Porcine epidemic diarrhea, a disastrous gastrointestinal disease, causes great financial losses due to its high infectivity, morbidity and mortality in suckling piglets despite the development and application of various vaccines. In this study, high-throughput sequencing was used to explore differences in the intestinal microbiota between uninfected piglets and piglets infected with porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV). The results revealed that the small intestinal microbiota of suckling piglets infected with PEDV showed low diversity and was dominated by Proteobacteria (49.1%). Additionally, the composition of the small intestinal microbiota of sucking piglets infected with PEDV showed marked differences from that of the uninfected piglets. Some of the taxa showing differences in abundance between uninfected piglets and piglets infected with PEDV were associated with cellular transport and catabolism, energy metabolism, the biosynthesis of other secondary metabolites, and amino acid metabolism as determined through the prediction of microbial function based on the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. Therefore, adjusting the intestinal microbiota might be a promising method for the prevention or treatment of PEDV.

A dual surface roughening scheme using a KOH-etched Si (100) substrate for the hydrothermal growth (HTG) of NiO nanosheets (NSs) to improve pH sensing performance is demonstrated. The effects of the KOH etching conditions and the HTG time for the synthesis of NSs on the pH sensing response are discussed. The NiO NS sensing electrode (SE) based on a KOH-etched Si substrate showed a near-perfect linearity of 0.999 and a near-Nernstian response of 56.5 mV pH−1. As compared with an NS-type SE based on planar Si (53.64 mV pH−1) and an SE based on sputtering NiO on a KOH-etched Si substrate (52.87 mV pH−1), an enhancement in pH sensitivity of 5.33% and 6.87% was achieved, respectively. It is attributed to the fact that the dual surface roughening scheme greatly increased the sensing area and the number of surface sites for ion adsorption.

A comparative study of the performance of lateral- and vertical-structured UV photodetectors (PDs) based on a hydrothermally grown (HTG) n-ZnO/sputtered p-CuO heterojunction (HJ) is presented. After substrate transfer (ST) conducted using a sonicating bath process, the vertical-structured UV PD showed a fast response and a 310-fold improvement in light responsivity compared with that of the lateral-structured UV PD under UV illumination (365 nm at 3 mW cm−2) at a reverse bias of −1 V. This improvement is attributed to the much shorter conduction path and lake of a seed layer for the vertical structure. With further surface chemical etching of the HTG n-ZnO layer after ST, a pyramid-like surface texture formed and a significantly enhanced UV light response (as high as 943-fold higher) was obtained. The increase in photo-responsivity is due to the removal of the high defect density initial ZnO growth layer and reduced light reflection.

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