Longitudinal studies on the variations of phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of K. pneumoniae across two decades are rare. We aimed to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility and virulence factors for K. pneumoniae isolated from patients with bacteraemia or urinary tract infection (UTI) from 1999 to 2022. A total of 699 and 1,267 K. pneumoniae isolates were isolated from bacteraemia and UTI patients, respectively, and their susceptibility to twenty antibiotics was determined; PCR was used to identify capsular serotypes and virulence-associated genes. K64 and K1 serotypes were most frequently observed in UTI and bacteraemia, respectively, with an increasing frequency of K20, K47, and K64 observed in recent years. entB and wabG predominated across all isolates and serotypes; the least frequent virulence gene was htrA. Most isolates were susceptible to carbapenems, amikacin, tigecycline, and colistin, with the exception of K20, K47, and K64 where resistance was widespread. The highest average number of virulence genes was observed in K1, followed by K2, K20, and K5 isolates, which suggest their contribution to the high virulence of K1. In conclusion, we found that the distribution of antimicrobial susceptibility, virulence gene profiles, and capsular types of K. pneumoniae over two decades were associated with their clinical source.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of 8-week green tea extract (GTE) supplementation on promoting postexercise muscle glycogen resynthesis and systemic energy substrate utilisation in young college students. A total of eight healthy male participants (age: 22·0 (se 1·0) years, BMI: 24·2 (se 0·7) kg/m2, VO2max: 43·2 (se 2·4) ml/kg per min) participated in this study. GTE (500 mg/d for 8 weeks) was compared with placebo in participants in a double-blind/placebo-controlled and crossover study design with an 8-week washout period. Thereafter, all participants performed a 60-min cycling exercise (75 % VO2max) and consumed a carbohydrate-enriched meal immediately after exercise. Vastus lateralis muscle samples were collected immediately (0 h) and 3 h after exercise, and blood and gaseous samples were collected during the 3-h postexercise recovery period. An 8-week oral GTE supplementation had no effects on further promoting muscle glycogen resynthesis in exercised human skeletal muscle, but the exercise-induced muscle GLUT type 4 (GLUT4) protein content was greater in the GTE supplementation trial (P<0·05). We observed that, during the postexercise recovery period, GTE supplementation elicited an increase in energy reliance on fat oxidation compared with the placebo trial (P<0·05), although there were no differences in blood glucose and insulin responses between the two trials. In summary, 8-week oral GTE supplementation increases postexercise systemic fat oxidation and exercise-induced muscle GLUT4 protein content in response to an acute bout of endurance exercise. However, GTE supplementation has no further benefit on promoting muscle glycogen resynthesis during the postexercise period.

This study seeks to resolve a puzzle of the coexistence of follower cooperative voice and cooperative silence (expressing/withholding work-related ideas, information, and opinions based on collective, cooperative motives) in the presence of transformational leadership. A sample of 193 bank employees under 52 managers revealed that in the presence of group-focused transformational leadership, both voice and silence based on cooperative motives increased through the mediation of value congruence between leaders and followers. However, cooperative voice was more likely to be the main response to a high level of value congruence when followers under the same leader perceived individual-focused transformational leadership uniformly. Under a high level of differentiated individual-focused transformational leadership, value congruence was likely to result in more cooperative silence. We discuss implications for future research on both leadership and employee voice.

Wiggling structures in a bipolar outflow may be attributed to orbital motion of a binary system or precession of an accretion disk perturbed by a companion. The shocked knots along the outflow axis display a morphology with either mirror symmetry due to the orbital motion or point symmetry resulted from disk precession. Using the Submillimeter Array (SMA), our CO (2-1) and SiO (5-4) observations show wiggling structures in the collimated bipolar outflow driven by the NGC 1333 IRAS 2A Class 0 protostar (d ~ 200 pc). By fitting the peak positions of emission knots, we can examine the lateral displacement of the molecular jet to constrain parameters of the unresolved binary system, such as the binary separation and total binary mass. With an angular resolution of ~3″, we have determined the knot positions in SiO (5–4)(Fig. 1) and CO (2–1). As a first attempt, we consider the scenario of orbital motion in a binary system and estimate a total binary mass of ~ 1M⊙ and a binary separation of roughly ~ 20 AU, corresponding to ~ 0.1″. Such a small separation makes it challenging to resolve this hypothesized proto-binary system, which is thought to be responsible for the large-scale quadrupolar outflow nearly perpendicular with each other in CO (1–0).

Three types of Ganium Nitride (GaN) transistors were studied in this work. The devices were fabricated and exhibited unique characteristics over on-state current and off-state blocking performances. We also compared the performance differences of devices fabricated by multiepitaxial GaN/AlGaN layers on different substrates (Sapphire and Si) and evaluated the correlations among starting substrate, device variation, and manufacturing uniformity. The first device is a normally-on device with Sapphire substrate which shows good drain saturation current (Idsat) and breakdown characteristics, but the gate leakage current is quite large. The second device is a normally-off GaN transistor named metal-insulate-semiconductor (MIS) heterojunction field-effect transistor (MIS-HFET) which exhibits good performance with threshold voltage (Vth) of 3V and breakdown voltage (Vbd) of over 1800V. However the third device is a normally-off GaN metal-oxide-semiconductor field-elect transistor (MOSFET) structure which is rather difficult to exhibit good blocking characteristic due to inadequate doping process control of the reduce-surface-field (RESURF) region.

Chronic subcutaneous (s.c.) administration of d-galactose (DG) to BL/6J mice has been shown to induce oxidative stress and is considered a model to mimic accelerated ageing. Fructo-oligosaccharide (FO) is a well-defined prebiotic and its fermentation by lactic acid bacteria has been shown to exert antioxidative capacity. The present study was aimed to determine whether FO attenuated DG-induced oxidative stress and hepatopathy in Balb/cJ mice. Mice (12 weeks of age, n 40) were divided into control (s.c. saline), DG (s.c. 1·2 g/kg body weight), DG+FO (5 %, w/w) and DG+vitamin E (0·2 %, w/w) groups and were killed after 52 d of treatment. Results indicated that DG significantly decreased the hepatic superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase activities. These alterations were ameliorated both by FO and vitamin E. DG increased the hepatic TAG content approximately by 7·2 % compared with the vehicle control, which was in agreement with the histological alteration. FO, similar to vitamin E, almost normalised the hepatic TAG content and ameliorated the histological characteristics of fatty liver. Similarly, the increased plasma alanine aminotransferase activity induced by DG was normalised by FO and vitamin E, respectively. Faecal bifidobacteria counts were greater in the DG+FO and DG+vitamin E groups compared with the DG group, respectively. In conclusion, the present study indicated that FO diminished the altered hepatic antioxidative enzyme activities and morphology caused by chronic DG administration in Balb/cJ mice, partially associated with its prebiotic role in the colon.

In this work, we examined the Ge incorporation and the accompanied defect formation during PECVD deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon-germanium alloys (a-Si1-xGex:H). In particular, we studied the effect of hydrogen on film growth, defect formation, Ge and Si incorporation efficiencies, and the H-bonding configuration. Our results indicate that hydrogen has a strong effect on improving the a-Si1-xGex:H film quality and the Ge incorporation in a-Si1-xGex:H. With adequate hydrogen dilution, the a-Si1-xGex:H thin-film quality significantly improved. However, excessive hydrogen dilution degraded the film properties. A number of analytical tools were employed, including FTIR, XPS, UV-Visible spectroscopy, photoconductivity, etc. The a-Si1-xGex:H material having 24% Ge content and a bangap of 1.61ev produced the solar cell with a conversion efficiency of 7.07%.

The crystallinity of the hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H) film was known to influence the solar cell efficiency greatly. Also hydrogen was found to play a critical role in controlling the crystallinity. Instead of employing conventional plasma deposition techniques, this work focused on using catalytic chemical vapor deposition (Cat-CVD) to study the effect of hydrogen dilution and the filament-to-substrate distance on the crystallinity, deposition rate, microstructure factor and electrical property of the μc-Si:H film. We found that the substrate material and structure can affect the crystallinity of the μc-Si:H film and the incubation effect. Comparing bare glass, TCO-coated glass, a-Si:H-coated glass and μc-Si:H-coated glass, the microcrystalline phase grows the fastest onto μc-Si:H surface, but the slowest onto a-Si:H surface. Surprisingly, the template effect lasted for more than a thousand atomic layers of silicon.

ZnO films were grown on (0001) sapphire substrates by atomic layer deposition (ALD) using diethylzinc (DeZn) and nitrous oxide (N2O) in an inductively heated reactor operated at atmospheric pressure. Low-temperature (LT) ZnO buffer layers having various thicknesses were deposited at 400¢J followed by subsequent growth of ZnO films at 600¢J. Some of the ZnO films were then post-annealed at 1000¢J in the N2O flow. Under certain growth conditions, ZnO nanowires were formed on the post-annealed ZnO samples. Room temperature (RT) photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the ZnO nanowires show strong ultraviolet (UV) near band edge emissions at 3.27 eV with a typical full width at half-maximum ( FWHM ) of ~130 meV and quenched defect luminescence at 2.8 eV. 10 K PL spectra of the post-annealed ZnO all exhibit sharp excitonic emissions with the dominant emission being located at 3.36 eV having a FWHM of 4.6 meV.

Mesoporous barium titanate powders having a 100- to 300-nm size were prepared by hydration and condensation of titanium tetra-isopropoxide and barium precursors in the presence of an organic surfactant, tetradecylamine, which was used as a self-assembly micelle. The processing and sintering of these mesoporous barium titanate powders has been investigated. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy were used to identify the structural characteristics and morphologies of the powders. Mesoporous wormhole-like powders with surface areas around 53 ∼ 108 m2/g could be obtained after removing the micelle organics by calcination at 400 °C for 3 h. Powders derived using barium hydroxide were found to form a larger pore size and a higher surface area. The addition of acetic acid was also effective in increasing the surface area. A formation mechanism for the mesoporous structure is depicted. Heat treatment caused the mesoporous spheres to shrink, and 155- ∼ 330-nm grain sizes were readily obtained after pressureless sintering at 900 ∼ 1000 °C for 1 h in air.