Analysis of Basic Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Manganese Slag before and after Solidification and Its Feasibility as Highway Slope.

Manganese slag is a kind of industrial waste produced by electrolytic production of manganese metal. The traditional method of stacking manganese slag not only causes waste of resources, but also produces environmental pollution. Finding harmless, effective, and economical disposal technology of manganese slag has gradually become a research hotspot and difficulty in the field of electrolytic manganese industry and environmental protection. To verify the feasibility of using manganese slag as roadbed material, the basic physical and chemical properties of manganese slag were analyzed based on X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence spectrum, SEM scanning electron microscope, and particle analysis, the basic engineering characteristics of raw materials of manganese slag and solidified manganese slag mixed with quicklime were analyzed through a compaction test and a CBR test. Finally, based on the Monte Carlo method, the stability of a highway slope in the Guizhou Province of China is simulated by the finite element method, considering the spatial variability of manganese slag material strength parameters. The results show that the solidified manganese slag material can be used as highway subgrade material. This study has important reference significance for manganese slag highway construction projects.

Discovery of potential Toxoplasma gondii CDPK1 inhibitors with new scaffolds based on the combination of QSAR and scaffold-hopping method with in vitro validation.

To discover drugs for toxoplasmosis with less side-effects and less probability to get drug resistance is eagerly appealed for pregnant women, infant or immunocompromised patients. In this work, using TgCDPK1 as drug target, we design a method to discover new inhibitors for CDPK1 as potential drug lead for toxoplasmosis with novel scaffolds based on the combination of 2D/3D-QSAR and scaffold-hopping methods. All the binding sites of the potential inhibitors were checked by docking method, and only the ones that docked to the most conserved sites of TgCDPK1, which make them have less probability to get drug resistance, were remained. As a result, 10 potential inhibitors within two new scaffolds were discovered for TgCDPK1 with experimentally verified inhibitory activities in micromole level. The discovery of these inhibitors may contribute to the drug development for toxoplasmosis. Besides, the pipeline which is composed in this work as the combination of QSAR and scaffold-hopping is simple, easy to repeat for researchers without need of in-depth knowledge of pharmacology to get inhibitors with novel scaffolds, which will accelerate the procedure of drug discovery and contribute to the drug repurposing study.