Impact of micro pofa and nano pofa in cementitious material : A review

The utilization of palm oil fuel ash as cement replacement in concrete and mortar mix design could be a solution for reducing the demand for cement. However, according to previous investigations palm ash-based concrete and mortar had lower fresh properties and hardened properties than usual concrete. Thus, modification of the ash’s particle sizes, as well as the mix design, was made and eventually nano palm ash was introduced into the mix design. This review article provides a detailed examination of the impact of particle size; micro and nano palm ash in concrete and mortar mix design to explore the potential of nano palm ash in future work. A detailed comparison between micro and nano palm ash in terms of ash particle characteristics, mix design, fresh properties and hardened properties are presented. Nano palm ash possesses lower unburnt carbon, higher silica content and smaller particle size than the micro palm ash. This led to the improvement in the nano palm ash-based concrete’s fresh properties and the early agehardened properties of concrete. Overall, the purpose of this review article is to provide a detailed understanding of the impact of micro and nano palm ash in cementitious materials

CuII(atsm) Attenuates Neuroinflammation

Background: Neuroinflammation and biometal dyshomeostasis are key pathological features of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Inflammation and biometals are linked at the molecular level through regulation of metal buffering proteins such as the metallothioneins. Even though the molecular connections between metals and inflammation have been demonstrated, little information exists on the effect of copper modulation on brain inflammation.Methods: We demonstrate the immunomodulatory potential of the copper bis(thiosemicarbazone) complex CuII(atsm) in an neuroinflammatory model in vivo and describe its anti-inflammatory effects on microglia and astrocytes in vitro.Results: By using a sophisticated in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) approach, we report the efficacy of CuII(atsm) in reducing acute cerebrovascular inflammation caused by peripheral administration of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). CuII(atsm) also induced anti-inflammatory outcomes in primary microglia [significant reductions in nitric oxide (NO), monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1), and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)] and astrocytes [significantly reduced NO, MCP-1, and interleukin 6 (IL-6)] in vitro. These anti-inflammatory actions were associated with increased cellular copper levels and increased the neuroprotective protein metallothionein-1 (MT1) in microglia and astrocytes.Conclusion: The beneficial effects of CuII(atsm) on the neuroimmune system suggest copper complexes are potential therapeutics for the treatment of neuroinflammatory conditions

Cu-II(atsm) Attenuates Neuroinflammation

Background: Neuroinflammation and biometal dyshomeostasis are key pathological features of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Inflammation and biometals are linked at the molecular level through regulation of metal buffering proteins such as the metallothioneins. Even though the molecular connections between metals and inflammation have been demonstrated, little information exists on the effect of copper modulation on brain inflammation. Methods: We demonstrate the immunomodulatory potential of the copper bis(thiosemicarbazone) complex Cu-II(atsm) in an neuroinflammatory model in vivo and describe its anti-inflammatory effects on microglia and astrocytes in vitro. Results: By using a sophisticated in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) approach, we report the efficacy of Cu-II(atsm) in reducing acute cerebrovascular inflammation caused by peripheral administration of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Cu-II(atsm) also induced anti-inflammatory outcomes in primary microglia [significant reductions in nitric oxide (NO), monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1), and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)] and astrocytes [significantly reduced NO, MCP-1, and interleukin 6 (IL-6)] in vitro. These anti-inflammatory actions were associated with increased cellular copper levels and increased the neuroprotective protein metallothionein-1 (MT1) in microglia and astrocytes. Conclusion: The beneficial effects of Cu-II(atsm) on the neuroimmune system suggest copper complexes are potential therapeutics for the treatment of neuroinflammatory conditions.Peer reviewe

High recombination rates and hotspots in a Plasmodium falciparum genetic cross

Using the universal P2/P8 primers, we were able to obtain the gene segments of chromo-helicase-DNA binding protein (CHD)-Z and CHD-W from ten species of ardeid birds including Chinese egret (Egretta eulophotes), little egret (E. garzetta), eastern reef egret (E. sacra), great egret (Ardea alba), grey heron (A. cinerea), Chinese pond-heron (Ardeola bacchus), cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis), black-crowned night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax), cinnamon bittern (Ixobrychus cinnamomeus) and yellow bittern (I. sinensis). Based on conserved regions inside the P2/P8-derived sequences, we designed new PCR primers for sex identification in these ardeid species. Using agarose gel electrophoresis, the PCR products showed two bands for females (140 bp derived from CHD-W and the other 250 bp from CHD-ZW), whereas the males showed only the 250 bp band. The results indicated that our new primers could be used for accurate and convenient sex identification in ardeid species.National Natural Science Foundation of China[30970380, 40876077]; Fujian Natural Science Foundation of China[2008S0007, 2009J01195

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Development of novel therapeutic approaches for treatment of Alzheimer's disease

© 2018 Dr. Xin Yi ChooAD is a complex disease, involving the perturbation of multiple interrelated biological pathways. Despite being the most common form of neurodegenerative disease, with the number of patients expected to increase drastically, the aetiology of AD remains unknown. Although genetic factors such as mutations in the APP and PSEN genes, which drive the overproduction of Aβ, are known to cause early on-set familial AD (EOFAD), majority of AD patients (> 95%) who develop clinical symptoms of AD later in life (i.e. late on-set AD (LOAD)) do not carry these mutations. Contrary to earlier assumptions that occurrence of LOAD was sporadic, GWAS and exome sequencing studies have identified genetic variants, in genes that are microglia specific, or highly expressed in microglia, that are associated with increased risk of LOAD, suggesting altered regulation of microglial functions to be involved in the pathogenesis of LOAD. Using microglia isolated from the 5xFAD mouse model of AD, we identified by bulk and single cell RNA-seq that plaque phagocytosing (X04+) and non-plaque phagocytosing (X04-) microglia are distinct microglial populations separable by their transcriptomic signature. Our study suggests that X04+ microglia are a homogenous population of microglia with a distinct gene expression profile associated with amyloid uptake. In contrary, X04- microglia are associated with an age-related transcriptomic profile and may be involved in the over-pruning of synapses in 5xFAD mice. We also demonstrated that microglia can undergo transcriptomic changes upon exposure to different environmental cues. Although therapeutic approaches that target different pathological features of AD have been evaluated, clinical translation of therapeutics has been very unsuccessful. This could be in part due to potential therapeutics targeting a single disease pathology. To identify new therapeutic candidates for the treatment of AD, this study also explored the use of metal-based compounds as a multi-targeting therapeutic strategy. Five novel metal-based compounds were screened to identify leading compounds that confer neuroprotective, metal-regulating and inflammation-modulating effects in a generic model of neuroinflammation. LM47 was identified as the only leading compound that exerted inflammatory-modulating activity through copper-associated action. Further testing of LM47 showed that the compound was well-tolerated in vivo. However, data by pharmacokinetic study and ICP-MS suggest that the copper free ligand LM46, and not LM47, acts as the active compound in vivo. Treatment of 5xFAD mice with LM46 increased the proportion of X04+ microglia in brain. However, Both LM46 and LM47 treatment of 5xFAD mice induced increased brain Aβ plaque load in the animals. Taken together, findings from our study suggest that improved targeting of specific microglia sub-population in AD could confer therapeutic outcomes

E-banking and Singapore consumers : its costs and benefits analysis.

This study examines the costs and benefits Singapore consumers perceive when using or not using e-channels

Neuroinflammation and Copper in Alzheimer’s Disease

Inflammation is the innate immune response to infection or tissue damage. Initiation of proinflammatory cascades in the central nervous system (CNS) occurs through recognition of danger associated molecular patterns by cognate immune receptors expressed on inflammatory cells and leads to rapid responses to remove the danger stimulus. The presence of activated microglia and astrocytes in the vicinity of amyloid plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients and mouse models implicates inflammation as a contributor to AD pathogenesis. Activated microglia play a critical role in amyloid clearance, but chronic deregulation of CNS inflammatory pathways results in secretion of neurotoxic mediators that ultimately contribute to neurodegeneration in AD. Copper (Cu) homeostasis is profoundly affected in AD, and accumulated extracellular Cu drives Aβ aggregation, while intracellular Cu deficiency limits bioavailable Cu required for CNS functions. This review presents an overview of inflammatory events that occur in AD in response to Aβ and highlights recent advances on the role of Cu in modulation of beneficial and detrimental inflammatory responses in AD

Evaluating Capture Sequence Performance for Single-Cell CRISPR Activation Experiments

10.1021/acssynbio.0c00499ACS SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY103640-64