Shape Effects of Iron Nanowires on Hyperthermia Treatment

This research discusses the influence of morphology of nanomagnetic materials (one-dimensional iron nanowires and zero-dimensional iron nanoparticles) on heating efficiency of the hyperthermia treatment. One-dimensional iron nanowires, synthesized by reducing method in external magnetic field, are explored in terms of their material properties, magnetic anisotropy, and cytotoxicity of EMT-6 cells. The magnetic anisotropy of an array of nanowires is examined in parallel and perpendicular magnetic fields by VSM. For the magnetic hyperthermia treatment tests, iron nanowires and nanoparticles with different concentrations are heated in alternating magnetic field to measure their actual heating efficiency and SLP heating properties. The shape effects of iron nanomaterials can be revealed from their heating properties. The cytotoxicity of nanowires with different concentrations is measured by its survival rate in EMT-6 with the cells cultivated for 6 and 24 hours

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

Synthesis and Electrocatalytical Application of Hybrid Pd/Metal Oxides/MWCNTs

The performance of Pd electrocatalysts for formic acid electrooxidation was improved by application of metal oxide-multiwall carbon nanotubes composites as a catalyst support. Hybrid oxides/MWCNTs were synthesized by two different methods: chemical reduction method and impregnation method. Pd based catalysts were synthesized by polyol method on the MWCNTs or oxide/MWCNTs composites. The In2O3 was deposited on MWCNTs by impregnation method (In2O3/MWCNTs-IM support) and in the presence of NaBH4 (In2O3/MWCNTs-NaBH4 support). The physical properties of the Pd/In2O3/MWCNTs-IM, Pd/In2O3/MWCNTs-NaBH4, Pd/SnO2/MWCNTs, and Pd/MWCNTs catalysts were characterized and their electrocatalytical performance in formic acid oxidation was compared. During Pd deposition on In2O3/MWCNTs-NaBH4 support, InPd2 structure was formed as observed by XRD. The electrochemical tests indicate that the two Pd/ In2O3/MWCNTs electrocatalysts have higher electrocatalytic activity than those of Pd/SnO2/MWCNTs and Pd/MWCNTs. The best performance was observed for the catalyst obtained by In2O3 impregnation of MWCNTs denoted by Pd/In2O3/MWCNTs-IM

Facile and mass-producible Ni-added iron nanowires with excellent microwave absorbing performance

The application of magnetic nanocrystalline powders as radar absorption materials is increasingly attracting R&D interest. Severe agglomeration and mass production, however, are critical issues for practical application of magnetic nanoparticles. In the present study, iron nanowires with varying amounts of nickel addition (0, 1, 10, 30, and 50 wt%) were synthesized via direct reduction of iron salts with the aid of strong NdFeB magnets. The yield rate of these Ni-added iron nanowires (NiFe NWs) exceeded 1 g/min, making them suitable and was feasible for mass production. The characteristics of the so-obtained NiFe NWs were confirmed using field emission scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Composite resins with NiFe NWs additions (3, 5, and 10 wt%) were prepared and examined using the coaxial line method to reveal their microwave absorption characteristics. Experimental results showed that composite resins with 10 wt% NiFe NWs additions possessed superior microwave absorbing properties, with the Ni1Fe99 NWs-added product exhibiting the best performance. When produced with a thickness of 1.7 mm, the reflection loss of the composites reached −39.28 dB at 12.53 GHz. Additionally, the efficient maximum absorption bandwidth was 3.33 GHz, ranging from 14.27 to 17.60 GHz

A Comparative Prevalence of Birth Defects between Newborns of Immigrant and Native-Born Mothers in Taiwan: Ten Years of Population-Based Data

In recent years, newborns born to immigrant mothers have accounted for about 10% of the total births in Taiwan. However, little is known about whether there are differences between newborns of immigrant and native-born mothers regarding the prevalence and the possible causes of birth defects. By combining four nationwide databases and assessing all newborns between 2005 and 2014 in Taiwan as research subjects, this study determined the prevalence of birth defects stratified into nine categories (neuronal, facial, cleft, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, urogenital, musculoskeletal and chromosomal abnormalities) in the newborns of immigrant mothers and native-born mothers. We found that the prevalence of any birth defects in newborns of immigrant mothers (ranging from 0.98 to 1.24%) was lower than that of native-born mothers (2.86%). Skeletomuscular system defects are the most common among newborns of women from the main immigrant countries (0.24–0.42%), while circulatory system defects were the most common among newborns of Taiwanese women (0.92%). The risks of all defects remained lower for newborns of immigrant mothers (AORs ranged from 0.37 to 0.47) after controlling for possible confounding variables. The higher rates of birth defects among newborns of native-born mothers may be attributed to an older maternal age at childbirth and a higher prevalence of diabetes than that of immigrant mothers. The findings from this study imply that the prevalence of birth defects between newborns of immigrant and native-born mothers is not similar, as evidenced by a decade of population-based data

Aqueous Ocimum gratissimum extract induces cell apoptosis in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells

Treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has exhibited a poor overall survival rate of only six to ten months, and the urgency of the development of more effective novel agents is ever present. In this line of research, we aimed to investigate the effects and inhibitive mechanisms of aqueous Ocimum gratissimum leaf extract (OGE), the extract of Ocimum gratissimum, which is commonly used as a therapeutic herb for its numerous pharmacological properties, on malignant HCC cells. Our results showed that OGE decreased the cell viability of HCC SK-Hep1 and HA22T cells in a dose-dependent manner (from 400 to 800 µg/mL), while there is little effect on Chang liver cells. Moreover, cell-cycle analysis shows increased Sub-G1 cell count in SK-Hep1 and HA22T cells which is not observed in Chang liver cells. These findings raise suspicion that the OGE-induced cell death may be mediated through proteins that regulate cell cycle and apoptosis in SK-Hep1 and HA22T cells, and further experimentation revealed that OGE treatment resulted in a dose-dependent decrease in caspase 3 and PARP expressions and in CDK4and p-ERK1/2expressions. Moreover, animal tests also exhibited decreased HCC tumor growth by OGE treatment. We therefore suggest that the inhibition of cell viability and tumor growth induced by OGE may be correlated to the alteration of apoptosis-related proteins

One-Step Synthesis of Gasoline Octane Booster and Diesel Fuel from Glycerol and <i>tert</i>-Butyl Alcohol

One-step synthesis of an octane booster for gasoline and a diesel fuel was performed using glycerol and <i>tert</i>-butyl alcohol (TBA) as raw materials and the solid acid Amberlyst-70 (A-70) as a catalyst. In contrast to the conventional etherification of glycerol with TBA operated at a low temperature resulting in a homogeneous product mixture, our study revealed that the same process at elevated reaction temperatures would automatically separate the products into an organic phase and an aqueous phase. The components of the former consisted of unconverted TBA, isobutylene (IB), 2,2,4-trimethyl-1-pentene, 2,4,4-trimethyl-2-pentene (DIB), 2,2,4,6-pentamethyl-3-heptene, 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-methyleneheptane (TIB), and oxygen-limited hydrocarbons (HCs), which are constituents that are different from the product distribution of the conventional reaction. The latter was composed of water, unconverted TBA, and glycerol. After a simple laboratory distillation of the organic phase product mixture, the distillate obtained by a simple distillation maintained at 225 °C in the still could be used as an octane booster for gasoline, while the residue could be adopted as diesel fuel