Psoriasis and Gut Microbiome—Current State of Art

Psoriasis is a chronic, immune-mediated inflammatory disease that affects around 125 million people worldwide. Several studies concerning the gut microbiota composition and its role in disease pathogenesis recently demonstrated significant alterations among psoriatic patients. Certain parameters such as Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio or Psoriasis Microbiome Index were developed in order to distinguish between psoriatic and healthy individuals. The “leaky gut syndrome” and bacterial translocation is considered by some authors as a triggering factor for the onset of the disease, as it promotes chronic systemic inflammation. The alterations were also found to resemble those in inflammatory bowel diseases, obesity and certain cardiovascular diseases. Microbiota dysbiosis, depletion in SCFAs production, increased amount of produced TMAO, dysregulation of the pathways affecting the balance between lymphocytes populations seem to be the most significant findings concerning gut physiology in psoriatic patients. The gut microbiota may serve as a potential response-to-treatment biomarker in certain cases of biological treatment. Oral probiotics administration as well as fecal microbial transplantation were most reported in bringing health benefits to psoriatic patients. However, the issue of psoriatic bacterial gut composition, its role and healing potential needs further investigation. Here we reviewed the literature on the current state of the relationship between psoriasis and gut microbiome.     

Improving through-thickness conductivity of carbon fiber reinforced polymer using carbon nanotube/polyethylenimine at the interlaminar region

The through-thickness conductivity of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite was increased by incorporating multiwalled carbon nanotubes in the interlaminar region. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were dispersed in a polyethylenimine (PEI) binder, which was then coated onto the carbon fiber fabric. Standard vacuum-assisted resin infusion process was applied to fabricate the composite laminates. This modification technique aims to enhance the electrical conductivity in through-thickness direction for the purpose of nondestructive testing, damage detection, and electromagnetic interference shielding. CNT concentrations ranging from 0 to 0.75 wt% were used and compared to pristine CFRP samples (reference). The through-thickness conductivity of the CFRP exhibited an improvement of up to 781% by adopting this technique. However, the dispersion of CNT in PEI led to a viscosity increase and poor wetting properties which resulted in the formation of voids/defects, poor adhesion (as shown in scanning electron micrographs) and the deterioration of the mechanical properties as manifested by interlaminar shear strength and dynamic mechanical analysis measurements.     

Combination of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and nonlinear methods to analyze the copolymerization of phosphonic acid derivatives

We demonstrate in this study that the combination of modern inline monitoring methods [here: inline nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)] with simulations gains more exact and profound kinetic results than previously used methods like linearization without that combination. The ¹H-NMR spectroscopic data (more than 100 data points) are used to construct the copolymerization diagram. The reactivity ratios are obtained applying the van Herks nonlinear least square method. The examination of the radical copolymerization of 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) with (2-{[2-(ethoxycarbonyl)prop-2-en-1-yl]oxy}ethyl) phosphonic acid (ECPPA) as important adhesive monomer used in dentistry yields reactivity ratios of r_HEMA = 1.83; r_ECPPA = 0.42. The copolymerization diagram reflects nonideal, non-azeotropic copolymerization. The sequence distribution of the obtained by Monte Carlo simulation indicates the generation of statistical copolymers. As an important finding, it is demonstrated that the repeating units responsible for etching and adhesion are arranged over the whole polymer chain, which is necessary to achieve proper functionality. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 48256.     

Lab-Scale Microreactor Plant for the Study of Methylations with Liquid Chloromethane

Chloromethane is an important reagent for methylations in the process industry. However, as a gas suspected of causing cancer, it is rarely used at laboratory scale. Therefore, a setup is presented here for studies in a laboratory under safe and reproducible conditions. The use of a microreactor guarantees high heat transfer rates and a low holdup of the reagent. As a proof-of-concept, the reaction of chloromethane with the secondary amine morpholine in aqueous solution is investigated. By applying elevated pressures, a liquid-liquid system with enhanced solubility of chloromethane in the aqueous phase is accessible.     

Scalable,password-based and threshold authentication for smart homes

Smart homes are a special use-case of the IoT paradigm, which is becoming more and more important in our lives. Although sensors, devices and applications make our daily lives easier, they often collect our sensitive data, which may lead to security problems (e.g., hacked devices, botnets, etc.). In several cases, the appropriate security mechanisms are missing within the devices. Therefore, security measures have become a central topic in the field of IoT. The most essential requirements are secure user–device authentication and confidentiality of transferred sensitive data. Passwords are the most widely used factors in various areas, such as user authentication, key establishment, and also secret sharing. Password-based protocols that are resistant to typical threats, such as offline dictionary, man-in-the-middle and phishing attacks, generate new session keys. The major aim of these solutions is to guarantee high-level security, even if a user applies a single low-entropy human memorable password for all their accounts. We introduce a threshold and password-based, distributed, mutual authenticated key agreement with key confirmation protocol for a smart home environment. The proposed protocol is a scalable and robust scheme, which forces the adversary to corrupt \(l-1\) smart home devices, where l is the threshold, in order to perform an offline dictionary attack. The protocol is designed to achieve password-only setting, and end-to-end security if the chosen IoT devices are also authenticated besides the user. We also provide a security analysis of the protocol in AVISPA. We apply the on-the-fly model checker and the constraint-logic-based attack searcher to perform protocol verification for bounded numbers of sessions. We show that the proposed protocol provides session key secrecy and mutual authentication of the user and the device manager. Since efficiency is a crucial aspect, we implemented our protocol to measure the computation and communication costs and demonstrate that our solution is appropriate and eligible for smart homes.