Polylactic acid (PLA) is a biodegradable and biocompatible polymer. Melt‐blown PLA electret fabrics have become attractive materials for air filter applications. Its filtration performance mainly depends on the electrostatic effect originating from electrets. How to improve their electret behavior and then to enhance their filtration efficiency has always been challenging. In this article, three melt‐blown PLA fabrics with different morphological or crystal structure are made from different process conditions or ingredient. The electrets are formed by means of corona charging technology. Their crystalline and morphological structure was analyzed, and filtration performance was measured. Their charge‐trapping feature was studied by thermal stimulating discharge technology. The results proved that the air filtration efficiency of three melt‐blown samples improved a lot when electrets were formed. Different crystalline structures of PLA fabrics will result in differences in their electret charge‐trapping feature. The PLA fabrics with semi‐crystalline characteristics display a regular charge‐trapped level distribution and amorphous structure hints the diversity of charge‐trapped levels. The deference in filtration resistance is mainly ascribed to the different fiber diameters and their distributions. More narrow distribution of fiber diameter leads to more compact fabrics and to higher filtration resistance. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019, 136, 48309.

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Utilizing smart face masks to monitor and analyze respiratory signals is a convenient and effective method to give an early warning for chronic respiratory diseases. In this work, a smart face mask is proposed with an air-permeable and biodegradable self-powered breath sensor as the key component. This smart face mask is easily fabricated, comfortable to use, eco-friendly, and has sensitive and stable output performances in real wearable conditions. To verify the practicability, we use smart face masks to record respiratory signals of patients with chronic respiratory diseases when the patients do not have obvious symptoms. With the assistance of the machine learning algorithm of the bagged decision tree, the accuracy for distinguishing the healthy group and three groups of chronic respiratory diseases (asthma, bronchitis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is up to 95.5%. These results indicate that the strategy of this work is feasible and may promote the development of wearable health monitoring systems.

Infectious bronchitis coronavirus (IBV) shows extensive genotypic and phenotypic variability. The evolutionary process involves generation of genetic diversity by mutations and recombination followed by replication of those phenotypes favored by selection. In the current study, we examined changes occurring in a wild Arkansas (Ark) challenge strain in chickens that were vaccinated either ocularly with commercially available attenuated ArkDPI-derived vaccines or in ovo with a replication-defective recombinant adenovirus expressing a codon-optimized IBV Ark S1 gene (AdArkIBV.S1(ck)). Commercial IBV Ark vaccines A, B, and C provided slightly differing levels of protection against homologous challenge. Most importantly for the current study, chickens vaccinated with the different vaccines displayed significant differences in specific B-lymphocyte responses in the Harderian gland (i.e., the challenge virus encountered differing immune selective pressure during invasion among host groups). Based on S1 sequences, five predominant populations were found in different individual vaccinated/challenged chickens. Chickens with the strongest immune response (vaccine A) were able to successfully impede replication of the challenge virus in most chickens, and only the population predominant in the challenge strain was detected in a few IBV-positive birds. In contrast, in chickens showing less than optimal specific immune responses (vaccines B and C) IBV was detected in most chickens, and populations different from the predominant one in the challenge strain were selected and became predominant. These results provide scientific evidence for the assumption that poor vaccination contributes to the emergence of new IBV strains via mutation and/or selection. In ovo vaccination with a low dose of AdArkIBV.S1(ck) resulted in a mild increase of systemic antibody and reduced viral shedding but no protection against IBV signs and lesions. Under these conditions we detected only virus populations identical to the challenge virus. Possible explanations are discussed. From a broad perspective, these results indicate that selection is an important force driving IBV evolution.

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