Serotonin (5‐hydroxytryptamine, HT), a neurotransmitter, and its main metabolite 5‐hydroxyindole‐3‐acetic acid (HIAA) are biomarkers for carcinoid tumors. They can be quantitatively detected by a new luminescent sensor based on a water stable lanthanide metal–organic framework (Ln‐MOF). This Ln‐MOF features a (3,4)‐connected topology containing 1D channels occupied by lattice water molecules. Luminescent studies reveal that high luminescence quenching efficiency occurs upon the addition of HT and HIAA. The Ln‐MOF also displays excellent sensitivity with fast response within 1 min, good reusability, and detection limits as low as 0.66 and 0.54 × 10−6m for HT and HIAA, respectively. In addition, the sensing function exhibits excellent selectivity even in the presence of other neurotransmitters and the main coexisting species in blood plasma and urine.

The use of wireless sensor networks (WSN) in healthcare applications is growing in a fast pace. Numerous applications such as heart rate monitor, blood pressure monitor and endoscopic capsule are already in use. To address the growing use of sensor technology in this area, a new field known as wireless body area networks (WBAN or simply BAN) has emerged. As most devices and their applications are wireless in nature, security and privacy concerns are among major areas of concern. Due to direct involvement of humans also increases the sensitivity. Whether the data gathered from patients or individuals are obtained with the consent of the person or without it due to the need by the system, misuse or privacy concerns may restrict people from taking advantage of the full benefits from the system. People may not see these devices safe for daily use. There may also possibility of serious social unrest due to the fear that such devices may be used for monitoring and tracking individuals by government agencies or other private organizations. In this paper we discuss these issues and analyze in detail the problems and their possible measures.

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Electronic medical record (EMR) is a crucial form of healthcare data, currently drawing a lot of attention. Sharing health data is considered to be a critical approach to improve the quality of healthcare service and reduce medical costs. However, EMRs are fragmented across decentralized hospitals, which hinders data sharing and puts patients' privacy at risks. To address these issues, we propose a blockchain based privacypreserving data sharing for EMRs, called BPDS. In BPDS, the original EMRs are stored securely in the cloud and the indexes are reserved in a tamper-proof consortium blockchain. By this means, the risk of the medical data leakage could be greatly reduced, and at the same time, the indexes in blockchain ensure that the EMRs can not be modified arbitrarily. Secure data sharing can be accomplished automatically according to the predefined access permissions of patients through the smart contracts of blockchain. Besides, the joint-design of the CP-ABE-based access control mechanism and the content extraction signature scheme provides strong privacy preservation in data sharing. Security analysis shows that BPDS is a secure and effective way to realize data sharing for EMRs.

The paradoxical coexistence of spontaneous tumor antigen-specific immune response with progressive disease in cancer patients need to dissect the molecular pathways involved in tumor-induced T-cell dysfunction or exhaustion. Programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) has been identified as a marker of exhausted T cells in chronic disease states, and blockade of PD-1-PD-L1 interactions has been shown to partially restore T-cell function. We have found that T-cell immunoglobulin mucin (Tim) 3 is expressed on CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) isolated from patients with colorectal cancer. All T-cell immunoglobulin mucin 3 (Tim-3+) TILs coexpress PD-1, and Tim-3+ PD-1+ CD8+ TILs represent the predominant fraction of Tcells infiltrating tumors. Tim-3+PD-1+ CD8+ TILs exhibit the most severe exhausted phenotype as defined by failure to produce cytokines, such as interferon-γ, tumor necrosis factor-α, and interleukin-2. We further find that combined targeting of the Tim-3 and PD-1 pathways increased the frequencies of not only interferon-γ and tumor necrosis factor-α but also frequencies of proliferating tumor antigen-specific CD8+ T cells than targeting either pathway alone. A concomitant decrease in regulatory T cells and enhanced killing in a cytotoxicity assay was observed. Collectively, our findings support the use of Tim-3-Tim-3L blockade together with PD-1-PD-L1 blockade to reverse tumor-induced T-cell exhaustion/dysfunction in patients with colorectal cancer.

Developing highly active, recyclable, and inexpensive photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) under visible light is significant for the direct conversion of solar energy into chemical fuels for various green energy applications. For such applications, it is very challenging but vitally important for a photocatalyst to simultaneously enhance the visible‐light absorption and suppress photogenerated electron–hole recombination, while also to maintain high stability and recyclability. Herein, a metal–organic framework (MOF)‐templated strategy has been developed to prepare heterostructured nanocatalysts with superior photocatalytic HER activity. Very uniquely, the synthesized photocatalytic materials can be recycled easily after use to restore the initial photocatalytic activity. It is shown that by controlling the calcination temperature and time with MOF‐5 as a host and guest thioacetamide as a sulfur source, the chemical compositions of the formed heterojunctions of ZnO/ZnS can be tuned to further enhance the visible‐light absorption and photocatalytic activity. The nanoscale heterojunction ZnO/ZnS structural feature serves to reduce the average free path of charge carriers and improve the charge separation efficiency, thus leading to significantly enhanced HER activity under visible‐light irradiation (λ > 420 nm) with high stability and recyclability without any cocatalyst.

This work reports a facile strategy for the preparation of a novel well-defined brush copolymer with two different grafts distributed on the same unit along the backbone via combination of three controlled polymerization methods, ring-opening polymerization (ROP), ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP), and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) based on the synthesis of the heterotrifunctional inimer, 2-hydroxymethyl-3-(2-bromoisobutyryloxymethyl)-5-norbornene (NBE-OH/Br). ROP of ε-caprolactone initiated by NBE-OH/Br was carried out to generate macroinimer, norbornene-graft-poly(ε-caprolactone)/Br (NBE-g-PCL/ Br). The grafting-through strategy was then employed to construct the polymer backbone, poly(norbornene)graft-poly(ε-caprolactone)/Br (PNBE-g-PCL/Br) via ROMP of the norbornene-terminated macroinimer NBE-g-PCL/Br. Finally, the grafting-from route was used for the synthesis of amphiphilic grafted brush copolymer, poly(norbornene)-graft-poly(ε-caprolactone)/poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate) (PNBE-g-PCL/PDMAE-MA) by ATRP of 2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate using bromo-functionalized ROMP product PNBE-g-PCL/Br as macroinitiators, containing one hydrophobic PCL graft and one hydrophilic PDMAEMA graft on each unit of the backbone.

BACKGROUND: Boreal cropping systems are heavily focused on the production of small-grain cereals; to improve their resilience to climate change and to achieve food and feed security, diversification is needed. This study investigated the potential of faba bean, narrow-leafed lupin and lentil as protein crops in southern Finland, where faba bean is traditional but the other two are novel.