2-All­yloxy-5-nitro­benzoic acid

The mol­ecule of the title compound, C10H9NO5, is approximately planar, with the mean planes of the nitro, carboxyl and all­yloxy groups rotated by 8.1 (3), 7.9 (3) and 4.52 (18)°, respectively, from the plane of the benzene ring. Bond lengths in the aromatic ring are influenced by both electronic effects and strain induced by ortho-substitution. In the crystal structure, centrosymmetrically related mol­ecules are paired into dimers through strong O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Logistic Regression Analysis of Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Intensive Sound Masking Therapy in Patients with Tinnitus

Objectives: To investigate factors influencing the effectiveness intensive sound masking therapy on tinnitus using Logistic Regression Analysis. Design: The study used a retrospective cross-section analysis. Participants: 102 patients with tinnitus were recruited at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, China. Intervention: Intensive sound masking therapy was used as an intervention approach for patients with tinnitus. Primary and secondary outcome measures: participants underwent audiological investigations and tinnitus pitch and loudness matching measurements, followed by intensive sound masking therapy. The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) was used as the outcome measure pre- and post-treatment. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to investigate the association of demographic and audiological factors with effective therapy. Results: According to the THI score changes pre-and post-sound masking intervention, fifty-one participants were categorised into an effective group, the remaining 51 participants were placed in a non-effective group. Those in the effective group were significantly younger than those in the non-effective group (p=0.012). Significantly more participants had flat audiogram configurations in the effective group (p=0.04). Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that age (OR=0.96, 95% CI: 0.93, 0.99, p=0.007), audiometric configuration (p=0.027) and THI score pre-treatment (OR=1.04, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.07, p<0.001) were significantly associated with therapeutic effectiveness. Further analysis showed that patients with flat audiometric configurations were 5.45 times more likely to respond to intervention than those with high-frequency steeply sloping audiograms (OR=5.45, 95% CI: 1.67, 17.86, p=0.005). Conclusion: Audiometric configuration, age and THI scores appear to be predictive for the effectiveness of sound masking treatment. Gender, tinnitus characteristics and hearing threshold measures seem not to be related to treatment effectiveness. Further randomized control study is needed to provide further evidence of the effectiveness of prognostic factors in tinnitus interventions

The effect of symmetrical and asymmetrical hearing impairment on the music quality perception

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of symmetrical, asymmetrical and unilateral hearing impairment on music quality perception. Six validated music pieces in the categories of classical music, folk music and pop music were used to assess music quality in terms of its ‘pleasantness’, ‘naturalness’, ‘fullness’, ‘roughness’ and ‘sharpness’. 58 participants with sensorineural hearing loss [20 with unilateral hearing loss (UHL), 20 with bilateral symmetrical hearing loss (BSHL) and 18 with bilateral asymmetrical hearing loss (BAHL)] and 29 normal hearing (NH) subjects participated in the present study. Hearing impaired (HI) participants had greater difficulty in overall music quality perception than NH participants. Participants with BSHL rated music pleasantness and naturalness to be higher than participants with BAHL. Moreover, the hearing thresholds of the better ears from BSHL and BAHL participants as well as the hearing thresholds of the worse ears from BSHL participants were negatively correlated to the pleasantness and naturalness perception. HI participants rated the familiar music pieces higher than unfamiliar music pieces in the three music categories. Music quality perception in participants with hearing impairment appeared to be affected by symmetry of hearing loss, degree of hearing loss and music familiarity when they were assessed using the music quality rating test (MQRT). This indicates that binaural symmetrical hearing is important to achieve a high level of music quality perception in HI listeners. This emphasizes the importance of provision of bilateral hearing assistive devices for people with asymmetrical hearing impairment

Discovering rare-earth-free magnetic materials through the development of a database

We develop an open-access database that provides a large array of datasets specialized for magnetic compounds as well as magnetic clusters. Our focus is on rare-earth-free magnets. Available datasets include (i) crystallography, (ii) thermodynamic properties, such as the formation energy, and (iii) magnetic properties that are essential for magnetic-material design. Our database features a large number of stable and metastable structures discovered through our adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA) searches. Many of these AGA structures have better magnetic properties when compared to those of the existing rare-earth-free magnets and the theoretical structures in other databases. Our database places particular emphasis on site-specific magnetic data, which are obtained by high-throughput first-principles calculations. Such site-resolved data are indispensable for machine-learning modeling. We illustrate how our data-intensive methods promote efficiency of the experimental discovery of new magnetic materials. Our database provides massive datasets that will facilitate an efficient computational screening, machine-learning-assisted design, and the experimental fabrication of new promising magnets

Effect of moisture on anthracite crushing behavior and grinding energy consumption

The change of water occurrence form and content in coal will change the physical characteristics and pore structure of coal, and then affect its crushing process.In order to study the effect of moisture contained in coal on on the crushing behavior of coal particles,anthracite coal was used as the research object. A Hastelloy grinding equipped with a power measuring device was applied to simulate the crushing environment in a medium-speed coal mill. The individual and mixed crushing experiments were carried out in multi-time batches of coal samples with different water content. Thus, the effects of water occurrence on coal crushing rate, pulverized coal fineness, and grinding energy consumption were studied. The experimental results showed that compared with the original coal samples, the initial particle size material crushing rate of homogenized soaked coal samples decreases significantly due to the increase of water content, its grindability index first decreased and then increased with increasing the water content when the homogenized immersed coal sample was crushed separately, and the fineness of pulverized coal t10 was positively correlated with water content. When dry and wet coal samples were mixed and crushed, the crushing rate and fine-grained material generation rate of 13.34% moisture content samples were much higher than that of homogenized soaked coal samples with the same moisture content, and their its grindability index was larger than that of the original coal; The grindability index of the blended coal samples with other moisture contents was slightly smaller than that of the homogenized soaked coal samples, and this difference became larger with the increase of moisture content, while the crushing rate and the yield of fine-grained materials differed less from that of the homogenized impregnated coal samples. Also, the result indicated that the classical energy-particle size relationship model may be used to characterize the individual and mixed crushing processes of samples with different moisture gradients. The internal and external moisture reduced the ability of anthracite to resist crushing to varying degrees, and increasing the water content during separate crushing improved the energy efficiency significantly. So, the water content parameters were introduced into the energy consumption model to characterize the crushing process of various moisture coal samples. By exploring the influence mechanism of water content in coal on energy consumption of coal crushing, it reveals the way of energy loss in the process of coal crushing and provides theoretical guidance for optimizing coal crushing process and reducing energy consumption

Aptamer modified Zr-based porphyrinic nanoscale metal-organic frameworks for active-targeted chemo-photodynamic therapy of tumors

Active-targeted nanoplatforms could specifically target tumors compared to normal cells, making them a promising therapeutic agent. The aptamer is a kind of short DNA or RNA sequence that can specifically bind to target molecules, and could be widely used as the active targeting agents of nanoplatforms to achieve active-targeted therapy of tumors. Herein, an aptamer modified nanoplatform DOX@PCN@Apt-M was designed for active-targeted chemo-photodynamic therapy of tumors. Zr-based porphyrinic nanoscale metal organic framework PCN-224 was synthesized through a one-pot reaction, which could produce cytotoxic 1O2 for efficient treatment of tumor cells. To improve the therapeutic effect of the tumor, the anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded into PCN-224 to form DOX@PCN-224 for tumor combination therapy. Active-targeted combination therapy achieved by modifying the MUC1 aptamer (Apt-M) onto DOX@PCN-224 surface can not only further reduce the dosage of therapeutic agents, but also reduce their toxic and side effects on normal tissues. In vitro, experimental results indicated that DOX@PCN@Apt-M exhibited enhanced combined therapeutic effect and active targeting efficiency under 808 nm laser irradiation for MCF-7 tumor cells. Based on PCN-224 nanocarriers and aptamer MUC1, this work provides a novel strategy for precisely targeting MCF-7 tumor cells

Sirtuin 1 and Autophagy Attenuate Cisplatin-Induced Hair Cell Death in the Mouse Cochlea and Zebrafish Lateral Line

Cisplatin-induced ototoxicity is one of the major adverse effects in cisplatin chemotherapy, and hearing protective approaches are unavailable in clinical practice. Recent work unveiled a critical role of autophagy in cell survival in various types of hearing loss. Since the excessive activation of autophagy can contribute to apoptotic cell death, whether the activation of autophagy increases or decreases the rate of cell death in CDDP ototoxicity is still being debated. In this study, we showed that CDDP induced activation of autophagy in the auditory cell HEI-OC1 at the early stage. We then used rapamycin, an autophagy activator, to increase the autophagy activity, and found that the cell death significantly decreased after CDDP injury. In contrast, treatment with the autophagy inhibitor 3-methyladenine (3-MA) significantly increased cell death. In accordance with in vitro results, rapamycin alleviated CDDP-induced death of hair cells in zebrafish lateral line and cochlear hair cells in mice. Notably, we found that CDDP-induced increase of Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) in the HEI-OC1 cells modulated the autophagy function. The specific SIRT1 activator SRT1720 could successfully protect against CDDP-induced cell loss in HEI-OC1 cells, zebrafish lateral line, and mice cochlea. These findings suggest that SIRT1 and autophagy activation can be suggested as potential therapeutic strategies for the treatment of CDDP-induced ototoxicity