Bioactive Peptides from Ruditapes philippinarum Attenuate Hypertension and Cardiorenal Damage in Deoxycorticosterone Acetate-Salt Hypertensive Rats.

Hypertension is a common disease that affects human health and can lead to damage to the heart, kidneys, and other important organs. In this study, we investigated the regulatory effects of bioactive peptides derived from Ruditapes philippinarum (RPP) on hypertension and organ protection in deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA)-salt hypertensive rats. We found that RPPs exhibited significant blood pressure-lowering properties. Furthermore, the results showed that RPPs positively influenced vascular remodeling and effectively maintained a balanced water-sodium equilibrium. Meanwhile, RPPs demonstrated anti-inflammatory potential by reducing the serum levels of inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-2, and IL-6). Moreover, we observed the strong antioxidant activity of RPPs, which played a critical role in reducing oxidative stress and alleviating hypertension-induced damage to the aorta, heart, and kidneys. Additionally, our study explored the regulatory effects of RPPs on the gut microbiota, suggesting a possible correlation between their antihypertensive effects and the modulation of gut microbiota. Our previous studies have demonstrated that RPPs can significantly reduce blood pressure in SHR rats. This suggests that RPPs can significantly improve both essential hypertension and DOAC-salt-induced secondary hypertension and can ameliorate cardiorenal damage caused by hypertension. These findings further support the possibility of RPPs as an active ingredient in functional anti-hypertensive foods.

First-principles simulation of neutral and charged oxygen vacancies in m-ZrO2: an origin of filamentary type resistive switching.

Metal oxide ZrO2has been widely explored for resistive switching application due to excellent properties like high ON/OFF ratio, superior data retention, and low operating voltage. However, the conduction mechanism at the atomistic level is still under debate. Therefore, we have performed comprehensive insights into the role of neutral and charged oxygen vacancies in conduction filament (CF) formation and rupture, which are demonstrated using the atomistic simulation based on density functional theory (DFT). Formation energy demonstrated that the fourfold coordinated oxygen vacancy is more stable. In addition, the electronic properties of the defect included supercell confirm the improvement in electrical conductivity due to the presence of additional energy states near Fermi energy. The CF formation and rupture using threefold and fourfold oxygen vacancies are demonstrated through cohesive energy, electron localization function, and band structure. Cohesive energy analysis confirms the cohesive nature of neutral oxygen vacancies while the isolated behavior for +2 charged oxygen vacancies in the CF. In addition, nudged elastic band calculation is also performed to analyze the oxygen vacancy diffusion energy under different paths. Moreover, we have computed the diffusion coefficient and drift velocity of oxygen vacancies to understand the CF. This DFT study described detailed insight into filamentary type resistive switching observed in the experimentally fabricated device. Therefore, this fundamental study provides the platform to explore the switching mechanism of other oxide materials used for memristor device application.

Effects of Asymmetric Local Joule Heating on Silicon Nanowire-Based Devices Formed by Dielectrophoresis Alignment Across Pt Electrodes.

We demonstrate the fabrication and characterization of silicon nanowire-based devices in metal-nanowire-metal configuration using direct current dielectrophoresis. The current-voltage characteristics of the devices were found rectifying, and their direction of rectification could be determined by voltage sweep direction due to the asymmetric Joule heating effect that occurred in the electrical measurement process. The photosensing properties of the rectifying devices were investigated. It reveals that when the rectifying device was in reverse-biased mode, the excellent photoresponse was achieved due to the strong built-in electric field at the junction interface. It is expected that rectifying silicon nanowire-based devices through this novel and facile method can be potentially applied to other applications such as logic gates and sensors.