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Wnt-1 inducible signaling pathway protein-2 (WISP-2) is a member of the CCN family, which is critical for the control of cell morphology, motion, adhesion and other processes involved in tumorigenesis. The expression pattern and clinical significance of WISP-2 in astrocytomas remains unclear. In this study, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction was performed to systematically investigate the expression of WISP-2 in 47 astrocytoma tissues of different pathological grades and 10 normal brain tissues. The mRNA expression levels of WISP-2 in the astrocytoma tissues were observed to be significantly higher than those in the normal brain tissues. Furthermore, the upregulation of WISP-2 was found to be associated with astrocytomas of higher pathological grades. Subsequently, 154 astrocytoma and 15 normal brain tissues were analyzed using immunohistochemistry and similar results were obtained. Univariate and multivariate survival analyses were used to determine the correlations between WISP-2 expression and overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). The results indicated that the expression of WISP-2 was found to negatively correlate with patient PFS and OS. These results demonstrated that the WISP-2 protein is involved in the pathogenesis and progression of human astrocytomas and may serve as a malignant biomarker of this disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct printing nanoparticle-based conductive inks onto paper substrates has encountered difficulties e.g. the nanoparticles are prone to penetrate into the pores of the paper and become partially segmented, and the necessary low-temperature-sintering process is harmful to the dimension-stability of paper. Here we prototyped the paper-based circuit substrate in combination with printed thermoplastic electrically conductive adhesives (ECA), which takes the advantage of the capillarity of paper and thus both the conductivity and mechanical robustness of the printed circuits were drastically improved without sintering process. For instance, the electrical resistivity of the ECA specimen on a pulp paper (6 × 10-5Ω·cm, with 50 wt% loading of Ag) was only 14% of that on PET film than that on PET film. This improvement has been found directly related to the sizing degree of paper, in agreement with the effective medium approximation simulation results in this work. The thermoplastic nature also enables excellent mechanical strength of the printed ECA to resist repeated folding. Considering the generality of the process and the wide acceptance of ECA technique in the modern electronic packages, this method may find vast applications in e.g. circuit boards, capacitive touch pads, and radio frequency identification antennas, which have been prototyped in the manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do you design a peptide building block to make 2-dimentional nanowebs and 3-dimensional fibrous mats? This question has not been addressed with peptide self-assembling nanomaterials. This article describes a designed 9-residue peptide, N-Pro-Ser-Phe-CysPhe-Lys-Phe-Glu-Pro-C, which creates a strong fishnet-like nanostructure depending on the peptide concentrations and mechanical disruptions. This peptide is intramolecularly amphiphilic because of a single pair of ionic residues. Lys and Glu, at one end and nonionic residues, Phe, Cys. and Phe. at the other end. Circular dichroism and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis demonstrated that this peptide adopts stable p-turn and 13-sheet structures and self-assembles into hierarchically arranged supramolecular aggregates in a concentration-dependent fashion, demonstrated by atomic force microscopy and electron microscopy. At high concentrations, the peptide dominantly self-assembled into globular aggregates that were extensively connected with each other to form "beads-on-a-thread" type nanofibers. These long nanofibers were extensively branched and overlapped to form a self-healing peptide hydrogel consisting of >99%water. This peptide can encapsulate the hydrophobic model drug pyrene and slowly release pyrene from coated microcrystals to liposomes. It can effectively stop animal bleeding within 30 s. We proposed a plausible model to interpret the intramolecular amphiphilic self-assembly process and suggest its importance for the future development of new biomaterials for drug delivery and regenerative medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, based on the experimental parameters of polar permafrost formation, the mathematical module, solid mechanics module, and Darcy's law module of COMSOL Multiphysics software are used to realize the coupled solution of PDE of temperature field, moisture field, and stress field considering the ice-water phase transition and moisture convection, and the relationship between the permafrost moisture convection and temperature change is analyzed by using the heat-flowsolid-moisture mutual coupling, which reveals that the law of action of low temperature intrusion into rock formation by polar drilling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a new method was reported for the fabrication of the nanostructured CuO/Al thermite film on a Cu substrate. The CuO nanorod (NR) arrays grew vertically from the Cu surfaces by electrochemical anodization processes, followed by the deposition of an Al layer on the CuO NRs via magnetron sputtering to form a core/shell CuO/Al nanothermite film, whose component, structure and morphology were subsequently characterized. In addition, the energy-release characteristics of the obtained nanothermite film were investigated using thermal analyses and laser ignition tests. All evidence demonstrates that the obtained CuO/Al is of a uniform structure and has superb energy performance. Impressively, the resulting material is potentially useful in applications of functional energetic chips due to its easy integration with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extracellular vesicle (EV)-based immunotherapeutics have emerged as promising strategy for treating diseases, and thus, a better understanding of the factors that regulate EV secretion and function can provide insights into developing advanced therapies. Here, we report that nutrient availability, even changes in individual nutrient components, may affect EV biogenesis and composition of immune cells [e.g., macrophages (Mfs)]. As a proof of concept, EVs from M1-Mf under glutamine-depleted conditions (EVGLN-) had higher yields, functional compositions, and immunostimulatory potential than EVs from conventional GLN-present medium (EVGLN+). Mechanistically, the systemic metabolic rewiring (e.g., altered energy and redox metabolism) induced by GLN depletion resulted in up-regulated pathways related to EV biogenesis/cargo sorting (e.g., ESCRT) and immunostimulatory molecule production (e.g., NF-κB and STAT) in Mfs. This study highlights the importance of nutrient status in EV secretion and function, and optimizing metabolic states and/or integrating them with other engineering methods may advance the development of EV therapeutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A graphene device with two top gates has been fabricated and measured for the first time. The thickness of the gate dielectric is 60 nm. The measurement results indicate that the externally applied gate biases can dope the underneath graphene to either p- or n-type, forming an induced p-n junction. The current-voltage (I-V) curve measurement results also indicate that there is no nonlinear phenomenon in a weakly induced graphene p-n junction. This graphene p-n junction can potentially be used for terahertz wave generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To promote the energy utilization efficiency of internal combustion engine, the approach of electronically controlled turbocharger (ECT) for IC engine exhaust gas energy recovery was investigated by the method of test coupling with numerical simulation. First, the tests for turbocharged gasoline engine and high-speed motor were conducted so as to provide experimental data for numerical simulation. Then, the simulation model of ECT engine was built and calibrated, and the working processes of ECT engine were simulated. The results show that the recovered exhaust gas energy by ECT increases with the decrease of by-pass valve opening due to the rising of exhaust gas mass flow rate, but the pumping loss also ascends; limited by the original engine turbocharger map, the engine working points are beyond turbine map when the by-pass valve opening increases to a certain degree. To further improve the energy recovery potential of ECT, a larger turbine was rematched, and the working processes of ECT engine under the whole operating conditions were resimulated. The results indicate that engine exhaust gas energy cannot be recovered by ECT in low-load and low-speed area due to the low exhaust gas pressure. In the effective working area, as the load and speed ascend, both the recovery efficiency of ECT and the utilization efficiency of exhaust gas energy increase, and their maximum values reach 8.4% and 18.4%, respectively. All those demonstrate that ECT can effectively recover engine exhaust gas energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we prepare and test a graphene field-effect transistor with two top gates. The Fermi energy level of graphene can be adjusted by applying positive and negative voltages to the two top gates, and N-type and P-type graphene are formed in the channel region, thus inducing a graphene p-n junction. The current model is established using the gradual channel approximation (GCA) method, and the current and p-n junction characteristics of the device were obtained by formula simulations. Based on the principle of p-n junction luminescence, this device with graphene p-n junction is expected to achieve terahertz wave radiation with an appropriate optical resonant cavity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]