Tailored diffusion limiting membrane for microneedle glucose sensors with wide linear range.

Continuous glucose monitoring is very important to daily blood glucose control in diabetic patients, but its accuracy is limited by the narrow linear range of the response of biosensor to the glucose concentration because of the oxygen starvation in tissue and the limited maximum conversion rate of glucose oxidase. In this work, a biocompatible diffusion limiting membrane based on two medical-grade polyurethanes is developed via blending modification to restrict the diffusion flux of glucose to match the oxygen concentration and the maximum conversion rate. The expansiveness of the linear range for the nanomaterials-modified electrode in the glucose biosensor can be achieved through the regulation of two polyurethanes, the solvent, and the thickness of the membrane. In addition, the mass transport of hydrogen peroxide and interfering substances is also limited of the membrane. The in vitro experiments demonstrated that the membrane-modified microneedle biosensor exhibited a rapid response to the concentration variation of glucose, a wide linear range that is sufficient to cover the blood concentration of healthy and diabetic people, the ability to resist the oxygen concentration fluctuation and interfering substances, good reproducibility and long-term stability. The custom wearable electrochemical system, possessing these characteristics, has been proven to accurately monitor the blood concentration in a living rat in real time. This demonstrates a significant potential for application in both daily and clinical blood glucose monitoring.

Water-Soluble Chemical Vapor Detection Enabled by Doctor-Blade-Coated Macroporous Photonic Crystals.

Water-soluble chemicals, involving a wide range of toxic chemicals in aqueous solutions, remain essential in both daily living or industrial uses. However, most toxicants are evaporated with water through their use and thus cause deleterious effects on the domestic environment and health in humans. Unfortunately, most current low-dose chemical vapor detection technologies are restricted by the use of sophisticated instruments and unable to promptly detect the quantity of diverse toxicants in a single analysis. To address these issues, this study reports the development of simple and fast chemical vapor detection using doctor-blade-coated macroporous poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)/poly(ethoxylated trimethylolpropane triacrylate) photonic crystals, in which the poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) has strong affinity to insecticide vapor owing to a favorable Gibbs free energy change for their mixing. The condensation of water-soluble chemical vapor therefore results in a significant reflection peak shift and an obvious color change. The visual colorimetric readout can be further improved by increasing the lattice spacing of the macroporous photonic crystals. Furthermore, the dependence of the reflection peak position on vapor pressure under actual conditions and the reproducibility of vapor detecting are also evaluated in this study.

Promotion of CO2 Electrochemical Reduction via Cu Nanodendrites.

The electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) to fuels and chemicals is an opportunity for sustainable energy research that can realize both renewable energy storage and negative carbon cycle feedback. However, the selective generation of multicarbon products is challenging because of the competitive hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and protonation of the reacting adsorbate. Copper-based materials have been the most commonly studied catalysts for CO2 electroreduction due to their ability to produce a substantial amount of C2 products. Here, we report that a nanodendrite configuration can improve the electrocatalytic performance of Cu catalysts, especially multicarbon product formation, while suppressing HER and methane production. The abundant conductive networks derived from the fractal copper dendritic structures with a high electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) facilitate electron transport and mass transfer, leading to superior kinetics for the formation of multicarbon products from CO2 electroreduction. As a result, approximately 70-120% higher ethylene and 60-220% higher C3 (n-PrOH and propanal) yields with lower onset potentials were produced over Cu nanodendrites compared to the initial Cu particles. This work opens an avenue for promoting CO2 electrochemical reduction to multicarbon products by catalyst configuration modulation.

[Environmental impact differences in Qingtian rice-fish culture system at different management scales in the context of land transfer: An empirical study with the carbon footprint method.] / åœŸåœ°æµè½¬èƒŒæ™¯ä¸‹ä¸åŒç»è¥è§„æ¨¡é’ç”°ç¨»é±¼å ±ç”Ÿç³»ç»Ÿçš„çŽ¯å¢ƒå½±å“å·®å¼‚­­åŸºäºŽç¢³è¶³è¿¹çš„å®žè¯ç ”ç©¶.

Under rapid industrialization and urbanization, the conservation and management of agricultural heritage systems is facing many threats and challenges, such as the massive outflow of working labor, land abandonment, and the difficulty in maintaining traditional knowledge systems. Promoting land transfer and carrying out moderate-scale management play an active role in the conservation of agricultural heritage systems. While land transfer brings economic benefits to heritage sites, its environmental impacts to heritage sites are worthy of attention. However, empirical studies are scarce. This study took Qingtian rice-fish culture system in Zhejiang Province as an example, which was designated as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) in 2005. Small farmer management model and land scale management model were distinguished, while the life cycle method was used to calculate the carbon footprints of two models. The results showed that the carbon footprints of small farmer management model and land scale management model were 6510.80 and 5917.00 kg CO2-eq·hm-2, respectively, while the carbon footprints per unit output were 0.13 and 0.10 kg CO2-eq·yuan-1, respectively. Compared with small farmer management model, land scale management model had lower greenhouse gas emission and lower environmental impact of per unit output. As farmers expanded the scale of land management, local greenhouse gas emissions had been reduced by 4097.20 kg CO2-eq. Furthermore, the accumulation of CH4 in agricultural production accounted for the largest proportion of carbon footprint. The input of compound fertilizer among agricultural production materials was next to CH4 accumulation, becoming the second largest source of greenhouse gas emission. Corn and wheat being used as fish feed also had a significant impact on greenhouse gas emission in small farmer management model. Therefore, the promotion of moderate scale land management is conducive to the win-win of economic and environmental benefits of traditional agricultural systems and plays an important role in the conservation of agricultural heritage systems.

Differential protective effects of connective tissue growth factor against Aß neurotoxicity on neurons and glia.

Impaired clearance of amyloid-ß peptide (Aß) leads to abnormal extracellular accumulation of this neurotoxic protein that drives neurodegeneration in sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). Connective tissue growth factor (CTGF/CCN2) expression is elevated in plaque-surrounding astrocytes in AD patients. However, the role of CTGF in AD pathogenesis remains unclear. Here we characterized the neuroprotective activity of CTGF. We found that CTGF facilitated Aß uptake and subsequent degradation within primary glia and neuroblastoma cells. CTGF enhanced extracellular Aß degradation via membrane-bound matrix metalloproteinase-14 (MMP14) in glia and extracellular MMP13 in neurons. In the brain of a Drosophila AD model, glial-expression of CTGF reduced Aß deposits, improved locomotor function, and rescued memory deficits. Neuroprotective potential of CTGF against Aß42-induced photoreceptor degeneration was disrupted through silencing MMPs. Therefore, CTGF may represent a node for potential AD therapeutics as it intervenes in glia-neuron communication via specific MMPs to alleviate Aß neurotoxicity in the central nervous system.

[Relationship between environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer risk among nonsmokers in China: A meta-analysis].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between the environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and lung cancer by Meta-analysis. METHODS: We used "lung cancer/lung neoplasm", "non-smoking/non-smoker", "China/Chinese", "case-control/case control", "risk factor", "environmental tobacco smoke/passive smoking" as key words, to search papers in databases including Chinese BioMedical Literature (CBM), China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI), Wanfang, Vip Citation Databases (VIP), PubMed and Web of Science databases, and collected the case-control studies on ETS and lung cancer among Chinese non-smokers from January 1999 to December 2013. A total of 129 research papers were collected. RevMan 5.2 software was used to calculate combined odds radio (OR) and 95% CI. RESULTS: Qualified 18 literatures were included, total cases 6 145 and controls 8 132. Consolidated results showed that ETS exposure could increase the risk of lung cancer, combined OR (95% CI) = 1.52 (1.42-1.64). Stratified analysis showed that ETS exposure was found to be significantly associated with an increasing risk of the lung cancer on non-smoking women and men, and combined OR (95% CI) were 1.58 (1.42-1.75) and 1.34 (1.08-1.65), respectively; the ETS exposure from family or the working environment could increase the risk of lung cancer, and combined OR (95% CI) were 1.48 (1.20-1.82) and 1.38 (1.13-1.69) respectively; childhood exposure and adult exposure were no significant statistical significance, and combined OR (95% CI) were 1.37 (0.98-1.91), and 1.34 (0.97-1.85) respectively. CONCLUSION: Environmental tobacco smoke exposure was a significant risk factor of lung cancer among non-smokers in China.

[An analysis of the use of antibacterial drugs in pediatric in-patients in Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery].

PURPOSE: To investigate the status of administration of antibiotics drugs for pediatric in-patients in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in our hospital and offer guides for rational use of antibiotics in clinical practice. METHODS: 102 medical records of children from 3 months to 18 years in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in our hospital from the year of 2005-2006 were selected randomly. They were required to fill in the questionnaire which included gender, age, diagnosis of diseases, situation of medicine, laboratory examination, bacterial culture and sensitivity test of medicine. Respective analysis was done over the aspects of the variation of antibiotics medication, duration of medication, drug combination, various choices of antibiotics during the treatment and the ways of administration. A conclusion was drawn of whether the administration of antibiotics was rational. RESULTS: The rate of antibiotics administration was 94.12%, and the rates of single drug and combined administration (two drugs) were 74.51% and 19.61% respectively. Intravenous drip was the main way of administration, 54 cases received antibiotics orally, none of them received intramuscular medication. The rate of changing two kinds of antibiotics,three kinds of antibiotics and four kinds of antibiotics were 36.27%,23.53% and 9.8% respectively. The rate of bacterial culture was 1.96%. The rate of duration of medication in less than three days, from three days to seven days and more than seven days were 24.50%,48.04% and 21.57% respectively. The administration frequence was higher in cephalosporins, lincosamides, penecillins category than in other antibiotics. CONCLUSION: Rational use of anti-bacteria drugs was the main trend, however some problems still existed such as prophylactic administration of antibiotics, low delivery ratio of sample collection, irrational use of drugs, frequent change of antibiotics and drug abuse etc. Therefore, more efficient measures should be developed and implemented such as rational layout of wards, enhancing preoperative health care and rational administration of antibiotics etc.

[Improvements in alarm care speed for the clinical monitor system].

Hypoxia often occurs in the course of emergency treatment the monitoring systems alarm is not heard promptly by the nurses in attendance. In this study, nurses were monitored for the speed of their reactions to such alarms in 326 clinical instances. In 128 instances (39 percent) the nurses reacted immediately (within ten seconds), and in 198 instances (61 percent) the nurses took more than ten seconds to react. In relation to the reactions that took longer than ten seconds, it was discovered that there was: a lack of alertness about dealing with alarms, insufficient knowledge about setting alarms, no coordinated response mechanism, a failure to hear the alarm, limitations affecting the equipment and difficulty detecting the direction of origin of the alarm sound. For these reasons the hospital implemented briefings about alarms during morning meetings, a coordinated response mechanism, improvements in standards concerning the setting and inspection of alarms, the setting of limits on the frequency of patient's visits and the numbers of visitors, and the setting of a standard alarm volume level. As a result, the percentage of nurses responding to alarms within ten seconds increased to eighty percent, raising standards of nursing care, medical treatment and patient safety.