Effects of Aromatic Ammoniums on Methyl Ammonium Lead Iodide Hybrid Perovskite Materials

The introduction of bulky ammoniums into methyl ammonium lead iodide hybrid perovskites (MAPbI3) has emerged as a promising strategy to improve the properties of these materials. In the present work, we studied the effects of several aromatic ammoniums onto the structural, electronic, and optical properties of MAPbI3. Although powder XRD data suggest that the bulky cations are not involved in the bulk phase of the MAPbI3, a surprisingly large effect of the bulky cations onto the photoluminescence properties was observed

Interfacial Stresses on Droplet Interface Bilayers Using Two Photon Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy

Response of lipid bilayers to external mechanical stimuli is an active area of research with implications for fundamental and synthetic cell biology. However, there is a lack of tools for systematically imposing mechanical strains and non-invasively mapping out interfacial (membrane) stress distributions on lipid bilayers. In this article, we report a miniature platform to manipulate model cell membranes in the form of droplet interface bilayers (DIBs), and non-invasively measure spatio-temporally resolved interfacial stresses using two photon fluorescence lifetime imaging of an interfacially active molecular flipper (Flipper-TR). We established the effectiveness of the developed framework by investigating interfacial stresses accompanying three key processes associated with DIBs: thin film drainage between lipid monolayer coated droplets, bilayer formation, and bilayer separation. Interestingly, the measurements also revealed fundamental aspects of DIBs including the existence of a radially decaying interfacial stress distribution post bilayer formation, and the simultaneous build up and decay of stress respectively at the bilayer corner and center during bilayer separation. Finally, utilizing interfacial rheology measurements and MD simulations, we also reveal that the tested molecular flipper is sensitive to membrane fluidity that changes with interfacial stress - expanding the scientific understanding of how molecular motors sense stress.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Bazhu Decoction, a Traditional Chinese Medical Formula, Ameliorates Cognitive Deficits in the 5xFAD Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder associated with aging. There are currently no effective treatments for AD. Bazhu decoction (BZD), a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula, has been employed clinically to alleviate AD. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms are still unclear. Here we found that middle- and high-doses of BZD ameliorated the behavioral aspects of 5xFAD transgenic mice in elevated plus maze, Y maze and Morris water maze tests. Moreover, BZD reduced the protein levels of BACE1 and PS1, resulting in a reduction of Aβ plaques. We also identified a beneficial effect of BZD on oxidative stress by attenuating MDA levels and SOD activity in the brains of 5xFAD mice. Together, these results indicate that BZD produces a dose-dependent positive effect on 5xFAD transgenic mouse model by decreasing APP processing and Aβ plaques, and by ameliorating oxidative damage. BZD may play a protective role in the cognitive and anxiety impairments and may be a complementary therapeutic option for AD

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Inflamm-Aging: A New Mechanism Affecting Premature Ovarian Insufficiency

The normal function of ovaries, along with the secretion of sex hormones, is among the most important endocrine factors that maintain the female sexual characteristics and promote follicular development and ovulation. Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a common cause in the etiology of female infertility. It is defined as the loss of ovarian function before the age of 40. The characteristics of POI are menstrual disorders, including amenorrhea and delayed menstruation, accompanied by a raised gonadotrophin level and decreased estradiol level. Inflammatory aging is a new concept in the research field of aging. It refers to a chronic and low-degree proinflammatory state which occurs with increasing age. Inflammatory aging is closely associated with multiple diseases, as excessive inflammation can induce the inflammatory lesions in certain organs of the body. In recent years, studies have shown that inflammatory aging plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of POI. This paper begins with the pathogenesis of inflammatory aging and summarizes the relationship between inflammatory aging and premature ovarian insufficiency in a comprehensive way, as well as discussing the new diagnostic and therapeutic methods of POI