Highlights Low genetic diversity of poama-1 gene which is a neglected malaria parasite. rPoAMA-1 protein can induce strong immunogenicity in mice. Cross-reactivity between rPocAMA-1 and rPowAMA-1 antigen is present.

Sulfoxide compounds bearing unique sulfinyl group have attracted extensive attentions due to their important application in asymmetric organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry. The utility of chiral sulfoxides as versatile auxiliaries, ligands, and catalysts and synthons has been well demonstrated. Furthermore, the sulfinyl moiety can act as a pharmaceutical core, a bioisosteric replacement of the carbonyl moiety or a modifier in drug design and drug development. In this review, their biological activities with esomeprazole, ajoene, sulforaphane, sulforaphene, cenicriviroc, arbidol sulfoxide, armodafinil and so on are exemplified. And their mechanisms of action are illustrated briefly. Since the sulfur chirality is different from carbon stereogenic center, much effort has been devoted to the preparation of chiral sulfoxides. Herein the advances in asymmetric synthesis of sulfoxide during the past decade are presented. The direct asymmetric oxidation of prochiral sulfides with cheap iron-complex catalyst, polyoxometalates, organocatalyst, biocatalyst and electrocatalyst is discussed. Moreover, the complementary strategy based on sulfenate anions and miscellaneous strategies emerged recently are described. Additionally, our recent research works in the construction of chiral sulfoxide are also mentioned.

Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD), an important postoperative neurological complication, is very common and has an elevated incidence in elderly patients. Sevoflurane, an inhaled anesthetic, has been demonstrated to be associated with POCD in both clinical and animal studies. However, how to prevent POCD remains unclear. Minocycline, a commonly used antibiotic can cross the blood-brain barrier and exert an inhibitory effect on inflammation in the central nervous system. The present work aimed to examine the protective effect and mechanism of minocycline on sevoflurane-induced POCD in aged mice. We found that 3% sevoflurane administered 2 h a day for 3 consecutive days led to cognitive impairment in aged animals. Further investigation revealed that sevoflurane impaired synapse plasticity by causing apoptosis and neuroinflammation and thus induced cognitive dysfunction. However, minocycline pretreatment (50 mg/kg, i.p, 1 h prior to sevoflurane exposure) significantly attenuated learning and memory impairments associated with sevoflurane in aged animals by suppressing apoptosis and neuroinflammation. Moreover, a mechanistic analysis showed that minocycline suppressed sevoflurane-triggered neuroinflammation by inhibiting Notch signaling. Similar results were also obtained in vitro. Collectively, these findings suggested minocycline may be an effective drug for the prevention of sevoflurane-induced POCD in elderly patients.

Existing large-signal control schemes for DC/DC converters formulate control strategies based primarily on nonlinear control theory, and the associated design and implementation are relatively complex. In this work, a decomposition modeling and inverse-system decoupling control method is proposed for DC/DC converters that operate under large-signal disturbances. First, a large-signal circuit-averaged model for DC/DC converters is established. The proposed control system has a double closed-loop control structure composed of a voltage loop and a current loop. Then, the voltage-loop and current-loop controlled subsystems are decoupled and compensated to first-order integral elements using the inverse system method. Several linear feedback controllers are designed for first-order integral systems under various optimization criteria using the optimal control theory. Simulation and experiment were performed on buck–boost converters with resistive and constant power loads. The results show that under the control of the proposed controller, all systems exhibited excellent dynamic and steady-state performance. The proposed method allows the disturbance control of the DC/DC converter, the dynamic behavior control of the voltage loop, and the current loop to become independent processes. The local controller design follows the classical linear control design method and is a simple and effective large-signal control strategy.