This paper proposes the planning method for capacitor installation in a distribution system to reduce the installation costs and minimize the loss of electrical energy. The expected lifetime of ...devices with moving parts depends on the total number of operations, which affects the replacement period and replacement decisions for aging equipment under a limited budget. In this paper, the expected device lifetimes are included in the formulation, and the optimal operation status of the devices is determined using a genetic algorithm. The optimal numbers and locations for capacitor installation are determined based on the optimal operation status. Simulation results in a 69-bus distribution system show that the proposed technique performs better than conventional methods.
We searched for potential suppressors of tumor metastasis by identifying the genes that are frequently down-regulated in hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC) while being negatively correlated with ...clinical parameters relevant to tumor metastasis, and we report here on the identification of N-myc downstream regulated gene 2 (NDRG2) as a promising candidate. NDRG2 expression was significantly reduced in HCC compared with nontumor or normal liver tissues 87.5% (35 of 40) and 62% (62 of 100) at RNA and protein levels, respectively. Reduction of NDRG2 expression was intimately associated with promoter hypermethylation because its promoter region was found to carry extensively methylated CpG sites in HCC cell lines and primary tumors. Immunohistochemical analysis of NDRG2 protein in 100 HCC patient tissues indicated that NDRG2 expression loss is significantly correlated with aggressive tumor behaviors such as late tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (P = 0.012), differentiation grade (P = 0.024), portal vein thrombi (P = 0.011), infiltrative growth pattern (P = 0.015), nodal/distant metastasis (P = 0.027), and recurrent tumor (P = 0.021), as well as shorter patient survival rates. Ectopically expressed NDRG2 suppressed invasion and migration of a highly invasive cell line, SK-Hep-1, and experimental tumor metastasis in vivo, whereas small interfering RNA-mediated knockdown resulted in increased invasion and migration of a weakly invasive cell line, PLC/PRF/5. In addition, NDRG2 could antagonize transforming growth factor beta1-mediated tumor cell invasion by specifically down-regulating the expression of matrix metalloproteinase 2 and laminin 332 pathway components, with concomitant suppression of Rho GTPase activity. These results suggest that NDRG2 can inhibit extracellular matrix-based, Rho-driven tumor cell invasion and migration and thereby play important roles in suppressing tumor metastasis in HCC.
We study the mid-infrared (IR) and near-ultraviolet (UV) excess emissions of spectroscopically selected quiescent galaxies on the optical red sequence. We use the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer ...mid-IR and Galaxy Evolution Explorer near-UV data for a spectroscopic sample of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 to study the possible connection between quiescent red-sequence galaxies with and without mid-IR/near-UV excess. Among 648 12 mum detected quiescent red-sequence galaxies without Halpha emission, 26% and 55% show near-UV and mid-IR excess emissions, respectively. When we consider only bright (M sub(r) < -21.5) galaxies with an early-type morphology, the fraction of galaxies with recent star formation is still 39%. The quiescent red-sequence galaxies with mid-IR and near-UV excess emissions are optically fainter and have slightly smaller D sub(n)4000 than those without mid-IR and near-UV excess emissions. We also find that mid-IR weighted mean stellar ages of quiescent red-sequence galaxies with mid-IR excess are larger than those with near-UV excess, and smaller than those without mid-IR and near-UV excess. The environmental dependence of the fraction of quiescent red-sequence galaxies with mid-IR and near-UV excess seems strong even though the trends of quiescent red-sequence galaxies with near-UV excess differ from those with mid-IR excess. These results indicate that the recent star formation traced by near-UV (<, ~1 Gyr) and mid-IR (<, ~2 Gyr) excess is not negligible among nearby, quiescent, red, early-type galaxies. We suggest a possible evolutionary scenario of quiescent red-sequence galaxies from quiescent red-sequence galaxies with near-UV excess to those with mid-IR excess to those without near-UV and mid-IR excess.
Abstract
We present the first comprehensive study of the most massive globular cluster, Omega Centauri, in the far-ultraviolet (FUV), extending from the center to ∼28% of the tidal radius using the ...Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope on board AstroSat. A comparison of the FUV-optical color–magnitude diagrams with available canonical models reveals that horizontal branch (HB) stars bluer than the knee (hHBs) and the white dwarfs (WDs) are fainter in the FUV by ∼0.5 mag than model predictions. They are also fainter than their counterparts in M13, another massive cluster. We simulated HB with at least five subpopulations, including three He-rich populations with a substantial He enrichment of
Y
up to 0.43 dex, to reproduce the observed FUV distribution. We find the He-rich younger subpopulations to be radially more segregated than the He-normal older ones, suggesting an in situ enrichment from older generations. The
ω
Cen hHBs span the same
T
eff
range as their M13 counterparts, but some have smaller radii and lower luminosities. This may suggest that a fraction of
ω
Cen hHBs are less massive than those of M13, similar to the result derived from earlier spectroscopic studies of outer extreme HB stars. The WDs in
ω
Cen and M13 have similar luminosity–radius–
T
eff
parameters, and 0.44–0.46
M
⊙
He-core WD model tracks evolving from progenitors with
Y
= 0.4 dex are found to fit the majority of these. This study provides constraints on the formation models of
ω
Cen based on the estimated range in age, Fe/H, and
Y
(in particular) for the HB stars.
Recently, it was reported that leucine-rich repeat-containing G-protein-coupled receptor 4 (LGR4, also called GPR48) is another receptor for RANKL and was shown to compete with RANK to bind RANKL and ...suppress canonical RANK signaling during osteoclast differentiation. The critical role of the protein triad RANK-RANKL in osteoclastogenesis has made their binding an important target for the development of drugs against osteoporosis. In this study, point-mutations were introduced in the RANKL protein based on the crystal structure of the RANKL complex and its counterpart receptor RANK, and we investigated whether LGR4 signaling in the absence of the RANK signal could lead to the inhibition of osteoclastogenesis.; Methods: The effects of point-mutated RANKL (mRANKL-MT) on osteoclastogenesis were assessed by tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP), resorption pit formation, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), western blot, NFATc1 nuclear translocation, micro-CT and histomorphological assay in wild type RANKL (mRANKL-WT)-induced in vitro and in vivo experimental mice model.
As a proof of concept, treatment with the mutant RANKL led to the stimulation of GSK-3β phosphorylation, as well as the inhibition of NFATc1 translocation, mRNA expression of TRAP and OSCAR, TRAP activity, and bone resorption, in RANKL-induced mouse models; and Conclusions: The results of our study demonstrate that the mutant RANKL can be used as a therapeutic agent for osteoporosis by inhibiting RANKL-induced osteoclastogenesis via comparative inhibition of RANKL. Moreover, the mutant RANKL was found to lack the toxic side effects of most osteoporosis treatments.
This study sought to determine hospital variation in the use of follow-up stress testing (FUST) and invasive coronary angiography (FUCAG) after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The claims ...records of 150,580 Korean patients who received PCI in 128 hospitals between 2008 and 2015 were analyzed. Patient were considered to have undergone FUST and FUCAG, when these testings were performed within two years after discharge from the index hospitalization. Hierarchical generalized linear and frailty models were used to evaluate binary and time-to-event outcomes. Hospital-level risk-standardized FUCAG and FUST rates were highly variable across the hospitals (median, 0.41; interquartile range IQR, 0.27-0.59; median, 0.22; IQR, 0.08-0.39, respectively). The performances of various models predicting the likelihood of FUCAG and FUST were compared, and the best performance was observed with the models adjusted for patient case mix and individual hospital effects as random effects (receiver operating characteristic curves, 0.72 for FUCAG; 0.82 for FUST). The intraclass correlation coefficients of the models (0.41 and 0.68, respectively) indicated that a considerable proportion of the observed variation was related to individual institutional effects. Higher hospital-level FUCAG and FUST rates were not preventive of death or myocardial infarction. Increased repeat revascularizations were observed in hospitals with higher FUCAG rates.
Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute self-limited vasculitis of infants and children that manifests as fever and signs of mucocutaneous inflammation. Coronary artery aneurysms develop in approximately ...15–25% of untreated children. Although the etiology of KD is largely unknown, epidemiologic data suggest the importance of genetic factors in the susceptibility to KD. In order to identify genetic variants that influence KD susceptibility, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using Affymetrix SNP array 6.0 in 186 Korean KD patients and 600 healthy controls; 18 and 26 genomic regions with one or more sequence variants were associated with KD and KD with coronary artery lesions (CALs), respectively (
p
< 1 × 10
−5
). Of these, one locus on chromosome 1p31 (rs527409) was replicated in 266 children with KD and 600 normal controls (odds ratio OR = 2.90, 95% confidence interval CI = 1.85–4.54,
P
combined
= 1.46 × 10
−6
); and a
PELI1
locus on chromosome 2p13.3 (rs7604693) was replicated in 86 KD patients with CALs and 600 controls (OR = 2.70, 95% CI = 1.77–4.12,
P
combined
= 2.00 × 10
−6
). These results implicate a locus in the 1p31 region and the
PELI1
gene locus in the 2p13.3 region as susceptibility loci for KD and CALs, respectively.
ABSTRACT
We present the first results of eight globular clusters (GCs) from the AstroSat/UVIT Legacy Survey programme GlobULeS based on the observations carried out in two far-ultraviolet (FUV) ...filters (F148W and F169M). The FUV–optical and FUV–FUV colour–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of GCs with the proper motion membership were constructed by combining the Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) data with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) UV Globular Cluster Survey data for inner regions and Gaia Early Data Release for regions outside the HST’s field. We detect sources as faint as F148W ∼ 23.5 mag, which are classified based on their locations in CMDs by overlaying stellar evolutionary models. The CMDs of eight GCs are combined with the previous UVIT studies of three GCs to create stacked FUV–optical CMDs to highlight the features/peculiarities found in the different evolutionary sequences. The FUV (F148W) detected stellar populations of 11 GCs comprise 2816 horizontal branch (HB) stars 190 extreme HB (EHB) candidates, 46 post-HB (pHB), 221 blue straggler stars (BSSs), and 107 white dwarf (WD) candidates. We note that the blue HB colour extension obtained from F148W − G colour and the number of FUV detected EHB candidates are strongly correlated with the maximum internal helium (He) variation within each GC, suggesting that the FUV–optical plane is the most sensitive to He abundance variations in the HB. We discuss the potential science cases that will be addressed using these catalogues including HB morphologies, BSSs, pHB, and WD stars.
ABSTRACT We investigate the spatial density configuration of stars around four metal-poor globular clusters (NGC 6266, NGC 6626, NGC 6642, and NGC 6723) in the Galactic bulge region using wide-field ...deep J, H, and K imaging data obtained with the Wide Field Camera near-infrared array on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. A statistical weighted filtering algorithm for the stars on the color-magnitude diagram is applied in order to sort cluster member candidates from the field star contamination. In two-dimensional isodensity contour maps of the clusters, we find that all four of the globular clusters exhibit strong evidence of tidally stripped stellar features beyond the tidal radius in the form of tidal tails or small density lobes/chunks. The orientations of the extended stellar substructures are likely to be associated with the effect of dynamic interaction with the Galaxy and the clusterʼs space motion. The observed radial density profiles of the four globular clusters also describe the extended substructures; they depart from theoretical King and Wilson models and have an overdensity feature with a break in the slope of the profile at the outer region of clusters. The observed results could imply that four globular clusters in the Galactic bulge region have experienced strong environmental effects such as tidal forces or bulge/disk shocks of the Galaxy during the dynamical evolution of globular clusters. These observational results provide further details which add to our understanding of the evolution of clusters in the Galactic bulge region as well as the formation of the Galaxy.
Abstract
The photometric properties of red supergiants (RSGs) in three nearby galaxies NGC 4449, NGC 5055 and NGC 5457 were investigated using near-infrared (JHK) imaging data obtained from WFCAM ...UKIRT. The resulting near-infrared photometric catalogue was combined with optical archive data to remove foreground Galactic stars. We found that the foreground stars can be separated from the supergiants in a (i − K, r − i) colour–colour diagram. The (J − K, K)0 colour–magnitude diagrams of the three galaxies are investigated and compared with theoretical isochrones. The majority of RSGs in the three galaxies have common age ranges from log (tyr) = 6.9 to log (tyr) = 7.3, and this indicates that these galaxies have experienced recent star formation within 20 Myr. For NGC 4449 and NGC 5457, the RSGs are spatially correlated with the H ii regions, which, however, is not the case for NGC 5055. We were not able to identify a clear metallicity dependence on the colours and the peak absolute magnitudes of the RSGs in the three galaxies. The inaccuracy of our photometric data contributes to the unclear metallicity effect on the colours of RSGs. Instead, we found a similar colour distribution and a constant peak magnitude of MK = −11.9 for the RSGs in the three galaxies. Therefore, we note that additional spectroscopy data for our RSG candidates, including photometry, are necessary to examine whether the RSG population changes with metallicity.
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