pH-responsive microcapsules synthesized via a water-in-oil-in-water emulsion template

Biological agents, such as peptides and nucleic acids (siRNA or dsRNA), are becoming increasingly employed in both the therapeutic and agrochemical industries as alternatives to synthetic chemicals. These agents have a number of advantages, including their specificity for a target, ease of registration and low human toxicity.1 Chemical pesticides are currently the most common method of crop protection, but have a number of drawbacks including their toxicity and effects on non-target species.2 Therefore, there is an ever-shifting move to the use of more eco-friendly biological control measures; however, these also have negative attributes. Bio-control agents are often unstable3 and, upon ingestion, are subjected to degradation by hydrolytic enzymes and conditions favouring acid hydrolysis. As a result, these water soluble agents must be protected by encapsulation in a water continuous phase. This provides a protective shell, ensuring their stability during delivery and giving the ability to control and trigger release, which facilitates a more efficient use. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Interfacial adhesion of compositional gradient ternary FCC alloy films

Combinatorial materials design of thin films allows for the investigation of fundamental mechanic relationships and optimization of thin films for engineering applications. By depositing a wide range of compositions on a single sample, a systematic study of the full alloy composition of particular material system can be investigated for a number of different properties in a relatively short amount of time. Using an integrated shutter controller, specifically designed and manufactured to allow for precise control over coating design, ternary alloys with the full compositional range can be deposited on a single wafer. By specifically programming the shutters it was possible to create multilayered thickness gradients of three elements, which were then annealed to create thin films with a large compositional gradient across the wafer. The adhesion strength of an Al2O3­ ALD coating on two such compositional gradient FCC alloy adhesion layers, AlCuAu and AuAgPd, was investigated as a function of the changing composition. The AlCuAu alloy sample consists of multiple phases and intermetallics across the wafer which are dependent on composition; whereas the AuAgPd alloy is a solid-solution across the compositional gradient. For this investigation, instrumented indentation with a conical diamond tip was used to locally measure the adhesion of the ALD coating with different adhesion layer compositions. By performing small arrays of indents over the surface of the coating, it was possible to test the adhesion-promoting properties of a broad spectrum of interface compositions in a single sample. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Impacts of School Nutrition Interventions on the Nutritional Status of School-Aged Children in Asia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

This review aims to describe school nutrition interventions implemented in Asia and quantify their effects on school-aged children's nutritional status. We searched Web of Science, Embase, Ovid MEDLINE, Global Health, Econlit, APA PsycInfo, and Social Policy and Practice for English articles published from January 2000 to January 2021. We quantified the pooled effects of the interventions on the changes in body mass index (BMI) and body mass index z score (BAZ), overall and by type of intervention. In total, 28 articles were included for this review, of which 20 articles were multi-component interventions. Twenty-seven articles were childhood obesity studies and were included for meta-analysis. Overall, school nutrition interventions reduced school-aged children's BMI and BAZ. Multi-component interventions reduced the children's BMI and BAZ, whereas physical activity interventions reduced only BMI and nutrition education did not change BMI or BAZ. Overweight/obesity reduction interventions provided a larger effect than prevention interventions. Parental involvement and a healthy food provision did not strengthen school nutrition interventions, which may be due to an inadequate degree of implementation. These results suggested that school nutrition interventions should employ a holistic multi-component approach and ensure adequate stakeholder engagement as well as implementation to maximise the effects

Neck muscle cross-sectional area, brain volume and cognition in healthy older men; A cohort study

BACKGROUND: Two important consequences of the normal ageing process are sarcopenia (the age-related loss of muscle mass and function) and age-related cognitive decline. Existing data support positive relationships between muscle function, cognition and brain structure. However, studies investigating these relationships at older ages are lacking and rarely include a measure of muscle size. Here we test whether neck muscle size is positively associated with cognition and brain structure in older men. METHODS: We studied 51 healthy older men with mean age 73.8 (sd 1.5) years. Neck muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) was measured from T1-weighted MR-brain scans using a validated technique. We measured multiple cognitive domains including verbal and visuospatial memory, executive functioning and estimated prior cognitive ability. Whole brain, ventricular, hippocampal and cerebellar volumes were measured with MRI. General linear models (ANCOVA) were performed. RESULTS: Larger neck muscle CSA was associated with less whole brain atrophy (t = 2.86, p = 0.01, partial eta squared 17%). Neck muscle CSA was not associated with other neuroimaging variables or current cognitive ability. Smaller neck muscle CSA was unexpectedly associated with higher prior cognition (t = −2.12, p < 0.05, partial eta squared 10%). CONCLUSIONS: In healthy older men, preservation of whole brain volume (i.e. less atrophy) is associated with larger muscle size. Longitudinal ageing studies are now required to investigate these relationships further

Data associated with 'pH-responsive polymer microcapsules for targeted delivery of biomaterials to the midgut of Drosophila suzukii'

Drosophila suzukii (or spotted wing Drosophila) is an economically important pest which can have a devastating impact on soft and stone fruit industries. Biological pesticides are being sought as alternatives to synthetic chemicals to control this invasive pest, but many are subject to degradation either in the environment or in the insect gut and as a result require protection. In this study we identified a sharp change in pH of the adult midgut from neutral to acidic (pH 6, but underwent rapid dissolution at pH < 4.2. In vivo studies showed that the natural acidity of the midgut of D. suzukii also induced the breakdown of the responsive P2VP microcapsules to release FITC-dextran which was taken up into the body of the insect and accumulated in the renal tubules