vB_EcoM-P896 coliphage isolated from duck sewage can lyse both intestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli and extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli.

Pathogenic Escherichia coli strains cause diseases in both humans and animals. The limiting factors to prevent as well as control infections from pathogenic E. coli strains are their pathotypes, serotypes, and drug resistance. Herein, a bacteriophage (vB_EcoM-P896) has been isolated from duck sewage. Furthermore, aside from targeting intestinal pathogenic E. coli strains like enteropathogenic E. coli, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, entero-invasive E. coli, and enteroaggregative E. coli, vB_EcoM-P896 can cause lysis in extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli strains such as avian pathogenic E. coli. Stability analysis revealed that vB_EcoM-P896 was stable under the following conditions: temperature, 4℃-50℃; pH, 3-11. The sequencing of the vB_EcoM-P896 genome was conducted utilizing an HiSeq system (Illumina, San Diego, CA) and subjected to de novo assembling with the aid of Spades 3.11.1. The characteristics of the DNA genome were as follows: size, 170,656 bp; GC content, 40.4%; the number of putative coding regions, 294. Transmission electron microscopy analysis of morphology and genome analysis revealed that the phage vB_EcoM-P896 belonged to the order Caudovirales and the family Myoviridae. The pan-genome analysis of vB_EcoM-P896 was divided into two levels. The first level involved the analysis of 91 strains of muscle tail phages, which were mainly divided into 5 groups. The second level involved the analysis of 24 strains of myophage with high homology. Of the 1480 gene clusters, 23 were shared core genes. Neighbor-joining phylogenetic trees were constructed using the Poisson model with MEGA6.0 based on the conserved sequences of phage proteins, the amino acid sequence of the terminase large subunit, and tail fibrin. Further analysis revealed that vB_EcoM-P896 was a typical T4-like potent phage with potential clinical applications.

Development of a Time Projection Chamber Readout with Hybrid Pixel Sensors for Beam Monitoring.

To monitor the position and profile of therapeutic carbon beams in real-time, in this paper, we proposed a system called HiBeam-T. The HiBeam-T is a time projection chamber (TPC) with forty Topmetal-II- CMOS pixel sensors as its readout. Each Topmetal-II- has 72 × 72 pixels with the size of 83 µm × 83 µm. The detector consists of the charge drift region and the charge collection area. The readout electronics comprise three Readout Control Modules and one Clock Synchronization Module. This Hibeam-T has a sensitive area of 20 × 20 cm and can acquire the center of the incident beams. The test with a continuous 80.55 MeV/u 12C6+ beam shows that the measurement resolution to the beam center could reach 6.45 µm for unsaturated beam projections.

Effects of dietary supplementation with tea polyphenols and probiotics on laying performance, biochemical parameters intestinal morphology and microflora of laying hens.

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of tea polyphenols (TP) and probiotics (PB) on the production performance, biochemical indices, and gut health of laying hens. A total of 400 Hy-line Brown layers (45 weeks old) were randomly assigned to 8 diet groups for 8-week feeding trial. Compared with the control basal diet (CT), dietary high dosage of TP and PB (HTP-PB) increased egg mass (P < 0.05). Supplementation with HTP-PB improved the levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and decreased the malonic dialdehyde (MDA) content (P < 0.05) without affecting the contents of immunoglobulins in the serum. The combination of HTP and PB supplementation promoted the secretion of estradiol (E2) and progesterone (PROG) compared with treatment with TP or PB alone (P < 0.05). The combined use of HTP and PB induced higher jejunal villus height (VH) than the CT group (P < 0.05). Dietary TP and PB could optimize the functional network of intestinal microflora and the interactions between the intestinal microflora and the host. Therefore, the combined use of the high dosage of TP and PB affected laying performance, improved antioxidant capacity, and promoted intestinal health, which may be associated with regulation of the intestinal microbiota.

Cluster-Locating Algorithm Based on Deep Learning for Silicon Pixel Sensors.

The application of silicon pixel sensors provides an excellent signal-to-noise ratio, spatial resolution, and readout speed in particle physics experiments. Therefore, high-performance cluster-locating technology is highly required in CMOS-sensor-based systems to compress the data volume and improve the accuracy and speed of particle detection. Object detection techniques using deep learning technology demonstrate significant potential for achieving high-performance particle cluster location. In this study, we constructed and compared the performance of one-stage detection algorithms with the representative YOLO (You Only Look Once) framework and two-stage detection algorithms with an RCNN (region-based convolutional neural network). In addition, we also compared transformer-based backbones and CNN-based backbones. The dataset was obtained from a heavy-ion test on a Topmetal-M silicon pixel sensor at HIRFL. Heavy-ion tests were performed on the Topmetal-M silicon pixel sensor to establish the dataset for training and validation. In general, we achieved state-of-the-art results: 68.0% AP (average precision) at a speed of 10.04 FPS (Frames Per Second) on Tesla V100. In addition, the detection efficiency is on the same level as that of the traditional Selective Search approach, but the speed is higher.

Chromatographic and mass spectrometric technologies for chemical analysis of Euodiae fructus: A review.

INTRODUCTION: Euodiae fructus, also known as Evodiae fructus, is a popular Chinese herbal medicine derived from the dried, nearly ripe fruits of Tetradium ruticarpum (A. Juss.) T. G. Hartley. The main bioactive constituents of Euodiae fructus are alkaloids, limonoids, flavonoids, and anthraquinones. The contents of these compounds vary greatly between different plant species, geographic locations, and harvest times, which thus affect the therapeutic effects. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to summarize the chromatographic and mass spectrometric technologies applied for chemical analysis and quality evaluation of Euodiae fructus. Moreover, we aimed to emphasize the diverse soft ionization techniques and mass analyzers of LC-MS methods for assessment of Euodiae fructus. METHODOLOGY: A literature study was carried out by retrieving articles published between January 1988 and December 2021 from well-known databases, including PubMed, ASC, Elsevier, ScienceDirect, J·STAGE, Thieme, Taylor & Francis, Springer Link, Wiley Online Library, and CNKI. The chemical analysis methods were described in several categories in accordance with the used analytical techniques, including thin-layer chromatography (TLC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), capillary electrophoresis (CE), and counter-current chromatography (CCC). RESULTS: This review systematically summarizes the achievements in chemical analysis and quality evaluation of Euodiae fructus published in over three decades, covering the various chromatographic and mass spectrometric technologies applied for identification and quantification of phytochemical constituents. CONCLUSION: The summary serves as an important basis for future phytochemical research and implementation of quality control methods in order to ensure the efficacy and safety of Euodiae fructus.

A Gate Programmable van der Waals Metal-Ferroelectric-Semiconductor Vertical Heterojunction Memory.

Ferroelectricity, one of the keys to realize non-volatile memories owing to the remanent electric polarization, is an emerging phenomenon in the 2D limit. Yet the demonstrations of van der Waals (vdW) memories using 2D ferroelectric materials as an ingredient are very limited. Especially, gate-tunable ferroelectric vdW memristive device, which holds promises in future multi-bit data storage applications, remains challenging. Here, a gate-programmable multi-state memory is shown by vertically assembling graphite, CuInP2 S6 , and MoS2 layers into a metal(M)-ferroelectric(FE)-semiconductor(S) architecture. The resulted devices seamlessly integrate the functionality of both FE-memristor (with ON-OFF ratios exceeding 105 and long-term retention) and metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOS-FET). Thus, it yields a prototype of gate tunable giant electroresistance with multi-levelled ON-states in the FE-memristor in the vertical vdW assembly. First-principles calculations further reveal that such behaviors originate from the specific band alignment between the FE-S interface. Our findings pave the way for the engineering of ferroelectricity-mediated memories in future implementations of 2D nanoelectronics.

Maximizing Average Throughput of Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks Based on Energy Harvesting.

Energy harvesting (EH) and cooperative communication techniques have been widely used in cognitive radio networks. However, most studies on throughput in energy-harvesting cooperative cognitive radio networks (EH-CCRNs) are end-to-end, which ignores the overall working state of the network. For the above problems, under the premise of prioritizing the communication quality of short-range users, this paper focuses on the optimization of the EH-CCRN average throughput, with energy and transmission power as constraints. The formulated problem was an unsolved non-deterministic polynomial-time hardness (NP-hard) problem. To make it tractable to solve, a multi-user time-power resource allocation algorithm (M-TPRA) is proposed, which is based on sub-gradient descent and unary linear optimization methods. Simulation results show that the M-TPRA algorithm can improve the average throughput of the network. In addition, the energy consumed by executing the M-TPRA algorithm is analyzed.

Acidifiers Attenuate Diquat-Induced Oxidative Stress and Inflammatory Responses by Regulating NF-κB/MAPK/COX-2 Pathways in IPEC-J2 Cells.

In this study, we evaluated the protective effects and potential mechanisms of acidifiers on intestinal epithelial cells exposure to oxidative stress (OS). IPEC-J2 cells were first pretreated with 5 × 10-5 acidifiers for 4 h before being exposed to the optimal dose of diquat to induce oxidative stress. The results showed that acidifiers attenuated diquat-induced oxidative stress, which manifests as the improvement of antioxidant capacity and the reduction in reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation. The acidifier treatment decreased cell permeability and enhanced intestinal epithelial barrier function through enhancing the expression of claudin-1 and occludin in diquat-induced cells. Moreover, acidifier treatment attenuated diquat-induced inflammatory responses, which was confirmed by the decreased secretion and gene expression of pro-inflammatory (TNF-α, IL-8) and upregulated anti-inflammatory factors (IL-10). In addition, acidifiers significantly reduced the diquat-induced gene and protein expression levels of COX-2, NF-κB, I-κB-ß, ERK1/2, and JNK2, while they increased I-κB-α expression in IPEC-J2 cells. Furthermore, we discovered that acidifiers promoted epithelial cell proliferation (increased expression of PCNA and CCND1) and inhibited apoptosis (decreased expression of BAX, increased expression of BCL-2). Taken together, these results suggest that acidifiers are potent antioxidants that attenuate diquat-induced inflammation, apoptosis, and maintain cellular barrier integrity by regulating the NF-κB/MAPK/COX-2 signaling pathways.

Drinking Water Supplemented with Acidifiers Improves the Growth Performance of Weaned Pigs and Potentially Regulates Antioxidant Capacity, Immunity, and Gastrointestinal Microbiota Diversity.

This study evaluated the potential effects of adding acidifiers to the drinking water on the growth performance, complete blood count, antioxidant indicators, and diversity of gastrointestinal microbiota for weaned pigs. A total of 400 weaned pigs were randomly divided into four treatments. Pigs were fed the same basal diet and given either water (no acidifier was added, control) or water plus blends of different formulas of acidifiers (acidifier A1, A2, or A3) for 35 days. On d 18 and 35 of the experimental period, 64 pigs (four pigs per pen) were randomly selected to collect blood for a CBC test (n = 128) and an antioxidant indicators test (n = 128); 24 pigs (six pigs per group) were randomly selected to collect fresh feces (n = 48) from the rectum for 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Compared to the control, supplementing the drinking water with acidifiers improved the growth performance and survival rate of weaned pigs. Acidifier groups also increased serum catalase (CAT) and total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC) activities, while also displaying a decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration compared to the control. The relative abundance of Firmicutes in the acidifier A1 group was greater than that in the control group (p < 0.05) on d 35; the relative abundance of Lactobacillus in the acidifier A1 group was greater than that in the control group (p < 0.05) on d 18 and 35. The microbial species Subdoligranulum or Ruminococcaceae_UCG-005 had significantly positive correlations with ADG and ADFI or with serum antioxidant indicators, respectively. These findings suggest that supplementing the drinking water with an acidifier has a potential as an antioxidant, which was reflected in the improvement of growth performance, immunity, antioxidant capacity, and intestinal flora.

Enhanced production of microalgae-originated photosensitizer by integrating photosynthetic electrons extraction and antibiotic induction towards photocatalytic degradation of antibiotic: A novel complementary treatment process for antibiotic removal from effluent of conventional biological wastewater treatment.

Antibiotic residues in effluents from bio-treated wastewaters are mainly responsible for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes in the environment. Conventional physicochemical treatments are thought to be unsustainable due to high energy consumption, large consumption of chemicals and environmental unfriendly processing step. In this study, a novel approach by integrating photosynthetic electrons extraction from microalgae with antibiotic induction was used to enhance the production of microalgae-originated photosensitizer for photolytic removal of antibiotic residues in effluents from conventional bio-treated wastewaters. Results showed that the accumulation of photoactive substances in extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) of chlorella vulgaris was positively related to the amounts of photosynthetic electrons extracted by the electrode which is a potential-dependent process and can be further enhanced by tetracycline (TC) induction. The protein and humic acid which are considered two main photoactive substances in EPS produced at 0.6 V accumulated to a high level of 320 and 24 µg/cm3 and were further increased to 380 and 48 µg/cm3 when TC was added which were 4.7 and 6.4-folds higher than that produced at potential free in the absence of TC. The EPS produced at 0.6 and 0.8 V led to 1.34 and 1.53-fold acceleration in photosensitized degradation of TC compared to that of EPS free in secondary effluent of municipal wastewater treatment plant. The complex heterocyclic ring structure of TC was broken down into simple monocyclic aromatic compounds, indicating a marked reduction in biotoxicity and recalcitrance. The hydroxyl radical played a main role for the photolysis of TC followed by singlet oxygen. This technology provides a new alternative to conventional physicochemical treatment as complementary treatment processes for biological wastewater treatment in terms of antibiotics removal.

Effect of an Antibacterial Polysaccharide Produced by Chaetomium globosum CGMCC 6882 on the Gut Microbiota of Mice.

Previously, a polysaccharide produced by Chaetomiumglobosum CGMCC 6882 was found to have antibacterial activity, but its toxic effects on body health and gut microbiota were concealed. Recent results showed that this polysaccharide was safe to Caco-2 cells and mice, while it reduced the body weight gain of mice from 10.5 ± 1.21 g to 8.4 ± 1.17 g after 28 days administration. Acetate, propionate, butyrate and total short-chain fatty acids concentrations increased from 23.85 ± 1.37 µmol/g, 10.23 ± 0.78 µmol/g, 7.15 ± 0.35 µmol/g and 41.23 ± 0.86 µmol/g to 42.77 ± 1.29 µmol/g, 20.03 ± 1.44 µmol/g, 12.06 ± 0.51 µmol/g and 74.86 ± 2.07 µmol/g, respectively. Furthermore, this polysaccharide enriched the abundance of gut microbiota and the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio was increased from 0.5172 to 0.7238. Overall, this study provides good guidance for the promising application of polysaccharides as preservatives in foods and in other fields in the future.

Heteropoly acid catalytic treatment for reactivity enhancement and viscosity control of dissolving pulp.

The reactivity enhancement and viscosity control are of practical importance during the manufacture of high-quality cellulose (also known as dissolving pulp). In the study, the concept of using phosphotungstic acid (HPW) for this purpose was demonstrated. The Fock reactivity of resultant pulp increased from 49.1% to 74.1% after the HPW catalytic treatment at a dosage of 86.4 mg HPW/g odp. The improved results can be attributed to the increased fiber accessibility, thanks to the favorable fiber morphologic changes, such as increased pore volume/size, water retention value and specific surface area. HPW can be readily recycled/reused by evaporating method, where maintaining 87.1% catalytic activity after six recycle times. The HPW catalytic treatment concept may provide a green alternative for the manufacture of high-quality dissolving pulp.

Tetra-aqua-bis-(µ(2)-4,4'-bipyridine)-dodeca-kis-(µ(2)-2-methyl-prop-2-enoato)octa-kis-(2-methyl-prop-2-enoato)tetra-ytterbium(III)tetra-zinc(II).

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, [Yb(4)Zn(4)(C(4)H(5)O(2))(20)(C(10)H(8)N(2))(2)(H(2)O)(4)], contains half of a centrosymmetric octa-nuclear mol-ecule in which each Zn(II) ion is four-coordinated by three O atoms from three 2-methyl-prop-2-enoate (L) ligands and one N atom from a 4,4'-bipyridine (bipy) ligand in a distorted pyramidal geometry. The two independent Yb(III) ions, each coordinated by eight O atoms in an irregular geometry, exhibit different coordination environments, viz. one water mol-ecule, five bridging bidentate and one chelating bidentate carboxyl-ate groups for one Yb(III) ion, and one water mol-ecule, three bridging bidentate and two chelating bidentate carboxyl-ate groups for the other Yb(III) ion. In the crystal structure, inter-molecular O-H⋯O and C-H⋯O hydrogen bonds help to establish the packing.

Bis(2,2'-bipyridine)-1κN,N';3κN,N'-hexa-µ-methacrylato-1:2κO:O';2:3κO:O'-(nitrato-2κO,O')-1,3-dicobalt(II)-2-terbium(III).

In the title trinuclear cobalt-terbium complex, [Co(2)Tb(C(4)H(5)O(2))(6)(NO(3))(C(10)H(8)N(2))(2)], the central Tb(III) and each of the Co(II) ions are bridged by three carboxyl-ate groups of the methacrylate anions. The Tb(III) cation is coordinated by six O atoms from six methacrylate anions and two O atoms from a chelating nitrate anion in a distorted square-anti-prismatic geometry. Each Co(II) ion is coordinated by three O atoms from three methyl-acrylate anions and two N atoms of a 2,2'-bypiridine ligand in a distorted square-pyramidal geometry. In the crystal structure, π-π stacking between the pyridine rings [centroid-centroid distances = 3.682 (8) and 3.760 (8) Å] is observed and weak inter-molecular C-H⋯O hydrogen bonding is also present.