Differences in composition and diversity of rumen fungi in buffalo fed different diets.

The rumen is a complex ecosystem containing a variety of fungi, which are crucial for the digestive activities of ruminants. Previous research on rumen fungi has mainly focused on anaerobic fungi, given the rumen's reputation as a mainly anaerobic environment. The objective of this study was to investigate rumen fungal diversity and the presence of aerobic fungi in buffalo fed on different diets. Three adult buffaloes were used as experimental animals. Alfalfa hay, oat hay, whole corn silage, sugarcane shoot silage, fresh king grass, dried rice straw, and five kinds of mixed diets with concentrate to roughage ratios of 20:80, 35:65, 50:50, 65:35, and 80:20 were used as the experimental diets. The experimental animals were fed different diets for 22 days. Rumen fluid was collected from the rumen fistula for ITS (Internal Transcribed Spacer) sequencing 2 h after feeding on the morning of day 22. The results indicate the presence of large quantities of aerobic fungi in the rumen of the buffaloes 2 h after feeding and suggest that Ascomycota and Basidiomycota are the dominant fungal groups under different feeding conditions. The study also identified 62 different fungal types, which showed significant differences among the 11 experimental diets.

Effects of king grass and rice straw hay on apparent digestibility and ruminal microorganisms of buffalo.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of Rice straw and King grass on apparent digestibility, ruminal bacterial, and fungus composition in buffaloes. Three ruminal fistulated buffaloes were used in a 3 × 2 Latin square design. The dietary treatments were king grass and straw hay. Experimental animals were kept in individual pens and concentrate was offered at 1 kg/d while roughage was fed ad libitum. Each period lasted for 15d, with the first 12d for an adaptation period, followed by a 3-day formal trial period. King grass has higher digestibility of protein. Rice straw has higher digestibility to cellulose. The results showed that when buffaloes were fed king grass and straw, Bacteroidetes were dominant in the rumen normal flora, but firmicutes were not. In addition, the results of this experiment suggest that increasing protein content in diets may be beneficial to increase the relative abundance of Proteobacteria. Similarly, higher dietary fiber content may be beneficial for increasing relative abundance of Prevotella and Staphylococcus. The dominant fungi in ruminal fluid 2 h after ingestion were aerobic fungi. These aerobic fungi most likely entered the rumen with food. Whether and how long aerobic fungi can survive in the rumen needs more research.

High-performance self-supporting AgCoPO4/CFP for hydrogen evolution reaction under alkaline conditions.

Electrochemical water decomposition to produce hydrogen is a promising approach for renewable energy storage. It is vital to develop a catalyst with low overpotential, low cost and high stability for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) under alkaline conditions. Herein, we used a simple hydrothermal method to obtain a AgCo(CO)4 precursor on the surface of carbon fiber paper (CFP). After thermal phosphorization, the self-supporting catalyst AgCoPO4/CFP was obtained, which greatly improved the HER catalytic performance under alkaline conditions. At 10 mA cm-2, it showed an overpotential of 32 mV. The Tafel slope was 34.4 mV dec-1. The high catalytic performance of AgCoPO4/CFP may be due to the hydrophilic surface promoting effective contact with the electrolyte and the synergistic effect of the two metals, which accelerated electron transfer and thus promoted hydrogen evolution reaction. In addition, it showed an outstanding urea oxidation reaction (UOR) activity. After adding 0.5 M urea, the over-potential of the AgCoPO4/CFP assembled electrolytic cell was only 1.45 V when the current density reached 10 mA cm-2, which was much lower than that required for overall water splitting. This work provides a new method for the design and synthesis of efficient HER electrocatalysts.

Charge-Switchable CuxO Nanozyme with Peroxidase and Near-Infrared Light Enhanced Photothermal Activity for Wound Antibacterial Application.

Bacterial infection is still a thorny problem threatening human health, and nanozymes offer a promising alternative strategy to combat the health threat posed by bacterial infection. However, the antibacterial efficacies of nanozymes are unsatisfactory because of low catalytic activity of nanozymes and their inability to trap bacteria. Herein, a multifunctional nanozyme, polydopamine (PDA)-modified copper oxide (CuxO-PDA) is designed to overcome this challenge. CuxO-PDA showed peroxidase-mimicking activity and the catalytic activity was enhanced upon near-infrared (NIR) irradiation. CuxO-PDA was negatively charged under neutral or alkaline condition and showed no obvious peroxidase-mimicking activity. On the contrary, the surface charge of CuxO-PDA can be switched to positive under acidic conditions, which can target negatively charged bacteria. More interestingly, well-dispersed CuxO-PDA can aggregate rapidly under NIR irradiation, which trapped the bacteria and nanozymes together. It was found that shortening the distance between nanozyme and bacteria could improve the antibacterial effect. The obtained CuxO-PDA can cause DNA degradation, lipid peroxidation, and biofilm eradication. CuxO-PDA showed good antibacterial effect against two kinds of representative bacteria, Escherichia coli (Gram-negative) and Staphylococcus aureus (Gram-positive). The experiment in vivo further proved favorable antibacterial activity of CuxO-PDA nanozyme.

Iterative Learning Control With Data-Driven-Based Compensation.

The robust iterative learning control (RILC) can deal with the systems with unknown time-varying uncertainty to track a repeated reference signal. However, the existing robust designs consider all the possibilities of uncertainty, which makes the design conservative and causes the controlled process converging to the reference trajectory slowly. To eliminate this weakness, a data-driven method is proposed. The new design intends to employ more information from the past input-output data to compensate for the robust control law and then to improve performance. The proposed control law is proved to guarantee convergence and accelerate the convergence rate. Ultimately, the experiments on a robot manipulator have been conducted to verify the good convergence of the trajectory errors under the control of the proposed method.

Electrochemical enantioselective sensor for effective recognition of tryptophan isomers based on chiral polyaniline twisted nanoribbon.

Effective enantioselective recognition with chiral nanomaterials remains a challenge in the field of chemistry and biology. In this paper, a pair of left- and right-handed polyaniline (defined as S-PANI and R-PANI) were synthesized by chemical oxidation of aniline to form a specially twisted nanoribbon, which was induced by enantiomeric camphorsulfonic acid. Both S-PANI and R-PANI were used to construct electrochemical chiral sensors for the discrimination of tryptophan isomers (D- and L-Trp). Owing to the formation of efficient chiral nanospace with special nanoribbon morphology and enormous amounts of oxygen-containing functional groups of S-PANI or R-PANI, the high enantioselectivity was obtained with the recognition efficiency of 4.90 (D-Trp) on S-PANI and 4.20 (L-Trp) on R-PANI, respectively. The obtained chiral electrodes were also used for the determination of the enantiomeric excess (ee) for Trp, and a good linear relationship between peak currents and ee% of Trp was obtained. Furthermore, the strategy we proposed has tremendous potential in enantiomer recognition field.

Poly(glycine)/graphene oxide modified glassy carbon electrode: Preparation, characterization and simultaneous electrochemical determination of dopamine, uric acid, guanine and adenine.

A novel poly(glycine) (p-GLY)/graphene oxide (GO) composite based sensor (p-GLY/GO) was successfully prepared on glassy carbon electrode by simple electropolymerization. Electrochemical responses of analytes on p-GLY/GO modified electrode were studied by cyclic voltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry. The results demonstrated that p-GLY/GO modified electrode showed a favorable application for the simultaneous determination of dopamine (DA), uric acid (UA), guanine (GU) and adenine (AD). Owing to the synergistic effect of p-GLY and GO, the oxidation peaks of four analytes separated well from each other, and the potential separations of oxidation peaks of DA-UA, UA-GU and GU-AD were large up to 170, 350 and 300 mV, respectively. As-prepared p-GLY/GO modified electrode offered wide linear responses for DA, UA, GU and AD over the ranges of 0.20-62, 0.10-105, 0.15-48 and 0.090-103 µM with detection limits of 0.011, 0.061, 0.026 and 0.030 µM (S/N = 3), respectively. Moreover, p-GLY/GO modified electrode presented favorable selectivity, stability and reproducibility, which was a promising candidate as an electrochemical sensor for the simultaneous determination of DA, UA, GU and AD.

Simultaneous voltammetric determination of guanine and adenine by using a glassy carbon electrode modified with a composite consisting of carbon quantum dots and overoxidized poly(2-aminopyridine).

A composite consisting of carbon quantum dots (CQDs) and overoxidized poly(2-aminopyridine) (PAPox) was deposited on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) through electrochemical polymerization and electrochemical oxidation. The modified GCE was used for the simultaneous determination of guanine and adenine. Electrochemical responses to guanine and adenine were investigated by cyclic voltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry. Owing to the synergistic effect of CQDs and PAPox, two oxidation peaks can be observed, with peaks at 0.81 and 1.13 V (vs. SCE) for guanine and adenine, respectively. The current at the respective peaks has a linear dependence on the concentrations of guanine in the range from 1.0 to 65 µM, and of adenine in the range from 2.0 to 70 µM. The respective detection limits are 0.51 and 0.39 µM (at an S/N ratio of 3). The modified GCE is selective, reproducible and stable. Graphical abstract Schematic of the preparation of a glassy carbon electrode modified with carbon quantum dots and overoxidized poly(2-aminopyridine (CQD/PAPox/GCE), and its application for the simultaneous determination of guanine and adenine.

Efficacy and Tolerability of Different Interventions in Children and Adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

BACKGROUND: Our study is an analysis of multiple publications involving assessing the comparable efficacy and tolerability of six interventions, which are lisdexamfetamine dimesylate (LDX), atomoxetine (ATX), methylphenidate (MPH), clonidine hydrochloride (CLON), guanfacine extended release (GXR), and bupropion, for young patients (6-18 years old) suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). METHODS: A conventional meta-analysis (MA) was performed to give direct comparisons and a network meta-analysis (NMA) was used to show the combination of direct and indirect evidence. Ranking preference for all the interventions under a certain outcome was given by the surface of cumulative ranking curve area (SUCRA). RESULTS: Overall, 15,025 participants from 73 studies were involved in our analysis. In the pairwise MA, LDX was associated with less withdrawal than ATX for lack of efficacy. MPH showed less effectiveness than LDX according to ADHD Rating Scale score. Based on the analysis of our NMA, significant results of efficacy that LDX is a competitive drug were observed when evaluating LDX in comparison with other drugs except for CLON. ATX and GXR presented higher rates of abdominal pain morbidity versus inactive treatment. CONCLUSION: The stimulants LDX and MPH are still highly recommended because they are highly effective and are tolerated well by patients. Among the non-stimulants, CLON can be taken into consideration for its appreciable effectiveness and tolerability. ATX and GXR can be seen as moderate choices.