Nontargeted screening (NTS) utilizing liquid chromatography electrospray ionization high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC/ESI/HRMS) is increasingly used to identify environmental contaminants. Major differences in the ionization efficiency of compounds in ESI/HRMS result in widely varying responses and complicate quantitative analysis. Despite an increasing number of methods for quantification without authentic standards in NTS, the approaches are evaluated on limited and diverse data sets with varying chemical coverage collected on different instruments, complicating an unbiased comparison.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Ion-mobility (IM)-derived collision cross-section (CCS) values can serve as a valuable additional identification parameter within suspect and non-target screening studies of environmental contaminants. However, these applications require to assess the reproducibility of CCS calculations between different IM set-ups. Especially for the comparison of trapped and drift-tube IM (TIMS/DTIM) derived CCS values, data for environmental applications is lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent advancements in amorphous materials have opened new avenues for exploring unusual magnetic phenomena at the sub-nanometer scale. We investigate the phenomenon of low-temperature "magnetic hardening" in heterogeneous amorphous Fe-Ni-B-Nb thin films, revealing a complex interplay between microstructure and magnetism. Magnetization hysteresis measurements at cryogenic temperatures show a significant increase in coercivity () below 25 K, challenging the conventional Random Anisotropy Model (RAM) in predicting magnetic responses at cryogenic temperatures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman-induced airway basal cells (hiBCs) derived from human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) offer a promising cell model for studying lung diseases, regenerative medicine, and developing new gene therapy methods. We analyzed existing differentiation protocols and proposed our own protocol for obtaining hiBCs, which involves step-by-step differentiation of hiPSCs into definitive endoderm, anterior foregut endoderm, NKX2.1+ lung progenitors, and cultivation on basal cell medium with subsequent cell sorting using the surface marker CD271 (NGFR).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTris (1-chloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TCIPP) is one of the major organophosphate flame retardants present in the indoor and outdoor environment. Knowledge of biotransformation pathways is important to elucidate potential bioavailability and toxicity of TCIPP and to identify relevant biomarkers. This study aimed to identify TCIPP metabolites through human metabolism assays and finally to confirm these findings in urine samples from an occupationally exposed population to propose new biomarkers to accurately monitor exposure to TCIPP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe chemical burden on the environment and human population is increasing. Consequently, regulatory risk assessment must keep pace to manage, reduce, and prevent adverse impacts on human and environmental health associated with hazardous chemicals. Surveillance of chemicals of known, emerging, or potential future concern, entering the environment-food-human continuum is needed to document the reality of risks posed by chemicals on ecosystem and human health from a one health perspective, feed into early warning systems and support public policies for exposure mitigation provisions and safe and sustainable by design strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInkjet printing is a more sustainable and scalable fabrication method than spin coating for producing perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Although spin-coated SnO has been intensively studied as an effective electron transport layer (ETL) for PSCs, inkjet-printed SnO ETLs have not been widely reported. Here, we fabricated inkjet-printed, solution-processed SnO ETLs for planar PSCs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the past years, the European Union (EU) has added edible insects to the list of novel foods, allowing an increasing number of insect-based products into the European market. With insects gaining more popularity in the Western world, it is crucial to investigate their chemical food safety. This study aimed at investigating possible isotopic patterns in different edible insect species (n = 52) from Asia, Africa and Europe using stable isotope ratio analysis (SIRA) to provide a framework for future investigations on food authenticity and traceability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndoor dust can contribute substantially to human exposure to known and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). Novel compounds with high structural variability and different homologues are frequently discovered through screening of the indoor environment, implying that constant monitoring is required. The present study aimed at the identification and semi-quantification of CECs in 46 indoor dust samples collected in Belgium by liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSolid waste is an inevitable consequence of urbanization. It can be safely managed in municipal landfills and processing plants for volume reduction or material reuse, including organic solid waste. However, solid waste can also be discarded in (un-)authorized dumping sites or inadvertently released into the environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To evaluate the effectiveness of complex therapy with Cortexin and Neuromexol in patients with chronic cerebral ischemia (CCI) and cognitive impairment (CI).
Material And Methods: We examined 801 patients with CCI on the background of arterial hypertension and atherosclerosis with confirmed CI: 329 (41.1%) men and 472 (58.
Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the Cytoflavin in patients with dyscirculatory encephalopathy (DE) who had a new coronavirus infection.
Material And Methods: 82 patients were examined: 16 (19.5%) men and 66 (80.
Persistent and mobile chemicals (PMs) are highly polar organic chemicals of anthropogenic origin, which have been documented as an emerging issue of concern for environmental and human health and for which policy needs have recently been identified. Since PMs are recognized as a serious threat to water resources and drinking water, many studies have focused on the occurrence and fate of PMs in aqueous environmental matrices, especially surface water, groundwater and drinking water but considerably less so directly on human exposure. Consequently, our understanding of human exposure to PMs is still limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaterials (Basel)
February 2023
We report the fabrication and characterization of solution-route CeO thin films with a tunable porosity and microstructure. Films were deposited by means of inkjet printing technique using 0.2 M, 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecombinant adeno-associated viruses (rAAVs) may be useful for the development of gene therapy for hereditary diseases. Patient-specific human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) can be differentiated into a variety of cells which are difficult or impossible to obtain by biopsy. To date, few research on the efficiency of rAAV transduction of hiPSCs has been published, but the obtained data are very contradictory and do not answer the actual question: how effective are rAAVs for the delivery of transgenes into hiPSCs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The NORMAN Association (https://www.norman-network.com/) initiated the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE; https://www.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe number of open access databases containing experimental and predicted collision cross section (CCS) values is rising and leads to their increased use for compound identification. However, the reproducibility of reference values with different instrumental designs and the comparison between predicted and experimental CCS values is still under evaluation. This study compared experimental CCS values of 56 small molecules (Contaminants of Emerging Concern) acquired by both drift tube (DT) and travelling wave (TW) ion mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPersistent and mobile chemicals (PMs) and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are groups of chemicals that have received recent global attention due to their potential health effects on the environment and humans. In this study, exposure to a broad range of PMs and PFAS was investigated in Flemish adolescents' urine samples (n = 83) using a suspect screening approach. For this purpose, three sample preparation methods were evaluated, and a basic liquid-liquid extraction was optimized for urine analysis based on the extraction efficiency of PMs (53-80%) and PFAS (>70%).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe increasing human exposure to contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) cannot be fully assessed by targeted biomonitoring methods alone as these are limited to a subset of known analytes. On the contrary, suspect screening approaches based on liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) allow the simultaneous detection of a high number of CECs and/or their (predicted) metabolites leading to a more comprehensive assessment of possible human exposure to these compounds. Within this study, 83 urine samples of Flemish adolescents (47 males, 36 females) collected in the frame of the 4th cycle of the Flemish Environment and Health Study (FLEHS IV) were selected with the aim of including a high and a low exposure group based on the overall exposure of 45 known contaminants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCellular 3D structures, for example, organoids, are an excellent model for studying and developing treatments for various diseases, including hereditary ones. Therefore, they are increasingly being used in biomedical research. From the point of view of safety and efficacy, recombinant adeno-associated viral (rAAV) vectors are currently most in demand for the delivery of various transgenes for gene replacement therapy or other applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMagnetic force microscopy (MFM) is a powerful technique for studying magnetic microstructures and nanostructures that relies on force detection by a cantilever with a magnetic tip. The detected magnetic tip interactions are used to reconstruct the magnetic structure of the sample surface. Here, we demonstrate a new method using MFM for probing the spatial profile of an operational nanoscale spintronic device, the spin Hall nano-oscillator (SHNO), which generates high-intensity spin wave auto-oscillations enabling novel microwave applications in magnonics and neuromorphic computing.
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