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The escalating challenge of antibiotic resistance has driven the innovation of new antibacterial and antifouling materials. Recent developments focus on nature-inspired topographical engineering and nanostructured surfaces to combat resistant bacteria. This review discusses these advances, emphasizing the potential of nanoantibiotics and biopolymers. Nanoantibiotics revitalize drug effectiveness by encapsulating them in nanoparticles, presenting a new strategy to fight pathogens. Biopolymers, eco-friendly and biodegradable, emerge as a sustainable alternative, with applications in food safety and beyond. The exploration of these materials signifies a leap in design, fabrication, and the possibility of cost-effective, large-scale production, highlighting a promising avenue for commercial applications to tackle antibiotic resistance and biofouling effectively.

Background and Objectives: A comprehensive nutritional management is necessary for favourable outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). We aimed to assess the changes in nutritional status and disease progression with nutritional management where renal replacement therapy (RRT) was not in place. Methods and Study Design: A quasi-experiment intervention was conducted on 70 CKD patients at stages 3-5 from July to December 2022. Participants were excluded if they underwent RRT, including dialysis (hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis), or kidney transplantation. The nutritional regimen covered nutritional counseling, samples of the dietary menu, and supplement products. We evaluated nutritional status using Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) scale and sub-clinical blood test at T0 (hospital admission) and T1 (two weeks after the admission or 24 hours before the discharge). Results: After the intervention, the number of patients classified as malnutrition or at risk of malnourished reduced significantly (65.7% to 54.3% and 25.7% and 5.7%, respectively). The serum concentration of urea, creatinine and parathyroid hormone decreased remarkably, especially in patients receiving nutritional management. In the intervention group, the dietary pattern provided increased intakes of calcium and iron at T1, while phosphorus, sodium and potassium decreased after follow-up. Nausea/vomiting, loss of appetite, tiredness and sleep disorders were improved in the intervention compared to the control group. Conclusions: Nutritional therapy enhanced the nutritional status, and quality of dietary and renal function in CKD patients without RRT. Applying nutrition education and treatment at an early stage can slow CKD progression, which should be applicable elsewhere in Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relevance. In the face of current climate change trends, coastal erosion occurs more frequently in coastal lands. This problem not only causes damage to houses and works, but also affects the lives of coastal people. Quang Nam has a coastline of 125 km, which is an area that has been seriously eroded under the impact of hydrodynamic factors, along with extreme weather phenomena, affecting people's lives, and degrade the local economy. Aim. This article presents research on shoreline changes in Quang Nam region using the method of integrating remote sensing and GIS to create a change map. From there, identify erosion and deposition areas to help management agencies pay attention to the protection and development orientation of Quang Nam province in the context of climate change. Methods. Shoreline extraction method in combination with GIS to calculate the coastline change and combines with storm statistics to assess the shoreline change. Results. In the whole study area, erosion is dominant over deposition. Erosion is concentrated mainly in An Bang, North Cua Dai, Duy Hai and Tam Tien areas, ranging from 3.9–9.2 m/year. Deposition is concentrated mainly in the areas south of Cua Dai and Tam Hoa (near the mouth of Truong Giang river). In addition, the analysis results of shoreline changes in Quang Nam area, when combined with storm data affecting this area, also show a positive correlation. Research results can contribute useful information to local authorities to have solutions for planning and managing coastal areas.

Chronic wounds often result in multiple infections with various kinds of bacteria and uncontrolled wound exudate, resulting in several healthcare issues. Advanced medicated nanofibres prepared by electrospinning have gained much attention for their topical application on infected chronic wounds. The objective of this work is to enhance the critical variables of ciprofloxacin-loaded polycaprolactone-silk sericin (PCL/SS-PVA-CIP) nanofibre production via the process of electrospinning. To examine the antibacterial effectiveness of PCL/SS-PVA-CIP nanocomposites, the material was tested against P. aeruginosa and S. aureus. The combination of PCL/SS-PVA-CIP exhibited potent inhibitory properties, with the most effective concentrations of ciprofloxacin (CIP) being 3 μg/g and 7.0 μg/g for each bacterium, respectively. The biocompatibility was evaluated by conducting cell reduction and proliferation studies using the human epidermal keratinocyte (HaCaT) cells and human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs) in vitro cell lines. The PCL/SS-PVA-CIP showed good cell compatibility with HaCaT and HGF cells, with effective proliferation even at antibiotic doses of up to 7.0 μg/g. The drug release effectiveness of the nanocomposites was assessed at various concentrations of CIP, resulting in a maximum cumulative release of 76.5% and 74.4% after 72 h for CIP concentrations of 3 μg/g and 7 μg/g, respectively. In summary, our study emphasizes the possibility of combining silk sericin (SS) and polycaprolactone (PCL) loading with CIP nanocomposite for wound management.

IntroductionAs sufficient nutrition helps alleviate catabolic stress and modulate the systemic inflammatory response of the body, it plays an indispensable role in the good prognosis of critically ill patients. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the malnutrition of patients with severe COVID-19 and its association with adverse treatment outcomes.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study in two provincial hospitals in Hanoi from February to April 2022. Participants were patients with severe COVID-19 admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Malnutrition risk were evaluated by Nutritional Risk Screening-2002 (NRS), Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM), Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI), and the adverse prognosis was assessed by Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II). The multivariate receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to estimate the predictive ability of those criteria regarding worse treatment results.ResultsThe percentages of malnutrition measured by NRS, GLIM, PNI, and BMI were 62.6, 51.5, 42.9, and 16.6%, respectively. Patients with more severe malnutrition assessed by GLIM, PNI, and having above target fasting blood glucose (FBG) (≥10.0 mmol/L) were more likely to have higher APACHE scores. PNI had a better diagnostic performance than NRS and BMI (AUC = 0.84, 0.81, and 0.82, respectively). In addition, FBG revealed a good prognostic implication (AUC = 0.84).ConclusionA relatively high percentage of patients experienced moderate and severe malnutrition regardless of screening tools. Individuals at higher risk of malnutrition and high FBG were predicted to have more adverse treatment outcomes. It is recommended that nutritional screening should be conducted regularly, and personalizing nutritional care strategies is necessary to meet patients’ nutrient demands and prevent other nutrition-related complications.

Nanosized multi-drug delivery systems provide synergistic effects between drugs and bioactive compounds, resulting in increased overall efficiency and restricted side effects compared to conventional single-drug chemotherapy. In this study, we develop an amphiphilic heparin-poloxamer P403 (HP403) nanogel that could effectively co-load curcuminoid (Cur) and cisplatin hydrate (CisOH) (HP403@CisOH@Cur) via two loading mechanisms. The HP403 nanogels and HP403@CisOH@Cur nanogels were closely analyzed with 1H-NMR spectroscopy, FT-IR spectroscopy, TEM, and DLS, exhibiting high stability in spherical forms. In drug release profiles, accelerated behavior of Cur and CisOH at pH 5.5 compared with neutral pH was observed, suggesting effective delivery of the compounds in tumor sites. In vitro studies showed high antitumor activity of HP403@CisOH@Cur nanogels, while in vivo assays showed that the dual-drug platform prolonged the survival time of mice and prevented tail necrosis. In summary, HP403@CisOH@Cur offers an intriguing strategy to achieve the cisplatin and curcumin synergistic effect in a well-designed delivery platform that increases antitumor effectiveness and overcomes undesired consequences caused by cisplatin in breast cancer treatment.

Jeokimyasal verilerin saha dağılım desenlerinin belirlenmesi çalışmalarında uzamsal küme ve aykırı değerler büyük önem taşır. Bunlar, sadece cevherleşmenin temel özelliklerini değil, aynı zamanda maden yatağının ve cevher mineralinin alansal dağılımını da karakterize ederler. Bu çalışmada, çok değişkenli verinin alansal dağılım deseni konusunda yeni bir yöntem tanıtılacak olup bu yöntemde stabil Mahalanobis uzaklığı ile lokal Moran’s I1 değeri baz alınmıştır. Uzamsal matriksi oluştururken, aralığı belirlemek üzere öncelikle Moran’s I uzamsal korelogramı kullanılmıştır. Daha sonra, belirli bir elementler topluluğu için stabil Mehalanobis aralığı hesaplanmıştır. Son olarak, hem uzamsal birlik derecesini ölçmek hem de, uzamsal küme ve aykırı değerler dahil olmak üzere Cu, Au, Mo, Ag, Pb, Zn, As ve Sb birliklerinin uzamsal dağılım desenlerini belirlemek için yersel Moran’s I1 istatistiği uygulanmıştır. Hem ham veri hem de Box-Cox dönüşüm verisi üzerinde altı değişik ölçekte (2km, 4km, 6km, 8km, 10km ve 12km) uzamsal desen analizi yapılmıştır. Elde edilen sonuçlar, Moran’s I1 ve stabil Mahalanobis ile tanımlanan uzamsal küme ve uzamsal aykırı değer alanlarının nesnel gerçeklik ile uyum sağladıklarını, ayrıca çalışma alanında bilinen maden yatakları ile de uyumlu bir ilişki gösterdiklerini ortaya koymuştur.

In this work, a simultaneous liquefaction, saccharification, and fermentation (SLSF) process at very high gravity (VHG) of broken rice for potable ethanol production was developed at pilot scale. The SLSF-VHG process was performed in a unique fermenter, at 30 °C. Rice flour (RF) was dissolved in tap water to reach 311.5 g/1 dry matter and then the mixture was simul-taneousely liquefied, saccharified, and fermented. Thanks to the addition of a raw starch hydrolyzing enzyme containing a mixture of alpha-amylase and gluco-amylase (Stargen 002 at 991.8 GAU/kg RF), gluco-amylase (Amigase Mega L at 0.035% w/w), protease (Fermgen at 600 SAPU/kg RF), active dry yeast Saccharomyces cereuisiae (Red Ethanol at 3.5 x 107 cells/ml), KH2PO4 (4.8mM), and urea (16.0 mM). Under these conditions, the SLSF-VHG process finished after 120 h and achieved an ethanol content of 17.6% v/v corresponding to 86.3% of the theoretical ethanol yield. We scaled up this SLSF process at very high gravity at pilot scale (251) and achieved an ethanol content of 17.0% v/v corresponding to a yield of 83.2% of the theoretical ethanol yield. Rice-based distillers dried grains (DDG) was produced from the whole stillage of SLSF process at very high gravity by being plate-filtered and dried. The obtained DDG had high contents of crude protein (47.5%) and fibers (15.8%). Our results suggest, the SLSF under VHG condition of broken rice as well as the recovery of protein-rich DDG could have a great potential for the ethanol and animal feeding industry in Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]