Artemisia pollen allergy in China : Component-resolved diagnosis reveals allergic asthma patients have significant multiple allergen sensitization

Background: Artemisia pollen allergy is a major cause of asthma in Northern China. Possible associations between IgE responses to Artemisia allergen components and clinical phenotypes have not yet been evaluated. This study was to establish sensitization patterns of four Artemisia allergens and possible associations with demographic characteristics and clinical phenotypes in three areas of China. Methods: Two hundred and forty patients allergic to Artemisia pollen were examined, 178 from Shanxi and 30 from Shandong Provinces in Northern China, and 32 from Yunnan Province in Southwestern China. Allergic asthma, rhinitis, conjunctivitis, and eczema symptoms were diagnosed. All patients sera were tested by ImmunoCAP with mugwort pollen extract and the natural components nArt v 1, nArt ar 2, nArt v 3, and nArt an 7. Results: The frequency of sensitization and the IgE levels of the four components in Artemisia allergic patients from Southwestern China were significantly lower than in those from the North. Art v 1 and Art an 7 were the most frequently recognized allergens (84% and 87%, respectively), followed by Art v 3 (66%) and Art ar 2 (48%). Patients from Northern China were more likely to have allergic asthma (50%) than patients from Southwestern China (3%), and being sensitized to more than two allergens increased the risk of allergic asthma, in which cosensitization to three major allergens Art v 1, Art v 3, and Art an 7 is prominent. Conclusions: Componentresolved diagnosis of Chinese Artemisia pollenallergic patients helps assess the potential risk of mugwortassociated allergic asthma.(VLID)329956

Extremely wide-angle nonreciprocal thermal emitters based on Weyl semimetals with dielectric grating structure

Although various nonreciprocal thermal emitters have been suggested to break the balance between absorption and emission, the majority can only achieve nonreciprocal effect at one certain angle, and the angular range in which these structures exhibit nonreciprocal effect is heavily restricted. In this work, the scheme to realize extremely wide-angle nonreciprocal thermal radiation effect is proposed and investigated. It is achieved by placing a dielectric grating atop a Weyl semimetal film backed with a metal mirror. The results show that the emitter exhibits strong nonreciprocal radiation at the wavelength of 15.98 μm when the incident angle is 30°. What's more, the strong nonreciprocal radiation can be achieved in a wide angular range. Such behavior results from the guided mode resonance, which is revealed by investigating the distribution of electromagnetic field at the resonant wavelength and is also confirmed by the dispersion relation of guided mode. This work provides a new approach to the design of novel nonreciprocal thermal emitters

Metasurfaces Assisted Twisted α-MoO₃ for Spinning Thermal Radiation

Spinning thermal radiation has demonstrated applications in engineering, such as radiation detection and biosensing. In this paper, we propose a new spin thermal radiation emitter composed of the twisted bilayer α-MoO3 metasurface; in our study, it provided more degrees of freedom to control circular dichroism by artificially modifying the filling factor of the metasurface. In addition, circular dichroism was significantly enhanced by introducing a new degree of freedom (filling factor), with a value that could reach 0.9. Strong-spin thermal radiation resulted from the polarization conversion of circularly polarized waves using the α-MoO3 metasurface and selective transmission of linearly polarized waves by the substrate. This allowed for extra flexible control of spinning thermal radiation and significantly enhanced circular dichroism, which promises applications in biosensing and radiation detection. As a result of their unique properties, hyperbolic materials have applications not only in spin thermal radiation, but also in areas such as near-field thermal radiation. In this study, hyperbolic materials were combined with metasurfaces to offer a new idea regarding modulating near-field radiative heat transfer

Spacecraft smart radiation device with near-zero solar absorption based on cascaded photonic crystals

Smart radiation device (SRD) for spacecraft based on thermochromic material vanadium dioxide (VO2) attracts increasing interest due to its ability of self-adaptive emission regulation. However, the spacecraft SRD is constrained by the high solar absorption at a high temperature and low emission tunability in practical applications. In this paper, a SRD is proposed for spacecraft thermal control, which consists of a solar reflector based on cascaded photonic crystals and a thermal emitter (VO2/BaF2/Ag). By cascading four photonic crystals with photonic band gaps for different central wavelengths, the total reflection range of the SRD in the solar radiation band is broadened. It is found that the SRD can realize near-zero solar absorption and high emission modulation depth, simultaneously. Though optimizing the thicknesses of the VO2 and BaF2, the emission modulation depth can reach 0.69, and the solar absorption can reduce to 0.08. In addition, the physical mechanism is studied by the distribution of the electric field. It is proved that the near-zero solar absorption originates from the broadband total reflection of the cascaded photonic crystals. The phase transition properties of VO2 and the difference in inherent losses at high and low temperatures result in high emission modulation depth. Besides, the low solar absorption and high emission modulation depth performances of the SRD can remain excellent when the angle of incidence is small than 46° regardless of the transverse electric wave or transverse magnetic wave. This work not only provides a new idea for designing SRDs, but also is expected to accelerate the development of intelligent thermal control of spacecraft

Accurate Characterization of the Adhesive Layer Thickness of Ceramic Bonding Structures Using Terahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy

Ceramic adhesive structures have been increasingly used in aerospace applications. However, the peaks of the signal on the upper and lower surface of the adhesive layer are difficult to measure directly due to the thin thickness of the adhesive layer and the effect of the attenuation dispersion of the ceramic layer. Thus, the existing non-destructive testing techniques have been ineffective in detecting adhesive quality. In this paper, the thickness of the adhesive layer is measured using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. A sparse deconvolution method is proposed for the terahertz time-domain spectral signal of ceramic adhesive structures with different adhesive layer thicknesses. The results show that the methods proposed in this paper can realize the separation of reflection signals for glue layers with a thickness of 0.20 mm. By comparing with a wavelet denoising method and a modified covariance method (AR/MCM), the effectiveness of the sparse deconvolution method in estimating the thickness of the glue layer is demonstrated. This work will provide the theoretical and experimental basis for using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy to detect the homogeneity of ceramic adhesive structures

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles for drug and gene delivery

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) are attracting increasing interest for potential biomedical applications. With tailored mesoporous structure, huge surface area and pore volume, selective surface functionality, as well as morphology control, MSNs exhibit high loading capacity for therapeutic agents and controlled release properties if modified with stimuli-responsive groups, polymers or proteins. In this review article, the applications of MSNs in pharmaceutics to improve drug bioavailability, reduce drug toxicity, and deliver with cellular targetability are summarized. Particularly, the exciting progress in the development of MSNs-based effective delivery systems for poorly soluble drugs, anticancer agents, and therapeutic genes are highlighted. KEY WORDS: Mesoporous silica nanoparticles, Poorly soluble drug, Cancer therapy, Multidrug resistance, Gene deliver

Metal–Organic Framework-Based Chemo-Photothermal Combinational System for Precise, Rapid, and Efficient Antibacterial Therapeutics

Rapid increase of antimicrobial resistance has become an urgent threat to global public health. In this research, since photothermal therapy is a potential antibacterial strategy, which is less likely to cause resistance, a metal–organic framework-based chemo-photothermal combinational system was constructed. Zeolitic imidazolate frameworks-8 (ZIF-8), a porous carrier with unique features such as high loading and pH-sensitive degradation, was synthesized, and then encapsulated photothermal agent indocyanine green (ICG). First, ICG with improved stability in ZIF-8 (ZIF-8-ICG) can effectively produce heat in response to NIR laser irradiation for precise, rapid, and efficient photothermal bacterial ablation. Meanwhile, Zn2+ ions released from ZIF-8 can inhibit bacterial growth by increasing the permeability of bacterial cell membrane and further strengthen photothermal therapy efficacy by reducing the heat resistance of bacteria. Study showed that bacteria suffered from significant changes in morphology after treatment with ZIF-8-ICG under laser irradiation. The combinational chemo-hyperthermia therapy of ZIF-8-ICG could thoroughly ablate murine subcutaneous abscess induced by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), exhibiting a nearly 100% bactericidal ratio. Both in vitro and in vivo safety evaluation confirmed that ZIF-8-ICG was low toxic. Overall, our researches demonstrated that ZIF-8-ICG has great potential to be served as an alternative to antibiotics in combating multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens

Virus-inspired surface-nanoengineered antimicrobial liposome: A potential system to simultaneously achieve high activity and selectivity

Enveloped viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 frequently have a highly infectious nature and are considered effective natural delivery systems exhibiting high efficiency and specificity. Since simultaneously enhancing the activity and selectivity of lipopeptides is a seemingly unsolvable problem for conventional chemistry and pharmaceutical approaches, we present a biomimetic strategy to construct lipopeptide-based mimics of viral architectures and infections to enhance their antimicrobial efficacy while avoiding side effects. Herein, a surface-nanoengineered antimicrobial liposome (SNAL) is developed with the morphological features of enveloped viruses, including a moderate size range, lipid-based membrane structure, and highly lipopeptide-enriched bilayer surface. The SNAL possesses virus-like infection to bacterial cells, which can mediate high-efficiency and high-selectivity bacteria binding, rapidly attack and invade bacteria via plasma membrane fusion pathway, and induce a local “burst” release of lipopeptide to produce irreversible damage of cell membrane. Remarkably, viral mimics are effective against multiple pathogens with low minimum inhibitory concentrations (1.6–6.3 μg mL−1), high bactericidal efficiency of >99% within 2 h, >10-fold enhanced selectivity over free lipopeptide, 99.8% reduction in skin MRSA load after a single treatment, and negligible toxicity. This bioinspired design has significant potential to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of lipopeptides and may create new opportunities for designing next-generation antimicrobials

Identification of a 62 kDa major allergen from Artemisia pollen as a putative galactose oxidase

Around 20 years ago, a 60-70 kDa protein was reported as a major allergen of mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) pollen. This study was to identify and characterize its molecular properties. Sera from 113 Chinese and 20 Dutch Artemisia allergic/sensitized subjects (and pools thereof) were used to identify the 60-70 kDa allergen. Pollen extracts of seven Artemisia species were compared by immunoblotting. Transcriptomics and proteomics (mass spectrometry) of A. annua pollen were used to identify the putative 60-70 kDa Artemisia allergen. Both the natural purified and recombinant allergens were evaluated for IgE reactivity by ImmunoCAP. Fourteen Chinese Artemisia allergic patients were tested intradermally with purified natural allergen. Immunoblots revealed two major bands at 12 and 25 kDa, and a weak band at 70 kDa for all seven Artemisia species. Using a combined transcriptomic and proteomic approach, the high molecular mass allergen in A. annua pollen was shown to be a 62 kDa putative galactose oxidase, with a putative N-glycosylation site. More than 94% of Artemisia pollen allergic patients had IgE response to this allergen. Although recognition of a non-glycosylated recombinant version was only confirmed in a minority (16%) and at much lower IgE levels, this discrepancy cannot be explained simply by reactivity to the carbohydrate moiety on the natural allergen. Intradermal testing with the natural allergen was positive in five out of nine sensitized patients. The previously reported 60-70 kDa allergen of Artemisia pollen is most likely a 62 kD putative galactose oxidase here designated Art an 7. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserve