BackgroundHaemaphysalis concinna, a three-host tick vector of several pathogens, poses a high risk to the health of humans and livestock. However, knowledge of the seasonal activities, relative density and other ecological characteristics of this tick is quite limited and fragmentary. This knowledge gap represents a bottleneck in our understanding of the health risks associated with tick-borne pathogens.MethodsWe conducted a two-year study from April 2012 to March 2014 in Northern Inner Mongolia situated on the China-Russia border, China, to investigate the seasonal activities and relative density of the three developmental stages of H. concinna. During the study period, feeding ticks were removed weekly from domestic sheep and their attachment sites were recorded. Questing ticks were collected weekly from five habitats (broadleaf forest, coniferous forest, shrubs, grassland and mixed coniferous forest) using the flagging-dragging method of capture. Rodents were captured and examined on two consecutive nights each week from June to September in 2012.ResultsH. concinna ticks were found mainly in shrubs and grasslands habitats. Adults were encountered from February to October with the major peak occurring in June. Larvae, which were observed mainly from late April to late September, reached peak numbers in late July. Nymphs were observed mainly from March to October, and their numbers peaked in early July. H. concinna adults and nymphs were found attached to sheep and their most favored sites of attachment were the face and ears. H. concinna larvae were found on two rodent species, Apodemus peninsulae and Eutamias sibiricus.ConclusionThe relative density and seasonal activities of H. concinna have been systematically reported for Northern Inner Mongolia, China. The information about the hosts infested by H. concinna and its preferred attachment sites on sheep will help efforts to control this tick and the tick-borne diseases carried by it.

The mixture of peppermint oil (PO) with medium-chain triacylglycerol was emulsified in water and stabilized with a food-grade biopolymer, modified starch, to form PO nanoemulsions. The effects of emulsifying conditions including homogenization pressure, the number of processing cycles, and oil loading on the mean diameters and viscosities of nanoemulsions were characterized by dynamic light scattering, optical microscopy, and rheological measurements. The formulated PO nanoemulsions with mean diameters normally <200 nm showed high stability over at least 30 days of storage time. Their antimicrobial properties related to those of PO have also been evaluated by two assays, the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and time-kill dynamic processes, against two Gram-positive bacterial strains of Listeria monocytogenes Scott A and Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923. Compared with bulk PO, the PO nanoemulsions showed prolonged antibacterial activities. The results suggest that the nanoemulsion technology can provide novel applications of essential oils in extending the shelf life of aqueous food products.

Employing renewable, earth-abundant, environmentally friendly, low-cost natural materials to design flexible supercapacitors (FSCs) as energy storage devices in wearable/portable electronics represents the global perspective to build sustainable and green society. Chemically stable and flexible cellulose and electroactive lignin have been employed to construct a biomass-based FSC for the first time. The FSC was assembled using lignosulfonate/single-walled carbon nanotube (Lig/SWCNT) pressure-sensitive hydrogels as electrodes and cellulose hydrogels as an electrolyte separator. The assembled biomass-based FSC shows high specific capacitance (292 F g at a current density of 0.5 A g), excellent rate capability, and an outstanding energy density of 17.1 W h kg at a power density of 324 W kg. Remarkably, the FSC presents outstanding electrochemical stability even suffering 1000 bending cycles. Such excellent flexibility, stability, and electrochemical performance enable the designed biomass-based FSCs as prominent candidates in applications of wearable electronic devices.

In the present study the antiviral properties of the bacteriocin subtilosin against Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and the safety and efficacy of a subtilosin-based nanofiber formulation were determined. High concentrations of subtilosin, the cyclical antimicrobial peptide produced by Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, were virucidal against HSV-1. Interestingly, at non-virucidal concentrations, subtilosin inhibited wild type HSV-1 and aciclovir-resistant mutants in a dose-dependent manner. Although the exact antiviral mechanism is not fully understood, time of addition experiments and western blot analysis suggest that subtilosin does not affect viral multiplication steps prior to protein synthesis. Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVOH)-based subtilosin nanofibers with a width of 278 nm were produced by the electrospinning process. The retained antimicrobial activity of the subtilosin-based fibers was determined via an agar well diffusion assay. The loading capacity of the fibers was 2.4 mg subtilosin/g fiber, and loading efficiency was 31.6%. Furthermore, the nanofibers with and without incorporated subtilosin were shown to be nontoxic to human epidermal tissues using an in vitro human tissue model. Taking together these results subtilosin-based nanofibers should be further studied as a novel alternative method for treatment and/or control of HSV-1 infection.

Traditional imaging systems exhibit a well-known trade-off between the resolution and the field of view of their captured images. Typical cameras and microscopes can either "zoom in" and image at high-resolution, or they can "zoom out" to see a larger area at lower resolution, but can rarely achieve both effects simultaneously. In this review, we present details about a relatively new procedure termed Fourier ptychography (FP), which addresses the above trade-off to produce gigapixel-scale images without requiring any moving parts. To accomplish this, FP captures multiple low-resolution, large field-of-view images and computationally combines them in the Fourier domain into a high-resolution, large field-of-view result. Here, we present details about the various implementations of FP and highlight its demonstrated advantages to date, such as aberration recovery, phase imaging, and 3D tomographic reconstruction, to name a few. After providing some basics about FP, we list important details for successful experimental implementation, discuss its relationship with other computational imaging techniques, and point to the latest advances in the field while highlighting persisting challenges.

Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) is a well-established method that measures rapid changes in scattered coherent light to identify blood flow and functional dynamics within a tissue. While its sensitivity to minute scatterer displacements leads to a number of unique advantages, conventional DCS systems become photon-limited when attempting to probe deep into the tissue, which leads to long measurement windows (∽1 sec). Here, we present a high-sensitivity DCS system with 1024 parallel detection channels integrated within a single-photon avalanche diode array and demonstrate the ability to detect mm-scale perturbations up to 1 cm deep within a tissue-like phantom at up to a 33 Hz sampling rate. We also show that this highly parallelized strategy can measure the human pulse at high fidelity and detect behaviorally induced physiological variations from above the human prefrontal cortex. By greatly improving the detection sensitivity and speed, highly parallelized DCS opens up new experiments for high-speed biological signal measurement.

. This report is the second part of a comprehensive two-part series aimed at reviewing an extensive and diverse toolkit of novel methods to explore brain health and function. While the first report focused on neurophotonic tools mostly applicable to animal studies, here, we highlight optical spectroscopy and imaging methods relevant to noninvasive human brain studies. We outline current state-of-the-art technologies and software advances, explore the most recent impact of these technologies on neuroscience and clinical applications, identify the areas where innovation is needed, and provide an outlook for the future directions.

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