No abstract

It is proposed that sorption is a combination of two fundamentally different processes: adsorption and partitioning. A sorption model was developed for both single-component and multicomponent systems. The model was tested using single-component experimental isotherm data of eight toxic organic compounds. Partitioning dominates the sorption process for compounds with high sorbability or high octanol-water partition coefficient, Xow. Binary sorption data were compared with the present model. The proposed model fitted experimental data well. It was found that Kow could be used to assess the competition effect in a multicomponent system. The competition is negligible when K0VI is larger than 1000. When Kow is smaller than 500, there is a significant competition effect. In very dilute solutions, the effect of the presence of a competing species can be ignored.

Highly crystalline and idiomorphic CoTiO single crystals with a well-defined polyhedral morphology were grown successfully for the first time by a facile flux method. Herein, the effects of the molten salt type and cobalt precursor on the phase composition, crystallization habit and morphology of the CoTiO products were also investigated. Importantly, using the flux-grown CoTiO crystal as the visible-light sensitizer due to its narrow band gap to couple with graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) by a direct in situ thermal induced polycondensation route, novel CoTiO/g-CN composite photocatalysts were obtained. The as-synthesized samples were systematically characterized by XRD, EDS, SEM, TEM, SAED, HRTEM, FT-IR, XPS, DRS and PL techniques. The results revealed that CoTiO polyhedral crystals were closely combined with g-CN nanosheets leading to the formation of a heterojunction structure at the interface between CoTiO and g-CN. Photocatalytic evaluation showed that the heterostructured CoTiO/g-CN composite exhibited much higher photocatalytic activity for the degradation of methyl orange under visible light irradiation than that of individual CoTiO and g-CN, which could be mainly ascribed to the synergistic effect between CoTiO and g-CN, including the enhanced visible-light harvesting ability and more efficient separation and longer lifetime of photogenerated charge carriers. Furthermore, the composite photocatalyst showed an excellent stability and reusability during four successive cycles. Finally, a possible mechanism responsible for the charge separation and improved photocatalytic activity was proposed.

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between plasma lipid profile and acne. Acne patients (n = 181) and healthy volunteers (n = 130) matched in terms of both age and sex were enrolled. Plasma total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and lipoprotein (LP)(a) levels were measured. TC, LDL-C and LP(a) levels in male and female patients with severe acne were significantly higher than in the healthy control group (P < 0.05). TG in male patients with severe and moderate acne was significantly higher than in the healthy control group (P < 0.05). LP(a) in male and female patients with mild, moderate and severe acne was significantly higher than in the healthy control group (P < 0.05). The constituent ratio of male and female patients with TC, TG, LDL-C and LP(a) over the normal range was significantly higher than in the healthy control group. In this study, acne patients were frequently associated with abnormal lipid profile, providing a new basis for further exploration of the pathogenesis, as well as new treatments, of acne vulgaris.

No abstract

Salmonella and Escherichia coli (E. coli) food contamination could lead to serious foodborne diseases. The gradual increase in the incidence of foodborne disease invokes new and efficient methods to limit food pathogenic microorganism contamination. In this study, a polyvalent broad-spectrum Escherichia phage named Tequatrovirus EP01 was isolated from pig farm sewage. It could lyse both Salmonella Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis) and E. coli and exhibited broad host range. EP01 possessed a short latent period (10 min), a large burst size (80 PFU/cell), and moderate pH stability (4–10) and appropriate thermal tolerance (30–80 °C). Electron microscopy and genome sequence revealed that EP01 belonged to T4-like viruses genus, Myoviridae family. EP01 harbored 12 CDSs associated with receptor-binding proteins and lacked virulence genes and drug resistance genes. We tested the inhibitory effect of EP01 on S. Enteritidis, E. coli O157:H7, E. coli O114:K90 (B90), and E. coli O142:K86 (B) in liquid broth medium (LB). EP01 could significantly reduce the counts of all tested strains compared with phage-free groups. We further examined the effectiveness of EP01 in controlling bacterial contamination in two kinds of foods (meat and milk) contaminated with S. Enteritidis, E. coli O157:H7, E. coli O114:K90 (B90), and E. coli O142:K86 (B), respectively. EP01 significantly reduced the viable counts of all the tested bacteria (2.18–6.55 log10 CFU/sample, p < 0.05). A significant reduction of 6.55 log10 CFU/cm2 (p < 0.001) in bacterial counts on the surface of meat was observed with EP01 treatment. Addition of EP01 at MOI of 1 decreased the counts of bacteria by 4.3 log10 CFU/mL (p < 0.001) in milk. Generally, the inhibitory effect exhibited more stable at 4 °C than that at 28 °C, whereas the opposite results were observed in milk. The antibacterial effects were better at MOI of 1 than that at MOI of 0.001. These results suggests that phage EP01-based method is a promising strategy of controlling Salmonella and Escherichia coli pathogens to limit microbial food contamination.

With growing cost of electricity, the power management of server clusters has become an important prob-