Background/Aims: Diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) represents the major cause of morbidity and mortality among diabetics. Exercise has been reported to be effective to protect the heart from cardiac ...injury during the development of DCM. However, the potential cardioprotective effect of exercise in advanced DCM remains unclear. Methods: Seven-week old male C57BL/6 wild-type or db/db mice were either subjected to a running exercise program for 15 weeks or kept sedentary. Cardiac function, myocardial apoptosis and fibrosis, and mitochondrial biogenesis were examined for evaluation of cardiac injury. Results: A reduction in ejection fraction and fractional shortening in db/db mice was significantly reversed by exercise training. DCM induced remarkable cardiomyocyte apoptosis and increased ratio of Bax/Bcl-2 at the protein level. Meanwhile, DCM caused slightly myocardial fibrosis with elevated mRNA levels of collagen I and collagen III. Also, DCM resulted in a reduction of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) replication and transcription, together with reduced mtDNA content and impaired mitochondrial ultrastructure. All of these changes could be abolished by exercise training. Furthermore, DCM-associated inhibition of PGC-1α and Akt signaling was significantly activated by exercise, indicating that exercise-induced activation of PGC-1α and Akt signaling might be responsible for mediating cardioprotective effect of exercise in DCM. Conclusion: Exercise preserves cardiac function, prevents myocardial apoptosis and fbrosis, and improves mitochondrial biogenesis in the late stage of DCM. Exercise-induced activation of PGC-1α and Akt signaling might be promising therapeutic targets for advanced DCM.
Due to the intermittent and uncontrollable nature of wind resources and inflexible operation of conventional generation units, they present challenges for the power system to integrate more wind ...power. With its unique flexibility on the demand side, the data center can be considered as an effective solution to relieve wind curtailment. Moreover, with the help of waste heat recovery module, the data center can reduce the utilization of conventional thermal units especially in the residential heating sector which increases the flexibility of system operation and facilitates more renewable integration. In this paper, a flexible workload management and resource scheduling model are proposed to achieve a multi-energy co-optimization for data center and enhance the integration of wind power. A two-stage stochastic programming model is formulated to address the uncertainties involved in this process. The proposed model is examined by a simulative data center microgrid and the numerical results demonstrate its effectiveness and robustness.
In order to study the effect of the venting direction on explosion pressure in liquefied petroleum gas pipelines, explosion accident scenarios are experimentally tested and numerically simulated in a ...pipeline model with different explosion venting directions. In addition, the effect characteristic is analyzed through the pressure field varying with time and peak pressure varying with the distance. Results show that the pressure in the vertical branch decreases sharply, while the pressure in the horizontal branch does not show an obvious decrease with explosion venting of the vertical branch. However, the pressure decreases obviously in both branches with explosion venting of the horizontal branch, and the biggest reduction of peak pressure of monitoring points is 73.55% compared with that without venting. In addition, large areas of negative pressure appear in both branches with explosion venting of the vertical branch; however, a large area of negative pressure area appears in the horizontal branch with explosion venting of the horizontal branch. What is more, the arrival time of peak pressure in the main pipe of the explosion pipeline is significantly reduced with explosion venting, which is caused by the different generation ways of peak pressure. The effect analysis result of the venting direction on explosion pressure could aid the optimal layout design of LPG pipelines with the location of venting and important facilities as well as with the selection of negative-pressure-resistant material and higher-accuracy sensors.
With the increasing number of vehicles, the generating vehicular data exceeds the capacity of mobile edge computing (MEC). Therefore, studying the interaction and collaboration of edge computing and ...cloud computing is of significance to provide vehicular users with low‐latency high‐rate services. This paper first proposes a MEC‐cloud computing collaboration architecture for Internet of vehicles, then designs the interconnection/interaction framework between MEC and cloud computing. We consider reducing computation delay and power consumption, and formulate an energy‐efficient workload allocation problem with load balancing and dynamic voltage frequency scaling technology, to obtain the optimal workload allocations of MEC and cloud computing. We then present the overall distribution optimization algorithm to solve this problem. The simulation and numerical results show that by saving communication bandwidth and reducing transmission delay, MEC significantly enhances the performance of cloud computing. Besides, the proposed workload balance scheme is better than the benchmark schemes in terms of power consumption and latency.
We propose a MEC‐cloud computing collaboration architecture for Internet of Vehicle (IoV), then design the interconnection/interaction framework between MEC and cloud computing. Considering reducing computation delay and power consumption, we formulate an energy‐efficient workload allocation problem and provide the overall distribution optimization algorithm, to obtain the optimal workload allocation scheme of MEC and cloud computing. The numerical results demonstrate the behavior of the proposed scheme, and verify its energy efficiency.
Abstract Purpose Interdisciplinary fields have become the driving force of modern science and a significant source of scientific innovation. However, there is still a paucity of analysis about the ...essential characteristics of disciplines’ cross-disciplinary impact. Design/methodology/approach In this study, we define cross-disciplinary impact on one discipline as its impact to other disciplines, and refer to a three-dimensional framework of variety-balance-disparity to characterize the structure of cross-disciplinary impact. The variety of cross-disciplinary impact of the discipline was defined as the proportion of the high cross-disciplinary impact publications, and the balance and disparity of cross-disciplinary impact were measured as well. To demonstrate the cross-disciplinary impact of the disciplines in science, we chose Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) as the data source, and investigated the relationship between disciplines’ cross-disciplinary impact and their positions in the Hierarchy of Science (HOS). Findings Analytical results show that there is a significant correlation between the ranking of cross-disciplinary impact and the HOS structure, and that the discipline exerts a greater cross-disciplinary impact on its neighboring disciplines. Several bibliometric features that measure the hardness of a discipline, including the number of references, the number of cited disciplines, the citation distribution, and the Price index have a significant positive effect on the variety of cross-disciplinary impact. The number of references, the number of cited disciplines, and the citation distribution have significant positive and negative effects on balance and disparity, respectively. It is concluded that the less hard the discipline, the greater the cross-disciplinary impact, the higher balance and the lower disparity of cross-disciplinary impact. Research limitations In the empirical analysis of HOS, we only included five broad disciplines. This study also has some biases caused by the data source and applied regression models. Practical implications This study contributes to the formulation of discipline-specific policies and promotes the growth of interdisciplinary research, as well as offering fresh insights for predicting the cross-disciplinary impact of disciplines. Originality/value This study provides a new perspective to properly understand the mechanisms of cross-disciplinary impact and disciplinary integration.
Analysis of spatial patterns to describe the spatial correlation between a tree location and marks (i.e., structural variables), can reveal stand history, population dynamics, competition and ...symbiosis. However, most studies of spatial patterns have concentrated on tree location and tree sizes rather than on crown asymmetry especially with direct analysis among marks characterizing facilitation and competition among of trees, and thus cannot reveal the cause of the distributions of tree locations and quantitative marks. To explore the spatial correlation among quantitative and vectorial marks and their implication on population dynamics, we extracted vertical and horizontal marks (tree height and crown projection area) characterizing tree size, and a vectorial mark (crown displacement vector characterizing the crown asymmetry) using an airborne laser scanning point cloud obtained from two forest stands in Oxfordshire, UK. Quantitatively and vectorially marked spatial patterns were developed, with corresponding null models established for a significance test. We analyzed eight types of univariate and bivariate spatial patterns, after first proposing four types. The accuracy of the pattern analysis based on an algorithm-segmented point cloud was compared with that of a truly segmented point cloud. The algorithm-segmented point cloud managed to detect 70–86% of patterns correctly. The eight types of spatial patterns analyzed the spatial distribution of trees, the spatial correlation between tree size and facilitated or competitive interactions of sycamore and other species. These four types of univariate patterns jointly showed that, at smaller scales, the trees tend to be clustered, and taller, with larger crowns due to the detected facilitations among trees in the study area. The four types of bivariate patterns found that at smaller scales there are taller trees and more facilitation among sycamore and other species, while crown size is mostly homogeneous across scales. These results indicate that interspecific facilitation and competition mainly affect tree height in the study area. This work further confirms the connection of tree size with individual facilitation and competition, revealing the potential spatial structure that previously was hard to detect.
With the development of mobile phone camera technology, mobile phones can take a large number of macro photography images that previously could only be taken by professional cameras. Therefore, it is ...of great significance to study the quality of macro photography images. For this reason, a macro photography image visual quality evaluation database is established and it is named as MP2020. The database contains 100 reference images and 800 distorted images of four distortion types, including 200 distorted images of JPEG 2000, 200 distorted images of JPEG, 200 distorted images of white noise, and 200 distorted images of Gaussian blur. The DMOS values in the database were calculated from 48000 data which are provided by 60 subjects. Ten classical image quality assessment algorithms were tested on the MP2020 database. The experimental results show that the existing image quality assessment algorithms, which are widely used, are not applicable to the macro photography images. Therefore, MP2020 would contribute to the improvement of existing algorithms and the development of new algorithms. MP2020 has been uploaded to GitHub for download.
The motor protein kinesin-1 plays an important role in polarized sorting of transport vesicles to the axon. However, the mechanism by which the axonal entry of kinesin-1-dependent cargo transport is ...regulated remains unclear. Microtubule-associated protein MAP7 (ensconsin in Drosophila) is an essential kinesin-1 cofactor and promotes kinesin-1 recruitment to microtubules. Here, we found that MAP7 family member MAP7D2 concentrates at the proximal axon, where it overlaps with the axon initial segment and interacts with kinesin-1. Depletion of MAP7D2 results in reduced axonal cargo entry and defects in axon development and neuronal migration. We propose a model in which MAP7D2 in the proximal axon locally promotes kinesin-1-mediated cargo entry into the axon.
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•The microtubule-binding domain of MAP7D2 targets the proximal axon•MAP7D2 is required for axon development•MAP7D2 associates with all three kinesin-1 family members•MAP7D2 promotes kinesin-1-mediated cargo transport in axons
Kinesin-1 is well known for transporting vesicles and organelles into to the axon. Pan et al. show that MAP7D2 concentrates at the proximal axon, regulates kinesin-1 activity, and locally promotes kinesin-1-mediated cargo trafficking into axons. Specific microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) that locally control motor activities is an emerging concept.
This study sought to identify circular RNAs (circRNA) that participate in the regulation of head and neck cancer (HNC), analyze their clinical application, and predict their molecular mechanism ...during HNC.
High-throughput sequencing was used to analyze circRNA expression in 18 matched HNC and adjacent normal tissues. Target circRNAs with significantly differential expression were obtained. In 103 HNC and adjacent normal tissues, real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to verify the differential expression of target circRNAs. This data was combined with clinicopathological information to analyze the diagnostic value of target circRNA. Bioinformatics was used to find target circRNAs that acted as competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) and construct a circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory network. mRNA expression was verified by immunohistochemistry (IHC).
A total of 714 differentially expressed circRNAs were detected in HNC, and the low expression of hsa_circ_0001675 was particularly significant (fold change FC = -4.85,
= 6.305E-05). hsa_circ_0001675 had significantly lower expression in HNC than in normal tissue (
< 0.01). Low hsa_circ_0001675 expression was positively associated with tumor invasion and clinical staging (
< 0.05), and its area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.7776. Low hsa_circ_0001675 expression also correlated with the overall survival (OS) rate and the progression-free survival (PFS) rate of HNC patients (
< 0.001). Bioinformatics was used to construct a ceRNA network of hsa_circ_0001675 with six differentially expressed miRNAs (hsa-miR-330-5p, hsa-miR-498, hsa-miR-532-3p, hsa-miR-577, hsa-miR-1248, and hsa-miR-1305) and 411 differentially expressed mRNAs and found that the neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, and the cAMP and calcium signaling pathways were particularly enriched. Further bioinformatics and IHC analysis showed that miR577/TESC is the likely downstream signaling pathway for hsa_circ_0001675.
This study showed that hsa_circ_0001675 is downregulated in HNC and could be an effective biomarker for HNC diagnosis. In addition, hsa_circ_0001675 may have a potential ceRNA mechanism and suppress HNC disease progression through the hsa_circ_0001675-miRNA-mRNA axis.
Two nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs) TT-2FIC and DTP-2FIC were developed by using naphthalene substituted thieno3,2-
b
thiophene as the core, alkylthiophene, alkylthieno3,2-
b
thiophene or 4-alkyl-4
H
...-dithieno3,2-
b
:2′,3′-
d
pyrrole as the π-bridges. This core could endow NFAs with coplanar backbone and twisted conjugated sidechains. In this way, over-aggregation of NFAs was suppressed, and TT-2FIC and DTP-2FIC exhibited good solubility and optimal π-π stacking. Eventually, PBDB-T:TT-2FIC and PBDB-T:DTP-2FIC cells achieved decent PCE of 4.25% and 4.96%, respectively.
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