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A highly sensitive and selective colorimetric sensor was developed for the determination of copper(ii) ions based on the conformational changes of Cu2+-binding peptides.

DNA emerged as a novel potential material for mass data storage, offering the possibility to cheaply solve a great data storage problem. Large oligonucleotide pools demonstrated high potential of large-scale data storage in test tube, meanwhile, living cell with high fidelity in information replication. Here we show a mixed culture of bacterial cells carrying a large oligo pool that was assembled in a high-copy-number plasmid was presented as a stable material for large-scale data storage. The underlying principle was explored by deep bioinformatic analysis. Although homology assembly showed sequence context dependent bias, the large oligonucleotide pools in the mixed culture were constant over multiple successive passages. Finally, over ten thousand distinct oligos encompassing 2304 Kbps encoding 445 KB digital data, were stored in cells, the largest storage in living cells reported so far and present a previously unreported approach for bridging the gap between in vitro and in vivo systems.

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In DNA data storage, the massive sequence complexity creates challenges in repeatable and efficient information readout. Here, our study clearly demonstrated that PCR created significant DNA amplification biases due to its inherent mechanism of inefficient priming, product-as-template, and error-spreading prone, which greatly hinder subsequent applications such as data retrieval in DNA-based storage. To mitigate the amplification bias, we recruited an isothermal DNA amplification by combining strand displacement amplification (SDA) with magnetic beads (MB) DNA immobilization for robust, repeated, and low-bias amplification of DNA oligo pool, comprising over 100 thousand oligos, in a primer-free and low-error-spreading fashion. Furthermore, we introduced oligo pool normalization (OPN), a cost-effective and scalable method for normalizing an oligo pool, by which oligo pools comprising from 256 to 1024 distinct oligos were simply modified with improved Gini-index. Therefore, we believe that the combination of SDA and OPN can provide an ideal amplification mechanism for a low-bias copy of a large oligo pool, which is of vital importance for successful data retrieval in DNA information storage.

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Purpose To investigate the changes and underlying mechanisms in parents' safety awareness and the use of child safety seats after the mandatory legislation in Shanghai city, China. Methods This study was carried out by Shanghai Key Laboratory of Environment and Children's Health using a multi-stage, simple random sampling method. Volunteers with children aged 0–12 months were recruited. Child safety seats were sent to each volunteer's family. Telephone encounters and/or on-site visits were used to collect data from parents using a phased survey on children's safety during car use. Results Among all respondents, 91.2% had heard of motor vehicle accidents involving children, and 97.2% could describe the appropriate use of a safety seat to minimize the risk of child injury in a collision. Among 1078 families with newborns, awareness of child safety seats was 91.9%. There were 86% patients aware that new laws and regulations have been released regarding the use of child safety seats, and 98.5% of them plan to comply with the new laws. Moreover, 61% patients think that taxis should be routinely equipped with child safety seats. Conclusion The parents in Shanghai obtained a high level of awareness of children's traffic safety after the introduction of child safety seats legislation, and had a positive experience related to the use of child safety seats. Taxi may be an important area of focus for implementation of child traffic safety. Traffic safety laws and regulations with further impact should be continuously studied.