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Interactions between the microbiota and their colonized environments mediate critical pathways from biogeochemical cycles to homeostasis in human health. Here we report a soil-inspired chemical system that consists of nanostructured minerals, starch granules and liquid metals. Fabricated via a bottom-up synthesis, the soil-inspired chemical system can enable chemical redistribution and modulation of microbial communities. We characterize the composite, confirming its structural similarity to the soil, with three-dimensional X-ray fluorescence and ptychographic tomography and electron microscopy imaging. We also demonstrate that post-synthetic modifications formed by laser irradiation led to chemical heterogeneities from the atomic to the macroscopic level. The soil-inspired material possesses chemical, optical and mechanical responsiveness to yield write-erase functions in electrical performance. The composite can also enhance microbial culture/biofilm growth and biofuel production in vitro. Finally, we show that the soil-inspired system enriches gut bacteria diversity, rectifies tetracycline-induced gut microbiome dysbiosis and ameliorates dextran sulfate sodium-induced rodent colitis symptoms within in vivo rodent models.

Objective. A retrospective cohort study was conducted to explore the effects of comprehensive nursing based on Orem’s self-care theory on symptom improvement and pregnancy outcomes in patients with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). Methods. Sixty patients with antiphospholipid antibody syndrome treated in our hospital from February 2019 to April 2021 were enrolled. The control group received comprehensive nursing, while the study group received comprehensive nursing based on Orem’s self-care theory. Nursing satisfaction, self-nursing ability, anxiety score, social support status, pregnancy outcome, and the score of life quality were compared between the two groups. Results. First of all, we compared the nursing satisfaction, the study group was very satisfied in 23 cases, satisfactory in 5 cases, general in 2 cases, the satisfaction rate was 100.00%. While in the control group, 11 cases were very satisfied, 10 cases were satisfied, 4 cases were general, and 5 cases were dissatisfied, the satisfaction rate was 83.33%. The nursing satisfaction in the study group was higher compared to the control group ( P < 0.05 ). Secondly, the self-concept, sense of self-care responsibility, self-nursing skills, health knowledge, and total score of the study group were higher compared to the control group ( P < 0.05 ). After intervention, the anxiety scores of the two groups decreased. Compared between the two groups, the anxiety scores of the study group before intervention and 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, and 4 weeks after intervention were lower compared to the control group ( P < 0.05 ). The comparison of social support showed that the scores of objective support, subjective support, utilization of support, and total score of social support in the study group were higher compared to the control group ( P < 0.05 ). The number of abortions in the control group was lower compared to the control group, and the number of full-term deliveries was higher compared to the control group ( P < 0.05 ). Finally, we compared the scores of life quality. After nursing, the scores of life quality of the two groups increased. Of note, the scores of physiological function, psychological function, social function, and health self-cognition in the study group were lower compared to the control group ( P < 0.05 ). Conclusion. Comprehensive nursing for patients with APS based on Orem’s self-care theory can effectively improve clinical symptoms and pregnancy outcome and play a positive role in facilitating patients’ nursing satisfaction and self-nursing ability, which can also effectively strengthen mental health and social support, this nursing model is worth popularizing in clinic.

Bioelectrical interfaces that bridge biotic and abiotic systems have heightened the ability to monitor, understand, and manipulate biological systems and are catalyzing profound progress in neuroscience research, treatments for heart failure, and microbial energy systems. With advances in nanotechnology, bifunctional and high-density devices with tailored structural designs are being developed to enable multiplexed recording or stimulation across multiple spatial and temporal scales with resolution down to millisecond-nanometer interfaces, enabling efficient and effective communication with intracellular electrical activities in a relatively noninvasive and biocompatible manner. This review provides an overview of how biological systems guide the design, engineering, and implementation of bioelectrical interfaces for biomedical applications. We investigate recent advances in bioelectrical interfaces for applications in nervous, cardiac, and microbial systems, and we also discuss the outlook of state-of-the-art biology-guided bioelectrical interfaces with high biocompatibility, extended long-term stability, and integrated system functionality for potential clinical usage.

Philippine archipelago (PA) has strong background seismicity, but there is no systematic study of earthquake triggering in this region. There are six earthquakes (Mw > 6) occurred between 2018/12/29 and 2019/09/29 in PA, which provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the triggering relationship among these events. We calculate the static Coulomb stress changes of the first five events, and find that the local seismicity after the 2018/12/29 Mw 7.0 earthquake is mostly associated with positive Coulomb stress changes, including the 2019/05/31 Mw 6.1 event, suggesting a possible triggering relationship. However, we cannot rule out the dynamic triggering mechanism, due to increased microseismicity in both positive and negative stress change regions, and an incomplete local catalog, especially right after the first Mw 7.0 mainshock. The dynamic stresses from these Mw > 6 events are large enough (from 5 kPa to 3 532 kPa) to trigger subsequent events, but a lack of seismicity and waveform evidence does not support delayed dynamic triggering among these events, even the shortest time interval is less than 24 hours. In the past 45 years, the released seismic energy shows certain peaks every 5–10 years. However, earthquakes with Mw > 6.0 were relatively infrequent between 2004 and 2018 at PA. Hence, it is possible that several regions are relatively late in their earthquake cycles, which would enhance their susceptibility of being triggered by earthquakes at nearby and regional distances.

With the development of unconventional shale gas in the southern Sichuan Basin, seismicity in the region has increased significantly in recent years. Though the existing sparse regional seismic stations can capture most earthquakes with \begin{document}$ {M}_{\mathrm{L}}\ge 2.5 $\end{document} , a great number of smaller earthquakes are often omitted due to limited detection capacity. With the advent of portable seismic nodes, many dense arrays for monitoring seismicity in the unconventional oil and gas fields have been deployed, and the magnitudes of those earthquakes are key to understand the local fault reactivation and seismic potentials. However, the current national standard for determining the local magnitudes was not specifically designed for monitoring stations in close proximity, utilizing a calibration function with a minimal resolution of 5 km in the epicentral distance. That is, the current national standard tends to overestimate the local magnitudes for stations within short epicentral distances, and can result in discrepancies for dense arrays. In this study, we propose a new local magnitude formula which corrects the overestimated magnitudes for shorter distances, yielding accurate event magnitudes for small earthquakes in the Changning−Zhaotong shale gas field in the southern Sichuan Basin, monitored by dense seismic arrays in close proximity. The formula is used to determine the local magnitudes of 7,500 events monitored by a two-phased dense array with several hundred 5 Hz 3C nodes deployed from the end of February 2019 to early May 2019 in the Changning−Zhaotong shale gas field. The magnitude of completeness ( \begin{document}$ {M}_{\mathrm{C}} $\end{document} ) using the dense array is −0.1, compared to \begin{document}$ {M}_{\mathrm{C}} $\end{document} 1.1 by the sparser Chinese Seismic Network (CSN). In addition, using a machine learning detection and picking procedure, we successfully identify and process some 14,000 earthquakes from the continuous waveforms, a ten-fold increase over the catalog recorded by CSN for the same period, and the \begin{document}$ {M}_{\mathrm{C}} $\end{document} is further reduced to −0.3 from −0.1 compared to the catalog obtained via manual processing using the same dense array. The proposed local magnitude formula can be adopted for calculating accurate local magnitudes of future earthquakes using dense arrays in the shale gas fields of the Sichuan Basin. This will help to better characterize the local seismic risks and potentials.

Real-world bioelectronics applications, including drug delivery systems, biosensing, and electrical modulation of tissues and organs, largely require biointerfaces at the macroscopic level. However, traditional macroscale bioelectronic electrodes usually exhibit invasive or power-inefficient architectures, inability to form uniform and subcellular interfaces, or faradaic reactions at electrode surfaces. Here, we develop a micelle-enabled self-assembly approach for a binder-free and carbon-based monolithic device, aimed at large-scale bioelectronic interfaces. The device incorporates a multiscale porous material architecture, an interdigitated microelectrode layout, and a supercapacitor-like performance. In cell training processes, we use the device to modulate the contraction rate of primary cardiomyocytes at the subcellular level to target frequency in vitro. We also achieve capacitive control of the electrophysiology in isolated hearts, retinal tissues, and sciatic nerves, as well as bioelectronic cardiac sensing. Our results support the exploration of device platforms already used in energy research to identify new opportunities in bioelectronics.

Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) capped with metal nanoparticles (NPs) show multifunctional and synergistic properties, which are important for applications in the fields of catalysis, photonics, and electronics. Conventional colloidal syntheses of this class of hybrid structures require complex sequential seeded growth, where each section requires its own set of growth conditions, and methods for preparing such wires are not universal. Here, we report a new and general method for synthesizing metal-semiconductor nanohybrids based on particle catalysts, prepared by scanning probe block copolymer lithography, and chemical vapor deposition. In this process, metallic heterodimer NPs were used as catalysts for NW growth to form semiconductor NWs capped with metallic particles (Au, Ag, Co, Ni). Interestingly, the growth processes for NWs on NPs are regioselective and controlled by the chemical composition of the metallic heterodimer used. Using a systematic experimental approach, paired with density functional theory calculations, we were able to postulate three different growth modes, one without precedent.

The synthetic tunability of semiconductor nanowires has enabled researchers to apply these materials in a variety of applications from energy harvesting to biological stimulation. One of the most intensely researched areas is the synthesis of branched nanowires, or nano-tree structures, owing to their high surface area. In this paper, we present a synthetic protocol that enables the growth of ultra-thin nanowire branches on a primary nanowire. Specifically, the method yields tightly distributed branches, whose locality is unique to our method. We furthermore induce the transformation of these branches into spheroidal superstructures. We explain how an Ostwald ripening-like mechanism can account for such a transformation. We suggest how our method can expand the synthetic toolset of branched nanowires, thus enabling the development of applications.

Summary Living tissues are an integrated, multiscale architecture consisting of dense cellular ensembles and extracellular matrices (ECMs). The cells and ECMs cooperate to enable specialized mechanical properties and dynamic responsiveness. However, the mechanical properties of living tissues are difficult to replicate. A particular challenge is identification of a cell-like synthetic component, which is tightly integrated with its matrix and also responsive to external stimuli. Here, we demonstrate that cellular-scale hydrated starch granules, an underexplored component in materials science, can turn conventional hydrogels into tissue-like materials when composites are formed. By using several synchrotron-based X-ray techniques, we reveal the mechanically induced organization and training dynamics of the starch granules in the hydrogel matrix. These dynamic behaviors enable multiple tissue-like properties such as programmability, anisotropy, strain-stiffening, mechanochemistry, and self-healability.

A hopper has very wide and vital applications in handing the granular materials in daily life and industrial production, and the full understanding of the granular flow inside a hopper is of great importance to control and optimize the discharge process. By employing experimental and numerical methods, the influence of particle packed pattern on the transient granular flow is investigated in terms of the particle-scale kinetics and structure. For the mono-sized particles packed pattern, despite the similar particle-scale structure, smaller particles achieve greater kinetic energy conversion efficiency, which helps shorten the discharge time. For the binary-sized particles uniform mixing pattern, the interaction between particles increases the individual kinetic energy and transient average coordination number (CN) of large particles, while decreases that of small ones. Then the in-between kinetic energy and the disperse structure are reached. For the layer by layer mixing pattern, the strong percolation effect caused by the upper small particles hinders the increase of the individual kinetic energy at the beginning of the discharge process, and the transient average CN at the layer interface abruptly reaches 8. By contrast, when the small particles are placed at the bottom, more particles are active in the larger space, and subsequently, a looser structure is achieved in a shorter period.

Objective: This scoping review aims to identify and map the outcomes reported from evaluations that measure the effectiveness and acceptability of palliative care programs and interventions in residential aged care facilities. Introduction: As the population ages, there is increasing attention on implementing new interventions and programs to improve palliative care in residential aged care facilities. However, there is no standard evaluation for intervention implementation. Mapping the outcome measures used in evaluations of diverse palliative care interventions in residential aged care facilities has not been explored recently. Inclusion criteria: This review will consider studies involving older adults (aged 50 and above) in any country living and receiving care in residential aged care facilities. This review will exclude literature that focused on other age groups and people receiving palliative care in other care settings, such as hospitals, palliative care inpatient units, sheltered housing, cancer centers, own homes, and hospices. Methods: This scoping review will follow the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. This scoping review will identify both published and unpublished (eg, gray literature) primary studies, as well as reviews. The databases to be searched for published studies will include MEDLINE, Emcare, ProQuest, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library. The search will be limited to evidence published in English from 2008 to the present. Visual, tabular, and accompanying narrative summaries will be used to present the results. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The 2008 MW7.9 Wenchuan and the 2013 MW6.6 Lushan earthquakes, which both occurred on the Longmen Shan thrust belt, show some interesting similarities and differences. Whereas the Wenchuan earthquake entailed a rupture zone that extended about 300 km northeastward, with fault slip extending to the surface, the Lushan earthquake was the result of a buried and much more compact zone of rupture. The high-frequency ground motions, however, for these two earthquakes, as measured by the peak ground acceleration, were evidently influenced by neither the extent of rupture nor the presence or absence of surface rupture. The source parameters for these two earthquakes tend to confirm the idea that high-frequency ground motion is controlled by stress changes in the rupture zone that give rise to the radiated ground acceleration. The apparent stresses for the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquakes are about 0.5 and 0.75 MPa, respectively, and the stress drops, in the same order, are about 2.5 and 3.5 MPa. The ratios of average stress drop to apparent stress are in the range 4.5–5 for both events, consistent with expectations based on the Brune (J Geophys Res 75(26):4997–5009, 1970) source model.

Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs). The key functions of DCs include engulfing, processing and presenting antigens to T cells and regulating the activation of T cells. There are two major DC subtypes in human blood: plasmacytoid DCs (pDCs) and conventional DCs. To define the differences between the adult and infant immune systems, especially in terms of DC constitution, we enriched DCs from human cord blood and generated single-cell RNA sequencing data from about 7000 cells using the 10x Genomics Single Cell 3′ Solution. After incorporating the differential expression analysis method in our clustering process, we identified all the known dendritic cell subsets. Interestingly, we also found a group of DCs with gene expression that was a mix of megakaryocytes and pDCs. Further, we verified the expression of selected genes at both the RNA level by PCR and the protein level by flow cytometry. This study further demonstrates the power of single-cell RNA sequencing in dendritic cell research.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) plays diverse biological roles, and its effects in part depend on its spatiotemporal presence, in both intra- and extracellular contexts. A full understanding of the physiological effects of H2O2 in both healthy and disease states is hampered by a lack of tools to controllably produce H2O2. Here, we address this issue by showing visible-light-induced production of exogenous H2O2 by free-standing, gold-decorated silicon nanowires internalized in human umbilical vein endothelial cells. We further show that the photocatalytic production of H2O2 is a general phenomenon of gold-silicon hybrid materials and is enhanced upon annealing.

Time sequence based speech emotion recognition methods are difficult to distinguish between emotional and non-emotional frames of speech, and cannot calculate the amount of emotional information carried by emotional frames. In this paper, we propose a speech emotion recognition method using Local Attention Mechanism (LAM) and Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) to deal with these issues. First, we extract the Variational Gammatone Cepstral Coefficients (VGFCC) emotional feature from the speech as the input of LAM-CTC shared encoder. Second, CTC layer performs automatic hard alignment, which allows the network to have the largest activation value at the emotional key frame of the voice. LAM layer learns different degrees on the emotional auxiliary frame. Finally, BP neural network is used to integrate the decoding outputs of CTC layer and LAM layer to obtain emotion prediction results. Evaluation on IEMOCAP shows that the proposed model outperformed the state-of-the-art methods with a UAR of 68.5% and an WAR of 68.1% respectively.

Laser-assisted synthesis yields silicon carbide–elastomer composite for bioelectric modulation of cells and tissues., Conducting or semiconducting materials embedded in insulating polymeric substrates can be useful in biointerface applications; however, attainment of this composite configuration by direct chemical processes is challenging. Laser-assisted synthesis has evolved as a fast and inexpensive technique to prepare various materials, but its utility in the construction of biophysical tools or biomedical devices is less explored. Here, we use laser writing to convert portions of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) into nitrogen-doped cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC). The dense 3C-SiC surface layer is connected to the PDMS matrix via a spongy graphite layer, facilitating electrochemical and photoelectrochemical activity. We demonstrate the fabrication of arbitrary two-dimensional (2D) SiC-based patterns in PDMS and freestanding 3D constructs. To establish the functionality of the laser-produced composite, we apply it as flexible electrodes for pacing isolated hearts and as photoelectrodes for local peroxide delivery to smooth muscle sheets.

Research in bioelectronics is highly interdisciplinary, with many new developments being based on techniques from across the physical and life sciences. Advances in our understanding of the fundamental chemistry underlying the materials used in bioelectronic applications have been a crucial component of many recent discoveries. In this review, we highlight ways in which a chemistry-oriented perspective may facilitate novel and deep insights into both the fundamental scientific understanding and the design of materials, which can in turn tune the functionality and biocompatibility of bioelectronic devices. We provide an in-depth examination of several developments in the field, organized by the chemical properties of the materials. We conclude by surveying how some of the latest major topics of chemical research may be further integrated with bioelectronics.

Optically actuated silicon structures reveal rapid calcium signal propagation in biofilms., Bacterial response to transient physical stress is critical to their homeostasis and survival in the dynamic natural environment. Because of the lack of biophysical tools capable of delivering precise and localized physical perturbations to a bacterial community, the underlying mechanism of microbial signal transduction has remained unexplored. Here, we developed multiscale and structured silicon (Si) materials as nongenetic optical transducers capable of modulating the activities of both single bacterial cells and biofilms at high spatiotemporal resolution. Upon optical stimulation, we capture a previously unidentified form of rapid, photothermal gradient–dependent, intercellular calcium signaling within the biofilm. We also found an unexpected coupling between calcium dynamics and biofilm mechanics, which could be of importance for biofilm resistance. Our results suggest that functional integration of Si materials and bacteria, and associated control of signal transduction, may lead to hybrid living matter toward future synthetic biology and adaptable materials.

Novel kinds of environmentally benign and stable absorbents, quaternary ammonium inner salts betaine (Bet) and l-carnitine (l-car) in aqueous solution, were designed and applied to efficiently and reversibly capture sulfur dioxide (SO2) in flue gas. The effects of the inner salt concentration, absorption temperature, SO2 concentration, and reuse cycle on the absorption of SO2 by the two absorbents were investigated. The results show that SO2 absorption capacities of the absorbents with 50% inner salt mass fraction were 0.155 mol of SO2/mol of Bet for Bet aqueous solutions and 0.599 mol of SO2/mol of l-car for l-car aqueous solutions, at 40 °C with a SO2 concentration of 2%, and the absorption capacities of absorbents did not change after 5 absorption/desorption cycles. Furthermore, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and proton nuclear magnetic resonance results demonstrate that the SO2 absorption follows the law that a strong acid (H2SO3) replaces a weak acid (−COOH). The absorbents could be used for...

Optically controlled nongenetic neuromodulation represents a promising approach for the fundamental study of neural circuits and the clinical treatment of neurological disorders. Among the existing material candidates that can transduce light energy into biologically relevant cues, silicon (Si) is particularly advantageous due to its highly tunable electrical and optical properties, ease of fabrication into multiple forms, ability to absorb a broad spectrum of light, and biocompatibility. This protocol describes a rational design principle for Si-based structures, general procedures for material synthesis and device fabrication, a universal method for evaluating material photoresponses, detailed illustrations of all instrumentation used, and demonstrations of optically controlled nongenetic modulation of cellular calcium dynamics, neuronal excitability, neurotransmitter release from mouse brain slices, and brain activity in the mouse brain in vivo using the aforementioned Si materials. The entire procedure takes ~4–8 d in the hands of an experienced graduate student, depending on the specific biological targets. We anticipate that our approach can also be adapted in the future to study other systems, such as cardiovascular tissues and microbial communities. This protocol describes how to fabricate and apply silicon-based structures for optically controlled neuromodulation. The structures can be used for nongenetic neuronal excitation in cultured neurons, brain slices, and in vivo applications.

The energy radiated as seismic waves strongly depends on the fault rupture process associated with rupture speed and dynamic frictional mechanisms involved in the fault slip motion. Following McGarr and Fletcher approach, we derived a physics-based relationship of the weighted average fault slip velocity vs apparent stress, rupture speed and static stress drop based on a dynamic circular fault model. The resultant function can be approximately used to bound near-fault ground motion and seismic energy associated with near-fault coseismic deformation. Fault frictional overshoot and undershoot mechanisms governed by a simple slip-weakening constitutive relation are included in our consideration by using dynamic rupture models named as M- and D-models and proposed by Madariaga (1976) and Boatwright. We applied the above function to the 2008 great Wenchuan earthquake and the 1999 Jiji (Chi-Chi) earthquake to infer the near-fault ground motion called slip weighted average particle velocity and obtained that such model-dependent prediction of weighted average ground velocities is consistent to the results derived from the near-fault strong motion observations. Moreover, we compared our results with the results by McGarr and Fletcher approach, and we found that the values of the weighted average particle velocities we obtained for these two earthquakes are generally smaller and closer to the values by direct integration of strong motion recordings of the near-fault particle velocity waveform data. In other words, if this result comes to be true, it would be a straightforward way used to constrain the near-fault ground motion or to estimate source parameters such as rupture speed, static and dynamic stress drops.

The dynamic and reversed expression of GATA1 and GATA2 are essential for proper erythroid differentiation. Our previous work demonstrates that LSD1, a histone H3K4 demethylase, represses GATA2 expression at late stage of erythroid differentiation. K562 and MEL cells were used and cultured in Roswell Park Memorial Institute-1640 medium (RPMI) and Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM), respectively. Western blot assay was used to examine the GATA1, GATA2, TAL1, HDAC1, HDAC2, CoREST and β-actin protein. The immunoprecipitation assay and GST pull-down assay were employed to detect the precipitated protein complexes and investigate the interaction between the proteins. The small interfering RNA (siRNA) and nonspecific control siRNA were synthesized to silence the target genes. Double fluorescence immunostaining was used to observe the association of LSD1 with GATA2 in K562 cells. The results indicated that knockdown of LSD1 in K562 cell causes increased H3K4 di-methylation at GATA1 locus and activates GATA1 expression, demonstrating that LSD1 represses GATA1 expression through LSD1-mediated histone demethylation. Upon induced erythroid differentiation of K562 cells, the interaction between GATA2 and LSD1 is decreased, consistent with a de-repression of GATA1 expression. Meanwhile, the interaction between TAL1 and LSD1 is increased, which forms a complex that efficiently suppresses GATA2 expression. In conclusion, these observations reveal an elegant mechanism to modulate GATA1 and GATA2 expression during erythroid differentiation. While LSD1 mainly forms complex with GATA2 to repress GATA1 expression in hematopoietic progenitor cells, it mostly forms complex with TAL1 to repress GATA2 expression in differentiated cells.

On the base of analysis of probability of failure under uncertainty of susceptibility measurement in the reverberation chamber, we derive the relationship between the sample number of stirrer positions and the number of the mean value of electric field of different injected power levels during the measurement, the duration of measurement will reduce to a certain extent by select appropriate parameters. Combined on the two different approach( substitution approach and removing approach) to represent the real field strength suffered on the devices putting in the reverberation chamber based on the statistic characteristics of reverberation chamber, We propose a fast approach to perform susceptibility measurement in a stepped-mode reverberation chamber. Such an approach can be apply for a much wider range of susceptibility measurement compared with other testing environment and other approach in reverberation chamber.