Continuous Synthesis of Highly Uniform Noble Metal Nanoparticles over Reduced Graphene Oxide Using Microreactor Technology

Batch reactors always suffer from inefficient transport properties, discontinuity, and scale-up effects, challenging the particle size control, reproducibility, and large-scale production of noble metal-reduced graphene oxide composites. To address these issues, a microfluidic-based strategy for the continuous synthesis of highly uniform Ag nanoparticles (NPs) over reduced graphene oxide (Ag-rGO composites) was developed in this study. Ag-rGO composites were formed by the coreduction of AgNO₃ and GO with NaBH₄, which was confined inside the dispersed aqueous plugs segmented by octane. By virtue of enhanced mixing and precise control of reaction parameters in the plugs, ultrafine Ag NPs with controlled particle size (1.5–5.6 nm) and narrow particle size distribution (PSD) were evenly deposited on rGO. The average particle size of Ag NPs and relative standard deviation of particle size in Ag-rGO composites synthesized via microfluidic-based strategy were smaller than those via batch method. Moreover, the versatility of this microfluidic-based strategy was further demonstrated in the continuous synthesis of Pt-rGO and Pd-rGO composites

Additional file 2 of Effect of cultivation mode on bacterial and fungal communities of Dendrobium catenatum

Additional file 2: Fig. S2. Indicator bacteria with LDA scores of 3 or greater in bacterial (A) and fungal (B) communities from three different cultivating substrates. POS: pine tree bark from PO, CES: rocks from CE, and LTS: pear tree bark from LT. Different-colored regions represent different cultivation modes. *: the biomarkers shared by the plants and the substrates

Additional file 1 of Effect of cultivation mode on bacterial and fungal communities of Dendrobium catenatum

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Indicator bacteria with LDA scores of 3 or greater in bacterial (A) and fungal (B) communities associated with D. catenatum from three different modes. CE: cliff epiphytic cultivation, LT: living tree epiphytic cultivation, PO: Pot cultivation. Different-colored regions represent different cultivation modes. *: the biomarkers shared by the plants and the substrates

Additional file 4 of Effect of cultivation mode on bacterial and fungal communities of Dendrobium catenatum

Additional file 4: Table S1. Relative abundances of the bacterial genera that correlated with the content of main chemical components in leaves and stems of D. catenatum from three cultivation modes. Table S2. Relative abundances of the fungal genera that correlated with the content of main chemical components in leaves and stems of D. catenatum from three cultivation modes

Additional file 3 of Effect of cultivation mode on bacterial and fungal communities of Dendrobium catenatum

Additional file 3: Fig. S3. Venn diagram to indicate number of shared and unique bacterial and fungal OTUs identified in three plant compartments of D. catenatum and three substrates from different cultivation modes. Each ellipse represents a compartment or a kind of substrates from a cultivation mode. CE: cliff epiphytic cultivation, LT: living tree epiphytic cultivation, PO: Pot cultivation, POS: pine tree bark from PO, CES: rocks from CE, and LTS: pear tree bark from LT

Facile Synthesis of Co₃O₄ with Different Morphologies via Oxidation Kinetic Control and Its Application in Hydrogen Peroxide Decomposition

Co₃O₄ nanoparticles (NPs) with tubular and hollow structures were successfully synthesized by the formation of CoOOH and subsequent high-temperature calcination in air. The as-synthesized Co₃O₄ retained the morphologies of CoOOH. Therefore, the key step for the synthesis of Co₃O₄ was the controllable preparation of CoOOH NPs with tubular and hollow structures, which were prepared through a facile strategy involving the oxidation of β-Co­(OH)₂ under strong basic conditions (template-free, aqueous solution, and mild temperature). The morphology of CoOOH was tuned by employing air and H₂O₂ as the oxidizing agents which possessed different oxidation abilities and thus resulted in different oxidation kinetics. The plausible formation mechanism of CoOOH NPs with tubular and hollow structures was both related to the Kirkendall effect. In contrast to the commercial Co₃O₄, the as-prepared Co₃O₄ NPs with tubular and hollow structures showed superior catalytic activities for the decomposition of H₂O₂. The reaction rate constants of the as-prepared Co₃O₄ NPs with tubular and hollow structures were over 100 times the value of the commercial one

Continuous Synthesis of Ag/AgCl/ZnO Composites Using Flow Chemistry and Photocatalytic Application

Ag/AgCl/ZnO composites were successfully synthesized in a continuous microfluidic system under visible light irradiation, which was employed in situ to reduce a portion of AgCl to metallic Ag. The formation of Ag/AgCl/ZnO composites was confined in small aqueous plugs, which were dispersed by octane as the continuous phase. In this way, enhanced mixing, low risk of channel clogging, and uniform light distribution were achieved. The characterization results revealed that the as-prepared Ag/AgCl/ZnO composites were composed of flowerlike ZnO with Ag/AgCl nanospheres anchored to them. It was found that the synthesis parameters such as water/oil volume flow ratio, total volume flow rate, temperature, and the molar ratio of Zn²⁺ to Ag⁺ had effects on the synthesis of Ag/AgCl/ZnO composites. Furthermore, the as-prepared Ag/AgCl/ZnO composites outperformed Ag/ZnO composites and AgCl/ZnO composites in the visible-light-driven degradation of methyl orange

Sequencing and <i>De Novo</i> Assembly of the Asian Clam (<i>Corbicula fluminea</i>) Transcriptome Using the Illumina GAIIx Method

<div><p>Background</p><p>The Asian clam (<i>Corbicula fluminea</i>) is currently one of the most economically important aquatic species in China and has been used as a test organism in many environmental studies. However, the lack of genomic resources, such as sequenced genome, expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and transcriptome sequences has hindered the research on <i>C. fluminea</i>. Recent advances in large-scale RNA-Seq enable generation of genomic resources in a short time, and provide large expression datasets for functional genomic analysis.</p> <p>Methodology/Principal Findings</p><p>We used a next-generation high-throughput DNA sequencing technique with an Illumina GAIIx method to analyze the transcriptome from the whole bodies of <i>C. fluminea</i>. More than 62,250,336 high-quality reads were generated based on the raw data, and 134,684 unigenes with a mean length of 791 bp were assembled using the Velvet and Oases software. All of the assembly unigenes were annotated by running BLASTx and BLASTn similarity searches on the Nt, Nr, Swiss-Prot, COG and KEGG databases. In addition, the Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COGs), Gene Ontology (GO) terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Gene and Genome (KEGG) annotations were also assigned to each unigene transcript. To provide a preliminary verification of the assembly and annotation results, and search for potential environmental pollution biomarkers, 15 functional genes (five antioxidase genes, two cytochrome P450 genes, three GABA receptor-related genes and five heat shock protein genes) were cloned and identified. Expressions of the 15 selected genes following fluoxetine exposure confirmed that the genes are indeed linked to environmental stress.</p> <p>Conclusions/Significance</p><p>The <i>C. fluminea</i> transcriptome advances the underlying molecular understanding of this freshwater clam, provides a basis for further exploration of <i>C. fluminea</i> as an environmental test organism and promotes further studies on other bivalve organisms.</p> </div

Rapamycin has little effect on the fibrogenic phenotype of tubular epithelial cells.

<p>HK2 cells or Animals were treated as described in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033626#s2" target="_blank">Methods and Materials</a>. A–C. Representative immunofluorescent costaining images of kidney sections derived from UUO mice or IRI mice, using anti-Kim-1 and anti-αSMA (A), anti-Kim-1 and anti-CD11b (B), anti-pS6K and anti-Kim-1 (C). Nuclei were labeled with DAPI (blue). Scale bar: 50 µm. D. HK2 cells were cultured for 48 hours in the absence or presence of aristolochic acid (AA), with or without administration of rapamycin. The cells were stained for Ki67 or pS6K. DAPI was used to stain the nuclei. E. Representative western blot and densitometric analyses for expression of CTGF, Collagen-I, and pS6K in cultured HK2 cells. β-actin was used in this experiment for equal protein loading control. Data were presented as mean ± SE. ** P<0.01, NS no significance. F. Assessment of proinflammatory and profibrogenic gene expression in culture HK2 cells. mRNA level of MCP-1, TGF-β, CTGF and Collagen-I were determined by realtime-PCR. ** P<0.01, NS no significance. Error bars represent S.E.</p

MOESM1 of Methane potentials of wastewater generated from hydrothermal liquefaction of rice straw: focusing on the wastewater characteristics and microbial community compositions

Additional file 1: Table S1. Characteristics of rice straw and the following line is standard error of each value; Table S2. Number of the high-quality sequences; Figure S1. COD, TOC and pH values of HTLWW samples under different HTL conditions; Figure S2. Comparison of methane production potentials of samples 200 °C–0.5 h, 260 °C–0.5 h and 200 °C–4 h