Molecular analysis
of exhaled breath aerosol (EBA) with simple
procedures represents a key step in clinical and point-of-care applications.
Due to the crucial health role, a face mask now is a safety device
that helps protect the wearer from breathing in hazardous particles
such as bacteria and viruses in the air; thus exhaled breath is also
blocked to congregate in the small space inside of the face mask.
Therefore, direct sampling and analysis of trace constituents in EBA
using a face mask can rapidly provide useful insights into human physiologic
and pathological information. Herein, we introduce a simple approach
to collect and analyze human EBA by combining a face mask with solid-phase
microextraction (SPME) fiber. SPME fiber was inserted into a face
mask to form SPME-in-mask that covered nose and mouth for in vivo sampling of EBA, and SPME fiber was then coupled
with direct analysis in real-time mass spectrometry (DART-MS) to directly
analyze the molecular compositions of EBA under ambient conditions.
The applicability of SPME-in-mask was demonstrated by direct analysis
of drugs and metabolites in oral and nasal EBA. The unique features
of SPME-in-mask were also discussed. Our results showed that this
method is enabled to analyze volatile and nonvolatile analytes in
EBA and is expected to have a significant impact on human EBA analysis
in clinical applications. We also hope this method will inspire biomarker
screening of some respiratory diseases that usually required wearing
of a face mask in daily life.
In this paper, a quantum private comparison protocol is proposed based on bell entangled states. In our protocol, two parties can compare the equality of their information with the help of a semi-honest third party. The correctness and security of our protocol are discussed. One party cannot learn the other's private information and the third party also cannot learn any information about the private information.
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