No abstract

β-Sitosterol is a well known phytosterol in plants, but owing to its poor solubility in typical media, determining its cellular mechanisms has been proven to be difficult. In this study, we investigated the anti-inflammatory activity of βsitosterol (BSS) isolated from Moringa oleifera in two cell lines. Over a dose range of 7.5 to 30 μM, BSS dispersed well in the medium as nanoparticles with diameters of 50 ± 5 nm and suppressed the secretion of inflammatory factors from keratinocytes and macrophages induced by PGN, TNF-α, or LPS, such as TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and ROS, separately. In addition, BSS significantly reduced the expression of NLRP3, a key component of NLRP3 inflammasomes, and inhibited the activation of caspase-1. There was partial inhibition of NF-κB in macrophages. This is the first study to report an increase in the solubility of nearly water-insoluble phytosterols via the formation of nanoparticles and to delineate the formulation's capacity to inhibit the signal transduction pathways of inflammation in macrophages.

No abstract

Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS), a quaternary semiconductor, is a promising absorber material for solar cell due to its abundance and low toxicity. In this study, a CZTS/TiO2 solar cell was fabricated successfully to investigate its photovoltaic behavior. In this solar cell, CZTS acts as an absorber material to replace an organic or organometallic dye in TiO2 dye-sensitized solar cell. This cell has an open circuit voltage of 631 mV under 1 Sun of 100 mW/cm2 illumination. The internal resistance of CZTS/TiO2 cell was also studied at different applied bias in dark using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. A short diffusion length of electrons in this cell was found.

Recently, recycling of severely contaminated Nd–Fe–B sintered magnets sludge had drawn considerable attention due to the concern of environmental burden and high cost of traditional wet process recycling. In the present study, we describe a new technology that utilizes distillation, reduction–diffusion (RD), and nanoparticle-doping techniques to prepare recycled Nd–Fe–B sintered magnets from Nd–Fe–B sludge in an efficient and environmentally friendly way. The sludge was purged first to remove both organic impurities and nonmagnetic impurities. The purged products were then treated with calcium-assisted RD reaction to obtain Nd2Fe14B single-crystalline powders. After doping with NdH x or DyH x nanoparticles, the powders were fabricated into recycled Nd–Fe–B sintered magnets by the conventional sintering method. The recycled magnets bear comparable magnetic properties to the original magnets. With 10% doping of NdH x , the energy product of the original magnets is recovered by 88%; with 15% doping of DyH x , the coercivity of the recycled magnets increases by 34% compared to the original magnets. Furthermore, comparison between the conventional recycling method and our new technology demonstrates that our new technology is an economical and environmentally friendly strategy for sintered Nd–Fe–B sludge recycling.