This study provides evidence that environmental factors like relative humidity and multiple air pollutants influence the incidence and prevalence of eczema and have lagged effects.

The behaviors of the holographic superconductors/insulator transition are studied by introducing a charged scalar field coupled with a logarithmic electromagnetic field in both the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet AdS black hole and soliton. For the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet AdS black hole, we find that: i) the larger coupling parameter of logarithmic electrodynamic field b makes it easier for the scalar hair to be condensated; ii) the ratio of the gap frequency in conductivity ω g to the critical temperature T c depends on both b and the Gauss-Bonnet constant α; and iii) the critical exponents are independent of the b and α. For the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet AdS Soliton, we show that the system is the insulator phase when the chemical potential µ is small, but there is a phase transition and the AdS soliton reaches the superconductor (or superfluid) phase when µ larger than critical chemical potential. A special property should be noted is that the critical chemical potential is not changed by the coupling parameter b but depends on α.

Cu 2 O nanospheres (NSs) were synthesized by modifying the glucose reduction method. Based on this method, Cu 2 O/Au (Ag) NSs were further prepared by in situ reduction of HAuCl 4 (via electron beam evaporation of Ag). With Rhodamine 6G (R6G) as probe, the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) characteristics of the three samples were systematically studied. The experiment results showed that the enhancement factor (EF) of Cu 2 O/Au (Ag) NSs as 1.25 × 10 8 (2.74 × 10 9 ) and the ultralow detection limit (LOD) as 8.07 × 10 –12 (1.13 × 10 –13 ) M for R6G. The excellent performance of SERS may be due to the charge transfer (CT) between metal–semiconductor (MS) molecules and the strong electromagnetic field (E-field) of each hot spot. In addition, discrete dipole approximation (DDA) simulations were performed to simulate the E-field enhancement of the Cu 2 O and Cu 2 O/Au (Ag) NSs in a three-dimensional (3D) configuration. These further supported that the high SERS performance for R6G is because of the powerful E-field coupling between neighboring Au (Ag) NPs and the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect. The Cu 2 O/Ag NSs have potential in applications such as biomedicine, food safety, and environmental monitoring because of their high sensitivity and good reproducibility.

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3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase (HMGR) catalyzes the formation of mevalonate. In many classes of organisms, this is the committed step leading to the synthesis of essential compounds, such as cholesterol. However, a high level of cholesterol is an important risk factor for coronary heart disease, for which an effective clinical treatment is to block HMGR using inhibitors like statins. Recently the structures of catalytic portion of human HMGR complexed with six different statins have been determined by a delicate crystallography study (Istvan and Deisenhofer Science 2001, 292, 1160-1164), which established a solid basis of structure and mechanism for the rational design, optimization, and development of even better HMGR inhibitors. In this study, three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship (3D QSAR) with comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) was performed on a training set of up to 35 statins and statin-like compounds. Predictive models were established by using two different ways: (1) Models-fit, obtained by SYBYL conventional fit-atom molecular alignment rule, has cross-validated coefficients (q2) up to 0.652 and regression coefficients (r2) up to 0.977. (2) Models-dock, obtained by FlexE by docking compounds into the HMGR active site, has cross-validated coefficients (q2) up to 0.731 and regression coefficients (r2) up to 0.947. These models were further validated by an external testing set of 12 statins and statin-like compounds. Integrated with CoMFA 3D QSAR predictive models, molecular surface property (electrostatic and steric) mapping and structure-based (both ligand and receptor) virtual screening have been employed to explore potential novel hits for the HMGR inhibitors. A representative set of eight new compounds of non-statin-like structures but with high pIC(50) values were sorted out in the present study.