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Jinquan Liu,1 Ruihua Zhang,1 Tingting Lian,2 Zuoxi Chen,1 Rui-Li Zhang,3 Qianqiu Wang1 1Institute of Dermatology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, National Center for STD Control, China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nanjing, 210042, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Dermatology, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Dermatology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210003, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Rui-Li Zhang; Qianqiu Wang, Email reallyvictor@126.com; wangqianqiunj@126.comPurpose: Syphilis is a sexually transmitted bacterial infection caused by Treponema pallidum (T. pallidum), which can lead to chronic morbidity and adverse complications. In clinical practice, serofast status (SF) patients present with clinical symptoms that are very similar to those of healthy individuals or syphilis-cured patients, and often require prolonged follow-up for diagnosis. Currently, there is increasing interest in the potential of plasma exosome-derived miRNA as a biomarker for the detection of infectious diseases. In this study, we aimed to explore the diagnostic potential of miRNA in SF and its possible biological implications.Patients and Methods: Exosome-derived miRNAs were isolated from peripheral plasma samples obtained from 20 patients with secondary syphilis (SS), SF, serologically cured syphilis (SC), and healthy controls (HC), and differentially expressed miRNAs (DEmiRNAs) were identified by microarray analysis. Prediction of potential target genes, functional annotation, gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis were then performed. The expression of selected miRNAs was confirmed in 37 patients by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of these miRNAs in differentiating syphilis from HC or SC.Results: The expression profile of plasma exosome-derived miRNA was discovered in individuals with SF through microarray analysis. The targeted genes of DEmiRNAs were found to be involved in diverse biological processes according to GO and KEGG analysis, such as regulation of transcription, mitochondria, Golgi, immune system, apoptosis, Ras signaling pathway, etc. Using RT-qPCR validation, miR-1273g-3p, miR-4485-5p, miR-197-3p, and miR-1908-3p showed significant upregulation in patients with SF. These miRNAs exhibited a superior diagnostic ability, either individually or combined, to distinguish SF from SC or HC.Conclusion: The DEmiRNAs in plasma exosomes may play a role in the pathogenesis of SF and have the potential to become a noble and effective diagnostic method.Keywords: serofast status, syphilis, microRNA, exosome, biomarker

Green and rapid synthesis of biomass carbon dots for the sensitive fluorescence sensing determination of oxytetracycline.

Breast cancer remains a dangerous disease, and delving the molecular mechanism of breast cancer is still necessary. To illustrate the role of miR-511-5p, TCGA database was used to excavate the abundance of miR-511-5p, and the miR-511-5p level was measured in the pathological tissues and tumor cell lines. Moreover, the targets of miR-511-5p were identified with miRDIP and GEPIA and then were used for functional enrichment analysis. Besides, the targets of miR-511-5p were analyzed with the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network for the hub nodes, and then the expression levels of the hub nodes were visualized with the GEPIA database. The results showed that miR-511-5p was significantly downregulated in multiple types of tumor samples in the online database, and the downregulated miR-511-5p was also found in pathological tissues and tumor cell lines. Moreover, 48 genes were identified as the potential targets of miR-511-5p by miRDIP and GEPIA databases and enriched in cell cycle, PI3K/AKT, and P53 pathways. Besides, seven genes including BRCA1, FN1, CCNE1, CCND1, CHEK1, BUB3, and CDC25A were identified as the hub nodes by the PPI network, and CCNE1 and CHEK1 were confirmed to be related with the prognostic survival of the patients with breast cancer. In conclusion, the proofs in this study suggest that reduced miR-511-5p was a biomarker event for breast cancer, and CCNE1 and CHEK1 served as potential targets of miR-511-5p to involve the progression of breast cancer.

Energy tunnel provides an innovative and efficient approach to harvesting geothermal energy. Some investigations on a single energy tunnel have been reported in the literature. This study investigated the behaviour of twin energy tunnels in two configurations (i.e. parallel and perpendicularly crossing) by using a thermo-hydro-mechanical coupled numerical model developed and validated in previous work. The responses of ground and a tunnel (denoted by ET1) to three thermo-activation modes were determined: cooling ET1 itself alone (ET1active), cooling a nearby tunnel alone (ET2active), cooling both tunnels simultaneously ((ET1+ ET2)active). The computed results reveal that the interaction between two tunnels becomes negligible when the clear distance reaches four times the tunnel diameter. When the clear distance is smaller, the interaction could impact the tunnel and soil displacements. In ET1active and (ET1+ET2)active, the vertical responses (i.e. ground settlement, ET1 settlement and vertical convergence) in both tunnel configurations can be close to or even exceed the allowable values in tunnel management guidelines, depending on ground and tunnel conditions. The horizontal responses of ET1 (i.e. horizontal displacement and convergence) are always insignificant. The thermo-activation of ET2 alone has minor effects on ET1, except a strong impact on ET1 settlement in the case of crossing tunnels.

During tunnel construction, water and mud inrush disasters from completely weathered granite usually lead to the serious casualties and economic losses. Predicting these disasters are vital to the safety construction. Considering the critical erosion condition and flow pattern variation at the three stages (Darcy, rapid, and stable flow stages), a seepage erosion model is developed to perform the coupling analysis of water and mud inrush evolution. The model is shown to have favorable accuracy in real-time predicting the erosion region, ground settlement region, and the main hydraulic parameters (i.e., permeability, water inflow, and mud inflow) by comparison with the laboratory tests and field investigations. Then, effects of the model parameters (i.e., particle diameter, erosion coefficient, and ground permeability) on the water and mud inrush are investigated. Results show that (1) with the decreasing particle diameter, the permeability and the water and mud inflow increase gradually. (2) The erosion coefficient mainly affects the evolution rate and time of the water and mud inrush disaster. (3) The water and mud inrush can be controlled when the ground permeability decreased to the 0.2 time of the initial value. The research findings and the proposed model can provide the reference for the water inrush prevention in a similar project.

The reduction of temperature effect is vitally important for high precision sensors. This paper introduces the theoretical analysis and experimental verification of an in-situ compensation method on the temperature coefficient of the scale factor for a single-axis electromagnetic force-balance feedback MEMS accelerometer. A micro thermistor, fabricated together with the MEMS accelerometer, is integrated to in-situ sense the temperature variation of the accelerometer. The thermistor is connected to the voltage-to-current resistance in series, which compensates the variation of the scale factor of the accelerometer that is influenced by temperature variation. The experimental results reveal that the temperature coefficient of the scale factor of the compensated accelerometer is within 6 ppm/°C for the temperature range from 25°C to 50°C, which is reduced by 68 times compared with the uncompensated accelerometer. Benefiting from the compatible fabrication process and the in-situ compensation, the proposed method is promising to be low-cost and high-efficiency.

Based on cross-sectional data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2004 to 2017, this paper systematically examines the nonlinear effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on carbon emissions and its causes using the PSTR model. It is found that the impact of EPU on carbon emissions at the provincial level in China has significant nonlinear characteristics and shows a positive and then negative pattern as the level of EPU increases. Furthermore, increased levels of EPU also cause a nonlinear migration of the effects of provincial economic and financial development, industrial structure, government spending, and environmental regulation on carbon emissions, illustrating a large amount of heterogeneity among Chinese provinces. Specifically, provinces with higher levels of economic and financial development experience a greater positive carbon emission effect from EPU, whereas provinces with lower levels of such development experience a greater negative carbon emission effect. In contrast, in provinces with irrational industrial structures, lower fiscal expenditures, and weaker environmental controls, the nonlinear carbon emission consequences of EPU are greater. Therefore, local governments should prudently adjust economic policies, improve and perfect the market information disclosure system, and afford full play to regional comparative advantages to help achieve the “double carbon goal”.

Nano- $g$ accelerometers are widely used in space exploration and measurement of the earth’s gravitational field. It is essential to precisely evaluate error effects at high orders such as cross-coupling for applications in a dynamic environment. Nevertheless, it remains challenging to meet the precision requirements using conventional calibration measures. In this article, we propose a method to separate the cross-coupling coefficients of a linear single-axis accelerometer by mounting it on a steadily rotating rate table that is tilted at a fixed deviation angle with respect to the horizontal plane. The gravity component is periodically modulated along the input axis per revolution. Simultaneously, a series of centripetal acceleration is applied along the cross axis in sequence while adjusting the rotation frequency of the rate table by steps. Thus, the cross-coupling coefficient can be separated by its dependence both on the modulated gravity acceleration and the centripetal acceleration. In comparison to the static multipoint angular rotation test on a tilted dividing head, the proposed dynamic modulation method demonstrates improved robustness against corruption from bias drift, with an improved uncertainty. This method to separate the cross-coupling coefficient is suitable for testing high-resolution accelerometers, without requiring high bias stability or sensitive response sustaining at ultralow frequency.

A simple and sensitive colorimetric sensing method was constructed for detection of Hg2+ in aqueous solutions and based on silver nanoparticles functionalized with l-cysteine (l-Cys-Ag NPs). In this method, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) induced aggregation of l-Cys-Ag NPs. Simultaneously, the solution colour changed from bright yellow to brown. In the presence of Hg2+ , Hg2+ chelated ATP to form a complex and reduce the degree of aggregation of l-Cys-Ag NPs and was accompanied by a colour change from brown to bright yellow. The changing values of absorbance at 390 nm were linearly correlated with concentration of Hg2+ over the 4.00 × 10-8 to 1.04 × 10-6 mol·L-1 range, with a detection limit of 8 nM. This method was used successfully for detection of Hg2+ in real water samples and performed good selectivity and sensitivity. The recovery range was 91.5-109.1%, indicating that the method has vast application potential for determination of Hg2+ in the environment.

High-precision microelectromechanical inertial sensors based on spring-mass structures are of great interests for a wide range of applications, including inertial navigation, disaster warning and resource exploration. Lowering the resonant frequency is essential to further improve the sensitivity of the sensors. However, conventional approaches are facing insurmountable difficulties from size reduction to machining precision. This paper proposed a novel quasi-zero-stiffness mechanism that is compatible with MEMS technologies together with a micromaching approach for adjusting the stiffness precisely. By improving the compliance of a typical spring with a negative-stiffness compensation mechanism induced by axial force, the resonant frequency of the micro spring-mass structure is lowered to 0.7 Hz, which is at least 3 times lower than current state-of-the-art micro structures. Based on this ultra-sensitive micro structure base on the quasi-zero-stiffness mechanism, the micro inertial sensor, with a chip size of a postage stamp, has shown a low self-noise of 0.6 nrad/ $\surd $ Hz at 0.04 Hz and a high long-term stability that are comparable to traditional pendulum inertial sensors. It is the first micro device, to our knowledge, that can successfully measure the tidal tilt signal. [2020-0048]

Predicting the user's trajectory behavior sequence based on point of interests (POIs) recommendation is of great significance in the realization of the smart city with the emerging of social Internet of Things technology. One of the widely adopted frameworks is the user-based collaborative filtering, where the explicit POI rating is calculated based on similar users’ preference. However, the trust between users is seldom considered. We believe that if two users show similar preferences or personality traits, the trust level between them should be high. To this end, we propose to calculate the trust-enhanced user similarity in user-based collaborative filtering based on network representation learning. Meanwhile, due to the significance of geographic influence and temporal influence, we integrate these two factors into POI recommendation by a fusion model. Therefore, our proposed POI recommendation system is unified collaborative recommendation framework, which fuses trust-enhanced users’ preferences to potential POIs with geographic influences and temporal influence for POI recommendation. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on two real-world datasets by comparing with several state-of-the-art methods in terms of precision@k and recall@k. Experimental results indicate that our proposed trust-enhanced collaborative filtering method outperforms other recommendation approaches.

The Baihetan super-high arch dam is constructed under complicated geological conditions, including large-scale columnar jointed basalt (CJB) with closely spaced joints and multiple interlayer and intralayer shear belts at the lower part of dam base, which may increase a risk of seepage in adjacent dam foundations. Therefore, curtain grouting is used to reduce the permeability of dam foundations. Lugeon and grouting field tests and geological exploration were carried out to investigate curtain grouting characteristics of the dam foundation. The findings were as follows: (1) the permeability coefficient of the first type of CJB and breccia lava without unloading is 2 × 10−5 ~ 5 × 10−5 cm/s; that of the second type of CJB without unloading is 2.5 × 10−5 ~ 5 × 10−5 cm/s; and that of the unloaded third type of massive basalt is 1 × 10−5 ~ 3 × 10−5 cm/s. (2) The rock core shows that the slurry caused repeated splitting of the rock mass and widened the cracks of the rock mass, which resulted in plastic deformation of the rock mass. The P ~ Q curve of the five-point Lugeon test shows that the curve shape is turbulent and that the maximum Lugeon value appears at the highest pressure. (3) The phenomenon of low-permeability conditions with a large grout take can be frequently observed. The proportion of the hole stages with a water permeability less than 1 LU and grout take greater than 50 kg/m ranges from 12.5 to 37.5%. The proportion of holes with permeability greater than 10 Lu and grout take greater than 50 kg/m is 0 to 12.5%. The findings from this case study can provide a reference for engineering construction.

In the tropical area, most shallow foundations and embankments are involved in dealing with unsaturated soils. Any collapse or settlement in unsaturated soils is determined by two independent stress variables: the applied stress and suction. The massive collapse related to suction changes may lead to unrecoverable damages to compacted earth fills both economic and human loss while this collapse has not been seen in the design. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of stress states and matric suction on collapse behavior of an unsaturated Malaysian granitic residual soil grade V. A suction-controlled double wall triaxial test was carried out to obtain the axial strain of the compacted specimen during loading and wetting collapse. In addition, there has been an attempt to predict the collapse behavior of the soil by using Rotational Multiple Yield Surface Framework (RMYSF). During loading in imposed suction, the axial strain increased as deviator stress increased. When the soil was inundated and the imposed suction was decreased step by step down to zero, the axial strain was very small at suction close to residual suction. It gradually increased as suction decreased. A massive settlement around 1.92% of the initial height was observed while the soil was nearly saturated. The findings also proved that the RMYSF model is able to predict the collapse behavior of the tested soil sufficiently.

ImportanceHigh-grade gliomas (HGGs) constitute the most common and aggressive primary brain tumor, with 5-year survival rates of 30.9% for grade 3 gliomas and 6.6% for grade 4 gliomas. The add-on efficacy of interferon alfa is unclear for the treatment of HGG.ObjectivesTo compare the therapeutic efficacy and toxic effects of the combination of temozolomide and interferon alfa and temozolomide alone in patients with newly diagnosed HGG.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis multicenter, randomized, phase 3 clinical trial enrolled 199 patients with newly diagnosed HGG from May 1, 2012, to March 30, 2016, at 15 Chinese medical centers. Follow-up was completed July 31, 2021, and data were analyzed from September 13 to November 24, 2021. Eligible patients were aged 18 to 75 years with newly diagnosed and histologically confirmed HGG and had received no prior chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or immunotherapy for their HGG.InterventionsAll patients received standard radiotherapy concurrent with temozolomide. After a 4-week break, patients in the temozolomide with interferon alfa group received standard temozolomide combined with interferon alfa every 28 days. Patients in the temozolomide group received standard temozolomide.Main Outcomes and MeasuresThe primary end point was 2-year overall survival (OS). Secondary end points were 2-year progression-free survival (PFS) and treatment tolerability.ResultsA total of 199 patients with HGG were enrolled, with a median follow-up time of 66.0 (95% CI, 59.1-72.9) months. Seventy-nine patients (39.7%) were women and 120 (60.3%) were men, with ages ranging from 18 to 75 years and a median age of 46.9 (95% CI, 45.3-48.7) years. The median OS of patients in the temozolomide plus interferon alfa group (26.7 [95% CI, 21.6-31.7] months) was significantly longer than that in the standard group (18.8 [95% CI, 16.9-20.7] months; hazard ratio [HR], 0.64 [95% CI, 0.47-0.88]; P = .005). Temozolomide plus interferon alfa also significantly improved median OS in patients with O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) unmethylation (24.7 [95% CI, 20.5-28.8] months) compared with temozolomide (17.4 [95% CI, 14.1-20.7] months; HR, 0.57 [95% CI, 0.37-0.87]; P = .008). Seizure and influenzalike symptoms were more common in the temozolomide plus interferon alfa group, with 2 of 100 (2.0%) and 5 of 100 (5.0%) patients with grades 1 and 2 toxic effects, respectively (P = .02). Finally, results suggested that methylation level at the IFNAR1/2 promoter was a marker of sensitivity to temozolomide plus interferon alfa.Conclusions and RelevanceCompared with the standard regimen, temozolomide plus interferon alfa treatment could prolong the survival time of patients with HGG, especially the MGMT promoter unmethylation variant, and the toxic effects remained tolerable.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01765088

Hydraulic fracturing is an effective treatment technology to improve reservoir permeability. In this paper, the dual effective stress was introduced into the theoretical analysis of water pressure during crack initiation, and the theoretical analysis results are about 37% more accurate than Hubbert and Willis theory based on the numerical results. Moreover, the artificial-macrocrack effects on fracturing crack propagation and direction changes have been analyzed and compared to hydraulic fracturing without the artificial-macrocrack. The water pressure required for crack initiation with the artificial-macrocracks is less than that without the artificial-macrocracks. When α (α is defined as the angle between the artificial-macrocrack and the horizontal direction) reached or exceeded π/4, crack growth began at the tip of the macrocrack with a higher box counting dimension than that at a lower values of α. Furthermore, a series of simulations have been conducted to obtain the point of fracturing crack direction change when α = 0. The fracturing crack starts to propagate at the artificial-macrocrack tip when λ = 0.95 (λ is defined as the ratio of horizontal stress to vertical stress), and the crack propagation direction becomes vertical when λ = 0.9625. By extracting the crack morphology from the simulation results, it was determined that the box-counting dimension, the crack perimeter, and the crack area proportion reach maximal values at λ = 0.95, λ = 0.9625 and λ = 0.975, respectively. Using image segmentation technology, the impact area proportion reached a maximum at λ = 0.9625 with a more effective treatment than at other values of λ. Finally, beddings and cracks in natural strata were taken into account for fracturing crack propagation, and beddings and cracks could guide the fracturing cracks. More microcracks could be generated along the beddings with the artificial-macrocrack effect at λ = 0.9. Case study indicated that the gas extraction achieved high production in the first 40 days, and the field data with fracturing treatment show that the average pure gas flux is about 4 times greater than that without fracturing. This research also provides a new idea to mine intact rock of construction aggregate.

Alkali-activated geopolymers cement based on natural red Pisha Sandstone (RPS), which causes severe soil erosion, was examined. The compressive strength and softening coefficient of the alkali-activated red Pisha Sandstone cement (AAPC) were investigated at different blast furnace slag replacement levels, NaOH dosages, and curing durations. This paper also investigated the strength and reaction mechanism of the AAPC samples with 40 wt% blast furnace slag at different NaOH dosages by replacing RPS with ISO Standard Sand (referred to as G group samples). Scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive X-ray, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction were used to analyze the hydration products and reaction mechanism of the samples at the curing ages of 28 days after the strength test. The results showed that the compressive strength and softening coefficient of the cement improved significantly when blast furnace slag was used as the mineral additive. When 1.5 wt% NaOH was used as the activator, the compressive strength and softening coefficient of the AAPC sample curing for 90 days increased from 6.9 to 56.2 MPa and 0.4 to 0.95, respectively, with an increase in the slag dosages from 0 to 40 wt%. The reaction mechanism of AAPC was essentially different from that of the alkali-activated blast furnace slag cement. The blast furnace slag significantly promoted the polymerization reaction of Si–Al gels. The Si–Al and C-S-H gels strengthened the AAPC system. However, the C-S-H gels and reinhardbraunsite, which are formed by the hydration of blast furnace slag, strengthened the alkali-activated blast furnace slag cement. In the AAPC samples with blast furnace slag as the mineral additive, the hydration reaction of the slag and the polymerization reaction of the Si–Al gels promoted each other.

Water inrush disasters originating from completely weathered granite are strongly affected by its physical and mechanical properties, such as the porosity, permeability, and water stability. The porosity and permeability are heavily affected by the particle composition. Meanwhile, a large amount of particles with poor cementation, are transferred by water, which may affect the flow properties and water inrush. This study investigates the mass transfer and flow properties of water inrush in completely weathered granite for different particle size distributions. To this end, a series of tests was performed by designing a new testing system, which can induce mass transfer and apply external pressures during the tests. The results demonstrate the following: (1) the flow properties and water inrush are related to the mass transfer. In the experiments, it was found that the permeability of the samples increases by a factor of 14–53.3, compared with the initial permeability. Thus, a notable signal to forecast water inrush can be obtained, which represents the change in water quality from muddy water to clear water. (2) With an increase in Talbot index n, the mass transfer and porosity first decrease and then increase. However, the permeability and water inflow increase and a critical value of n = 1.0 is required to induce the water inrush. (3) Three flow stages, namely, a Darcy flow, rapid flow, and stable flow, can be utilized to describe the water inrush evolution. Non-Darcy flow properties and high water inrush risk are observed in the second stage, where the water inflow increases to 551 mL/min, which is more than thrice that in the Darcy flow for n = 1.0. The obtained results can provide an important reference to understand the mechanisms, forecast the risks, and implement effective control measures for water inrush (e.g., optimum control time).

High-precision seismic sensors are key components in geophysical applications. Traditional seismic sensors apply levelling systems to avoid overload by the gravity projection, introducing additional volume, weight and cost. In this paper, we design, fabricate and experimentally demonstrate a levelling-free single-axis in-plane seismic sensor based on MEMS technology. Three kinds of capacitive sensors are integrated into one chip. Two encoder-like area-varying capacitive displacement sensors work alternatively to avoid the inflection points, enabling the seismic sensor to work linearly in arbitrary attitudes with a high sensitivity and an angle sensor selects the working array from the two arrays and measures the angle between the sensitive direction and gravity direction at the same time. In order to calibrate the scale factor, a gap-varying capacitive displacement sensor is integrated to measure the spacing. By the combination of these capacitive sensors, the micromachined seismic sensor is able to work in arbitrary attitudes with a resolution of better than 50 ng/√Hz at 1 atmosphere. Assembling three seismic sensors along axes orthogonal to each other, a three-axis seismic measurement system can be constructed. This system has successfully detected a MS7.0 earthquake at 2017-08-08 (UTC time), which happened in Sichuan Province (1000 km away), and another MS6.6 earthquake happened about 10 h later in Xinjiang Province (2700 km away). Being low cost and low power, this nano-g MEMS seismic sensor provides an alternative solution for geophysical applications.

In this paper, cheap liquorice residue was used to prepare activated carbon (AC), thioacetamide (TAA) was used to modify the AC, and the adsorption experiments were conducted in the simulated acid radioactive wastewater with low uranium concentration to study the adsorption behavior and mechanism for uranium by TAA modified AC (TAA–AC). The removal efficiency by TAA–AC was 92.1–98.2% from the 1 mg L−1 uranium solution at pH 2–6. The adsorption equilibrium data were well fitted by Dubinin–Radushkevich model, and the maximum adsorption capacity was estimated to be 340 mg g−1. TAA–AC showed an enhanced selectivity for uranium in the presence of competitive ions. Furthermore, the adsorption experiments were conducted in the actual acid radioactive wastewater with low uranium concentration from an in situ leach uranium mine. The high adsorption rate (98.3%) and selectivity (Kd = 3.78×104 mL g−1) for uranium were observed in the actual acid radioactive wastewater, and the adsorption rate was found to maintain 96.2% over six cycles of adsorption–desorption.

Presented herein is a simple, robust, and label-free homogeneous electrochemical sensing platform constructed for the detection of protein kinase activity and inhibition by integration of carboxypeptidase Y (CPY)-assisted peptide cleavage reaction and vertically ordered mesoporous silica films (MSFs). In this sensing platform, the substrate peptide composed of kinase-specific recognized sequence and multiple positively charged arginine (R) residues was ingeniously designed. In the presence of protein kinase, the substrate peptide was phosphorylated and then immediately resisted CPY cleavage. The phosphorylated peptide could be effectively adsorbed on the negatively charged surface of MSFs modified indium-tin oxide (ITO) electrode (MSFs/ITO) by noncovalent electrostatic attraction. The adsorbed peptide was subsequently used as a hamper to prevent the diffusion of electroactive probe (FcMeOH) to the electrode surface through the vertically aligned nanopores, resulting in a detectable reduction of electrochemical signal. As demonstrated for the feasibility and universality of the sensing platform, both protein kinase A (PKA) and casein kinase II (CK2) were selected as the models, and the detection limits were determined to be 0.083 and 0.095 UmL

Tilt sensors have been widely used in many applications, such as instrumentation leveling, oil drilling and structural health monitoring. With the rapid development of the micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology, MEMS accelerometer-based high-performance tilt sensors are capable of replacing conventional tilt sensors in most of application fields. High-sensitivity MEMS resonant accelerometers (MRAs) are fully qualified for tilt sensing. However, MRA chips have to be vacuum packaged and require complex circuits; therefore, they are difficult to be miniaturized and commercialized. In this case, this paper introduces a commercial-oriented capacitive MEMS accelerometer for tilt sensing with both high-resolution and compact size. The proposed MEMS sensor utilizes simplified fabrication processes, the area-change-based capacitive displacement transducer and the capacitance-to-voltage conversion application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for low-cost, high-sensitivity, low power consumption and miniaturization. The developed MEMS sensor has a package dimension of 14 mm × 14 mm × 3.6 mm with a single +5 V power supply and analog voltage output. Several evaluation experiments have been conducted with the results showing that the developed MEMS tilt sensor has a full measurement range of ±180°, a linear measurement range of ±30° with a nonlinearity of ±2.8%, a sensitivity of 33.6 mV/°, a noise floor of 2 × 10−4°/√Hz, a bandwidth of 100 Hz and an angle resolution of 7 × 10−4° with an integral time of 0.5 s. Compared with other commercial MEMS tilt sensors, the proposed sensor has a better resolution, a lower noise floor, a larger bandwidth, a lower power consumption and a smaller package. The simplified fabrication process and high performance suggest the developed MEMS tilt sensor is promising to be competitive in the market.