Southwest University

About: Southwest University is a education organization based out in Chongqing, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Gene & Population. The organization has 29772 authors who have published 27755 publications receiving 409441 citations. The organization is also known as: Southwest University in Chongqing & SWU.

A multifunctional hemin@metal-organic framework and its application to construct an electrochemical aptasensor for thrombin detection.

Abstract: A new type of multifunctional metal–organic framework (MOF) has been synthesized by encapsulating hemin into the nano-sized Fe-MIL-88 MOFs (hemin@MOFs) and first applied in an electrochemical aptasensor to detect thrombin (TB) with the aid of an enzyme for signal amplification. The gold nanoparticle functionalized hemin@MOFs (Au/hemin@MOFs) have not only simultaneously served as redox mediators and solid electrocatalysts, but have also been utilized as an ideal loading platform to immobilize a large number of biomolecules. In this aptasensor, Au/hemin@MOFs conjugated with glucose oxidase (GOD) and thrombin binding aptamer (TBA II) were used as the secondary aptamer bioconjugates (Au/hemin@MOF–TBA II–GOD bioconjugates), and TB was sandwiched between Au/hemin@MOF–TBA II–GOD bioconjugates and the amino-terminated TBA I which was self-assembled on the gold nanoparticle (AuNP) modified electrode. The GOD could oxidize glucose into gluconic acid accompanied by the generation of H2O2. The generated H2O2 on the electrode surface was further electrocatalyzed by hemin@MOFs to amplify the electrochemical signal of hemin contained in hemin@MOFs. Therefore, the synthesized hemin@MOFs represented a new paradigm for multifunctional materials since it combined three different functions including serving as catalysts, redox mediators and loading platforms within a single material. With such an ingenious design, a wide linear range of 0.0001 nM to 30 nM was acquired with a relatively low detection limit of 0.068 pM for TB detection.

Epilepsy Seizure Prediction on EEG Using Common Spatial Pattern and Convolutional Neural Network

Abstract: Epilepsy seizure prediction paves the way of timely warning for patients to take more active and effective intervention measures. Compared to seizure detection that only identifies the inter-ictal state and the ictal state, far fewer researches have been conducted on seizure prediction because the high similarity makes it challenging to distinguish between the pre-ictal state and the inter-ictal state. In this paper, a novel solution on seizure prediction is proposed using common spatial pattern (CSP) and convolutional neural network (CNN). Firstly, artificial pre-ictal EEG signals based on the original ones are generated by combining the segmented pre-ictal signals to solve the trial imbalance problem between the two states. Secondly, a feature extractor employing wavelet packet decomposition and CSP is designed to extract the distinguishing features in both the time domain and the frequency domain. It can improve overall accuracy while reducing the training time. Finally, a shallow CNN is applied to discriminate between the pre-ictal state and the inter-ictal state. Our proposed solution is evaluated on 23 patients’ data from Boston Children's Hospital-MIT scalp EEG dataset by employing a leave-one-out cross-validation, and it achieves a sensitivity of 92.2% and false prediction rate of 0.12/h. Experimental result demonstrates that the proposed approach outperforms most state-of-the-art methods.

Low-cost and large-scale fabrication method for an environmentally-friendly superhydrophobic coating on magnesium alloy

Abstract: A low-cost and large-scale fabrication method to an environmentally-friendly superhydrophobic coating on magnesium alloy is reported in this paper. The rough surface structure could be facilely obtained by electrodeposition of copper. Then the rough surface could be changed from hydrophilic to superhydrophobic via modification with lauric acid. The as-prepared coatings were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffractometry (XRD), electrochemical corrosion test and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The as-prepared superhydrophobic coatings have ultra-low slide angles (2°) and contact angles of 154°. Our method is of great value for the industrial fabrication of superhydrophobic coatings. It has an excellent anti-corrosion effect and self-cleaning effect.