Low molecular weight PEI-grafted carboxyl-modified soybean protein as gene carriers with reduced cytotoxicity and greatly improved transfection in vitro

SA-SP-PEI were synthesized via acylation reaction between carboxyl-modified soybean protein (SA-SP) and branched polyethylenimine (PEI) with molecular weight of 600, 1200, and 1800?Da, and designed as SA-SP-PEI600, SA-SP-PEI1200, and SA-SP-PEI1800, respectively. SA-SP-PEI could effectively condense plasmid DNA into nanoscale polyplexes and protect them from enzymatic digestion. MTT assay revealed that SA-SP-PEI exhibited reduced cytotoxicity on 293?T and SH-SY5Y cells. SA-SP-PEI1800/DNA complexes hold highest transfection efficiency on 293?T and SH-SY5Y cells with or without 10% serum, which was owing to its better serum stable and improved biocompatibility. Such polycationic soybean proteins have great potentials as gene carriers by further optimization.     

A Multilevel Recognition Model of Water Inrush Sources: A Case Study of the Zhaogezhuang Mining Area

Mine Water and the Environment - Discriminating water inrush sources efficiently and accurately is necessary to control water in coal mines. We combined the improved genetic algorithm (IGA) and...     

Application Aware Topology Generation for Surface Wave Networks-on-Chip

The networks-on-chip （NoC） communication has an increasingly larger impact on the system power consumption and performance. Emerging technologies, like surface wave, are believed to have lower transmission latency and power consumption over the conventional wireless NoC. Therefore, this paper studies how to optimize the network performance and power consumption by giving the packet-switching fabric and traffic pattern of each application. Compared with the conventional method of wire-linked, which adds wireless transceivers by using the genetic algorithm （GA）, the proposed maximal declining sorting algorithm （MDSA） can effectively reduce time consumption by as much as 20.4% to 35.6%. We also evaluate the power consumption and configuration time to prove the effective of the proposed algorithm.     

平板陶瓷膜生物反应器反冲洗方法研究

针对MBR反冲洗效果不佳,耗水量较多等问题,本研究对其进行了改进,用陶瓷膜替换平板膜,并在此基础上提出了全水法、气水联合法、全气法三种反冲洗方式进行研究,旨在减缓膜污染和延长膜寿命,提高MBR系统效能。实验结果表明,在相同处理效果前提下,气水联合反冲洗可有效地减缓膜污染,且仅为全水反冲洗耗水量的一半,膜通量基本不受影响,效能显著。     

Effects of isomalt on the quality of wheat flour dough and spicy wheat gluten sticks

The effects of different isomalt concentrations on the quality of wheat flour dough and spicy wheat gluten sticks (SWGS) were evaluated at the physical, structural and molecular levels. The results showed that the radial expansion rate (RER) and oil absorption rate (OAR) of SWGS increased first and then decreased with increased isomalt supplementation, which reached the maximum at 3 wt%. The pasting properties of wheat starch also changed, and the peak viscosity, breakdown and setback were decreased with the addition of isomalt. Dynamic rheological properties results showed that the storage modulus (G') and loss modulus (G'') increased with the addition of isomalt, which may be attributed to the reinforcement of gluten network structure by hydrogen bonding of isomalt. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images illustrated that the SWGS surface becomes smooth and the broken gluten structure was reduced after the addition of different isomalt levels compared with the control group. Overall, the wheat flour dough quality analysis showed that the addition of isomalt could generate a close binding with wheat starch and protein and further strengthen the internal structure of gluten through isomalt hydrogen bonds.     

Processing and characterization of an Li7La3Zr0.5Nb0.5Ta0.5Hf0.5O12 high-entropy Li–garnet electrolyte

In this paper, we demonstrated the processing of Li₇La₃Zr_0.5Nb_0.5Ta_0.5Hf_0.5O₁₂ (LLZNTH) high-entropy Li–garnet with promising properties for lithium batteries. We first synthesized the LLZNTH Li–garnet powders which have a single cubic garnet phase (space group: $\text{◂⋅▸}Ia\overline{3}d$; No. 230) without any secondary phases as well as uniform elements distributions. The prepared powders were further densified to a relative density of ∼94% with well-crystallized grains and good contact with the neighboring grains. Minimal grain growth can be observed in the sintering time range from 8 to 20 h, which is likely due to the sluggish effects of high-entropy compounds. The sample also maintains the cubic garnet phase along with uniform elements distribution after sintering. Electrochemical characterizations indicate that the densified sample has an adequate ionic conductivity of 4.67 × 10⁻⁴ S cm⁻¹ at room temperature, a low activation energy of 0.25 eV, and a low electronic conductivity in the order of 10⁻⁸ S cm⁻¹. The significance of designing high-entropy electrolyte is further discussed.     

2D Enzyme Cascade Network with Efficient Substrate Channeling by Swinging Arms

In living cells, compartmentalized or membrane‐associated enzymes are often assembled into large networks to cooperatively catalyze cascade reaction pathways essential for cellular metabolism. Here, we report the assembly of an artificial 2D enzyme network of two cascade enzymes—glucose‐6‐phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH)—on a wireframe DNA origami template. Swinging arms were used to facilitate the transport of the redox intermediate of NAD⁺/NADH between enzyme pairs on the array. The assemblies of 2D enzyme networks were characterized by gel electrophoresis and visualized by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The spatial arrangements of multiple enzyme pairs were optimized to facilitate efficient substrate channeling by exploiting the programmability of DNA origami to manipulate the key parameters of swinging arm length and stoichiometry. Compared with a single enzyme pair, the 2D organized enzyme systems exhibited higher reaction efficiency due to the promoted transfer of intermediates within the network.     

Effect of annealing temperature on structural and magnetic properties of Co2TiO4 ceramics prepared by sol-gel method

In this paper, polycrystalline Co₂TiO₄ ceramics have been synthesized using a sol-gel process followed by annealing at different temperatures. The lattice size and the average grain size of the samples increases with rise in annealing temperature. The temperature-dependent inverse paramagnetic susceptibilities recorded under zero-field-cooling condition have been fitted according to the Néel's expression for ferrimagnets. Subsequently, the molecular field constants and the corresponding exchange constants have been calculated. The fitting result shows that the magnetic interaction in the system becomes weaker as the annealing temperature rises. In addition, negative magnetization is observed during field-cooling process. The higher annealing temperature is beneficial to the growth of tetrahedral sublattice, leading to a decrease on compensation temperature. Furthermore, magnetization hysteresis loops for all the samples demonstrate the crucial role of grain size on the magnetic properties.