Simultaneous Detection of Chlamydia Trachomatis, Neisseria Gonorrhoeae, Ureaplasma Urealyticum by Multiplex PCR-Running

Chlamydia trachomatis (CT), Ureaplasma urealyticum (UU) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) are the most common pathogens of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), frequently founded in urogenital infections, and showed a criminal role in increasing the risk of potential adverse outcomes. In this study a multiplex PCR assay for the simultaneous detection and accurate identification of 3 clinically relevant pathogens of STIs, i.e., CT, NG and UU in a single tube was developed and evaluated. The limits of detection for the multiplex PCR assay were ~10 copies of DNAs per reaction. This assay has comparable clinical sensitivity to the conventional monoplex real-time PCR assay and considerable potential to be routine molecular diagnostic tool for simultaneous identification of STIs at relatively low cost due to multiplexing

Multifaceted oncostatin M: novel roles and therapeutic potential of the oncostatin M signaling in rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a self-immune inflammatory disease characterized by joint damage. A series of cytokines are involved in the development of RA. Oncostatin M (OSM) is a pleiotropic cytokine that primarily activates the Janus kinase (JAK)/signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) signaling pathway, the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway, and other physiological processes such as cell proliferation, inflammatory response, immune response, and hematopoiesis through its receptor complex. In this review, we first describe the characteristics of OSM and its receptor, and the biological functions of OSM signaling. Subsequently, we discuss the possible roles of OSM in the development of RA from clinical and basic research perspectives. Finally, we summarize the progress of clinical studies targeting OSM for the treatment of RA. This review provides researchers with a systematic understanding of the role of OSM signaling in RA, which can guide the development of drugs targeting OSM for the treatment of RA

Improved Calculation of Load and Resistance Factors Based on Third-Moment Method

Load and resistance factor design (LRFD) is widely used in building codes for reliability design. In the calculation of load and resistance factors, the third-moment method (3M) has been proposed to overcome the shortcomings (e.g., inevitable iterative computation, requirement of probability density functions (PDFs) of random variables) of other methods. With the existing 3M method, the iterative is simplified to one computation, and the PDFs of random variables are not required. In this paper, the computation of load and resistance factors is further simplified to no iterations. Furthermore, the accuracy of the proposed method is proved to be higher than the existing 3M methods. Additionally, with the proposed method, the limitations regarding applicable range in the existing 3M methods are avoided. With several examples, the comparison of the existing 3M method, the ASCE method, the Mori method, and the proposed method is given. The results show that the proposed method is accurate, simple, safe, and saves material

Time-Varying Reliability Evaluation of Concrete Based on Carbonation Depth

When studying concrete impairment, the carbonation depth of concrete is regarded to be variable. Therefore, a time-varying reliability evaluation is important to perform a structural safety assessment. By analyzing 13,198 data on the carbonation depth of concrete, we propose a time-varying reliability evaluation based on the third-moment (TM) method to predict the service life of concrete. Validated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulation, the errors of the calculated results using time-varying reliability evaluation were within 4%. It is shown that the TM method proposed in this paper is more practical than traditional approaches such as MC simulation and second-moment (SM) methods in probability analysis. In this paper, exponential distribution was used to characterize the distribution of carbonation depths. Since paint was present on the concrete surface, numerous uncarbonized concrete components were found in the experiments; to develop a time-varying model considering the uncarbonized components, a function for evaluating the ratio of carbonized concretes is proposed. Overall, the time-varying TM method provided in this paper can act as a foundation for other investigations on probabilistic analysis, e.g., of compressive strength, deflection, and crack of concrete, which can be used to evaluate the reliability of concrete

Interfacial Properties of Monolayer SnS–Metal Contacts

Two-dimensional semiconducting SnS is expected to have great potential for application in nanoelectronics. By using both ab initio electronic structure calculations and more reliable quantum transport simulations, we systematically explored the interfacial properties of monolayer (ML) SnS in contact with a series of metals (Ag, Al, Au, Pd, Cu, and Ni) for the first time. According to the adsorption level, three categories are found: strong adsorption is found in ML SnS–Pd and Ni contacts; medium adsorption is found in ML SnS–Cu contacts; and weak adsorption is found in ML SnS–Ag, Al, and Au contacts. Because the band structure of ML SnS is destroyed in all of the contact systems, a vertical Schottky barrier at the ML SnS–metal interface is absent. However, at the metalized-SnS/uncontacted-SnS interface in a transistor configuration, a lateral Schottky contact is always formed as a result of strong Fermi level pinning (with a pinning factor of 0.17–0.28) according to the quantum transport simulations. This work provides guidelines to design ML SnS-based devices with optimized electrode contact for high performance

Legislative Documents

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Few-Layer Fe₃(PO₄)₂·8H₂O: Novel H‑Bonded 2D Material and Its Abnormal Electronic Properties

Using first-principles calculations, we study the structural and electronic properties of a new layered hydrogen-bonded 2D material Fe₃(PO₄)₂·8H₂O. Interestingly, unlike other common 2D materials, such as layered van der Waals 2D materials, the band gap of 2D Fe₃(PO₄)₂·8H₂O-(010)-(1 × 1) is smaller than bulk Fe₃(PO₄)₂·8H₂O, which does not obey the normal quantum confinement effect and can be attributed to the edge states and the hydrogen bonds between the layers. We also find that the band-gap variation with the reduced layers depends on the length of the interlayer hydrogen bond and the stronger interlayer hydrogen bond leads to the larger band gap