Enhanced photocatalytic degradation of ciprofloxacin over Bi2O3/(BiO)(2)CO3 heterojunctions: Efficiency, kinetics, pathways, mechanisms and toxicity evaluation

In this study, the degradation of antibiotic ciprofloxacin (CIP) over Bi2O3/(BiO)(2)CO3 heterojunctions under simulated solar light irradiation (SSL-Bi2O3/(BiO)(2)CO3) was examined for the first time. The results showed that the Bi2O3/(BiO)(2)CO3 heterojunctions dramatically improved CIP decay efficiency. The effect of parameters showed that the CIP decay was optimized with the Bi2O3/(BiO)(2)CO3 dosage of 0.5 g/L and a wide pH range of 4.0-8.3, based on which, a kinetic model was derived to predict the remaining CIP concentration. It was found that the presence of anions like SO42-, NO3- and HCO3- decelerated the CIP decay, while the co-existence of Cl- accelerated the CIP decay. Six degradation intermediates were identified by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass analyzer (UPLC/MS) and ion chromatographic (IC) analysis, and the decay pathways and degradation mechanism of CIP were proposed by combining the experiment data with theoretical calculation of frontier electron densities. Hydroxyl radical's reaction, photo-hole (h(+)) oxidation and reductive defluorination were found to involve in the CIP decay. The efficient alleviation on total organic carbon (TOC) and toxicity indicated that the complete mineralization and de-toxicity are possible by this system with sufficient reaction time

Modeling the Relationship among Linguistic Typological Features with Hierarchical Dirichlet Process

PACLIC 23 / City University of Hong Kong / 3-5 December 200

Mesoscale regulation of droplet templates to tailor microparticle structures and functions

The hierarchical design of mesoscale structures in droplet templates determines the structure and functionality of the resultant microparticles. In this review, we summarize recent progress on the control of microfluidic emulsion templates for the synthesis of polymeric microparticles with desired functionality and internal structure. We introduce strategies for controlling the morphology and interfacial stability of emulsion templates. These strategies are based on manipulation of the mesoscale structure of amphiphilic molecules and nanoparticles at emulsion-droplet interfaces. We also discuss strategies for controlling the mesoscale structure of microparticles, which involve manipulating the interfacial mass-transfer and chemical reactions during template synthesis. We provide insight on the use of these strategies for the rational design and fabrication of polymeric microparticles with predictable internal structures and functionality at the single-particle level

Capsaicin, a spicy component of hot peppers, modulates adipokine gene expression and protein release from obese-mouse adipose tissues and isolated adipocytes, and suppresses the inflammatory responses of adipose tissue macrophages

AbstractAdipokines are involved in the obesity-induced chronic inflammatory response that plays a crucial role in the development of obesity-related pathologies such as type II diabetes and atherosclerosis. We here demonstrate that capsaicin, a naturally occurring phytochemical, can suppress obesity-induced inflammation by modulating adipokine release from and macrophage behavior in obese mice adipose tissues. Capsaicin inhibited the expressions of IL-6 and MCP-1 mRNAs and protein release from the adipose tissues and adipocytes of obese mice, whereas it enhanced the expression of the adiponectin gene and protein. The action of capsaicin is associated with NF-κB inactivation and/or PPARγ activation. Moreover, capsaicin suppressed not only macrophage migration induced by the adipose tissue-conditioned medium, but also macrophage activation to release proinflammatory mediators. Capsaicin may be a useful phytochemical for attenuating obesity-induced inflammation and obesity-related complications

Proper Distance Metrics for Phylogenetic Analysis Using Complete Genomes without Sequence Alignment

A shortcoming of most correlation distance methods based on the composition vectors without alignment developed for phylogenetic analysis using complete genomes is that the “distances” are not proper distance metrics in the strict mathematical sense. In this paper we propose two new correlation-related distance metrics to replace the old one in our dynamical language approach. Four genome datasets are employed to evaluate the effects of this replacement from a biological point of view. We find that the two proper distance metrics yield trees with the same or similar topologies as/to those using the old “distance” and agree with the tree of life based on 16S rRNA in a majority of the basic branches. Hence the two proper correlation-related distance metrics proposed here improve our dynamical language approach for phylogenetic analysis

Extensive Reading with Guidance

A language learning mode called “word-focused extensive reading” has been proposed to facilitate word-usage learning. The user inputs a word in the computer program designed and implemented for reading to find its usage in the context of a sentence. The computer program then searches for the knowledge base for the word and provides guidance to show a summary of the salient features of word collocation. Sentences with the word in question are displayed one at a time. For each sentence the relevant collocating words are highlighted. In this way the reader sees the word collocation so as to recognize the salient features of the word and thus incrementally acquires the knowledge of word usage. The program works with large Chinese and English collections of texts. For Chinese the knowledge of word collocation was built on the basis of the Balanced Corpus of Academia Sinica. The English collocation features were collected from the British National Corpus. The program can also be useful for learning to differentiate near-synonyms

Korean-Chinese Person Name Translation for Cross Language Information Retrieval

PACLIC 21 / Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea / November 1-3, 200