Abnormal expression of PRKAG2-AS1 in endothelial cells induced inflammation and apoptosis by reducing PRKAG2 expression.

PRKAG2 is required for the maintenance of cellular energy balance. PRKAG2-AS1, a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), was found within the promoter region of PRKAG2. Despite the extensive expression of PRKAG2-AS1 in endothelial cells, the precise function and mechanism of this gene in endothelial cells have yet to be elucidated. The localization of PRKAG2-AS1 was predominantly observed in the nucleus, as revealed using nuclear and cytoplasmic fractionation and fluorescence in situ hybridization. The manipulation of PRKAG2-AS1 by knockdown and overexpression within the nucleus significantly altered PRKAG2 expression in a cis-regulatory manner. The expression of PRKAG2-AS1 and its target genes, PRKAG2b and PRKAG2d, was down-regulated in endothelial cells subjected to oxLDL and Hcy-induced injury. This finding suggests that PRKAG2-AS1 may be involved in the mechanism behind endothelial injury. The suppression of PRKAG2-AS1 specifically in the nucleus led to an upregulation of inflammatory molecules such as cytokines, adhesion molecules, and chemokines in endothelial cells. Additionally, this nuclear suppression of PRKAG2-AS1 facilitated the adherence of THP1 cells to endothelial cells. We confirmed the role of nuclear knockdown PRKAG2-AS1 in the induction of apoptosis and inhibition of cell proliferation, migration, and lumen formation through flow cytometry, TUNEL test, CCK8 assay, and cell scratching. Finally, it was determined that PRKAG2-AS1 exerts direct control over the transcription of PRKAG2 by its binding to their promoters. In conclusion, downregulation of PRKAG2-AS1 suppressed the proliferation and migration, promoted inflammation and apoptosis of endothelial cells, and thus contributed to the development of atherosclerosis resulting from endothelial cell injury.

Abnormal expression of PRKAG2-AS results in dysfunction of cardiomyocytes through regulating PRKAG2 transcription by interacting with PPARG.

The role of PRKAG2 in the maintenance of heart function is well established, but little is known about how PRKAG2 is regulated in cardiomyocytes. In this study, we investigated the role of the lncRNA PRKAG2-AS, which is present at the PRKAG2 promoter, in the regulation of PRKAG2 expression. PRKAG2-AS expression was predominantly nuclear, as determined by RNA nucleoplasmic separation and fluorescence in situ hybridization. Knockdown of PRKAG2-AS in the nucleus, but not the cytoplasm, significantly decreased the expression of PRKAG2b and PRKAG2d. Interestingly, we found that PRKAG2-AS and its target genes, PRKAG2b and PRKAG2d, were reduced in the hearts of patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy, suggesting a potential role for PRKAG2-AS in myocardial ischemia. Indeed, knockdown of PRKAG2-AS in the nucleus resulted in apoptosis of cardiomyocytes. We further elucidated the mechanism by which PRKAG2-AS regulates PRKAG2 transcription by identifying 58 PRKAG2-AS interacting proteins. Among them, PPARG was selected for further investigation based on its correlation and potential interaction with PRKAG2-AS in regulating transcription. Overexpression of PPARG, or its activation with rosiglitazone, led to a significant increase in the expression of PRKAG2b and PRKAG2d in cardiomyocytes, which could be attenuated by PRKAG2-AS knockdown. This finding suggests that PRKAG2-AS mediates, at least partially, the protective effects of rosiglitazone on hypoxia-induced apoptosis. However, given the risk of rosiglitazone in heart failure, we also examined the involvement of PRKAG2-AS in this condition and found that PRKAG2-AS, as well as PRKAG2b and PRKAG2d, was elevated in hearts with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and that overexpression of PRKAG2-AS led to a significant increase in PRKAG2b and PRKAG2d expression, indicating that up-regulation of PRKAG2-AS may contribute to the mechanism of heart failure by promoting transcription of PRKAG2. Consequently, proper expression of PRKAG2-AS is essential for maintaining cardiomyocyte function, and aberrant PRKAG2-AS expression induced by hypoxia or other stimuli may cause cardiac dysfunction.

Nanocellulose-Assisted Construction of Multifunctional MXene-Based Aerogels with Engineering Biomimetic Texture for Pressure Sensor and Compressible Electrode.

Multifunctional architecture with intriguing structural design is highly desired for realizing the promising performances in wearable sensors and flexible energy storage devices. Cellulose nanofiber (CNF) is employed for assisting in building conductive, hyperelastic, and ultralight Ti3C2Tx MXene hybrid aerogels with oriented tracheid-like texture. The biomimetic hybrid aerogels are constructed by a facile bidirectional freezing strategy with CNF, carbon nanotube (CNT), and MXene based on synergistic electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bonding. Entangled CNF and CNT "mortars" bonded with MXene "bricks" of the tracheid structure produce good interfacial binding, and superior mechanical strength (up to 80% compressibility and extraordinary fatigue resistance of 1000 cycles at 50% strain). Benefiting from the biomimetic texture, CNF/CNT/MXene aerogel shows ultralow density of 7.48 mg cm-3 and excellent electrical conductivity (~ 2400 S m-1). Used as pressure sensors, such aerogels exhibit appealing sensitivity performance with the linear sensitivity up to 817.3 kPa-1, which affords their application in monitoring body surface information and detecting human motion. Furthermore, the aerogels can also act as electrode materials of compressive solid-state supercapacitors that reveal satisfactory electrochemical performance (849.2 mF cm-2 at 0.8 mA cm-2) and superior long cycle compression performance (88% after 10,000 cycles at a compressive strain of 30%).

Photothermal-enabled single-atom catalysts for high-efficiency hydrogen peroxide photosynthesis from natural seawater.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a powerful industrial oxidant and potential carbon-neutral liquid energy carrier. Sunlight-driven synthesis of H2O2 from the most earth-abundant O2 and seawater is highly desirable. However, the solar-to-chemical efficiency of H2O2 synthesis in particulate photocatalysis systems is low. Here, we present a cooperative sunlight-driven photothermal-photocatalytic system based on cobalt single-atom supported on sulfur doped graphitic carbon nitride/reduced graphene oxide heterostructure (Co-CN@G) to boost H2O2 photosynthesis from natural seawater. By virtue of the photothermal effect and synergy between Co single atoms and the heterostructure, Co-CN@G enables a solar-to-chemical efficiency of more than 0.7% under simulated sunlight irradiation. Theoretical calculations verify that the single atoms combined with heterostructure significantly promote the charge separation, facilitate O2 absorption and reduce the energy barriers for O2 reduction and water oxidation, eventually boosting H2O2 photoproduction. The single-atom photothermal-photocatalytic materials may provide possibility of large-scale H2O2 production from inexhaustible seawater in a sustainable way.

Randomized control study of the use of faropenem for treating patients with pulmonary tuberculosis.

OBJECTIVES: Faropenem has antituberculosis activity in vitro but its utility in treating patients with tuberculosis (TB) is unclear. METHODS: We conducted an open-label, randomized trial in China, involving newly diagnosed, drug-susceptible pulmonary TB. The control group was treated with the standard 6-month regimen. The experimental group replaced ethambutol with faropenem for 2 months. The primary outcome was the treatment success rate after 6 months of treatment. Noninferiority was confirmed if the lower limit of a 95% one-sided confidence interval (CI) of the difference was greater than -10%. RESULTS: A total of 227 patients eligible for the study were enrolled in the trial group and the control group in a ratio of 1:1. Baseline characteristics of participants were similar in both groups. In the modified intention-to-treat population, 88.18% of patients in the faropenem group achieved treatment success, and 85.98% of those in the control group were successfully treated, with a difference of 2.2% (95% CI, -6.73-11.13). In the per-protocol population, treatment success was 96.04% in the faropenem group and 95.83% in the control group, with a difference of 2.1% (95% CI, -5.31-5.72). The faropenem group showed noninferiority to the control group in the 6-month treatment success rates. The faropenem group had significantly fewer adverse events (P <0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Our study proved that oral faropenem regimen can be used for the treatment of TB, with fewer adverse events. (Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ChiCTR1800015959).

Group theoretic particle swarm optimization for multi-level threshold lung cancer image segmentation.

Background: Image segmentation is an important step during the processing of medical images. For example, for the computer aid diagnostic systems for lung cancer image analysis, the segmented regions of tumors would help doctors in early diagnosis to determine timely and appropriate treatment possibilities and thereby improve the survival rate of the patients. However, general clinical routines of manual segmentation for large number of medical images are very difficult and time consuming, which is the challenge we aim to tackle using our proposed method. Methods: A novel image segmentation method with evolutionary learning technique named Group Theoretic Particle Swarm Optimization is proposed. It can tackle multi-level thresholding optimization problem during the segmentation process and rebuild the search paradigm according to the solid mathematical foundation of symmetric group from four designable aspects, which are particle encoding, solution landscape, neighborhood movement and swarm topology, respectively. The Kapur's entropy of multi-level thresholds is assessed as the objective function. Results: In contrast to those conventional metaheuristics methods for lung cancer image segmentation, this newly presented method generates the best performance result among them. Experimental results show that its Kapur's entropy has the value of 9.07, which is 16% higher than the worst case. Computational time is acceptable at the cost of 173.730 seconds, average level of evaluation metrics [Kappa, Precision, Recall, F1-measure, intersection over union (IoU) and receiver operating characteristic (ROC)] is over 90%, and search process of multi-level threshold combination would finally converge in the later phase of iterations after 700. The ablation study indicates that all components are significant to the contributions of our proposed method. Conclusions: Group Theoretic Particle Swarm Optimization for multi-level threshold segmentation is an efficient way to split a medical image into distinct regions and extract tumor tissues regions from the background. It maintains the balanced relationship between diversification and intensification during the search process and helps clinicians to make the diagnosis more accurately. Our proposed method processes potential medical value and clinical meanings.

An Adaptive Injection Model for Pansharpening.

Pansharpening technology is used to acquire a multispectral image with high spatial resolution from a panchromatic (PAN) image and a multispectral (MS) image. The detail injection model is popular for its flexibility. However, the accuracy of the injection gain and the extracted details may greatly influence the quality of the pansharpened image. This paper proposes an adaptive injection model to solve these problems. For detail extraction, we present a Gaussian filter estimation algorithm by exploring the intrinsic character of the MS sensor and convolving the PAN image with the filter to adaptively optimize the details to be consistent with the character of the MS image. For the adaptive injection coefficient, we iteratively adjust the coefficient by balancing the spectral and spatial fidelity. By multiplying the optimized details and injection gain, the final HRMS is obtained with the injection model. The performance of the proposed model is analyzed and a large number of tests are carried out on various satellite datasets. Compared to some advanced pansharpening methods, the results prove that our method can achieve the best fusion quality both subjectively and objectively.

Downregulation of NUP93 aggravates hypoxia-induced death of cardiomyocytes in vitro through abnormal regulation of gene transcription.

Nuclear pore complex in the nuclear envelope plays an important role in controlling the transportation of RNAs, proteins and other macromolecules between the nucleus and cytoplasm. The relationship between abnormal expression of nucleoporins and cardiovascular diseases is unclear. In this study we investigated how myocardial infarction affected the expression and function of nucleoporins in cardiomyocytes. We separately knocked down 27 nucleoporins in rat primary myocardial cells. Among 27 nucleoporins, knockdown of Nup93, Nup210 and Nup214 markedly increased the expression of ANP and BNP, two molecular markers of cardiomyocyte function. We showed that Nup93 was significantly downregulated in hypoxic cardiomyocytes. Knockdown of Nup93 aggravated hypoxia-induced injury and cell death of cardiomyocytes, whereas overexpression of Nup93 led to the opposite effects. RNA-seq and bioinformatics analysis revealed that knockdown of Nup93 did not affect the overall transportation of mRNAs from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, but regulated the transcription of a large number of mRNAs in cardiomyocytes, which are mainly involved in oxidative phosphorylation and ribosome subunits. Most of the down-regulated genes by Nup93 knockdown overlapped with the genes whose promoters could be directly bound by Nup93. Among these genes, we demonstrated that Nup93 knockdown significantly down-regulated the expression of YAP1. Overexpression of YAP1 partially rescued the function of Nup93 knockdown and attenuated the effects of hypoxia on cell injury and cardiomyocyte death. We conclude that down-regulation of Nup93, at least partially, contributes to hypoxia-induced injury and cardiomyocyte death through abnormal interaction with the genome to dynamically regulate the transcription of YAP1 and other genes. These results reveal a new mechanism of Nup93 and might provide new therapeutic targets for the treatment of ischemia-induced heart failure.

A Case of Misdiagnosed as Upper Urinary Tract Obstruction Caused by the Fungal Ball.

Upper urinary tract obstruction caused by fungal balls is a rare urinary system disease. We admitted an elderly man with symptoms of urinary tract infection and diabetes mellitus. When the patient was transported into the hospital, a CT scan revealed right renal pelvis dilatation and gas buildup, routine urinalysis showing full field of view of white blood cells and middle urinary bacteria and fungi cultures came back negative, leading to the incorrect diagnosis of emphysematous pyelonephritis with Aerogenes infection. When the diagnosis is confirmed, surgery and antifungal therapy are used to deal with both the obstruction and the fungal ball.

A case of acute pancreatitis induced by voriconazole during treatment of cryptococcal meningitis.

Acute pancreatitis refers to pancreatic enzyme activation caused by a variety of aetiologies, and mainly characterized by local inflammation of the pancreas, with or without diseases of other organ function changes. The main clinical features are abdominal pain and elevated trypsin levels in the blood. Common causes of acute pancreatitis include cholelithiasis, alcohol consumption and hyperlipidaemia, among which drugs are considered to be one of the rare causes of pancreatitis. The patient in this case was a 16-year-old adolescent female who developed acute severe pancreatitis during the treatment of cryptococcal meningitis with voriconazole for 35 days. Following diagnosis that pancreatitis was induced by voriconazole, the drug was immediately stopped and the patient was discharged after symptomatic treatment. The phenomenon of voriconazole-induced pancreatitis is extremely rare, but we hope that this report can arouse greater attention and vigilance of the majority of medical personnel to improve the safety of patients' medication, especially for children or minors.

Interferon regulatory factor-7 is required for hair cell development during zebrafish embryogenesis.

Interferon regulatory factor-7 (IRF7) is an essential regulator of both innate and adaptive immunity. It is also expressed in the otic vesicle of zebrafish embryos. However, any role for irf7 in hair cell development was uncharacterized. Does it work as a potential deaf gene to regulate hair cell development? We used whole-mount in situ hybridization (WISH) assay and morpholino-mediated gene knockdown method to investigate the role of irf7 in the development of otic vesicle hair cells during zebrafish embryogenesis. We performed RNA sequencing to gain a detailed insight into the molecules/genes which are altered upon downregulation of irf7. Compared to the wild-type siblings, knockdown of irf7 resulted in severe developmental retardation in zebrafish embryos as well as loss of neuromasts and damage to hair cells at an early stage (within 3 days post fertilization). Coinjection of zebrafish irf7 mRNA could partially rescued the defects of the morphants. atp1b2b mRNA injection can also partially rescue the phenotype induced by irf7 gene deficiency. Loss of hair cells in irf7-morphants does not result from cell apoptosis. Gene expression profiles show that, compared to wild-type, knockdown of irf7 can lead to 2053 and 2678 genes being upregulated and downregulated, respectively. Among them, 18 genes were annotated to hair cell (HC) development or posterior lateral line (PLL) development. All results suggest that irf7 plays an essential role in hair cell development in zebrafish, indicating that irf7 may be a member of deafness gene family.

A deep ensemble learning method for single finger-vein identification.

Finger-vein biometrics has been extensively investigated for personal verification. Single sample per person (SSPP) finger-vein recognition is one of the open issues in finger-vein recognition. Despite recent advances in deep neural networks for finger-vein recognition, current approaches depend on a large number of training data. However, they lack the robustness of extracting robust and discriminative finger-vein features from a single training image sample. A deep ensemble learning method is proposed to solve the SSPP finger-vein recognition in this article. In the proposed method, multiple feature maps were generated from an input finger-vein image, based on various independent deep learning-based classifiers. A shared learning scheme is investigated among classifiers to improve their feature representation captivity. The learning speed of weak classifiers is also adjusted to achieve the simultaneously best performance. A deep learning model is proposed by an ensemble of all these adjusted classifiers. The proposed method is tested with two public finger vein databases. The result shows that the proposed approach has a distinct advantage over all the other tested popular solutions for the SSPP problem.

An ECG data sampling method for home-use IoT ECG monitor system optimization based on brick-up metaheuristic algorithm.

With the rise in the popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) in-home health monitoring, the demand of data processing and analysis increases at the server. This is especially true for ECG data which has to be collected and analyzed continuously in real time. The data transmission and storage capacity of a simple home-use IoT system is often limited. In order to provide a responsive and reasonably high-resolution analysis over the data, the ECG recorder sampling rate must be tuned to an acceptable level such as 50Hz (compared to between 100Hz and 500Hz in lab), a huge amount of time series are to be gathered and dealt with. Therefore, a suitable sampling method that helps shorten the ECG data transformation time and uploading time is very important for cost saving.. In this paper, how to down sample the ECG data is investigated; instead of traditional data sampling methods, the use of a novel Brick-up Metaheuristic Optimization Algorithm (BMOA) that automatically optimizes the sampling of ECG data is proposed. By its adaptive design in choosing the most appropriate components, BMOA can build in real-time a best metaheuristic optimization algorithm for each device user assuming no two ECG data series are exactly identical. This dynamic pre-processing approach ensures each time the most optimal part of the ECG data series is harvested for health analysis from the raw data, in different scenarios from different users. In this study various application scenarios using real ECG datasets are simulated. The experimentation is tested with one of the most commonly used ECG classification methods, Long Short-Term Memory Network. The result shows the ECG data sampling by BMOA is indeed adaptive, the classification efficiency is improved, and the data storage requirement is reduced.

Role of weak magnetic strength in the operation of aerobic granular reactor for wastewater treatment containing ammonia nitrogen concentration gradient.

Weak magnetic field (WMF) and aerobic granular sludge (AGS) technology were both robust technologies in wastewater treatments. In this study, the AGS characteristics and nutrient removal performances were all estimated at the load of 20 to 40 mg/L ammonia nitrogen (NH4+-N) and 0 to 40mT magnetic field. Results showed that 10mT was beneficial for keeping stable structure of granules when increasing NH4+-N load, accompanied with increasing protein (PN) secretion in EPS. Besides, all the total nitrogen (TN) removal rate under 10mT reached above 90%, while they were all less than 80% under other WMF strength when loading with 40 mg/L NH4+-N. Moreover, the simultaneous nitrification and denitrification (SND) efficiency could be enhanced by WMF of 10mT. Illumina MiSeq sequencing showed that NH4+-N load changed the bacterial richness and diversity when the magnetic strength was 10mT. And Candidatus_Competibacter was identified as the main functional genes for effective operation in this system.

Outcome of a 980-nm diode laser coagulation in women with radiation-induced hemorrhagic cystitis: a single-center retrospective study.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a 980-nm diode laser coagulation in women with radiation-induced hemorrhagic cystitis (RHC). We conducted a retrospective study of 21 RHC patients treated with a 980-nm diode laser between July 2014 and December 2017 at our institution. Data was collected with regard to age, sex, lower urinary tract symptoms, use of transfusions, a drop in hemoglobin levels, indication of radiotherapy, median time between radiation therapy and presentation, previous treatments, operative time, mean energy used, number of coagulated areas, catheterization time, discharge time after treatment, hospital stay, and surgical outcome. All 21 patients were women with a median age of 52 years (range 36-68 years). Eighteen patients complained of frequency and urgency, four patients had dysuria, and one patient developed urinary retention. Radiation therapy was primarily indicated in the treatment of cervical cancer in 18 patients (85.7%) and endometrial cancer in three patients (14.3%). Nine patients (42.8%) received blood transfusion before surgery and three patients (14.3%) needed blood transfusion after the procedure. The mean decrease in hemoglobin prior to the procedure was 4.08 ± 2.04 g/dL. The median length of time from completion of radiotherapy to the presentation of hematuria was 38 months (range 8-65 months). All patients had failed an adequate trial of conservative treatment which included adequate hydration, hemostatics, continuous bladder irrigation (CBI), and clot evacuation at the bedside. Eleven patients (52.4%) had previously been treated with endoscopic electrocoagulation; the mean number of procedures was 1.73 ± 0.78 (range 1-3 sessions). Six patients (28.6%) underwent HBO, and sodium hyaluronate solution irrigation was administered to 3 patients (14.3%). The mean number of HBO sessions was 26.3 ± 16.8 (range 8-50), and the mean number of sodium hyaluronate solution irrigation procedures was 4.33 ± 1.53 (range 3-6). All operations were successful. The mean operative time was 45.6 ± 12.3 min, the mean number of coagulated areas was 11.7 ± 4.4, the mean energy used was 2.74 ± 1.14 kJ, the mean catheterization time was 6.2 ± 0.9 days, the mean discharge time after treatment was 6.8 ± 1.2 days, and the average length of a hospital stay was 7.4 ± 1.3 days. In 16 patients (76.2%), hematuria was completely resolved after one session of diode laser coagulation. Four patients (19.0%) underwent multiple sessions of laser treatment due to recurrent gross hematuria (three patients required two sessions and one patient required three sessions). Only one patient (4.8%) who had persistent gross hematuria after diode laser treatment (two sessions) underwent a radical cystectomy, which resolved the hematuria. The median hematuria-free interval of patients who had multiple procedures was 9 months (range 1-13 months). In total, 21 patients underwent 27 sessions of diode laser coagulation, and the median hematuria-free interval was 16 months (range 1-45 months) with a median follow-up of 25 months (range 7-48 months). Our study shows promising results for the management of patients with RHC; however, further evaluation with a larger cohort is required to confirm the efficacy of this treatment.

Kinesin family member 23 (KIF23) contributes to the progression of bladder cancer cells in vitro and in vivo.

The aim of our study was to detect the expression of KIF23 in human bladder cancer tissues and to assess the potential role of KIF23 in bladder cancer progression. The expression of KIF23 and the correlation with bladder cancer patients were explored using the TCGA database. Additionally, IHC assays were also performed to detect KIF23 expression in 95 bladder cancer tissues and corresponding non-tumor tissues collected in our hospital. Colony formation, MTT, and flow cytometry (FCM) assays were performed to detect its effects on bladder cancer cell proliferation and apoptosis, respectively. An animal model was developed to found the effects of KIF23 on tumor growth in mice. Data showed that the KIF23 expression was upregulated in human bladder cancer tissues. The expression of KIF23 was correlated with the prognosis and clinicopathological features, including T stage (p=0.022) and recurrence (p=0.020), of bladder cancer patients. KIF23 depletion inhibited the proliferation of bladder cancer cells, stimulated apoptosis, and suppressed tumor growth in mice. We demonstrated the involvement of KIF23 in bladder cancer progression and provided a promising therapeutic target for the treatment of bladder cancer.

Involvement of prenucleation clusters in calcium phosphate mineralization of collagen.

Involvement of thermodynamically-stable prenucleation clusters (PNCs) in the biomineralization of collagen has been speculated since their existence was reported in mineralization systems. It has been hypothesized that intrafibrillar mineralization proceeds via nucleation of inhibitor-stabilized intermediates produced by liquid-liquid separation (aka. polymer-induced liquid precursors; PILPs). Here, the contribution of PNCs and PILPs to calcium phosphate intrafibrillar mineralization of collagen was examined in a model with a semipermeable membrane that excludes nucleation inhibitor-stabilized PILPs from reaching the collagen fibrils, using cryogenic electron microscopy of reconstituted fibrils and conventional transmission electron microscopy of collagen sponges. Molecular dynamics simulation with the Interface force field (IFF) was used to confirm the existence of PILPs with amorphous calcium phosphate and elucidate details of the dynamics. Furthermore, intrafibrillar mineralization of single collagen fibrils was experimentally observed with unstabilized PNCs when anionic/cationic polyelectrolytes were used to establish Donnan equilibrium across the semipermeable membrane. Molecular dynamics simulation verified PNC formation within the collagen intrafibrillar gap zones at the atomic scale and explained the role of external PILPs. The PILPs decrease the interfibrillar water content and increase the interfibrillar ionic concentration. Nevertheless, intrafibrillar mineralization of collagen sponges with PNCs alone was inefficacious, being constrained by competition from extrafibrillar mineral precipitation. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Compared with conventional PILP-based intrafibrillar mineralization, mineralization of collagen fibrils using unstabilized PNCs is constrained by competition from extrafibrillar mineral deposition. The narrow window of opportunity for PNCs to produce intrafibrillar mineralization provides a plausible explanation for the feasibility of nucleation inhibitor-free intrafibrillar apatite assembly during reconstitution of type I collagen.

Self-doping synthesis of trivalent Ni2O3 as a hole transport layer for high fill factor and efficient inverted perovskite solar cells.

Nickel oxide (NiOx) as a hole transport layer has been vastly investigated in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) due to the nature of p-type doping, highly transparent materials, and deep-lying valence bands. In this paper, a new phase based on trivalent Ni2O3 is synthesized by low temperature solution processing of mixed nickel (acetate/nitrate). In comparison, high-temperature solution-processing of divalent NiOx resulted in novel Ni2O3 thin films that display better consistency and superior energy compatibility with perovskite thin films. In this respect, high-performance perovskite solar cells are efficiently produced utilizing MA0.85FA0.15PbI0.9Cl0.1 perovskite with a power conversion efficiency (PCE) reaching 17.89% and negligible hysteresis comparable to 14.37% for NiOx. The Ni2O3-based PSCs reported the highest fill factor (FF) (82.66%) compared to that of divalent NiOx (67.53%). Different characterization studies and analyses supply proof of improved film quality, increased transport and extraction of charges, and suppressed charge recombination. Meanwhile, the device exhibits low hysteresis compared to sol-gel-processed NiOx.

A case report of pyopneumopericardium following bungee jumping in a patient with tuberculosis.

RATIONALE: Pyopneumopericardium related to bungee jumping is a rare occurrence in the current antibiotic era. We present a case of esophagus-seeded Streptococcus sanguinis pyopneumopericardium in a young man with tuberculosis who had just completed bungee jumping. PATIENT CONCERN: A 27-year-old man was hospitalized with a 1-day history of fever, chest tightness, and intermittent sharp chest pain after bungee jumping for the first time. DIAGNOSES: Clinical examinations, thoracentesis, and pericardiocentesis revealed pyopneumopericardium, pyopneumomediastinum, and suppurative pleurisy secondary to bungee-jumping-related traumas. Pericardial fluid cultures were positive for S sanguinis, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex genetic test was positive in both sputum and pleural effusion. INTERVENTIONS: The patient improved with drainage and comprehensive antimicrobial therapy. OUTCOMES: The patient developed constrictive pericarditis and underwent pericardiectomy after 6 months of anti-tuberculosis treatment. During the 6-month follow-up after surgery, he recovered uneventfully. LESSONS: This case adds to the long list of bungee-jumping complications. Early diagnosis to initiate appropriate therapy is critical for pyopneumopericardium patients to achieve good outcomes.

Efficient Cascade Resonance Energy Transfer in Dynamic Nanoassembly for Intensive and Long-Lasting Multicolor Chemiluminescence.

Light emission induced by chemical reactions, known as chemiluminescence (CL), has been widely used for bioassays, biosensors, imaging, and illumination applications. Most known CL systems exhibit flash-type single-color light emissions, which limit their applications. Long-lasting multicolor CL in aqueous solutions is highly desirable, especially for biological applications, but remains a challenge. Herein, we report a simple strategy of achieving highly efficient cascade Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) in the dynamic nanoassembly of ß-cyclodextrin (ß-CD), CL reagents, and fluorophores in aqueous solution, which emits intensive multicolor CL with adjustable wavelength within 410-610 nm. ß-CD can bind CL reagents and fluorophores to form a dynamic nanoassembly. These nanoassemblies can bring the included luminescent intermediate and fluorophores into close proximity and proper alignment, which should greatly enhance the FRET efficiency between luminescent intermediate and fluorophores. Indeed, the cascade FRET efficiency in this supramolecular nanoassembly reaches up to 92%, which is comparable with the cascade FRET systems based on covalently linked donors and acceptors. By using hydroxypropyl methylcellulose as the thickener to slow the diffusion (to elongate the CL emission), and using Ca(OH)2 solid (a low solubility strong base) as buffer to maintain the pH in the optimal range for the CL reaction, this nanoassembly system has been further developed to achieve slow-diffusion-controlled catalytic CL reactions, which enables long-lasting multicolor CL in aqueous solution that is visible to naked eyes and lasts for more than 20 h. The multicolor CL systems can be used to prepare transformable two-dimensional multicolor codes for encryption application.