Residents of nursing homes often have a very limited access to natural daylight, which is the main environmental cue for circadian entrainment that usually cannot be compensated by standard indoor ...lighting. For the development of adequate modernization strategies with regard to a more human-centred lighting approach, reliable field measurements of the circadian effectiveness of the prevalent lighting conditions are required. To ease the task for the lighting practitioner, our lab recently developed a simplified method of estimating the biologically meaningful circadian stimulus (CS) metric using standard measurement equipment. In this work, the proposed method is applied for the first time in field measurements to assess the circadian effectiveness of the indoor light conditions including daylight entry of a nursing home in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main area. Reference thresholds for low, moderate and high circadian stimuli derived from the literature were used for subsequent data analysis. Mostly, moderate to rather low CS values were found. It is concluded that the amount of circadian-effective light is insufficient to provoke proper circadian stimulation, which may lead to progressive circadian disruptions manifesting in adverse effects on the residents’ health and well-being. Further evidence is provided that the insufficient-lighting-situation in nursing homes is a serious problem in long-term care and needs urgent consideration in health policy.
Multichannel LED luminaires with more than three channels offer the advantage to vary the spectrum and keeping the chromaticity steady. However, the optimisation calculations of various quality ...metrics are a challenge for real-time implementation, especially for the limited resources of a luminaire’s microcontroller. Here, we present a method in which a five-channel system is simulated with a quickly solvable 3-channel system by defining virtual channels, each consisting of two LED channels. An analysis of the influence of the parameterisation of the virtual valences on various quality metrics is presented. It shows how these parameters must be set at the time of the mixing calculation, in order to optimise the desired quality aspect. The mixing calculation can thus be carried out in real-time without high hardware requirements and is suitable for further developments, for example, to compensate for colour drift of the LEDs through sensor feedback.
Chemokines form a family of proteins with critical roles in many biological processes in health and disease conditions, including cardiovascular, autoimmune diseases, infections, and cancer. Many ...chemokines engage in heterophilic interactions to form heterodimers, leading to synergistic activity enhancement or reduction dependent on the nature of heterodimer-forming chemokines. In mixtures, different chemokine species with diverse activities coexist in dynamic equilibrium, leading to the observation of their combined response in biological assays. To overcome this problem, we produced a non-dissociating CXCL4-CXCL12 chemokine heterodimer OHD
as a new tool for studying the biological activities and mechanisms of chemokine heterodimers in biological environments. Using the OHD
, we show that the CXCL4-CXCL12 chemokine heterodimer inhibits the CXCL12-driven migration of triple-negative MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells. We also show that the CXCL4-CXCL12 chemokine heterodimer binds and activates the CXCR4 receptor.
Gene therapy has a strong potential in neuroscience by suppressing or replacing abnormalities in genetic materials. The employment of nano-gene carrier for neurological disorders is comparatively ...young and restricted since the aim to effectively deliver therapeutic agents into the central nervous system (CNS) commonly has confronted difficulties of several natural occurring barriers in the body and unfavorable characteristics of pharmaceutical agents. Two major anatomical and biochemical barriers are blood-brain barrier (BBB) and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (BCSFB), which significantly prevent permeation of most drugs and genes to brain parenchyma. In this concern, nanotechnology emerges as an innovative method for transporting therapeutics to the CNS. Diverse nano-systems have been closely investigated, some of which have demonstrated initial success for in vivo studies. The perspectives of nanotechnology for gene therapy would be a promising field to be further explored in the near future.
A technological breakthrough is embodied in the successful demonstration of an extended interaction klystron (EIK) amplifier, which has produced over 7.5 kW of peak output power at W-band (94 GHz). ...An efficiency of ~17% has been achieved with a depressed collector. The EIK is driven by a 20-kV, 4-A sheet beam in a permanent magnet solenoid, with 99% beam current transmission from gun to collector. Key features that contribute to the success of this device are: tight beam focusing and correspondingly narrow beam tunnel, which are made possible by the solenoidal focusing and which provide high interaction impedance and high gain per unit length and the incorporation of design elements to stabilize the inherently over-moded circuit. Measured performance agrees well with 3-D particle-in-cell simulations.
•Proposition of a practical and effective method for condition monitoring.•Construction of a new health indicator based on different data-types.•Utilization of electrical signals to detect most ...electrical machine defects.•Fault classification based on an improved ANFIS model.•Application of the proposed methodology on various systems.
Smart manufacturing is one of the key parts of the fourth industry revolution (Industry 4.0). It offers promising perspectives for high reliability, availability, maintainability and safety production process, but also makes the systems more complex and challenging for health assessment. To deal with these challenges, one needs to develop a robust approach to monitor and assess the system health state. In this paper, a practical and effective method that can be applied for fault detection and diagnostics of a given system is developed. The proposed method relies on a pattern recognition technique based on the construction of a new health indicator. This health indicator, which can be applied to different types of sensor measurements, is fed to an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) to detect the health states of the system and diagnose the causes. Furthermore, the performance and the robustness of the proposed method are highlighted by considering various case studies under numerous operating conditions.
Copper(II) oxide nanoparticles (
NP
CuO) have many industrial applications, but are highly cytotoxic because they generate reactive oxygen species (ROS). It is unknown whether the damaging ROS are ...generated primarily from copper leached from the nanoparticles, or whether the nanoparticle surface plays a significant role. To address this question, we separated nanoparticles from the supernatant containing dissolved copper, and measured their ability to damage plasmid DNA with addition of hydrogen peroxide, ascorbate, or both. While DNA damage from the supernatant (measured using an electrophoresis assay) can be explained solely by dissolved copper ions, damage by the nanoparticles in the presence of ascorbate is an order of magnitude higher than can be explained by dissolved copper and must, therefore, depend primarily upon the nanoparticle surface. DNA damage is time-dependent, with shorter incubation times resulting in higher EC
50
values. Hydroxyl radical (
*
OH) is the main ROS generated by
NP
CuO/hydrogen peroxide as determined by EPR measurements;
NP
CuO/hydrogen peroxide/ascorbate conditions generate ascorbyl, hydroxyl, and superoxide radicals. Thus,
NP
CuO generate ROS through several mechanisms, likely including Fenton-like and Haber-Weiss reactions from the surface or dissolved copper ions. The same radical species were observed when
NP
CuO suspensions were replaced with the supernatant containing leached copper, washed
NP
CuO, or dissolved copper solutions. Overall,
NP
CuO generate significantly more ROS and DNA damage in the presence of ascorbate than can be explained simply from dissolved copper, and the
NP
CuO surface must play a large role.
We present the first vacuum electronic traveling wave amplifier to incorporate an interaction circuit fabricated by ultraviolet (UV) photolithography and electroforming, demonstrating over 60 W of ...output power at 214.5 GHz from a 12.1 kV, 118 mA electron beam. The tube also achieved an instantaneous bandwidth of ~15 GHz in G-band in the small signal regime. The all-copper circuit was fabricated in two layers using a UV-transparent polymer monofilament embedded in the photoresist to form the beam tunnel prior to electroforming. Effects arising from fabrication errors and target tolerances are discussed. This microfabrication technique and demonstration paves the way for a new era of vacuum electron devices that could extend into the 1-2 THz range with advances in high-current-density electron guns.
Alpha herpesviruses (α-HV) infect host mucosal epithelial cells prior to establishing a life-long latent infection in the peripheral nervous system. The initial spread of viral particles from mucosa ...to the nervous system and the role of intrinsic immune responses at this barrier is not well understood. Using primary neurons cultured in compartmentalized chambers, prior studies performed on Pseudorabies virus (PRV) have demonstrated that type I and type II interferons (IFNs) induce a local antiviral response in axons via distinct mechanisms leading to a reduction in viral particle transport to the neuronal nucleus. A new class of interferons known as type III IFNs has been shown to play an immediate role against viral infection in mucosal epithelial cells. However, the antiviral effects of type III IFNs within neurons during α-HV infection are largely unknown. In this study, we focused on elucidating the antiviral activity of type III IFN against PRV neuronal infection, and we compared the interferon-stimulated gene (ISGs) induction pattern in neurons to non-neuronal cells. We found that IFN pre-exposure of both primary neurons and fibroblast cells significantly reduces PRV virus yield, albeit by differential STAT activation and ISG induction patterns. Notably, we observed that type III IFNs trigger the expression of a subset of ISGs mainly through STAT1 activation to induce an antiviral state in primary peripheral neurons.
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