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For samples irradiated with Xe22+ ions, the greatest decrease in thermal conductivity was 19%, while for ceramics irradiated with Kr15+ ions, the maximum decrease was not more than 10%. The results show a significant resistance of ceramics to radiation damage by Kr15+ ions and negative effects, leading to a decrease in the resistance of optical and conductive properties of ceramics when irradiated with Xe22+ ions with doses higher than 5 × 1014 ion/cm2. Using the X-ray diffraction method, the dependences of structural distortions and changes in dislocation density in the structure of ceramics on the radiation dose were established. It has been determined that the main structural changes are associated with the fragmentation of grains, which result in an increase in the dislocation density, as well as deformation and distortion of the crystal lattice as a result of the formation of complex defects in the structure.Contamination by pesticides in the food chain and the environment is a worldwide problem that needs to be actively monitored to ensure safety. Unfortunately, standard pesticide analysis based on mass spectrometry takes a lot of time, money and effort. Thus, simple, reliable, cost-effective and field applicable methods for pesticide detection have been actively developed. One of the most promising technologies is an aptamer-based biosensor or so-called aptasensor. It utilizes aptamers, short single-stranded DNAs or RNAs, as pesticide recognition elements to integrate with various innovative biosensing technologies for specific and sensitive detection of pesticide residues. Several platforms for aptasensors have been dynamically established, such as colorimetry, fluorometry, electrochemistry, electrochemiluminescence (ECL) and so forth. Each platform has both advantages and disadvantages depending on the purpose of use and readiness of technology. For example, colorimetric-based aptasensors are more affordable than others because of the simplicity of fabrication and resource requirements. Electrochemical-based aptasensors have mainly shown better sensitivity than others with exceedingly low detection limits. This paper critically reviews the progression of pesticide aptasensors throughout the development process, including the selection, characterization and modification of aptamers, the conceptual frameworks of integrating aptamers and biosensors, the ASSURED (affordable, sensitive, specific, user-friendly, rapid and robust, equipment-free and deliverable to end users) criteria of different platforms and the future outlook.Neutrophils are short-lived and terminally differentiated cells, and therefore, have been considered as effector cells to phagocytose pathogens and kill them or damage tissues [...].There are several techniques for current measurement. Most of them are capable of measuring both alternating and direct current (AC/DC) components. However, they have severe drawbacks for rotating applications (large size, sensitivity to external fields, and low signal amplitude). In addition to these weaknesses, measured signals should be transmitted to a stationary part. In order to contribute solving these difficulties, this paper presents a sensor that can measure AC/DC simultaneously based on the electromagnetic coupling of two coils. To this aim, the measured waveform is analysed. In this paper, the design of such a sensor is presented. This design is validated through computer simulations and a prototype is built. The performance of this sensor prototype is analysed through experimental tests.Chronic, non-healing wounds impose a great burden on patients, professionals and health care systems worldwide. Diabetes mellitus (DM) and obesity are globally highly prevalent metabolic disorders and increase the risk for developing chronic wounds. Glucocorticoids (GCs) are endogenous stress hormones that exert profound effects on inflammation and repair systems. 11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 1 (11β-HSD1) is the key enzyme which controls local GC availability in target tissues such as skin. Since treatment with GCs has detrimental side effects on skin integrity, causing atrophy and delayed wound healing, we asked whether the dysregulated expression of 11β-HSD1 and consequently local GC levels in skin contribute to delayed wound healing in obese, diabetic db/db mice. We found increased expression of 11β-HSD1 during disturbed wound healing and in the healthy skin of obese, diabetic db/db mice. Cell analysis revealed increased expression of 11β-HSD1 in fibroblasts, myeloid cells and dermal white adipose tissue from db/db mice, while expression in keratinocytes was unaffected. Among diabetes- and obesity-related factors, insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 down-regulated 11β-HSD1 expression in fibroblasts and myeloid cells, while glucose, fatty acids, TNF-α and IL-1β did not affect it. Insulin exerted its inhibitory effect on 11β-HSD1 expression by activating PI3-kinase/Akt-signalling. Consequently, the inhibitory effect of insulin is attenuated in fibroblasts from insulin-resistant db/db mice. We conclude that insulin resistance in obesity and diabetes prevents the down-regulation of 11β-HSD1, leading to elevated endogenous GC levels in diabetic skin, which could contribute to impaired wound healing in patients with DM.There has been increasing interest, in the past decade, in bio-mediated approaches to soil improvement for geotechnical applications. Microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) has been investigated as a potentially sustainable method for the strengthening and stabilisation of soil structures. This paper presents the results of a study on the effect of jute fibres on both the MICP process and properties of biocemented sand. Ureolytic Sporosarcina pasteurii has been used to produce biocemented soil columns via MICP in the laboratory. Results showed that columns containing 0.75% (by weight of sand) untreated jute fibres had unconfined compressive strengths approximately six times greater on average compared to biocemented sand columns without jute fibres. Furthermore, efficiency of chemical conversion was found to be higher in columns containing jute fibres, as measured using ion chromatography. Columns containing jute had calcimeter measured CaCO3 contents at least three times those containing sand only. The results showed that incorporation of jute fibres into the biocemented sand material had a beneficial effect, resulting in stimulation of bacterial activity, thus sustaining the MICP process during the twelve-day treatment process. This study also explores the potential of jute fibres in self-healing MICP systems.Essential genes contain key information of genomes that could be the key to a comprehensive understanding of life and evolution. Because of their importance, studies of essential genes have been considered a crucial problem in computational biology. Computational methods for identifying essential genes have become increasingly popular to reduce the cost and time-consumption of traditional experiments. A few models have addressed this problem, but performance is still not satisfactory because of high dimensional features and the use of traditional machine learning algorithms. Thus, there is a need to create a novel model to improve the predictive performance of this problem from DNA sequence features. This study took advantage of a natural language processing (NLP) model in learning biological sequences by treating them as natural language words. To learn the NLP features, a supervised learning model was consequentially employed by an ensemble deep neural network. Our proposed method could identify essential genes with sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC), and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) values of 60.2%, 84.6%, 76.3%, 0.449, and 0.814, respectively. The overall performance outperformed the single models without ensemble, as well as the state-of-the-art predictors on the same benchmark dataset. This indicated the effectiveness of the proposed method in determining essential genes, in particular, and other sequencing problems, in general.Breast cancer (BC) is the most common tumour in women. Although the introduction of novel therapeutic approaches in clinical practice has dramatically improved the clinical outcome of BC patients, this malignant disease remains the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. The wingless/integrated (Wnt) signalling pathway represents a crucial molecular node relevantly implicated in the regulation of normal somatic stem cells as well as cancer stem cell (CSC) traits and the epithelial-mesenchymal transition cell program. Accordingly, Wnt signalling is heavily dysregulated in BC, and the altered expression of different Wnt genes is significantly associated with cancer-related aggressive behaviours. For all these reasons, Wnt signalling represents a promising therapeutic target currently under clinical investigation to achieve cancer eradication by eliminating CSCs, considered by most to be responsible for tumour initiation, relapse, and drug resistance. In this review, we summarized the current knowledge on the Wnt signalling pathway in BC and have presented evidence implicating the suitability of Wnt targeting in an attempt to improve the outcome of patients without affecting the normal somatic stem cell population.Bougainvillea (Nyctaginaceae) is a popular ornamental plant group primarily grown for its striking colorful bracts. However, despite its established horticultural value, limited genomic resources and molecular studies have been reported for this genus. Thus, to address this existing gap, complete chloroplast genomes of four species (Bougainvillea glabra, Bougainvillea peruviana, Bougainvilleapachyphylla, Bougainvillea praecox) and one Bougainvillea cultivar were sequenced and characterized. The Bougainvillea cp genomes range from 153,966 bp to 154,541 bp in length, comprising a large single-copy region (85,159 bp-85,708 bp) and a small single-copy region (18,014 bp-18,078 bp) separated by a pair of inverted repeats (25,377-25,427 bp). All sequenced plastomes have 131 annotated genes, including 86 protein-coding, eight rRNA, and 37 tRNA genes. These five newly sequenced Bougainvillea cp genomes were compared to the Bougainvillea spectabilis cp genome deposited in GeBank. The results showed that all cp genomes based on SNPs and indels analysis. Phylogenetic reconstructions further showed that these two species appear to be the basal taxa of Bougainvillea. The rarely cultivated and wild species of Bougainvillea (B.pachyphylla, B. peruviana, B. praecox) diverged earlier than the commonly cultivated species and cultivar (B. spectabilis, B. glabra, B. cv.). Overall, the results of this study provide additional genetic resources that can aid in further phylogenetic and evolutionary studies in Bougainvillea. Moreover, genetic information from this study is potentially useful in identifying Bougainvillea species and cultivars, which is essential for both taxonomic and plant breeding studies.(1) The aim of this study was to identify the association between post-materialism and health care use (in terms of the frequency of doctor visits and the reason for doctor visits). (2) Data were taken from the German General Social Survey (a representative sample of individuals aged 18 years and over, n = 3338). The Inglehart's post-materialist index was used to quantify post-materialism. The doctor visits (self-reported) in the past three months served as an outcome measure. The reasons for seeing a doctor served as an additional outcome measure (acute illness; chronic illness; feeling unwell; requesting advice; visit to the doctor's office without consulting the doctor (e.g., need to get a prescription); preventive medical check-up/vaccination). (3) After adjusting for several covariates, negative binomial regressions revealed that compared with materialism, post-materialism was associated with decreased doctor visits (total sample; women). Moreover, the likelihood of visiting the doctor for reasons of chronic illnesses was lower in post-materialistic women, whereas the likelihood of visiting the doctor for reasons of preventive medical check-up/vaccination was higher in post-materialistic women.