Novel Brønsted-acidic ionic liquids based on benzothiazolium cations as catalysts for esterification reactions

Three novel Brønsted-acidic ionic liquids based on benzothiazolium cations were prepared, which served as catalysts for the synthesis of benzoic esters. All three gave good yields of the target esters in esterification reactions. Moreover, they combine the advantages of both homogeneous and heterogeneous solid catalysts in esterification reactions, which enabled them to serve as homogeneous catalysts to catalyze the reactions and be conveniently recovered by simple filtration after the reactions. They could be reused several times without noticeable decrease in efficiency

Quantitative susceptibility mapping using multi-channel convolutional neural networks with dipole-adaptive multi-frequency inputs

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) quantifies the distribution of magnetic susceptibility and shows great potential in assessing tissue contents such as iron, myelin, and calcium in numerous brain diseases. The accuracy of QSM reconstruction was challenged by an ill-posed field-to-susceptibility inversion problem, which is related to the impaired information near the zero-frequency response of the dipole kernel. Recently, deep learning methods demonstrated great capability in improving the accuracy and efficiency of QSM reconstruction. However, the construction of neural networks in most deep learning-based QSM methods did not take the intrinsic nature of the dipole kernel into account. In this study, we propose a dipole kernel-adaptive multi-channel convolutional neural network (DIAM-CNN) method for the dipole inversion problem in QSM. DIAM-CNN first divided the original tissue field into high-fidelity and low-fidelity components by thresholding the dipole kernel in the frequency domain, and it then inputs the two components as additional channels into a multichannel 3D Unet. QSM maps from the calculation of susceptibility through multiple orientation sampling (COSMOS) were used as training labels and evaluation reference. DIAM-CNN was compared with two conventional model-based methods [morphology enabled dipole inversion (MEDI) and improved sparse linear equation and least squares (iLSQR) and one deep learning method (QSMnet)]. High-frequency error norm (HFEN), peak signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR), normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE), and the structural similarity index (SSIM) were reported for quantitative comparisons. Experiments on healthy volunteers demonstrated that the DIAM-CNN results had superior image quality to those of the MEDI, iLSQR, or QSMnet results. Experiments on data with simulated hemorrhagic lesions demonstrated that DIAM-CNN produced fewer shadow artifacts around the bleeding lesion than the compared methods. This study demonstrates that the incorporation of dipole-related knowledge into the network construction has a potential to improve deep learning-based QSM reconstruction

An Alternative and Effective HIV Vaccination Approach Based on Inhibition of Antigen Presentation Attenuators in Dendritic Cells

BACKGROUND: Current efforts to develop HIV vaccines that seek to stimulate immune responses have been disappointing, underscoring the inability of natural immune responses to control HIV-1 infection. Here we tested an alternative strategy to induce anti-HIV immune responses by inhibiting a host's natural immune inhibitor. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We used small interfering RNA (siRNA) to inhibit suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS) 1, a key negative regulator of the JAK/STAT pathway, and investigated the effect of this silencing on the ability of dendritic cells (DCs) to induce anti-HIV-1 immunity. We found that SOCS1-silenced DCs broadly induced enhanced HIV-1 envelope (Env)-specific CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes and CD4(+) T helper cells, as well as antibody responses, in mice. Importantly, SOCS1-silenced DCs were more resistant to HIV Env-mediated suppression and were capable of inducing memory HIV Env-specific antibody and T cell responses. SOCS1-restricted signaling, as well as production of proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-12 by DCs, play a critical role in regulating the anti-HIV immune response. Furthermore, the potency of HIV DNA vaccination is significantly enhanced by coimmunization with SOCS1 siRNA expressor DNA. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that SOCS1 functions as an antigen presentation attenuator to control both HIV-1-specific humoral and cellular responses. This study represents the first, to our knowledge, attempt to elicit HIV-specific T cell and antibody responses by inhibiting a host's antigen presentation attenuator, which may open a new and alternative avenue to develop effective therapeutic and prophylactic HIV vaccines

A saúde mental é o fator mais importante que influencia a qualidade de vida de idosos deixados para trás quando as famílias emigram da China rural

OBJECTIVES: to investigate the quality of life and the associated factors on left behind elderly in rural China. METHOD: the research was conducted cluster sampling to select 456 elderly left behind when family members migrated out of rural China to participate in a cross-sectional study by completing a general data questionnaire and Quality of Life questionnaire. RESULTS: 91.5% of the elderly requested psychological counseling and education. For the elderly, scores for mental health (39.56±13.73) were significantly lower compared with Chinese standard data (61.6±13.7) (POBJETIVOS: investigar la calidad de vida y los factores asociados a los adultos mayores que se quedan en las zonas rurales de China. MÉTODO: la investigación se realizó por medio de muestreo por conglomerados para seleccionar 456 adultos mayores que se quedaron cuando los miembros de la familia emigraron de zonas rurales de China, para participar en un estudio de corte transversal, completando un cuestionario de datos generales y cuestionario de calidad de vida. RESULTADOS: el 91.5% de los adultos mayores solicitó asistencia psicológica y educación. Para los adultos mayores, las puntuaciones de salud mental (39.56±13.73) fueron significativamente más bajos en comparación con los datos estándar de China (61.6±13.7) (pOBJETIVOS: investigar a qualidade de vida e fatores associados de idosos deixados para trás na China rural. MÉTODO: foi realizada amostragem por conglomerado para selecionar 456 idosos deixados para trás quando os membros da família emigram da China rural. Este é um estudo transversal com preenchimento de um questionário de dados gerais e de qualidade de vida. RESULTADOS: 91,5% dos idosos convidados solicitaram aconselhamento e educação psicológicos. Para os idosos, os escores de saúde mental (39,56±13,73) foram significativamente menores em comparação aos dados padrões chineses (61,6±13,7) (

The `excess' of primary cosmic ray electrons

With the accurate cosmic ray (CR) electron and positron spectra (denoted as $\Phi_{\rm e^{-}}$ and $\Phi_{\rm e^{+}}$, respectively) measured by AMS-02 collaboration, the difference between the electron and positron fluxes (i.e., $\Delta \Phi=\Phi_{\rm e^{-}}-\Phi_{\rm e^{+}}$), dominated by the propagated primary electrons, can be reliably inferred. In the standard model, the spectrum of propagated primary CR electrons at energies $\geq 30$ GeV softens with the increase of energy. The absence of any evidence for such a continuous spectral softening in $\Delta \Phi$ strongly suggests a significant `excess' of primary CR electrons and at energies of $100-400$ GeV the identified excess component has a flux comparable to that of the observed positron excess. Middle-age but `nearby' supernova remnants (e.g., Monogem and Geminga) are favored sources for such an excess.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, Phys. Lett. B, in pres