Antibacterial activity and action target of phenyllactic acid against Staphylococcus aureus and its application in skim milk and cheese

Phenyllactic acid (PLA) has been demonstrated to possess antibacterial activity and capacity to prolong food shelf life. However, studies on the performance of PLA in inhibiting Staphylococcus aureus and its effectiveness when applied to dairy products are largely lacking. Here, antibacterial activity (planktonic and biofilm states) of PLA against S. aureus CICC10145 (S. aureus_45) were investigated. The results showed that PLA inhibited growth of S. aureus_45 and formation of S. aureus_45 biofilm. Next, the antibacterial action target of PLA was uncovered from both physiological and phenotypic perspectives. The results showed that PLA decreased cell metabolic activity and cell viability, damaged cell membrane integrity, triggered leakage of intracellular contents (DNA, proteins, and ATP), and caused oxidative stress damage and morphological deformation of S. aureus_45. In practical application, the antibacterial activity of PLA against S. aureus_45 cells was further confirmed in skim milk and cheese as dairy food models, and the antibacterial effects can be adequately maintained during storage for 21 d, at least at 4°C. These findings suggested that PLA could be a potential candidate for controlling S. aureus outgrowth in dairy foods.     

NiFe layered double hydroxide as an efficient bifunctional catalyst for electrosynthesis of hydrogen peroxide and oxygen

Two electron oxygen reduction reaction to produce hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is a promising alternative technique to the multistep and high energy consumption anthraquinone process. Herein, Ni–Fe layered double hydroxide (NiFe-LDH) has been firstly demonstrated as an efficient bifunctional catalyst to prepare H₂O₂ by electrochemical oxygen reduction (2e^? ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Significantly, the NiFe-LDH catalyst possesses a high faraday efficiency of 88.75% for H₂O₂ preparation in alkaline media. Moreover, the NiFe-LDH catalyst exhibits excellent OER electrocatalytic property with small overpotential of 210 mV at 10 mA cm^?2 and high stability in 1 M KOH solution. On this basis, a new reactor has been designed to electrolyze oxygen and generate hydrogen peroxide. Under the ultra-low cell voltage of 1 V, the H₂O₂ yield reaches to 47.62 mmol g_cat^?1 h^?1. In order to evaluate the application potential of the bifunctional NiFe-LDH catalyst for H₂O₂ preparation, a 1.5 V dry battery has been used as the power supply, and the output of H₂O₂ reaches to 83.90 mmol g_cat^?1 h^?1. The excellent electrocatalytic properties of 2e^? ORR and OER make NiFe-LDH a promising bifunctional electrocatalyst for future commercialization. Moreover, the well-designed 2e^? ORR-OER reactor provides a new strategy for portable production of H₂O₂.     

Designing independent water transport channels to improve water flooding in ultra-thin nanoporous film cathodes for PEMFCs

Utilization of 3D nanostructured Pt cathodes could obviously improve performances of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) owing to the reduced tortuosity and the bi-continuous nanoporous structure. However, these cathodes usually suffer from the flooding problem ascribed to the ionomer-free and nanoscale pores which are more susceptible to water condensation. In this paper, ultra-thin nanoporous metal films (100 nm) were utilized to construct PEMFC cathodes and independent transport channels were designed separately for water and gas aiming at the flooding problem. Nanoporous gold (NPG) film was used as the model support for loading Pt nanoparticles owing to its controllable and stable structure. After optimizing the polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) content and carbon loading in the gas diffusion layer (GDL), plasma treatment under O₂ atmosphere was used to pattern the GDL with independent water transport channels. The obtained liquid permeation coefficients and oxygen gains demonstrated the obviously improved water and O₂ transport. By using a home-made optimized GDL and a nanoporous film cathode with pore size ～60 nm, the flooding problem could be facilely solved. With a Pt loading of ～16 μg cm^?2, this 3D nanostructured cathode exhibits a PEMFC performance of ～957 mW cm^?2 at 80 °C. The Pt power efficiency is about 4 times higher than that of the commercial Pt/C cathode (50 μg cm^?2, 756 mW cm^?2). Obviously, this study provides a simple but effective methodology to solve the water flooding problem in the ultra-thin nanoporous film cathodes which is applicable for other types of 3D nanostructured PEMFC cathodes.     

急性炎性疾病患者乳酸林格氏液液体动力学

目的:探索炎性疾病患者的乳酸林格氏液（Ringer's lactate,RL）液体动力学特征以及炎性生物标记物是否可以作为协变量影响RL分布和排泄。方法:本研究为前瞻性队列研究。选择40例美国麻醉医师分级（ASA）I-II级，腹腔镜下择期胆囊切除术（胆囊炎组，n=20）或者腹腔镜下急诊阑尾切除术（阑尾炎组，n=20）。所有患者麻醉诱导前开始输注RL，按15 mL/kg，35 min内输毕。采用酶联免疫（enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay,ELISA）方法测定血浆炎症（TNF-α,IL-10和CRP）或者内皮损伤生物标记物（syndecan-1,SDC-1）；利用血红蛋白（Hb）稀释-时间曲线和尿量，使用Phoenix软件，采用非线性混合效应模型分析计算RL液体动力学参数和协变量的影响。结果:与胆囊炎组相比，阑尾炎组RL从组织间隙到血浆的转运速率常数（k21）显著降低（14×10-3min-1 versus 35×10-3min-1;P=0.012）。阑尾炎组C反应蛋白（CRP）升高［中位数38.1(1.8-143.6) μg/mL versus 1.3(0.1-159.0) μg/mL;P<0.001］；与清醒状态相比，麻醉期间（输液开始后30～45 min），液体从中央室中到外周室的转运速率常数（k12）显著增加（57×10-3min-1 versus 32×10-3min-1；P<0.01）。清除速率常数（k10）降低90%（0.6×10-3min-1 versus 5.3×10-3min-1;P<0.001）。无论在清醒状态还是麻醉状态下低血压均能降低液体清除；炎症或者内膜损伤的生物标记物不能作为显著影响RL液体动力学参数的协变量。结论:阑尾炎或者胆囊炎患者术前输入液体后“炎症反应的生物标记物”不是RL的液体动力学的协变量，但是两组患者中，全身麻醉期间输入液体的清除率下降。     

Output-relevant Variational autoencoder for Just-in-time soft sensor modeling with missing data

Main challenges for developing data-based models lie in the existence of high-dimensional and possibly missing observations that exist in stored data from industry process. Variational autoencoder (VAE) as one of the deep learning methods has been applied for extracting useful information or features from high-dimensional dataset. Considering that existing VAE is unsupervised, an output-relevant VAE is proposed for extracting output-relevant features in this work. By using correlation between process variables, different weight is correspondingly assigned to each input variable. With symmetric Kullback–Leibler (SKL) divergence, the similarity is evaluated between the stored samples and a query sample. According to the values of the SKL divergence, data relevant for modeling are selected. Subsequently, Gaussian process regression (GPR) is utilized to establish a model between the input and the corresponding output at the query sample. In addition, owing to the common existence of missing data in output data set, the parameters and missing data in the GPR are estimated simultaneously. A practical debutanizer industrial process is utilized to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Crystallization and spectroscopic properties in Er3+ doped oxyfluorogermanate glass ceramics containing Na

The Er³⁺ doped oxyfluorogermanate glasses, with a composition containing Na element, were synthesized by the conventional melting–quenching technique. When Na element was introduced into the composition of oxyfluorogermanate glass, the crystals behavior was investigated in details. Depending on the annealing procedure supplied, thermal annealing of precursor glasses in the system GeO₂/BaF₂/AlF₃/Na₂O/NaF/ZnO/GdF₃/ErF₃ led to the precipitation of different crystal phase nanocrystals. It was confirmed the nanocrystals in GC600 is orthorhombic NaBaAlF₆ which led to enhance obviously in the UC luminescence of Er³⁺. However, the nanocrystals in G585 led to decrease in the UC luminescence, which indicated few Er ions enter into the lattice of this nanocrystal phase. The reason of the decrease in UC emission intensity of GC585 was analyzed.     

Kinetics of light-induced degradation in compensated boron-doped silicon investigated using photoluminescence and numerical simulation

We use photoluminescence to observe light-induced degradation in silicon in real time. Numerical simulations are used to match our results and lifetime decay data from the literature with theoretical models for the generation of the light-induced boron–oxygen defects. It is found that the existing model of the slowly generated defect SRC, where its saturated concentration is a function of the majority carrier concentration, does not explain certain results in both p- and n-type samples. A new model is proposed in which the saturated SRC concentration is controlled by the total hole concentration under illumination.     

APP软件性能效率研究

性能效率是APP软件的重要质量属性，但目前缺乏APP软件性能效率的通用模型。分析了APP软件的性能特征，基于ISO/IEC 25010标准提出了APP软件的性能效率模型，定义了APP软件性能效率的子特性和度量指标。基于提出的APP软件性能效率模型，通过实验对APP软件的性能效率进行了度量及相关分析。