Materials science against viruses Materials science is important in all areas of antiviral research, including investigation of viral structure and biology, protection, detection, treatment and vaccination.
The current COVID-19 pandemic urges the extremely sensitive and prompt detection of SARS-CoV-2 virus. Here, we present a Human Angiotensin-converting-enzyme 2 (ACE2)-functionalized gold “virus traps” nanostructure as an extremely sensitive SERS biosensor, to selectively capture and rapidly detect S-protein expressed coronavirus, such as the current SARS-CoV-2 in the contaminated water, down to the single-virus level. Such a SERS sensor features extraordinary 106-fold virus enrichment originating from high-affinity of ACE2 with S protein as well as “virus-traps” composed of oblique gold nanoneedles, and 109-fold enhancement of Raman signals originating from multi-component SERS effects. Furthermore, the identification standard of virus signals is established by machine-learning and identification techniques, resulting in an especially low detection limit of 80 copies mL−1 for the simulated contaminated water by SARS-CoV-2 virus with complex circumstance as short as 5 min, which is of great significance for achieving real-time monitoring and early warning of coronavirus. Moreover, here-developed method can be used to establish the identification standard for future unknown coronavirus, and immediately enable extremely sensitive and rapid detection of novel virus.
Hollow mesoporous nanomaterials have gained tremendous attention in the fields of nanomedicine and nanobiotechnology. Herein, n-perfluoropentane (PFP)-encapsulated hollow mesoporous Prussian blue (HPB) nanocubes (HPB-PFP) with excellent colloidal stability have been synthesized for concurrent in vivo tumor diagnosis and regression. The HPB shell shows excellent photothermal conversion efficiency that can absorb near-infrared (NIR) laser light and convert it into heat. The generated heat can not only cause tumor ablation by raising the temperature of tumor tissue but also promote the continuous gasification and bubbling of encapsulated liquid PFP with low boiling point. These formed PFP bubbles can cause tissue impedance mismatch, thus apparently enhancing the signal of B-mode ultrasound imaging in vitro and generating an apparent echogenicity signal for tumor tissues of nude mice in vivo. Without showing observable in vitro and in vivo cytotoxicity, the designed biocompatible HPB-PFP nanotheranostics with high colloidal stability and photothermal efficiency are anticipated to find various biomedical applications in activated ultrasound imaging-guided tumor detection and therapy.
is an optical photograph of three light-emitting pixels emitting green light. It is seen that the pixels are clearly separated by the cathode separator. The maximum efficiency of the device fabricated with the separator was 1.17 lm/W. This value compares with 1.28 lm/W for the device fabricated without the separator. The difference of less than 10 % is believed to be within experimental error.A technique has been presented that enables one to fabricate reversely tapered structures in one simple step. The physics investigated with a model system of a tapered parallelopiped would provide the bounds within which the technique would work in terms of aspect ratios and one contact angle. The results presented reveal that the technique works for such a tapered structure ranging in size from micrometer to millimeter. This EMOF technique has been successfully applied to the fabrication of cathode separators that are used for the cathode patterning of OLEDs. The ability to fabricate reversely tapered structures efficiently and cheaply should lead to applications in optics and MEMS.
ExperimentalThe fabrication procedure of these separators is illustrated in Figure 1. The master was made with a commercially available negative photoresist. The exposure was controlled to impart differing amount of dose to the resist as a function of the layer thickness. The usual procedure of spin-coating, pre-baking, printing, developing, and drying was followed. Onto this master, PDMS (Sylgard 184, Dow Corning) was cast to obtain the PDMS mold. The PDMS mold was placed for molding the structure onto a substrate. A drop of a polymer solution is used in MIMIC for molding. After a sufficient amount of time had elapsed for the molding, the PDMS mold was removed, leaving the fabricated structure on the substrate.An organic light-emitting diode based on the EMOF technique was fabricated. A three-layer OLED consists of 4,4,-bis[N-(1-naphthyl)-N-phenyl-amino]biphenyl (NPB) as the hole transport layer, (8-hydroxyquinolino)aluminum (Alq 3 ) as the emitting layer, each 50 nm thick, and LiF/Al as the cathode on an ITO glass (20 X/square, 75 nm ITO). Prior to the deposition of the organic layers, the substrate was cleaned by procedures described previously [11]. The cathode separators were fabricated using the EMOF technique, and the organic layers for the OLEDs were deposited by high vacuum (~10 ±6 torr) thermal evaporation. All organic materials used for OLEDs were purified by thermal gradient sublimation before use.
Objectives:
We present the development and validation of a portable NLP approach for automated surveillance of SSIs.
Summary of Background Data:
The surveillance of SSIs is labor-intensive limiting the generalizability and scalability of surgical quality surveillance programs.
Methods:
We abstracted patient clinical text notes after surgical procedures from 2 independent healthcare systems using different electronic healthcare records. An SSI detected as part of the American College of Surgeons’ National Surgical Quality Improvement Program was used as the reference standard. We developed a rules-based NLP system (Easy Clinical Information Extractor [CIE]-SSI) for operative event-level detection of SSIs using an training cohort (4574 operative events) from 1 healthcare system and then conducted internal validation on a blind cohort from the same healthcare system (1850 operative events) and external validation on a blind cohort from the second healthcare system (15,360 operative events). EasyCIE-SSI performance was measured using sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver-operating-curve (AUC).
Results:
The prevalence of SSI was 4% and 5% in the internal and external validation corpora. In internal validation, EasyCIE-SSI had a sensitivity, specificity, AUC of 94%, 88%, 0.912 for the detection of SSI, respectively. In external validation, EasyCIE-SSI had sensitivity, specificity, AUC of 79%, 92%, 0.852 for the detection of SSI, respectively. The sensitivity of EasyCIE-SSI decreased in clean, skin/subcutaneous, and outpatient procedures in the external validation compared to internal validation.
Conclusion:
Automated surveillance of SSIs can be achieved using NLP of clinical notes with high sensitivity and specificity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.