Albumin Binding Function: The Potential Earliest Indicator for Liver Function Damage

Background. Currently there is no indicator that can evaluate actual liver lesion for early stages of viral hepatitis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and cirrhosis. Aim of this study was to investigate if albumin binding function could better reflect liver function in these liver diseases. Methods. An observational study was performed on 193 patients with early NAFLD, viral hepatitis, and cirrhosis. Cirrhosis patients were separated according to Child-Pugh score into A, B, and C subgroup. Albumin metal ion binding capacity (Ischemia-modified albumin transformed, IMAT) and fatty acid binding capacity (total binding sites, TBS) were detected. Results. Both IMAT and TBS were significantly decreased in patients with NAFLD and early hepatitis. In hepatitis group, they declined prior to changes of liver enzymes. IMAT was significantly higher in cirrhosis Child-Pugh class A group than hepatitis patients and decreased in Child-Pugh class B and class C patients. Both IMAT/albumin and TBS/albumin decreased significantly in hepatitis and NAFLD group patients. Conclusions. This is the first study to discover changes of albumin metal ion and fatty acid binding capacities prior to conventional biomarkers for liver damage in early stage of liver diseases. They may become potential earliest sensitive indicators for liver function evaluation

National-scale mapping of building footprints using feature super-resolution semantic segmentation of Sentinel-2 images

Since buildings are closely related to human activities, large-scale mapping of individual buildings has become a hot research topic. High-resolution images with sub-meter or meter resolution are common choices to produce maps of building footprints. However, high-resolution images are both infrequently collected and expensive to obtain and process, making it very difficult to produce large-scale maps of individual buildings timely. This paper presents a simple but effective way to produce a national-scale map of building footprints using feature super-resolution semantic segmentation of sentinel-2 images. Specifically, we proposed a super-resolution semantic segmentation network named EDSR_NASUnet, which is an end-to-end network to generate semantic maps with a spatial resolution of 2.5 m from real remote sensing images with a spatial resolution of 10 m. Based on the dataset consisting of images from 35 cities in China, we quantitatively compared the proposed method with three methods under the same framework and qualitatively evaluated the identification results of individual buildings. In addition, we mapped building footprints within the entire China at 2.5 m-resolution using Sentinel-2 images of 10 m resolution. The density of building footprints varies considerably across China, with a gradual increase in building footprints from west to east, i.e. from the first step of China’s terrain to the third one. We detected over 86.3 million individual buildings with a total rooftop area of approximately 58,719.43 km2. The number of buildings increased from 5.73 million in the first step of China’s terrain, through 23.41 million in the second step of China’s terrain, to 57.16 million in the third step of China’s terrain. The area of buildings also increased from 3318.02 km2 through 13,844.29 to 41,557.12 km2. The Aihui-Tengchong line, a dividing line representing the regional distribution of China’s population, also divides the regional distribution of Chinese buildings. Our approach has a more open and practical application because of the medium-resolution images and platform with open access. Results are available to the community (https://code.earthengine.google.com/?asset=users/flower/2019_China)

Effect of high pressure sintering and annealing on microstructure and thermoelectric properties of nanocrystalline Bi2Te2.7Se0.3 doped with Gd

Bi2Te2.7Se0.3 of high performance doped with Gd bulk materials was prepared by a high pressure (6.0 GPa) sintering (HPS) method at 593 K, 633 K, 673 K and 693 K. The sample was then annealed for 36 h in a vacuum at 633 K. The phase composition, crystal structure and morphology of the sample were analyzed by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The electric conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and thermal conductivity aspects of the sample were measured from 298 K to 473 K. The results show that high pressure sintering and the doping with Gd has a great effect on the crystal structure and the thermoelectric properties of the samples. The samples are consisted of nanoparticles before and after annealing, and these nanostructures have good stability at high temperature. HPS together with annealing can improve the TE properties of the sample by decreasing the thermal conductivity of the sample with nanostructures. The maximum ZT value of 0.74 was obtained at 423 K for the sample, which was sintered at 673 K and then annealed at 633 K for 36 h. Compared with the zone melting sample, it was increased by 85% at 423 K. Hence the temperature of the maximum of figure of merit was increased. The results can be applied to the field of thermoelectric power generation materials

Enhancement in Li+/Mg(2+)separation from salt lake brine with PDA-PEI composite nanofiltration membrane

Extraction of lithium from high Mg2+/Li(+)ratio salt lake brine with the nanofiltration (NF) membrane is significantly challenging. Interfacial polymerization was utilized for the facile modification of NF membranes with polydopamine (PDA) and polyethylenimine (PEI) to enhance lithium separation efficiency. Comparing permeability and salts rejection (Li(+)and Mg2+) of three NF membranes before and after PDA/PEI deposition, it was observed that separation efficiency was not only dependent on steric hindrance but also affected by Donnan exclusion mechanism. In the case of NF270 membrane after facile polymerization, due to small pore size distribution and low charge density confirmed by zeta potential measurements, Li(+)permeability was reached about 95% at a flux of 21.33 L center dot m(-2)center dot h(-1). Although with the DK membrane, separation factor SF(Li/Mg)was also increased up to 60 after modification, the pore narrowing effect significantly decreased lithium permeability and flux. Experimental results showed that facile modification not only enhanced stability and hydrophilicity but also reduced the high Mg2+/Li(+)ratio from 30 to 4.1 in single-stage separation

Highly purified dicobalt phosphide nanodendrites on exfoliated graphene: In situ synthesis and as robust bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting

Designing highly active, earth-abundant and robust electrocatalysts with large surface areas, abundant active sites, good electric conductivity, and minimization of gas bubble adhesion operated in the same electrolyte toward overall water splitting remains a grand challenge. Herein, we report an in situ synthesis of dendritic dicobalt phosphide (Co2P) nanostructures with high purity on exfoliated graphene (EG), denoted as Co2P/EG, which show superior performances toward both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The abundant active sites featured by dendritic nanostructures, and fast electron transfer kinetics of EG as well as synergistic effects between active species and substrate contribute to the improved catalytic performances for HER and OER. In specific, for the HER, the CO2P/EG shows excellent activity with a low overpotentials of 163 mV and 157 mV at 10 mA cm(-2) in 0.5 M H2SO4 and 1.0 M KOH, respectively. While for the OER, it also exhibits high efficiency with an overpotential of 260 mV at 10 mA cm(-2) in 1.0 M KOH. More impressively, a Co2P/EG parallel to Co2P/EG two-electrode alkaline electrolyzer affords a current density of 10 mA cm(-2) at a low cell voltage of 1.67 V, along with satisfied stability. An AA dry battery with a nominal voltage of 1.5 V can drive overall water splitting with obvious gas bubble release. Moreover, our synthetic approach might be applied for in situ synthesizing various metal phosphides/EG for electrolysis-based energy conversion. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Gold-catalyzed reduction of metal ions for core-shell structures with subnanometer shells

Construction of core-shell nanostructures with ultrathin shells is a powerful way to leverage the lattice strain effect to enhance surface activity for a given catalytic reaction. Herein, we report a gold-catalyzed approach for growing a large variety of subnanometer-thick metal shells of up to several atomic layers on the gold cores. This strategy relies on a gold-catalyzed reduction of various metal precursors, in both aqueous and organic solvents, in which the metal atoms nucleate on the gold seed surfaces instead of self-nucleating in the solution. In addition, by coupling this gold catalysis with the galvanic replacement reaction, the ultrathin shell composition could be tuned to further optimize the lattice strain effect in the shell layer. This provides an effective way to equip the core-shell nanostructures with the desired catalytic performance in some key electrochemical reactions, for example, the ethanol oxidation reaction and oxygen reduction reaction

Multi-Responsive Sensor Based on Porous Hydrogen-Bonded Organic Frameworks for Selective Sensing of Ions and Dopamine Molecules

Hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs), as an emerging porous material, have attracted increasing research interest in fluorescence sensing due to their inherent fluorescence emission units with unique physicochemical properties. Herein, based on the organic building block 3,3′,5,5′-tetrakis-(4-carboxyphenyl)-1,1′-biphenyl (H4TCBP), the porous material HOF-TCBP was successfully synthesized using hydrogen bond self-assembly in a DMF solution. The fluorescence properties of the HOF-TCBP solution showed that when the concentration was high, excimers were easily formed, the PL emission was red-shifted, and the fluorescence intensity became weaker. HOF-TCBP showed good sensitivity and selectivity to metal ions Fe3+, Cr3+, and anion Cr2O72−. In addition, HOF-TCBP can serve as a label-free fluorescent sensor material for the sensitive and selective detection of dopamine (DA). HOF-based DA sensing is actually easy, low-cost, simple to operate, and highly selective for many potential interfering substances, and it has been successfully applied to the detection of DA in biological samples with satisfactory recoveries (101.1–104.9%). To our knowledge, this is the first report of HOF materials for efficient detection of the neurotransmitter dopamine in biological fluids. In short, this work widely broadens the application of HOF materials as fluorescent sensors for the sensing of ions and biological disease markers

Gold-catalyzed reduction of metal ions for core-shell structures with subnanometer shells

Construction of core-shell nanostructures with ultrathin shells is a powerful way to leverage the lattice strain effect to enhance surface activity for a given catalytic reaction. Herein, we report a gold-catalyzed approach for growing a large variety of subnanometer-thick metal shells of up to several atomic layers on the gold cores. This strategy relies on a gold-catalyzed reduction of various metal precursors, in both aqueous and organic solvents, in which the metal atoms nucleate on the gold seed surfaces instead of self-nucleating in the solution. In addition, by coupling this gold catalysis with the galvanic replacement reaction, the ultrathin shell composition could be tuned to further optimize the lattice strain effect in the shell layer. This provides an effective way to equip the core-shell nanostructures with the desired catalytic performance in some key electrochemical reactions, for example, the ethanol oxidation reaction and oxygen reduction reaction