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Hypertension is a significant risk factor of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) with high prevalence worldwide, the current treatment has multiple adverse effects and requires continuous administration. The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) agonists have shown great potential in treating diabetes mellitus, neurodegenerative diseases, obesity and hypertension. Butyric acid is a potential target in treating hypertension. Yet, the application of GLP-1 analogue and butyric acid in reducing blood pressure and reversing ventricular hypertrophy remains untapped. In this study, we combined the therapeutic capability of GLP-1 and butyric acid by transforming Clostridium butyricum (CB) with recombinant plasmid pMTL007 encoded with hGLP gene to construct the engineered probiotics Clostridium butyricum-pMTL007-GLP-1 (CB-GLP-1). We used spontaneous hypertensive rat (SHR) models to evaluate the positive effect of this strain in treating hypertension. The results revealed that the intragastric administration of CB-GLP-1 had markedly reduced blood pressure and improved cardiac marker ACE2, AT2R, AT1R, ANP, BNP, β-MHC, α-SMA and activating AMPK/mTOR/p70S6K/4EBP1 signalling pathway. The high-throughput sequencing further demonstrated that CB-GLP-1 treatments significantly improved the dysbiosis in the SHR rats via downregulating the relative abundance of Porphyromonadaceae at the family level and upregulating Lactobacillus at the genus level. Hence, we concluded that the CB-GLP-1 greatly improves blood pressure and cardiomegaly by restoring the gut microbiome and reducing ventricular hypertrophy in rat models. This is the first time using engineered CB in treating hypertension, which provides a new idea for the clinical treatment of hypertension.

In this paper, bipolar pulse reactive magnetron sputtering with ion source assisted deposition method has been utilized for the deposition of nanocrystalline alumina (Al2O3) films at the temperature of 300 °C onto silicon (111) wafers, and cemented carbide substrates. The influence of ion source power, i.e. 0, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 kW on the structure, morphology, compressive stress and mechanical properties of the Al2O3 films were investigated. In absence of ion source power assistance, an amorphous Al2O3 film was dominant at deposition temperature of 300 °C. With ion source assisted deposition, the crystalline γ-Al2O3 films were obtained at the same conditions, suggesting an importance of ion source power in crystallinity development of metal oxide films obtained from magnetron sputtering deposition method. Images of surface morphology clearly demonstrated the difference in granular sizes of film surfaces prepared with and without ion source powers. With increasing ion source power from 1.0 to 2.0 kW, the micro-hardness and compressive stress of the films were increased from 7 GPa to 13 GPa and 0.3 GPa to 1.1 GPa, respectively. Results revealed that the reactive magnetron sputtering with the ion source assisted deposition was a simple and effective way to prepare nanocrystalline γ-Al2O3 films at low temperature.

MAl2O4:Eu2+0.01, Dy3+0.02 (M=Ca, Sr and Ba) materials were synthesized by combustion method. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) patterns indicate that all the samples are of high purity and crystallinity. The grain sizes of MAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+ are similar. The luminescent properties of phosphors were studied systematically. The main peaks of emission spectra of the luminescent phosphors changes from blue-purple to yellow-green and then to blue-green due to the different distortion existed in different host lattices. The decay time of phosphors varies a lot, and SrAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+ shows the best persistence characteristic. Thermoluminescence analysis indicates that the trap levels in MAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+ (M=Ca, Sr and Ba) are different, and the trap level in SrAl2O4 host is the most moderate to exhibit long afterglow at room temperature.

Nitrogen and Aluminum co-doped ZnO thin films were prepared by In Situ thermal oxidation of RF magnetron sputtered Zn3N2:Al films on quartz glasses. The structural, optical and electrical properties of the samples were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optical transmittance, photoluminescence (PL) and Hall effect measurements. XRD analyses revealed that Zn3N2:Al films entirely transformed into ZnO films after annealing in oxygen at 500 °C for one hour. Hall effect measurements confirmed p-type conduction in ZnO films with a low resistivity of 34.8Ω cm, a high hole concentration of 3.26×1017 cm-3 and a Hall mobility of 2.3 cm2/Vs. Optical transmission spectra shows that the films are highly transparent in the visible region . Our results demonstrate a promising approach to fabricate low resistivity p-type ZnO.

CrN films with deposition rates of 30-190 nm/min were deposited on Si (111) substrates by middle-frequency magnetron sputtering methods. XRD, SEM, EDS and microhardness tests were used to investigate the effects of bias voltages and total gas pressure on the structure and mechanical properties of the resulting CrN films. With the increasing of bias voltages and total gas pressure, the preferential diffraction orientation changed from (111) to (200). A smooth surface was observed by the SEM experiments and the thickness of the film was about 2 µm. The deposition rates and Cr content of resulting films were highly influenced by the magnitude of the bias voltage and total gas pressure. RMS and Ra properties of the CrN films increased when increased total gas pressure or decreased bias voltage. CrN films produced under optimal conditions have an almost 1:1 Cr:N ratio as determined by EDS. The hardness of the CrN film increased from 2200 to 2700 HV when increased the bias voltages from 0 to 200 V.

The surface of anatase TiO2 nanoparticles was modified by xylene using soxhlet extractor. The photoluminescence (PL) of the modified nanoparticles was investigated. A stable and strong blue luminescence peak at 420 nm can be observed, and the intensity of the PL peak increases with the increase of the extraction time.

ZnS:Na thin films with (111) preferred orientation were deposited on glass substrates by vacuum evaporation method. The as-prepared films were annealed in flowing argon at 400–500 °C to improve the film crystallinity and electrically activate the dopants. The structural, optical and electrical properties of ZnS:Na films are investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL), optical transmittance measurements and the four-point probe method. Results show that the as-prepared ZnS:Na films are amorphous, and exhibit (111) preferred orientation after annealing at 400 −500 °C. The PL emissions at 414 nm and 439 nm are enhanced due to the increase of the intrinsic defects induced by the thermal annealing. However, all the samples exhibit high resistivity due to the heavy self-compensation.