Thermomyces lanuginosus and Scytalidium thermophilum are among the most ubiquitous thermophilic fungi in compost and soil. Chemical study on these two prevalent strains collected from Yunnan led to isolation of 23 metabolites, including one new metabolite, therlanubutanolide ( 1 ), and 15 known compounds ( 2 - 16 ), isolated from the YGP culture broth of Thermomyces lanuginosus and 7 known compounds ( 17 - 23 ) isolated from Scytalidium thermophilum , respectively. Therlanubutanolide ( 1 ) shared the quite similar features of the same carbon skeleton and saturation as natural hexadecanoic acids. This was for the first time reported discovery of such a lactone as natural occurring metabolite. All the compounds were reported for the first time from thermophilc fungi. Among them, 2 was for the first time reported to be a naturally occuring metabolite and the NMR data of 2 was first provided in this study. A type of PKS-derived metabolites, 3,4-dihydronaphthalen-1(2H)-ones, 6 - 7 and 19 , which were widely found in plant pathogenic fungi as phytotoxins and reported to have antimicrobial acitivity, were obtained from both dominant thermophilic fungi. The frequent occurrence of such PKS phytotoxins in these two thermophilic fungi might suggest particular ecological interest. © 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.Electroactive organic compounds could bring new chemical opportunities to further improve existing electrochemical energy storage technologies as they can be prepared from less-limited resources and potentially at low environmental footprint. Among the current explored research fields, the anion-ion cell configuration appears poorly investigated although quite promising to promote the fabrication of molecular (metal-free) rechargeable batteries. Herein, we report the synthesis and the electrochemical behavior of both Mg/Li salts of 2,5-(dianilino)terephthalate (MgDAnT and Li2DAnT) and cross-linked polyviologen (c-PV2+) that can reversibly uptake/extract anions at different working potentials enabling the assembly of full anionic organic batteries. The reversible anion ingress in MgDAnT is however accompanied by solvent co-insertion from the electrolyte that provokes an overpotential effect during the first charge. Full anionic batteries pairing Li2DAnT with c-PV2+ were assembled giving rise to 0.7 V as output voltage with a specific capacity of 50 mAh per gram of Li2DAnT. © 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.INTRODUCTION In canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL), lymphopenia, and the disorganization of lymphoid organs such as spleen and lymph nodes have been demonstrated. However, the involvement of thymus in CVL has not been evaluated so far. Herein, we investigated whether the thymus can be colonized by Leishmania infantum in naturally infected dogs. METHODS Thymus were obtained from 16 of 58 dogs and samples of this organ were submitted to immunohistochemistry for laminin and fibronectin detection, histopathology, in situ hybridization and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) targeting the gene ITS-1 for Leishmania and sequenced. Samples of spleen, skin and popliteal lymph nodes were collected and submitted to immunohistochemistry and parasitological culture followed by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis. RESULTS L. infantum was identified in all dogs. DNA and amastigote forms of Leishmania were detected in the thymus from 16 dogs by PCR and in eight by immunohistochemistry. Besides thymus, parasites were detected in spleen, lymph nodes, and skin. A granulomatous or pyogranulomatous thymitis was observed in eight dogs associated to intact amastigotes forms of this parasite. Fibronectin deposition in thymus was higher in dogs with more clinical signs. CONCLUSIONS These results demonstrate that the thymus of dogs can be parasitized by L. infantum, which may generate inflammatory reactions leading to alterations in thymic microarchitecture. © 2020 The Authors. Immunity, Inflammation and Disease published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Resistance phenomena, especially acquired drug-resistance, has been severely hampering the applications of chemotherapeutics during chemotherapy of tumor. Autophagy plays a role in maintaining the survival of cancer cells and may mediate resistance to chemotherapy drugs. Herein, a new series of 5-amino-2-ether-benzamide derivatives as autophagy inhibitors were synthesized and evaluated. As lead autophagy inhibitor selected from 14 synthesized compounds, the compound 4d showed the most obvious effect of LC3B conversion.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/benzylpenicillin-potassium.html  Further, the autophagy inhibition of 4d was evaluated using transmission electron microscopy and confocal microscopy, showing the fusion of autophagosomes and lysosomes at the final stage of autophagic flux was suppressed. We also found it could enhance the chemosensitivity of vincristine in vincristine-resistant esophageal cancer cell line Eca109/VCR in synergistic association manner. Moreover, the computational study showed that 4d might bind with p62-zz to inhibit autophagy. We also found 4d showed more safety to normal cells than cancer cells on the cytotoxicity compared to the reported p62-zz inhibitor. © 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.BACKGROUND In minimally invasive surgery, there are several challenges for training novice surgeons, such as limited field-of-view and unintuitive hand-eye coordination due to performing the operation according to video feedback. Virtual reality (VR) surgical simulators are a novel, risk-free, and cost-effective way to train and assess surgeons. METHODS We developed VR-based simulations to accurately assess and quantify performance of two VR simulations gentleness simulation for laparoscopy and rotator cuff repair for arthroscopy. We performed content and construct validity studies for the simulators. In our analysis, we systematically rank surgeons using data mining classification techniques. RESULTS Using classification algorithms such as K-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machines, and Logistic Regression we have achieved near 100% accuracy rate in identifying novices, and up to an 83% accuracy rate identifying experts. Sensitivity and specificity were up to 1.0 and 0.9, respectively. CONCLUSION Developed methodology to measure and differentiate the highly ranked surgeons and less-skilled surgeons.