Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) was initially recognized as a factor that causes the necrosis of tumors, but it has been recently identified to have additional important functions as a ...pathological component of autoimmune diseases. TNF-α binds to two different receptors, which initiate signal transduction pathways. These pathways lead to various cellular responses, including cell survival, differentiation, and proliferation. However, the inappropriate or excessive activation of TNF-α signaling is associated with chronic inflammation and can eventually lead to the development of pathological complications such as autoimmune diseases. Understanding of the TNF-α signaling mechanism has been expanded and applied for the treatment of immune diseases, which has resulted in the development of effective therapeutic tools, including TNF-α inhibitors. Currently, clinically approved TNF-α inhibitors have shown noticeable potency in a variety of autoimmune diseases, and novel TNF-α signaling inhibitors are being clinically evaluated. In this review, we briefly introduce the impact of TNF-α signaling on autoimmune diseases and its inhibitors, which are used as therapeutic agents against autoimmune diseases.
Electrically insulating polymer dielectrics with high energy densities and excellent thermal conductivities are showing tremendous potential for dielectric energy storage. However, the practical ...application of polymer dielectrics often requires mutually exclusive multifunctional properties such as high dielectric constants, high breakdown strengths, and high thermal conductivities. The rational assembly of 2D nanofillers of boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) into a well‐aligned micro‐sandwich structure in polyimide (PI) composites is reported. The alternating stacking of rGO and BNNS synergistically exploits the large difference in their electrical conductivities to yield a high dielectric constant with a moderate breakdown strength. Moreover, the distinctively separated rGO and BNNS layers give rise to higher thermal conductivities of composites than those containing mixed fillers because of reduced phonon scattering at the interfaces between two identical fillers, as verified by molecular dynamics simulations. Consequently, the micro‐sandwich nanocomposite prevails over the PI film with a simultaneously high dielectric constant of ≈579, a high energy density (43‐fold higher than PI) and an excellent thermal conductivity (11‐fold higher than PI) at a low hybrid filler content of only 2.5 vol%. The multifunctional nanocomposites developed in this work are promising for flexible dielectrics with excellent heat dissipation.
Multifunctional micro‐sandwich composites with a high thermal conductivity, a high dielectric constant, and a low dielectric loss are developed with alternatingly stacked reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS) layers in a polyimide matrix. The synergistic alignments of rGO and BNNS result in a high energy density and an excellent thermal management capability for flexible dielectrics.
Realization of sensing multidirectional strains is essential to understanding the nature of complex motions. Traditional uniaxial strain sensors lack the capability to detect motions working in ...different directions, limiting their applications in unconventional sensing technology areas, like sophisticated human–machine interface and real‐time monitoring of dynamic body movements. Herein, a stretchable multidirectional strain sensor is developed using highly aligned, anisotropic carbon nanofiber (ACNF) films via a facile, low‐cost, and scalable electrospinning approach. The fabricated strain sensor exhibits semitransparency, good stretchability of over 30%, outstanding durability for over 2500 cycles, and remarkable anisotropic strain sensing performance with maximum gauge factors of 180 and 0.3 for loads applied parallel and perpendicular to fiber alignment, respectively. Cross‐plied ACNF strain sensors are fabricated by orthogonally stacking two single‐layer ACNFs, which present a unique capability to distinguish the directions and magnitudes of strains with a remarkable selectivity of 3.84, highest among all stretchable multidirectional strain sensors reported so far. Their unconventional applications are demonstrated by detecting multi‐degrees‐of‐freedom synovial joint movements of the human body and monitoring wrist movements for systematic improvement of golf performance. The potential applications of novel multidirectional sensors reported here may shed new light into future development of next‐generation soft, flexible electronics.
The multidirectional strain sensing capability of a strain sensor consisting of highly aligned carbon nanofiber (ACNF) films produced via electrospinning is investigated. The sensor possesses exceptional selectivity to differentiate strains applied in various in‐plane directions due to the anisotropic deformation behaviors of ACNFs and, as such, is practically useful in analyzing complex motions with multi‐degrees‐of‐freedom.
Context: Red ginseng (heat-processed Panax ginseng) is a well-known alternative medicine with pharmacological antidiabetic activity. It exerts pharmacological effects through the transformation of ...saponin into metabolites by the intestinal microbiota. Given that intestinal conditions and intestinal microflora vary among individuals, the pharmacological effects of orally administered red ginseng likely may vary among individuals.
Objective: To overcome this variation and produce homogeneously effective red ginseng, we evaluated the antidiabetic effects of probiotic-fermented red ginseng in a mouse model.
Materials and methods: The antidiabetic efficacy of orally administered probiotic-fermented red ginseng was assessed in ICR mice after induction of diabetes using streptozotocin (170 mg/kg body weight). Samples were given orally for 8 weeks, and indicators involved in diabetic disorders such as body weight change, water intake, blood glucose, glucose tolerance and various biochemical parameters were determined.
Results: Oral administration of probiotic-fermented red ginseng significantly decreased the level of blood glucose of about 62.5% in the fasting state and induced a significant increase in glucose tolerance of about 10.2% compared to the control diabetic mice. Additionally, various indicators of diabetes and biochemical data (e.g., blood glycosylated haemoglobin level, serum concentrations of insulin, and α-amylase activity) showed a significant improvement in the diabetic conditions of the mice treated with probiotic-fermented red ginseng in comparison with those of control diabetic mice.
Discussion and conclusion: Our results demonstrate the antidiabetic effects of probiotic-fermented red ginseng in the streptozotocin-induced mouse diabetes model and suggest that probiotic-fermented red ginseng may be a uniformly effective red ginseng product.
Due to a variability and uncertainty of photovoltaic (PV) output power, PV operators may be subject to significant penalties on forthcoming energy markets. Thus, the accurate prediction of PV output ...power plays a very important role in energy market. This paper proposes a novel solar prediction scheme for one-hour ahead prediction of solar irradiance based on various meteorological factors including the cloud cover and support vector machine (SVM). A k-means clustering algorithm is applied to collect meteorological data and the entire data are classified into three clusters based on similar daily weather types. The same cluster data are used for the SVM regression in the training stage. We also investigate the prediction error analysis. It is shown that the solar irradiance prediction errors of each prediction scheme can be categorized to be leptokurtic and a t location-scale distribution is proposed as a distribution fitting for the prediction errors. In addition, the power and energy capacities of an energy storage system (ESS), which can absorb the prediction errors, are estimated from the probability density functions. Numerical results show that the proposed SVM regression scheme significantly improves the prediction accuracy and reduces the ESS installation capacity.
Highlights
Two functionally different anisotropic layers are rationally assembled for highly selective and stretchable multidirectional strain sensors.
Concurrently excellent selectivity, ...sensitivity, stretchability, and linearity up to 100% strain is demonstrated for the first time in a multidirectional strain sensor.
A novel stepwise crack propagation mechanism is proposed to enable high stretchability and linearity.
Flexible multidirectional strain sensors are crucial to accurately determining the complex strain states involved in emerging sensing applications. Although considerable efforts have been made to construct anisotropic structures for improved selective sensing capabilities, existing anisotropic sensors suffer from a trade-off between high sensitivity and high stretchability with acceptable linearity. Here, an ultrasensitive, highly selective multidirectional sensor is developed by rational design of functionally different anisotropic layers. The bilayer sensor consists of an aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) array assembled on top of a periodically wrinkled and cracked CNT–graphene oxide film. The transversely aligned CNT layer bridge the underlying longitudinal microcracks to effectively discourage their propagation even when highly stretched, leading to superior sensitivity with a gauge factor of 287.6 across a broad linear working range of up to 100% strain. The wrinkles generated through a pre-straining/releasing routine in the direction transverse to CNT alignment is responsible for exceptional selectivity of 6.3, to the benefit of accurate detection of loading directions by the multidirectional sensor. This work proposes a unique approach to leveraging the inherent merits of two cross-influential anisotropic structures to resolve the trade-off among sensitivity, selectivity, and stretchability, demonstrating promising applications in full-range, multi-axis human motion detection for wearable electronics and smart robotics.
In this paper, we consider the problem of optimal dynamic service function (SF) placement and flow routing in a SF chaining (SFC) enabled network. We formulate a multi-objective optimization problem ...to maximize the acceptable flow rate and to minimize the energy cost for multiple service chains. We transform the multi-objective optimization problem into a single-objective mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem, and prove that the problem is NP-hard. We propose a polynomial time algorithm based on linear relaxation and rounding to approximate the optimal solution of the MILP. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the effects of the energy budget, the network topology, and the amount of server resources on the acceptable flow rate. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve near-optimal performance and can significantly increase the acceptable flow rate and the service capacity compared to other algorithms under an energy cost budget.
As an emerging area in organic electronics, polymer memories have become an active research topic in recent years, because they are likely to be an alternative or supplementary technology to the ...conventional memory technology facing the problems and challenges in miniaturizing from microscale to nanoscale. This review provides a summary of the widely reported electrical switching phenomena in polymers and the corresponding polymer electronic memories. A general introduction to the current state of memory technology and some basic concepts of electronic memories is first presented, followed by a brief historical development and some key advances in polymer electronic memories. The subsequent sections give a comprehensive review of three categories of polymer electronic memories, classified by drawing the mechanistic analogy between the polymer switching element and one of the three primary circuit elements,
viz., capacitor, transistor and resistor. Emphasis is placed on the relationships among material structures and properties, memory devices and operating mechanisms. Finally, the challenges facing the research and development in the field of polymer electronic memories are summarized.
Ecological civilization has a significant role in the sustainable development of the regional tourism industry. The high dependence of tourism on ecological civilization contributes to the complex ...interaction between the two. How to coordinate the relationship between tourism and ecological civilization has affected the sustainable development and ecological civilization strategy of Guangdong Province and even the whole of China. Previous quantitative research on the coupling and coordination of the two has certain limitations. One limitation is the lack of dynamic prediction. In this paper, an evaluation index system of the relationship between tourism and ecological civilization is constructed. Quantitative methodologies such as entropy-weight, gray relation analysis, and obstacle degree are integrated. Meanwhile, the gray model (GM), GM (1,1) model is used for prediction. The data sample is based on the years 2005 to 2021 in Guangdong Province, China. The main results are as follows: (1) Tourism and ecological civilization both rise slowly from a low starting point. Affected by the epidemic, tourism declines rapidly in 2020 and rises slowly in 2021, but it still lags behind ecological civilization. Both continue a slow upward trend over the next decade. (2) The degree of coupling coordination has undergone a fluctuating evolution from moderate disorder to mild coordination and falls back to the barely coordination stage from 2020 to 2021. In the next decade, the coupling coordination between the two will be gradually optimized. The coupling coordination degree will be greater than 0.8 having entered a benign coordination stage in 2028; (3) The gray relation and obstacle factors show different dynamics. High gray relation comes from the ecological civilization. Partial factors are still in the region with high gray relation and high obstacle degree. The results of this paper are expected to contribute to a more appropriate ecotourism model and provide some enlightenment for implementing the effectively coordinated sustainable development of tourism and ecological civilization in Guangdong Province, China, as well as those areas with the same industrial characteristics.
The parabolic equation (PE) method is employed to solve the Loran-C additional secondary factors (ASFs) over irregular terrain. Based on the split-step Fourier transform (SSFT) algorithm, the method ...has been proven to be numerically efficient. The ASF results are compared to those of the integral equation (IE) method and the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Very good agreements are observed. The computational time of the PE method is several orders less than that of the other two. The memory requirement is similar to the IE, and less than the FDTD method.
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