Rational use of antibiotic is the key approach to improve the antibiotic performance and tackling of the antimicrobial resistance. The efficacy of antimicrobials are influenced by many factors: (1) bacterial status (susceptibility and resistance, tolerance, persistence, biofilm) and inoculum size; (2) antimicrobial concentrations [mutant selection window (MSW) and sub-inhibitory concentration]; (3) host factors (serum effect and impact on gut micro-biota). Additional understandings regarding the linkage between antimicrobial usages, bacterial status and host response offers us new insights and encourage the struggle for the designing of antimicrobial treatment regimens that reaching better clinical outcome and minimizing the emergence of resistance at the same time.

No abstract

We successfully fabricated a highly anisotropic electrical conductive microcoil/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite based on helical Spirulina-templated metallic particles using an electric field-induced alignment method. The optimized AC electric field (2 kV/cm, 1 kHz) could efficiently assemble the lightweight conductive microcoils into continuous long chains and form unique end-to-end physical contacts between adjacent particles in the alignment direction, leading to highly conductive channels. Furthermore, the electrical conductivity in the alignment direction reached up to ∼10 S/m for 1 wt % loading and exhibited almost 7-8 orders of magnitude higher than that in perpendicular directions, which is by far the most remarkable conductive anisotropy for anisotropic conductive composites (ACCs). In addition, the anisotropic composites exhibit excellent current-carrying capability in a functional light emitting diode (LED) circuit. Therefore, due to the superior conductive anisotropy and high conductivity, the composites have promising potential in high reliability electrical interconnections and subminiature integrated circuits.

Frustules, the silica shells of diatoms, have unique porous architectures with good mechanical strength. In recent years, biologists have learned more about the mechanism of biosilica shells formation; meanwhile, physicists have revealed their optical and microfluidic properties, and chemists have identified ways to modify them into various materials while maintaining their hierarchical structures. These efforts have provided more opportunities to use biosilica structures in microsystems and other commercial products. This review focuses on the preparation of biosilica structures and their applications, especially in the development of microdevices. We discuss existing methods of extracting biosilica from diatomite and diatoms, introduce methods of separating biosilica structures by shape and sizes, and summarize recent studies on diatom-based devices used for biosensing, drug delivery, and energy applications. In addition, we introduce some new findings on diatoms, such as the elastic deformable characteristics of biosilica structures, and offer perspectives on planting diatom biosilica in microsystems.

Microorganisms are widely used as the biotemplates for producing micro/ nanomaterials owing to their unique features, such as exquisite morphology, renewable, and environmentally friendly. However, mass intracellular synthesis of uniformly dispersed nanoparticles (NPs) inside microorganisms is still challenging, especially in a predictable and controllable manner. Here, a facile and efficiency strategy is proposed to controllably produce highly dispersed and surfactant-free Pd@Ag core-shell NPs within the Spirulina platensis (Sp.) cells. In this approach, the Sp. cells' permeability is enhanced by the hydrochloric acid treatment first, which enables the Pd NPs penetrate the cell envelope and distribute uniformly inside the cells, and then they can work as the catalytic seeds for the following electroless silver deposition, resulting in the intracellular fabrication of Pd@Ag core-shell NPs with no agglomeration. The Pd@Ag NPs show excellent catalytic activity (turnover frequency is up to 2893 h −1 for the 6.32 nm Pd@Ag NPs), good stability, and recyclability toward the 4-nitrophenol reductions. The excellent properties are attributed to the asymmetrical core-shell structure, small size, and good dispersion of Pd@Ag NPs. Due to its facility, cost-effectiveness, and versatility, this method can be expanded to other microorganisms, so it opens tremendous opportunities for various metallic nanoparticles intracellular synthesis as well as the practical application.

Human dehydrated normal and cancerous gastric tissues were measured using transmission time-domain terahertz spectroscopy. Based on the obtained terahertz absorption spectra, the contrasts between the two kinds of tissue were investigated and techniques for automatic identification of cancerous tissue were studied. Distinctive differences were demonstrated in both the shape and amplitude of the absorption spectra between normal and tumor tissue. Additionally, some spectral features in the range of 0.2~0.5 THz and 1~1.5 THz were revealed for all cancerous gastric tissues. To systematically achieve the identification of gastric cancer, principal component analysis combined with t-test was used to extract valuable information indicating the best distinction between the two types. Two clustering approaches, K-means and support vector machine (SVM), were then performed to classify the processed terahertz data into normal and cancerous groups. SVM presented a satisfactory result with less false classification cases. The results of this study implicate the potential of the terahertz technique to detect gastric cancer. The applied data analysis methodology provides a suggestion for automatic discrimination of terahertz spectra in other applications.

One of the greatest puzzles in wound healing is how to substitute or replace the defect caused by loss and damaged tissue or organs. In regenerative medicine, Tissue Engineering has been proposed to supply this demand by generating tissues in vitro. Bioreactors are the key to translate these cells and tissue-based constructs into large-scale biological products that are clinically effective, safe and financially pliable. In this review, we summarise the different upto-date bioreactor designs being used for different cell types and special design scaffolds, and highlight advantages of different bioreactors, current challenges and the future trends. It is our belief that with efforts combined from multiple disciplinary participants, a novel bioreactor system that is capable of fast, large scale tissue culture would come about in near future.

Visible-light active photocatalysis under continuous magnetic actuation.