Label-Free Fluorescent Determination of Sunset Yellow in Soft Drinks Based on an Indicator-Displacement Assay

This work reported a fluorescence sensing platform for Sunset Yellow (SY) determination based on competitive host-guest interaction between cucurbit[7]uril (CB7) and signal probe/target molecules. Luteolin/epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and SY were selected as the probe and target molecules, respectively. When luteolin or EGCG entered the CB7 host, its fluorescence significantly improved. However, upon the presence of SY in the performed luteolin·CB7 or EGCG·CB7 complex, this led to a remarkable decrease in fluorescence. This result was due to the fact that the binding constant of CB7/SY (4.9×104 M−1) was greater than that of CB7/luteolin (3.2×103 M−1) or CB7/EGCG (4.8×103 M−1). The fluorescence intensities of CB7/luteolin and CB7/EGCG complexes decreased linearly with increased SY concentration ranges of 0.5–50.0 and 2.0–50.0 μM. The proposed method had detection limits of 0.12 and 0.45 μM and was successfully used to determine SY samples with good recoveries ranging from 96.3% to 103.8%. This competitive mode provided a promising fluorescence assay strategy for potential applications in food safety

Impact of lockdown on the growth of children in China aged 3-6 years during the COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundLockdowns in COVID-19 pandemic led to less physical activity and more intake of unhealthy food in children. The aim of this study was to investigate the negative impact of major lockdowns on the growth of children aged 3-6 years during COVID-19 pandemic period.MethodsPhysical examination results in 2019 to 2022 from 5834 eligible children (2972 males and 2862 females) from Southwestern China who were 3 years old in 2019 were retrospectively collected. Height and weight data points were extracted from the results, and percentiles of height (height%), weight (weight%), and BMI (BMI%), and rates of overweight and obesity were calculated and compared between different years during the pandemic.ResultsAfter analyzing the 15404 growth data points from 5834 children, a slowly increasing trend of height% from 2019 to 2022 was observed. Weight%, BMI%, overweight rate, obesity rate, and combined overweight and obesity rate had two peaks in 2020 and 2022 when major lockdowns were adopted and a drop in between (year 2021), except for obesity rate which did not drop in 2021. Similar results were shown after stratification by gender.ConclusionThe lockdowns in COVID-19 pandemic promoted obesity of kindergarten children, but did not show any negative impact on their height growth possibly due to over-nutrition of children during lockdowns. More efforts need to be made to limit the increase of obesity rate in kindergarten children during possible future lockdowns

A Systems Biology-Based Classifier for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Diagnosis

AIM: The diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in the early stage is crucial to the application of curative treatments which are the only hope for increasing the life expectancy of patients. Recently, several large-scale studies have shed light on this problem through analysis of gene expression profiles to identify markers correlated with HCC progression. However, those marker sets shared few genes in common and were poorly validated using independent data. Therefore, we developed a systems biology based classifier by combining the differential gene expression with topological features of human protein interaction networks to enhance the ability of HCC diagnosis. METHODS AND RESULTS: In the Oncomine platform, genes differentially expressed in HCC tissues relative to their corresponding normal tissues were filtered by a corrected Q value cut-off and Concept filters. The identified genes that are common to different microarray datasets were chosen as the candidate markers. Then, their networks were analyzed by GeneGO Meta-Core software and the hub genes were chosen. After that, an HCC diagnostic classifier was constructed by Partial Least Squares modeling based on the microarray gene expression data of the hub genes. Validations of diagnostic performance showed that this classifier had high predictive accuracy (85.88∼92.71%) and area under ROC curve (approximating 1.0), and that the network topological features integrated into this classifier contribute greatly to improving the predictive performance. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that this modeling strategy is not only applicable to HCC, but also to other cancers. CONCLUSION: Our analysis suggests that the systems biology-based classifier that combines the differential gene expression and topological features of human protein interaction network may enhance the diagnostic performance of HCC classifier

Cause Analysis and Process Optimization of Non uniformity of FRP Anti current Vibration Carrier Shell

For improving the test system, it needs to build measuring carrier and optimize shell design. To obtain valid and reliable test data, it needs the measurement uncertainty of test system with 3dB.But the test results show the measurement of results between the inside and outside the shell are quite different. This has great impact on the measurement results. This paper carried out cause analysis from five links of people, machine, material, method, environment for sound transmission performance of FRP housing. It found out the main reason of poor sound transmission of FRP housing, Single side vacuum adsorption molding method have been taken, good results and expected purpose have been achieved