[en] Objective: To study the relationships between changes of rhesus monkeys with EAE in MRS and those in histopathology and ultrastructure. Methods: Nine rhesus monkeys were sensitized by the intradermal injection of homologous myelin basic protein or purified bovine MBP in complete Freund's adjuvant. The ratio of Cho/Cr and NAA/Cr was measured in EAE over course and compared with that before attack. Finally, the histologic characters of the disease was confirmed by light microscope and transmission electron microscope. Results: The lesions of acute and chronic form of EAE was extensive. The lesions of chronic form of EAE observed on MRI were multiple and limited, with mild inflammation. The ratios of NAA/Cr in acute and chronic form were decreased (t = 68.66, 5.69, separately, P < 0.05). A lot of vacuolation, hydropic degeneration, and lipofuscin in the axis-cylinders could be observed in both phases. The ratio of Cho/Cr in chronic EAE was increased (t = 3.48, P < 0.05). In acute form of EAE, severe inflammation, necrosis, and destruction of axons were observed in histopathology. However, chronic form of EAE showed marked demyelination. Conclusion: The ratios of Cho/Cr and NAA/Cr by MRS quantitative analysis can be used to determine different stages of the lesion and predict the histopathological feature in EAE in rhesus monkeys

[en] Epi-medium Brevi-cornum Maxim (EBM) can increase β-receptor binding sites in lungs of rats and raise the cAMP content and cAMP/cGMP ratio in plasma and lung of rats. The cGMP and E₂ in plasma and lung of rats were decreased and cAMP/cGMP ratio was increased by Radix Rehmanial Liquid (RRL). Both drugs, EBM and RRL, can raise cortisol concentration in plasma of rats

[en] Titanium dioxide has received much attraction in the field of photocatalysts applied for hydrogen production from the water splitting due to its unique set of desirable properties of non-toxicity, chemical and thermal stability, efficient photocatalytic activity and low cost. However, it is only active under ultraviolet irradiation because of the wide band gap, which limits its photocatalytic efficiency. In the present paper, the geometrical structure, dopant formation energy, electronic structure and optical properties of a series of Zr–S co-doped anatase TiO₂ were calculated by the GGA + U method based on density functional theory to narrow the band gap and expand its light absorption edge. The results show that the hybridization of O2p and S3p changes the energy levels near the top of valence band and Zr4d orbital makes a certain separation of the O2p and Ti3d orbital in conduction bands, which is helpful to prevent the recombination of electron and hole. The distance between S and Zr atom in the supercell has a significant influence on the electronic structure and optical properties of the co-doped system. The edge of co-doped TiO₂ absorption band has a certain degree of redshift. This study may provide theoretical guidance for its application in photocatalysts.

[en] Dual-energy (DE) decomposition has been adopted in orthopedic imaging to measure bone composition and visualize intraarticular contrast enhancement. One of the potential applications involves monitoring of callus mineralization for longitudinal assessment of fracture healing. However, fracture repair usually involves internal fixation hardware that can generate significant artifacts in reconstructed images. To address this challenge, we develop a novel algorithm that combines simultaneous reconstruction-decomposition using a previously reported method for model-based material decomposition (MBMD) augmented by the known-component (KC) reconstruction framework to mitigate metal artifacts. We apply the proposed algorithm to simulated DE data representative of a dedicated extremity cone-beam CT (CBCT) employing an x-ray unit with three vertically arranged sources. The scanner generates DE data with non-coinciding high- and low-energy projection rays when the central source is operated at high tube potential and the peripheral sources at low potential. The proposed algorithm was validated using a digital extremity phantom containing varying concentrations of Ca-water mixtures and Ti implants. Decomposition accuracy was compared to MBMD without the KC model. The proposed method suppressed metal artifacts and yielded estimated Ca concentrations that approached the reconstructions of an implant-free phantom for most mixture regions. In the vicinity of simple components, the errors of Ca density estimates obtained by incorporating KC in MBMD were ∼1.5–5× lower than the errors of conventional MBMD; for cases with complex implants, the errors were ∼3–5× lower. In conclusion, the proposed method can achieve accurate bone mineral density measurements in the presence of metal implants using non-coinciding DE projections acquired on a multisource CBCT system. (paper)

[en] This study developed a new method to determine the residues of 13 organophosphorus flame retardants (OPFRs) in drinking water by gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) technique and investigated the chemical distribution in water samples from municipal plants along the Yangtze River in Nanjing. The linear calibration correlation coefficients R² for all 13 OPFRs were at least 0.998 0. Three levels of spiked test were performed. Most of the recoveries were in the range of 80~120%, and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) for the 13 OPFRs were 2.1~17% (n = 6). Five OPFRs were 100% positively detected in the samples, and 3 OPFRs were positively detected in some samples. The concentrations of detected OPFR in the water ranged from 0.7 to 5780.0 ng L⁻¹. The average concentrations of OPFRs in wet season were higher than those in dry season, and the contaminants mainly originated from the source water in the Yangtze River. The exposure assessments of individual and total OPFRs were investigated. The estimated daily intakes of total OPFRs via ingestion of drinking water reached up to 64.8 and 45.2 ng/kg bw/day in dry and wet season, respectively. This study demonstrates a profile of OPFR distribution in Nanjing municipal water and provides information on human exposure assessment via drinking water in the Nanjing District, China.

[en] Application of model-based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) to high resolution cone-beam CT (CBCT) is computationally challenging because of the very fine discretization (voxel size  <100 µ m) of the reconstructed volume. Moreover, standard MBIR techniques require that the complete transaxial support for the acquired projections is reconstructed, thus precluding acceleration by restricting the reconstruction to a region-of-interest. To reduce the computational burden of high resolution MBIR, we propose a multiresolution penalized-weighted least squares (PWLS) algorithm, where the volume is parameterized as a union of fine and coarse voxel grids as well as selective binning of detector pixels. We introduce a penalty function designed to regularize across the boundaries between the two grids. The algorithm was evaluated in simulation studies emulating an extremity CBCT system and in a physical study on a test-bench. Artifacts arising from the mismatched discretization of the fine and coarse sub-volumes were investigated. The fine grid region was parameterized using 0.15 mm voxels and the voxel size in the coarse grid region was varied by changing a downsampling factor. No significant artifacts were found in either of the regions for downsampling factors of up to 4×. For a typical extremities CBCT volume size, this downsampling corresponds to an acceleration of the reconstruction that is more than five times faster than a brute force solution that applies fine voxel parameterization to the entire volume. For certain configurations of the coarse and fine grid regions, in particular when the boundary between the regions does not cross high attenuation gradients, downsampling factors as high as 10×  can be used without introducing artifacts, yielding a ∼50×  speedup in PWLS. The proposed multiresolution algorithm significantly reduces the computational burden of high resolution iterative CBCT reconstruction and can be extended to other applications of MBIR where computationally expensive, high-fidelity forward models are applied only to a sub-region of the field-of-view. (paper)

[en] An amphiphilic probe bearing a pyrene fluorophore and a hydrophobic cetyl chain has been synthesized by click reaction. The fluorescence recognition properties of the probe toward Hg²⁺ in DMF solution, in aqueous solution and in gel state were detailedly investigated. In DMF solution, the soluble probe shows a pyrene-based monomer emission, and binds with Hg²⁺ in a 1:1 stoichiometry with the fluorescence a turn-off response. The probe can self assemble nonoaggregates with showing both pyrene-based monomer and excimer emissions in aqueous solution. The formed nonoaggregates can be enhanced upon binding with Hg²⁺, which leads the monomer emission largely quenching, but the excimer emission a little change. It also found that the probe in aqueous solution shows more sensitive toward Hg²⁺ than that in DMF solution. Furthermore, the probe can form fluorescent organic gels in some organic solvents, and the gels were collapsed with only addition of Hg²⁺. For biological application, the probe was successfully used for fluorescence imaging of intracellular Hg²⁺.

[en] Highlights: • STING and ORMDL3 genes expression was increased in patients with recurrent wheeze. • STING upregulates ORMDL3 expression and promoter activity in cells. • ORMDL3 is positively associated with the STING-TBK1-IRF3/STAT6 signaling pathway. • STING increases the ORMDL3 expression in asthma and recurrent wheeze by promoting both the expression and activity of the TBK1-IRF3-STAT6 complex. Orosomucoid 1-like protein 3 (ORMDL3) is an asthma candidate gene associated with virus-triggered recurrent wheeze. Stimulator of interferon gene (STING) controls TLR-independent cytosolic responses to viruses. However, the association of STING with ORMDL3 is unclear. Here, we have shown that ORMDL3 expression shows a linear correlation with STING in recurrent wheeze patients. In elucidating the molecular mechanisms of the ORMDL3-STING relationship, we found that STING promoted the transcriptional activity of ORMDL3, which was significantly associated with increased levels of interferon regulatory factor 3 (IRF3) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 6 (STAT6). Further study showed that via activation of TANK binding kinase 1 (TBK1), STING enhanced the phosphorylation and binding of IRF3 and STAT6, which upregulated ORMDL3 by binding to the promoter. Our results showed that STING positively regulated ORMDL3 through the TBK1-IRF3-STAT6 complex.

[en] A novel heterojunction photocatalyst CdWO_4/BiOBr was fabricated combining nano-rod CdWO_4 with flake-like BiOBr through a hydrothermal and subsequently chemical precipitation method. The samples were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), Energy dispersive X-ray detector (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and UV–vis spectrophotometer. Moreover the photocatalytic activities were evaluated by decomposing dye molecule RhB under visible light irradiation. The results showed that high photocatalytic performance can be achieved on the heterojunction photocatalysts with the 15% CdWO_4/BiOBr composite displaying highest activity. The results of the study concluded that it was the introduction of BiOBr into the catalyst that mainly enhanced the activity of the photocatalyst by promoting the separation of electron–hole group on the interface of BiOBr and CdWO_4. - Highlights: • The CdWO_4/BiOBr p–n heterojunction was prepared through a hydrothermal and chemical precipitation method. • The 15% CdWO_4/BiOBr composite exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity for the decomposition of RhB. • The reasons of the enhanced photocatalytic activity of CdWO_4/BiOBr heterojunction were discussed.

[en] Thermoelectric cooling has gained much attention due to its significant application in 5G communication chip cooling. Enhancing the performance of thermoelectric cooling devices is an imminent and pressing concern. Applying the same material for both n-type and p-type components can promote the compatibility of thermoelectric cooling module due to their similar mechanical properties. This work focuses on the development of thermoelectric cooling module based on n-type and p-type PbTe ingots. The high ZT values near room temperature are achieved through fabricating PbTe ingots. This approach substantially enhances the carrier mobility by minimizing charge carrier scattering at grain boundaries compared to polycrystals. These optimized ingots are then utilized to construct a thermoelectric cooling device consisting of seven pairs of thermoelectric couples, which achieves a maximum cooling temperature difference of ≈14 K at room temperature and ≈28 K at 350 K. This study offers fresh insights into the development of thermoelectric cooling module using PbTe-based materials. (© 2024 Wiley‐VCH GmbH)