Optical blood glucose non-invasive detection and its research progress.

Blood glucose concentration is an important index for the diagnosis of diabetes, its self-monitoring technology is the method for scientific diabetes management. Currently, the typical household blood glucose meters have achieved great success in diabetes management, but they are discrete detection methods, and involve invasive blood sampling procedures. Optical detection technologies, which use the physical properties of light to detect the glucose concentration in body fluids non-invasively, have shown great potential in non-invasive blood glucose detection. This article summarized and analyzed the basic principles, research status, existing problems, and application prospects of different optical glucose detection technologies. In addition, this article also discusses the problems of optical detection technology in wearable sensors and perspectives on the future of non-invasive blood glucose detection technology to improve blood glucose monitoring in diabetic patients.

Highly conductive and transparent electrospun indium tin oxide nanofibers calcined by microwave plasma.

In this work, indium tin oxide (ITO) nanofibers have been prepared by electrospinning of polymers and post-growth microwave plasma calcination (MPC). Interestingly, compared to traditional calcination in furnace, MPC can accelerate the degradation of high polar polymers and improve adhesion of ITO nanofibers to the sapphire substrate. Further characterizations reveal that the ITO nanofibers with diameters of 100-150 nm prepared by MPC at 600 °C can reach a low sheet resistance of 269 Ω/sq and a high transmittance of 90.7% at 550 nm simultaneously, which has not been previously reported by others. Our results show that the efficient MPC method has great potential in preparation of metal-oxide nanofibers for electrical and optical applications.

Mechanically Robust and Electrically Stable High-Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerator Based on Fluffy-Free EC/Nylon-11 and PTFE/PVDF Nanofibers.

Electrospun nanofiber (NF)-based triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have attracted significant attention in recent years due to their high specific surface area, flexibility, and facile fabrication. However, these TENGs' triboelectric (TE) layers composed of electrospun NFs fail easily due to the poor mechanical properties and fluffy characteristics of the NFs. Herein, electropositive and electronegative TE layers based on ethylcellulose-coated nylon-11 (EC/nylon-11) NFs and polytetrafluoroethylene-coated poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PTFE/PVDF) NFs are prepared via electrospinning and postcoating processes. The obtained EC/nylon-11 and PTFE/PVDF NFs are fluffy-free and exhibit 12.26 and 20.33-fold enhancements of Young's modulus compared with those of pure nylon-11 and PVDF NFs, respectively. The optimized TENG exhibits not only superior performance, including an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 212 V, a short-circuit current (ISC) of 18.5 µA, and a maximum power density of 1.76 W/m2 but also excellent electrical durability for over 100,000 cycles. The TENG's capability is further demonstrated by continuously driving electronics for over 5 min and by being integrated into a self-powered sensor array of electric skin to detect different in vitro stimuli. This work provides an effective approach to obtaining mechanically robust and electrically stable NF-based high-performance TENGs, which may have potential applications in durable, wearable, and self-powered nanoelectronics.

Expression of C-myc and ß-catenin and their correlation in triple negative breast cancer.

BACKGROUND: The present study was planned to study the expression of C-myc and ß-catenin in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) tissue. Furthermore, their relations to clinical features of the tumor and the survival prognosis were also studied. Additionally, correlation was evaluated between the expression of C-myc and ß-catenin to provide the theoretical basis for the targeted therapy of TNBC. METHODS: Sixty cases of patients diagnosed with TNBC for the first time were selected for the study. The immumo-histochemical staining was employed to detect the positive expression rates of C-myc and ß-catenin in cancer tissues and normal mammary tissues 3 cm away from the carcinoma. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was used to test the gene amplification of C-myc in order to analyze the relation between C-myc and the protein expression of ß-catenin. Further, kept the median follow-up time to 25.0 months in order to compare the survival prognosis. RESULTS: The positive expression rates of C-myc and ß-catenin in cancer tissues were significantly higher than those in precancerous normal tissues (P<0.05). Furthermore, the expression rates were related with the diameter of tumor, clinical staging, pathological grading and lymphatic metastasis (P<0.5). There were 33 cases that exhibited an increase in C-myc gene copy number and the gene amplification was observed to be 55% in total. On the other hand, patients with positive expression of C-myc and ß-catenin protein exhibited a shortened disease-free survival without tumor with an increasing recurrence rate and lower survival rate (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The present study concludes that the positive expression of C-myc and ß-catenin in TNBC tissue might be closely correlated with clinical features of cancer and the survival prognosis.