A huge portion of energy consumption in buildings comes from heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Numerous previous works assessed the potential of natural ventilation compared to mechanical ...ventilation and proved their justification on the field. Nevertheless, it is a major difficulty to collect enough information from the literature to make decisions between different natural ventilation solutions with a given situation and boundary conditions. The current study tests the passive air conduction system (PACS) variations in the design phase of a medium-sized new winery’s cellar and production hall in Villány, Hungary. A computational fluid dynamics simulation based comparative analysis enabled to determine the differences in updraft (UD) and downdraught (DD) PACS, whereby the latter was found to be more efficient. While the DD PACS performed an air change range of 1.02 h−1 to 5.98 h−1, the UD PACS delivered −0.25 h−1 to 12.82 h−1 air change rate. The ventilation performance of the DD version possessed lower amplitudes, but the distribution was more balanced under different wind incident angles, thus this version was chosen for construction. It could be concluded that the DD PACS provides a more general applicability for natural ventilation in moderate climates and in small to medium scale industry hall domains with one in- and one outlet.
When mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are used for therapy of immunological pathologies, they get into an inflammatory environment, altering the effectiveness of the treatment. To establish the impact ...of environmental inflammatory factors on MSCs' immunofunction in the mirror of intrinsic heterogeneity of mouse MSC population, individual MSC clones were generated and characterized. Adipogenic but not osteogenic differentiation and pro-angiogenic activity of five independent MSC cell lines were similar. Regarding osteogenic differentiation, clones MSC3 and MSC6 exhibited poorer capacity than MSC2, MSC4, and MSC5. To study the immunosuppressive heterogeneity, in vitro and in vivo experiments have been carried out using T-cell proliferation assay and delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) response, respectively. A remarkable difference was found between the clones in their ability to inhibit T-cell proliferation in the following order: MSC2≥MSC5>MSC4>MSC3 >> MSC6. Nevertheless, the differences between the immunosuppressive activities of the individual clones disappeared on pretreatment of the cells with pro-inflammatory cytokines, a procedure called licensing. Stimulation of all clones with IFN-γ and TNF-α resulted in elevation of their inhibitory capability to a similar level. Nitric oxide (NO) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) were identified as major mediators of immunofunction of the MSC clones. The earlier findings were also supported by in vivo results. Without licensing, MSC2 inhibited DTH response, while MSC6 did not affect DTH response. In contrast, prestimulation of MSC6 with inflammatory cytokines resulted in strong suppression by this clone as well. Here, we have showed that MSC population is functionally heterogeneous in terms of immunosuppressive function; however, this variability is largely reduced under pro-inflammatory conditions.
New studies and reports are published on a daily basis about the dangers of climate change and its main causes: humanity’s constantly growing population, the built environment and resource ...consumption. The built environment is responsible for approx. 40% of the total energy consumption, and a significant part comes from maintaining an appropriate indoor comfort environment by heating ventilation and air conditioning. Though contemporary studies have achieved a wide knowledge about natural ventilation and passive air conducting systems (PACS) and their applicability, further investigations are necessary to deepen the aerodynamic topology of air conducting building structures’ shape properties. Hence, in our current research we conducted a series of tests applying different wind catcher geometries. The methodology of this work is based on the authors’ previous work, where passive air conduction systems were compared with different airflow directions via computational fluid dynamic simulations (CFD). After finding the better performing PACS (a downdraught system), this research evaluates whether further improvements in ventilation efficiency are possible due to the aerodynamic shaping of the roof integrated inlet structures. Four different wind catcher geometries were examined to determine the most advantageous dimensional settings in the natural ventilation system’s given boundaries. After multiple series of basic and developed calculation runs, diverse shape designs of the passive air conduction inlet (PACI) were examined, including wind deflector geometries. The initial reference wind catcher’s air change rate was increased by approx. 11%. The results deliver the potential measure of improvements achievable in the aerodynamic shape design of structures under identic conditions of the same building domain. As a consequence, more sophisticated natural ventilation structural solutions will be possible in more operation cost- and performance-effective ways.
This contribution presents a method for efficiently classifying geophysical anomalies and identifying regions and features that share characteristics of many known iron-oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) ...deposits of the Gawler Craton, and can therefore be used in drill target prioritization. Residual Bouguer gravity and reduced-to-pole total magnetic intensity grids over the Gawler Craton were transformed, generating polygon datasets representing populations of locally anomalous gravity and magnetic intensity. Taken as simple anomaly polygons, there are a very large number of features across the Gawler Craton (>39,000 TMI and >10,000 gravity). Superimposing mineral deposits over these features shows a clear spatial correlation between IOCG deposits and occurrences, and anomalies (>90% of deposits within 1,000 m of an anomaly), but leaves thousands of anomalies of varying magnitudes that cannot all be related to IOCG mineralization. Eliminating TMI and gravity anomalies with a separation of more than 1,000 m reduced the search space to ~20,000 TMI features and ~8,500 gravity features. Limiting the search to a statistically derived gravity threshold ≥0.4 mGal gravity anomalies, the exploration space is reduced to 798 gravity features with coincident TMI features within the Olympic Copper-Gold Province. The Anselin Local Morans I method was used to delineate geographic regions based upon spatial clustering of high magnitude anomalies. The spatial distribution and clustering characteristics of the gravity anomalies provide additional information and can be related to differing basement geology and deposit style. Terranes where lithologies and Cu-Au occurrences are commonly magnetite-rich show clustered high-magnitude gravity anomalies, and correlated spatially with the Mount Woods and Moonta domains within the eastern Gawler Craton. Importantly, it was found that the central, and currently most endowed, the Olympic Domain, was distinct in that it was dominated by spatial outliers (discrete high-magnitude density features).
These results could be used as a starting point in developing IOCG exploration strategies, due to the high number of additional untested, spatially coincident gravity and magnetic anomalies that warrant further investigation.
Bone marrow derived mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have recently been implicated as one source of the tumor-associated stroma, which plays essential role in regulating tumor progression. In spite ...of the intensive research, the individual factors in MSCs controlling tumor progression have not been adequately defined. In the present study we have examined the role of galectin-1 (Gal-1), a protein highly expressed in tumors with poor prognosis, in MSCs in the course of tumor development. Co-transplantation of wild type MSCs with 4T1 mouse breast carcinoma cells enhances the incidence of palpable tumors, growth, vascularization and metastasis. It also reduces survival compared to animals treated with tumor cells alone or in combination with Gal-1 knockout MSCs. In vitro studies show that the absence of Gal-1 in MSCs does not affect the number of migrating MSCs toward the tumor cells, which is supported by the in vivo migration of intravenously injected MSCs into the tumor. Moreover, differentiation of endothelial cells into blood vessel-like structures strongly depends on the expression of Gal-1 in MSCs. Vital role of Gal-1 in MSCs has been further verified in Gal-1 knockout mice. By administering B16F10 melanoma cells into Gal-1 deficient animals, tumor growth is highly reduced compared to wild type animals. Nevertheless, co-injection of wild type but not Gal-1 deficient MSCs results in dramatic tumor growth and development.These results confirm that galectin-1 is one of the critical factors in MSCs regulating tumor progression.
In January 2017 the largest airborne magnetic, radiometric and elevation survey in South Australia's history began in the Gawler Craton. The aim of the South Australian Government is to use the ...survey as an opportunity to achieve best practice in relation to the coordination, landholder liaison, reporting and quality control of the survey, in tandem with collaborative partners at Geoscience Australia. Some of the outcomes include a series of test lines flown by all survey aircraft to assist in back-calibration of radiometric data; landholder and stakeholder information website to maximise public value; subscriber email updates; close liaison with field capture teams; timely delivery of survey data and results and a proactive approach in ensuring the data captured is of consistent, high quality across the entire survey region. The survey is being performed in three stages and each stage provides an opportunity to assess approaches and fine tune requirements. It is expected that the end result will set a benchmark for other jurisdictions performing similar work.
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