Maintenance of residual activity of Bt toxin by using natural and synthetic dyes: a novel approach for sustainable mosquito vector control

Mosquito control protein from Bacillus thuringiensis gets inactivated with exposure to sunlight. To address this issue, the potential of synthetic and natural dye was investigated as sunlight protectants. Bt SV2 in absence of dyes when exposed to sunlight showed reduced effectiveness against the fourth instars of mosquito larvae. Whereas acriflavin, congo red and violacein were able to maintain 86.4%, 91.6% and 82.2% mosquito larvicidal efficacy of Bt SV2 against IVth instars larvae of Anopheles stephensi Meigen after exposure to sunlight. Similarly, beetroot dye, acriflavin, congo red and violacein maintained 98.4%, 97.1%, 90.8% and 70.7% larvicidal activities against Aedes aegypti Linnaeus after sunlight exposure. Prodigiosin was found to be the best photo-protectant by simultaneously protecting and enhancing Bt activity by 6.16% and 22.16% against A. stephensi and A. aegypti, respectively. Combination of dyes with Bt formulations can be a good strategy for mosquito control programmes in tropical and sub-tropical regions.     

High‐performance liquid chromatographic column packings with different particle sizes: Chromatographic behavior for the quality analysis of HuanglianShangqing pill

The chromatographic separation of traditional Chinese medicines is still a highly challenging task in analytical science with respect to its hundreds and thousands of chemical compounds, while increase of separation efficiency can greatly improve the separation power of chromatographic column for traditional Chinese medicine. In this study, 13 bioactive components in HuanglianShangqing pill were selected as an index to optimize the separation conditions and evaluate the system suitability of three commercially available columns packed with 1.8, 3.5, and 5.0 μm particles. The chromatographic separations were obtained by the most appropriate Eclipse Plus C₁₈ column (100 × 2.1 mm, 3.5 μm) within 45 min using gradient elution with aqueous‐ammonium acetate (10 mmol/L, pH 5.0) and acetonitrile, at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min and an operating temperature of 30°C. The quality of HuanglianShangqing pill was assessed through combining simultaneous quantification of 13 compounds with fingerprint analysis. For the qualitative analysis, mass spectrometry was used to confirm the 13 compounds. All the validation data conformed to the acceptable requirements. For the fingerprint analysis, 32 peaks were selected as the common peaks at 254 nm to evaluate the similarities among HuanglianShangqing pills obtained from ten manufacturers.     

Overloading control of gas chromatographic systems

Increasing the interlaboratory reproducibility of gas chromatographic retention indices requires avoiding measurements distorted by overloading effects. Several criteria of evaluating the limits of the mass overloading of gas chromatographic systems are compared and reconsidered. The criteria mostly appropriate for practical purposes are based on (i) the dependences of factors of peak broadening (ratio of peak height and its width) vs. amount of analyte injected into the chromatographic column and (ii) the dependence of parameters characterizing the peak distortion (asymmetry factor) vs. the amount of analyte. Both these criteria provide mutually comparable evaluations of the overloading limits for analytes of different polarity. At the same time, the dependence of retention indices vs. amounts of analyte injected in the chromatographic column cannot be recommended for overloading control, because the parameters of the corresponding linear regressions indicate temperature dependence. The interpretation of certain gas chromatographic anomalies requires the correct evaluation of overloading limits. For example, the unusual temperature dependence of retention indices of polar analytes on non‐polar stationary phases and the dependence of retention indices on ratio of amounts of target analytes and reference compounds.     

Development of a method using high‐performance liquid chromatographic fingerprint and multi‐ingredients quantitative analysis for the quality control of Yangxinshi Pian

A simple and reliable method of high‐performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection method was developed for fingerprint analysis and simultaneous determination of six compounds including puerarin, salvianolic acid B, berberine hydrochloride, palmatine chloride, dehydrocorydaline, and icariin in the Chinese medicine preparation Yangxinshi Pian. The separation was performed on an Agilent Eclipse XDB‐C₁₈ reserved‐phase column (250 mm × 4.6mm I.D., 5 μm) using gradient elution with 50 mmol/L monopotassium phosphate aqueous solution and methanol as mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The column operating temperature was set at 30°C, and the detection wavelength was 280 nm. The method was validated by linearity, precision, accuracy, stability, and recovery. For fingerprint analysis, 25 peaks were selected as the common peaks, and four kinds of similarities including cosine similarity (S), ratio of similarity (S′), projection content similarity (C), and content similarity (P) were applied to evaluate the quality consistency of different batches of Yangxinshi Pian. The results showed that the developed method was an efficient tool for quality evaluation of Yangxinshi Pian.     

Secrecy energy efficiency optimization for multiuser massive MIMO wiretap systems with transmit antenna selection

Massive multiple-input-multiple-output (Massive MIMO) significantly improves the capacity of wireless communication systems. However, large-scale antennas bring high hardware costs, and security is a vital issue in Massive MIMO networks. To deal with the above problems, antenna selection (AS) and artificial noise (AN) are introduced to reduce energy consumption and improve system security performance, respectively. In this paper, we optimize secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) in a downlink multi-user multi-antenna scenario, where a multi-antenna eavesdropper attempts to eavesdrop the information from the base station (BS) to the multi-antenna legitimate receivers. An optimization problem is formulated to maximize the SEE by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming vectors, the artificial noise vector and the antenna selection matrix at the BS. The formulated problem is a nonconvex mixed integer fractional programming problem. To solve the problem, a successive convex approximation (SCA)-based joint antenna selection and artificial noise (JASAN) algorithm is proposed. After a series of relaxation and equivalent transformations, the nonconvex problem is approximated to a convex problem, and the solution is obtained after several iterations. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has good convergence behavior, and the joint optimization of antenna selection and artificial noise can effectively improve the SEE while ensuring the achievable secrecy rate.     

An ultra-wideband coding polarizer for beam control and RCS reduction

Pancharatnam−Berry (PB) phase metasurface, as a special class of gradient metasurfaces, has been paid much attention owing to the robust performance for phase control of circularly polarized waves. Herein, we present an element-based polarizer for the first step, which enables the incident electromagnetic waves into the cross-polarized waves with the relative bandwidth of 71%, and the polarization conversion ratio exceeds 90% at 6.9−14.5 GHz. Then an eight-elements coding polarizer based on the PB phase is presented for the applications on beam control and radar cross section reduction. The simulated values indicate that the reduction of radar cross section is more than 10 dB at 6−16 GHz. Our work reveals the availability of manipulating the waves, beamforming in communication systems and electromagnetic stealth, and so on.     

显化反应条件视角 发展反应调控意识——受控的燃烧

以波义耳研究燃烧的史实为背景,创新设计燃烧条件的探究实验,并提出“条件叠加式”燃烧条件探究新思路。以“燃灭控”为主线,一以贯之地显性化“条件是认识化学反应的一种基本视角”,落实“在一定条件下通过化学反应可以实现物质转化”的化学观念。基于调控化学反应思想创新设计“燃旺弱灭”反应控制视域,统整开展“情境”“活动”与“任务”三位一体的学习活动。重置教材实验的教学价值取向,结合燃烧的形式美、汉语言文字解读,将化学学科知识与美育、汉语言文化领域跨领域融合。     

二维纳米材料的改性及其环境污染物治理方面的应用

二维纳米材料是一类具有类似二维平面形态,且厚度在纳米级甚至数个原子层的材料,其种类繁多并且具有很多与体相材料不同的物化性质,在众多领域受到了广泛关注。二维纳米材料在催化降解、吸脱附、过滤、传感检测等领域具有可观的应用潜力,还可用于环境污染的防治。通过形貌、元素、基团、缺陷的修饰、改性和材料合成等策略可以调控二维纳米材料的性质,从而研发新的材料体系或者改善二维纳米材料的性能。本文首先归纳了二维纳米材料的种类,并重点阐述了各种改性策略的作用及研究现状,以及改性的二维纳米材料在治理水体污染、大气污染和污染物检测等方面的应用,为二维纳米材料在环境治理领域的发展现状作了系统介绍和展望。