As one of the biggest parts of total national energy consumption (TNEC), building energy consumption (BEC) catches public eyes and has been regarded as a crucial problem of the current society. For ...the past 20 years, BEC in china has been increasing at a high speed. To curb the rapid growing of BEC, china has enforced and implemented a series of policies. These include enforcing BEC constraints on new building projects, promoting more environment friendly building designs, establishing a more sophisticated legislation for building energy conservation, and increasing the total budget in the area of BEC control. This article analyzed china BEC situation and the challenges. As the main point, the measures required by China government to improve building energy efficiency were introduced as well.
A central problem in biomechanical studies of personalized human left ventricular (LV) modelling is to estimate material properties from in vivo clinical measurements. In this work we evaluate the ...passive myocardial mechanical properties inversely from the in vivo LV chamber pressure–volume and strain data. The LV myocardium is described using a structure-based orthotropic Holzapfel–Ogden constitutive law with eight parameters. In the first part of the paper we demonstrate how to use a multi-step non-linear least-squares optimization procedure to inversely estimate the parameters from the pressure–volume and strain data obtained from a synthetic LV model in diastole. In the second part, we show that to apply this procedure to clinical situations with limited in vivo data, additional constraints are required in the optimization procedure. Our study, based on three different healthy volunteers, demonstrates that the parameters of the Holzapfel–Ogden law could be extracted from pressure–volume and strain data with a suitable multi-step optimization procedure. Although the uniqueness of the solution cannot be addressed using our approaches, the material response is shown to be robustly determined.
Monolayer (ML) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are of great research interest due to their potential use in ultrathin electronic and optoelectronic applications. They show promise in new ...concept devices in spintronics and valleytronics. Here we present a growth study by molecular-beam epitaxy of ML and sub-ML MoSe2, an important member of TMDs, revealing its unique growth characteristics as well as the formation processes of domain boundary (DB) defects. A dramatic effect of growth temperature and post-growth annealing on DB formation is uncovered.
Recent evidence has suggested that AMPK activators may be applied as therapeutic drugs in suppressing cancer cell growth. However, the molecular mechanism of their suppressive function in cancer ...cells is still unclear. Here we show that AMPK activators impair cervical cancer cell growth through the reduction of DVL3, a positive regulator in Wnt/β-catenin signaling and an oncogenic player in cervical cancer tumorigenesis. By western blot and immunohistochemical analyses, we demonstrated that DVL3 was frequently upregulated and significantly associated with elevated β-catenin (P = 0.009) and CyclinD1 (P = 0.009) expressions in cervical cancer. Enforced expression of DVL3 elevated β-catenin and augmented cervical cancer cell growth, verifying that DVL3-mediated Wnt/β-catenin activation is involved in cervical cancer oncogenesis. On the other aspect, we noted that the cervical cancer cell growth was remarkably suppressed by AMPK activators and such cell growth inhibition was in concomitant with the reduction of DVL3 protein level in dose- and time-dependent manners. Besides, impaired mTOR signaling activity also reduced DVL3 expression. In contrast, co-treatment with Compound C (AMPK inhibitor) could significantly abrogate metformin induced DVL3 reduction. In addition, co-treatment with AM114 or MG132 (proteosomal inhibitors) could partially restore DVL3 expression under the treatment of metformin. Further in vivo ubiquitination assay revealed that metformin could reduce DVL3 by ubiquitin/proteasomal degradation. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing the probable molecular mechanisms of that the AMPK activators suppress cervical cancer cell growth by impairing DVL3 protein synthesis via AMPK/mTOR signaling and/or partially promoting the proteasomal degradation of DVL3.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is expressed in the epithelial cells of a wide range of organs/tissues from which most cancers are derived. Although accumulating ...reports have indicated the association of cancer incidence with genetic variations in CFTR gene, the exact role of CFTR in cancer development and the possible underlying mechanism have not been elucidated. Here, we report that CFTR expression is significantly decreased in both prostate cancer cell lines and human prostate cancer tissue samples. Overexpression of CFTR in prostate cancer cell lines suppresses tumor progression (cell growth, adhesion and migration), whereas knockdown of CFTR leads to enhanced malignancies both in vitro and in vivo. In addition, we demonstrate that CFTR knockdown-enhanced cell proliferation, cell invasion and migration are significantly reversed by antibodies against either urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) or uPA receptor (uPAR), which are known to be involved in various malignant traits of cancer development. More interestingly, overexpression of CFTR suppresses uPA by upregulating the recently described tumor suppressor microRNA-193b (miR-193b), and overexpression of pre-miR-193b significantly reverses CFTR knockdown-enhanced malignant phenotype and abrogates elevated uPA activity in prostate cancer cell line. Finally, we show that CFTR gene transfer results in significant tumor repression in prostate cancer xenografts in vivo. Taken together, the present study has demonstrated a previously undefined tumor-suppressing role of CFTR and its involvement in regulation of miR-193b in prostate cancer development.
Remote signals available from the wide-area monitoring system could be used to enhance the stability of large interconnected power systems with the help of a wide-area damping controller (WADC). ...Uncertainty in system parameters and signal transmission time delay are the major factors, which could worsen the damping effect and deteriorate the system stability. This study presents a novel adaptive wide-area damping control scheme in which oscillation modes will be identified online using stochastic subspace identification for an online tuning of the WADC structure and parameters using the residue method. A simple and practical signal time delay compensation algorithm will also be proposed to measure and compensate the time delay in each wide-area control signal so as to eliminate the effects of signal time delay on the proposed adaptive WADC. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed adaptive wide-area damping control scheme have been verified with simulation studies on the IEEE 16-generator 5-area test system under various disturbance scenarios.
BACKGROUND: Whereas chronological age (CA) cannot distinguish functional differences among individuals of the same age, the biological age (BA) may be used to reflect the functional state of the ...body. The purpose of this study was to construct an integral formula of the BA, by using principle component analysis (PCA). METHODS: The vital organ function of 505 healthy individuals of Han origin (age 35–91 years) was examined. A total of 114 indicators of cardiovascular, pulmonary, and brain functions, and clinical, inflammatory, genetic, psychological, and life habit factors were assessed as candidate indicators of aging. Candidate indicators were submitted with CA to correlation and redundancy analyses. The PCA method was used to build an integral formula of the BA for the population. RESULTS: Seven biomarkers were selected in accordance with a certain load standard. These biomarkers included the trail making test (TMT), pulse pressure (PP), mitral valve annulus ventricular septum of the peak velocity of early filling (MVES), minimum carotid artery intimalmedial thickness (IMTmin), maximum internal diameter of the carotid artery (Dmax), maximal midexpiratory flow rate 75/25 (MMEF75/25), and Cystatin C (CysC). The formula for the BA was: BA = 0.0685 (TMT) + 0.267 (PP)–1.375 (MVES) + 22.443 (IMTmin) + 2.962 (Dmax)–2.332 (MMEF75/25) + 16.104 (CysC) + 0.137 (CA) + 0.492. CONCLUSION: Several genetic and lifestyle indicators were considered as candidate markers of aging. However, ultimately, only markers reflecting the function of the vital organs were included in the BA formula. This study represents a useful attempt to employ multiple indicators to build a comprehensive BA evaluation formula of aging populations.
Based on dimensionless load separation principle, the normalization method for estimating J-resistance curves of CIET specimen for ductile materials has been developed. Experiments of ductile crack ...growth resistance on a typical pressure vessel steel SA-508 are conducted by using CT, SEB and CIET specimens. The resulted J-resistance curves show outstanding influence by load configuration and specimen dimensions. J-Q-M and J-A2-M approaches are introduced to quantify the crack front constraint of the three types of specimens. According to finite element analyses (FEA) under plane strain and 3D conditions, the distance-independent constraint parameters are calibrated by matching the FEA results with the J-Q-M and J-A2-M solutions using weight average method. The analyses show that the parameters of Q and A2 are load-independent under plane strain condition, but under 3D condition, the J-A2-M approach is incapable of characterizing the stress and deformation fields ahead of crack front of CIET specimen for SA-508 steel, and the parameter Q is no longer load-independent. Because of different crack front constraint, the CIET specimen with B=10 mm, a0=5.8 mm gets the lowest fracture resistance while the SEB specimen with B=20 mm, a0=11 mm and the CT specimen with B=15 mm, a0=29 mm obtain the highest fracture resistance for SA-508 steel. The size requirements of J-Q-M dominance for each used CIET, CT and SEB specimens are got. Finally, the constraint-modified J-resistance curves of SA-508 steel based on J-Q-M approach are constructed to predict the crack growth resistance for any fracture specimens or actual flawed structures.
Naturally acquired anti–hepatitis E virus (HEV) immunity can protect against new HEV infections. The aim of this study was to analyse the persistence of naturally acquired anti-HEV immunoglobulin ...(Ig) G and anti-HEV IgG concentrations after vaccination.
We examined the seropositivity rates of participants included in a phase 3 clinical efficacy trial (67 months' follow-up) for a HEV vaccine (Hecolin; Xiamen Innovax Biotech, China) and predicted long-term persistence using mixed-effect models.
The analysis focused on 2242 baseline seropositive participants in a control group (placebo recipients) and 2031 baseline seropositive participants in an vaccine group (vaccine recipients) who received 1 to 3 doses of Hecolin. Naturally acquired anti-HEV IgG levels decreased steadily independent of the initial antibody level; 50% of the placebo recipients were expected to have undetectable antibody concentrations after 14.5 years. After immunization with Hecolin, the power-law model and the modified power-law model predicted that 82.1 and 99.4% of the participants, respectively, would remain seropositive for anti-HEV IgG for 30 years after vaccination.
Whereas naturally acquired anti-HEV IgG levels decrease steadily, HEV vaccination induces long-lasting, high-level anti-HEV IgG concentrations.
•Mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the lacrimal apparatus is a rare disease, and the rate of MAML2 translocations is lower than that in salivary mucoepidermoid carcinomas (MECs).•Lacrimal gland and ...lacrimal sac MECs may not be of the same subtypes intrinsically because of the lack of MAML2 translocations in lacrimal sac MECs.•The etiologic function of HPV6 infection needs to be explored in lacrimal apparatus MECs.•MAML2 fluorescence in situ hybridization was positive for MAML2 rearrangement in 3 lacrimal gland tumors (2 low-grade and 1 high-grade).
In this study, we evaluated the clinicopathologic and molecular characteristics of lacrimal apparatus mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC) to define its typical diagnostic features.
Retrospective observational case series.
Institutional pathology records between 2011 and 2021 were searched for all cases of lacrimal apparatus MEC.
A total of 2 male and 6 female patients ranging in age from 18 to 83 years (median 56, mean 54) were included. Six lacrimal apparatus MECs were found in the lacrimal gland, and 2 cases occurred in the lacrimal sac and nasolacrimal duct. Histologically, there were 6 cases of conventional MEC, 1 clear-cell variant of MEC, and 1 oncocytic variant of MEC for a total of 8 cases. There were 3 low-grade cases and 5 high-grade cases. All 8 cases were evaluated via immunohistochemistry, and the results were positive (scores 1-4) for pankeratin, 34betaE12, p63, p40, CK7, CK8, and CK19, with a relatively higher expression of p63 observed in high-grade MEC. The presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) type 6 DNA was found in 4 patients. MAML2 fluorescence in situ hybridization was positive for MAML2 rearrangement in 3 lacrimal gland tumors (2 low-grade and 1 high-grade). Six tumors were managed with radical resection, and 2 patients underwent orbital exenteration. Postoperative radiation therapy was delivered to 6 patients, and chemotherapy was administered to 1 patient.
MECs of the lacrimal apparatus are rare tumors, and the rate of MAML2 translocations is lower than that in salivary MECs. Lacrimal gland and lacrimal sac MECs may not be of the same subtypes intrinsically because of the difference in MAML2 translocation, anatomy, and clinical course. The etiologic function of HPV type 6 infection should be explored in lacrimal apparatus MECs. Radical surgery is the treatment of choice. The description of these unique findings may assist in the definitive diagnosis of and improve our understanding of lacrimal apparatus MEC.
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