Sources and directions of social support and life satisfaction among solitary Chinese older adults in Hong Kong: the mediating role of sense of loneliness

Based on survey data collected from 151 community-dwelling solitary Chinese older adults in Hong Kong, the present study used path analysis to examine the mediating role of sense of loneliness in the relationship between different sources and directions of social support and life satisfaction. The results showed that sense of loneliness mediated the effects of support from families, friends, and support for others on life satisfaction. In addition, a formal source of social support was not associated with life satisfaction among solitary older adults, although those with a more secure financial status had greater overall life satisfaction. These findings highlight the importance of enhancing awareness among social and health care service providers about the negative effects of insufficient social support on older adults’ sense of loneliness and life satisfaction. Family and friendship networks should be expanded for solitary older adults

Method to Annotate Arrhythmias by Deep Network

This study targets to automatically annotate on arrhythmia by deep network. The investigated types include sinus rhythm, asystole (Asys), supraventricular tachycardia (Tachy), ventricular flutter or fibrillation (VF/VFL), ventricular tachycardia (VT). Methods: 13s limb lead ECG chunks from MIT malignant ventricular arrhythmia database (VFDB) and MIT normal sinus rhythm database were partitioned into subsets for 5-fold cross validation. These signals were resampled to 200Hz, filtered to remove baseline wandering, projected to 2D gray spectrum and then fed into a deep network with brand-new structure. In this network, a feature vector for a single time point was retrieved by residual layers, from which latent representation was extracted by variational autoencoder (VAE). These front portions were trained to meet a certain threshold in loss function, then fixed while training procedure switched to remaining bidirectional recurrent neural network (RNN), the very portions to predict an arrhythmia category. Attention windows were polynomial lumped on RNN outputs for learning from details to outlines. And over sampling was employed for imbalanced data. The trained model was wrapped into docker image for deployment in edge or cloud. Conclusion: Promising sensitivities were achieved in four arrhythmias and good precision rates in two ventricular arrhythmias were also observed. Moreover, it was proven that latent representation by VAE, can significantly boost the speed of convergence and accuracy

Volatile Fatty Acids Production from Codigestion of Food Waste and Sewage Sludge Based on β

Volatile fatty acids (VFAs) are preferred valuable resources, which can be produced from anaerobic digestion process. This study presents a novel technology using β-cyclodextrins (β-CD) pretreatment integrated alkaline method to enhance VFAs production from codigestion of food waste and sewage sludge. Experiment results showed that optimized ratio of food waste to sewage sludge was 3 : 2 because it provided adequate organic substance and seed microorganisms. Based on this optimized ratio, the integrated treatment of alkaline pH 10 and β-CD addition (0.2 g/g TS) performed the best enhancement on VFAs production, and the maximum VFAs production was 8631.7 mg/L which was 6.13, 1.38, and 1.57 times higher than that of control, initial pH 10, and 0.2 g β-CD/g TS treatment, respectively. Furthermore, the hydrolysis rate of protein and polysaccharides was greatly improved in integration treatment, which was 1.18–3.45 times higher than that of other tests. Though the VFAs production and hydrolysis of polymeric organics were highly enhanced, the primary bacterial communities with different treatments did not show substantial differences

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Accurate quantification of astaxanthin from Haematococcus pluvialis using DMSO extraction and lipase-catalyzed hydrolysis pretreatment

Haematococcus pluvialis accumulates high contents of astaxanthin and is considered as an important source of natural astaxanthin production. Fast and accurate quantification of astaxanthin is needed to evaluate the quality of microalgal sources for astaxanthin extraction and to monitor the H. pluvialis cultivation process. In the present study, a less-invasive method for astaxanthin accurate quantification was developed. Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) was used as an extraction solvent to improve the membrane permeability of H. pluvialis. Cholesterol esterase was used to hydrolyze astaxanthin esters via incubation at 36 degrees C for 30 min. The detection of astaxanthin after hydrolysis was achieved by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) within 10 min using a C18 column. The astaxanthin content measurements after enzymatic pretreatment were 1.5-1.7 times higher than that measured after saponified pretreatment. DMSO solvent extraction combined with lipase-catalyzed hydrolysis followed by HPLC detection is proposed for the accurate quantification of astaxanthin in H. pluvialis

Rapamycin induces autophagy and exacerbates metabolism associated complications in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes

31-38Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is characterized by lack of insulin production as a consequence of massive beta cells destruction. The contributions of autophagy to loss of beta cell mass were not clearly elucidated. Rapamycin is a specific and potent inhibitor of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and is used as the central immunosuppressant in T1DM patients especially for those who received islet transplantation. In the present study, effects of rapamycin on autophagy of T1DM were investigated in a mouse model treated with multiple low doses of streptozotocin. Rapamycin treatment led to hyperglycemia, weight loss, increased intake of food and drinking water, and islet inflammation in T1DM mice. Pathological changes including autophagy and apoptosis in pancreas, kidney, spleen and thymus, accompanied with an accumulation of LC3-II, Beclin1 and Caspase-3 protein were observed. The results indicate that rapamycin may exacerbate metabolism associated complications by activating autophagy and apoptosis in T1DM

Study on freeze-thaw resistance with NaCl of desert sand engineering cement composites

To test the salt-freezing resistance performance of desert sand engineering cement composite (DSECC) prepared by different types of desert sand, the specimens with 3% NaCl solution on the top surface after 56 days of curing were tested by one-sided freeze-thaw cycles (FTC) and compression test after freezing and thawing. Two desert sands were collected from the Tengger Desert and Mu Us Desert in China, denoted T and M. The appearance, water absorption rate, mass loss rate, relative dynamic elastic modulus and longitudinal ultrasonic speed of the DSECC were tested after 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 and 28 cycles of freeze-thaw. Compressive strength was tasted after 8, 16, 24, and 32 cycles of freeze-thaw. Results show that FTC can accelerate the damage of the appearance. Meanwhile, the water absorption rate increases, the relative dynamic elastic modulus, the longitudinal ultrasonic wave speed, and the compressive strength decreases. Under the same FTC, the salt-freezing resistance performance of DSECC using T has slightly better than that using M

Interfacing manganese oxide and cobalt in porous graphitic carbon polyhedrons boosts oxygen electrocatalysis for Zn-air batteries

Rational design and synthesis of highly active and robust bifunctional non-noble electrocatalysts for both oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) are urgently required for efficient rechargeable metal-air batteries. Herein, abundant MnO/Co heterointerfaces are engineered in porous graphitic carbon (MnO/Co/PGC) polyhedrons via a facile hydrothermal-calcination route with a bimetal-organic framework as the precursor. The in situ generated Co nanocrystals not only create well-defined heterointerfaces with high conductivity to overcome the poor OER activity but also promote the formation of robust graphitic carbon. Owing to the desired composition and formation of the heterostructures, the resulting MnO/Co/PGC exhibits superior activity and stability toward both OER and ORR, which makes it an efficient air cathode for the rechargeable Zn-air battery. Importantly, the homemade Zn-air battery is able to deliver excellent performance including a peak power density of 172 mW cm-2 and a specific capacity of 872 mAh g-1 , as well as excellent cycling stability (350 cycles), outperforming commercial mixed Pt/C||RuO2 catalysts. This work highlights the synergy from heterointerfaces in oxygen electrocatalysis, thus providing a promising approach for advanced metal-air cathode materials.NRF (Natl Research Foundation, S’pore)Accepted versio

Additional file 3: Figure S3. of Caveolin-1 regulates the expression of tight junction proteins during hyperoxia-induced pulmonary epithelial barrier breakdown

Efficacy assessment of Cav-1-siRNA transfection and pCMV6-CAV1 transfection. At 60–70 % confluence, cells exposed to normoxia were transfected with 10 nm of a control siRNA (Fluorescein Conjugate) (Cat.#6201;Cell Signaling Danvers MA) for 72 h to assess transfection efficiency for Cav-1-siRNA, while cells exposed to normoxia or hyperoxia were transfected with 1 μg/mL of pCMV6-AC-GFP (Cat.#PS100010; OriGene Technologies) for 48 h to assess transfection efficiency for pCMV6-CAV1. Images were obtained using a confocal laser scanning microscope at 100× magnification. Green represents transfected cells. The areas of transfected cells and all the cells in the view were measured by image pro plus software, and the ratio represents transfection efficiency. The transfection efficiency of control siRNA was (88.29 ± 8.25)% (A, B). The transfection efficiency of pCMV6-AC-GFP under normoxic conditions was (92.81 ± 4.16)% (C, D). The transfection efficiency of pCMV6-AC-GFP under hyperoxic conditions was (90.42 ± 6.83)% (E, F). (TIF 10078 kb