Recycling spent lead-acid battery into lead halide for resource purification and multifunctional perovskite diode

Abstract: Please refer to full text to view abstract

Two colistin resistance-producing Aeromonas strains, isolated from coastal waters in Zhejiang, China: characteristics, multi-drug resistance and pathogenicity

IntroductionAeromonas spp. are ubiquitous inhabitants of ecosystems, and many species are opportunistically pathogenic to humans and animals. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) Aeromonas species have been widely detected in hospitals, urban rivers, livestock, and aquatic animals.ResultsIn this study, we identified two Aeromonas isolates, namely Aeromonas veronii 0728Q8Av and Aeromonas caviae 1029Y16Ac, from coastal waters in Zhejiang, China. Both isolates exhibited typical biochemical characteristics and conferred MDR to 11 kinds of antibiotics, remaining susceptible to ceftazidime. Whole-genome sequencing revealed that both isolates harbored multiple antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and several mobile genetic elements (MGEs) on the chromosomes, each containing a resistance genomic island (GI), a typical class 1 integron, a transposon, and various insertion sequences (ISs). Most ARGs were situated within the multiple resistance GI, which contained a class 1 integron and a transposon in both Aeromonas isolates. Furthermore, a chromosomal mcr-3.16 gene was identified in A. veronii 0728Q8Av, while a chromosomal mcr-3.3 was found in A. caviae 1029Y16Ac. Both mcr-3 variants were not located within but were distanced from the multidrug resistance GI on the chromosome, flanking by multiple ISs. In addition, a mcr-3-like was found adjacent to mcr-3.16 to form a tandem mcr-3.16-mcr-3-like-dgkA structure; yet, Escherichia coli carrying the recombinants of mcr-3-like did not exhibit resistance to colistin. And an incomplete mcr-3-like was found adjacent to mcr-3.3 in A. caviae 1029Y16Ac, suggesting the possibility that mcr-3 variants originated from Aeromonas species. In vivo bacterial pathogenicity test indicated that A. veronii 0728Q8Av exhibited moderate pathogenicity towards infected ayu, while A. caviae 1029Y16Ac was non-virulent.DiscussionThus, both Aeromonas species deserve further attention regarding their antimicrobial resistance and pathogenicity

Targeting the BRD4/FOXO3a/CDK6 Axis Sensitizes AKT Inhibition in Luminal Breast Cancer

BRD4 assembles transcriptional machinery at gene super-enhancer regions and governs the expression of genes that are critical for cancer progression. However, it remains unclear whether BRD4-mediated gene transcription is required for tumor cells to develop drug resistance. Our data show that prolonged treatment of luminal breast cancer cells with AKT inhibitors induces FOXO3a dephosphorylation, nuclear translocation, and disrupts its association with SirT6, eventually leading to FOXO3a acetylation as well as BRD4 recognition. Acetylated FOXO3a recognizes the BD2 domain of BRD4, recruits the BRD4/RNAPII complex to the CDK6 gene promoter, and induces its transcription. Pharmacological inhibition of either BRD4/FOXO3a association or CDK6 significantly overcomes the resistance of luminal breast cancer cells to AKT inhibitors in vitro and in vivo. Our study reports the involvement of BRD4/FOXO3a/CDK6 axis in AKTi resistance and provides potential therapeutic strategies for treating resistant breast cancer

SnO2Nanowire Arrays and Electrical Properties Synthesized by Fast Heating a Mixture of SnO2and CNTs Waste Soot

SnO2nanowire arrays were synthesized by fast heating a mixture of SnO2and the carbon nanotubes waste soot by high-frequency induction heating. The resultant SnO2nanowires possess diameters from 50 to 100 nm and lengths up to tens of mircrometers. The field-effect transistors based on single SnO2nanowire exhibit that as-synthesized nanowires have better transistor performance in terms of transconductance and on/off ratio. This work demonstrates a simple technique to the growth of nanomaterials for application in future nanoelectronic devices

Nonlinear dynamic analysis and control design of a solvent-based post-combustion CO2 capture process

A flexible operation of the solvent-based post-combustion CO2capture (PCC) process is of great importance to make the technology widely used in the power industry. However, in case of a wide range of operation, the presence of process nonlinearity may degrade the performance of the pre-designed linear controller. This paper gives a comprehensive analysis of the dynamic behavior and nonlinearity distribution of the PCC process. Three cases are taken into account during the investigation: 1) capture rate change; 2) flue gas flowrate change; and 3) re-boiler temperature change. The investigations show that the CO2capture process does have strong nonlinearity; however, by selecting a suitable control target and operating range, a single linear controller is possible to control the capture system within this range. Based on the analysis results, a linear model predictive controller is designed for the CO2capture process. Simulations of the designed controller on an MEA based PCC plant demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach

High Diversity of Tick-associated Microbiota from Five Tick Species in Yunnan, China

Ticks are obligate blood-sucking vectors for multiple zoonotic diseases. In this study, tick samples were collected from Yunnan Province, China, which is well-known as the “Global Biodiversity Hotspot” in the world. This study aimed to clarify the microbial populations, including pathogens, associated with ticks and to identify the diversity of tick-borne microbiota in this region. The 16S rRNA full-length sequencing from pooled tick DNA samples and PCR amplification of pathogenic genera from individual samples were performed to understand tick-associated microbiota in this region. A total of 191 adult ticks of 5 tick species were included and revealed 11 phyla and 126 genera bacteria, including pathogenic Anaplasma , Ehrlichia , Candidatus Neoehrlichia, Rickettsia , Borrelia , and Babesia . Further identification suggested that Rickettsia sp. YN01 was a variant strain of Rickettsia spp. IG-1, but Rickettsia sp. YN02 and Rickettsia sp. YN03, were potentially two new SFGR species. This study revealed the complexity of ecological interactions between host and microbe and provided insight for the biological control of ticks. A high microbial diversity in ticks from Yunnan was identified, and more investigation should be undertaken to elucidate the pathogenicity in the area

A Plagiarism Detection Algorithm based on Extended Winnowing

Plagiarism is a common problem faced by academia and education. Mature commercial plagiarism detection system has the advantages of comprehensive and high accuracy, but the expensive detection costs make it unsuitable for real-time, lightweight application environment such as the student assignments plagiarism detection. This paper introduces the method of extending classic Winnowing plagiarism detection algorithm, expands the algorithm in functionality. The extended algorithm can retain the text location and length information in original document while extracting the fingerprints of a document, so that the locating and marking for plagiarism text fragment are much easier to achieve. The experimental results and several years of running practice show that the expansion of the algorithm has little effect on its performance, normal hardware configuration of PC will be able to meet small and medium-sized applications requirements. Based on the characteristics of lightweight, high efficiency, reliability and flexibility of Winnowing, the extended algorithm further enhances the adaptability and extends the application areas