Compound eyes formation in decapod crustaceans occurs after the nauplius stage. However, the key genes and regulatory mechanisms of compound eye development during crustacean embryonic development ...have not yet been clarified. In this study, RNA-seq was used to investigate the gene expression profiles of Neocaridina denticulata sinensis from nauplius to zoea stage. Based on RNA-seq data analysis, the phototransduction and insect hormone biosynthesis pathways were enriched, and molting-related neuropeptides were highly expressed. There was strong cell proliferation in the embryo prior to compound eye development. The formation of the visual system and the hormonal regulation of hatching were the dominant biological events during compound eye development. The functional analysis of DEGs across all four developmental stages showed that cuticle formation, muscle growth and the establishment of immune system occurred from nauplius to zoea stage. Key genes related to eye development were discovered, including those involved in the determination and differentiation of the eye field, eye-color formation, and visual signal transduction. In conclusion, the results increase the understanding of the molecular mechanism of eye formation in crustacean embryonic stage.
•Impacts of fouling and ambient temperature on ASHP's performances were studied.•Increased fouling level and ambient air temperature led to poorer performances.•An equivalent temperature rise due to ...fouling was proposed and evaluated.•An improved simulated fouling approach was experimentally validated.
Air source heat pumps (ASHPs) have been widely used for providing buildings with heating in winter and cooling in summer. In certain locations, with an increased level of air pollutions, fouling of the outdoor coil in a space cooling ASHP unit may appear, which affects the operating performances of the ASHP unit. Furthermore, the operating performances of an ASHP unit can also be affected by ambient air temperature (Ta). In this paper, a field study on the effects of outdoor coil fouling at different Ta on the operating performances of a field space cooling ASHP unit is presented. The study results demonstrated that the operating performances of the field ASHP unit were significantly affected by the changes in both Ta and percentage of fouled outdoor coil surface (PFOCS). For example, at Ta = 30 °C, the variation in PFOCS from 0 to 100% led to a reduction in COP for the field ASHP unit from 2.7 to 2.0. At a fixed PFOCS of 60%, the changes in Ta from 26 to 33 °C resulted in a reduction in COP from 2.6 to 2.1. In order to more conveniently investigate the combined impacts of fouling on the operating performances of an ASHP unit at different Ta, an equivalent ambient air temperature rise (ETR) was proposed. Based on the measured and evaluated operating parameters of the field ASHP unit at different Ta and PFOCS values, ETR values at 0 - 40%, 40 - 60%, 60 - 100% and 0 - 100% PFOCS ranges were evaluated. These ETR values implied that defouling of a fouled outdoor coil may be initiated when PFOCS was at 40 - 60%. With the ETR values for the full PFOCS range of 0 - 100%, the impact of full fouling on the operating performances of an ASHP unit may be evaluated as if it was operated with a clean outdoor coil but at an equivalent ambient air temperature of Ta + ETR.
Osteoporosis (OP) is one of the most common metabolic skeletal disorders and is commonly seen in the elderly population and postmenopausal women. It is mainly associated with progressive loss of bone ...mineral density, persistent deterioration of bone microarchitecture, and increased fracture risk. To date, drug therapy is the primary method used to prevent and treat osteoporosis. However, long-term drug therapy inevitably leads to drug resistance and specific side effects. Therefore, researchers are constantly searching for new monomer compounds from natural plants. As a candidate for the treatment of osteoporosis, curcumin (CUR) is a natural phenolic compound with various pharmacological and biological activities, including antioxidant, anti-apoptotic, and anti-inflammatory. This compound has gained research attention for maintaining bone health in various osteoporosis models. We reviewed preclinical and clinical studies of curcumin in preventing and alleviating osteoporosis. These results suggest that if subjected to rigorous pharmacological and clinical trials, naturally-derived curcumin could be used as a complementary and alternative medicine for the treatment of osteoporosis by targeting osteoporosis-related mechanistic pathways. This review summarizes the mechanisms of action and potential therapeutic applications of curcumin in the prevention and mitigation of osteoporosis and provides reference for further research and development of curcumin.
•TEPS is a tube encircled photoelectric sensor used to monitor the degree of frosting.•A novel TEPS defrosting control method was proposed and a field test was conducted.•Accuracy and stability of ...the TEPS method under different conditions are confirmed.•Advantages of the TEPS method compared to the conventional T-T method are presented.•The TEPS method is a promising alternative defrosting control method for ASHP.
To improve the defrosting accuracy of air source heat pumps (ASHPs), this paper proposes a novel defrosting control method by applying tube encircled photoelectric sensors (TEPSs). A field test was conducted for two heating seasons in Beijing, China, to verify the feasibility and practicality of the novel TEPS method. The test results revealed that irrespective of the environmental conditions, the TEPS method can initiate defrosting in similar situations: most of the heat exchanger surface had been covered by frost; the compressor suction temperature decreased by ~9 °C; the compressor discharge temperature increased by ~16 °C; and the heating capacity decreased by ~30%. Furthermore, the TEPS method was verified to make more accurate and more reasonable defrosting decisions than the traditional T-T method under both frosting and non-frosting conditions. The results indicate that the TEPS method is a competitive defrosting control method that can be used for ASHPs.
The objective of this study is to evaluate the risk of secondary autoimmune diseases in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients treated with alemtuzumab (ALZ) through a meta-analysis.
PubMed, Web of ...Science, OVID, EMBASE, and Cochrane central register of controlled trials were searched. Information and data were screened and extracted by 2 researchers. The obtained data were analyzed using the R software meta package. Quality assessment was conducted using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). The causes of heterogeneity were analyzed using subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis. Publication bias was evaluated using funnel plots and Egger's test.
The search retrieved a total of 3530 papers from the databases. After screening, a total of 37 studies were included in the meta-analysis. The analysis results indicate that the pooled incidence rate of overall secondary autoimmune events (SAEs) in the included studies was 0.2824 0.2348, 0.3300 (I²=94%, p<0.01). The overall incidence of autoimmune thyroid events (ATE) was 0.2257 0.1810, 0.2703 (I²=94%, p<0.01). Among them, the rate of serious autoimmune thyroid events (SATE) was 0.0541 0.0396, 0.0687 (I²=0%, p=0.44). The incidence rates of different thyroid events were as follows: Graves' disease (GD), 0.2266 0.1632, 0.2900 (I²=83%, p<0.01); Hashimoto thyroiditis (HT), 0.0844 0.0000, 0.2262 (I²=81%, p=0.02); Hashimoto thyroiditis with hypothyroidism (HTwH), 0.0499 0.0058, 0.0940 (I²=37%, p=0.21); fluctuating thyroid dysfunction (FTD), 0.0219 0.0015, 0.0424 (I²=0%, p=0.40); transient thyroiditis (TT), 0.0178 0.0062, 0.0295 (I²=0%, p=0.94). The overall incidence of hematological events was 0.0431 0.0274, 0.0621 (I²=70%, p<0.01). The incidence rates from high to low were as follows: lymphopenia, 0.0367 0.0000, 0.0776 (I²=81%, p=0.02); Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), 0.0258 0.0199, 0.0323 (I²=25%, p=0.15); Hemolytic anemia (HA), 0.0177 0.0081, 0.0391 (I²=29%, p=0.23); pancytopenia, 0.0136 0.0000, 0.0314 (I²=0%, p=0.67); Neutropenia, 0.0081 0.0000, 0.0183 (I²=0%, p=0.42). After excluding thyroid and hematological diseases, the combined incidence of other related SAEs was 0.0061 0.0014, 0.0109 (I²=50%, p=0.02). The incidence of each disease ranked from highest to lowest as: skin psoriasis (SP), 0.0430 0.0000, 0.0929 (I²=0%, p=0.57); alopecia areata (AA), 0.0159 0.0024, 0.0372 (I²=19%, p=0.29); vitiligo, 0.0134 0.0044, 0.0223 (I²=0%, p=0.81); inflammatory atrichia (IA), 0.0103 0.0000, 0.0232 (I²=0%, p=0.43); chronic urticaria (CU), 0.0107 0.0000, 0.0233 (I²=0%, p=0.60); and nephropathy, 0.0051 0.0000, 0.0263 (I²=62%, p=0.02).
The occurrence of secondary autoimmune diseases in patients with MS treated with ALZ is noteworthy, particularly in the form of thyroid events and hematological events. Clinicians should monitor the overall condition of patients promptly for early management and avoid delayed diagnosis and treatment.
inplasy.com/inplasy-2024-4-0048/, identifier INPLASY202440048.
A sensor data acquisition system is an essential part of an industrial automation control system. However, the variety of sensor producer causes the difficulty of protocol's unity. The mechanism ...which requires the acquisition boards to be powered off when the number or types or manufacturer of sensors is changed is unreasonable. Meanwhile, traditional sensor reading cycle depends more on the embedded program skills. In this paper, to solve these problems, a new method is proposed to design a reconfigurable data acquisition system for industrial sensors, in which field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is adopted as the core controller. We use both dynamic system reconfiguration and static system reconfiguration in our design. Performance of the proposed system is verified in practical application of an automated production system of poly carboxylic acid water reducing agent.
Tolerizing DNA vaccines encoding key autoantigens are one of emerging strategies for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Among these vaccines, the most representative is pcDNA-CCOL2A1, an ...antigen-specific DNA vaccine encoding chicken type Ⅱ collagen (CCⅡ) with significant therapeutic and prophylactic efficacy in collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) rat models. We compared the in situ expression levels of CCOL2A1-mRNA and CCⅡ protein and the protective efficacies against CIA after a single dose (300 μg/kg) of this vaccine via intramuscular (IM), subcutaneous (SC) and intravenous (IV) vaccinations. The IM vaccination routes resulted in good protective efficacies in terms of decreasing CIA incidence and severity and significantly improved radiographic and histopathologic findings and scores of joints. Furthermore, IM, SC, and IV vaccinations markedly decreased serum levels of anti-type Ⅱ collagen (CⅡ) IgG antibodies, but only IM vaccination significantly reduced serum levels of rheumatoid factor (RF) and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) antibody. The vaccine exhibited a continuous CCOL2A1-mRNA expression in the tail and abdominal subcutaneous tissue injection sites, but no CCOL2A1-mRNA signal was observed in muscle. Strikingly, CCⅡ protein expression levels at the three injection sites were comparable with minimal variation. IM administration may be considered the preferred route for RA treatment in clinical practice.
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•The pcDNA-CCOL2A1 is an antigen-specific DNA vaccine encoding type Ⅱ collagen.•IM-vaccination has good protective efficacies than SC- and IV-vaccination against CIA.•Intramuscular administration may be the preferred route for treating RA in clinics.
With the development of product miniaturization in aerospace, the nuclear industry, and other fields, Ni-Co-based superalloys with excellent overall properties have become key materials for micro ...components in these fields. In the microforming field, size effects significantly impact the mechanical properties and plastic deformation behavior of materials. In this paper, micro-tensile experiments at room temperature and an ultra-low temperature were carried out to study the effects of initial microstructure and deformation temperature on the deformation behavior of Ni-Co-based superalloy thin sheets. The results show that as the ratio of specimen thickness to grain size (t/d) decreased from 8.6 to 2.4, the tensile strength σb decreased from 1221 MPa to 1090 MPa, the yield strength σs decreased from 793 MPa to 622 MPa, and the elongation decreased from 0.26 to 0.21 at room temperature. When t/d decreased from 8.6 to 2.4, σb decreased from 1458 MPa to 1132 MPa, σs decreased from 917 MPa to 730 MPa, and the elongation decreased from 0.31 to 0.28 at ultra-low temperatures. When t/d decreased from 8.6 to 2.4, the surface roughness of the specimen increased from 0.769 to 0.890 at room temperature and increased from 0.648 to 0.809 at ultra-low temperatures. During the microplastic deformation process of Ni-Co-based superalloy thin sheets, the coupled effects of surface roughening caused by free surface grains and hindered dislocation movement induced by grain boundary resulted in strain localization, which caused fracture failure of Ni-Co-based superalloy thin sheets.
•A novel TSVVR compression method is proposed to improve an air source heat pump.•The TSVVR system has variable compressor volume ratio to adapt to different regions.•Experimental comparisons of ...three ASHPs are carried out via simulation.•The improved ASHP can work at an ambient temperature of −30 °C with a higher COP.
Traditional air source heat pumps (ASHPs) only can work above about −20 °C to −25 °C, and have limitations in terms of performance. This paper proposes a novel three-cylinder two-stage variable volume ratio (TSVVR) rotary compressor to improve the performance of the ASHP. Utilizing the variation characteristics of the compressor optimal volume ratio under the different temperatures, the compressor volume can be switched for better performance. Experiments are conducted on the improved ASHP with the TSVVR rotary compressor and the two traditional ASHPs with the single-stage and two-stage compressor using the simulation of the residential building in the environmental laboratory. The results show that the TSVVR system operates in a stable manner with the COP of 1.52 W/W at −30 °C, and achieves a higher COP than the traditional ASHPs. The optimal volume ratio decreases with the decrease of the evaporation temperature. The TSVVR system works in the three-cylinder mode at low temperature and directly expands the heating capacity and compression efficiency because of the increase of the low-pressure volume and suction volume. When the water temperature varies between 40 °C and the maximum possible temperature, the COP of the TSVVR system is 18.4−22.3% higher and 6.6–7.3% higher than the single-stage and two-stage systems, respectively; when the indoor temperature varies between 12.5 °C and 18 °C, the COP of the TSVVR system is around 18.4−23.4% and 5.2–8.8% higher than the single-stage and two-stage systems, respectively. The two-cylinder mode of the TSVVR system has a larger volume ratio than the single-stage and two-stage ASHPs and is closer to the optimal volume ratio, which is more suitable for the high temperature and low load conditions. In the three-cylinder mode, the TSVVR system has a smaller volume ratio, and the compression efficiency and system refrigerant flow rate increase, when the evaporation temperature is low. Two modes ensure that the TSVVR system always work in the efficient states, especially in the low temperature environments.
Solar radiation has important impacts on buildings such as for cooling/heating load forecasting, energy consumption forecasting, and multi-energy complementary optimization. Two types of solar ...radiation data are commonly used in buildings: radiation data in typical meteorological years and measured radiation data from meteorological stations, both of which are types of historical data. However, it is difficult to predict the hourly global solar radiation, which affects the application of relevant prediction models in practical engineering. Most existing methods for predicting hourly global solar radiation have issues such as difficulty in obtaining input parameters or complex data processing, which limits their practical engineering applications. This study proposed a simplified method to accurately predict the hourly horizontal solar radiation using extraterrestrial solar radiation, weather types, cloud cover, air temperature, relative humidity, and time as the input parameters. The back-propagation network, support vector machine, and light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) models were used to establish the prediction model, and Shapley additive explanations were used to analyze the relationship between the input variables and the prediction results to simplify the structure of the prediction model. Taking Lanzhou New District in Gansu Province as an example, the results showed that the LightGBM model performed the best, with the root mean square error of 126.1 W/m2. Shapley additive explanations analysis showed that weather type was not a significant factor in the LightGBM model. Therefore, the weather type was removed from the LightGBM model and the root mean square error was 135.2 W/m2. The results showed that extra-terrestrial radiation and limited weather forecast parameters can be used to predict hourly global solar radiation with satisfactory prediction results.
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