Co-reductive fabrication of carbon nanodots with high quantum yield for bioimaging of bacteria

A simple and straightforward synthetic approach for carbon nanodots (C-dots) is proposed. The strategy is based on a one-step hydrothermal chemical reduction with thiourea and urea, leading to high quantum yield C-dots. The obtained C-dots are well-dispersed with a uniform size and a graphite-like structure. A synergistic reduction mechanism was investigated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The findings show that using both thiourea and urea during the one-pot synthesis enhances the luminescence of the generated C-dots. Moreover, the prepared C-dots have a high distribution of functional groups on their surface. In this work, C-dots proved to be a suitable nanomaterial for imaging of bacteria and exhibit potential for application in bioimaging thanks to their low cytotoxicity

Challenges in quantifying changes in the global water cycle

Human influences have likely already impacted the large-scale water cycle but natural variability and observational uncertainty are substantial. It is essential to maintain and improve observational capabilities to better characterize changes. Understanding observed changes to the global water cycle is key to predicting future climate changes and their impacts. While many datasets document crucial variables such as precipitation, ocean salinity, runoff, and humidity, most are uncertain for determining long-term changes. In situ networks provide long time-series over land but are sparse in many regions, particularly the tropics. Satellite and reanalysis datasets provide global coverage, but their long-term stability is lacking. However, comparisons of changes among related variables can give insights into the robustness of observed changes. For example, ocean salinity, interpreted with an understanding of ocean processes, can help cross-validate precipitation. Observational evidence for human influences on the water cycle is emerging, but uncertainties resulting from internal variability and observational errors are too large to determine whether the observed and simulated changes are consistent. Improvements to the in situ and satellite observing networks that monitor the changing water cycle are required, yet continued data coverage is threatened by funding reductions. Uncertainty both in the role of anthropogenic aerosols, and due to large climate variability presently limits confidence in attribution of observed changes

Decadal changes of the Western Arabian sea ecosystem

Historical data from oceanographic expeditions and remotely sensed data on outgoing longwave radiation, temperature, wind speed and ocean color in the western Arabian Sea (1950–2010) were used to investigate decadal trends in the physical and biochemical properties of the upper 300 m. 72 % of the 29,043 vertical profiles retrieved originated from USA and UK expeditions. Increasing outgoing longwave radiation, surface air temperatures and sea surface temperature were identified on decadal timescales. These were well correlated with decreasing wind speeds associated with a reduced Siberian High atmospheric anomaly. Shoaling of the oxycline and nitracline was observed as well as acidification of the upper 300 m. These physical and chemical changes were accompanied by declining chlorophyll-a concentrations, vertical macrofaunal habitat compression, declining sardine landings and an increase of fish kill incidents along the Omani coast

Requirements for a global data infrastructure in support of CMIP6

The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)’s Working Group on Climate Modelling (WGCM) Infrastructure Panel (WIP) was formed in 2014 in response to the explosive growth in size and complexity of Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs) between CMIP3 (2005–2006) and CMIP5 (2011–2012). This article presents the WIP recommendations for the global data infrastruc- ture needed to support CMIP design, future growth, and evolution. Developed in close coordination with those who build and run the existing infrastructure (the Earth System Grid Federation; ESGF), the recommendations are based on several principles beginning with the need to separate requirements, implementation, and operations. Other im- portant principles include the consideration of the diversity of community needs around data – a data ecosystem – the importance of provenance, the need for automation, and the obligation to measure costs and benefits. This paper concentrates on requirements, recognizing the diversity of communities involved (modelers, analysts, soft- ware developers, and downstream users). Such requirements include the need for scientific reproducibility and account- ability alongside the need to record and track data usage. One key element is to generate a dataset-centric rather than system-centric focus, with an aim to making the infrastruc- ture less prone to systemic failure. With these overarching principles and requirements, the WIP has produced a set of position papers, which are summa- rized in the latter pages of this document. They provide spec- ifications for managing and delivering model output, includ- ing strategies for replication and versioning, licensing, data quality assurance, citation, long-term archiving, and dataset tracking. They also describe a new and more formal approach for specifying what data, and associated metadata, should be saved, which enables future data volumes to be estimated, particularly for well-defined projects such as CMIP6. The paper concludes with a future facing consideration of the global data infrastructure evolution that follows from the blurring of boundaries between climate and weather, and the changing nature of published scientific results in the digital age

Have greenhouse gases intensified the contrast between wet and dry regions?

While changes in land precipitation during the last 50 years have been attributed in part to human influences, results vary by season, are affected by data uncertainty and do not account for changes over ocean. One of the more physically robust responses of the water cycle to warming is the expected amplification of existing patterns of precipitation minus evaporation. Here, precipitation changes in wet and dry regions are analyzed from satellite data for 1988–2010, covering land and ocean. We derive fingerprints for the expected change from climate model simulations that separately track changes in wet and dry regions. The simulations used are driven with anthropogenic and natural forcings combined, and greenhouse gas forcing or natural forcing only. Results of detection and attribution analysis show that the fingerprint of combined external forcing is detectable in observations and that this intensification of the water cycle is partly attributable to greenhouse gas forcing

Propranolol in the treatment of infantile haemangiomas:lessons from the European Propranolol In the Treatment of Complicated Haemangiomas (PITCH) Taskforce survey

Oral propranolol is widely prescribed as first line treatment for infantile haemangiomas (IHs) and anecdotally prescribing practice differs widely between centres

Role of biorelevant dissolution media in the selection of optimal Salt forms of oral drugs: maximizing the gastrointestinal solubility and in vitro activity of the antimicrobial molecule, clofazimine

peer-reviewedClofazimine is an antimycobacterial agent that is routinely used for the treatment of leprosy. Clofazimine has also been shown to have high clinical potential for the treatment of many Gram-positive pathogens, including those that exhibit high levels of antibiotic resistance in the medical community. The use of clofazimine against these pathogens has largely been limited by the inherently poor water solubility of the drug substance. In this work, the possibility of repurposing and reformulating clofazimine to maximize its clinical potential is investigated. To achieve this, the potential of novel salt forms of clofazimine as supersaturating drug delivery vehicles to enhance the aqueous solubility and gastrointestinal solubility of the drug substance was explored. The solution properties of seven novel salt forms, identified during an initial screening process, were examined in water and in a gastrointestinal-like media and were compared and contrasted with those of the free base, clofazimine, and the commercial formulation of the drug, Lamprene. The stability of the most promising solid forms was tested, and their bioactivity against Staphylococcus aureus was also compared with that of the clofazimine free base and Lamprene. Salts forms which showed superior stability as well as solubility and activity to the commercial drug formulation were fully characterized using a combination of spectroscopic techniques, including X-ray diffraction, solid-state NMR, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

Current understanding of the human microbiome

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature Medicine 24 (2018): 392–400, doi:10.1038/nm.4517.Our understanding of the link between the human microbiome and disease, including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and autism, is rapidly expanding. Improvements in the throughput and accuracy of DNA sequencing of the genomes of microbial communities associated with human samples, complemented by analysis of transcriptomes, proteomes, metabolomes and immunomes, and mechanistic experiments in model systems, have vastly improved our ability to understand the structure and function of the microbiome in both diseased and healthy states. However, many challenges remain. In this Review, we focus on studies in humans to describe these challenges, and propose strategies that leverage existing knowledge to move rapidly from correlation to causation, and ultimately to translation.Many of the studies described here in our laboratories were supported by the NIH, NSF, DOE, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.2018-10-1