Antiviral treatment alters the frequency of activating and inhibitory receptor-expressing natural killer cells in chronic Hepatitis B virus infected patients

Natural killer (NK) cells play a critical role in innate antiviral immunity, but little is known about the impact of antiviral therapy on the frequency of NK cell subsets. To this aim, we performed this longitudinal study to examine the dynamic changes of the frequency of different subsets of NK cells in CHB patients after initiation of tenofovir or adefovir therapy. We found that NK cell numbers and subset distribution differ between CHB patients and normal subjects; furthermore, the association was found between ALT level and CD158b+ NK cell in HBV patients. In tenofovir group, the frequency of NK cells increased during the treatment accompanied by downregulated expression of NKG2A and KIR2DL3. In adefovir group, NK cell numbers did not differ during the treatment, but also accompanied by downregulated expression of NKG2A and KIR2DL3. Our results demonstrate that treatment with tenofovir leads to viral load reduction, and correlated with NK cell frequencies in peripheral blood of chronic hepatitis B virus infection. In addition, treatments with both tenofovir and adefovir in chronic HBV infected patients induce a decrease of the frequency of inhibitory receptor+ NK cells, which may account for the partial restoration of the function of NK cells in peripheral blood following treatment

Additional symmetries of constrained CKP and BKP hierarchies

The additional symmetries of the constrained CKP (cCKP) and BKP (cBKP) hierarchies are given by their actions on the Lax operators, and their actions on the eigenfunction and adjoint eigenfunction $\{\Phi_i,\Psi_i \}$ are presented explicitly. Furthermore, we show that acting on the space of the wave operator, $\partial_k^*$ forms new centerless $W^{cC}_{1+\infty}$ and $W^{cB}_{1+\infty}$-subalgebra of centerless $W_{1+\infty}$ respectively. In order to define above symmetry flows $\partial_k^*$ of the cCKP and cBKP hierarchies, two vital operators $Y_k$ are introduced to revise the additional symmetry flows of the CKP and BKP hierarchies.Comment: 14 pages, accepted by SCIENCE CHINA Mathematics(2010

Multifunctional Solar Waterways: Plasma-Enabled Self-Cleaning Nanoarchitectures for Energy-Efficient Desalination

© 2019 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Evaporating seawater and separating salt from water is one of the most promising solutions for global water scarcity. State-of-the-art water desalination devices combining solar harvesting and heat localization for evaporation using nanomaterials still suffer from several issues in energy efficiency, long-term performance, salt fouling, light blocking, and clean water collection in real-world applications. To address these issues, this work devises plasma-enabled multifunctional all-carbon nanoarchitectures with on-surface waterways formed by nitrogen-doped hydrophilic graphene nanopetals (N-fGPs) seamlessly integrated onto the external surface of hydrophobic self-assembled graphene foam (sGF). The N-fGPs simultaneously transport water and salt ions, absorb sunlight, serve as evaporation surfaces, then capture the salts, followed by self-cleaning. The sGF ensures effective thermal insulation and enhanced heat localization, contributing to high solar-vapor efficiency of 88.6 ± 2.1%. Seamless connection between N-fGPs and sGF and self-cleaning of N-fGP structures by redissolution of the captured salts in the waterways lead to long-term stability over 240 h of continuous operation in real seawater without performance degradation, and a high daily evaporation yield of 15.76 kg m−2. By eliminating sunlight blocking and guiding condensed vapor, a high clean water collection ratio of 83.5% is achieved. The multiple functionalities make the current nanoarchitectures promising as multipurpose advanced energy materials

Synthesis and solid-state characterisation of 4-substituted methylidene oxindoles

Background 4-substituted methylidene oxindoles are pharmacologically important. Detailed analysis and comparison of all the interactions present in crystal structures is necessary to understand how these structures arise. The XPac procedure allows comparison of complete crystal structures of related families of compounds to identify assemblies that are mainly the result of close-packing as well as networks of directed interactions. Results Five 4-substituted methylidene oxindoles have been synthesized by the Knoevenagel condensation of oxindole with para-substituted aromatic aldehydes and were characterized in the solid state by x-ray crystallography. Hence, the structures of (3E)-3-(4-Bromobenzylidene)-1,3-dihydro-2H-indol-2-one, 3a, (3E)-3-(4-Chlorobenzylidene)-1,3-dihydro-2H-indol-2-one, 3b, (3E)-3-(4-Methoxybenzylidene)-1,3-dihydro-2H-indol-2-one, 3c, (3E)-3-(4-Methylbenzylidene)-1,3-dihydro-2H-indol-2-one, 3d and (3E)-3-(4-Nitrobenzylidene)-1,3-dihydro-2H-indol-2-one, 3e, were elucidated using single crystal X-ray crystallography. Conclusions A hydrogen bonded dimer molecular assembly or supramolecular construct was identified in all the crystal structures examined along with a further four 1D supramolecular constructs which were common to at least two of the family of structures studied. The 1D supramolecular constructs indicate that once the obvious strong interaction is satisfied to form hydrogen bonded dimer it is the conventionally weaker interactions, such as steric bulk and edge-to-face interactions which compete to influence the final structure formation

Sensitization, energy transfer and infra-red emission decay modulation in Yb3+-doped NaYF4 nanoparticles with visible light through a perfluoroanthraquinone chromophore

The authors thank Dr. R. Wilson for XRD measurements. H.L., Y.P., H.Y., J.H. and H.G. are funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) and Queen Mary University of London. H. L. also would like to thank the support from China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project (2017M611440). I.H. acknowledges funding from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grant MAT2016-80438-P), the EU FP7 (Marie Curie-CIG-Grant 303535). WPG would like to thank EPSRC for support (EP/K004484/1 and EP/L020114/1) and NSFC (61574095). X.C. was supported by the Centre of Excellence in Medical Engineering funded by the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC under grant number WT088641/Z/09/Z. We are grateful to the EPSRC UK NMSF at Swansea University for mass spectrometry

Electron trapping around a magnetic null

Magnetic reconnection is an important process in astrophysical, space and laboratory plasmas. The magnetic null pair structure is theoretically suggested to be a crucial feature of the three-dimensional magnetic reconnection. The physics around the null pair, however, has not been explored in combination with the magnetic field configuration deduced from in situ observations. Here, we report the identification of the configuration around a null pair and simultaneous electron dynamics near one null of the pair, observed by four Cluster spacecraft in the geo-magnetotail. Further, we propose a new scenario of electron dynamics in the null region, suggesting that electrons are temporarily trapped in the central reconnection region including electron diffusion region resulting in an electron density peak, accelerated possibly by parallel electric field and electron pressure gradient, and reflected from the magnetic cusp mirrors leading to the bi-directional energetic electron beams, which excite the observed high frequency electrostatic waves