1,848 research outputs found
A therapeutic potential for marine skeletal proteins in bone regeneration
A vital ingredient for engineering bone tissue, in the culture dish, is the use of recombinant matrix and growth proteins to help accelerate the growth of cultivated tissues into clinically acceptable quantities. The skeletal organic matrices of calcifying marine invertebrates are an untouched potential source of such growth inducing proteins. They have the advantage of being ready-made and retain the native state of the original protein. Striking evidence shows that skeleton building bone morphogenic protein-2/4 (BMP) and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) exist within various marine invertebrates such as, corals. Best practice mariculture and the latest innovations in long-term marine invertebrate cell cultivation can be implemented to ensure that these proteins are produced sustainably and supplied continuously. This also guarantees that coral reef habitats are not damaged during the collection of specimens. Potential proteins for bone repair, either extracted from the skeleton or derived from cultivated tissues, can be identified, evaluated and retrieved using chromatography, cell assays and proteomic methods. Due to the current evidence for bone matrix protein analogues in marine invertebrates, together with the methods established for their production and retrieval there is a genuine prospect that they can be used to regenerate living bone for potential clinical use. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI
Heralded quantum entanglement between two crystals
Quantum networks require the crucial ability to entangle quantum nodes. A
prominent example is the quantum repeater which allows overcoming the distance
barrier of direct transmission of single photons, provided remote quantum
memories can be entangled in a heralded fashion. Here we report the observation
of heralded entanglement between two ensembles of rare-earth-ions doped into
separate crystals. A heralded single photon is sent through a 50/50
beamsplitter, creating a single-photon entangled state delocalized between two
spatial modes. The quantum state of each mode is subsequently mapped onto a
crystal, leading to an entangled state consisting of a single collective
excitation delocalized between two crystals. This entanglement is revealed by
mapping it back to optical modes and by estimating the concurrence of the
retrieved light state. Our results highlight the potential of rare-earth-ions
doped crystals for entangled quantum nodes and bring quantum networks based on
solid-state resources one step closer.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Laboratory biomarkers associated with COVID-19 severity and management
The heterogeneous disease course of COVID-19 is unpredictable, ranging from mild self-limiting symptoms to cytokine storms, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), multi-organ failure and death. Identification of high-risk cases will enable appropriate intervention and escalation. This study investigates the routine laboratory tests and cytokines implicated in COVID-19 for their potential application as biomarkers of disease severity, respiratory failure and need of higher-level care.
From analysis of 203 samples, CRP, IL-6, IL-10 and LDH were most strongly correlated with the WHO ordinal scale of illness severity, the fraction of inspired oxygen delivery, radiological evidence of ARDS and level of respiratory support (p ≤ 0.001). IL-6 levels of ≥3.27 pg/ml provide a sensitivity of 0.87 and specificity of 0.64 for a requirement of ventilation, and a CRP of ≥37 mg/l of 0.91 and 0.66.
Reliable stratification of high-risk cases has significant implications on patient triage, resource management and potentially the initiation of novel therapies in severe patients
Mapping the unconventional orbital texture in topological crystalline insulators
The newly discovered topological crystalline insulators (TCIs) harbor a
complex band structure involving multiple Dirac cones. These materials are
potentially highly tunable by external electric field, temperature or strain
and could find future applications in field-effect transistors, photodetectors,
and nano-mechanical systems. Theoretically, it has been predicted that
different Dirac cones, offset in energy and momentum-space, might harbor vastly
different orbital character, a unique property which if experimentally
realized, would present an ideal platform for accomplishing new spintronic
devices. However, the orbital texture of the Dirac cones, which is of immense
importance in determining a variety of materials properties, still remains
elusive in TCIs. Here, we unveil the orbital texture in a prototypical TCI
PbSnSe. By using Fourier-transform (FT) scanning tunneling
spectroscopy (STS) we measure the interference patterns produced by the
scattering of surface state electrons. We discover that the intensity and
energy dependences of FTs show distinct characteristics, which can directly be
attributed to orbital effects. Our experiments reveal the complex band topology
involving two Lifshitz transitions and establish the orbital nature of the
Dirac bands in this new class of topological materials, which could provide a
different pathway towards future quantum applications
Efficient and long-lived quantum memory with cold atoms inside a ring cavity
Quantum memories are regarded as one of the fundamental building blocks of
linear-optical quantum computation and long-distance quantum communication. A
long standing goal to realize scalable quantum information processing is to
build a long-lived and efficient quantum memory. There have been significant
efforts distributed towards this goal. However, either efficient but
short-lived or long-lived but inefficient quantum memories have been
demonstrated so far. Here we report a high-performance quantum memory in which
long lifetime and high retrieval efficiency meet for the first time. By placing
a ring cavity around an atomic ensemble, employing a pair of clock states,
creating a long-wavelength spin wave, and arranging the setup in the
gravitational direction, we realize a quantum memory with an intrinsic spin
wave to photon conversion efficiency of 73(2)% together with a storage lifetime
of 3.2(1) ms. This realization provides an essential tool towards scalable
linear-optical quantum information processing.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Photonic quantum state transfer between a cold atomic gas and a crystal
Interfacing fundamentally different quantum systems is key to build future
hybrid quantum networks. Such heterogeneous networks offer superior
capabilities compared to their homogeneous counterparts as they merge
individual advantages of disparate quantum nodes in a single network
architecture. However, only very few investigations on optical
hybrid-interconnections have been carried out due to the high fundamental and
technological challenges, which involve e.g. wavelength and bandwidth matching
of the interfacing photons. Here we report the first optical quantum
interconnection between two disparate matter quantum systems with photon
storage capabilities. We show that a quantum state can be faithfully
transferred between a cold atomic ensemble and a rare-earth doped crystal via a
single photon at telecommunication wavelength, using cascaded quantum frequency
conversion. We first demonstrate that quantum correlations between a photon and
a single collective spin excitation in the cold atomic ensemble can be
transferred onto the solid-state system. We also show that single-photon
time-bin qubits generated in the cold atomic ensemble can be converted, stored
and retrieved from the crystal with a conditional qubit fidelity of more than
. Our results open prospects to optically connect quantum nodes with
different capabilities and represent an important step towards the realization
of large-scale hybrid quantum networks
Janus monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides.
Structural symmetry-breaking plays a crucial role in determining the electronic band structures of two-dimensional materials. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to breaking the in-plane symmetry of graphene with electric fields on AB-stacked bilayers or stacked van der Waals heterostructures. In contrast, transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers are semiconductors with intrinsic in-plane asymmetry, leading to direct electronic bandgaps, distinctive optical properties and great potential in optoelectronics. Apart from their in-plane inversion asymmetry, an additional degree of freedom allowing spin manipulation can be induced by breaking the out-of-plane mirror symmetry with external electric fields or, as theoretically proposed, with an asymmetric out-of-plane structural configuration. Here, we report a synthetic strategy to grow Janus monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides breaking the out-of-plane structural symmetry. In particular, based on a MoS2 monolayer, we fully replace the top-layer S with Se atoms. We confirm the Janus structure of MoSSe directly by means of scanning transmission electron microscopy and energy-dependent X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and prove the existence of vertical dipoles by second harmonic generation and piezoresponse force microscopy measurements
Schedule-dependent activity of 5-fluorouracil and irinotecan combination in the treatment of human colorectal cancer: in vitro evidence and a phase I dose-escalating clinical trial
Several schedules of 5-fluorouracil (FU) and irinotecan (IRI) have been shown to improve overall survival in advanced colorectal cancer (CRC). Preclinical evidence suggests that the sequential administration of IRI and FU produces synergistic activity, although their clinical use has not been fully optimised. We investigated the interaction between short-term exposure to SN-38, the active metabolite of IRI, and prolonged exposure to FU in human CRC HT-29 cells and observed that the synergism of action between the two agents can be increased by extending the time of cell exposure to FU and reducing the interval between administration of the two agents. Based on these findings, we performed a phase I trial in 25 advanced CRC patients using a modified IRI/FU regimen as first-line therapy and evaluated three dose levels of IRI (150–300 mg/m2) and two of continuous infusion of FU (800–1000 mg/m2) in a 3-weekly schedule. The most severe grade III–IV toxicities were neutropoenia in four cycles and diarrhoea in three. One patient achieved complete response (4%), 12 a partial response (48%), the overall response rate was 52% (±20, 95% CI); seven of 25 patients had stable disease (28%), the overall disease control was 80% (±16, 95% CI). This modified IRI/FU schedule is feasible and exhibits potentially interesting clinical activity
Analysis and Prediction of Translation Rate Based on Sequence and Functional Features of the mRNA
Protein concentrations depend not only on the mRNA level, but also on the translation rate and the degradation rate. Prediction of mRNA's translation rate would provide valuable information for in-depth understanding of the translation mechanism and dynamic proteome. In this study, we developed a new computational model to predict the translation rate, featured by (1) integrating various sequence-derived and functional features, (2) applying the maximum relevance & minimum redundancy method and incremental feature selection to select features to optimize the prediction model, and (3) being able to predict the translation rate of RNA into high or low translation rate category. The prediction accuracies under rich and starvation condition were 68.8% and 70.0%, respectively, evaluated by jackknife cross-validation. It was found that the following features were correlated with translation rate: codon usage frequency, some gene ontology enrichment scores, number of RNA binding proteins known to bind its mRNA product, coding sequence length, protein abundance and 5′UTR free energy. These findings might provide useful information for understanding the mechanisms of translation and dynamic proteome. Our translation rate prediction model might become a high throughput tool for annotating the translation rate of mRNAs in large-scale
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