Benzyl alcohol oxidation and hydrogen generation over MoS2/ZnIn2S4 composite photocatalyst

Research on Chemical Intermediates - Owing to the simultaneous utilization of photogenerated electrons and holes, coupling light-driven hydrogen (H2) evolution reaction (HER) and biomass-derived...     

Multifunctional fibrous wound dressings for refractory wound healing

Refractory wounds have always been an important issue to healthcare systems, whose healing process is always delayed by multiple factors, including bacterial infections, chronic inflammation, and excessive exudates, etc. Employing multifunctional wound dressings is recognized as an effective strategy to deal with refractory wounds, which has yielded promising outcomes in recent years. Among these advanced wound dressings, fibrous dressings have gained growing attention due to their unique merits. Such wound dressings have demonstrated great potential in delivering theranostic agents, such as antibacterial agents, anti-inflammatory drugs, growth factors, and diagnostic probes, etc., for the purposes of accelerating wound healing. This paper reviews the development of multifunctional fibrous dressings and their applications in treating refractory wounds. The construction approaches of novel fibrous dressing with capabilities of antibacterial, anti-inflammation, exudate management and diagnosis were also introduced. Furthermore, the existing problems and challenges are also discussed briefly.     

Versatile Near-Infrared Super-Resolution Imaging of Amyloid Fibrils with the Fluorogenic Probe CRANAD-2

CRANAD-2 is a fluorogenic curcumin derivative used for near-infrared detection and imaging in vivo of amyloid aggregates, which are involved in neurodegenerative diseases. We explore the performance of CRANAD-2 in two super-resolution imaging techniques, namely stimulated emission depletion (STED) and single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM), with markedly different fluorophore requirements. By conveniently adapting the concentration of CRANAD-2, which transiently binds to amyloid fibrils, we show that it performs well in both techniques, achieving a resolution in the range of 45–55 nm. Correlation of SMLM with atomic force microscopy (AFM) validates the resolution of fine features in the reconstructed super-resolved image. The good performance and versatility of CRANAD-2 provides a powerful tool for near-infrared nanoscopic imaging of amyloids in vitro and in vivo.     

Anti-fibrosis attributes: UHPLC-MS/MS-based pharmacokinetics profiling of a novel autotaxin inhibitor with excellent in vivo efficacy in rat

3,4-Difluorobenzyl(1-ethyl-5-(4-((4-hydroxypiperidin-1-yl)-methyl)thiazol-2-yl)-1H-indol-3-yl)carbamate (NAI59), a small molecule with outstanding therapeutic effectiveness to anti-pulmonary fibrosis, was developed as an autotaxin inhibitor candidate compound. To evaluate the pharmacokinetics and plasma protein binding of NAI59, a UPLC–MS/MS method was developed to quantify NAI59 in plasma and phosphate-buffered saline. The calibration curve linearity ranged from 9.95 to 1990.00 ng/mL in plasma. The accuracy was −6.8 to 5.9%, and the intra- and inter-day precision was within 15%. The matrix effect and recovery, as well as dilution integrity, were within the criteria. The chromatographic and mass spectrometric conditions were also feasible to determine phosphate-buffered saline samples, and it has been proved that this method exhibits good precision and accuracy in the range of 9.95–497.50 ng/mL in phosphate-buffered saline. This study is the first to determine the pharmacokinetics, absolute bioavailability, and plasma protein binding of NAI59 in rats using this established method. Therefore, the pharmacokinetic profiles of NAI59 showed a dose-dependent relationship after oral administration, and the absolute bioavailability in rats was 6.3%. In addition, the results of protein binding showed that the combining capacity of NAI59 with plasma protein attained 90% and increased with the increase in drug concentration.     

Integral Representations of the Large and Little Schröder Numbers

In the paper, the authors establish several integral representations for the generating functions of the large and little Schröder numbers and for the large and little Schröder numbers.     

Preparation and gas sensing activity of La and Y co-doped titania nanoparticles

Journal of Sol-Gel Science and Technology - A novel gas sensing material, La–Y co-doped TiO2 nanoparticles, was synthesized by sol–gel method and applied to detect organic pollutants...     

Influence of Polarity and Activation Energy in Microwave–Assisted Organic Synthesis (MAOS)

The aim of this work was to determine the parameters that have decisive roles in microwave-assisted reactions and to develop a model, using computational chemistry, to predict a priori the type of reactions that can be improved under microwaves. For this purpose, a computational study was carried out on a variety of reactions, which have been reported to be improved under microwave irradiation. This comprises six types of reactions. The outcomes obtained in this study indicate that the most influential parameters are activation energy, enthalpy, and the polarity of all the species that participate. In addition to this, in most cases, slower reacting systems observe a much greater improvement under microwave irradiation. Furthermore, for these reactions, the presence of a polar component in the reaction (solvent, reagent, susceptor, etc.) is necessary for strong coupling with the electromagnetic radiation. We also quantified that an activation energy of 20–30 kcal mol⁻¹ and a polarity (μ) between 7–20 D of the species involved in the process is required to obtain significant improvements under microwave irradiation.