In this paper, second-order sliding-mode (SOSM) control approach is applied to synchronous buck dc-dc converters. The proposed SOSM controller can stabilize synchronous buck dc-dc converters using a ...simple digital state-machine structure, without requiring current sensing or an integral term in the control loop. The SOSM controller results in fast step-load and start-up transient responses, and is robust against parameter uncertainties. Fast transients and current limitation during start up can be accomplished by adjusting one controller parameter. Furthermore, a hysteresis method is introduced to control the switching frequency. The proposed approach is verified by experimental results on a 1.25-V 10-A prototype.
Gastric cancer is one of the most common cancers and has the highest mortality rate worldwide. It is worthwhile to explore the mechanism of gastric cancer progression. An increasing number of studies ...have found that non-coding RNAs including miRNA and lncRNA play important roles in gastric cancer progression. This review summarized the role of ectopic miRNA in gastric cancer proliferation, growth, migration, invasion and apoptosis. Meantime, aberrantly expressed miRNA also received a great deal of attention as potential biomarker for gastric cancer diagnosis and therapy. Over the last decade, lncRNA was considered to regulate gastric cancer progression at the transcript and post-transcript level. At the transcript level, lncRNA induced gastric cancer progression by changing chromatin modification and mRNA stabilization to regulate mRNA and miRNA expression. Furthermore, lncRNA regulated gastric cancer progression by completely combining with miRNA to produce ceRNA or promote protein stabilization at the post-transcript level. Greater attention of miRNA and lncRNA in gastric cancer can provide new insight of mechanism of cancer development and may be acted as a new anticancer target.
Diabetes mellitus (DM) patients are at a higher risk of developing brain injury characterized by neuronal death. Melatonin, a hormone produced by the pineal gland, exerts neuroprotective effects ...against brain damage. However, the effect of melatonin on diabetes‐induced brain injury has not been elucidated. This study was to evaluate the role of melatonin against neuronal death in DM and to elucidate the underlying mechanisms. Herein, we found that melatonin administration significantly alleviated the neuronal death in both streptozotocin (STZ)‐induced diabetic mice and high glucose (HG)‐treated neuronal cells. Melatonin inhibited neuronal pyroptosis and excessive autophagy, as evidenced by decreased levels of NLRP3, cleaved caspase‐1, GSDMD‐N, IL‐1β, LC3, Beclin1, and ATG12 both in vivo and in vitro. MicroRNA‐214‐3p (miR‐214‐3p) was decreased in DM mice and HG‐treated cells, and such a downregulation was corrected by melatonin, which was accompanied by repression of caspase‐1 and ATG12. Furthermore, downregulation of miR‐214‐3p abrogated the anti‐pyroptotic and anti‐autophagic actions of melatonin in vitro. Our results indicate that melatonin exhibits a neuroprotective effect by inhibiting neuronal pyroptosis and excessive autophagy through modulating the miR‐214‐3p/caspase‐1 and miR‐214‐3p/ATG12 axes, respectively, and it might be a potential agent for the treatment of brain damage in the setting of DM.
A novel car-following model was proposed to describe the motion of the vehicles on a single lane gyroidal road. We explore the related effects of gyroidal road upon uniform traffic flow analytically ...and numerically. The analytical result shows that the related factors of gyroidal road including the friction coefficient, radius of curvature and slope have great influences on the stability of the uniform flow respectively. The modified KdV (Korteweg–de Vries) equation is derived in the unstable area and the kink solution is obtained near the critical point. A series of simulations are conducted to verify the effects upon uniform traffic flow under different road conditions. It is shown that the amplitudes of the headway oscillation wave were affected by the friction coefficient, radius of curvature and slope respectively. The numerical results are in good agreement with the analytical results.
•We proposed a new traffic flow model considering triple factors on a gyroidal road.•Stability analysis was conducted with three factors.•Nonlinear analysis was taken to derive the mKdV equation and to solve the kink solution.
The morphological and molecular identification of mites is challenging due to the large number of species, the microscopic size of the organisms, diverse phenotypes of the same species, similar ...morphology of different species and a shortage of molecular data.
Nine medically important mite species belonging to six families, i.e. Demodex folliculorum, D. brevis, D. canis, D. caprae, Sarcoptes scabiei canis, Psoroptes cuniculi, Dermatophagoides farinae, Cheyletus malaccensis and Ornithonyssus bacoti, were collected and subjected to DNA barcoding. Sequences of cox1, 16S and 12S mtDNA, as well as ITS, 18S and 28S rDNA from mites were retrieved from GenBank and used as candidate genes. Sequence alignment and analysis identified 28S rDNA as the suitable target gene. Subsequently, universal primers of divergent domains were designed for molecular identification of 125 mite samples. Finally, the universality of the divergent domains with high identification efficiency was evaluated in Acari to screen DNA barcodes for mites.
Domains D5 (67.65%), D6 (62.71%) and D8 (77.59%) of the 28S rRNA gene had a significantly higher sequencing success rate, compared to domains D2 (19.20%), D3 (20.00%) and D7 (15.12%). The successful divergent domains all matched the closely-related species in GenBank with an identity of 74-100% and a coverage rate of 92-100%. Phylogenetic analysis also supported this result. Moreover, the three divergent domains had their own advantages. D5 had the lowest intraspecies divergence (0-1.26%), D6 had the maximum barcoding gap (10.54%) and the shortest sequence length (192-241 bp), and D8 had the longest indels (241 bp). Further universality analysis showed that the primers of the three divergent domains were suitable for identification across 225 species of 40 families in Acari.
This study confirmed that domains D5, D6 and D8 of 28S rDNA are universal DNA barcodes for molecular classification and identification of mites. 28S rDNA, as a powerful supplement for cox1 mtDNA 5'-end 648-bp fragment, recommended by the International Barcode of Life (IBOL), will provide great potential in molecular identification of mites in future studies because of its universality.
The effects of different heat treatments on the structure and functional properties of quinoa protein isolates (QPI) were investigated. QPI‐MW and QPI‐BL still had good solubility, emulsification and ...gelability and seemed to be more suitable for application in thermally processed foods. Microwave heating and boiling might be better heat treatment methods for QPI.
Summary
The effects of microwave heating (MW), steaming (SM), boiling (BL) and baking (BK) on the structure and functional properties of quinoa protein isolates (QPI) were investigated. SDS‐PAGE showed the 20–30 kDa band strength of QPI‐BL was enhanced, which indicated the disulphide bond was broken and protein molecules dissociated. Due to the recombination of subunits, some large molecular weight or insoluble polymer components of QPI‐SM and QPI‐BK did not pass through the gel. Microwave heating and boiling showed negative effects for α‐helix and positive effects for β‐sheet, which implied the molecular structure was transformed from ordered to disordered, the secondary structure became loose. The reduction of free SH (sulfhydryl) and surface hydrophobicity implied that aggregation and cross‐linking of protein molecules for QPI‐SM and QPI‐BK. QPI, QPI‐MW and QPI‐BL exhibited better solubility, which was related to the water holding capacity (WHC) and emulsification. For QPI‐SM and QPI‐BK, functional properties (including solubility, WHC and gel‐forming ability) decreased due to molecular aggregation. Heat treatments significantly affect the structure and functional properties of QPI, the current research showed that microwave heating and boiling might be better heat treatment methods for QPI and would help the development of quinoa protein products.
The human microbiome is defined as the microorganisms that reside in or on the human body, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa, and their genomes. The human microbiome participates in the ...modulation of human metabolism by influencing several intricate pathways. The association between specific bacteria or viruses and the efficacy of cancer treatments and the occurrence of treatment-related toxicity in cancer patients has been reported. However, the understanding of the interaction between the host microbiome and the cancer treatment response is limited, and the microbiome potentially plays a greater role in the treatment of cancer than reported to date. Here, we provide a thorough review of the potential role of the gut and locally resident bacterial microbiota in modulating responses to different cancer therapeutics to demonstrate the association between the gut or locally resident bacterial microbiota and cancer therapy. Probable mechanisms, such as metabolism, the immune response and the translocation of microbiome constituents, are discussed to promote future research into the association between the microbiome and other types of cancer. We conclude that the interaction between the host immune system and the microbiome may be the basis of the role of the microbiome in cancer therapies. Future research on the association between host immunity and the microbiome may improve the efficacy of several cancer treatments and provide insights into the cause of treatment-related side effects.
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