Dysregulation of ribosome-associated quality control elicits cognitive disorders via overaccumulation of TTC3.

Ribosome-associated quality control (RQC) pathway is responsible for degradation of nascent polypeptides in aberrantly stalled ribosomes, and its defects may lead to neurological diseases. However, the underlying molecular mechanism of how RQC dysfunction elicits neurological disorders remains poorly understood. Here we revealed that neurons with knockout (KO) of ubiquitin ligase LTN1, a key gene in the RQC pathway, show developmental defects in neurons via upregulation of TTC3 and UFMylation signaling proteins. The abnormally enhanced TTC3 protein in Ltn1 KO neurons reduced further accumulation of translationally arrested products by preventing translation initiation of selective genes. However, the overaccumulated TTC3 protein in turn caused dendritic abnormalities and reduced surface-localized GABAA receptors during neuronal development. Ltn1 KO mice showed behavioral deficits associated with cognitive disorders, a subset of which were restored by TTC3 knockdown in medial prefrontal cortex. Together, the overactivated cellular compensatory mechanism against defective RQC through TTC3 overaccumulation induced synaptic and cognitive deficits. More broadly, these findings represent a novel cellular mechanism underlying neuronal dysfunctions triggered by exaggerated cellular stress response to accumulated abnormal translation products in neurons.

Beyond the waves: Unraveling pandemic outcomes with genomic insights and immunity analysis - Evidence from 14 countries.

OBJECTIVE: Although the World Health Organization and many governments have recategorized COVID-19 as a generally mild to moderately severe disease, consecutive pandemic waves driven by immune escape variants have underscored the need for timely and accurate prediction of the next outbreak. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to translating genomic data and infection- and vaccine-induced immunity into direct estimates. METHODS: We retrieved epidemiologic and genomic data shortly before pandemic waves across 14 developed countries from late 2021 to mid-2022 and examined associations between early-stage variant competition, infection- and vaccine-induced immunity, and the time intervals between wave peaks. We applied regression analysis and the generalized estimating equation method to construct an inferential model. RESULTS: Each per cent increase in the proportion of a new variant was associated with a 1.0% reduction in interpeak intervals on average. Curvilinear associations between vaccine-induced immunity and outcome variables were observed, suggesting that reaching a critical vaccine distribution rate may decrease the caseload of the upcoming wave. CONCLUSIONS: By leveraging readily accessible pre-outbreak genomic and epidemiologic data, our results not only substantiate the predictive potential of early variant fractions but also propose that immunity acquired through infection alone may not sufficiently mitigate transmission. Conversely, a rapid and widespread vaccination initiative appears to be correlated with a decrease in disease incidence.

Ag/ZnO microcavities with high sensitivity and self-cleaning properties for fast repetitive SERS detection.

A SERS substrate with high sensitivity and reusability was proposed. The chip consists of multiple ZnO microcavities loaded with silver particles. Based on structural characteristics, this coupling between cavity modes and localized surface plasmon modes can highly localize the electric field, where experimental results revealed a detection limit of 10-11 M for R6G. In addition, during carrier control in semiconductors with localized electromagnetic fields, our substrate also exhibits high self-cleaning efficiency and in situ detection stability. Even in a dry environment, it exhibits excellent light-mediated cleaning ability across multiple reuse test cycles. The convenient, rinse-free substrate, with its cost-effective and sustainable features, shows great promise for the study on detection and degradation of active materials.

Examining the normality assumption of a design-comparable effect size in single-case designs.

What Works Clearinghouse (WWC, 2022) recommends a design-comparable effect size (D-CES; i.e., gAB) to gauge an intervention in single-case experimental design (SCED) studies, or to synthesize findings in meta-analysis. So far, no research has examined gAB's performance under non-normal distributions. This study expanded Pustejovsky et al. (2014) to investigate the impact of data distributions, number of cases (m), number of measurements (N), within-case reliability or intra-class correlation (ρ), ratio of variance components (λ), and autocorrelation (ϕ) on gAB in multiple-baseline (MB) design. The performance of gAB was assessed by relative bias (RB), relative bias of variance (RBV), MSE, and coverage rate of 95% CIs (CR). Findings revealed that gAB was unbiased even under non-normal distributions. gAB's variance was generally overestimated, and its 95% CI was over-covered, especially when distributions were normal or nearly normal combined with small m and N. Large imprecision of gAB occurred when m was small and ρ was large. According to the ANOVA results, data distributions contributed to approximately 49% of variance in RB and 25% of variance in both RBV and CR. m and ρ each contributed to 34% of variance in MSE. We recommend gAB for MB studies and meta-analysis with N ≥ 16 and when either (1) data distributions are normal or nearly normal, m = 6, and ρ = 0.6 or 0.8, or (2) data distributions are mildly or moderately non-normal, m ≥ 4, and ρ = 0.2, 0.4, or 0.6. The paper concludes with a discussion of gAB's applicability and design-comparability, and sound reporting practices of ES indices.

Dynamic moist air monitor in a micro area with extremely high figure-of-merit.

In the rapidly changing moisture air, conventional relative humidity (RH) sensors are often difficult to respond in time and accurately due to the limitation of flow rate and non-uniform airflow distribution. In this study, we numerically demonstrate that humidity changes on micro-zones can be monitored in real time using a Bloch surface wave (BSW) ubiquitous in one-dimensional photonic crystals (1DPC). This phenomenon can be observed by leakage radiation microscope (LRM). After theoretically deriving the angular resolution limit of LRM, we obtained the minimum BSW angular change on a practical scheme that can be observed in the momentum space to complete the detection, and realized the dynamic real-time monitoring of small-scale humidity change in experiment for the first time. This monitoring method has extremely high figure of merit (FOM) without hysteresis, which can be used in humidity sensing and refractive index sensing as well as the research on turbulence.

Refractive index sensing based on surface plasmon-coupled emission excited by reverse Kretschmann or Tamm structure.

Surface plasmon coupled emission (SPCE) is the directional emission of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) through the reverse channels of focused surface plasmon excitation to the far field, which has shown significant possibilities in bioanalysis, medical diagnosis, and so on. We carried out a theoretical study of SPCE to analyze its mechanisms and proposed a new structure to improve the emission intensity of SPCE. We proposed a method for refractive index sensing based on SPCE, consisting of a reverse Kretschmann (RK) or a Tamm structure for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The corresponding sensing sensitivity reaches 87.61 deg/RIU and 67.44 deg/RIU, respectively. Compared with that in the RK, the far-field radiation intensity of SPCE in the Tamm structure is enhanced by two orders of magnitude. Furthermore, compared with surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing, SPCE sensing can improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and excitation efficiency. Our structures enable refractive index sensing with a high SNR, high spatial resolution, and without the requirement of angular alignment using complex mechanics, which are suitable for practical applications such as quantitative biomolecular detection and medical diagnosis.

Controlling Chemoselectivity of Catalytic Hydroboration with Light.

The ability to selectively react one functional group in the presence of another underpins efficient reaction sequences. Despite many designer catalytic systems being reported for hydroboration reactions, which allow introduction of a functional handle for cross-coupling or act as mild method for reducing polar functionality, these platforms rarely deal with more complex systems where multiple potentially reactive sites exist. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, the ability to use light to distinguish between ketones and carboxylic acids in more complex molecules. By taking advantage of different activation modes, a single catalytic system can be used for hydroboration, with the chemoselectivity dictated only by the presence or absence of visible light.

Stable directional emission in active optical waveguides shielding external environmental influences.

The skillful confinement of light brought by the composite waveguide structure has shown great possibilities in the development of photonic devices. It has greatly expanded the application range of an on-chip system in dark-field imaging and confined the laser when containing an active medium. Here we experimentally proved a stable directional emission in an active waveguide composed of metal and photonic crystal, which is almost completely unaffected by the external environment and different from the common local light field that is seriously affected by the structure. When the refractive index of samples on the surface layer changes, it can ensure the constant emission intensity of the internal mode, while still retaining the external environmental sensitivity of the surface mode. It can also be used for imaging and sensing as a functional slide. This research of chip-based directional emission is very promising for various applications including quantitative detection of biological imaging, coupled emission intensity sensing, portable imaging equipment, and tunable micro lasers.

Experimental synthesis of partially coherent sources.

A flexible pseudo-mode sampling superposition method for synthesizing partially coherent sources has been introduced that can be thought of as an approximate discrete representation of Gori's nonnegative definiteness criterion for designing spatial correlation functions. Importantly, without performing formidable mode analysis, this method enables us to develop a convenient and efficient experimental technology to customize partially coherent sources without sacrificing theoretical accuracy. As an example, we experimentally generate a new, to the best of our knowledge, class of nontrivial pseudo-Schell model sources recently proposed by de Sande et al. Our approach opens up a useful avenue for manipulating nontrivial partially coherent beams and promotes applications for optical tweezers and photolithography.

Twisted partially coherent array sources and their transmission in anisotropic turbulence.

A new class of twisted Schell-model array correlated sources are introduced based on Mercer's expansion. It turns out that such sources can be expressed as superposition of fully coherent Laguerre-Gaussian modes, and the twistable condition is established. Furthermore, on the basis of a stretched coordinate system and a quadratic approximation, analytical expressions for the mutual coherence function of an anisotropic non-Kolmogorov turbulence and the cross-spectral density of a twisted Gaussian Schell-model array beam are rigorously derived. Due to the presence of the twist phase, the beam spot and the degree of coherence rotate as they propagate, but their rotation centers are different. It is shown that the anisotropy of turbulence causes an anisotropic beam spreading in the horizontal and vertical directions. However, impressing a twist phase on source beams can significantly inhibit this effect. For an anticipated atmospheric channel condition, a comprehensive selection of initial optical signal parameters, receiver aperture size and receiver capability, etc., is necessary. Our work is helpful for exploring new forms of twistable sources, and promotes guidance on optimization of partial coherent beam applications.

Label-Free Chemical Imaging of Latent Fingerprints with Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy.

Fingerprints have long been the gold standard for personal identification in forensic investigations. Methods for cultivating and enhancing the visualization of latent fingerprints (LFPs) are continuously evolving. One important challenge is to identify suspicious chemicals present in fingerprint residues, which requires chemical imaging capability. Recently, vibrational spectroscopy has shown that LFP analysis through tape-lift, Raman mapping, and multivariate data analysis presents a useful tool for forensic investigation. However, there are still major difficulties in terms of acquisition speed, poor spatial resolution, and lack of sensitivity. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of stimulated Raman scattering microscopy to quickly and easily extract LFP patterns from different substrates. Contrary to what has been reported, no obvious fingerprint degradation or lipid diffusion is observed with either glass or stainless steel substrate. Importantly, we demonstrate that trace exogenous chemicals can be detected in fingerprints. We further demonstrate an improvement in directly acquiring a LFP pattern lifted from tape by spectrally removing signals from tape.

Atomic force microscopy with nanoelectrode tips for high resolution electrochemical, nanoadhesion and nanoelectrical imaging.

Multimodal nano-imaging in electrochemical environments is important across many areas of science and technology. Here, scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) using an atomic force microscope (AFM) platform with a nanoelectrode probe is reported. In combination with PeakForce tapping AFM mode, the simultaneous characterization of surface topography, quantitative nanomechanics, nanoelectronic properties, and electrochemical activity is demonstrated. The nanoelectrode probe is coated with dielectric materials and has an exposed conical Pt tip apex of ∼200 nm in height and of ∼25 nm in end-tip radius. These characteristic dimensions permit sub-100 nm spatial resolution for electrochemical imaging. With this nanoelectrode probe we have extended AFM-based nanoelectrical measurements to liquid environments. Experimental data and numerical simulations are used to understand the response of the nanoelectrode probe. With PeakForce SECM, we successfully characterized a surface defect on a highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite electrode showing correlated topographical, electrochemical and nanomechanical information at the highest AFM-SECM resolution. The SECM nanoelectrode also enabled the measurement of heterogeneous electrical conductivity of electrode surfaces in liquid. These studies extend the basic understanding of heterogeneity on graphite/graphene surfaces for electrochemical applications.

Cortactin-binding protein 2 increases microtubule stability and regulates dendritic arborization.

Neurons are characterized by subcellular compartments, such as axons, dendrites and synapses, that have highly specialized morphologies and biochemical specificities. Cortactin-binding protein 2 (CTTNBP2), a neuron-specific F-actin regulator, has been shown to play a role in the regulation of dendritic spine formation and their maintenance. Here, we show that, in addition to F-actin, CTTNBP2 also associates with microtubules before mature dendritic spines form. This association of CTTNBP2 and microtubules induced the formation of microtubule bundles. Although the middle (Mid) region of CTTNBP2 was sufficient for its association with microtubules, for microtubule bundling, the N-terminal region containing the coiled-coil motifs (NCC), which mediates the dimerization or oligomerization of CTTNBP2, was also required. Our study indicates that CTTNBP2 proteins form a dimer or oligomer and brings multiple microtubule filaments together to form bundles. In cultured hippocampal neurons, knockdown of CTTNBP2 or expression of the Mid or NCC domain alone reduced the acetylation levels of microtubules and impaired dendritic arborization. This study suggests that CTTNBP2 influences both the F-actin and microtubule cytoskeletons and regulates dendritic spine formation and dendritic arborization.

Modeling, Simulation, and Implementation of Solar-Driven Water-Splitting Devices.

An integrated cell for the solar-driven splitting of water consists of multiple functional components and couples various photoelectrochemical (PEC) processes at different length and time scales. The overall solar-to-hydrogen (STH) conversion efficiency of such a system depends on the performance and materials properties of the individual components as well as on the component integration, overall device architecture, and system operating conditions. This Review focuses on the modeling- and simulation-guided development and implementation of solar-driven water-splitting prototypes from a holistic viewpoint that explores the various interplays between the components. The underlying physics and interactions at the cell level is are reviewed and discussed, followed by an overview of the use of the cell model to provide target properties of materials and guide the design of a range of traditional and unique device architectures.

Extracting surface wave-coupled emission with subsurface dielectric gratings.

Conventional surface plasmons (SPs) or Bloch surface waves (BSWs) have a wave vector exceeding that of light in vacuum, and, therefore, the surface plasmon-coupled emission (SPCE) or Bloch surface wave-coupled emission (BSWCE) cannot escape from the corresponding structures. With the aid of a high-refractive-index prism or an oil-immersion objective, the SPCE or BSWCE can be coupled into free space. But the large volumes of the prism and objective are certainly unfavorable for miniaturization of the optical systems or inconvenient for applications such as the optical displays. Here we experimentally demonstrate a new method to extract the SPCE or BSWCE with a subsurface dielectric grating. The experimental results verify that the chip-like substrate with two decorated sides can bring out the directional fluorescence emission in free space. The emitting direction and emitting patterns can be tuned by the period size and dimensionality of the gratings. Our work provides a new strategy to realize free-space directional fluorescence emission at a very low cost and compact configuration, which has potential applications in fluorescence-based sensing, imaging, light-emitting diodes, optical displays, and other near-field optical devices.

Back focal plane imaging of directional emission from dye molecules coupled to one-dimensional photonic crystals.

Bloch surface waves (BSWs) on one-dimensional photonic crystals (1DPCs) have been used to beam the fluorescence emission from the dye molecules. All dielectric 1DPC displays its low propagating loss, narrow resonance and the absence of absorption or quenching. In this paper, back focal plane imaging reveals that in addition to the BSW mode, a guided mode and a cavity mode also exist in the 1DPC which all couple with the excited dye molecules. The appearance of these modes is sensitive to the wavelength of the fluorescence and alters the beaming effect by the 1DPC. Numerical simulations verify the existence of these modes which are consistent with the experimental results. Comparisons between the Bloch surface wave coupled emission and surface plasmon coupled emission are also presented for a clearer understanding of the multilayered film enabled directional emission.

Effect of metal film thickness on Tamm plasmon-coupled emission.

Tamm plasmons (TPs) are the result of trapping optical energy at the interface between a metal film and a one-dimensional photonic crystal. In contrast to surface plasmons, TPs display unique properties such as the ability to undergo direct optical excitation without the aid of prisms or gratings, being populated using both S- and P-polarized light, and importantly, they can be created with incident light normal to the surface. This latter property has recently been used to obtain Tamm plasmon-coupled emission (TPCE), which beams along a path directly perpendicular to the surface. In this paper the effects of metal film thickness on the TPCE are investigated using back focal plane (BFP) imaging and spectral resolutions. The observed experimental results are in agreement with the numerical simulations. The present work provides the basic understanding needed to design structures for TPCE, which in turn has potential applications in the fabrication of active materials for light emitting devices, fluorescence-based sensing, using microarrays, and imaging.

Dynamically generating a large-area confined optical field with subwavelength feature size.

By using a prism of high refractive index, free-space cylindrical vector beams can be selectively converted into confined optical fields with large area, such as surface plasmon polaritons or waveguide modes, whose interference will produce optical features at the nanometer scale. Due to the polarization sensitivity of these modes, the macroscopic distribution of the confined field can be dynamically manipulated through an electronically driven liquid crystal. Based on these phenomena, a promising maskless interference nanolithography is proposed and experimentally demonstrated.

Food-borne bacteria analysis using a diatomite bioinspired SERS platform.

Rapid and sensitive detection of food-borne bacteria has remained challenging over the past few decades. We propose a surface-enhanced Raman scattering sensing strategy based on a novel bioinspired surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrate, which can directly detect dye molecular residues and food-borne pathogen microorganisms in the environment. The surface-enhanced Raman scattering platform consists of a natural diatomite microporous array decorated with a metal-phenolic network that enables the in situ reduction of gold nanoparticles. The as-prepared nanocomposites display excellent surface-enhanced Raman scattering activity with the lowest limit of detection and the maximum Raman enhancement factor of dye molecules up to 10-11 M and 1.18 × 107, respectively. For food-borne bacterial detection, a diatomite microporous array decorated with a metal polyphenol network and gold nanoparticle-based surface-enhanced Raman scattering analysis is capable of distinguishing the biochemical fingerprint information of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, indicating the great potential for strain identification.

Development and validation of a risk nomogram to estimate risk of hyponatremia after spinal cord injury: A retrospective single-center study.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to establish a nomogram-based assessment for predicting the risk of hyponatremia after spinal cord injury (SCI). DESIGN: The study is a retrospective single-center study. PARTICIPANTS: SCI patients hospitalized in the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University. SETTING: The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, Guangxi, China. METHODS: We performed a retrospective clinical study to collect SCI patients hospitalized in the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University from 2016 to 2020. Based on their clinical scores, the SCI patients were grouped as either hyponatremic or non-hyponatremic, SCI patients in 2016-2019 were identified as the training set, and patients in 2020 were identified as the test set. A nomogram was generated, the calibration curve, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and decision curve analysis (DCA) were used to validate the model. RESULTS: A total of 895 SCI patients were retrieved. After excluding patients with incomplete data, 883 patients were finally included in this study and used to construct the nomograms. The indicators used in the nomogram included sex, completeness of SCI, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, fever, constipation, white blood cell (WBC), albumin and serum Ca2+. These indices were determined by the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis. The C-index of the model was 0.81, the area under the curve (AUC) of the training set was 0.82(Cl:0.79-0.85), and the validation set was 0.79(Cl:0.73-0.85). CONCLUSIONS: Nomogram has good predictive ability, sex, completeness of SCI, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, fever, constipation, WBC, albumin and serum Ca2+ were predictors of hyponatremia after SCI.