Influence of gut microbiota and intestinal barrier on enterogenic infection after liver transplantation.

Liver transplantation is currently a standard therapy for patients with end-stage liver diseases and hepatocellular carcinoma. Given that liver transplantation has undergone a thriving development in these decades, the survival rates after liver transplantation have markedly improved as a result of the critical advancement in surgical techniques, immunosuppressive therapies, and post-operative care. However, infection remains a fatal complication after liver transplantation surgery.

Alumina-Supported CoFe Alloy Catalysts Derived from Layered-Double-Hydroxide Nanosheets for Efficient Photothermal CO Hydrogenation to Hydrocarbons.

A series of novel CoFe-based catalysts are successfully fabricated by hydrogen reduction of CoFeAl layered-double-hydroxide (LDH) nanosheets at 300-700 °C. The chemical composition and morphology of the reaction products (denoted herein as CoFe-x) are highly dependent on the reduction temperature (x). CO hydrogenation experiments are conducted on the CoFe-x catalysts under UV-vis excitation.

Infrared target detection method based on the receptive field and lateral inhibition of human visual system.

In this paper, an infrared target adaptive detection method based on the receptive field and lateral inhibition (LI) of the human visual system is proposed. In the proposed method, the direction parameters of a Gabor filter are adaptively determined according to the gradient direction, so that edges in the image can be detected without manual intervention. Meanwhile, background prediction based on LI is used for regulating the gray value in the image to achieve background suppression and target enhancement.

Metabolic Epoxidation Is a Critical Step for the Development of Benzbromarone-Induced Hepatotoxicity.

Benzbromarone (BBR) is effective in the treatment of gout; however, clinical findings have shown it can also cause fatal hepatic failure. Our early studies demonstrated that CYP3A catalyzed the biotransformation of BBR to epoxide intermediate(s) that reacted with sulfur nucleophiles of protein to form protein covalent binding both in vitro and in vivo. The present study attempted to define the correlation between metabolic epoxidation and hepatotoxicity of BBR by manipulating the structure of BBR.

Layered-Double-Hydroxide Nanosheets as Efficient Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalysts for Dinitrogen Fixation.

Semiconductor photocatalysis attracts widespread interest in water splitting, CO reduction, and N fixation. N reduction to NH is essential to the chemical industry and to the Earth's nitrogen cycle. Industrially, NH is synthesized by the Haber-Bosch process under extreme conditions (400-500 °C, 200-250 bar), stimulating research into the development of sustainable technologies for NH production.

Modified Tetrathiafulvalene as an Organic Conductor for Improving Performances of Li-O Batteries.

Large over-potentials owing to the sluggish kinetics of battery reactions have always been the drawbacks of Li-O batteries, which lead to short cycle life. Although redox mediators have been intensively investigated to overcome this issue, side-reactions are generally induced by the solvated nature of redox mediators. Herein, we report an alternative method to achieve more efficient utilization of tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) in Li-O batteries.

Self-Assembled Au/CdSe Nanocrystal Clusters for Plasmon-Mediated Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution.

Plasmon-mediated photocatalytic systems generally suffer from poor efficiency due to weak absorption overlap and thus limited energy transfer between the plasmonic metal and the semiconductor. Herein, a near-ideal plasmon-mediated photocatalyst system is developed. Au/CdSe nanocrystal clusters (NCs) are successfully fabricated through a facile emulsion-based self-assembly approach, containing Au nanoparticles (NPs) of size 2.

The Modeling and Simulation of the Galvanic Coupling Intra-Body Communication via Handshake Channel.

Intra-body communication (IBC) is a technology using the conductive properties of the body to transmit signal, and information interaction by handshake is regarded as one of the important applications of IBC. In this paper, a method for modeling the galvanic coupling intra-body communication via handshake channel is proposed, while the corresponding parameters are discussed. Meanwhile, the mathematical model of this kind of IBC is developed.

Nickel-Cobalt Diselenide 3D Mesoporous Nanosheet Networks Supported on Ni Foam: An All-pH Highly Efficient Integrated Electrocatalyst for Hydrogen Evolution.

Novel 3D Ni Co Se mesoporous nanosheet networks with tunable stoichiometry are successfully synthesized on Ni foam (Ni Co Se MNSN/NF with x ranging from 0 to 0.35). The collective effects of special morphological design and electronic structure engineering enable the integrated electrocatalyst to have very high activity for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and excellent stability in a wide pH range.

Alkali-Assisted Synthesis of Nitrogen Deficient Graphitic Carbon Nitride with Tunable Band Structures for Efficient Visible-Light-Driven Hydrogen Evolution.

A facile synthetic strategy for nitrogen-deficient graphitic carbon nitride (g-C N ) is established, involving a simple alkali-assisted thermal polymerization of urea, melamine, or thiourea. In situ introduced nitrogen vacancies significantly redshift the absorption edge of g-C N , with the defect concentration depending on the alkali to nitrogen precursor ratio. The g-C N products show superior visible-light photocatalytic performance compared to pristine g-C N .

A Sustainable Strategy for the Synthesis of Pyrochlore H Nb O Hollow Microspheres as Photocatalysts for Overall Water Splitting.

A facile and green process was developed for the synthesis of pyrochlore H Nb O hollow microspheres by using hydrothermal treatment of Sn Nb O hollow microspheres in aqueous 2 m HCl at 100-180 °C. The facile transformation of Sn Nb O into H Nb O is facilitated by the intrinsic ion-exchange capability of Sn Nb O . The resulting H Nb O hollow microspheres (diameter 1-2 μm, shell thickness 100-200 nm) displayed excellent photocatalytic performance for overall water splitting under UV irradiation, affording H and O evolution rates of 240 and 116 μmol h  g , respectively.

Recent Advances in the Synthesis, Characterization and Application of Zn-containing Heterogeneous Catalysts.

Monovalent Zn (3d4s) systems possess a special electronic structure that can be exploited in heterogeneous catalysis and photocatalysis, though it remains challenge to synthesize Zn-containing materials. By careful design, Zn-related species can be synthesized in zeolite and layered double hydroxide systems, which in turn exhibit excellent catalytic potential in methane, CO and CO activation. Furthermore, by utilizing advanced characterization tools, including electron spin resonance, X-ray absorption fine structure and density functional theory calculations, the formation mechanism of the Zn species and their structure-performance relationships can be understood.

[Fingerprint Properties of Semi Synthetic Penicillin Pharmaceutical Wastewater].

High-concentration antibiotics are detected in surface water from time to time. There has been an increasing demand for strengthening the supervision of the antibiotic pharmaceutical wastewater. Three-dimensional fluorescence technique is known as a rapid, simple and high-sensitivity method.

A Bifunctional Organic Redox Catalyst for Rechargeable Lithium-Oxygen Batteries with Enhanced Performances.

poly(2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyloxy-4-yl methacrylate) (PTMA) has been prepared and coated on carbon surface during electrode preparation. The PTMA has been applied as an efficient bifunctional catalyst for lithium-oxygen batteries with lower overpotentials, enhanced rate performances, and prolonged cycle life.

The Simulation of the Recharging Method Based on Solar Radiation for an Implantable Biosensor.

A method of recharging implantable biosensors based on solar radiation is proposed. Firstly, the models of the proposed method are developed. Secondly, the recharging processes based on solar radiation are simulated using Monte Carlo (MC) method and the energy distributions of sunlight within the different layers of human skin have been achieved and discussed.

Smart Utilization of Carbon Dots in Semiconductor Photocatalysis.

Efficient capture of solar energy will be critical to meeting the energy needs of the future. Semiconductor photocatalysis is expected to make an important contribution in this regard, delivering both energy carriers (especially H ) and valuable chemical feedstocks under direct sunlight. Over the past few years, carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as a promising new class of metal-free photocatalyst, displaying semiconductor-like photoelectric properties and showing excellent performance in a wide variety of photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic applications owing to their ease of synthesis, unique structure, adjustable composition, ease of surface functionalization, outstanding electron-transfer efficiency and tunable light-harvesting range (from deep UV to the near-infrared).

A polymorphism at the microRNA binding site in the 3'-untranslated region of is associated with the risk of gastric cancer development.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) bind to the 3'-untranslated regions (3'-UTRs) of mRNAs, affecting translation and regulating cell differentiation, tumorigenesis and apoptosis. Genetic polymorphisms in these regions in target genes are able to affect the binding affinity between miRNA and target genes, ultimately affecting the expression of individual miRNAs. In the present case-control study, genotyping of 5 microRNA single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located at the binding site of the 3'-UTR of (rs1044129), (rs4901706), (rs1053667), (rs11337) and (rs3660) genes was assessed in order to investigate its role in gastric cancer (GC).

Carbon Nanosheets: Nitrogen-Doped Porous Carbon Nanosheets Templated from g-C3 N4 as Metal-Free Electrocatalysts for Efficient Oxygen Reduction Reaction (Adv. Mater. 25/2016).

T. Zhang and co-workers report the synthesis of nitrogen-doped porous carbon nanosheets with extremely high nitrogen content and high surface areas using graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3 N4 ) as template, nitrogen source, and porogen. As described on page 5080, the nanosheets exhibit outstanding oxygen reduction catalytic activities which are comparable to commercial Pt/C catalysts in alkaline media.

Prognostic significance of Dicer expression in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Dicer is a RNaseIII endonuclease of the microRNA processing pathway, which is implicated in carcinogenesis of various types of human cancer. The present study assessed the expression level of Dicer in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissue to evaluate its association with HCC tumorigenesis. A low expression of Dicer was significantly associated with a shorter postoperative survival time of patients with HCC, which was assessed using the log-rank test with Kaplan-Meier survival analysis.

Facile synthesis of ultrathin SnNb2O6 nanosheets towards improved visible-light photocatalytic H2-production activity.

Ultrathin SnNb2O6 nanosheets with a thickness of ∼3 nm were synthesized via a facile hydrothermal route using ultrathin K4Nb6O17 nanosheets as the precursor. This ultrathin nanosheets with a large specific surface area of 71.1 m(2) g(-1) showed improved visible-light photocatalytic H2-production activity in lactic acid aqueous solution, which is about 4 and 14 times higher than that of 50 nm-thick SnNb2O6 nanosheets and bulk SnNb2O6 powders, respectively.

Identification of sequence polymorphisms in the D-Loop region of mitochondrial DNA as a risk factor for colon cancer.

The accumulation of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the displacement loop (D-Loop) of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been identified for their association with cancer risk in a number of cancers. We investigated the colon cancer risk profile of D-Loop SNPs in a case-control study. The frequent alleles of nucleotides 73G/A, 146T/C, 195T/C, 324C/G, 16261C/T, and 16304T/C as well as the minor allele of 309C/C insert were significantly associated with an increased risk for colon cancer.

Ultrafine NiO Nanosheets Stabilized by TiO2 from Monolayer NiTi-LDH Precursors: An Active Water Oxidation Electrocatalyst.

Faceted NiO nanoparticles preferentially exposing high surface energy planes demand attention due to their excellent electrocatalytic properties. However, the activity of faceted NiO nanoparticles generally remains suboptimal due to their large lateral size and thickness, which severely limits the availability of coordinatively unsaturated active reactive edge and corner sites. Here, ultrafine NiO nanosheets with a platelet size of ∼4.

Nitrogen-Doped Porous Carbon Nanosheets Templated from g-C3 N4 as Metal-Free Electrocatalysts for Efficient Oxygen Reduction Reaction.

Nitrogen-doped porous carbon nanosheets (N-CNS) are synthesized by hydrothermal carbon coating of g-C3 N4 nanosheets followed by high-temperature treatment in N2 . g-C3 N4 serves as a template, nitrogen source, and porogen in the synthesis. This approach yields N-CNS with a high nitrogen content and comparable oxygen reduction reaction catalytic activities to commercial Pt/C catalysts in alkaline media.

A retrospective study on intensity-modulated radiation therapy combined with chemotherapy after D2 radical surgery for gastric carcinoma.

In order to investigate the clinical value of different chemotherapies, the efficacy of intensity-modulated radiation therapy with concurrent chemotherapy following D2 radical surgery for gastric carcinoma was evaluated in this study. A total of 102 patients who underwent D2 radical surgery for gastric carcinoma followed by concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CRT) between January, 2008 and March, 2012, were selected. The 5/7 field intensity-modulated radiation therapy was used, with a planning target volume dose of 45 Gy in 25 fractions over 5 weeks.