Facile Preparation and Study of Self-healing Water-absorbing Expanding Elastomers.

The absorbent expansion elastomer plays a crucial role in engineering sealing and holds a promising future in this field as infrastructure continues to develop. Traditional materials have their limitations, especially when used in large construction projects where the integrity and reliability of the material are of utmost importance. In this work, a self-healing water-absorbing expansion elastomer was developed for continuous production at a large scale to monitor the sealing conditions of massive infrastructure projects. At room temperature, the material exhibited a repairing efficiency of 57.77% within 2 h, which increased to 84.02% after 12 h. This extended reaction time allowed for effective repairs when defects were detected. The material's strength reached approximately 3 MPa, making it suitable for a wide range of applications. The volume expansion rate of the material reached 200-400% for effective sealing, and the fictionalization of the packing made it have a good external force sensing effect and prevent heat build-up effect. The conductive detection performance of the absorbent expansion elastomer was improved by utilizing triple self-healing strategies, including dipole-dipole interaction, ion cross-linked network, and externally-aided restoration materials.

Sandwich-Type Self-Healing Sensor with Multilevel for Motion Detection.

Real-time detection of various parts of the human body is crucial in medical monitoring and human-machine technology. However, existing self-healing flexible sensing materials are limited in real-life applications due to the weak stability of conductive networks and difficulty in balancing stretchability and self-healing properties. Therefore, the development of wearable flexible sensors with high sensitivity and fast response with self-healing properties is of great interest. In this paper, a novel multilevel self-healing polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material is proposed for enhanced sensing capabilities. The PDMS was designed to have multiple bonding mechanisms including hydrogen bonding, coordination bonding, disulfide bonding, and local covalent bonding. To further enhance its sensing properties, modified carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were embedded within the PDMS matrix using a solvent etching technique. This created a sandwich-type sensing material with improved stability and sensitivity. This self-healing flexible sensing material (self-healing efficiency = 70.1% at 80 °C and 6 h) has good mechanical properties (stretchability ≈413%, tensile strength ≈0.69 MPa), thermal conductivity, and electrical conductivity. It has ultrahigh sensitivity, which makes it possible to be manufactured as a multifunctional flexible sensor.

Development a high-sensitivity sandwich ELISA for determining antigen content of porcine circovirus type 2 vaccines.

Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) is intensely prevalent in global pig farms. The PCV2 vaccine is an important means of preventing and controlling PCV2. The quality control of PCV2 vaccines is predominantly based on detection techniques such as animal testing and neutralizing antibody titration. Measuring the content of effective proteins in vaccines to measure vaccine efficacy is an excellent alternative to traditional methods, which can greatly accelerate the development speed and testing time of vaccines. In this study, we screened a monoclonal antibody (mAb) that can effectively recognize not only the exogenous expression of PCV2 Cap protein but also PCV2 virus. The double antibody sandwich ELISA (DAS-ELISA) was developed using this mAb that specifically recognize PCV2 Cap. The minimum protein content detected by this method is 3.5 ng/mL. This method can be used for the quality control of PCV2 inactivated vaccine and subunit vaccine, and the detection results are consistent with the results of mice animal experiments. This method has the advantages of simple operation, good sensitivity, high specificity and wide application. It can detect the effective antigen Cap protein content of various types of PCV2 vaccines, which not only shorten the vaccine inspection time but also save costs.

Deletion of ARGLU1 causes global defects in alternative splicing in vivo and mouse cortical malformations primarily via apoptosis.

Haploinsufficient mutation in arginine and glutamine-rich protein 1 (Arglu1), a newly identified pre-mRNA splicing regulator, may be linked to neural developmental disorders associated with mental retardation and epilepsy in human patients, but the underlying causes remain elusive. Here we show that ablation of Arglu1 promotes radial glial cell (RG) detachment from the ventricular zone (VZ), leading to ectopic localized RGs in the mouse embryonic cortex. Although they remain proliferative, ectopic progenitors, as well as progenitors in the VZ, exhibit prolonged mitosis, p53 upregulation and cell apoptosis, leading to reduced neuron production, neuronal loss and microcephaly. RNA seq analysis reveals widespread changes in alternative splicing in the mutant mouse embryonic cortex, preferentially affecting genes involved in neuronal functions. Mdm2 and Mdm4 are found to be alternatively spliced at the exon 3 and exon 5 respectively, leading to absence of the p53-binding domain and nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) and thus relieve inhibition of p53. Removal of p53 largely rescues the microcephaly caused by deletion of Arglu1. Our findings provide mechanistic insights into cortical malformations of human patients with Arglu1 haploinsufficient mutation.

Comparison of prognostic factors of esophageal cancer between a Chinese cohort and the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Esophageal cancer is a highly aggressive, early metastasis gastrointestinal malignancy, with geographic differences in prognosis. It is unknown whether there are differences in the survival in different regions among esophageal cancer patients who underwent the treatments. This study was to explore the influencing factors of esophageal cancer survival in patients from China and the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Methods: The retrospective cohort study were conducted with 605 Chinese esophageal cancer patients in the Wuxi People's Hospital and 2,351 patients from the SEER database. The demographic and clinical data were collected from the two cohort, respectively. The outcome was the death during the follow-up. The follow-up ended on November 30, 2021. The Cox proportional hazards model was used in the univariate and multivariate survival analyses, with hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: In group one, the following were identified as the prognostic factors: female gender (HR =0.568; 95% CI: 0.398-0.811), T3 and T4 stages (HR =3.312; 95% CI: 2.493-4.401), N2 and N3 stages (HR =3.562; 95% CI: 2.631-4.824), and other subtypes of cancer (HR =0.393; 95% CI: 0.223-0.693). The following prognostic were factors identified in group two: age ≥65 years (HR =1.16; 95% CI: 1.058-1.276), female gender (HR =0.843; 95% CI: 0.752-0.945), T3 and T4 stages (HR =1.523; 95% CI: 1.373-1.690), M1 stage (HR =2.554; 95% CI: 2.303-2.832), treatment with surgery and chemotherapy (HR =0.507; 95% CI: 0.457-0.562), and other subtypes of cancer (HR =1.432; 95% CI: 1.298-1.581). Conclusions: There may be some differences in prognostic factors between Chinese and American patients with esophageal cancer. It is indicated that different management strategies of esophageal cancer should be considered in different populations to improve the prognosis of patients.