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We sought to determine whether normal human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells and apoptotic human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells play any role in the lung repair following bleomycin-induced lung injury in rat models.Umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells were obtained from the umbilical cord following caesarian section from healthy normal babies. Plasmin deprivation method was used for culture of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells and flow cytometry was used to identify cell surface antigen and activity of stem cells and apoptosis. The animal model of acute lung injury was established by a one-off intratracheal instillation of bleomycin (BLM) (5 mg/kg) and then normal stem cells and apoptotic stem cells were separately injected. Alveolar lavage fluid and lung tissue were collected for further analysis prior to the injury and at days 3, 7, 14 after administration of BLM. The number of neutrophils in the broncho alveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was counted; Bicinchoninic Acid (BCA) method was used for estimation of total protein content in alveolar lavage fluid; biochemical assay was used for estimation of myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity; hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining of lung tissue was used for histopathology analysis; reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay was used for the determination of interferon-gamma (INF-γ) and mRNA changes of interleukin-4 (IL-4) in lung tissue. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used for the determination of cytokines TNF-α in the lung tissue.Apoptotic human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells were more effective in reducing lung neutrophil infiltration and total protein leakage in rat models of acute lung injury (ALI). There was also an improvement in the degree of vascular permeability, reduction in the level of proinflammatory cytokines, INF-γ gene level and boost in anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-4 levels which also helps in more effectively reducing the degree of injury in ALI.Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell transplantation may have a bright future in the clinical setting for the treatment of ALI/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Apoptotic human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells may have more effective than normal human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells in the treatment of acute lung injury.

Background Extra-nodal marginal zone B cell lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue originating in the liver is less common. Case presentation We described the clinical presentation, immunohistochemistry, and immunophenotypes of this lymphoma, which was misdiagnosed with tiny hepatic carcinoma in a 44-year-old woman with hepatitis C; the patient underwent left lateral sectionectomy. The immunophenotype identified the most of the lymphoid cells as positive CD20, CD34, Ki67, CD3, CD4, CD79a, CD45RO, MUM-1, and CD5 and negative CD10, CD15, CD30, ACT, CK, CRO, DES, and HMB45. The diagnosis of primary hepatic mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) was made by histology after surgery; the patient went through the excellent recovery with no chemotherapy and is disease free for 27 months. Conclusions Primary hepatic MALT is less common with incidental finding; local resection is beneficial due to its oncological indolence.

Microstructure evolution of the homogenised ZK40 magnesium alloy was investigated during compression in the temperature range of 250–400°C and at the strain rate range of 0·01–50 s−1. At a higher strain rate (⩾10 s−1), dynamic recrystallisation developed extensively at grain boundaries and twins, resulting in a more homogeneous microstructure than the other conditions. The hot deformation characteristics of ZK40 exhibited an abnormal relationship with the strain rate, i.e., the hot workability increased with increasing the strain rate. However, the dynamic recrystallisation grain size was almost the same with increasing the temperature at the strain rate of 10 s−1, while it increased obviously at the strain rates of 20 and 50 s−1. Therefore, hot deformation at the strain rate of 10 s−1 and temperature range of 250–400°C was desirable and feasible for the ZK40 alloy.

A hybrid interpolation method is proposed for the fast analysis of the radar cross-section (RCS) over a broad frequency band by use of the matrix interpolation method. In order to efficiently compute electromagnetic scattering, the general minimal residual (GMRES) iterative solver is applied to compute the coefficients of Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) basis functions and the sparse approximate inversion (SAI) preconditioning technique is used to accelerate the iterative solver. Moreover, both the near field impedance and SAI preconditioning matrices are interpolated at intermediate frequencies over a relatively large frequency band with rational function interpolation technique. Therefore, a lot of time can be saved for the calculation of both the near field impedance and preconditioning matrices. Numerical results demonstrate that this hybrid method is efficient for wideband RCS calculation with high accuracy.

Based on study of the hydrogeological condition and the characteristics of petroleum hydrocarbons pollution in karst groundwater, an oil refinery located in western part of a certain city is chosen as the study site to have an analysis on the control factors of groundwater petroleum hydrocarbons contamination. The study result shows that the control factors of groundwater petroleum hydrocarbons contamination are hydrogeological condition and biodegradation. The soil layer of Quaternary is very thin, the limestone is exposed in the surface, which makes the petroleum hydrocarbons easy to permeate into the water bearing layer. Karst-fractured zone in aquifer determines the migration way of petroleum hydrocarbons to be convection, but the magmatic rock in northern part has certain blocking effect on the migration of petroleum hydrocarbons. Biodegradation makes both the contamination plume area of petroleum hydrocarbons and the content of petroleum hydrocarbons decreased.

To efficiently solve large dense complex linear system arising from electric field integral equations (EFIE) formulation of electromagnetic scattering problems, the multilevel fast multipole method (MLFMM) is used to accelerate the matrix-vector product operations. The symmetric successive over-relaxation (SSOR) preconditioner is constructed based on the near-field matrix of the EFIE and employed to speed up the convergence rate of iterative methods. This technique can be greatly improved by shifting the near-field matrix of the EFIE with the principle value term of the magnetic field integral equation (MFIE) operator. Numerical results demonstrate that this method can reduce both the number of iterations and the computational time significantly with low cost for construction and implementation of preconditioners. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1035–1039, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24254

An adaptive strategy is combined with the cubic-spline interpolation method in this article to efficiently calculate the scattering from electrically large objects. The cubic-spline interpolation method is used to approximate the monostatic radar crosssection (RCS) curve on a set of nonuniform sampling nodes and the adaptive strategy is employed to generate new sampling points automatically. Unlike asymptotic waveform evaluation method, the derivatives are not required for the novel interpolation method. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method is able to rigorously approximate the result with less computation time when compared with conventional interpolation methods. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 751–755, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23211

In this article, a Stoer-Bulirsch adaptive frequency sampling method is proposed in conjunction with the method of moments to analyze the broadband electromagnetic wave scattering from frequency selective surfaces. On comparing with other sampling methods, the Stoer-Bulirsch algorithm is a recursive tabular method and requires no matrix inversion. Therefore, it can obtain a rational interpolation function without suffering from singularity problems. Furthermore, since final results are obtained by interpolating with the adaptive frequency sampling method, no more information is needed except the sampled frequency and its true value. Hence, it can be widely used in most of the electromagnetic simulations. Numerical results show that our proposed sampling strategy performs well in terms of both simulation time and computation accuracy. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 755–758, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23204

In this article, an adaptive technique combined with the bicubic spline interpolation method is proposed to efficiently calculate the scattering from electrically large objects. The bicubic spline interpolation method is used to approximate the 2D monostatic RCS data on a set of nonuniform sampling nodes. The adaptive technique is employed to generate new sampling points automatically by using a coarse-to-fine hierarchy. Compared with some conventional extrapolation/interpolation methods, such as asymptotic waveform evaluation (AWE) method, our method can avoid calculating derivatives at each control point by using spline technique. Numerical results demonstrate that the novel method proposed in this article is able to approximate the 2D RCS data with high accuracy and efficiency. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 1851–1857, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23540

A systematic study is performed on radio properties of H$_{2}$O megamaser host Seyfert 2 galaxies, through multi-band radio continuum observations (at 11cm, 6.0 cm, 3.6 cm, 2.0 cm and 1.3 cm) with the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope within a total time duration of four days. For comparison, a control Seyfert 2 galaxy sample without detected maser emission was also observed. Spectral indices were determined for those sources for which measurements exist at two adjacent bands assuming a power-law dependence S$_\nu \propto \nu^{-\alpha}$, where S is the flux density and $\nu$ is the frequency. Comparisons of the radio continuum properties between megamaser and non-masing Seyfert 2s show no difference in spectral indices. However, a difference in radio luminosity is statistically significant, i.e. the maser galaxies tend to have higher radio luminosities by a factor of 2 to 3 than the non-masing ones, commonly reaching values above a critical threshold of 10$^{29}$ ergs$^{-1}$Hz$^{-1}$. This result confirms an earlier conclusion by Zhang et al. (2012), but is based on superior data with respect to the time interval within which the data were obtained, with respect to the observational facility (only one telescope used), the number of frequency bands.

The spatial resolution of transmission electron backscatter diffraction (t-EBSD) with a standard conventional EBSD detector was evaluated quantitatively based on the calculation of the correlation coefficient of transmission patterns which were acquired across a twin boundary in the sample of austenitic steel. The results showed that the resolution of t-EBSD improved from tens of nanometres to below 10 nm with increasing accelerating voltage and thinning of specimen thickness. High voltage could enhance the penetration depth and reduce the scattering angle. And the thinning of specimen thickness would result in decreasing of the scattering events according to the theory of thermal diffuse scattering (TDS). In addition, the transmission patterns were found to be weak and noisy if the specimen was too thin, because of the decreasing intensity detected by the screen. Consequently, in this work, the best spatial resolution of 7 nm was achieved at 30 kV and 41 nm thickness. Moreover, the specimen thickness range was also discussed using Monte-Carlo simulation. This approach was helpful to account for the differences of measured spatial resolutions, by t-EBSD, of lamellas with different thickness.

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNETs) are a small subgroup of tumors with a variety of biological behaviors.We sought to identify the specially expressed genes and characterize significant pathways in PanNETs compared with non-neoplastic samples. Gene expression profile GSE43795 was obtained from Gene Expression Omnibus database, which included 6 PanNETs and 5 non-neoplastic samples. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified using Limma package. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses were used to enrich the functions and pathways of DEGs. Transcription factors (TFs) and tumor-associated genes (TAGs) were also identified. Finally, a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed, and hub proteins and functional module were screened out.Total of 821 DEGs (421 down-regulated, 400 up-regulated) were selected. GO and KEGG enrichment analyses showed that up-regulated DEGs were related to several pathways, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, Ca2+ signaling pathway, long-term potentiation, and long-term depression pathways. Down-regulated DEGs were enriched in several pathways, such as pancreatic secretion, protein digestion and absorption, and metabolic pathway. Interferon-stimulated gene protein 15 (ISG15), somatostatin (SST), and synaptosomal-associated protein 25 kDa (SNAP25) were identified as hub proteins.The genes involved in type 2 diabetes mellitus pathway may play important roles in the development of PanNETs. SNAP25, SST, and ISG15 may be used as potential targets for treatment of PanNETs.

We report a holographic imaging technique for monitoring electrical breakdown. Proof-of-concept experiment of imaging breakdown in air is demonstrated. It is shown that the holographically captured amplitude and phase information can be used to visualize the breakdown process and calculate the electron density of the generated plasma. A temporal resolution of about 5 ns is accomplished, which is limited by the laser pulse duration time.

Overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS) are key outcome measures for head and neck cancer as they reflect treatment efficacy, and have implications for patients and health services. The UK has recently developed a series of national cancer audits which aim to estimate survival and recurrence by relying on institutions manually submitting interval data on patient status, a labour-intensive method. However, nationally, data are routinely collected on hospital admissions, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. We have developed a technique to automate the interpretation of these routine datasets, allowing us to derive patterns of treatment in head and neck cancer patients from routinely acquired data.We identified 122 patients with head and neck cancer and extracted treatment histories from hospital notes to provide a gold standard dataset. We obtained routinely collected local data on inpatient admission and procedures, chemotherapy and radiotherapy for these patients and analysed them with a computer algorithm which identified relevant time points and then calculated OS and PFS. We validated these by comparison with the gold standard dataset. The algorithm was then optimised to maximise correct identification of each timepoint, and minimise false identification of recurrence events.Of the 122 patients, 82% had locally advanced disease. OS was 88% at 1 year and 77% at 2 years and PFS was 75% and 66% at 1 and 2 years. 40 patients developed recurrent disease. Our automated method provided an estimated OS of 87% and 77% and PFS of 87% and 78% at 1 and 2 years; 98% and 82% of patients showed good agreement between the automated technique and Gold standard dataset of OS and PFS respectively (ratio of Gold standard to routine intervals of between 0.8 and 1.2). The automated technique correctly assigned recurrence in 101 out of 122 (83%) of the patients: 21 of the 40 patients with recurrent disease were correctly identified, 19 were too unwell to receive further treatment and were missed. Of the 82 patients who did not develop a recurrence, 77 were correctly identified and 2 were incorrectly identified as having recurrent disease when they did not.We have demonstrated that our algorithm can be used to automate the interpretation of routine datasets to extract survival information for this sample of patients. It currently underestimates recurrence rates due to many patients not being well-enough to be treated for recurrent disease. With some further optimisation, this technique could be extended to a national level, providing a new approach to measuring outcomes on a larger scale than is currently possible. This could have implications for healthcare provision and policy for a range of different disease types.

Odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) are crucial in the olfactory pathway of insects. In the present study, the antenna-enriched OBP AlinOBP13 was investigated because of its potential contribution to the peripheral olfactory perception in the alfalfa plant bug Adelphocoris lineolatus. The results of quantitative reverse transcriptase-PCR showed that the transcript level of AlinOBP13 was higher in the adult stage than in the nymph stages. The transcript levels of AlinOBP13 in the male and female antennae significantly increased after 4 and 8 h of starvation, respectively. Fine ultrastructures of different types of chemosensilla in both female and male antennae were investigated using transmission electron microscopy and immunocytochemical labelling. The results revealed that the anti-AlinOBP13 antiserum strongly and specifically labelled short basiconic sensilla; this antiserum was restricted to the inner lumen and the cavities below the sensillum base of the sensilla. By contrast, multiporous sensilla trichodea, medium long sensilla basiconica, and aporous sensilla chaetica were not labelled. The present study is the first to report an OBP showing specific expression in the short basiconic sensilla of a member of the Hemipteran species. The results of a fluorescence displacement binding assay indicated that recombinant AlinOBP13 showed a more specific binding preference to terpenoids than to sex pheromones and other classes of chemicals. This binding ability was dramatically affected by pH; higher binding affinities were displayed at pH 10.0 than at pH 7.4 and 5.0. In addition, the results of dose-dependent electroantennogram recordings from the antennae showed that both female and male adult bugs responded to the terpenoids tested, suggesting an apparent physiological relevance of AlinOBP13 in A. lineolatus chemoreception. The results of this study suggest that AlinOBP13 functions as a specific carrier of terpenoids and provide insights into the mechanism of A. lineolatus in response to green volatiles.

This paper deals with an experimental investigation of pin fin boiling of saturated and subcooled HFE-7100 under atmospheric pressure. Fin base temperature and heat flux data are measured along with the fin tip temperature. The basic features of boiling stability of HFE-7100 boiling on pin fin had been reported for the first time. For a given liquid/heating surface combination there exist upper steady-state (USS) branch and lower steady-state (LSS) branch, and a large, unstable regime located in between. Zones with different stability characteristics are mapped according to boiling on fins with different aspect ratios. Liquid subcooling can largely enhance heat transfer performance. A longer fin can provide a safer operation.

This paper investigates the relative stability between nucleate and film boiling modes of FC-72 and HFE-7100, which have potential to electronic device cooling applications. Equilibrium heat flux, qc, which refers to as an index for measuring the relative stability of boiling, was obtained at a liquid subcooling of 0-20 K. Experimental results reveal that (1) qcincreases with liquid subcooling; (2) although the FC-72 exhibits a higher critical heat flux (CHF) than does the HFE-7100, somewhat unexpectedly, the equilibrium heat flux for the latter is greater than the former. Restated, at a prescribed heat flux, the risk to burnout for boiling of FC-72 is higher than that of HFE-7100. The shift in boiling curves interprets the experimental findings.

This paper deals with an experimental investigation of pin fin boiling of saturated and subcooled HFE-7100 under atmospheric pressure. Fin base temperature and heat flux data are measured along with the fin tip temperature. The basic features of boiling stability of HFE-7100 boiling on pin fin had been reported for the first time. For a given liquid/heating surface combination there exist upper steady-state (USS) branch and lower steady-state (LSS) branch, and a large, unstable regime located in between. Zones with different stability characteristics are mapped according to boiling on fins with different aspect ratios. Liquid subcooling can largely enhance heat transfer performance. A longer fin can provide a safer operation.

Nucleate boiling, which can transfer large amount of thermal energy at small temperature difference, reveals as an efficient pasteurization method to biological sludges. This work, for the first time, reported the nucleate boiling curves and the critical heat flux (CHF) data of two biological sludges. Sludge boiling would exhibit a more efficient nucleate boiling mode. However, the corresponding CHF markedly decreases with the presence of solid phase. Dilution of sludge would yield a more efficient nucleate boiling as well as a higher CHF.

This paper deals with an experimental investigation of pin fin boiling of saturated and subcooled FC-72 under atmospheric pressure. Fin base temperature and heat flux data are measured along with the fin tip temperature. The basic features of boiling stability of fluorocarbon boiling on pin fin had been reported for the first time. For a given liquid/heating surface combination there exist upper steady-state (USS) branch and lower steady-state (LSS) branch, and a large, unstable regime located in between. Zones with different stability characteristics are mapped according to boiling on fins with different aspect ratios. Liquid subcooling can largely enhance heat transfer performance. A longer fin can provide a safer operation.

Under the assumption that structural relaxation is dominated by the decay of clusters of particles, we develop a microscopic theory for transport in a strongly supercooled liquid. By introducing a local order parameter that describes the geometry of particle aggregates in addition to the number density and momentum density, we obtain an expression for the effective longitudinal viscosity in which a hopping tem emerges nonperturbatively. We find that the hopping kernel of the present work arises from couplings to bilinear density-momentum modes in agreement with previous mode-coupling treatments. However, the magnitude of the hopping kernel is suppressed through a wave vector cutoff instead of the previously suggested initial time cutoff.

Within the context of a general mode-coupling theory previously developed for the description of equilibrium fluctuations in simple classical fluids, we derive an expression for the effective longitudinal viscosity includings couplings to currents so that certain key assumptions inherent in previous work on the glass transition can be analyzed critically. We show that the hopping kernels arise from an approximate resummation of the dominant class of diagrams resulting from bilinear modes. Although the resummed expression for the viscosity obtained in this paper is very similar to the result previously obtained from a kinetic theory approach, there are important difference, most notably in the form of the vertices connecting the hopping kernels and the lack of subtractions in the kernels representing the cage effect and activated hopping transport. Using the formalism developed presently, we show that the introduction of an initial cut off time in the hopping kernel to obtain a strong temperature dependence for the viscosity amounts to neglecting a class of processes that may be of comparable if not greater importance than the terms explicityly kept in previous work.

A solution method based on Lagrangean dualization and subgradient optimization for the symmetric traffic equilibrium assignment problem is presented. Its interesting feature is that it includes a simple and computationally cheap procedure for calculating a sequence of feasible flow assignments which tend to equilibrium ones. The Lagrangean subproblem essentially consists of shortest route searches, and it is shown that one may compute an equilibrium flow by taking the simple average of all the shortest route flows obtained during the subgradient optimization scheme, provided that its step lengths are chosen according to a modified harmonic series. The new method is compared to the Frank-Wolfe algorithm and the method of successive averages on a medium-scale problem; its computational performance is at least comparable to that of the two other methods. The main motive for considering this computational methodology is that it may easily be extended and applied to more complex traffic problems; this feature ...

It is well known that linear programs can generally not be solved by straightforward Lagrangean relaxation and dual subgradient optimization, the reason being that the solutions to the Lagrangean relaxed problems are, normally, infeasible in the original linear program. This property is a consequence of the linearity of the problem and it holds even in the unlikely case that an exact optimal dual solution is found. We show that an optimal solution to the linear program can be obtained by calculating the simple average of the solutions to the relaxed problems which are solved during the subgradient search scheme, provided that the steplengths in this scheme are chosen according to a modified harmonic series. This method is similar to a procedure given earlier by Shor, which utilizes a particular weighted average and holds for any divergent series steplength rule. As an application of these two averaging schemes, we construct an approximate algorithm for the minimum cost multicommodity network flow problem....

We study the influence of boundaries on the equal-time thermal correlations in a three-dimensional fluid maintained under a constant temperature gradient. Within the confines of the model for an idealized fluid bounded by two infinite, parallel walls, we show that it is crucial to retain the unbounded spatial components in the problem so that the solutions approach meaningful results as we move the walls infinitely far apart. In addition, we consider a composite system by including the dynamics of the “walls”, and we investigate the conditions for the relevant physical parameters under which the details of wall dynamics may be neglected by employing the simple boundary condition δT=0.

Third-order many-body perturbation theory is used to obtainE1 transition amplitudes for ions of the lithium and sodium isoelectronic sequences and for the neutral alkali-metal atoms potassium, rubidium, cesium, and francium. Complete angular reductions of the first-, second-, and third-order amplitudes are given. Tables of transition energies and rates are given for the 2p1/2→ 2s1/2, 2p3/2→ 2s1/2, 3s1/2→ 2p1/2, and 3s1/2→ 2p3/2transitions in the lithium isoelectronic sequence and for the corresponding 3p1/2→ 3s1/2, 3p3/2→ 3s1/2, 4s1/2→ 3p1/2, and 4s1/2→ 3p3/2transitions in the sodium sequence. For neutral alkali atoms, amplitudes ofnp1/2→ ns1/2,np3/2→ ns1/2, (n+ 1)s1/2→ np1/2, and (n+ 1)s1/2→ np3/2transitions are evaluated, wherenis the principal quantum number of the valence electron in the atomic ground state. Semi-empirical corrections for the omitted fourth- and higher-order terms in perturbation theory are given for the neutral alkali-metal atoms. Comparisons with previous high-precision calculations and with experiment are made.

Relativistic many-body perturbation theory is applied to determine energies of [2${\mathit{p}}^{5}$3s] excited states of neonlike ions with nuclear charges in the range Z=10--92. These calculations start with a ${\mathit{V}}^{(\mathit{N}\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1)}$ Hartree-Fock potential and include correlation corrections. Core-hole corrections are treated to all orders in perturbation theory while the core-core, valence-core, and valence-hole corrections are treated to second order only. The Breit interaction is also included to second order, but the dominant correlation corrections to the Breit interaction are identified and iterated to all orders. Frequency-dependent corrections to the Breit interaction and mass-polarization corrections are treated to first order only. Lowest-order radiative corrections are included by evaluatng the electron self-energy and vacuum polarization in a local potential that approximates the Hartree-Fock potential. Detailed comparisons are made with measurements and with other calculations.

Using the Effelsberg-100 m telescope, we perform a successful pilot survey on H2O maser emission toward a small sample of radio-bright Seyfert 2 galaxies with a redshift larger than 0.04. The targets were selected from a large Seyfert 2 sample derived from the spectroscopic Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS-DR7). One source, SDSS J102802.9+104630.4 (z ~ 0.0448), was detected four times during our observations, with a typical maser flux density of ~30 mJy and a corresponding (very large) luminosity of ~1135 L ⊙. The successful detection of this radio-bright Seyfert 2 and an additional tentative detection support our previous statistical results that H2O megamasers tend to arise from Seyfert 2 galaxies with large radio luminosity. The finding provides further motivation for an upcoming larger H2O megamaser survey toward Seyfert 2s with particularly radio-bright nuclei with the basic goal to improve our understanding of the nuclear environment of active megamaser host galaxies.

Mining ion-type rare-earth ore made the landscape and ecological environment degraded in mining area, and the tailing produced by rare-earth mining also led large areas land desertification, which resulted in surface temperature variations and significant differences in other types of mining disturbances. In order to analyse surface disturbance of rare-earth mining area, this paper applied the methods based on Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Temperature different Coefficient (TDC) as the ecological disturbance indicator, compared and validated their applicability in Lingbei rare-earth mining area of Southern China. The results illustrated that, compared to NDVI, the TDC which reflected the characteristic of rare-earth mining technology has better discrimination of disturbance, especially for in-situ leach mining area. The places of tailing and the in-situ leach mining plants were the most dramatic mining disturbance. They had the biggest TDC value, followed by orchards and farmlands, reclamation plants, they had relatively small disturbance. And the last was the plant with the smallest TDC value. TDC in rare-earth mining could better correspond to the level of surface ecological disturbance. Therefore, TDC as the indicator of ecological disturbance factor had better performance than NDVI in rare-earth mining area.

In this work, the reversal of radial glow distribution induced by reversed magnetic field is reported. Based on the Boswell antenna which is symmetric and insensitive to the magnetic field direction, it seems such a phenomenon in theory appears impossible. However, according to the diagnostic of the helicon waves by magnetic probe, it is found that the direction of magnetic field significantly affects the propagation characteristic of helicon waves, i.e., the interchange of the helicon waves at the upper and the lower half of tube was caused by reversing the direction of magnetic field. It is suggested that the variation of helicon wave against the direction of magnetic field causes the reversed radial glow distribution. The appearance of the traveling wave does not only improve the discharge strength, but also determines the transition of the discharge mode.

Relativistic many-body perturbation theory is applied to determine energies of [2[ital p][sup 5]3[ital s]] excited states of neonlike ions with nuclear charges in the range [ital Z]=10--92. These calculations start with a [ital V][sup ([ital N][minus]1)] Hartree-Fock potential and include correlation corrections. Core-hole corrections are treated to all orders in perturbation theory while the core-core, valence-core, and valence-hole corrections are treated to second order only. The Breit interaction is also included to second order, but the dominant correlation corrections to the Breit interaction are identified and iterated to all orders. Frequency-dependent corrections to the Breit interaction and mass-polarization corrections are treated to first order only. Lowest-order radiative corrections are included by evaluatng the electron self-energy and vacuum polarization in a local potential that approximates the Hartree-Fock potential. Detailed comparisons are made with measurements and with other calculations.

Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases in children. It is attributable to complicated coactions between various genetic factors and environmental allergens.We attempt to unfold the mechanism of asthmatic disorder and research the molecular mechanism of Seretide on asthmatic disease.Using the GSE31773 microarray datasets downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus database, we first screened the differentially expressed genes between healthy control and asthmatic samples cells based on classical t-test and false discovery rate0.05 as significant threshold. The underlying molecular mechanisms were investigated by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analysis. In addition, the crosstalk network of pathways was also constructed.A total of 2011 differentially expressed genes were obtained by comparing asthmatic sample treated with Seretide and healthy controls. A total of 403 differentially expressed genes were collected between asthma samples untreated by Seretide and healthy sample controls. The enriched pathway of differentially expressed genes included signal transduction disorder (such as TGF-beta signaling pathway) and metabolism disorder (such as Phenylalanine metabolism). There were 27 pathway crosstalk pairs among 13 pathways.Our findings will help to clarify the molecular mechanism of Seretide and offer advices for asthma pathogenesis, Seretide therapy and follow-up treatment.

Many-body perturbation theory is applied to the calculation of photoionization cross sections with excitations (2p, 3s) to (4s, kl) and (3p, kl) of sodium. The double-electron excitations (2p, 3s) to (4s, nl) and (3p, nl) are included and lead to the resonance structure between 38.5 and 46.5 eV. The cross section for the transition (2p to kd+ks) is obtained taking into account the random-phase approximation (RPA) and an important part of the Brueckner-orbital (BO) and structure-radiation (SR) corrections. A comparison of the contributions from RPA, BO and SR for the transition (2p to kl) is presented. The contributions of substantial correlations shake-off, virtual-Auger, knock-out and ground-state correlation (GSC) have been calculated and discussed for the transitions (2p, 3s) to (4s, kd) and (3p, kp), respectively. The ratios of the contributions from the cross section of photoionization with excitations to the cross section of the transition (2p to kl) are in good agreement with experiment.

Nineteen single-copy clones isolated from a PstI genomic library (cv. Maiden Plantain), and eight Vigna chloroplast DNA clones were used to probe total genomic DNA digests of 57 genotypes of Musa from India. The 19 genomic clones detected a total of 107 polymorphisms among the 57 genotypes. Principal coordinates and phenetic analyses of these data placed cultivars and species into distinct groups that were in general agreement with a previously published RAPD-based classification of these same plant materials. The 107 polymorphisms were sufficient to differentiate each clone from every other clone. Heterologous Vigna chloroplast DNA probes were used to characterize the cytoplasm of Musa cultivars and species. PCO analysis of these RFLPs were detected both within and between the generally recognized genome groups, indicating multiple hybridization pathways in the origin of hybrid clones. Data presented demonstrate that RFLPs are sufficiently abundant to classify Musa germplasm and that genetic relationships among Musa cultivars, based upon RFLP data, are in general agreement with relationships determined by analysis of morphology and RAPDs.

Summary Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are multi-potent progenitor cells that are isolated from the bone marrow and several adult organs and tissues. These cells possess remarkable immunosuppressive properties and can inhibit the proliferation and function of the major immune cell populations, including T cells, B cells and natural killer (NK) cells; modulate the activities of dendritic cells (DCs); and induce regulatory T cells both in vivo and in vitro. These unique properties make MSCs ideal candidates for clinical application as immunosuppressants. The immunomodulatory effect of MSCs is mediated by a non-specific anti-proliferative action of these cells, which is dependent on cell–cell contact or secreted soluble factors such as indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), nitric oxide (NO), histocompatibility leucocyte antigen-G (HLA-G), transforming growth factor (TGF)-β, interferon (IFN)-γ and interleukin (IL)-1β. Considerable progress has been obtained in preclinical studies on MSCs, including those on their ability to activate allogeneic cells. This review examines the current understanding of the immunomodulatory properties of MSCs and its therapeutic implication for immune-mediated diseases and transplant rejection.

We use approximate Sommerfeld-Maue plus Volkov states to investigate the relativistic and final-state Coulomb-potential effects in strong-field multiphoton-ionization processes. Nonperturbative calculations are carried out for Dirac hydrogenlike atoms in the length gauge. Both ionization rates and angular distributions of photoelectrons are obtained with elliptically polarized light for various laser intensities. Qualitative agreement of «twofold» symmetry of azimuthal angular distribution of photoelectrons with experimental measurements is presented, and a tendency toward «fourfold» symmetry at the laser fields of intensity higher than 1 a.u, is pointed out

This paper presents a new solution technique for the traffic assignment problem. The approach is based on an iteratively improved nonlinear and separable approximation of the originally nonseparabl ...

Although nanoparticles have tremendous potential for a host of applications, their adverse effects on living cells have raised serious concerns recently for their use in the healthcare and consumer sectors. As regards the central nervous system (CNS), research data on nanoparticle interaction with neurons has provided evidence of both negative and positive effects. Maximal application dosage of nanoparticles in materials to provide applications such as antibacterial and antiviral functions is approximately 0.1–1.0 wt%. This concentration can be converted into a liquid phase release rate (leaching rate) depending upon the host or base materials used. For example, nanoparticulate silver (Ag) or copper oxide (CuO)-filled epoxy resin demonstrates much reduced release of the metal ions (Ag + or Cu 2+ ) into their surrounding environment unless they are mechanically removed or aggravated. Subsequent to leaching effects and entry into living systems, nanoparticles can also cross through many other barriers, such as skin and the blood–brain barrier (BBB), and may also reach bodily organs. In such cases, their concentration or dosage in body fluids is considered to be well below the maximum drug toxicity test limit (10 −5 g ml −1 ) as determined in artificial cerebrospinal solution. As this is a rapidly evolving area and the use of such materials will continue to mature, so will their exposure to members of society. Hence, neurologists have equal interests in nanoparticle effects (positive functionality and negative toxicity) on human neuronal cells within the CNS, where the current research in this field will be highlighted and reviewed.

Recently, a new bistatic point target reference spectrum, which is called extended Loffeld's bistatic formula (ELBF) is proposed. The point target simulation shows that this method can work well in the general bistatic configuration. In this paper, physical optics (PO) method is introduced to calculate the echo data from three dimensional targets for bistatic SAR. Then the original LBF and ELBF are tested for the bistatic SAR imaging by using electromagnetic simulation data. Experiment results demonstrate that compared with the conventional LBF, the ELBF has better imaging quality for azimuth variant configurations.

The purpose of this prospective study was to evaluate the therapeutic effects of intra-arterial chemotherapy in preventing high-risk superficial bladder cancer from recurrence and progression. from may 2003 to December 2007, 52 patients were divided randomly into 2 groups. Twenty-five patients were given intra-arterial chemotherapy with gemcitabine and cisplatin, and 27 patients received intravesical instillation with epirubicin. After 6-67 months of follow-up (median, 40 months), the overall recurrence-free rates of the intra-arterial chemotherapy and intravesical instillation groups were 83.3% and 33.4%, respectively (p=0.001 log rank). Tumor progression was not found in the intra-arterial chemotherapy group while 7 patients in the intravesical instillation group had tumor progression. The overall tumor progression-free rates were 100% and 58.5%, respectively (p=0.009 log rank). The patients with functional bladders were 100% and 81.5% in the intra-arterial chemotherapy and intravesical instillation groups after 67 months of follow-up, respectively. In conclusion, intra-arterial chemotherapy is more effective than intravesical instillation in preventing high-risk superficial bladder cancer from recurrence and progression.

A procedure is presented for calculations of double-perturbation problems in the coupled-cluster formalism. With use of this method to include to all orders the correlation effects of single and pair excitations, the enhancement factor R=-585 is obtained for the electric dipole moment (EDM) in atomic thallium. Equations for EDM perturbed single-excitation amplitudes are solved by diagonalization to take into account mixing between excited core states, and perturbed pair functions are introduced to incorporate correlation effects. Considering contributions from higher-order perturbation terms, we estimate the accuracy of the obtained enhancement factor is approximately at the 5\char21{}10 % level.

Heterogenous expression of recombinant proteins in milk of livestock at a large scale is very labour-intensive to be achieved with current transgenic animals, and usually seen as time-consuming, expensive and technically most challenging. Here we describe a convenient system for transient production of recombinant human growth hormone and its extensive use in recombinant protein production for therapeutic purposes. In this study, an adenoviral vector containing the GFP gene and hGH gene was constructed for direct infusion into the epithelium of mammary glands of goats via the teat canal during the period of natural lactation. Western-blot analysis of milk samples obtained from all of the viral-treated founders indicated that the recombinant hGH (rhGH) was secreted into the milk of the goats. The concentrations of rhGH in milk ranged from 0.6 to 2.4 mg/ml and lasted for more than 10 days during lactation. These data suggest that it is possible to produce larger amounts of recombinant human growth hormone in the milk of livestock animals by using replication-defective adenoviruses.

A time-dependent coupled-cluster approach may be employed to describe dynamic processes of many-electron systems. Atomic properties, such as the frequency-dependent polarizability, can be treated as a response of the system described by the coupled-cluster expansion to an external radiation field. The major difficulty in the realization of such a formalism is to deal with dynamic pair functions. The procedure reported here is to simplify the full set of single- and pair-excitation expansion equations to a subset of equations which includes polarization and relaxation effects to all orders and is solved by using a complete set of discrete basis functions. Calculations of excitation energies and frequency-dependent electric dipole polarizabilities for helium are presented. Application of the procedure to calculate photoionization cross sections is discussed.

In this paper, the adaptive frequency sampling (AFS) method with Steor-Bulirsch (SB) algorithm is proposed in conjunction with the method of moments (MOM) to calculate the broadband electromagnetic scattering performance of the frequency selective surface (FSS). Comparing with other sampling methods, the Store-Bulirsch algorithm is a recursive tabular method and requires no matrix inversion, so it can obtain a rational interpolation function without suffering from singularity problems. Furthermore, since we use the AFS strategy to interpolate the final results, no more information is needed except the sampled frequency f and its true value, so it can be widely used in most of the electromagnetic (EM) simulation. Numerical results show that our sampling strategy has a good performance in both CPU time saving and computation accuracy.

Correction to: British Journal of Cancer (2015) 112, 1766–1771. doi:10.1038/bjc.2015.141; published online 5 May 2015 Following the publication of this manuscript, the authors have noticed an error in Table 1. The sixth line, which reads ‘N2 metastasis in multiple or bilateral inguinal lymph nodes & Unilateral or bilateral metastasis in four or more inguinal lymph nodes without ENE, ENE of LNM or pelvic lymph nodes’, should be deleted.