Enhancement of the organic acid content and antioxidant capacity of yellow whey through fermentation with Lacticaseibacillus casei YQ336.

Fermentation is considered an effective tool for improving the functional characteristics of food. In this study, Lacticaseibacillus casei YQ336 was used to ferment yellow whey, and physical and chemical analysis was performed to identify the changes in the nutritional components and antioxidant activity of the fermented yellow whey. Non-targeted metabolomics was used to study the transformation of small molecular substances in the fermented yellow whey. After 48 h of pure culture fermentation with L. casei YQ336, the pH of yellow whey decreased significantly (p < 0.05). Meanwhile, the content of total acids, organic acids, sugars, total phenols, and total flavonoids and the antioxidant activity showed a significant increase (p < 0.05). A total of 628 differential metabolites were identified between fermented and unfermented yellow whey samples, of which 293 were upregulated and 335 were downregulated. After fermentation, due to the growth and metabolic activity of L. casei YQ336, meaningful metabolites such as homovanillic acid, lactic acid, oxalic acid, L-glutamic acid, and phenylalanine, as well as phenyllactic acid, gallic acid, and genistein were produced. This increased the organic acid content and antioxidant activity of yellow whey. The findings provide a theoretical and practical basis for further research on the bio-functional activity of yellow whey and the recycling and utilization of food by-products.

Wearable Near-Eye Tracking Technologies for Health: A Review.

With the rapid advancement of computer vision, machine learning, and consumer electronics, eye tracking has emerged as a topic of increasing interest in recent years. It plays a key role across diverse domains including human-computer interaction, virtual reality, and clinical and healthcare applications. Near-eye tracking (NET) has recently been developed to possess encouraging features such as wearability, affordability, and interactivity. These features have drawn considerable attention in the health domain, as NET provides accessible solutions for long-term and continuous health monitoring and a comfortable and interactive user interface. Herein, this work offers an inaugural concise review of NET for health, encompassing approximately 70 related articles published over the past two decades and supplemented by an in-depth examination of 30 literatures from the preceding five years. This paper provides a concise analysis of health-related NET technologies from aspects of technical specifications, data processing workflows, and the practical advantages and limitations. In addition, the specific applications of NET are introduced and compared, revealing that NET is fairly influencing our lives and providing significant convenience in daily routines. Lastly, we summarize the current outcomes of NET and highlight the limitations.

Rapid Detection of Bacterial Resistance to ß-Lactam Antibiotics with a Relay-Response Chemiluminescence Assay.

Bacterial resistance caused by ß-lactamases has been a major threat to public health around the world, seriously weakening the efficacy of ß-lactam antibiotics, the most widely used therapeutic agents against infectious diseases. To detect the bacterial resistance to ß-lactam antibiotics, particularly specific type of ß-lactam antibiotics, in a rapid manner, we report herein a relay-response chemiluminescence assay. This assay mainly consists of two reagents: a ß-lactam-caged thiophenol and a thiophenol-sensitive chemiluminescence reporter, both of which are synthetically feasible. The selective hydrolysis of ß-lactam by ß-lactamase leads to the releasing of free thiophenol, which then triggers the emission of a chemiluminescence signal in a relay manner. Three thiophenol-caged ß-lactams, structural analogues of cephalothin, cefotaxime, and meropenem, respectively, have been synthesized. And the application of this assay with these analogues of ß-lactam antibiotics allows fast detection of ß-lactamase-expressing resistant bacteria and, more impressively, provides detailed information on the resistant scope of bacteria.