Effects of Dietary Stevioside Supplementation on Feed Intake, Digestion, Ruminal Fermentation, and Blood Metabolites of Goats

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of dietary inclusion of tevioside on feed intake, feeding behavior, nutrient digestion, rumen fermentation, and serum biochemical parameters in goats. Nine male Xiangdong black goats (21.8 ± 1.5 kg of body weight) were used in a replicated 3 × 3 Latin square. All goats were fed a basal diet including concentrate and forage (chopped rice traw). The three treatments were 0, 400, or 800 mg stevioside per kg chopped rice traw on a dry matter (DM) basis. Dry matter intake of forage and total diet linearly increased (p = 0.03 and p = 0.04) with increasing stevioside in the diet. There was no effect (p > 0.05) of stevioside inclusion in the diets on eating time, rumination time, or total mastication time for the goats. Total volatile fatty acid (VFA) concentration in the rumen responded quadratically (p < 0.01), decreasing from 0 to 400 mg/kg stevioside inclusion and increasing thereafter. The inclusion of steviosid in the diets promoted a quadratic increase in the apparent total tract digestibilities of neutral detergent fiber (NDF) (p = 0.02) and acid detergent fiber (ADF) (p = 0.01). Based on the results of this experiment, it could be concluded that supplementing goat diets with stevioside at 400 mg/kg to 800 mg/kg forage (about 270 to 541 mg/kg diet) resulted in increased dry intake of forage and total diet, suggesting that stevioside has positive potential as a feed additive to improve feed intake

High response to nitrogen dioxide derived from antimony peroxide modified tin oxide porous nanocomposites serving as gas sensing material

[Display omitted] Sb2O5 modified porous SnO2 nanocomposites have been synthesized and exhibited superior sensing performances for NO2 detection attributing to the hybrid of p-type Sb2O5 with n-type SnO2 to form p-n junctions. The Sb2O5 modified SnO2 porous nanocomposites serving as NO2 gas sensing material have been successfully synthesized through a facile hydrothermal method followed by a calcination process. The porous Sb2O5/SnO2 nanocomposites display a dominant pore size of ca. 20nm and specific surface area of 37.2m2g−1, which can provide large contact area for the chemical adsorption of NO2 molecules and abundant channels for the import and export of NO2 gas. Gas sensing tests demonstrated that the as-prepared porous Sb2O5/SnO2 nanocomposites (1mol% Sb2O5) achieved superior sensing performances including high selectivity to NO2, low optimal operating temperature (ca. 100°C), high response (800–5 ppm NO2), and short response and recovery times (20 s and 70 s to 5ppm NO2, respectively). Comparing with pure SnO2 porous structure, the enhanced gas sensing performances of the porous Sb2O5/SnO2 nanocomposites are mainly ascribed to the p-n junctions generated from the hybrid of n-type SnO2 with p-type Sb2O5, which not only improved the response and selectivity to NO2 gas, but also reduced the operating temperature

Ultrathin Cellulose Nanofiber Assisted Ambient-Pressure-Dried, Ultralight, Mechanically Robust, Multifunctional MXene Aerogels

Ambient-pressure-dried (APD) preparation of transition metal carbide/nitrides (MXene) aerogels is highly desirable yet remains highly challenging. Here, ultrathin, high-strength-to-weight-ratio, renewable cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) are efficiently utilized to assist in the APD preparation of ultralight yet robust, highly conductive, large-area MXene-based aerogels via a facile, energy-efficient, eco-friendly, and scalable freezing-exchanging-drying approach. The strong interactions of large-aspect-ratio CNF and MXene as well as the biomimetic nacre-like microstructure induce high mechanical strength and stability to avoid the structure collapse of aerogels in the APD process. Abundant functional groups of CNFs facilitate the chemical crosslinking of MXene-based aerogels, significantly improving the hydrophobicity, water resistance, and even oxidation stability. The ultrathin, one-dimensional nature of the CNF renders the minimal MXenes' interlayered gaps and numerous heterogeneous interfaces, yielding the excellent conductivity and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performance of aerogels. The synergies of the MXene, CNF, and abundant pores efficiently improve the EMI shielding performance, photothermal conversion, and absorption of viscous crude oil. Our work shows great promises of the APD, multifunctional MXene-based aerogels in electromagnetic protection or compatibility, thermal therapy, and oil-water separation applications. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Graphene oxide-assisted multiple cross-linking of MXene for large-area, high-strength, oxidation-resistant, and multifunctional films

Transition metal carbides/nitrides (MXenes) with metallic electrical conductivity and excellent processability attract increasing attention for assembling multifunctional macrostructures. However, the challenges, involving poor mechanical strength, inferior oxidation stability, and limited scalable manufacturing, impede their wide applications. Herein, the large-area, high-strength, ultra-flexible hybrid films are developed through the multiple physical and chemical cross-linking of MXene/cellulose films facilitated by graphene oxide. The MXene-based films manifest significantly improved hydrophobicity, water/solvent resistance, and oxidation stability, and meanwhile, maintain excellent conductivity and electromagnetic interference shielding performance. The X-band surface-specific shielding effectiveness (SE) of 18,837.5 dB cm2 g−1 and an SE over 60 dB in an ultra-broadband frequency range are achieved, comparable to the best shields ever reported. Furthermore, the wearable films demonstrate excellent photothermal antibacterial and electrothermal deicing applications. Thus, such high-performance MXene-based films developed through a facile and scalable manufacturing method have substantial application prospects in flexible electronics, thermotherapy, electromagnetic compatibility, and aerospace.This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2021YFB3502500), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO. 22205131, 61905232), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (No. 2022HYYQ-014, ZR2016BM16), and Provincial Key Research and Development Program of Shandong (No. 2021ZLGX01), Distinguished Young Scholars Foundation of Hubei Province (ZRJQ2022000503), "20 Clauses about Colleges and Universities (new)" (Independent Training of Innovation Team) Program of Jinan (2021GXRC036), the Joint Laboratory project of Electromagnetic Structure Technology (637-2022-70-F-037), Shenzhen municipal special fund for guiding local scientific and Technological Development (China 2021Szvup071), and Qilu Young Scholar Program of Shandong University (No. 31370082163127)

Identification and validation of biomarkers related to Th1 cell infiltration in neuropathic pain

Abstract Neuropathic pain (NP) is a widespread chronic pain with a prevalence of 6.9–10% in the general population, severely affecting patients’ physical and mental health. Accumulating evidence indicated that the immune environment is an essential factor causing NP. However, the mechanism is unclear. This study attempted to analyze NP-related immune infiltration patterns. We downloaded the expression profiles from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The novel method of single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) algorithm and weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was applied to identify immune-related genes and verified in vitro and in vivo experiments. The spared nerve injury (SNI) group was closely related to type1 T helper cells (Th1 cells), and two key genes (Abca1 and Fyb) positively correlated with Th1 cell infiltration. At the single-cell level, Abca1 and Fyb were significantly expressed in macrophages. In addition, we verified that Abca1 could affect the function of macrophages. Finally, we hypothesized that Abca1 is involved in the infiltration of Th1 cells into dorsal root ganglion (DRG) tissues and induces NP via immunoinflammatory response. Hence, the present study aimed to elucidate the correlation between NP and neuroinflammation and identify a new therapeutic target for treating NP

Imbedding Pd Nanoparticles into Porous In₂O₃ Structure for Enhanced Low-Concentration Methane Sensing

Methane (CH4), as the main component of natural gas and coal mine gas, is widely used in daily life and industrial processes and its leakage always causes undesirable misadventures. Thus, the rapid detection of low concentration methane is quite necessary. However, due to its robust chemical stability resulting from the strong tetrahedral-symmetry structure, the methane molecules are usually chemically inert to the sensing layers in detectors, making the rapid and efficient alert a big challenge. In this work, palladium nanoparticles (Pd NPs) embedded indium oxide porous hollow tubes (In2O3 PHTs) were successfully synthesized using Pd@MIL-68 (In) MOFs as precursors. All In2O3-based samples derived from Pd@MIL-68 (In) MOFs inherited the morphology of the precursors and exhibited the feature of hexagonal hollow tubes with porous architecture. The gas-sensing performances to 5000 ppm CH4 were evaluated and it was found that Pd@In2O3-2 gave the best response (Ra/Rg = 23.2) at 370 °C, which was 15.5 times higher than that of pristine-In2O3 sensors. In addition, the sensing materials also showed superior selectivity against interfering gases and a rather short response/recovery time of 7 s/5 s. The enhancement in sensing performances of Pd@In2O3-2 could be attributed to the large surface area, rich porosity, abundant oxygen vacancies and the catalytic function of Pd NPs