Search

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Two blast tests were conducted to study the blast resistance of high performance geopolymer composite walls reinforced with steel wire mesh (SWM) and aluminium foam (AF). Conventional reinforced concrete (CRC) walls were also tested as control specimens. In total seven walls were tested under different blast loading conditions. The first blast test was conducted on one 2260 mm × 2260 mm × 150 mm SWM reinforced, one 2260 mm × 1000 mm × 150 mm SWM reinforced and one 2260 mm × 1000 mm × 150 mm combined SWM and AF reinforced high performance geopolymer composite walls under 50 kg TNT explosives at a standoff distance of 2.3 m. The second blast test was conducted on one 2260 mm × 2260 mm × 150 mm SWM reinforced and one 2260 mm × 2260 mm × 150 mm combined SWM and AF reinforced high performance geopolymer composite walls under 100 kg TNT explosives on the ground at the same standoff distance. Blast tests were also performed on two 2260 mm × 2260 mm × 150 mm CRC walls under such two designed explosions to compare their behaviours with reinforced high performance geopolymer composite walls. LVDT (linear variable differential transformer) devices were used to record the deflection histories and pressure sensors were used to measure the airblast pressure histories. The testing results indicated that the combined SWM and AF reinforced high performance geopolymer composite walls had a better blast resistance than the CRC walls, and the SWM reinforced high performance geopolymer composite wall was superior to both.

To further understand the role of microRNA (miRNA) during testicular development, we constructed four small RNA libraries from the testes of the Chinese indigenous Xiang pig at four different ages, which were sequenced using high-throughput Solexa deep sequencing methods. It yielded over 23 million high-quality reads and 1,342,579 unique sequences. At two and three months of age, the proportion which represented miRNAs was the most abundant class of small RNAs, but it was gradually replaced by the category that represented piRNAs in adult testes. We identified 543 known and homologous conserved porcine miRNAs and 49 potential novel miRNAs. There were 306 known miRNAs which were co-expressed in four libraries. Six miRNAs and three potential novel miRNAs were validated in testes and sperms of Xiang pig by RT-qPCR method. Many clusters of mature miRNA variants were observed, in which let-7 family was the most abundant one. After comparison among libraries, 204 miRNAs were identified as being differentially expressed and likely involved in the development and spermatogenesis of pig testes. This work presented a general genome-wide expression profile of the testes-expressed small RNAs in different ages of pig testes. Our results suggested that miRNAs performed a role in the regulation of mRNAs in puberty pig testes while piRNAs likely functioned mainly in sexually mature pig testes.

With the development of dye and printing, production wastewater has become one of the most primary pollution sources of water and soil pollution. Most of the dyes are toxic substances, which have the “three-way” effect of carcinogenic, teratogenic and mutagenic. Therefore, it is a very difficult but significant issue to deal with the dye in the wastewater. Here, we report a study on low-cost, high-capacity hydrogels that remove water-soluble dyes. The hydrogel is prepared by crosslinking the β-cyclodextrin and functional monomer: acrylamido and 2-acrylamide-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid by aqueous solution polymerization, meanwhile, alkaline hydrolysis is also an important step for adsorption performance. After alkaline hydrolysis, the amide and sulfonic groups in the hydrogel were converted into carboxylate and sulfonate, which was beneficial to the adsorption of cationic dyes. This polymer could remove 96.58% methylene blue (400 mg/L) and only requires 0.02 wt%. Its maximum adsorption capacity for methylene blue could reach 2638.22 mg/g under equilibrium condition. It is the most powerful adsorbent used to treat dye wastewater, according to the report. It also provides some references for hydrogel treatment of dye wastewater.

Participation of nondispatchable renewable energy resources (RER) such as wind turbines (WT) and photovoltaic (PV) systems is one of the main challenges of these clean energy resources. Due to the uncertain nature of these resources, predictions of their amount of power in the day-ahead market is very difficult and associated with error. This paper introduces a novel model for the participation of the mentioned resource in the day-ahead power market based on error and economic loss minimization. An intra-market (IM) model was considered to update the predicted power of these resources before the planned time horizon. Furthermore, a new probabilistic forecasting model was proposed for uncertain parameters in both the day-ahead and intramarket. The mentioned model included an integrated system of renewable energy with another distributed generation, storage device, and demand response to compensate for all resource and load economic losses. By this approach, it can be claimed that, all microgrid participants i.e., load, producer and storage, have more profits in comparison with the power supply individually. To demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed model, we considered a test case that consisted of a wind turbine, PV, fuel cell, storage unit, and demand response, by taking into account the day-ahead, intra and unbalanced market. In this case study, daily, weekly, and monthly analyses were performed. The simulation results revealed the effectiveness and performance of the proposed modelling in comparison with other participation model.

The chrysanthemums (Chrysanthemum × morifolium Ramat.) are a well-known group of traditional ornamental flowers in China and have been cultivated all over the world. Yet the origin of chrysanthemum cultivars has been highly debated. In this study we employ the nuclear low-copy LFY gene to study the evolutionary history of chrysanthemum cultivars. The structure of the LFY gene in all Chrysanthemum species examined is highly conserved with three exons and two introns. The length of the LFY gene in Chrysanthemum varied from 2, 887 to 3, 348 bp. The two introns exhibited high levels of variation in length and sequence composition at the intraspecific and interspecific levels. Phylogenetic analysis of the whole LFY sequences of Chrysanthemum resulted in topologies that contained three major clades. The LFY sequences from the same cultivars are present in two or three clades, supporting that hybridization and allopolyploidy were important mechanisms in the origins of different chrysanthemums. Our results suggest that different cultivars had different ancestors. Chrysanthemum indicum, C. zawadskii and C. nankingense were likely the direct ancestors of most chrysanthemum cultivars examined. Chrysanthemum vestitum is a putative ancestor for some cultivars, and may have indirectly involved in the development of the chrysanthemum cultivars. Sequences of the LFY gene are informative to shed insights into the origin of chrysanthemum cultivars and show great potential as a phylogenetic marker to decipher the phylogeny of Chrysanthemum and its close relatives.

Aberrant deposition of fat including free fatty acids in the liver often causes damage to hepatocytes, namely lipotoxicity, which is a key pathogenic event in the development and progression of fatty liver diseases. This study demonstrates a pivotal role of sphingosine kinase 1 (SphK1) in protecting hepatocytes from lipotoxicity. Exposure of primary murine hepatocytes to palmitate resulted in dose-dependent cell death, which was enhanced significantly in Sphk1-deficient cells. In keeping with this, expression of dominant-negative mutant SphK1 also markedly promoted palmitate-induced cell death. In contrast, overexpression of wild-type SphK1 profoundly protected hepatocytes from lipotoxicity. Mechanistically, the protective effect of SphK1 is attributable to suppression of ER stress-mediated pro-apoptotic pathways, as reflected in the inhibition of IRE1α activation, XBP1 splicing, JNK phosphorylation, and CHOP induction. Of note, SphK1 inhibited the IRE1α pathway by reducing IRE1α expression at the transcriptional level. Moreover, S1P mimicked the effect of SphK1, suppressing IRE1α expression in a receptor-dependent manner. Furthermore, enforced overexpression of IRE1α significantly blocked the protective effect of SphK1 against lipotoxicity. Therefore, this study provides new insights into the role of SphK1 in hepatocyte survival and uncovers a novel mechanism for protection against ER stress-mediated cell death.

The LEAFY (LFY) gene encodes a key transcription factor involved in flower development. In this study, we identified the LFY homolog in Chrysanthemum argyrophyllum L. (CaFL) and sequenced eight clones from a single plant. The cloned genes varied in length (2915–3075 bp) and each had three exons and two introns. The three exons were highly conserved, so intron variance was primarily responsible for gene length differences. The putative CaFL proteins from the eight clones were 99% identical to one another and greater than 97% identical to Chrysanthemum lavandulifolium DFL and Chrysanthemum nankingense CnFL. Intraspecific and interspecific sequence comparisons of the two introns indicated that they varied considerably in both length and sequence composition. Phylogenetic analysis showed that CaFL is more similar to dicotyledonous FLO/LFY-like proteins than to those from monocotyledons or gymnosperms.

The role of Th17 cells and Th17-associated cytokines in the development of acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) in clinical allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) recipients is not well established. In the current study, a cohort of 69 allo-HSCT patients was examined for the percentages of Th17 and FoxP3+ Treg cells and the expressions of RORγt and FoxP3 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). The Th17 percentage and RORγt expression were significantly higher, whereas Treg percentage and FoxP3 expression were significantly lower in severe aGVHD (grade 3 to 4) and mild aGVHD (grade 1 to 2) patients than in patients without aGVHD (grade 0) and healthy donors. We then investigated the expressions of Th17-associated cytokines, including TGF-β, IL-6, IL-1β, IL-17, IL-21, IL-22, IL-23, as well as IL-23R in the PBMCs of patients after allo-HSCT. The expressions of IL-17 and IL-22 in CD4+ T cells were also examined. The results showed that the expressions of IL-6, IL-1β, IL-17, IL-21, IL-23, and IL-23R were all increased, whereas IL-22 expression was decreased in aGVHD patients. The changes were also correlated with the severity of aGVHD. We also investigated the dynamic changes of Th17/Treg cells and Th17-associated cytokines in patients during the onset and resolution of aGVHD. The results demonstrated a reciprocal relationship between Treg and Th17 cells. Th17-associated cytokine expressions, namely IL-17 and IL-23, were closely related to the occurrence and resolution of aGVHD. We conclude that the dynamic balance between the Th17 and FoxP3+ Treg cells and the changes of Th17-associated cytokines could be the indicators of the disease progression and promising candidates of prognostic biomarkers of aGVHD.

Oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) is a heterogeneous and autosomal recessive disorder with hypopigmentation in the eye, hair, and skin color. Four genes, TYR, OCA2, TYRP1, and SLC45A2, have been identified as causative genes for nonsyndromic OCA1–4, respectively. The genetic identity of OCA5 locus on 4q24 is unknown. Additional unknown OCA genes may exist as at least 5% of OCA patients have not been characterized during mutational screening in several populations. We used exome sequencing with a family-based recessive mutation model to determine that SLC24A5 is a previously unreported candidate gene for nonsyndromic OCA, which we designate as OCA6. Two deleterious mutations in this patient, c.591G>A and c.1361insT, were identified. We found apparent increase of immature melanosomes and less mature melanosomes in the patient’s skin melanocytes. However, no defects in the platelet dense granules were observed, excluding typical Hermansky–Pudlak syndrome (HPS), a well-known syndromic OCA. Moreover, the SLC24A5 protein was reduced in steady-state levels in mouse HPS mutants with deficiencies in BLOC-1 and BLOC-2. Our results suggest that SLC24A5 is a previously unreported nonsyndromic OCA candidate gene and that the SLC24A5 transporter is transported into mature melanosomes by HPS protein complexes.

Because of the complexity of urban systems, the dynamic process of urban expansion is filled with uncertainty. Although many studies have been done on cellular automata (CA)-based urban expansion models, the measurements of uncertainties and uncertainty propagation were commonly neglected when constructing CA models. The cloud model can express uncertainty and its propagation, and coherently integrates fuzziness and randomness as well as overcoming the limitations of fuzzy theory and the Monte Carlo method. A cloud-based CA (cloud-CA) model is presented in this paper to represent uncertainty propagation and show the dependence of simulation results on different degrees of uncertainty represented by hyper-entropy (He). We implemented the cloud-CA model and applied it on the simulation of the urban expansion in Jiangxia, Wuhan, China. After constructing the appropriate parameter settings for the cloud-CA model, a comparison of cloud-CA with the fuzzy-set-based CA (fuzzy-CA) model, and the hybrid CA model based on fuzzy set and the Monte Carlo method (FSMC-CA) was made by simulating spatial patterns of urban growth in Jiangxia from 2002 to 2007. The experiment indicated that the cloud-CA model has a better performance than the other two CA models, with higher kappa indices and figure of merit, proving the effectiveness of the cloud-CA model.

Bleeding in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is mainly associated with disseminated intravascular coagulation and hyperfibrinolysis. Annexin II (Ann II) is a co-receptor for plasminogen and tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). This study demonstrates that abnormally high levels of Ann II expression in APL cells increase the production of plasmin. Hyperfibrinolysis could be corrected by all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) or ATRA plus arsenic trioxide therapy in patients with APL. SiRNA targetting Ann II caused a decrease in tPA-dependent plasmin generation, while Ann II cDNA transfectant stimulated plasmin production. These results suggest that Ann II play an important role in hyperfibrinolysis in APL.

In the first paper the simulation model, numerical methods and experimental measurement validation for a vehicle compartment with two chairs and one long bench have been provided. In this paper, the simulated results are presented. Simulation results with a variety of conditions reveal that: (1) a good choice for decreasing the cooling load in the summer time is increasing the inlet air temperature, not reducing the volume flow rate of the inlet air; (2) the thermal comfort in a compartment with given conditions depends on the number of persons in it. For the compartment studied, when there are two passengers in the compartment both of them should sit in the backside; (3) the outside temperature has appreciable effect on the cooling load. While change of the vehicle speed hardly affects the cooling load of air conditioner when good seal of the compartment is assumed; (4) to decrease the cooling load one can change the material of the window (reducing its transmissivity), and improve thermal insulation on the vehicle body; (5) a better flow circulation near the compartment bottom is favorable to improve the uniformity of temperature field around the driver’s foot zone. The inlet air direction should be kept horizontal.

It is important to analyze the temperature and air-flow field inside the passenger compartment to ameliorate the amenity and decrease energy consumption. This paper uses commercial software FLUENT to simulate 3-D temperature distributions and flow field in a compartment with or without passengers. Validated by the experimental data, the numerical model is used to investigate the influence of different factors on the thermal comfort and the energy consumption. In the first paper, the test conditions and the numerical models are described in details. The measured and predicted transient temperatures are compared and good agreement is obtained. In addition, the air temperature distribution in a steady test situation is also numerically predicted by both transient and steady model, and the agreements between the three sets of data are satisfactorily, showing the reliability of the models. In the companion part of the two papers the simulated effects of several operational conditions will be presented.