Interbilayer-crosslinked multilamellar vesicles as synthetic vaccines for potent humoral and cellular immune responses

Vaccines based on recombinant proteins avoid the toxicity and antivector immunity associated with live vaccine (for example, viral) vectors, but their immunogenicity is poor, particularly for CD8(+) T-cell responses. Synthetic particles carrying antigens and adjuvant molecules have been developed to enhance subunit vaccines, but in general these materials have failed to elicit CD8(+) T-cell responses comparable to those for live vectors in preclinical animal models. Here, we describe interbilayer-crosslinked multilamellar vesicles formed by crosslinking headgroups of adjacent lipid bilayers within multilamellar vesicles. Interbilayer-crosslinked vesicles stably entrapped protein antigens in the vesicle core and lipid-based immunostimulatory molecules in the vesicle walls under extracellular conditions, but exhibited rapid release in the presence of endolysosomal lipases. We found that these antigen/adjuvant-carrying vesicles form an extremely potent whole-protein vaccine, eliciting endogenous T-cell and antibody responses comparable to those for the strongest vaccine vectors. These materials should enable a range of subunit vaccines and provide new possibilities for therapeutic protein delivery.     

Fabrication of gradient optical filter containing anisotropic Bragg nanostructure

New gradient optical filters containing asymmetric Bragg structure were prepared from the distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) porous silicon (PSi). Anisotropic DBR PSi displaying a rainbow-colored reflection was generated by using an asymmetric etching configuration. Flexible anisotropic DBR PSi composite films were obtained by casting of polymer solution onto anisotropic DBR PSi thin films. The surface and cross-sectional images images of anisotropic DBR PSi composite films obtained with cold field emission scanning electron microscope indicated that the average pore size and the thickness of porous layer decreased as the lateral distance increased. As lateral distance increased, the reflection resonance shifted to shorter wavelength.     

High Strength Steel Plates for Large Container Ships

Heavy thickness steel plates with a good combination of strength,toughness and weldability have been demanded for building of large container ships.High strength steel plates with heavy gauge of EH36,EH40 and EH47 grades were developed by optimizing chemical compositions and TMCP process parameters.Micro alloying elements of Ti and Nb were added to the three steel grades for enhancing the strength and toughness of base plates.The strength of base plates of the EH47 grade was further enhanced with the help of the increased amount of substitutional solid solutes,such as manganese,copper,nickel,or chromium.EH36 steel plates for high heat input over 550 kJ/cm were manufactured by improving thermal stability of TiN particles for better weld heat-affected zone toughness.Thermally stabilized TiN particles effectively suppress grain growth at weld heat-affected zone,leading to better toughness.These steel plates showed excellent mechanical properties of base plates and welded joints.     

Fractionation of barley straw with dilute sulfuric acid for improving hemicellulose recovery

Dilute acid fractionation of barley straw improves dissolving hemicellulose fraction of the straw, while leaving the cellulose more reactive and accessible to enzyme as a strategy of pretreatment. To characterize the fractionation process, the effects of the acid concentration, temperature and reaction time on the hemicellulose removal as well as on the formation of by-products (furfural, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural and acetic acid) were investigated. The optimum fractionation conditions of barley straw were 1% (w/v) concentration of sulfuric acid, 158 °C of reaction temperature and 15 min of reaction time. Under the optimum conditions, 87% of xylan was hydrolyzed and recovered in liquid hydrolyzate, which was 7% higher than that of the predicted yield. The hydrolyzate contained glucose 2.44 g/L, arabinose 1.70 g/L, xylose 13.41 g/L, acetic acid 1.55 g/L, levulinic acid 0.03 g/L, 5-HMF 0.03 g/L and furfural 0.75 g/L.     

Two unsaturated fatty acids with potent α-glucosidase inhibitory activity purified from the body wall of sea cucumber (Stichopus japonicus)

One therapeutic approach for preventing diabetes mellitus and obesity is to retard the absorption of glucose via inhibition of α-glucosidase. Two unsaturated fatty acids with strong α-glucosidase inhibitory activity, 7(Z)-octadecenoic acid (1) and 7(Z),10(Z)-octadecadienoic acid (2), were purified from the body wall of Stichopus japonicus. IC(50) values of compounds 1 and 2 were 0.51 and 0.67 μg/mL against Saccharomyces cerevisiae α-glucosidase and 0.49 and 0.60 μg/mL against Bacillus stearothermophilus α-glucosidase, respectively. These compounds mildly inhibited rat-intestinal sucrase and maltase. In addition, both compounds showed a mixed type of inhibition against S. cerevisiae α-glucosidase and were very stable under thermal and acidic conditions up to 60 min. The K(I) and K(IS) values of compounds 1 and 2 were 0.44 and 0.22 μg/mL, and 0.39 and 0.13 μg/mL, respectively. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: One therapeutic approach for preventing diabetes mellitus is to retard the absorption of glucose via inhibition of α-glucosidase. In this study, 2 fatty acids with strong α-glucosidase-inhibitory activity, 7(Z)-octadecenoic acid and 7(Z),10(Z)-octadecadienoic acid, were purified and identified from sea cucumber. Therefore, sea cucumber fatty acids can potentially be developed as a novel natural nutraceutical for the management of type-2 diabetes.     

Transport of strontium and cesium in simulated hanford tank waste leachate through quartz sand under saturated and unsaturated flow

We investigated the effects of water saturation and secondary precipitate formation on Sr and Cs transport through quartz sand columns under saturated and unsaturated flow. Column experiments were conducted at effective water saturation ranging from 0.2 to 1.0 under steady-state flow using either 0.1 M NaNO(3) or simulated tank waste leachate (STWL; 1 M NaNO(3) and 1 M NaOH) mimicking Hanford (Washington, USA) tank waste. In 0.1 M NaNO(3) columns, Sr transported like a conservative tracer, whereas Cs was retarded relative to Sr. The transport of Sr and Cs in the 0.1 M NaNO(3) columns under all water saturations could be described with the equilibrium convection-dispersion equation (CDE). In STWL columns, Sr mobility was significantly reduced compared to the 0.1 M NaNO(3) column, because Sr was incorporated into or sorbed to neo-formed secondary precipitates. Strontium sequestration by precipitates was confirmed by additional batch and electron micrograph analyses. In contrast(,) the transport of Cs was less affected by the STWL; retardation of Cs in STWL columns was similar to that found in 0.1 M NaNO(3) columns. Analysis of STWL column data revealed that both Sr and Cs breakthrough curves showed nonideal behavior that suggest nonequilibrium conditions, although nonlinear geochemical behavior cannot be ruled out.     

Enzyme-catalysed assembly of DNA hydrogel

DNA is a remarkable polymer that can be manipulated by a large number of molecular tools including enzymes. A variety of geometric objects, periodic arrays and nanoscale devices have been constructed. Previously we synthesized dendrimer-like DNA and DNA nanobarcodes from branched DNA via ligases. Here we report the construction of a hydrogel entirely from branched DNA that are three-dimensional and can be crosslinked in nature. These DNA hydrogels were biocompatible, biodegradable, inexpensive to fabricate and easily moulded into desired shapes and sizes. The distinct difference of the DNA hydrogel to other bio-inspired hydrogels (including peptide-based, alginate-based and DNA (linear)-polyacrylamide hydrogels) is that the crosslinking is realized via efficient, ligase-mediated reactions. The advantage is that the gelling processes are achieved under physiological conditions and the encapsulations are accomplished in situ-drugs including proteins and even live mammalian cells can be encapsulated in the liquid phase eliminating the drug-loading step and also avoiding denaturing conditions. Fine tuning of these hydrogels is easily accomplished by adjusting the initial concentrations and types of branched DNA monomers, thus allowing the hydrogels to be tailored for specific applications such as controlled drug delivery, tissue engineering, 3D cell culture, cell transplant therapy and other biomedical applications.     

A novel MobileNet with selective depth multiplier to compromise complexity and accuracy

In the last few years, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have demonstrated good performance while solving various computer vision problems. However, since CNNs exhibit high computational complexity, signal processing is performed on the server side. To reduce the computational complexity of CNNs for edge computing, a lightweight algorithm, such as a MobileNet, is proposed. Although MobileNet is lighter than other CNN models, it commonly achieves lower classification accuracy. Hence, to find a balance between complexity and accuracy, additional hyperparameters for adjusting the size of the model have recently been proposed. However, significantly increasing the number of parameters makes models dense and unsuitable for devices with limited computational resources. In this study, we propose a novel MobileNet architecture, in which the number of parameters is adaptively increased according to the importance of feature maps. We show that our proposed network achieves better classification accuracy with fewer parameters than the conventional MobileNet.