Background
Studies in prospective cohorts have suggested that enterovirus infections are associated with the appearance of islet autoantibodies that precede later appearance of type 1 diabetes (T1D). ...It was shown that in addition to an antibody‐mediated anti‐coxsackievirus (CV)‐B neutralizing activity of serum from patients with T1D, there was also enhancing anti‐CV‐B activity in vitro. In this study, the patterns of enhancing and neutralizing anti‐CV activities were analysed from consecutive serum samples collected from children who were followed from birth until they developed T1D in the Finnish Type 1 Diabetes Prediction and Prevention (DIPP) study and compared to those in non‐diabetic control children.
Methods
The titres of serum neutralizing activity were analysed against those CVs which were detected in the stools in these children (CV‐B3, CV‐B5 or CV‐A4) using plaque assay. The enhancing activity of these serum samples was analysed by measuring interferon‐alpha (INF‐α) production in cultures of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) inoculated with a mixture of these viruses and diluted serum.
Results
A sustained anti‐CV enhancing activity was observed in consecutive serum samples in patients with T1D. The pattern of responses differed between children who developed T1D and control children. In patients, the anti‐CV enhancing activity was predominant or even exclusive over the neutralizing activity, whereas in controls the enhancing and neutralising activities were more balanced or the neutralizing activity was largely predominant.
Conclusions
Evaluating the anti‐enterovirus neutralizing and enhancing activity of serum samples can be useful to investigate further the relationship between enteroviruses and the development of T1D.
Experimental system: Due to serious economic challenges posed by root-knot (Meloidogyne species) nematodes in sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) production, the Sweet Potato Programme (SPP) of the ...Agricultural Research Council (ARC) in South Africa has since included screening for nematode host-status in its breeding-selection activities. Procedures: 20 sweet potato lines were screened against M. javanica, M. incognita race 2 and M. incognita race 4 in parallel trials inoculated with 3000 eggs and second-stage juveniles (J2) per established cutting. Results: At 56 days after inoculation, the reproductive potential (RP) of all test Meloidogyne species on sweet potato line 1990-10-2 was zero, whereas RP values on other lines were 19.48-342.7, 31.9-995.1 and 10.3-380.44 ranges for M. javanica, M. incognita race 2 and M. incognita race 4, respectively. Conclusion: Among the test sweet potato lines, line 1990-10-2 was non-host to populations of tropical Meloidogyne species in South Africa and could, therefore, be subjected to nematode resistance tests.
In recent years, a wireless charging topology with inherent constant current (CC) and constant voltage (CV) output conversion through a clamp coil on the transmitting side has been proposed. Because ...it does not require auxiliary circuits such as load voltage sampling and wireless communication, it has received extensive attention and research. However, there are some issues with this topology. For example, there is cross-coupling between the transmitting coil and clamp coil, which causes a deviation in the CV output and easily causes overvoltage damage to the battery. Aiming at the above problem, this article proposes a single-switch wireless CC and CV charger with a self-sustaining battery charging profile and theoretical zero CV output deviation. On the transmitting side, a bipolar pad (BP) coil structure is used to eliminate the cross-coupling between the transmitting coil and clamp coil, and completely eliminates voltage deviation during CV output in theory. This article establishes the simplest equivalent model of the proposed circuit topology and calculates the mathematical expression of the equivalent input voltage in the time domain. And a method for automatically calculating the parameters of a single-switch circuit is designed. Finally, the superiority of the proposed circuit topology is verified through simulation and real lithium-ion battery charging experiments.
Summary
Li‐ion batteries are one of the most prominent rechargeable batteries. They are extensively used in most of the electric vehicles to the portable electronic devices. This is due to high ...energy density and low self‐discharge rates which further showcase high efficiency. Furthermore, the Li‐ion batteries have a high discharge rate, low emission of toxic gasses as well as high open‐circuit voltage. The efficient utilization of these batteries depends on the appropriate charging method. The charging method is determined by considering the essential attributes such as fast charging ability, and its charge storage capability. Therefore, to achieve all the above qualities, a novel charging process based on constant pulse and constant voltage (CP‐CV) method has been proposed. The proposed CP‐CV charging method uses pulse charging until a maximum cut‐off voltage reaches the prescribed limit set by the battery manufacturers. Once this maximum cut‐off voltage reaches, the charging algorithm switches to constant voltage (CV) method. The experimental setup used to test two non‐identical Li‐ion cells (lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) and lithium manganese oxide (LMO)) and one Li‐ion battery pack (lithium iron phosphate LFP) chemistry. The experimental result of CP‐CV is compared with the constant current and constant voltage (CC‐CV) method with similar test parameters. The exploratory analysis has been performed for different charge rates while keeping the battery manufacturer datasheet as a reference. The results show that there is a 22.84% reduction in charging time as well as a 2.18% increment in the charge storage and a significant reduction in the temperature of Li‐ion cells using CP‐CV as compared to CC‐CV method.
Carotenoid biosynthesis in papaya fruits from the cultivars (cv.) ‘Golden’ and ‘Sunrise Solo’ was studied throughout three different ripening stages. The content of these secondary metabolites was ...assessed using HPLC–PDA–MSn. Carotenoid levels increased during ripening, with all-trans-lycopene varying from 0.73 to 1.58μg/g in the cv. ‘Golden’ and from 0.68 to 1.67μg/g in the cv. ‘Sunrise Solo’. The all-trans-β-cryptoxanthin content varied from 1.29 to 3.0μg/g in the cv. ‘Golden’ and from 0.28 to 5.13μg/g in the cv. ‘Sunrise Solo’. The Zds gene showed a different pattern of expression during the ripening and between cultivars, while the Lcyβ gene expression was up-regulated in the two cultivars. The capacity to scavenge peroxyl radicals did not show a significant difference among the ripening stages and between the different cultivars. This study describes, for the first time, a tentative correlation between carotenoid biosynthesis in papaya pulp and the gene expression of the enzymes related to this pathway.
•The all-trans-β-cryptoxanthin levels increased 18-fold during ripening in the Sunrise Solo.•Gene's expression during ripening and levels of carotenoids in papaya were correlated.•Carotenoid accumulation was not followed by an increase of antioxidant capacity.
Pulmonary hypertension is common in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and may be associated with poor outcomes. The magnitude of the association between ...pulmonary hypertension and mortality is uncertain due to the small size and variable findings of observational studies.
Systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies using subgroup analyses and metaregression.
Patients with ESRD or earlier stages of CKD.
Observational studies reporting clinical outcomes in patients with co-existing pulmonary hypertension and CKD or ESRD identified using a systematic search of PubMed and Embase.
Pulmonary hypertension diagnosed by Doppler echocardiography.
All-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and cardiovascular events.
16 studies, with 7,112 patients with an overall pulmonary hypertension prevalence of 23%, were included. Pulmonary hypertension was associated with increased risk for all-cause mortality among patients with CKD (relative risk RR, 1.44; 95% CI, 1.17-1.76), with ESRD receiving maintenance dialysis (RR, 2.32; 95% CI, 1.91-2.83), and with a functioning kidney transplant (RR, 2.08; 95% CI, 1.35-3.20). Pulmonary hypertension was associated with increased risk for cardiovascular events in patients with CKD (RR, 1.67; 95% CI, 1.07-2.60) and ESRD receiving dialysis (RR, 2.33; 95% CI, 1.76-3.08). There was an association between pulmonary hypertension and increased risk for cardiovascular mortality in patients with CKD or ESRD (RR, 2.20; 95% CI, 1.53-3.15).
Heterogeneity of included studies, possibility of residual confounding, unavailability of individual patient-level data, and possibility of outcome reporting bias.
Pulmonary hypertension is associated with a substantially increased risk for death and cardiovascular events in patients with CKD and ESRD. Risk is higher in patients with ESRD receiving dialysis compared with patients with CKD stages 1 to 5. Understanding the effect of interventions to lower pulmonary artery pressure on the survival of these patents awaits their evaluation in randomized controlled trials.
'Huangjinya' is an excellent albino tea germplasm cultivated in China because of its bright color and high amino acid content. It is light sensitive, with yellow leaves under intense light while ...green leaves under weak light. As well, the flavonoid and carotenoid levels increased after moderate shading treatment. However, the mechanism underlying this interesting phenomenon remains unclear. In this study, the transcriptome of 'Huangjinya' plants exposed to sunlight and shade were analyzed by high-throughput sequencing followed by
assembly. Shading 'Huangjinya' made its leaf color turn green.
assembly showed that the transcriptome of 'Huangjinya' leaves comprises of 127,253 unigenes, with an average length of 914 nt. Among the 81,128 functionally annotated unigenes, 207 differentially expressed genes were identified, including 110 up-regulated and 97 down-regulated genes under moderate shading compared to full light. Gene ontology (GO) indicated that the differentially expressed genes are mainly involved in protein and ion binding and oxidoreductase activity. Antioxidation-related pathways, including flavonoid and carotenoid biosynthesis, were highly enriched in these functions. Shading inhibited the expression of flavonoid biosynthesis-associated genes and induced carotenoid biosynthesis-related genes. This would suggest that decreased flavonoid biosynthetic gene expression coincides with increased flavonoids (e.g., catechin) content upon moderate shading, while carotenoid levels and biosynthetic gene expression are positively correlated in 'Huangjinya.' In conclusion, the leaf color changes in 'Huangjinya' are largely determined by the combined effects of flavonoid and carotenoid biosynthesis.
Accurate assessment of undrained shear strength (USS) for soft sensitive clays is a great concern in geotechnical engineering practice. This study applies novel data-driven extreme gradient boosting ...(XGBoost) and random forest (RF) ensemble learning methods for capturing the relationships between the USS and various basic soil parameters. Based on the soil data sets from TC304 database, a general approach is developed to predict the USS of soft clays using the two machine learning methods above, where five feature variables including the preconsolidation stress (PS), vertical effective stress (VES), liquid limit (LL), plastic limit (PL) and natural water content (W) are adopted. To reduce the dependence on the rule of thumb and inefficient brute-force search, the Bayesian optimization method is applied to determine the appropriate model hyper-parameters of both XGBoost and RF. The developed models are comprehensively compared with three comparison machine learning methods and two transformation models with respect to predictive accuracy and robustness under 5-fold cross-validation (CV). It is shown that XGBoost-based and RF-based methods outperform these approaches. Besides, the XGBoost-based model provides feature importance ranks, which makes it a promising tool in the prediction of geotechnical parameters and enhances the interpretability of model.
Display omitted
•XGBoost and RF-based ELMs for predicting the undrained shear strength of soft clays.•Bayesian hyper-parameter optimization for determination of the hyper-parameters.•ELMs performance and transformation model comparison.•Feature relative importance ranked by the proposed XGBoost-based model.
In this paper, a method is introduced to find out the optimal charge pattern (OCP) of the multistage constant current (MSCC) charge method based on the equivalent circuit model of a Li-ion battery. ...Unlike the conventional methods, the proposed one does not require several kinds of time-consuming and labor-intensive experiments. The OCP can be simply calculated by the developed equations with the results obtained by a simple experiment. The validity of the proposed method has been verified through the experimental results and it shows that the charge time and the charge energy can be reduced by 12% and 1.8%, respectively, and the charge efficiency of a Li-ion battery can be improved by 0.54% as compared to the conventional constant current-constant voltage (CC-CV) method. A lower temperature rise during the charge can be regarded as an additional advantage of the proposed method.
Many methods have been proposed for faster and better battery charging with increased energy efficiencies. One of the most promising has been the pulse charge algorithm-also referred to as a pulse ...charging technique. Many researchers have investigated the impact of pulse charging on lithium-ion batteries. However, the combined impact of duty cycle and frequency of the pulse charge current on lithium-ion polymer batteries is seldom investigated. This work uses the Taguchi orthogonal arrays to search for optimal pulse charging parameters that will maximize battery charge and energy efficiencies while decreasing charge time. Confirmation experiments were performed and compared with the benchmark constant current-constant voltage (CC-CV) charging method. It was determined that by operating a pulse charger using optimal parameters, charge time was reduced by 47.6%, and battery charge and energy efficiencies were increased by 1.5% and 11.3%, respectively, when compared with the CC-CV charging method at a charge rate of 0.5 C.
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