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Nature Materials Jul 2024The voltage penalty driving water dissociation (WD) at high current density is a major obstacle in the commercialization of bipolar membrane (BPM) technology for energy...
The voltage penalty driving water dissociation (WD) at high current density is a major obstacle in the commercialization of bipolar membrane (BPM) technology for energy devices. Here we show that three materials descriptors, that is, electrical conductivity, microscopic surface area and (nominal) surface-hydroxyl coverage, effectively control the kinetics of WD in BPMs. Using these descriptors and optimizing mass loading, we design new earth-abundant WD catalysts based on nanoparticle SnO synthesized at low temperature with high conductivity and hydroxyl coverage. These catalysts exhibit exceptional performance in a BPM electrolyser with low WD overvoltage (η) of 100 ± 20 mV at 1.0 A cm. The new catalyst works equivalently well with hydrocarbon proton-exchange layers as it does with fluorocarbon-based Nafion, thus providing pathways to commercializing advanced BPMs for a broad array of electrolysis, fuel-cell and electrodialysis applications.
PubMed: 38951650
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-024-01943-8 -
Scientific Reports Jul 2024Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is an imaging technique used to visualize and analyze nano-sized structures and objects such as virus particles. Light microscopy...
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is an imaging technique used to visualize and analyze nano-sized structures and objects such as virus particles. Light microscopy can be used to diagnose diseases or characterize e.g. blood cells. Since samples under microscopes exhibit certain symmetries, such as global rotation invariance, equivariant neural networks are presumed to be useful. In this study, a baseline convolutional neural network is constructed in the form of the commonly used VGG16 classifier. Thereafter, it is modified to be equivariant to the p4 symmetry group of rotations of multiples of 90° using group convolutions. This yields a number of benefits on a TEM virus dataset, including higher top validation set accuracy by on average 7.6% and faster convergence during training by on average 23.1% of that of the baseline. Similarly, when training and testing on images of blood cells, the convergence time for the equivariant neural network is 7.9% of that of the baseline. From this it is concluded that augmentation strategies for rotation can be skipped. Furthermore, when modelling the accuracy versus amount of TEM virus training data with a power law, the equivariant network has a slope of - 0.43 compared to - 0.26 of the baseline. Thus the equivariant network learns faster than the baseline when more training data is added. This study extends previous research on equivariant neural networks applied to images which exhibit symmetries to isometric transformations.
Topics: Neural Networks, Computer; Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Algorithms; Rotation; Humans
PubMed: 38951630
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-65597-x -
Light, Science & Applications Jul 2024We present a novel time-of-flight resolved Bessel light bullet-enabled stimulated Raman scattering (B-SRS) microscopy for deeper tissue 3D chemical imaging with high...
We present a novel time-of-flight resolved Bessel light bullet-enabled stimulated Raman scattering (B-SRS) microscopy for deeper tissue 3D chemical imaging with high resolution without a need for mechanical z-scanning. To accomplish the tasks, we conceive a unique method to enable optical sectioning by generating the counter-propagating pump and Stokes Bessel light bullets in the sample, in which the group velocities of the Bessel light bullets are made ultraslow (e.g., v ≈ 0.1c) and tunable by introducing programmable angular dispersions with a spatial light modulator. We theoretically analyze the working principle of the collinear multicolor Bessel light bullet generations and velocity controls with the relative time-of-flight resolved detection for SRS 3D deep tissue imaging. We have also built the B-SRS imaging system and present the first demonstration of B-SRS microscopy with Bessel light bullets for 3D chemical imaging in a variety of samples (e.g., polymer bead phantoms, biological samples such as spring onion tissue and porcine brain) with high resolution. The B-SRS technique provides a > 2-fold improvement in imaging depth in porcine brain tissue compared to conventional SRS microscopy. The method of optical sectioning in tissue using counter-propagating ultraslow Bessel light bullets developed in B-SRS is generic and easy to perform and can be readily extended to other nonlinear optical imaging modalities to advance 3D microscopic imaging in biological and biomedical systems and beyond.
PubMed: 38951517
DOI: 10.1038/s41377-024-01498-y -
Neuroinformatics Jul 2024CADENCE is an open Python 3-written neuroinformatics tool with Qt6 graphic user interface for supervised calcium events detection. In neuronal ensembles recording during...
CADENCE is an open Python 3-written neuroinformatics tool with Qt6 graphic user interface for supervised calcium events detection. In neuronal ensembles recording during calcium imaging experiments, the output of instruments such as Celena X, Zeiss LSM 5 Live confocal microscope and Miniscope is a movie showing flashing cells somata. There are few pipelines to convert video to relative fluorescence ΔF/F, from simplest ImageJ plugins to sophisticated tools like MiniAn (Dong et al. in Elife 11, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70661 , 2022). Minian, an open-source miniscope analysis pipeline. Elife, 11.). While in some areas of study relative fluorescence ΔF/F may be the desired result in itself, researchers of neuronal ensembles are typically interested in a more detailed analysis of calcium events as indirect proxy of neuronal electrical activity. For such analyses, researchers need a tool to infer calcium events from the continuous ΔF/F curve in order to create a raster representation of calcium events for later use in analysis software, such as Elephant (Denker, M., Yegenoglu, A., & Grün, S. (2018). Collaborative HPC-enabled workflows on the HBP Collaboratory using the Elephant framework. Neuroinformatics, 19.). Here we present such an open tool with supervised calcium events detection.
PubMed: 38951389
DOI: 10.1007/s12021-024-09677-3 -
Acta Parasitologica Jun 2024Crenosoma vulpis (Dujardin,1845) is a lungworm which has spread worldwide in canines and is associated with upper respiratory infections. In a majority of cases, the...
PURPOSE
Crenosoma vulpis (Dujardin,1845) is a lungworm which has spread worldwide in canines and is associated with upper respiratory infections. In a majority of cases, the infections are accompanied with chronic cough. Diagnosis of lungworms is often underdiagnosed and can be misinterpreted as other respiratory diseases.
METHODS
The Small Animal Clinic of the University Veterinary Hospital admitted an 11-month-old dog presented with persistent cough associated with difficulty in breathing and even asphyxia. Based on clinical symptoms, the patient underwent radiological and bronchoscopic examination. Bronchoscopy revealed the presence of lungworms obturating the branches of the tracheobronchial tree. Larvae were collected by bronchoscopic lavage and subjected to parasitological and molecular examination.
RESULTS
Microscopic detection and morphological identification of the worms removed during the bronchoscopy confirmed the presence of female adult worms. The subsequent molecular characterisation of the mitochondrial (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene (cox1) and 12S ribosomal DNA (rDNA)), nuclear (18S rDNA) genes, as well as the analysis of the second internal transcribed spacer (ITS-2) region of the ribosomal DNA, confirmed the Crenosoma vulpis species. Faecal samples were processed using the Baermann method, which confirmed the presence of the larval stage 1 of C. vulpis. The therapy with fenbendazole at a dose of 50 mg/kg of live weight once daily for the period of 7 days was initiated for the patient.
CONCLUSION
This paper presents the first molecularly confirmed clinical case of a Crenosoma vulpis infection in an 11-month-old female dog of the Miniature Schnauzer breed in Slovakia.
PubMed: 38951380
DOI: 10.1007/s11686-024-00861-8 -
Forensic Science, Medicine, and... Jun 2024Cases of battery ingestion are well documented in the scientific literature, especially concerning button cell battery ingestion in children. In this instance, the...
Cases of battery ingestion are well documented in the scientific literature, especially concerning button cell battery ingestion in children. In this instance, the authors present an atypical case of a young man who voluntarily ingested a cylindrical alkaline battery containing manganese. The patient died approximately a week later, despite not exhibiting any specific symptoms. The battery was found in the cecum during the autopsy, showing deterioration at its positive pole. The cecal mucosa exhibited two ulcerations without perforation. Histological analysis revealed intestinal ischemia in the cecum, with no microscopic lesions in other organs. Toxicology reports indicated high levels of manganese in both cardiac and peripheral blood. Considering all the results from the additional analyses, the experts concluded that the death was likely of multifactorial origin, associated with a toxic blood concentration of manganese. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first recorded death following the ingestion of a cylindrical battery, and the first instance of manganese intoxication resulting from the ingestion of an alkaline battery. The authors will present the case and provide a literature review to assess the extent to which the presence of manganese may have contributed to the fatality.
PubMed: 38951377
DOI: 10.1007/s12024-024-00854-z -
Biomedical Microdevices Jul 2024Janus particles are popular in recent years due to their anisotropic physical and chemical properties. Even though there are several established synthesis methods for...
Janus particles are popular in recent years due to their anisotropic physical and chemical properties. Even though there are several established synthesis methods for Janus particles, microfluidics-based methods are convenient and reliable due to low reagent consumption, monodispersity of the resultant particles and efficient control over reaction conditions. In this work a simple droplet-based microfluidic technique is utilized to synthesize magnetically anisotropic TiO2-Fe2O3 Janus microparticles. Two droplets containing reagents for Janus particle were merged by using an asymmetric device such that the resulting droplet contained the constituents within its two hemispheres distinct from each other. The synthesized Janus particles were observed under the optical microscope and the scanning electron microscope. Moreover, a detailed in vitro characterization of these particles was completed, and it was shown that these particles have a potential use for biomedical applications.
Topics: Lab-On-A-Chip Devices; Titanium; Biocompatible Materials; Ferric Compounds; Equipment Design; Particle Size
PubMed: 38951313
DOI: 10.1007/s10544-024-00711-4 -
Die Ophthalmologie Jul 2024The International Committee on Classification of Corneal Dystrophies (IC3D) was founded in 2005 to address difficulties arising from the outdated nomenclature for... (Review)
Review
The International Committee on Classification of Corneal Dystrophies (IC3D) was founded in 2005 to address difficulties arising from the outdated nomenclature for corneal dystrophies (CD) and to correct misconceptions in the literature. For each of the 22 CDs, a separate template was created to represent the current clinical, pathological and genetic knowledge of the disease. In addition, each template contains representative clinical photographs as well as light and electron microscopic images and, if available, confocal microscopic and coherence tomographic images of the respective CD. After the first edition was published in 2008, the revised version followed in 2015. The third edition of the IC3D was published as open access in February 2024. The latest edition is intended to serve as a reference work in everyday clinical practice and facilitate the diagnosis of CD, which might sometimes be difficult. This article provides an overview of the diagnostic and treatment principles of CD and presents the IC3D and its changes over time.
PubMed: 38951244
DOI: 10.1007/s00347-024-02066-w -
European Journal of Pharmaceutical... Jun 2024This study aimed to develop a thermosensitive in situ gel formulation for rectal delivery of Ibuprofen as an efficient alternative dosage form. Utilizing poloxamer 188,...
This study aimed to develop a thermosensitive in situ gel formulation for rectal delivery of Ibuprofen as an efficient alternative dosage form. Utilizing poloxamer 188, poloxamer 407, and HPMC via cold technique method, a thermosensitive in situ gel was successfully prepared. The concentration of Ibuprofen in the formulations was 1.2% (w/w). The prepared gels underwent assessment for clarity, gelation temperature, gelation time, gel strength, spread ability, syringe-ability, pH, viscosity, FTIR, and drug content. The selected formulations exhibited a gelation temperature within the range of 30°C to 36°C, with consistent amount of drug soluble in the formulations (93% - 110%). Mucoadhesive studies, in vitro release tests, ex vivo modeling of drug release, kinetic studies modeling, and histopathology testing were also conducted. The formulation comprising 18% poloxamer 407, 12% poloxamer 188, and 1% sodium chloride (FS15) demonstrated suitable gelation temperature and desirable drug release rate. In vitro drug release tests indicated completion within one hour for both FS10 (20% P407 & 10% P188) and FS15 (18% P407 & 12% P188), with consistent and predictable release patterns observed through kinetic modeling analysis. Microscopic histopathology examination confirmed the safety of the selected formula, exhibiting no irritation in the mucosal membrane of the sheep. In conclusion, Ibuprofen thermosensitive in situ gel presents a promising and convenient strategy as a rectal carrier and an alternative dosage form to solid suppositories.
PubMed: 38950638
DOI: 10.1016/j.ejps.2024.106843 -
Annual Review of Marine Science Jul 2024When President Bill Clinton and Francis Collins, then the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, celebrated the near completion of the human genome... (Review)
Review
When President Bill Clinton and Francis Collins, then the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, celebrated the near completion of the human genome sequence at the White House in the summer of 2000, it is unlikely that they or anyone else could have predicted the blossoming of meta-omics in the following two decades and their applications in modern human microbiome and environmental microbiome research. This transformation was enabled by the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies and sophisticated computational biology tools and bioinformatics software packages. Today, environmental meta-omics has undoubtedly revolutionized our understanding of ocean ecosystems, providing the genetic blueprint of oceanic microscopic organisms. In this review, I discuss the importance of functional genomics in future marine microbiome research and advocate a position for a gene-centric, bottom-up approach in modern oceanography. I propose that a synthesis of multidimensional approaches is required for a better understanding of the true functionality of the marine microbiome.
PubMed: 38950441
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-marine-020123-100931