Preparation of TiO 2

Photocatalysts comprising nanosized TiO2 particles on activated carbon (AC) were prepared by a sol-gel method. The TiO2/AC composites were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric (TG) analysis, nitrogen adsorption, scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX). Their photocatalytic activities were studied through the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) in photocatalytic reactor at room temperature under ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation and the effect of loading cycles of TiO2 on the structural properties and photocatalytic activity of TiO2/AC composites was also investigated. The results indicate that the anatase TiO2 particles with a crystal size of 10–20 nm can be deposited homogeneously on the AC surface under calcination at 500°C. The loading cycle plays an important role in controlling the loading amount of TiO2 and morphological structure and photocatalytic activity of TiO2/AC composites. The porosity parameters of these composite photocatalysts such as specific surface area and total pore volume decrease whereas the loading amount of TiO2 increases. The TiO2/AC composite synthesized at 2 loading cycles exhibits a high photocatalytic activity in terms of the loading amount of TiO2 and as high as 93.2% removal rate for RhB from the 400 mL solution at initial concentration of 2 × 10−5 mol/L under UV light irradiation

ORY-1001 Suppresses Cell Growth and Induces Apoptosis in Lung Cancer Through Triggering HK2 Mediated Warburg Effect

ORY-1001, an inhibitor of covalent lysine (K)-specific demethylase 1A (KDM1A), has been used as a therapy for the treatment of acute leukemia. However, the underlying mechanisms of anticancer are still not fully elucidated. Here, we report that KDM1A is highly expressed in lung cancers, where it appears to drive aggressive growth. Furthermore, lung cancer patients with higher KDM1A levels have worse survival outcomes than patients with lower KDM1A levels. Interestingly, ORY-1001significantly inhibited the cell proliferation, colony formation, cell cycle, and induced apoptosis, by regulating the Warburg effect through controlling Hexokinases 2 (HK2) expression. In summary, these results indicate that ORY-1001 could inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells via regulating the Warburg effect by controlling HK2

Robustness of Double Random Phase Encoding spread-space spread-spectrum watermarking technique

In this paper the robustness of a recently proposed image watermarking scheme, namely the Double Random Phase Encoding spread-space spread-spectrum watermarking (DRPE SS-SS) technique, is investigated. The watermark, which is chosen to be in the form of a digital barcode image, is numerically encrypted using a simulation of the optical DRPE process. This produces a random complex image, which is then processed to form a real valued random image with a low number of quantization levels. This signal is added to the host image. Extraction of the barcode, involves applying an inverse DRPE process to the watermarked image followed by low pass filtering. This algorithm is designed to utilize the capability of the DRPE to reversibly spread the energy of the watermarking information in both the space and spatial frequency domains. In this way the energy of the watermark in any spatial or spatial frequency bin is very small. To test robustness several common geometric transformations and signal processing operations are performed using both informed and blind detections for different barcode widths and different quantization levels. The results presented indicate that while the DRPE SS-SS method is robust to scaling, and JPEG compression distortion, it is especially robust to spatial cropping and both low and high pass filtering. Both random-watermark and random-host false positive cases are examined. The uniqueness of the watermark is demonstrated, and it is shown that the DRPE SS-SS has very low false positive errors, and that the larger the barcode width, the lower the false positive rate. Finally the effects of both printing and scanning are examined

Evaluation of Stability and Biocompatibility of Chitosan/Sodium Tripolyphosphate and Chitosan/Flaxseed Gum Composite Nanoparticles Loaded with Bighead Carp Peptides

Chitosan nanoparticle is becoming an excellent carrier for the delivery of bioactive components due to the advantages of simple preparation, low cost and high biocompatibility. Previous studies have shown that chitosan/sodium tripolyphosphate (CS/TPP) and chitosan/flaxseed gum (CS/FG) nanoparticles loaded with bighead carp peptides (BCP) have the advantages of small particle size, high encapsulation rate and significant slow-release effect. This study explored the effects of ionic strength, pH, simulated digestion and storage time on the preparation of chitosan/sodium tripolyphosphate (CS/TPP-BCP) and chitosan/flaxseed gum (CS/FG-BCP) nanoparticles, and evaluated the extracellular lactate dehydrogenase content and antioxidant capacity in vivo of Caco-2 cells treated with the chitosan nanoparticles and their cellular uptake. The results showed that the two kinds of chitosan nanoparticles were stable under acidic conditions and sensitive to a solution with opposite charges. The stability of the nanoparticles loaded with bighead peptides was higher than that of free peptides and both nanoparticles showed higher biocompatibility and cell uptake

Roadmap on optical security

Information security and authentication are important challenges facing society. Recent attacks by hackers on the databases of large commercial and financial companies have demonstrated that more research and development of advanced approaches are necessary to deny unauthorized access to critical data. Free space optical technology has been investigated by many researchers in information security, encryption, and authentication. The main motivation for using optics and photonics for information security is that optical waveforms possess many complex degrees of freedom such as amplitude, phase, polarization, large bandwidth, nonlinear transformations, quantum properties of photons, and multiplexing that can be combined in many ways to make information encryption more secure and more difficult to attack. This roadmap article presents an overview of the potential, recent advances, and challenges of optical security and encryption using free space optics. The roadmap on optical security is comprised of six categories that together include 16 short sections written by authors who have made relevant contributions in this field. The first category of this roadmap describes novel encryption approaches, including secure optical sensing which summarizes double random phase encryption applications and flaws [Yamaguchi], the digital holographic encryption in free space optical technique which describes encryption using multidimensional digital holography [Nomura], simultaneous encryption of multiple signals [Pérez-Cabré], asymmetric methods based on information truncation [Nishchal], and dynamic encryption of video sequences [Torroba]. Asymmetric and one-way cryptosystems are analyzed by Peng. The second category is on compression for encryption. In their respective contributions, Alfalou and Stern propose similar goals involving compressed data and compressive sensing encryption. The very important area of cryptanalysis is the topic of the third category with two sections: Sheridan reviews phase retrieval algorithms to perform different attacks, whereas Situ discusses nonlinear optical encryption techniques and the development of a rigorous optical information security theory. The fourth category with two contributions reports how encryption could be implemented at the nano- or micro-scale. Naruse discusses the use of nanostructures in security applications and Carnicer proposes encoding information in a tightly focused beam. In the fifth category, encryption based on ghost imaging using single-pixel detectors is also considered. In particular, the authors [Chen, Tajahuerce] emphasize the need for more specialized hardware and image processing algorithms. Finally, in the sixth category, Mosk and Javidi analyze in their corresponding papers how quantum imaging can benefit optical encryption systems. Sources that use few photons make encryption systems much more difficult to attack, providing a secure method for authentication.Centro de Investigaciones ÓpticasConsejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnica