Resveratrol protects against sepsis induced acute kidney injury in mice by inducing Klotho mediated apoptosis inhibition

Purpose: To investigate the mechanism of resveratrol protection against sepsis-induced acute kidney injury in mice. Methods: A sepsis-induced acute kidney injury model was established in mice by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP). Sixty healthy male ICR mice were randomly divided into the sham operation (sham) group, sepsis-induced acute kidney injury model (CLP) group, CLP + low-dose (20 mg/kg) resveratrol treatment (CLP + ResL) group, CLP + high-dose (40 mg/kg) resveratrol treatment (CLP + ResH) group and CLP + Klotho (0.01 mg/kg) treatment (CLP + Klotho) group. All mice were administered treatment on the day after surgery and once every 24 h for 3 days. Various serum biochemical parameters and protein expressions were evaluated. Results: After CLP, the levels of serum creatinine (Scr) and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) increased and the pathology was exacerbated. The protein and mRNA expression levels of Klotho and Bcl-2 decreased, while those of Bax and Caspase-3 increased (p < 0.05). After resveratrol and Klotho protein intervention, Scr and BUN levels recovered, and pathological changes were alleviated. The protein and mRNA expression levels of Klotho and Bcl-2 increased, while those of Bax and Caspase-3 decreased. The conditions of the mice in CLP + ResH group and the CLP + Klotho group improved more significantly than those of the mice in the CLP + ResL group (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Resveratrol upregulates the expression of endogenous Klotho to exert its antiapoptotic effects, which can protect the kidneys of mice against sepsis-induced acute kidney injury. Thus, the compound has potentials for development for protection against acute kidney injury

Influence of Cations on HCOOH and CO Formation during CO2 Reduction on a PdMLPt(111) Electrode

Understanding the role of cations in the electrochemical CO2 reduction (CO2RR) process is of fundamental importance for practical application. In this work, we investigate how cations influence HCOOH and CO formation on PdMLPt(111) in pH 3 electrolytes. While only (a small amount of adsorbed) CO forms on PdMLPt(111) in the absence of metal cations, the onset potential of HCOOH and CO decreases with increasing cation concentrations. The cation effect is stronger on HCOOH formation than that on CO formation on PdMLPt(111). Density functional theory simulations indicate that cations facilitate both hydride formation and CO2 activation by polarizing the electronic density at the surface and stabilizing *CO2-. Although the upshift of the metal work function caused by high coverage of adsorbates limits hydride formation, the cation-induced electric field counterbalances this effect in the case of *H species, sustaining HCOOH production at mild negative potentials. Instead, at the high *CO coverages observed at very negative potentials, surface hydrides do not form, preventing the HCOOH route both in the absence and presence of cations. Our results open the way for a consistent evaluation of cationic electrolyte effects on both activity and selectivity in CO2RR on Pd-Pt catalysts

Influence of various experimental parameters on the capacitive removal of phosphate from aqueous solutions using LDHs/AC composite electrodes

The efficient uptake of phosphate from aqueous solutions was achieved on layered double hydroxides (LDHs)-based electrodes via capacitive desalination in our previous study. The current follow-up work was mainly carried out to study the influence of various experimental parameters on the capacitive removal of phosphate using LDHs/activated carbon (LDHs/AC) composite electrodes. A series of batch experiments were implemented to investigate the experimental factors, including Mg2+/Al3+ ratios (2, 3, and 4), trivalent metal cations (Al3+, Fe3+, Cr3+), initial solution pH (from 3 to 10), coexisting anions (NO3-, Cl-, SO42-), and ion strengths, in capacitive deionization. The electrode materials before and after capacitive deionization were characterized to reinforce the analysis of the adsorption mechanisms by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray, cyclic voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Results indicated that the Mg-Al LDHs/AC electrodes exhibited higher phosphate adsorption capacity (80.43 mg PO43-/g), more regular morphology, and higher degree of crystallinity than that of Mg-Fe LDHs/AC and Mg-Cr LDHs/AC. Increasing Mg2+/Al3+ ratios enhanced the adsorption capacity of phosphate. The uptake of phosphate by Mg-Al LDHs/AC under circumneutral pH and low ion strength reached the maximum level. Furthermore, the presence of coexisting anions lowered the adsorption capacity of phosphate mainly due to the occurrence of a compressed electrical double layer. Therefore, the influence of different experimental parameters on phosphate removal via capacitive deionization by Mg-Al LDHs/AC necessitates a systematic investigation to optimize the preparation conditions of LDHs-based electrodes and several important operating parameters

Enhanced phosphate removal under an electric field via multiple mechanisms on MgAl-LDHs/AC composite electrode

Phosphorus removal is essential to avoid eutrophication in water bodies. Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are widely used to scavenge phosphate through intercalated ion exchange or surface complexation. Moreover, LDHs have attracted increasing attention as electrode modifiers for supercapacitors. Researchers have begun to re-delve the electrosorption technology according to the fundamental principle of electrical double layers. Herein, we propose a new phosphate removal method inspired by the adsorption characteristic and electrical double-layer capacitive properties of LDHs through electrosorption via capacitive deionization. We present a series of experiments to study the enhanced phosphate removal under an electric field via multiple mechanisms on the MgAl-LDHs/AC electrode. The uptake of phosphate by MgAl-LDHs/AC was investigated as a function of phosphate concentration, applied voltage, electrode materials, and temperature. The MgAl-LDHs/AC electrode possessed a salt removal capacity of 67.92 mg PO43−·g−1 (1.2 V, 250 mg·L−1 KH2PO4, 30 °C). The electrosorption kinetics of phosphate ions onto the capacitive deionization electrode followed the pseudo-second-order kinetics model rather than the pseudo-first-order kinetics model. Furthermore, the adsorption isotherms of phosphate on the MgAl-LDHs/AC electrode fitted the Freundlich model better than the Langmuir model. The proposed method could be used for phosphate removal

Hydrothermal synthesis of reduced graphene oxide-LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 composites as 5V cathode materials for Li-ion batteries

Composite materials consisting of reduced graphene oxide and LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 were in situ prepared by a simple one-step hydrothermal treating method. The physical property and electrochemical performance of the composite materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, charge/discharge testing, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The results demonstrate that the graphene oxide is partially reduced and uniformly in situ anchored on the surface of LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4. As a result, the specific surface area of the composite material dramatically increases from 0.2488 to 8.71 m2 g−1, and the initial specific discharge capacity improves from 125.8 to 140.2 mAh g−1, respectively. Furthermore, the capacity retention maintains 95.8% after 100 cycles, and the electrode polarization has significantly been lessened. At rates of 1, 2, and 5 C, the composite material with 5% reduced graphene oxide can deliver much higher capacities than the pristine LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4. Moreover, AC impedance test results show that the interfacial charge transfer impedance obviously reduced. It is confirmed that the introduction of reduced graphene oxide through hydrothermal treating is effective to enhance the electrochemical performance of the composite material

Towards Anytime Optical Flow Estimation with Event Cameras

Event cameras are capable of responding to log-brightness changes in microseconds. Its characteristic of producing responses only to the changing region is particularly suitable for optical flow estimation. In contrast to the super low-latency response speed of event cameras, existing datasets collected via event cameras, however, only provide limited frame rate optical flow ground truth, (e.g., at 10Hz), greatly restricting the potential of event-driven optical flow. To address this challenge, we put forward a high-frame-rate, low-latency event representation Unified Voxel Grid, sequentially fed into the network bin by bin. We then propose EVA-Flow, an EVent-based Anytime Flow estimation network to produce high-frame-rate event optical flow with only low-frame-rate optical flow ground truth for supervision. The key component of our EVA-Flow is the stacked Spatiotemporal Motion Refinement (SMR) module, which predicts temporally-dense optical flow and enhances the accuracy via spatial-temporal motion refinement. The time-dense feature warping utilized in the SMR module provides implicit supervision for the intermediate optical flow. Additionally, we introduce the Rectified Flow Warp Loss (RFWL) for the unsupervised evaluation of intermediate optical flow in the absence of ground truth. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first work focusing on anytime optical flow estimation via event cameras. A comprehensive variety of experiments on MVSEC, DESC, and our EVA-FlowSet demonstrates that EVA-Flow achieves competitive performance, super-low-latency (5ms), fastest inference (9.2ms), time-dense motion estimation (200Hz), and strong generalization. Our code will be available at https://github.com/Yaozhuwa/EVA-Flow.Comment: Code will be available at https://github.com/Yaozhuwa/EVA-Flo

Effects of tea garden soil on aroma components and related gene expression in tea leaves

In order to explore the effect of soil on the synthesis of aroma components in tea leaves, tea seedlings replanted in tea rhizosphere soil of different ages were used as research materials. Tea seedlings were replanted in soils aged 0, 4, 9, and 30 years, and after one year of growth, 34, 37, 29, and 26 substances were detected in the tea leaves, respectively, using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The relative contents of terpenoids and alcohols in the tea leaves dropped from 66.40% to 44.52% and 5.21% to 2.61%, respectively, as the age of the rhizosphere soil increased. Aldehydes, esters, and nitrogen compounds increased from 3.80% to 22.36%, 1.33% to 12.02%, and 3.13% to 19.96%, respectively, as the age of the rhizosphere soil increased. Gene differential expression measured by fluorescence quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR) showed that the number of nerolidol synthetase and linalool synthase genes in tea leaves increased significantly, and the terpineol synthetase, phellandrene synthase, myrcene synthetase, ocimene synthase, limonene synthetase, germacrene synthase, and farnesene synthase genes declined significantly with the increase in soil age. In summary, as the number of years tea had been planted in the soil increased, the soil significantly affected the expression of terpene synthase genes in tea leaves, and then the composition and content of aroma substances in tea leaves changed. The results provide a theoretical basis for the improvement of tea quality

Optimizing biodiesel production in marine Chlamydomonas sp. JSC4 through metabolic profiling and an innovative salinity-gradient strategy

BACKGROUND: Biodiesel production from marine microalgae has received much attention as microalgae can be cultivated on non-arable land without the use of potable water, and with the additional benefits of mitigating CO(2) emissions and yielding biomass. However, there is still a lack of effective operational strategies to promote lipid accumulation in marine microalgae, which are suitable for making biodiesel since they are mainly composed of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. Moreover, the regulatory mechanisms involved in lipid biosynthesis in microalgae under environmental stress are not well understood. RESULTS: In this work, the combined effects of salinity and nitrogen depletion stresses on lipid accumulation of a newly isolated marine microalga, Chlamydomonas sp. JSC4, were explored. Metabolic intermediates were profiled over time to observe transient changes during the lipid accumulation triggered by the combination of the two stresses. An innovative cultivation strategy (denoted salinity-gradient operation) was also employed to markedly improve the lipid accumulation and lipid quality of the microalga, which attained an optimal lipid productivity of 223.2 mg L(-1) d(-1) and a lipid content of 59.4% per dry cell weight. This performance is significantly higher than reported in most related studies. CONCLUSIONS: This work demonstrated the synergistic integration of biological and engineering technologies to develop a simple and effective strategy for the enhancement of oil production in marine microalgae