We report two microlensing events, KMT-2017-BLG-1038 and KMT-2017-BLG-1146, that are caused by planetary systems. These events were discovered by Korea Microlensing Telescope Network survey ...observations from the 2017 bulge season. The discovered systems consist of a planet and host star with mass ratios of and , respectively. Based on a Bayesian analysis assuming a Galactic model without stellar remnant hosts, we find that the planet KMT-2017-BLG-1038Lb is a super-Jupiter-mass planet ( ) orbiting a mid-M dwarf host ( ) that is located at kpc toward the Galactic bulge. The other planet, KMT-2017-BLG-1146Lb, is a sub-Jupiter-mass planet ( ) orbiting a mid-M dwarf host ( ) at a distance of kpc toward the Galactic bulge. Both are potentially gaseous planets that are beyond their hosts' snow lines. These typical microlensing planets will be routinely discovered by second-generation microlensing surveys, rapidly increasing the number of detections.
Abstract Background Adult liver transplantation (OLT) recipients occasionally show serious acute cardiopulmonary dysfunction, requiring intensive care. We assessed the role of extracorporeal membrane ...oxygenation (ECMO) support in adult recipients facing acute pulmonary failure and refractory to conventional mechanical ventilation and concurrent nitric oxide gas inhalation. Methods From January 2008 to March 2011, 18 adult OLT recipients at our institution required ECMO support: 12 due to pneumonia and 6 to adult respiratory distress syndrome. Their mean age was 55.7 ± 6.9 years and mean Model for End-stage Liver Disease score, 24.8 ± 8.5. Twelve patients had undergone living donor and six deceased donor OLT. Results A venovenous access mode and concurrent continuous venovenous hemodiafiltration were used in all patients. There were no procedure-related complications. Eight patients (44.4%) were successfully weaned from ECMO upon the first attempt after a mean support of 11.9 ± 6.1 days, but the other 10 died due to overwhelming infection. Univariate analysis revealed no significant pre-ECMO risk factor for treatment failure but C-reactive protein concentration at the time of ECMO differed significantly among patients who did versus did not survive after ECMO. Conclusions ECMO as rescue therapy may be a final therapeutic option for OLT recipients with refractory pulmonary dysfunction who would otherwise die due to hypoxemia from severe pneumonia or adult respiratory distress syndrome.
Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), produced extracellularly by autotaxin (ATX), has diverse biological activities implicated in tumor initiation and progression, including increasing cell survival, ...angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis. ATX, LPA and the matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 have all been implicated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) invasion and metastasis. We, thus sought to determine whether ATX with subsequent LPA production and action, including induction of MMP-9 could provide a unifying mechanism. ATX transcripts and LPA receptor type 1 (LPA1) protein are elevated in HCC compared with normal tissues. Silencing or pharmacological inhibition of LPA1 significantly attenuated LPA-induced MMP-9 expression and HCC cell invasion. Further, reducing MMP-9 activity or expression significantly inhibits LPA-induced HCC cell invasion, demonstrating that MMP-9 is downstream of LPA1. Inhibition of phosphoinositide-3 kinase (PI3K) signaling or dominant-negative mutants of protein kinase Cδ and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) abrogated LPA-induced MMP-9 expression and subsequent invasion. We thus demonstrate a mechanistic cascade of ATX-producing LPA with LPA activating LPA1 and inducing MMP-9 through coordinate activation of the PI3K and the p38 MPAK signaling cascades, providing novel biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for HCC.
Tumor-stroma interactions significantly influence cancer cell metastasis and disease progression. These interactions are partly comprised of the cross-talk between tumor and stromal fibroblasts, but ...the key molecular mechanisms within the cross-talk that govern cancer invasion are still unclear. Here, we adapted our previously developed microfluidic device as a 3D
organotypic model to mechanistically study tumor-stroma interactions by mimicking the spatial organization of the tumor microenvironment on a chip. We cocultured breast cancer and patient-derived fibroblast cells in 3D tumor and stroma regions, respectively, and combined functional assessments, including cancer cell migration, with transcriptome profiling to unveil the molecular influence of tumor-stroma cross-talk on invasion. This led to the observation that cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF) enhanced invasion in 3D by inducing expression of a novel gene of interest, glycoprotein nonmetastatic B (
), in breast cancer cells, resulting in increased migration speed. Importantly, knockdown of GPNMB blunted the influence of CAF on enhanced cancer invasion. Overall, these results demonstrate the ability of our model to recapitulate patient-specific tumor microenvironments to investigate the cellular and molecular consequences of tumor-stroma interactions. SIGNIFICANCE: An organotypic model of tumor-stroma interactions on a microfluidic chip reveals that CAFs promote invasion by enhancing expression of GPNMB in breast cancer cells.
ZnO-nanowire gas sensors were fabricated by a selective growth of nanowires on patterned Au catalysts thus forming nanowire air bridges or ‘
nanobridges’ between two Pt pillar electrodes. The gas ...sensing properties of nanobridge gas sensors were demonstrated using a diluted NO
2. The response, as a function of temperature, was highest at 225
°C and was linearly increased with the concentration of NO
2 in the range of 0.5–3
ppm and then showed a sign of saturation. Our sensor showed higher response compared with different types of sensors including ZnO nanocrystals, Sn- and In-doped ZnO thin film, or ZnO nanowires. The enhanced response was attributed to the additional modulation of the sensor resistance due to potential barrier at nanowire/nanowire junctions as well as the surface depletion region of each nanowire. Also nanobridge structure enabled fast recovery behavior because desorbed gas molecules can be easily swept away from the surface of ZnO nanowire without re-adsorption.
Submesoscale processes are key in understanding physical and biological phenomena near the surface, but there remains a lack of observational evidence over large areas. We used hourly images from a ...geostationary satellite that can resolve variation in surface ocean color over an area of few hundred kilometers. The temporal variation in the surface chlorophyll a distribution captured by the satellite images was first used to generate a submesoscale‐permitting velocity field, from which we calculated the turbulence statistics such as kinetic energy spectra, velocity structure functions, and energy flux. Application to the April scenes in the East/Japan Sea showed that the kinetic energy spectra had a transition scale at 50 km that suggested two spectral regimes following k−3 and k−5/3, implying the coexistence of quasi‐geostrophic turbulence and surface quasi‐geostrophic turbulence. The chlorophyll a scalar spectrum suggested two spectral regimes of k−5/3 and k−1 with a transition at 3 km.
Plain Language Summary
The primary question that motivated this work was how to evaluate near‐surface submesoscale (i.e., between mesoscale and microscale) turbulence in an Eulerian framework over an area of a few hundred kilometers. As this has not been possible with conventional observational platforms, we suggested a novel approach using a geostationary satellite that observed ocean color (Geostationary Ocean Color Imager, specifically in this study). A submesoscale‐permitting velocity field was generated for the East/Japan Sea by processing satellite chlorophyll a observations, which was used to compute various turbulence statistics. Since the Eulerian observation has a sufficient number of data points, we were able to discern different physical properties over a broad area during a short observation period. To our best knowledge, the derivation of submesoscale statistics from the geostationary ocean color images has not been attempted for such a large area. Our findings may provide a timely and systematic approach for validating numerical models and evaluating the near‐surface submesoscale turbulence that plays an important role in smaller‐scale physical and biological processes.
Key Points
Satellite chlorophyll a observations are used to calculate Eulerian statistics and evaluate submesoscale turbulence over a large area
Kinetic energy spectra and velocity structure functions are computed based on the derived submesoscale‐permitting velocity field
Kinetic energy spectra suggest that quasi‐geostrophic and surface quasi‐geostrophic turbulence dominate in the East/Japan Sea in April
Manipulating structure, defects and composition of a material at the atomic scale for enhancing its physical or mechanical properties is referred to as nanostructuring. Here, by combining advanced ...microscopy techniques, we unveil how formation of highly regular nano-arrays of nanoparticles doubles the strength of an Fe-based alloy, doped with Ti, Mo, and V, from 500 MPa to 1 GPa, upon prolonged heat treatment. The nanoparticles form at moving heterophase interfaces during cooling from the high-temperature face-centered cubic austenite to the body-centered cubic ferrite phase. We observe MoC and TiC nanoparticles at early precipitation stages as well as core-shell nanoparticles with a Ti-C rich core and a Mo-V rich shell at later precipitation stages. The core-shell structure hampers particle coarsening, enhancing the material's strength. Designing such highly organized metallic core-shell nanoparticle arrays provides a new pathway for developing a wide range of stable nano-architectured engineering metallic alloys with drastically enhanced properties.
Global standards of patent protection have been strengthened and harmonized in recent years. Despite the heated policy debates and theoretical controversies, empirical studies of the consequences for ...innovative activity are scant. This paper contributes to the debate by providing an empirical analysis of the effects of patent strength on different aspects of innovative activity, namely firm-level research and development (R&D), domestic patenting, and foreign patenting. The analysis employs an updated index of patent rights. The results show the complexity of evaluating the effects of patent reform on innovative activity, since the effects vary nonlinearly (depending on the initial level of patent strength) and vary by a country's level of economic development. Overall, for developing economies, patent strength negatively affects domestic patent filings and insignificantly affects R&D and foreign patent filings. For developed economies, patent strength positively affects R&D and domestic patent filings, and negatively affects foreign patent filings, after some critical level of patent protection is reached.
We present the analysis of OGLE-2016-BLG-0613, for which the lensing light curve appears to be that of a typical binary-lens event with two caustic spikes but with a discontinuous feature on the ...trough between the spikes. We find that the discontinuous feature was produced by a planetary companion to the binary lens. We find four degenerate triple-lens solution classes, each composed of a pair of solutions according to the well-known wide/close planetary degeneracy. One of these solution classes is excluded due to its relatively poor fit. For the remaining three pairs of solutions, the most-likely primary mass is about , while the planet is a super Jupiter. In all cases, the system lies in the Galactic disk, about halfway toward the Galactic bulge. However, in one of these three solution classes, the secondary of the binary system is a low-mass brown dwarf, with relative mass ratios (1:0.03:0.003), while in the two others the masses of the binary components are comparable. These two possibilities can be distinguished in about 2024 when the measured lens-source relative proper motion will permit separate resolution of the lens and source.
ABSTRACT
The objective of the current experiment was to investigate the effect of stocking density and sex on growth performance, meat quality, and intestinal barrier function in broiler chickens. ...The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with a 2 × 4 factorial arrangement consisting of sex and four different stocking densities in battery cages. A total of 540 1-d-old Ross 308 broiler chickens were allotted to one of eight treatments with five replicates. Within each sex, birds were raised at four different stocking densities of 15.2, 20.2, 25.3, or 30.4 birds/m2 from 1 to 28 d of age. Different stocking densities were achieved by raising a different number of birds per battery cage with identical floor size (0.76 m × 0.78 m). At the end of the experiment, two birds per replicate were euthanized by CO2 asphyxiation to collect tissue samples for further analyses. Results indicated that no interactions between sex and stocking density were observed for all measurements except for serum lipopolysaccharide (LPS) concentrations. Increasing stocking density decreased (linear, P < 0.01) body weight gain and feed intake, but had no negative effects on meat quality. Trans-epithelial electrical resistance values, a measure of intestinal permeability, were decreased (linear, P < 0.01) with increasing stocking density, regardless of sex. Accordingly, serum LPS concentrations were increased (linear, P < 0.01) with increasing stocking density. However, increasing stocking density increased serum LPS concentrations in male broiler chickens, but had no effects on female broiler chickens, showing an interaction (P < 0.01). The expression of zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1) and junctional adhesion molecule B (JAM-2) was decreased (linear, P < 0.05) with increasing stocking density. In conclusion, increasing stocking density decreases broiler performance regardless of sex and this negative effect is likely associated with decreased intestinal barrier function.
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