Minimization of heavy metal adsorption in struvite through effective separation and manipulation of flow field.

The admixture of heavy metals on struvite during the P recovery process from wastewater will affect its value for safe agricultural application, but it is not clear how to effectively separate heavy metals from struvite. Herein, a two-stage separation reactor (static and dynamic) has been developed to achieve efficient separation of heavy metals and struvite. The generation of struvite from real swine wastewater would naturally precipitate to the lowest layer under static conditions, leading to an enrichment of heavy metals (75 % Cu and 84 % Zn) in suspension. Meanwhile, phosphorus recovery from real swine wastewater results in the generation of a large amount of fines flowing out of the reactor due to the effects of suspended solids (SS), etc., making it necessary to recover phosphorus by static separation. For the dynamic separation step, we also analyzed the characteristics of struvite formation at different rotational speeds in a continuous reaction system. The results demonstrated that the shear rate of the fluid affects the particle size of struvite, which in turn determines the rate and the distribution of struvite in either primary or secondary recovery tanks. The implementation of zonal regulation in the flow field can produce a higher phosphorus efficiency (from 85.8 to 95.5 % at pH=8.1-8.2, from 93.8 to 98.5 % at pH=9.0-9.1) and a lower alkali consumption (55.56 % of alkali cost), which is favorable for the separation of struvite crystals and heavy metals (the amount of Cu and Zn metals separated increased by more than 50 %), and ultimately yield high quality of struvite. The findings in this study will provide insights for the separation and reduction of heavy metals through a combined method with dynamic and static in a continuous system, providing a reference for the safe application of struvite in agriculture.

Multiscale dilated convolutional neural network for Atrial Fibrillation detection.

Atrial Fibrillation (AF), a type of heart arrhythmia, becomes more common with aging and is associated with an increased risk of stroke and mortality. In light of the urgent need for effective automated AF monitoring, existing methods often fall short in balancing accuracy and computational efficiency. To address this issue, we introduce a framework based on Multi-Scale Dilated Convolution (AF-MSDC), aimed at achieving precise predictions with low cost and high efficiency. By integrating Multi-Scale Dilated Convolution (MSDC) modules, our model is capable of extracting features from electrocardiogram (ECG) datasets across various scales, thus achieving an optimal balance between precision and computational savings. We have developed three MSDC modules to construct the AF-MSDC framework and assessed its performance on renowned datasets, including the MIT-BIH Atrial Fibrillation Database and Physionet Challenge 2017. Empirical results unequivocally demonstrate that our technique surpasses existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods in the AF detection domain. Specifically, our model, with only a quarter of the parameters of a Residual Network (ResNet), achieved an impressive sensitivity of 99.45%, specificity of 99.64% (on the MIT-BIH AFDB dataset), and an [Formula: see text] score of 85.63% (on the Physionet Challenge 2017 AFDB dataset). This high efficiency makes our model particularly suitable for integration into wearable ECG devices powered by edge computing frameworks. Moreover, this innovative approach offers new possibilities for the early diagnosis of AF in clinical applications, potentially improving patient quality of life and reducing healthcare costs.

N-acetyl-L-cysteine attenuates oxidative stress-induced bone marrow endothelial cells apoptosis by inhibiting BAX/caspase 3 pathway.

Bone marrow endothelial cells (BMECs) play a crucial role in the maintenance of bone homeostasis. The decline in BMECs is associated with abnormal bone development and loss. At present, the mechanism of age-related oxidative stress enhancement in BMEC dysfunction remains unclear. Our experiment explored injury caused by oxidative stress enhancement in BMECs both in vivo and in vitro. The BMECs, indicators of oxidative stress, bone mass, and apoptosis-related proteins were analyzed in different age groups. We also evaluated the ability of N-Acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) attenuate oxidative stress injury in BMECs. NAC treatment attenuated reactive oxygen species (ROS) overgeneration and apoptosis in BMECs in vitro and alleviated the loss of BMECs and bone mass in vivo. In conclusion, this study could improve our understanding of the mechanism of oxidative stress-induced BMECs injury and whether NAC has therapeutic potential in senile osteoporosis.

Versatile cutting fracture evolution modeling for deformable object cutting simulation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Soft body cutting simulation is the core module of virtual surgical training systems. By making full use of the powerful computing resources of modern computers, the existing methods have already met the needs of real-time interaction. However, there is still a lack of high realism. The main reason is that most current methods follows the "Intersection-IS-Fracture" mode, namely cutting fracture occurs as long as the cutting blade intersects with the object. To model real-life cutting phenomenon considering deformable objects' fracture resistance, this paper presents a highly realistic virtual cutting simulation algorithm by introducing an energy-based cutting fracture evolution model. METHODS: We design the framework based on the co-rotational linear FEM model to support large deformations of soft objects and also adopt the composite finite element method (CFEM) to balance between simulation accuracy and efficiency. Then, a cutting plane constrained Griffth's energy minimization scheme is proposed to determine when and how to generate a new cut. Moreover, to provide the contact effect before the fracture occurs, we design a material-aware adaptation scheme that can guarantee indentation consistent with the cutting tool blade and visually plausible indentation-induced deformation to avoiding large computational effort. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is feasible for generating highly realistic cutting simulation results of different objects with various materials and geometrical characteristics while introducing a negligible computational cost. Besides, for different blade shapes, the proposed algorithm can produce highly consistent indentation and fracture. Qualitative evaluation and performance analysis indicate the versatility of the proposed algorithm.

Sustainable, Highly Efficient and Superhydrophobic Fluorinated Silica Functionalized Chitosan Aerogel for Gravity-Driven Oil/Water Separation.

A superhydrophobic fluorinated silica functionalized chitosan (F-CS) aerogel is constructed and fabricated by a simple and sustainable method in this study in order to achieve highly efficient gravity-driven oil/water separation performance. The fluorinated silica functionalization invests the pristine hydrophilic chitosan (CS) aerogel with promising superhydrophobicity with a water contact angle of 151.9°. This novel F-CS aerogel possesses three-dimensional structure with high porosity as well as good chemical stability and mechanical compression property. Moreover, it also shows striking self-cleaning performance and great oil adsorption capacity. Most importantly, the as-prepared aerogels exhibits fast and efficient separation of oil/water mixture by the gravity driven process with high separation efficiency. These great performances render the prepared F-CS aerogel a good candidate for oil/water separation in practical industrial application.

Antibacterial activity and long-term stable antibacterial performance of nisin grafted magnetic GO nanohybrids.

In this study, magnetic graphene oxide (MGO) nanohybrids were firstly fabricated by loading Fe3O4 NPs onto GO nanosheets and then novel nisin grafted MGO (nisin-g-MGO) nanohybrids were prepared by a facile method. The nisin-g-MGO nanohybrids exhibit strong enough magnetic separation capacity. The magnetic saturation (Ms) of nisin-g-MGO nanohybrids was 23.3 emu/g that enables nisin-g-MGO nanohybrids can be rapidly and completely separated from the black and stable suspension by an external magnet. The antibacterial studies of nisin-g-MGO nanohybrids show great antibacterial performance against Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis, respectively. Moreover, the nisin-g-MGO nanohybrids exhibit long-term antibacterial stability that they still keep their good antibacterial activity after six months storage. Meanwhile, the fabricated nisin-g-MGO nanohybrids exhibit good biocompatibility without any obvious effect on HEK293 cell viability due to the calculated cell viabilities were more than 95%. And no observed changes in cell morphology were found in nisin-g-MGO nanohybrids treated HEK293 cells. Hence, the fabricated nisin-g-MGO nanohybrids exhibit great potentials in antibacterial application.

A pharmacokinetics study of orally administered higenamine in rats using LC-MS/MS for doping control analysis.

According to WADA guidelines, the presence of Higenamine (HG) in urine should not be ≥10 ng/mL. HG is widely found in materials used in Chinese herbal medicines as well as food and additives. This paper is the first method wherein a rat model has been used to evaluate the pharmacokinetics of orally administered HG by LC-MS/MS and would be helpful in doping control analysis. The method was found to be linear over a concentration range of 0.5(lower limit of quantification, LLOQ)-500 ng/mL for plasma and 0.5(LLOQ)-1000 ng/mL for urine. The values for intra- and inter-day accuracy and precision did not deviate by >12.25% for HG in plasma and 5.87% in urine. Extraction recoveries of HG were 70.30-86.71% from plasma and 74.93%-79.29% from urine. HG was stable in plasma and urine after the extraction process and when exposed to different storage conditions. The findings of this study could provide some reference value for the assessment of HG misuse and for the control of intake and external application of HG-related materials (foods and medicinal herbs). Our key findings are that high levels of external application or oral administration of HG-rich materials may lead to a positive urine test for HG in athletes.

[Ovarian response and pregnancy outcome in hyper-responders during repeated in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the ovarian response and pregnancy outcomes in patients with excessive ovarian response receiving long-protocol pituitary down-regulation during repeated in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET). METHODS: Sixty IVF-ET cycles from January 2008 to December 2011 were analyzed retrospectively. The clinical characteristics were compared between the various treatment cycles. RESULTS: Compared with those with the first treatment cycle, the patients receiving repeated cycles had a significantly older age (P<0.001), reduced initial doses of Gn (P=0.049), and moderately lowered estrogen level on the day of hCG administration (E2) (P=0.027) and the number of oocytes retrieved (P=0.030). The high-quality embryo formation rate (P<0.001) and clinical pregnancy rate (P=0.009) were both significantly higher in patients with repeated cycles. The dose for down-regulation, total Gn dose, duration of Gn stimulation, number of two pronuclei (PN), number of fertilized oocyte, and the cancellation rate for a high risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) were all comparable between the two groups (P>0.05). The recurrence rate of ovarian excessive respond was 40% (12/30). CONCLUSIONS: For patients receiving repeated IVF treatment cycle with a high ovarian response, a smaller initial dose of Gn should be used to minimize the risk of hyper-response and improve the outcome of assisted reproductive treatment.