Chemical composition,antibacterial and antioxidant activity of the essential oils of Metaplexis japonica and their antibacterial components

The aim of this research was to determine the chemical composition, antioxidant and antibacterial properties of the essential oils from Metaplexis japonica and isolation of antibacterial constituents from the essential oils. Results showed that 63 components were identified in essential oils. Phenylethyl alcohol (77.978%), α‐terpineol (31.810%) and docosane (21.644%) were the most abundent constituents of flower oil, leaf oil and fruit oil, respectively. Based on bioactivity‐guided fractionation, three active constituents were isolated and identified as phenylethyl alcohol, α‐terpineol and β‐linalool. Both flower oil and phenylethyl alcohol showed high antibacterial performance, with inhibition zone from 25 ± 0.5 to 11 ± 0.6 mm at highest concentration, and MIC values ranging from 0.125 to 2%. In both DPPH and ABTS assay, the oils showed moderate antioxidant activity. These results indicate potential efficacy of active constituents and essential oils of M. japonica to control food‐borne pathogenic and spoilage bacteria.     

Dichlorinated Dithienylethene-Based Copolymers for Air-Stable n-Type Conductivity and Thermoelectricity

Two donor–acceptor (D–A) polymers are obtained by coupling difluoro- and dichloro-substituted forms of the electron-deficient unit BDOPV and the relatively weak donor moiety dichlorodithienylethene (ClTVT). The conductivity and power factors of doped devices are different for the chlorinated and fluorinated BDOPV polymers. A high electron conductivity of 38.3 and 16.1 S cm⁻¹ are obtained from the chlorinated and fluorinated polymers with N-DMBI, respectively, and 12.4 and 2.4 S cm⁻¹ are obtained from the chlorinated and fluorinated polymers with CoCp₂, respectively, from drop-cast devices. The corresponding power factors are 22.7, 7.6, 39.5, and 8.0  µ W m⁻¹ K⁻², respectively. Doping of PClClTVT with N-DMBI results in excellent air stability; the electron conductivity of devices with 50 mol% N-DMBI as dopant remained up to 4.9 S m⁻¹ after 222 days in the air, the longest for an n-doped polymer stored in air, with a thermoelectric power factor of 9.3  µ W m⁻¹ K⁻². However, the conductivity of PFClTVT-based devices can hardly be measured after 103 days. These observations are consistent with morphologies determined by grazing incidence wide angle X-ray scattering and atomic force microscopy.     

E-GCN: graph convolution with estimated labels

Applied Intelligence - G raph C onvolutional N etwork (GCN) has been commonly applied for semi-supervised learning tasks. However, the established GCN frequently only considers the given labels in...     

Photoacoustic Therapy for Precise Eradication of Glioblastoma with a Tumor Site Blood–Brain Barrier Permeability Upregulating Nanoparticle

Glioblastoma is an extremely difficult clinical indication with very few therapeutic choices. In this study, a nanoparticle is constructed featuring high red absorbance and selective penetration of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) at the tumor site. This nanoparticle can provide timely activation of the adenosine receptor on the BBB to allow self‐passage and accumulation in the tumor. The nanoparticle converts pulsed laser energy into a shockwave via photoacoustic (PA) cavitation to achieve localized mechanical damage and thus yields a precision antitumor effect. In addition to its therapeutic function, the nanoparticle‐mediated PA process can also generate images that provide valuable information regarding tumor depth, size, and vascular morphology to inform treatment planning and monitoring. The results show that the nanoparticles can be efficiently delivered into the glioblastoma via intravenous infusion and this PA shockwave therapy can selectively destroy glioblastoma tumors with no observable side effects on normal tissue.     

An index structure supporting rule activation in pervasive applications

World Wide Web - Rule mechanism has been widely used in many areas, such as databases, artificial intelligent and pervasive computing. In a rule mechanism, rule activation decides which rules are...     

Confined Transformation of UiO‐66 Nanocrystals to Yttria‐Stabilized Zirconia with Hierarchical Pore Structures for Catalytic Applications

Solid acids as a substitution for hazardous liquid acids (e.g., HF and H₂SO₄) can promote many important reactions in the industry, such as carbon cracking, to proceed in a more sustainable way. Starting from a zirconium‐based metal‐organic framework (UiO‐66 nanocrystals), herein a transformative method is reported to prepare micro/mesoporous yttria‐stabilized zirconia (YSZ) encapsulated inside a mesoporous silica shell. It is then further demonstrated that the resultant reactor‐like catalysts can be used for a wide range of catalytic reactions. The acidity of the YSZ phase is found with rich accessible Lewis acid and Brønsted acid sites and they display superior performances for esterification (acetic acid and ethanol) and Friedel‐Crafts alkylation (benzylation of toluene). After being loaded with different noble metals, furthermore, hydrogenation of CO₂ and a one‐pot cascade reaction (nitrobenzene and benzaldehyde to N‐benzylaniline) are used as model reactions to prove the versatility and stability of catalysts. Based on the findings of this work, it is believed that this class of reactor‐like catalysts can meet future challenges in the development of new catalyst technology for greener heterogeneous catalysis.     

Physical Characteristics of Friction Processes in a Columnar Approach-Separation Model with Tangential Force

Protection of Metals and Physical Chemistry of Surfaces - Three-dimensional molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is conducted to understanding the dynamics processes of atomic-scale friction, which...