The Significance of COVID-19 Diseases in Lipid Metabolism Pregnancy Women and Newborns

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. Elderly people, people with immunodeficiency, autoimmune and malignant diseases, as well as people with chronic diseases have a higher risk of developing more severe forms of the disease. Pregnant women and children can becomesick, although more often they are only the carriers of the virus. Recent studies have indicated that infants can also be infected by SARS-CoV-2 and develop a severe form of the disease with a fatal outcome. Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) ina pregnant woman can affect the supply of oxygen to the fetus and initiate the mechanism of metabolic disorders of the fetus and newborn caused by asphyxia. The initial metabolic response of the newborn to the lack of oxygen in the tissues is the activation of anaerobic glycolysis in the tissues and an increase in the concentration of lactate and ketones. Lipid peroxidation, especially in nerve cells, is catalyzed by iron released from hemoglobin, transferrin and ferritin, whose release is induced by tissue acidosis and free oxygen radicals. Ferroptosis-inducing factors can directly or indirectly affect glutathione peroxidase through various pathways, resulting in a decrease in the antioxidant capacity and accumulation of lipid reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the cells, ultimately leading to oxidative cell stress, and finally, death. Conclusion: damage to the mitochondria as a result of lipid peroxidation caused by the COVID-19 disease can cause the death of a newborn and pregnant women as well as short time and long-time sequelae.     

Synthesis,Surface Activity,and Biological Activities of Phosphonium and Metronidazole Salts

A series of phosphonium amphiphilic compounds was synthesized. Cationic parts of molecules contain triphenylphosphonium moieties. Lipophilic parts of compounds are represented by straight alkyl chain or the alkyl chains which are ornamented by benzyl or metronidazole. The physicochemical properties of phosphonium amphiphilic compounds were investigated by the measurements of surface tension and conductivity. The critical micelle concentration (cmc), the surface tension value at the cmc (γ_cmc), the surface area at the surface saturation per head group (A_cmc) were determined. The lowest cmc value was determined for phosphonium salts with straight dodecyl alkyl chain. Its value was 1.5 × 10⁻³ mol dm⁻³. Surface tension at the cmc decreases with the addition of bulky moieties (benzyl, radical from metronidazol) at the end of alkyl chains. Biological activities of compounds were studied on human erythrocytes and strains of Acanthamoeba lugdunensis and Acanthamoeba quina. Dodecyltriphenylphosphonium bromide showed the highest activity against Acanthamoeba. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first compound of the group of phosphonium amphiphiles, which exhibited high activity against Acanthamoeba. The determined structure–activity relationship indicated nonspecific trophocidal and hemolytic activity that depends on physicochemical properties of the studied compounds.     

Room temperature corrosion properties of AZ31 magnesium alloy processed by extrusion and equal channel angular pressing

The electrochemical properties of AZ31 magnesium alloy processed by extrusion and equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) were investigated. The electrochemical properties were evaluated using potentiodynamic tests and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy in corrosion solution of 0.1 M sodium chloride. The electrochemical changes of the sample surface were correlated with microstructure evolution. Material processed by extrusion and subsequently by 8 passes of ECAP shows similar or even inferior corrosion resistance to the extruded material after immersion time up to 96 h. However, corrosion resistance of material after extrusion and ECAP is significantly better than that of the extruded material for immersion time of 168 h. This sudden improvement is caused by different formation and fall off of protective corrosion products. Microstructure after extrusion is inhomogeneous and contains relatively large grains, whereas material after ECAP possesses homogeneous ultrafine-grained (UFG) microstructure. As a result, material after ECAP offers more corrosion nucleation sites, but UFG microstructure causes that only smaller clusters of corrosion products fall off the surface. The easier and faster corrosion protective layer restoration on the surface of UFG material after ECAP leads to enhanced corrosion resistance.     

Biological Activities of Toninia candida and Usnea barbata Together with Their Norstictic Acid and Usnic Acid Constituents

The aim of this study was to investigate the chemical composition of acetone extracts of the lichens Toninia candida and Usnea barbata and in vitro antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anticancer activities of these extracts together with some of their major metabolites. The chemical composition of T. candida and U. barbata extracts was determined using HPLC-UV analysis. The major phenolic compounds in these extracts were norstictic acid (T. candida) and usnic acid (U. barbata). Antioxidant activity was evaluated by free radical scavenging, superoxide anion radical scavenging, reducing power and determination of total phenolic compounds. Results of the study proved that norstictic acid had the largest antioxidant activity. The total content of phenols in the extracts was determined as the pyrocatechol equivalent. The antimicrobial activity was estimated by determination of the minimal inhibitory concentration using the broth microdilution method. The most active was usnic acid with minimum inhibitory concentration values ranging from 0.0008 to 0.5 mg/mL. Anticancer activity was tested against FemX (human melanoma) and LS174 (human colon carcinoma) cell lines using the microculture tetrazolium test. Usnic acid was found to have the strongest anticancer activity towards both cell lines with IC₅₀ values of 12.72 and 15.66 μg/mL.     

The influence of low-energy ion bombardment on the microstructure development and mechanical properties of TiBx coatings

The influence of the deposition parameters on the growth, structure and mechanical properties of the TiB_x coatings is studied. The TiB_x coatings represent a nanocomposite system, in which random or oriented TiB₂ nanocrystallites are embedded in an amorphous matrix as is revealed by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. We show that low-energy ion bombardment (E_i ) of growing TiB_x coating, influences the preferred orientation of TiB₂ crystallites. The increase of ion current density (i_s) by means of negative substrate bias voltage (U_s) leads to change from random to the (0001) preferred crystal orientation whereby the electrical biasing promotes crystal growth in the coating and the (0001) texture appears gradually during the film growth. Together with the (0001) preferred orientation selection the composition B/Ti ratio was changed from 2.9 (floating potential, E_i = 8 eV) to 2.4 (E_i = 94 eV). The highest amount of oriented (0001) crystallites and highest hardness H = 53 GPa exhibit TiB_x coatings deposited at E_i = 94 eV and i_s = 2.69 mA.cm⁻².     

Self-organised manifold learning and heuristic charting via adaptive metrics

Classical metric and non-metric multidimensional scaling (MDS) variants represent the well-known manifold learning (ML) methods which enable construction of low-dimensional representation (projections) of high-dimensional data inputs. However, their use is limited to the cases when data are inherently reducible to low dimensionality. In general, drawbacks and limitations of these, as well as pure, MDS variants become more apparent when the exploration (learning) is exposed to the structured data of high intrinsic dimension. As we demonstrate on artificial as well as real-world datasets, the over-determination problem can be solved by means of the hybrid and multi-component discrete-continuous multi-modal optimisation heuristics. A remarkable feature of the approach is that projections onto 2D are constructed simultaneously with the data categorisation compensating in part for the loss of original input information. We observed that the optimisation module integrated with ML modelling, metric learning and categorisation leads to a nontrivial mechanism resulting in heuristic charting of data.     

Calculation of the Heat Transfer Coefficient for Laminar Flow in Pipes in Practical Engineering Applications

ABSTRACT

Paper presents an analysis of existing correlations for laminar liquid flow and heat transfer in tubes based on the published theoretical research and experimental data. Considering the relatively large deviation of existing correlations from the experimental data, the novel correlation for laminar heat transfer in tubes is proposed. The new correlation covers large range of tube diameters ranging from micro-scale level 125.4 µm to conventional diameter 20.8 mm, Graetz numbers up to 6500 and fluid to wall viscosity ratio 0.0048–11.7. Correlation ratio of the newly proposed relationship for a total number of 390 experimental runs is 96.6% and standard deviation is 16.2%. Moreover, correlation covers both the hydraulically and thermally undeveloped and developed flows and all cases of boundary conditions that can be met in industrial applications.     

Metallic nano-structures for polarization-independent multi-spectral filters

Cross-shaped-hole arrays (CSHAs) are selected for diminishing the polarization-dependent transmission differences of incident plane waves. We investigate the light transmission spectrum of the CSHAs in a thin gold film over a wide range of features. It is observed that two well-separated and high transmission efficiency peaks could be obtained by designing the parameters in the CSHAs for both p-polarized and s-polarized waves; and a nice transmission band-pass is also observed by specific parameters of a CSHA too. It implicates the possibility to obtain a desired polarization-independent transmission spectrum from the CSHAs by designing their parameters. These findings provide potential applications of the metallic nano-structures in optical filters, optical band-pass, optical imaging, optical sensing, and biosensors.     

First-principles versus semi-empirical modeling of global and local electronic transport properties of graphene nanopore-based sensors for DNA sequencing

Using first-principles quantum transport simulations, based on the nonequilibrium Green function formalism combined with density functional theory (NEGF+DFT), we examine changes in the total and local electronic currents within the plane of graphene nanoribbon with zigzag edges (ZGNR) hosting a nanopore which are induced by inserting a DNA nucleobase into the pore. We find a sizable change of the zero-bias conductance of two-terminal ZGNR + nanopore device after the nucleobase is placed into the most probable position (according to molecular dynamics trajectories) inside the nanopore of a small diameter \(D=1.2\) nm. Although such effect decreases as the nanopore size is increased to \(D=1.7\) nm, the contrast between currents in ZGNR + nanopore and ZGNR + nanopore + nucleobase systems can be enhanced by applying a small bias voltage \(V_b \lesssim 0.1\) V. This is explained microscopically as being due to DNA nucleobase-induced modification of spatial profile of local current density around the edges of ZGNR. We repeat the same analysis using NEGF combined with self-consistent charge density functional tight-binding (NEGF+SCC-DFTB) or self-consistent extended Hückel (NEGF+SC-EH) semi-empirical methodologies. The large discrepancy we find between the results obtained from NEGF+DFT vs. those obtained from NEGF+SCC-DFTB or NEGF+SC-EH approaches could be of great importance when selecting proper computational algorithms for in silico design of optimal nanoelectronic sensors for rapid DNA sequencing.     

Mdm31 protein mediates sensitivity to potassium ionophores but does not regulate mitochondrial morphology or phospholipid trafficking in Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Mdm31p is an inner mitochondrial membrane (IMM) protein with unknown function in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mutants lacking Mdm31p contain only a few giant spherical mitochondria with disorganized internal structure, altered phospholipid composition and disturbed ion homeostasis, accompanied by increased resistance to the electroneutral K⁺/H⁺ ionophore nigericin. These phenotypes are interpreted as resulting from diverse roles of Mdm31p, presumably in linking mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to the machinery involved in segregation of mitochondria, in mediating cation transport across IMM and in phospholipid shuttling between mitochondrial membranes. To investigate which of the roles of Mdm31p are conserved in ascomycetous yeasts, we analysed the Mdm31p orthologue in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Our results demonstrate that, similarly to its S. cerevisiae counterpart, SpMdm31 is a mitochondrial protein and its absence results in increased resistance to nigericin. However, in contrast to S. cerevisiae, Sz. pombe cells lacking SpMdm31 are also less sensitive to the electrogenic K⁺ ionophore valinomycin. Moreover, mitochondria of the fission yeast mdm31Δ mutant display no changes in morphology or phospholipid composition. Therefore, in terms of function, the two orthologous proteins appear to have considerably diverged between these two evolutionarily distant yeast species, possibly sharing only their participation in ion homeostasis. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.