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The contamination of pathogenic micro-organisms and heavy metals in drinking water sources poses a serious threat to human health, which raises the demand for efficient water treatments. Herein, multi-functional capacitive deionization (CDI) electrodes were developed for the simultaneous decontamination of bacteria and heavy metal contaminants. Polyhexamethylene guanidine (PHMG), an antibacterial polymer, was deposited on the surface of the activated carbon (AC) electrode with the assistance of mussel-inspired polydopamine (PDA) chemistry. The main characterization results proved successful co-deposition of PDA and PHMG on the AC electrode, forming a hydrophilic coating layer in one step. Electrochemical analyses indicated that the AC-PDA/PHMG electrodes presented satisfactory capacitive behaviors, with outstanding salt adsorption capacity and cycling stability. The modified electrodes also exhibit excellent disinfection performance and heavy metal adsorption performance. The bacterial elimination rate of co-deposited electrodes grew along with the increase in the PHMG content. Particularly, AC-PDA/PHMG

Titanium implants have been widely used as one of the most effective treatments of bone defects. However, the lack of osteogenesis and bacteria-resistant activities result in high infection and loosening rates of titanium implants. Anodic oxidation could easily construct titanium dioxide nanotubes (TNTs) array on the surface of titanium, and the rough surface of TNTs is beneficial to the growth of osteoblast-related cells on the surface. And TNTs could be excellent drug carriers because of their single-entry tubular hollow structure. In this review, we aim at detailing the application of TNTs as drug carriers in the field of bone implants. Starting from the topography of TNTs, we illustrated the biological activity of the TNTs surface, the drugs for loading in TNTs, and the controlled and responsive release strategies of drug-loaded TNTs, respectively. At the end of this review, the shortcomings of TNTs as the drug carrier in the field of bone implants are discussed, and the development direction of this research field is also prospected.

The rapid in situ inhibition of bacterial contamination and subsequent infection without inducing drug resistance is highly vital for the successful implantation and long-term service of titanium (Ti)-based orthopedic implants. However, the instability and potential cytotoxicity of current coatings have deterred their clinical practice. In this study, anodic oxidized titania nanotubes (TNT) were modified with antibacterial polyhexamethylene guanidine (PG) with the assistance of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid. Interestingly, the prepared TNT-PG coating exhibited superior in vitro antibacterial activity than flat Ti-PG coating and effectively killed typical pathogens such as Escherichia coli and superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus with above 4-log reduction (> 99.99 % killed) in only 5 min. TNT-PG coating also exerted excellent hemocompatibility with red blood cells and nontoxicity toward mouse pre-osteoblasts (MC3T3-E1) in 1 week of coculture. In addition, the efficient in vivo anti-infective property of this coating was observed in a rat subcutaneous infection model. More importantly, TNT-PG coating improved the expression of alkaline phosphatase and enhanced the extracellular matrix mineralization of pre-osteoblasts, denoting its osteoinductive capacity. This versatile TNT-PG coating with excellent antibacterial activity and biocompatibility could be a promising candidate for advanced orthopedic implant applications.

While indirect taxes can fall on both consumption and investment spending, there has been little discussion on how governments may tax these two types of expenditure differentially. This article shows that the choice between taxing consumption and investment spending has important distributive implications for left governments as the traditional defenders of redistribution. In particular, when left governments increase taxes on investment relative to consumption expenditure, the higher price of investment relative to consumption goods drives up the labor share of corporate income, lowers corporate saving and reduces corporate net lending. Because this labor share strategy of redistribution is likely to antagonize capital, left governments tend to pursue it more intensely when corporatism has declined. I test these arguments using data across 12–14 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from the 1970s to 2010.

The neighbor-distinguishing total chromatic number $$\chi ''_{a}(G)$$ of a graph G is the minimum number of colors required for a proper total coloring of G such that any two adjacent vertices have different sets of colors. In this paper, we show that if G is a planar graph with $$\Delta =12$$, then $$13\le \chi ''_{a}(G)\le 14$$, and moreover $$\chi ''_{a}(G)=14$$ if and only if G contains two adjacent 12-vertices.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has attracted wide attention in antibacterial applications due to its advantages of spatial-temporal selectivity, noninvasiveness, and low incidence to develop drug resistance. To make it more convenient, universal, and manipulatable for clinical application, a conceptually antibacterial strategy, namely "electroluminodynamic therapy" (ELDT), is presented by nanoassembly of an electroluminescent (EL) material and a photosensitizer, which is capable of generating reactive oxygen species (ROS) in situ under an electric field, i.e., the fluorescence emitted by the EL molecules excites the photosensitizer to generate singlet oxygen (

Hemorrhage is the leading cause of preventable death of injured military and civilian patients, and subsequent infection risks endanger their lives or impede the healing of their wounds. Here, we report an injectable biodegradable hydrogel with hemostatic, antimicrobial, and healing-promoting properties. The hydrogel was prepared by dynamic cross-linking of a natural polysaccharide (dextran) with antimicrobial peptide e-poly-l-lysine (EPL) and encapsulating base fibroblast growth factor (bFGF). The amino groups of EPL were allowed to react with the aldehyde of oxidized dextran (OD) through the Schiff-base reaction for the generation of hydrogels that have fast self-healing and injectable characteristics and adapt to the shapes of wounds. The prepared OD/EPL hydrogels promoted blood clotting in vitro and stopped bleeding in a rat liver injury model within 6 min through their platelet-aggregating ability and sealing effect. These hydrogels exhibited inherent antimicrobial effects without the use of antibiotics and effectively killed a broad spectrum of pathogenic microbes, including Gram-positive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Gram-negative Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa and fungus Candida albicans in vitro. Moreover, these OD/EPL hydrogels were compatible with mammalian cells in vitro and in vivo and biodegradable in the mouse body. The loaded bFGF can be released sustainably, and it can promote angiogenesis, endothelial cell migration, and consequently accelerate the healing of wounds. The OD/EPL hydrogel inhibited MRSA infection in a rat full-thickness skin wound model and promoted healing. This kind of multifunctional hydrogel is a promising wound dressing for the emergency treatment of acute deep or penetrating injuries.

Polyethylene glycol-modified canine uricase (PEG-UHC) was prepared by modifying the e-amino group of lysine residues on the canine uricase (UHC) protein to near-saturation with 5 kDa monomethoxyl-polyethylene glycol succinimide (mPEG-SPA-5k). In order to accurately determine the PEGylation uniformity of PEG-UHC, CZE, 3-8% gradient gel SDS-PAGE, and imaging CIEF (iCIEF) analyses were compared. CZE could not effectively separate PEG-UHC proteins with different degrees of modification, 3-8% gradient gel SDS-PAGE could separate PEG-UHC into seven gel bands; however, most of the gel bands were smeared or blurred, and the separation of PEG-UHC samples by iCIEF was significantly better than that by 3-8% gradient gel SDS-PAGE. Under denatured conditions, iCIEF separated 12 pI peaks, and could also accurately quantify the relative monomer PEG-UHC content. More than 85% of the total monomeric PEG-UHC was conjugated with 7-12 PEG molecules; of this 85%, approximately 40% was conjugated with 9-10 PEG molecules. These results demonstrated that iCIEF exhibits good potential for determining the PEGylation homogeneity of PEGylated protein drugs.

Polyethylene glycol-modified canine uricase (PEG-UHC) prepared with a lower-molecular-weight (5 kDa) PEG is used to treat gout. This study investigated the comparative pharmacokinetics of single and multiple doses of PEG-UHC administered intravenously and a single dose of uricase (UHC) administered intravenously in cynomolgus monkeys. A noncompartmental model was used to fit the plasma drug concentration–time curve and calculate the pharmacokinetic parameters of PEG-UHC, which were compared with those obtained for UHC at the equivalent dose (2 mg/kg). To study the pharmacokinetics after multiple dose administration, cynomolgus monkeys were administered five intravenous injections of PEG-UHC (0.5 mg/kg), with one injection performed every 15 days. The area under the curve (AUC) and the maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) of PEG-UHC were positively correlated with dose, whereas plasma half-life (t1/2) and clearance (CL) did not change significantly with increasing dose, suggesting that these pharmacokinetic characteristics are linear. Intravenous PEG-UHC exhibited an average t1/2 that was 125.79 times longer and an AUC0−t that was 64.45 times larger than the corresponding values for UHC at the same dose (2 mg/kg), while the CL of PEG-UHC was 1/72.73 times the CL of intravenous UHC. The plasma drug concentration reached a steady state after five injections, and the t1/2 values following the first and last drug administration did not differ significantly. Our data show that PEG-UHC is markedly superior to UHC in terms of duration of action, and that the pharmacokinetics of PEG-UHC in cynomolgus monkeys are linear. Sequential administration of PEG-UHC did not accelerate drug clearance. Our findings provide the basis for future clinical studies of PEG-UHC.

To encourage intra-class compactness and inter-class separability among trainable feature vectors, large-margin softmax methods are developed and widely applied in the face recognition community. The introduction of the large-margin concept into the softmax is reported to have good properties such as enhanced discriminative power, less overfitting and well-defined geometric intuitions. Nowadays, language modeling is commonly approached with neural networks using softmax and cross entropy. In this work, we are curious to see if introducing large-margins to neural language models would improve the perplexity and consequently word error rate in automatic speech recognition. Specifically, we first implement and test various types of conventional margins following the previous works in face recognition. To address the distribution of natural language data, we then compare different strategies for word vector norm-scaling. After that, we apply the best norm-scaling setup in combination with various margins and conduct neural language models rescoring experiments in automatic speech recognition. We find that although perplexity is slightly deteriorated, neural language models with large-margin softmax can yield word error rate similar to that of the standard softmax baseline. Finally, expected margins are analyzed through visualization of word vectors, showing that the syntactic and semantic relationships are also preserved., Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2020

A plane graph G is k-edge-face colorable if the elements of \(E(G)\cup F(G)\) can be colored with k colors such that any two adjacent or incident elements receive different colors. G is edge-face L-list colorable if for a given list assignment \(L=\{L(x){\mid }x\in E(G)\cup F(G)\}\), there exists a proper edge-face coloring \(\pi \) of G such that \(\pi (x)\in L(x)\) for all \(x\in E(G)\,\cup \,F(G)\). If G is edge-face L-list colorable for any list assignment with \(|L(x)|=k\) for all \(x\in E(G)\,\cup \,F(G)\), then G is edge-face k-choosable. The edge-face list chromatic number is defined to be the smallest integer k such that G admits an edge-face k-list coloring.

The neighbor-distinguishing total chromatic number χ a ′ ′ ( G ) of a graph G is the smallest integer k such that G can be totally colored using k colors with a condition that any two adjacent vertices have different sets of colors. In this paper, we give a sufficient and necessary condition for a planar graph G with maximum degree 13 to have χ a ′ ′ ( G ) = 14 or χ a ′ ′ ( G ) = 15 . Precisely, we show that if G is a planar graph of maximum degree 13, then 14 ≤ χ a ′ ′ ( G ) ≤ 15 ; and χ a ′ ′ ( G ) = 15 if and only if G contains two adjacent 13-vertices.

Complementing the existing partisanship and income distribution literature that focuses on the earnings of all employees, this paper examines the effect of left government partisanship on top managers. Drawing on firm-level top executive compensation data across thirteen advanced industrialized countries, the paper shows that left government partisanship principally leads to lower CEO compensation, either through laws that enhance workers’ collective bargaining power vis-à-vis management or laws that allow shareholders to cast proxy votes on executive compensation (i.e., say-on-pay laws). Furthermore, I show that left government partisanship reduces CEO pay more heavily in those firms that more strongly favor labor’s competing stakeholders. In particular, left partisanship reduces executive compensation more heavily in firms that set aside more revenue for shareholders, managers, or creditors, that is, firms with higher asset return, stock return, or debt. These findings highlight how the macro-politics of rising top income inequality at the national level interacts with the micro-distributive conflicts at the firm level. In particular, financialization, such as the rise of the shareholder value revolution, may accentuate the impact of partisan politics against top income inequality.

The neighbor-distinguishing total coloring of a graph G is a proper total coloring of G using k colors such that any two adjacent vertices have different sets of colors. It was known that every planar graph G with $$\Delta \ge 10$$ is neighbor-distinguishing totally $$(\Delta +3)$$-colorable. In this paper, we extend this result to the case $$\Delta =9$$. Namely, we prove that every planar graph G with $$\Delta =9$$ is neighbor-distinguishing totally 12-colorable.

The rise of the super-rich has attracted much political and academic attention in recent years. However, there have been few attempts to explain the cross-national along with the temporal variation in the rise of top incomes. Drawing on the World Wealth and Income Database, we study the income share of the top 1% in current postindustrial democracies from 1960 to 2012. We find that extreme income concentration at the top is a predominantly political phenomenon, not the result of increasing marginal productivity of top managers in markets of increasing size. Top income shares are largely unrelated to economic growth, increased knowledge-intensive production, export competitiveness, financialization and wealth accumulation, though they are related to stock market capitalization. Instead, they are closely associated with political and policy changes such as union density and centralization, secular-right governments, top marginal tax rates and investment in public tertiary education.

A proper edge coloring of a graph G using the color set $$\{1,2,\ldots , k\}$${1,2,?,k} is called neighbor sum distinguishing if for any pair of adjacent vertices x and y the sum of colors taken on the edges incident to x is different from the sum of colors taken on the edges incident to y. The smallest value of k in such a coloring of G is denoted by $$\chi '_{_{\sum }}(G)$$???(G). In this paper, we show that $$\chi '_{_{\sum }}(G)\le 6$$???(G)≤6 for any simple subcubic graph G. This improves a result in Flandrin et al. (Graphs Combin 29:1329---1336, 2013), which says that every cubic graph G has $$\chi '_{_{\sum }}(G)\le 8$$???(G)≤8.

A graph G is said to be neighbor-sum-distinguishing edge k-choose if, for every list L of colors such that L(e) is a set of k positive real numbers for every edge e, there exists a proper edge coloring which assigns to each edge a color from its list so that for each pair of adjacent vertices u and v the sum of colors taken on the edges incident to u is different from the sum of colors taken on the edges incident to v. Let \(\mathrm{ch}^{\prime }_{\sum ^p}(G)\) denote the smallest integer k such that G is neighbor-sum-distinguishing edge k-choose. In this paper, we prove that if G is a subcubic graph with the maximum average degree mad(G), then (1) \(\mathrm{ch}^{\prime }_{\sum ^p}(G)\le 7\); (2) \(\mathrm{ch}^{\prime }_{\sum ^p}(G)\le 6\) if \(\hbox {mad}(G)

Paeoniflorin is a promising therapy for ulcerative colitis; however, a carrier is required for its localization and release in the colon. This study was conducted to investigate the colon-targeting potential of Eudragit S100 (EUS100)-coated halloysite nanotube (HNT)/chitosan (CTS) (HNT/CTS/EUS100) microspheres encapsulating paeoniflorin. HNT/CTS microspheres were prepared by emulsification cross-linking and were then coated by emulsification-solvent evaporation using EUS100 as the coating material. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy were performed to study the structure and morphology of the microspheres. The HNT/CTS microspheres were mainly bound by physical adsorption. The microspheres had an average particle size of 26.7 ± 7.5 μm and a rough surface with a porous internal structure. Cumulative drug release in vitro was evaluated using different pH media and rat colonic content to simulate gastrointestinal and colonic conditions. HNT/CTS/EUS100 microspheres released approximately 70% of the drug in simulated colon fluid, which was approximately 20% higher than that released by HNT/CTS microspheres. Drug release by HNT/CTS/EUS100 in simulated colon fluid was controlled by first-order diffusion mechanisms. Our results indicate that HNT/CTS/EUS100 microspheres can effectively deliver paeoniflorin to the colon with good colonic drug delivery characteristics.

In this paper, a fractional SIR model with birth and death rates on heterogeneous complex networks is proposed. Firstly, we obtain a threshold value R 0 based on the existence of endemic equilibrium point E ∗ , which completely determines the dynamics of the model. Secondly, by using Lyapunov function and Kirchhoff’s matrix tree theorem, the globally asymptotical stability of the disease-free equilibrium point E 0 and the endemic equilibrium point E ∗ of the model are investigated. That is, when R 0 1 , the disease-free equilibrium point E 0 is globally asymptotically stable and the disease always dies out; when R 0 > 1 , the disease-free equilibrium point E 0 becomes unstable and in the meantime there exists a unique endemic equilibrium point E ∗ , which is globally asymptotically stable and the disease is uniformly persistent. Finally, the effects of various immunization schemes are studied and compared. Numerical simulations are given to demonstrate the main results.

In this paper, a homogeneous-mixing population fractional model for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission, which incorporates anti-HIV preventive vaccines, is proposed. The dynamics of the model indicate that the basic reproduction number being the unity is a strict threshold for disease eradication when there is no vaccine. However, it has been shown that when the efficacy or dosage of vaccines is low, the model exhibits the phenomenon of backward bifurcation, where a stable disease-free equilibrium point (DFE) coexists with a stable endemic equilibrium point (EE) when the associated reproduction number is less than unity. Therefore, driving the basic reproduction number below the unity is not enough to eradicate the disease. A new critical value at the turning point should be deduced as a new threshold of disease eradication. We have generalized the integer LaSalle invariant set theorem into fractional system and given some sufficient conditions for the disease-free equilibrium point being globally asymptotical stability. Mathematical results in this paper suggest that improving the efficiency and dosage of vaccines are all valid methods for the control of disease.

Prevention of infection and promotion of osteoconduction are the key factors to achieve long-term success in orthopaedic implants. In this work, an effective antimicrobial and osteoconductive coating is facilely prepared by the cross-linking of e-poly-L-lysine (EPL) and catechol (abbreviated as EPLC) via a one-step mussel-inspired chemistry. A series of EPLC paints were prepared by catechol (15 mM) and varying concentrations of EPL (30, 40, and 50 mM) and named as EPLC1, EPLC2, and EPLC3. The coatings were easy to paint on implants. EPLC3 with the highest EPL concentration exhibited the most potent antimicrobial activity (greater than 99.99%) against both Gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Gram-positive “superbug” methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and inhibited the biofilm formation of MRSA up to one week. Furthermore, the EPLC3 painted Ti implant was capable of reducing more than 3-log bacterial burden in a rodent subcutaneous infection model infected by MRSA. More interestingly, EPLC3 coating increased the osteoconductivity of Ti surfaces by promoting mouse pre-osteoblast MC3T3-E1 adhesion and proliferation. And the EPLC3 painted Ti surfaces could induce hydroxyapatite (HAp) formation after incubation in simulating human body fluids (SBF) within two weeks. Overall, the mussel-inspired EPLC paint can be easily applied to orthopaedic implants, and endowed Ti with antimicrobial activity and promoted its osteoconductivity, which will benefit the long-term success of Ti implants.

The maximum packing C 8-max PD(v) and minimum covering C 8-minCD(v) of K v with 8-cycles are studied, all structures with the nonisomorphic leave (excess) are presented. In Li et al. (Graphs Combin 25:735---752, 2009), C 8-max PD(v) and C 8-minCD(v) have been determined for odd v. In this paper, we introduce the enumeration of nonisomorphic $${(v,\frac{v}{2}+s)}$$ -graphs (s = 4, 6), give complete solution of the maximum packing and minimum covering designs of K v with 8-cycles for any even v with all possible leaves (excesses).

Building on the varieties of capitalism thesis of comparative advantages in technological innovation, the authors theorize the effect of sociopolitical coordination from a dynamic perspective and then apply the dynamic theories to the political economy of employment, in comparison to the existing employment literature situated in a constant-technology context. Based on cross-sectional survey as well as pooled time-series aggregate data, the authors argue that new technologies not only increase productivity through process innovation but also generate rents through product innovation. By preventing opportunistic behavior between firms, sociopolitical coordination intensifies reciprocal sharing of innovation, which increases productivity returns but dilutes rents, leading to comparative advantage in process over product innovation. Because process innovation is labor saving but product innovation is employment friendly, interfirm coordination further leads to comparative disadvantage in job creation from innovation. In other words, the Anglo-Saxon employment creation advantage, currently identified on the static basis of noninnovative low-skill industries, is reinforced by a similar advantage from the dynamic perspective, based on strength in job-friendly innovation.

In this paper, we completely settle the maximum packing and minimum covering problem of K v with octagons for v odd, give the maximum G-packing (minimum G-covering) for all possible leaves(repeats).

This article examines the sociopolitical conditions for preventing market failure in public goods investment. Based on International Social Survey Program data for 17 advanced industrialized countries, the author compares economies with strong and weak institutions of interfirm coordination in how they encourage investment in skills and technological innovation and highlight the inefficiency of alternative investment strategies that bypass cooperation. With weak coordination, firms underinvest in skills and the labor market relies on academic education as an alternative, resulting in underutilization of human capital. Innovation intensifies skill demands and can reduce overeducation. However, without cooperation, firms also underinvest in research and development, and the economy relies on innovation from outside the firm, which reduces its effectiveness in alleviating overeducation. In countries with weak interfirm coordination, the economy suffers simultaneously from deficient skills, underused academic qualifications, and technological innovations with limited human capital benefits for the labor force.