A novel strategy to improve the sensitivity of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) sensors was proposed. An electrocatalytic Prussian blue (PB) film was electrochemically polymerized on an electrode surface to fabricate an MIP electrochemical sensor using oxytetracycline (OTC) as a template. The OTC determination relied on a competition reaction between OTC and glucose-oxidase-labeled OTC and the catalytic reduction of hydrogen peroxide by the modified PB film. Experimental results show that double amplification, which is based on the catalysis of inorganic PB films and the enzymatic effect of glucose oxidase, can remarkably increase the assay sensitivity. The main experimental conditions (including electrocatalysis of the PB film, pH effects, incubation and competition times, and anti-interference) were optimized. This novel MIP sensor can offer an femtomole detection limit for OTC. In addition, the feasibility of its practical applications has been demonstrated in the analysis of a series of real milk samples.

Fluorescent gold/silver nanoclusters templated by DNA or oligonucleotides have been widely reported since DNA or oligonucleotides could be designed to position a few metal ions at close proximity prior to their reduction, but nucleoside-templated synthesis is more challenging. In this work, a novel type of strategy taking cytidine (C) as template to rapid synthesis of fluorescent, water-soluble gold and silver nanoclusters (C-AuAg NCs) has been developed. The as-prepared C-AuAg NCs have been characterized by UV-vis absorption spectroscopy, fluorescence, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS). The characterizations demonstrate that C-AuAg NCs with a diameter of 1.50 ± 0.31 nm, a quantum yield ∼9%, and an average lifetime ∼6.07 μs possess prominent fluorescence properties, good dispersibility, and easy water solubility, indicating the promising application in bioanalysis and biomedical diagnosis. Furthermore, this strategy by rapid producing of highly fluorescent nanoclusters could be explored for the possible recognition of some disease-related changes in blood serum. This raises the possibility of their promising application in bioanalysis and biomedical diagnosis.

Rapid and ultrasensitive detection of pathogenic bacteria and their relevant multidrug resistance is particularly important in clinical diagnosis, disease control, and environmental monitoring. In this contribution, we have explored the possibility to rapidly detect some important disease related bacteria based on a nanostructured Au modified indium tin oxide electrode through the antibiotic agents such as doxorubicin. The rapid and real-time electrochemical detection of multidrug resistant bacteria like Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus could be readily realized through the nanostructured Au based biosensor with high sensitivity. The observations of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and laser confocal fluorescence microscopy also demonstrate the effectiveness of the relevant new strategy for the rapid and ultrasensitive electrochemical detection of some disease related bacteria.

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An ultra-low power always-on keyword spotting (KWS) accelerator is implemented in 22nm CMOS technology, which is based on an optimized convolutional neural network (CNN). To reduce the power consumption while maintaining the system recognition accuracy, we first perform a bit-width quantization method on the proposed CNN to reduce the data/weight bit width required by the hardware computing unit without reducing the recognition accuracy. Then, we propose an approximate computing architecture for the quantized CNN using voltage-domain analog switching network based multiplication and addition unit. Implementation results show that this accelerator can support 10 keywords real time recognition under different noise types and SNRs, while the power consumption can be significantly reduced to 52µW.

Fluorescent platinum nanoclusters constructed through one-step synthesis from chloroplatinic acid cross swiftly across carcinoma cell membranes for bio-imaging and photothermal treatment.

In vivo simultaneous and multisite tumor rapid-targeting through specifically biosynthesized gold nanoclusters could be readily followed and monitored by real-time fluorescence imaging.

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