Search

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.

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.

Citrus maxima peel (CMP) was utilized for the green synthesis of multifunctional silver-biochar material (Ag-CMPB). An alternative, cost-effective and eco-friendly technique was performed using the CMP extract as a reducing agent for the biosynthesis of Ag-CMPB material, in which biochar is prepared from CMP residue. Ag-CMPB nanomaterials were characterized by various physico-chemical methods such as XRD, HRTEM, BET, FT-IR, EDX, and PZC. The results revealed the formation of the face-centered cubic structure of Ag with the particle size in a range of 3 − 10 nm and the stacking structure of layers of biochar. Flavonoids and phenolic acids in CMP extract as a reducing agent of Ag-CMPB material. The specific surface area of Ag-CMPB was determined to be 79.2 m2/g with a pore diameter of 22.4 Å. Ag-CMPB showed high efficiency in the short time in removing organic compounds. The adsorption efficiency was recognized in the following sequence for POPs adsorption: Methyl blue > Rhodamine B > Methyl orange, with the adsorption capacities of 95.5, 69.3, and 51.5 mg/g, respectively. The antibacterial activity of Ag-CMPB was evaluated on five bacteria against B. cereus, E. coli, P. aeruginosa, S. aureus, and Salmonella by the zone of inhibition and MIC value.

Nylon 66, which is an important membrane class used in manufacturing of chitin and chitosan, have a number of features that can be improved by surface functionalizations into a novel composite structure with support of ultrasound and silica gel (SiG) catalyst in a doubled amidation reaction. Firstly, nylon 66/para-phenylenediamine thin film composite (NP-TFC) is prepared from commercial nylon 66 membrane in an ultrasound assisted hydrolysis-amidation reaction. Secondly, carboxylic functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT-COOH) are grafted on the NP fiber in an ultrasound assisted/SiG-catalyzed amidation reaction, where para-phenylenediamine (pPD) role is cross-linking. As an excellent result confirmed by either Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), Raman spectrometry or scanning electron microscopic (SEM), bundled MWCNTs bridges are easily built in SiG-catalyzed ethanol media to connect nylon 66 fibers at distances of 0.3–1 μm. The vacuum filtration test confirmed that as-prepared nylon 66/pPD/MWCNTs structure has superior Ca2+ rejection efficiency to that of original nylon 66.