| 1. |
- Beal, Jacob, et al.
(author)
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Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
- 2020
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In: Communications Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2399-3642. ; 3:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data.
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| 2. |
- Bai, Yang, et al.
(author)
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Geometry design of tethered small-molecule acceptor enables highly stable and efficient polymer solar cells
- 2023
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In: Nature Communications. - : NATURE PORTFOLIO. - 2041-1723. ; 14:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- With the power conversion efficiency of binary polymer solar cells dramatically improved, the thermal stability of the small-molecule acceptors raised the main concerns on the device operating stability. Here, to address this issue, thiophene-dicarboxylate spacer tethered small-molecule acceptors are designed, and their molecular geometries are further regulated via the thiophene-core isomerism engineering, affording dimeric TDY-alpha with a 2, 5-substitution and TDY-beta with 3, 4-substitution on the core. It shows that TDY-alpha processes a higher glass transition temperature, better crystallinity relative to its individual small-molecule acceptor segment and isomeric counterpart of TDY-beta, and amore stablemorphology with the polymer donor. As a result, the TDY-alpha based device delivers a higher device efficiency of 18.1%, and most important, achieves an extrapolated lifetime of about 35000 hours that retaining 80% of their initial efficiency. Our result suggests that with proper geometry design, the tethered small-molecule acceptors can achieve both high device efficiency and operating stability.
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| 3. |
- Cao, Yuanyuan, et al.
(author)
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Improving the surveillance and response system to achieve and maintain malaria elimination : a retrospective analysis in Jiangsu Province, China
- 2022
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In: INFECTIOUS DISEASES OF POVERTY. - : Springer Nature. - 2095-5162 .- 2049-9957. ; 11:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Following initiation of China's National Malaria Elimination Action Plan (NMEAP) in 2010, the '1-3-7' approach was developed and rolled out in China to facilitate the malaria elimination programme and accelerate malaria elimination. This study aims to summarize and condense these experiences through a retrospective analysis in Jiangsu Province, which could be adapted and applied in other malaria elimination settings worldwide.Methods: A retrospective analysis of imported malaria cases into China identified through an improved surveillance and response system in Jiangsu Province was carried out for the period of 2001-2020. To improve the malaria surveillance and response system, Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention from the prefectures and counties in Jiangsu province conducted population-level health education to improve healthcare seeking behavior, strengthened capacity of health facilities to improve performance of malaria diagnosis and treatment, and raised the capacity of public health providers to improve implementation of the '1-3-7' approach. Categorical variables were carried out by Chi square tests with Fisher's exact correction.Results: From 2001 to 2020, a total of 9,879 malaria cases were reported in Jiangsu Province. Since 2012, no indigenous malaria cases have been reported in Jiangsu Province. However, in recent years, there has been a substantial increase of imported falciparum malaria cases. Between 2012 and 2020, an estimated 61.57 million individuals have benefited from population-level health education in Jiangsu Province. For healthcare-seeking services among the 2,423 imported malaria cases, 687 (28.4%) and 1,104 (45.6%) cases visited hospitals on the first day and the second day from symptom onset, respectively. A total of 1,502 (61.9%) cases were diagnosed on the first day at medical facilities. Jiangsu Province achieved 100%, 99.4% and 98.3% completion rate in terms of case detection and notification (within one day), case investigation (within three days) and foci response and disposition (within seven days), respectively. The improved surveillance and response system in Jiangsu Province plays an important role in preventing the re-introduction of malaria and maintaining the malaria-free status.Conclusions: Jiangsu Province has maintained its malaria-free status since 2012. The continuous improvement of a surveillance and response system plays an important role in the early detection and rapid response of potential malaria-related outbreaks in Jiangsu, China, and has important lessons for other malaria eliminating settings. Remaining vigilant in the detection of imported malaria cases and maintaining an active surveillance and response system is critical to sustain the success of malaria elimination.
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| 4. |
- Chen, Min, et al.
(author)
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Highly stable and efficient all-inorganic lead-free perovskite solar cells with native-oxide passivation
- 2019
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In: Nature Communications. - : Nature Publishing Group. - 2041-1723. ; 10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- There has been an urgent need to eliminate toxic lead from the prevailing halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs), but the current lead-free PSCs are still plagued with the critical issues of low efficiency and poor stability. This is primarily due to their inadequate photovoltaic properties and chemical stability. Herein we demonstrate the use of the lead-free, all-inorganic cesium tin-germanium triiodide (CsSn(0.5)Ge(0.5)l(3)) solid-solution perovskite as the light absorber in PSCs, delivering promising efficiency of up to 7.11%. More importantly, these PSCs show very high stability, with less than 10% decay in efficiency after 500 h of continuous operation in N-2 atmosphere under one-sun illumination. The key to this striking performance of these PSCs is the formation of a full-coverage, stable native-oxide layer, which fully encapsulates and passivates the perovskite surfaces. The native-oxide passivation approach reported here represents an alternate avenue for boosting the efficiency and stability of lead-free PSCs.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- He, Mingshu, et al.
(author)
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Deep-Feature-Based Autoencoder Network for Few-Shot Malicious Traffic Detection
- 2021
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In: Security and Communication Networks. - : Hindawi Limited. - 1939-0114 .- 1939-0122. ; 2021
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- With the increase of Internet visits and connections, it is becoming essential and arduous to protect the networks and different devices of the Internet of Things (IoT) from malicious attacks. The intrusion detection systems (IDSs) based on supervised machine learning (ML) methods require a large number of labeled samples. However, the number of abnormal behaviors is far less than that of normal behaviors, let alone that the shots of malicious behavior samples which can be intercepted as training dataset are actually limited. Consequently, it is a key research topic to conduct the anomaly detection for the small number of abnormal behavior samples. This paper proposes an anomaly detection model with a few abnormal samples to solve the problem in few-shot detection based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) and autoencoder (AE). This model mainly consists of the CNN-based supervised pretraining module and the AE-based data reconstruction module. Only a few abnormal samples are utilized to the pretrain module to build the structure of extracting deep features. The data reconstruction module simply chooses the deep features of normal samples as training data. There also exist some effective attention mechanisms in the pretraining module. Through the pretraining of small samples, the accuracy of abnormal detection is improved compared with merely training normal samples with AE. The simulation results prove that this solution can solve the above problems occurring in network behavior anomaly detection. In comparison to the original AE model and other clustering methods, the proposed model advances the detection results in a visible way.
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| 7. |
- Li, Pei-Zhou, et al.
(author)
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A highly porous metal-organic framework for large organic molecule capture and chromatographic separation
- 2017
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In: Chemical Communications. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 1359-7345 .- 1364-548X. ; 53:24, s. 3434-3437
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A highly porous metal-organic framework (MOF) with large pores was successfully obtained via solvothermal assembly of a ''click''-extended tricarboxylate ligand and Zn(II) ions. The inherent feature of large-molecule accessible pores endows the MOF with a unique property for utilization toward large guest molecules.
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| 8. |
- Liu, Yi, et al.
(author)
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Porous, robust, thermally stable, and flame retardant nanocellulose/polyimide separators for safe lithium-ion batteries
- 2023
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In: Journal of Materials Chemistry A. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 2050-7488 .- 2050-7496. ; 11:43, s. 23360-23369
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The safety of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is paramount for all users. One effective way to improve safety is incorporating heat-resistant polyimide (PI) separators, which can increase the thermal stability of batteries and minimize the risk of thermal runaway. However, preparing PI separators with both an ideal pore structure and adequate mechanical properties remains as a challenge. Here, we introduced decabromodiphenyl ethane (DBDPE) and cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) into PI and produced a hybrid separator with an outstanding pore structure and excellent mechanical properties. Aided with DBDPE, the separators attain a well-defined and uniform pore size (20 nm), while demonstrating high porosities (78%) through phase inversion processes. Owing to the addition of CNFs, the mechanical properties of the separators were significantly improved, with a tensile strength of 25.4 MPa and an elastic modulus of 550.1 MPa. Moreover, the separators demonstrate high ion conductivity (0.45 mS cm-1), excellent thermal-dimensional stability (up to 200 degrees C), remarkable flame retardancy, and outstanding electrolyte wettability. At room temperature, the batteries with the separators demonstrate comparable performance with those of polypropylene (PP) separators. However, when subjected to thermal shock treatments, the batteries with the separators outperform those with PP, showcasing their superior performance. The work introduces a novel strategy for designing high-performance separators, thereby paving the way for advancements in the fabrication of LIBs with enhanced safety features. A porous, robust, and thermally stable hybrid separator was developed to solve the dilemma between desired pore structures and mechanical properties in polyimide separators by introducing decabromodiphenyl ethane and cellulose nanofibers.
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| 9. |
- Pan, Yitao, et al.
(author)
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Novel Chlorinated Polyfluorinated Ether Sulfonates and Legacy Per-/Polyfluoroalkyl Substances : Placental Transfer and Relationship with Serum Albumin and Glomerular Filtration Rate
- 2017
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In: Environmental Science and Technology. - Dordrecht, Neteherlands : Springer Netherlands. - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 51:1, s. 634-644
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) may cross the placental barrier and lead to fetal exposure. However, little is known about the factors that influence maternal-fetal transfer of these chemicals. PFAS concentrations were analyzed in 100 paired samples of human maternal sera collected in each trimester and cord sera at delivery; these samples were collected in Wuhan, China, 2014. Linear regression was used to estimate associations of transfer efficiencies with factors. Chlorinated polyfluorinated ether sulfonates (Cl-PFAESs, 6:2 and 8:2) were frequently detected (>99%) in maternal and cord sera. A significant decline in PFAS levels during the three trimesters was observed. A U-shape trend for transfer efficiency with increasing chain length was observed for both carboxylates and sulfonates. Higher transfer efficiencies of PFASs were associated with advancing maternal age, higher education, and lower glomerular filtration rate (GFR). Cord serum albumin was a positive factors for higher transfer efficiency (increased 1.1-4.1% per 1g/L albumin), whereas maternal serum albumin tended to reduce transfer efficiency (decreased 2.4-4.3% per 1g/L albumin). Our results suggest that exposure to Cl-PFAESs may be widespread in China. The transfer efficiencies among different PFASs were structure-dependent. Physiological factors (e.g., GFR and serum albumin) were observed for the first time to play critical roles in PFAS placental transfer.
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| 10. |
- Tang, Sui, et al.
(author)
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Association of plant-based diet index with sleep quality in middle-aged and older adults : The Healthy Dance Study
- 2023
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In: Sleep Health. - : Elsevier. - 2352-7218 .- 2352-7226. ; 9:5, s. 698-703
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Objectives: To investigate the association between plant-based diet indices and sleep quality in Chinese middle-aged and older adults.Methods: The study included 2424 participants aged 45 years and older. Dietary data were collected using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, and sleep quality was assessed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scale. Plant-based diet was categorized based on 3 indices (score range, 17-85) covering 17 food groups: the overall plant-based diet index, healthful plant-based diet index, and unhealthful plant-based diet index. The associations between these plant-based diet indices and sleep quality were examined using logistic and linear regression analyses.Results: After controlling for sociodemographic, lifestyle, and multiple disease-related factors, participants in the highest quartile of the healthful plant-based diet index had 0.55 higher odds of better sleep quality (95% CI: 0.42, 0.72; P-trend < .001). In contrast, participants in the highest quartile of the unhealthful plant-based diet index had 2.03 higher odds of poor sleep quality (95% CI: 1.51, 2.72; P-trend < .001). In addition, plant-based diet index and healthful plant-based diet index were inversely associated with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores, while unhealthful plant-based diet index and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores were positively associated.Conclusions: We found unhealthy plant-based diets are significantly associated with poor sleep quality. Adherence to overall plant-based diets, especially healthy plant-based diets, was positively associated with optimal sleep quality.(c) 2023 National Sleep Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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