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Assembly of the top-down graphene units mostly results in 3D porous structure with randomly organized pores. The direct bottom-up synthesis of macroscopic 2D graphene sheets with organized pores are long sought in materials chemistry field, but rarely achieved. Herein, we present a self-catalysis-assisted bottom-up route using L-glutamic acid and iron chloride as starting materials for the fabrication of the millimeter-sized few-layer graphene sheets with aligned porous channels parallel to the 2D direction. The amino- and carboxyl-functional groups in L-glutamic acid can coordinate with iron cations, thus allowing an atomic dispersion of iron cations. The pyrolysis thus initiated the growth of graphene catalyzed by in-situ generated iron nanoparticles, and a dynamic flow of iron nanoparticles eventually led to the formation of millimeter-sized few-layer graphene sheets with aligned channels (60–85 nm in diameter). Used as anodes in lithium-ion batteries, these graphene sheets showed a good rate capability (142 mA h g−1 at 2 A g−1) and high capacity retention of 93% at 2 A g−1 after 1200 cycles. Kinetic analysis revealed that lithium ions storage was dominated by diffusion behavior and capacitive behavior together, in that graphene sheets with aligned channels could accelerate electron transfer and shorten lithium ions transport pathway. This work provides a novel approach to prepare unique porous graphene materials with specific structure for energy storage.

Blood components are considered to reflect nutrient metabolism and immune activity in both humans and animals. In this study, we measured 12 blood components in Pekin ducks and performed genome-wide association analysis to identify the QTLs (quantitative trait locus) using a genotyping-by-sequencing strategy. A total of 54 QTLs were identified for blood components. One genome-wide significant QTL for alkaline phosphatase was identified within the intron-region of the OTOG gene (P = 1.31E-07). Moreover, 21 genome-wide significant SNPs for the level of serum cholinesterase were identified on six different scaffolds. In addition, for serum calcium, one genome-wide significant QTL was identified in the upstream region of gene RAB11B. These results provide new markers for functional studies in Pekin ducks, and several candidate genes were identified, which may provide additional insights into specific mechanisms for blood metabolism in ducks and their potential application for duck breeding programs.

Along with the extensive application of radiation in medical, military and other fields, human beings carry a greater risk of exposure to radiation environment that causes a range of physical injure, particularly to the brain in cognition. However, the radiation-associated cognitive disability is poorly understood and there is no effective prevention or long-term treatment. Here, we demonstrate that neurogenesis and neuroinflammation disorder are primarily involved in the pathophysiological basis of irradiation-induced cognitive decline. Furthermore, we discovered that tetrahydroxy stilbene glucoside (TSG), a natural active ingredient from Heshouwu that has been well known for its unique anti-aging effect as the Chinese herb, can be a promising mitigator to improve learning-memory ability by facilitating the neurogenesis in the proliferation and differentiation of the surviving neural progenitor cells via AMPK/Tet2, and attenuating the neuroinflammation in the microglial NLRP3 inflammasomes activation via AMPK in vivo. Additionally, TSG was also revealed to activate AMPK by molecular docking and kinase enzyme system assay in vitro. Taken together, our findings identify TSG, as the AMPK activator, prevents radiation-induced cognitive dysfunction by regulating neurogenesis and neuroinflammation via AMPK/Tet2 in rodents, and represents a very promising candidate for developing drugs that can be used for radiation-associated brain injury.

With-No-Lysine kinases (WNK) have been reported to be associated with plant growth regulation in Arabidopsis, soybean, and rice, but little is known of their roles in fruits. In this study, a total of 114 WNK genes were identified from 8 fruit trees species, and these WNK genes belonged to 2 classes (I and II) that respectively contain 4 (A, B, C, D) and 2 groups (E, F). The WNK genes had variable exon-intron structures and were randomly distributed among most chromosomes of each genus. The expression levels of six of the 18 WNK genes in peach were almost undetectable in fruits, suggesting that they may not be associated with fruit development and ripening. Of the other 12 WNK genes, PpWNK.B1 exhibited stronger stability of expression levels than the best reference genes reported previously in fruits from two peach cultivars. These results suggested that PpWNK.B1 could be a reliable reference gene for gene expression studies of peach fruit. Moreover, qRT-PCR assays yielded evidence that when using single reference gene as internal control, mistakes were more possible, indicating that the use of three reference genes is necessary for gene expression studies. Based on the gene expression profiles validated by qRT-PCR, PpWNK.A1 is predicted to likely be involved in fruit ripening, while PpWNK.A2 and PpWNK.E3.1 are likely associated with early fruit development. The present study represented the WNK genes in fruits, and it will be a valuable resource in continuing investigation of gene regulation network during fruit development and ripening. Keywords: peach, With-No-Lysine kinase, phylogenetic tree, reference gene, gene expression

Traditional ELISA methods of using animal immunity yield antibodies for detection Cry toxin. Not only is this incredibly harmful to the animals, but is also time-intensive. Here we developed a simple method to yield the recognition element. Using a critical selection strategy and immunoassay we confirmed a clone from the Ph.D-C7C phage library, which has displayed the most interesting Cry1Ab-binding characteristics examined in this study (Fig. 1). The current study indicates that isolating peptide is an alternative method for the preparation of a recognition element, and that the developed assay is a potentially useful tool for detecting Cry1Ab.

Cuticular wax of three Asian pear cultivars, ‘Kuerle’, ‘Xuehua’ and ‘Yuluxiang’ at harvest and after 7 months of storage, was analyzed to determine its chemical composition, crystal morphology, and expression levels of associated genes. The highest cuticular wax concentration was observed in ‘Kuerle’ and the lowest in ‘Xuehua’. The surface wax was mainly composed of alkanes, primary alcohols, terpenoids, fatty acids, and aldehydes. After storage, the total wax concentration at all cultivars decreased, and the wax crystal structures became glossier. ‘Yuluxiang’ fruit showed the strongest resistance to Alternaria rot. Gene expression analysis indicated that four structural genes (CER6, KCS9, KCS20 and FDH1) expressed at higher levels and three genes (CER60, DGAT1 and MAH1) expressed at lower levels in stored fruit were involved in wax synthesis, and the expression levels of two wax transportation genes (LTPG1 and LTP4) and a transcriptional activator (MYB96) were also consistent with the wax concentration of the cultivars. Overall, understanding the differences in the cuticular wax in fruit at harvest and after storage among the cultivars may lead to a better understanding of their contributions to disease resistance and postharvest storage properties.

The public health and ecological impacts of volatile organic compound (VOCs) pollution have become a serious problem in China, arousing increasing attention to emissions control. In this context, this paper analyses the effectiveness of VOC reduction policies, namely pollution charges and environmental taxes at the national and industrial sector levels. It uses a computable general equilibrium model, which connects macroeconomic variables with VOC emissions inventory, to simulate the effects of policy scenarios (with 2007 as the reference year). This paper shows that VOC emissions are reduced by 2.2% when a pollution charge equal to the average cost of engineering reduction methods – the traditional approach to regulation in China – is applied. In order to achieve a similar reduction, an 8.9% indirect tax would have to be imposed. It concludes that an environmental tax should be the preferred method of VOC regulation due to its smaller footprint on the macroeconomy. Other policies, such as subsidi...

Cancer is one of the major and most deadly diseases of mankind. With present technologies, early detection and prevention of cancer disease is still a major bottleneck. Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC) is one of the cancer biomarkers for the diagnosis of metastasis. However, there is an urgent need to improve the turn around time of CTC detection from a small sample volume in order to promote its clinical implications. This paper highlights Digi-SACA, an automated workflow to capture CTCs from the whole blood on self-assembled cell array chips. The gravity force and lateral driving force based microfluidic chip drive the mononuclear blood cells from 4 ml of samples to form a monolayer without any external fluid control equipment. The subsequent immunostaining and automated image acquisition, image processing, CTC enumeration, and CTC harvest can be completed within 4 h. The sensitivity of Digi-SACA chip is 1 in ten million leukocytes which is very promising for early detection of the CTC. In a small pilot study series, the Digi-SACA chip is able to detect of the mean of 14.4 CTCs from 4 ml of blood in 10 clinical samples from patients with breast cancer, while mean of 17.6 CTCs were measured from the same sample set with IsoFlux™ platform from 4 ml of blood. We have also demonstrated the efficiency of our technique to pick CTC with glass micropipettes for standard cell culture growth up to 11–15 days. Overall, our study represents the liability of the Digi-SACA system in CTCs enumeration, detection, and isolation against the state-of-the-art.

CD163 and sialoadhesin had been reported as the two receptors for porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) infection. The signaling pathway activated by PRRSV entry was seldom reported. In our studies, we demonstrated that PRRSV entry triggers FAK, PI3K, AKT and Rac1 activation. The signaling pathway FAK-PI3K-AKT-Rac1 is essential for PRRSV entry. Blocking FAK by PF573228 attenuates the activation of PI3K, AKT, Rac1 and the cytoskeleton remodeling induced by virus entry. Inhibitors to FAK, PI3K, AKT and Rac1 can significantly inhibit the virus entry. In conclusion, our observations reveal that PRRSV triggers the activation of FAK-PI3K-AKT-Rac1 signaling pathway to facilitate its entry into cells.

Sociability is the prerequisite to social living. Oxytocin and the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical axis mediate various social behaviors across different social contexts in different rodents. We hypothesized that they also mediate levels of non-reproductive social behavior. Here we explored naturally occurring variation in sociability through a social preference test and compared central oxytocin, glucocorticoid receptors, serum adrenocorticotropic hormone and corticosterone in mandarin voles with different levels of sociability. We found that low-social voles showed higher levels of anxiety-like behavior in open field tests, and had more serum adrenocorticotropic hormone and corticosterone than high-social voles. High-social individuals had more glucocorticoid receptor positive neurons in the hippocampus and more oxytocin positive neurons in the paraventricular nuclei and supraoptic nuclei of the hypothalamus than low-social individuals. Within the same level of sociability, females had more oxytocin positive neurons in the paraventricular nuclei and supraoptic nuclei of the hypothalamus than males. These results indicate that naturally occurring social preferences are associated with higher levels of central oxytocin and hippocampus glucocorticoid receptor and lower levels of anxiety and serum adrenocorticotropic hormone and corticosterone.

Both 6-substituted aminocarbonyl and acylamino benzimidazole derivatives were designed and synthesized as nonpeptidic angiotensin II AT1 receptor antagonists. Compounds 6f, 6g, 11e, 11f, 11g, and 12 showed nanomolar AT1 receptor binding affinity and high AT1 receptor selectivity over AT2 receptor in a preliminary pharmacological evaluation. Among them, the two most active compounds 6f (AT1 IC50 = 3 nM, AT2 IC50 > 10,000 nM, PA2 = 8.51) and 11g (AT1 IC50 = 0.1 nM, AT2 IC50 = 149 nM, PA2 = 8.43) exhibited good antagonistic activity in isolated rabbit aortic strip functional assay. In addition, they were orally active AT1 receptor antagonists in spontaneous hypertensive rats.

A series of 6-substituted carbamoyl benzimidazoles were designed and synthesised as new nonpeptidic angiotensin II AT 1 receptor antagonists. The preliminary pharmacological evaluation revealed a nanomolar AT 1 receptor binding affinity for all compounds in the series, and a potent antagonistic activity in an isolated rabbit aortic strip functional assay for compounds 6f , 6g , 6h and 6k was also demonstrated. Furthermore, evaluation in spontaneous hypertensive rats and a preliminary toxicity evaluation showed that compound 6g is an orally active AT 1 receptor antagonist with low toxicity.

The rapid and scalable synthesis of hierarchical carbon monoliths with an ordered mesostructure and fully interconnected macropores has been demonstrated. Resorcinol and formaldehyde based polymers were used as the carbon precursor, triblock copolymer Pluronic F127 as the structural directing agent, and organic base lysine as both the polymerization catalyst and mesostructure assembly promoter. In the presence of lysine, homogeneous and crack-free polymer monoliths can be obtained through rapid gelation in 15 min at 90 °C. The polymer monoliths have a robust framework, which can be directly dried at 50 °C in air and carbonized at high temperature under a nitrogen atmosphere. The carbon monoliths are crack-free and have an ordered mesostructure with fully interconnected macropores. The surface area and the macropore volume are high with values up to 600 m2 g−1 and 3.52 cm3 g−1, respectively. Further steam activation of the carbon monolith can significantly improve the surface area to 2422 m2 g−1 while still maintaining the ordered mesostructure.

The promoting effect of ethanol on the synthesis of N -(2-methylphenyl)hydroxylamine from o -nitrotoluene in Zn/H 2 O/CO 2 system was observed. By adding appropriate amount of ethanol, the selectivity of N- (2-methylphenyl)hydroxylamine increased from 71% to 90% when the reduction was carried out at 25 °C under normal pressure of CO 2 .

Tubular structured ordered mesoporous carbon CMK-5 was investigated for the adsorption of the industrial dyes reactive blue 19, acid red 57 and fuchsin basic in aqueous solutions at room temperature. It was found that CMK-5 exhibits an ultrahigh adsorption rate and superior adsorption capacities for these dyes. Its maximum adsorption capacities for reactive blue 19, acid red 57 and fuchsin basic were 733, 1131 and 1403 mg g−1, respectively, and significantly greater than other literature reported results on porous carbons. Following adsorption of reactive blue 19, CMK-5 carbon could be regenerated by either ethanol extraction or thermal annealing at 600 °C, reaching ∼51% and ∼77%, respectively of the adsorption capacity of the original carbon. For comparison, ordered mesoporous carbon CMK-3 (rod structure), polymer based disordered mesoporous carbon, and steam and CO2 activated commercial coconut carbons were investigated for the adsorption of reactive blue 19. The fast adsorption rate of CMK-5 carbon is due to its unique properties of tubular mesostructure, bimodal mesopore system and high surface area. In the case of requiring emergency removal of large amount of dyes in aqueous solution, CMK-5 would be an ideal choice.

Abrasive is the one of key influencing factors during chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process. Currently, α-Alumina (α-Al2O3) particle, as a kind of abrasive, has been widely used in CMP slurries, but their high hardness and poor dispersion stability often lead to more surface defects. After being polished with composite particles, the surface defects of work pieces decrease obviously. So the composite particles as abrasives in slurry have been paid more attention. In order to reduce defect caused by pure α-Al2O3 abrasive, α-alumina-g-polystyrene sulfonic acid (α-Al2O3-g-PSS) composite abrasive was prepared by surface graft polymerization. The composition, structure and morphology of the product were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy(FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS), time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy(TOF-SIMS), and scanning electron microscopy(SEM), respectively. The results show that polystyrene sulfonic acid grafts onto α-Al2O3, and has well dispersibility. Then, the chemical mechanical polishing performances of the composite abrasive on glass substrate were investigated with a SPEEDFAM-16B-4M CMP machine. Atomic force microscopy(AFM) images indicate that the average roughness of the polished glass substrate surface can be decreased from 0.835 nm for pure α-Al2O3 abrasive to 0.583 nm for prepared α-Al2O3-g-PSS core-shell abrasive. The research provides a new and effect way to improve the surface qualities during CMP.

The importance of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in human nutrition and disease prevention was demonstrated four decades ago. EPA and DHA are important PUFAs. Separation of EPA and DHA has been carried out under supercritical condition by using a silver ion modified molecular sieve 13X (MS13X). MS13X was modified by silver nitrate, and the modification reaction was optimized by stir model, the concentration of silver nitrate and temperature. It was found that the optimized reaction conditions are stirring with nitrogen bubbling, 0.1 mol/l silver nitrate and 20 °C in the dark. Results indicated that 1 g MS13X could be bound by 7.4 mg silver ion, namely 12.4% sodium of MS13X was exchanged. The modified MS13X (called SN13X) displays maximum adsorption capacity of EPA and DHA at 40 °C, with 37.4 mg/g and 24.2 mg/g, respectively. SN13X was packed in the column (20 cm × 1 cm) under supercritical fluid apparatus, and adsorption, washing and elution of EPA and DHA were carried out by gradient pressure. In this study, the purity of EPA and DHA were enhanced to 88.4% and 84.3% from 20.4% and 12.7%, with recovery of 45.8% and 39.2%, respectively.

As part of the development of a system for routinely measuring shear-wave splitting, this paper introduces an Expert System (ES) to measure the polarisations and time-delays of seismic shear-wave splitting in three-component seismograms above small earthquakes. Expert Systems are rule-based computer techniques designed to provide expertise in particular topics, where the rules are algorithms developed from previous knowledge and experience. The technique is tested on data recorded by the seismic network in Iceland. The statistics suggests that the ES is reasonably successful and provides appropriate initial input parameters for a more precise analysis, which leads to the success of the comprehensive Shear-Wave Analysis System (SWAS) for measuring shear-wave splitting.

In laser flash photolysis (LFP) work, noise-like signals were observed together with transient absorption decay spectra in time domain. Analyzed results show that it is a valuable resonance spectrum of excited state molecules, in which four molecular cases are given here. We proposed that this kind signal might originate from nuclear or nuclear and electron spin resonance features in the excited molecules based on radio wave frequency spectrum levels and the significant interaction with static magnetic field.

Background: Although cigarette smoking is known to have detrimental effects on the immune system, the nature of the immunosuppressive agent or agents is poorly understood. Objective: The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of cigarette smoke extracts from high-tar (unfiltered Camel), medium-tar (Marlboro), and low-tar (Carlton) cigarettes on the in vitro production of IL-1β, IL-2, IFN-γ, and TNF-α. Methods: The concentrations of hydroquinone and catechol in cigarette smoke extracts were determined by using HPLC. Human PBMCs were treated with cigarette smoke extracts, hydroquinone, or catechol, and stimulated with anti-CD3 and phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate. Cytokine levels in the supernatants were quantified by ELISA. Results: Pretreatment of PBMCs with cigarette smoke extracts derived from a single high- or low-tar cigarette suppressed the production of IL-1β, IL-2, IFN-γ, and TNF-α by greater than 90% without significant loss of cell viability. Nicotine, at a concentration comparable with that found in the highest-tar cigarettes (200 μg/mL), suppressed the production of IL-2, IFN-γ, and TNF-α by only 21% to 38%. Catechol (50 μmol/L) inhibited production of IL-2 and IL-1β by 62% to 73% but had little effect on TNF-α or IFN-γ production. In contrast, hydroquinone inhibited the production of all 4 cytokines with IC 50 values ranging from 3 μmol/L(IL-1β) to 29 μmol/L (IFN-γ). However, HPLC determination of the hydroquinone concentrations in cigarette smoke extracts from single Camel (33 ± 4 μmol/L), Marlboro (13 ± 2 μmol/L), and Carlton ( Conclusion: These studies indicate that cigarette smoke contains potent inhibitors of cytokine production, at least one of which is present even in low-tar cigarettes. (J Allergy Clin Immunol 2000;106:280-7.)

The structures of methanol dehydrogenase (MEDH) from two closely related methylotrophic bacteria, Methylophilus methylotrophus and W3A1, have been determined at 2.6-A resolution. The molecule, a quinoprotein of molecular mass of about 138 kDa, contains two heavy (H) and two light (L) subunits of unknown sequence and two molecules of noncovalently associated pyrroloquinoline quinone. The two enzymes crystallize isomorphously in space group P2(1) with one H2L2 heterotetramer in the asymmetric unit. The electron density map of the M. methylophilus enzyme was obtained by multiple isomorphous replacement with anomalous scattering and improved by solvent leveling and electron density averaging. For model building, the amino acid sequence of MEDH from Paracoccus denitrificans for the H subunit and from Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 for the L subunit were used to represent the unknown amino acid sequence. At the present time, 579 and 57 amino acid residues for the large and small subunits, respectively, have been fitted into the map. The phases for MEDH from M. methylophilus were used directly to analyze the W3A1 structure, and both structures were refined to R-factors (where R = sigma[Fo-Fc[/sigma Fo) of 0.277 and 0.266, respectively. The L subunit contains a long alpha-helix and an extended N-terminal segment, both lying on the molecular surface of the H subunit. The H subunit contains eight antiparallel beta-sheets, each consisting of four strands arranged topologically like the letter W. The eight Ws are arranged circularly, forming the main disc-shaped body of the subunit, with some short helices and loops connecting the consecutive Ws, as well as some excursions within and between some of the Ws. The pyrroloquinoline quinone prosthetic group is located in the central channel of the large subunit near the surface of the molecule. The topology of the eight-W folding unit is similar to those of the six- and seven-W folding units previously reported for three other proteins, neuraminidase, methylamine dehydrogenase, and galactose oxidase.