Evolution and stability of 2-mercaptobenzimidazole inhibitor film upon Al alloy 6061

Journal of Applied Electrochemistry - Organic corrosion inhibitors have become competent alternatives to hazardous chrome conversion coatings due to their rapid adsorption over metal surfaces in...     

Adaptation to Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Enhances Resistance of Oral Cancer Cells to Cisplatin by Up-Regulating Polymerase η and Increasing DNA Repair Efficiency

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response is an adaptive program to cope with cellular stress that disturbs the function and homeostasis of ER, which commonly occurs during cancer progression to late stage. Late-stage cancers, mostly requiring chemotherapy, often develop treatment resistance. Chemoresistance has been linked to ER stress response; however, most of the evidence has come from studies that correlate the expression of stress markers with poor prognosis or demonstrate proapoptosis by the knockdown of stress-responsive genes. Since ER stress in cancers usually persists and is essentially not induced by genetic manipulations, we used low doses of ER stress inducers at levels that allowed cell adaptation to occur in order to investigate the effect of stress response on chemoresistance. We found that prolonged tolerable ER stress promotes mesenchymal–epithelial transition, slows cell-cycle progression, and delays the S-phase exit. Consequently, cisplatin-induced apoptosis was significantly decreased in stress-adapted cells, implying their acquisition of cisplatin resistance. Molecularly, we found that proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) ubiquitination and the expression of polymerase η, the main polymerase responsible for translesion synthesis across cisplatin-DNA damage, were up-regulated in ER stress-adaptive cells, and their enhanced cisplatin resistance was abrogated by the knockout of polymerase η. We also found that a fraction of p53 in stress-adapted cells was translocated to the nucleus, and that these cells exhibited a significant decline in the level of cisplatin-DNA damage. Consistently, we showed that the nuclear p53 coincided with strong positivity of glucose-related protein 78 (GRP78) on immunostaining of clinical biopsies, and the cisplatin-based chemotherapy was less effective for patients with high levels of ER stress. Taken together, this study uncovers that adaptation to ER stress enhances DNA repair and damage tolerance, with which stressed cells gain resistance to chemotherapeutics.     

Microscopic Methods for Identification of Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria from Various Habitats

This paper is devoted to microscopic methods for the identification of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB). In this context, it describes various habitats, morphology and techniques used for the detection and identification of this very heterogeneous group of anaerobic microorganisms. SRB are present in almost every habitat on Earth, including freshwater and marine water, soils, sediments or animals. In the oil, water and gas industries, they can cause considerable economic losses due to their hydrogen sulfide production; in periodontal lesions and the colon of humans, they can cause health complications. Although the role of these bacteria in inflammatory bowel diseases is not entirely known yet, their presence is increased in patients and produced hydrogen sulfide has a cytotoxic effect. For these reasons, methods for the detection of these microorganisms were described. Apart from selected molecular techniques, including metagenomics, fluorescence microscopy was one of the applied methods. Especially fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) in various modifications was described. This method enables visual identification of SRB, determining their abundance and spatial distribution in environmental biofilms and gut samples.     

Towards artificial intelligence at scale in the chemical industry

In the Industry 4.0 era, the chemical industry is embracing broad adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methods. This article provides a holistic view of how the industry is transforming digitally towards AI at scale. First, a historical perspective on how the industry used AI to aid humans in better decision-making is shown. Then state-of-the-art AI research addressing industrial needs on reliability and safety, process optimization, supply chain, material discovery, and reaction engineering is highlighted. Finally, a vision of the plant of the future is illustrated with critical components of AI-ready culture, model life cycle management, and renewed role of humans in chemical manufacturing.     

Multiple Chemical Features Impact Biological Performance Diversity of a Highly Active Natural Product-Inspired Library

A systematic, diversity-oriented synthesis approach was employed to access a natural product-inspired flavonoid library with diverse chemical features, including chemical properties, scaffold, stereochemistry, and appendages. Using Cell Painting, the effects of these diversity elements were evaluated, and multiple chemical features that predict biological performance diversity were identified. Scaffold identity appears to be the dominant predictor of performance diversity, but stereochemistry and appendages also contribute to a lesser degree. In addition, the diversity of chemical properties contributed to performance diversity, and the driving chemical property was dependent on the scaffold. These results highlight the importance of key chemical features that may inform the creation of small-molecule, performance-diverse libraries to improve the efficiency and success of high-throughput screening campaigns.     

Commentary to: An exact schedulability test for fixed-priority preemptive mixed-criticality real-time systems

Real-Time Systems - In this paper we point to some errors in recent paper by Asyaban et al. in which they devise an exact schedulability test. These errors are critical for the correct operation of...     

Photoactive Earth‐Abundant Iron Pyrite Catalysts for Electrocatalytic Nitrogen Reduction Reaction

The generation of ammonia, hydrogen production, and nitrogen purification are considered as energy intensive processes accompanied with large amounts of CO₂ emission. An electrochemical method assisted by photoenergy is widely utilized for the chemical energy conversion. In this work, earth‐abundant iron pyrite (FeS₂) nanocrystals grown on carbon fiber paper (FeS₂/CFP) are found to be an electrochemical and photoactive catalyst for nitrogen reduction reaction under ambient temperature and pressure. The electrochemical results reveal that FeS₂/CFP achieves a high Faradaic efficiency (FE) of ≈14.14% and NH₃ yield rate of ≈0.096 µg min^?1 at ?0.6 V versus RHE electrode in 0.25 m LiClO₄. During the electrochemical catalytic reaction, the crystal structure of FeS₂/CFP remains in the cubic pyrite phase, as analyzed by in situ X‐ray diffraction measurements. With near‐infrared laser irradiation (808 nm), the NH₃ yield rate of the FeS₂/CFP catalyst can be slightly improved to 0.1 µg min^?1 with high FE of 14.57%. Furthermore, density functional theory calculations demonstrate that the N₂ molecule has strong chemical adsorption energy on the iron atom of FeS₂. Overall, iron pyrite‐based materials have proven to be a potential electrocatalyst with photoactive behavior for ammonia production in practical applications.     

Magnetocaloric and magneto-transport properties of Gd10Co20Si70 alloy

We report the results of magnetic, thermodynamic, transport and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) studies of newly synthesized Gd_(10)Co_(20)Si_(70) alloy. These measurements confirm an antiferromagnetic transition at T_N=9 K. Both MCE and magnetoresistance (MR) show quadratic dependence on the applied magnetic field, indicating the presence of spin fluctuations in the alloy. The maximum values of the magnetic entropy change determined from the isothermal magnetization data for magnetic field change of 7 and9 T are found to be 10.5 and 15.6 J/kg·K, respectively. As a consequence of the spin fluctuations effect, the MCE peaks are pulled towards high temperature side as asymmetrically broadened peak. The MR attains a large positive value of 73%at 2 K in 8 T. The large MR and reversible MCE make this alloy an attractive multifunctional magnetic material.