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Investigation in radioactive contaminant removal from aqueous solutions has been considered essential upon unexpected nuclear accidents. In this report, we have successfully prepared Prussian blue analogues (PBAs) with different substituted cations (A2[Fe(CN)6] (A: Cu2+, Co2+, and Ni2+)). The synthesized PBAs were characterized and employed for the removal of Cs+, Sr2+, and Co2+ as sorption models, which are commonly found in radioactive waste. Sorption examinations reveal that Cu2[Fe(CN)6] has the highest sorption capacity towards Cs+, Sr2+, and Co2+ compared with those of Co2[Fe(CN)6] and Ni2[Fe(CN)6]. This is mainly attributed to the cation-exchange ability of substituted metal within the framework of PBAs. The sorption mechanism is qualitatively and quantitatively supported by infrared spectroscopy (IR) and total reflection X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy analysis (TXRF). In addition, it was found that Cs+ is adsorbed most effectively by PBAs due to the size matching between Cs+ ions and the channel windows of PBAs. These findings are important for the design of sorbents with suitable ion-exchange capacity and selectivity toward targeted radioactive wastes.

This paper explores the thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of HFC-134a over γ-Al2O3 calcined at temperatures of 550 °C (A550), 650 °C (A650), 750 °C (A750), and 850 °C (A850). The physicochemical properties of catalysts were studied through thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller equation for nitrogen physisorption analysis (BET), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and temperature-programmed desorption of ammonia (NH3-TPD). The non-catalytic pyrolysis of HFC-134a showed less than 15% decomposition of HFC-134a. Catalysts increased the decomposition as A650 revealed the highest decomposition efficiency by decomposing more than 95% HFC-134a for 8 h followed by A750, A850, and A550. The larger surface area and pore volume paired with a low amount of strong acidic sites were considered as the main contributors to the comparatively longer catalytic activity of A650.

The use of gnobiotic brine shrimp ( Artemia spp.) for ecotoxicology and bacteria-host interaction studies is common. However, requirements for axenic culture and matrix effects of seawater media can be an obstacle. Thus, we investigated the hatching ability of Artemia cysts on a novel sterile Tryptic Soy Agar (TSA) medium. Herein, we demonstrate for the first time that Artemia cysts can hatch on a solid medium without liquid, which offers practical advantages. We further optimized the culture conditions for temperature and salinity and assessed this culture system for toxicity screening of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) across multiple biological endpoints. Results revealed that maxima hatching (90%) of embryos occurred at 28 °C and without addition of sodium chloride. When capsulated cysts were cultured on TSA solid medium Artemia were negatively impacted by AgNPs at 30–50 mgL −1 in terms of the embryo hatching ratio (47–51%), umbrella- to nauplii-stage transformation ratio (54–57%), and a reduction in nauplii-stage growth (60–85% of normal body length). At 50–100 mgL −1 AgNPs and higher, evidence of damage to lysosomal storage was recorded. At 500 mgL −1 AgNPs, development of the eye was inhibited and locomotory behavior impeded. Our study reveals that this new hatching method has applications in ecotoxicology studies and provides an efficient means to control axenic requirements to produce gnotobiotic brine shrimp.

Despite dengue being a major public health problem, there are no antiviral or adjunctive treatments for the disease. Novel therapeutics are needed, particularly for patients at high risk of severe disease, including those living with obesity. Metformin reduces dengue viral replication in vitro through AMPK activation and may also have beneficial immunomodulatory effects. We conducted an open label trial at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, enrolling 120 patients with dengue and obesity (60 treatment arm, 60 control arm receiving standard of care only). Within the treatment arm, the first 10 patients were prescribed low dose metformin, and the remaining 50 patients received weight-based dosing of 1-1.5g/day. The primary outcome was the number of adverse events (AEs), and secondary outcomes were clinical and laboratory parameters, including fever clearance time, platelet nadir, percentage of haematocrit change from baseline, maximum creatinine and highest AST/ALT, and the kinetics of plasma viraemia and NS1 antigenaemia. The majority of patients in both groups had dengue with warning signs. Six patients in the metformin group and 5 controls developed dengue shock syndrome, and no patients died. There were more AEs recorded in the metformin treated group than in the control group (mean±SD: 15 ± 4 vs. 11 ± 6), particularly the high-dose metformin group (15 ± 5). Twenty-five patients (42%) had to stop the study drug due to AEs, including severe diarrhea (n = 12), dengue shock (n = 5), increased lactate of >3mmol/L (n = 4), hypoglycemia (n = 3), and persistent vomiting (n = 1). There were no clear differences in secondary outcomes between the two groups. Metformin was poorly tolerated in patients with dengue, mainly due to gastrointestinal side effects. Metformin did not beneficially affect clinical evolution or virological parameters compared to supportive care alone. Our data does not support progression to larger phase 3 trials of metformin in patients with dengue. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04377451 (May 6th, 2020).

Dengue is the most prevalent arboviral disease of humans. The host and virus variables associated with dengue virus (DENV) transmission from symptomatic dengue cases (n = 208) to Aedes aegypti mosquitoes during 407 independent exposure events was defined. The 50% mosquito infectious dose for each of DENV-1-4 ranged from 6.29 to 7.52 log10 RNA copies/mL of plasma. Increasing day of illness, declining viremia, and rising antibody titers were independently associated with reduced risk of DENV transmission. High early DENV plasma viremia levels in patients were a marker of the duration of human infectiousness, and blood meals containing high concentrations of DENV were positively associated with the prevalence of infectious mosquitoes 14 d after blood feeding. Ambulatory dengue cases had lower viremia levels compared with hospitalized dengue cases but nonetheless at levels predicted to be infectious to mosquitoes. These data define serotype-specific viremia levels that vaccines or drugs must inhibit to prevent DENV transmission.

In 2022, we established a residual sample serosurveillance program in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. During September 2022-April 2024, we found low measles antibody seroprevalence in children in the city's western region, where a measles outbreak began in May 2024. Serosurveillance could be a useful tool for outbreak prediction and prevention.

In this paper, we study the formation of optical bistability (OB) and optical multistability (OM) in a degenerate four-level atomic system by an external magnetic field that is excited by a probe laser field, a coupling laser field and a signal laser field. The coupling field can cause electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) for the probe field in the atomic medium, while the signal field and/or external magnetic field can switch between single-EIT and two-EIT regimes. Based on these properties, OB and OM effects can be formed at two different frequency regions of the probe field (two channels). By adjusting the magnetic field or the intensity and the frequency of laser fields, the threshold intensity and the width of OB or OM can also be changed simply. The model can be useful for experimental observations and applications in modern photonic devices .

Flexible bronchoscopy has revolutionized respiratory disease diagnosis. It offers direct visualization and detection of airway abnormalities, including lung cancer lesions. Accurate identification of airway lesions during flexible bronchoscopy plays an important role in the lung cancer diagnosis. The application of artificial intelligence (AI) aims to support physicians in recognizing anatomical landmarks and lung cancer lesions within bronchoscopic imagery. This work described the development of BM-BronchoLC, a rich bronchoscopy dataset encompassing 106 lung cancer and 102 non-lung cancer patients. The dataset incorporates detailed localization and categorical annotations for both anatomical landmarks and lesions, meticulously conducted by senior doctors at Bach Mai Hospital, Vietnam. To assess the dataset’s quality, we evaluate two prevalent AI backbone models, namely UNet++ and ESFPNet, on the image segmentation and classification tasks with single-task and multi-task learning paradigms. We present BM-BronchoLC as a reference dataset in developing AI models to assist diagnostic accuracy for anatomical landmarks and lung cancer lesions in bronchoscopy data.

The wMel strain of Wolbachia can reduce the permissiveness of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to disseminated arboviral infections. Here, we report that wMel-infected Ae. aegypti (Ho Chi Minh City background), when directly blood-fed on 141 viremic dengue patients, have lower dengue virus (DENV) transmission potential and have a longer extrinsic incubation period than their wild-type counterparts. The wMel-infected mosquitoes that are field-reared have even greater relative resistance to DENV infection when fed on patient-derived viremic blood meals. This is explained by an increased susceptibility of field-reared wild-type mosquitoes to infection than laboratory-reared counterparts. Collectively, these field- and clinically relevant findings support the continued careful field-testing of wMel introgression for the biocontrol of Ae. aegypti-born arboviruses.

In thin-layer chromatography coupled with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TLC-SERS), the coffee ring effect (CRE) describes the formation of a ring-shape spot (blank in the middle and darker on the edge) caused by the aggregation of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs), alone (single CRE) or with the analytes (double CRE). In this work, the SCRE and DCRE were investigated in two anti-diabetic drugs, hydrophobic glibenclamide (GLB) and more hydrophilic metformin (MET). The SCRE occurred in GLB analysis, as opposed to the DCRE that occurred in MET. It was proven that for optimization of the TLC-SERS analytical procedure, it is necessary to distinguish the CRE patterns of analytes. Additionally, MET and GLB were analyzed with the developed TLC-SERS method and confirmed by another validated method using high-performance liquid chromatography. Four herbal products collected on the market were found to be adulterated with GLB or/and MET; among those, one product was adulterated with both MET and GLB, and two products were adulterated with GLB at a higher concentration than the usual GLB prescription dose. The TLC-SERS method provided a useful tool for the simultaneous detection of adulterated anti-diabetic herbal products, and the comparison of the SCRE and DCRE provided more evidence to predict CRE patterns in TLC-SERS.