as a special target. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

Templated Synthesis of Diamond Nanopillar Arrays Using Porous Anodic Aluminium Oxide (AAO) Membranes.

Diamond nanostructures are mostly produced from bulk diamond (single- or polycrystalline) by using time-consuming and/or costly subtractive manufacturing methods. In this study, we report the bottom-up synthesis of ordered diamond nanopillar arrays by using porous anodic aluminium oxide (AAO). Commercial ultrathin AAO membranes were adopted as the growth template in a straightforward, three-step fabrication process involving chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and the transfer and removal of the alumina foils. Two types of AAO membranes with distinct nominal pore size were employed and transferred onto the nucleation side of CVD diamond sheets. Subsequently, diamond nanopillars were grown directly on these sheets. After removal of the AAO template by chemical etching, ordered arrays of submicron and nanoscale diamond pillars with ~325 nm and ~85 nm diameters were successfully released.