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The first-principles method has been performed to investigate the phase transition, elastic, thermodynamic and superconductivity properties of lanthanum monosulphide (LaS) under pressure. A structural phase transition from the NaCl-type (B1) to CsCl-type (B2) structure is found to occur at around 16.8 GPa. The calculated ground state properties such as lattice constants, bulk modulus, and Debye temperatures are in good agreement with experimental data. Finally, the pressure dependence of the theoretical elastic constants and elastic modulus of LaS has been studied. The observations show that LaS is mechanically stable not only in B1 phase below 8.77 GPa but also in B2 phase under high pressure. LaS is ductile in B1 phase while brittle in B2 phase. The present observation of physical properties in B2 phase of LaS needs validation by future experimental.

In-doped TiO2 thin film was introduced at the interface of fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate and mesoporous TiO2 film by spin-coating method, and its application as a new compact layer material for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) was investigated. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV-visible spectroscopy, current-voltage characteristics, Mott-Schottky analysis, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) analysis and open-circuit voltage decay (OCVD) technique are used to characterize the morphology, optical transmittance and flat-band potentials (Vfb) of In-doped titania compact film and its effect to the photoelectron conversion process. It was found that In-doping increased the transmittance of TiO2 compact layer, the interfacial resistance between FTO substrate and porous TiO2 film and the flat-band potential of TiO2 film. The In-doped TiO2 compact layer effectively suppressed the charge recombination from FTO to the electrolyte, increased the optical absorption of dye and then increased the short-circuit photocurrent density (Jsc). Furthermore, In-doped TiO2 compact layer acted as a weak energy barrier, which increased the electron density in the mesoporous TiO2 film, thus improved open-circuit photovoltage (Voc). As a result, the overall energy conversion efficiency of the DSSC with In-doped TiO2 compact layer was enhanced by 11.9% and 6.9% compared to the DSSC without compact layer and with pure TiO2 compact layer, respectively. It indicated that In-doped TiO2 is a promising compact layer material for dye-sensitized solar cells.

The melanocortin 4 receptor is a member of melanocortin receptors of G-protein-coupled receptors. By binding to melanocortin receptor agonists or antagonists, MC4R participates in the regulating of food intake, weight, energy homeostasis and sexual behavior. By activating the protein kinase A and leptin-melanocortin signalling pathways, MC4R mediates the amplification of signals from the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal and hypothalamo-pituitary-thyroid axes. This process permits peripheral information about the status of energy metabolism to be transmitted to the central nervous system. The hypothalamic nuclei then integrate these signals to evoke the appropriate reaction. We found that different sexes exhibited distinct metabolic regulation abilities, likely due to differences in these signalling pathways. MC4R plays a key role in coordinating the afferent messages from the peripheral and regulatory signals by controlling food intake and energy expenditure. To probe the disparities in metabolism and weight regulation between the sexes, we analyzed the expression of MC4R in different tissues from male and female mice by qRT-PCR and immunofluorescence. The results show that the expression of MC4R in brain and kidney is higher in female mice than in male mice, but in the livers, the result is opposition. Additionally, in both sexes, the expression of MC4R is higher in the brain than in the kidneys, and its expression in the liver is lowest, in males, the expression of MC4R in the testis is higher than that in the kidneys. These data show that the expression of MC4R exist different between sexes mice.

Rapid global development has resulted in the widespread use of water pipelines in industrial and agricultural production and life. During water transportation and deployment, water pipes with different angles need to be positioned according to different geographical and topographical problems. Flowmaster simulation software was used to simulate the leakage process of pipelines with different angles. The transient characteristics of fluids in the pipeline were studied in detail. The influences of parameters, such as the bending coefficient R/D (R is the turning radius of pipe, D is the inner diameter of pipe), leakage position, and leakage aperture on the transient flow law of pipelines with and without leakage, were analyzed. The results show that the periodic decay of the upstream flow and pressure curve at the valve with and without leakage has an insignificant relationship with the bending coefficient R/D, however, the amplitude of the sudden position change is positively correlated with the magnitude of R/D. The leakage aperture is positively correlated with the leakage flow and negatively correlated with the pressure value at the leak location node. The farther the leak position is from the valve, the greater the amplitude of the valve end pressure and the upstream flow curve, and symmetric fluctuations occur.

Nano-TiO2 has always been one of the most important topics in the research of photocatalysts due to its special activity and stability. However, it has always been difficult to obtain nano-TiO2 with high dispersion, a small particle size and high photocatalytic activity. In this paper, nano-TiO2 powder was prepared by combining the high-gravity technique and direct precipitation method in an impinging stream-rotating packed bed (IS-RPB) reactor followed by Fe3+ in-situ doping. TiOSO4 and NH3&middot, H2O solutions were cut into very small liquid microelements by high-speed rotating packing, and the mass transfer and microscopic mixing of the nucleation and growth processes of nano-TiO2 were strengthened in IS-RPB, which was beneficial to the continuous production of high quality nano-TiO2. Pure TiO2 and iron-doped nano-TiO2 (Fe-TiO2) were obtained in IS-RPB and were investigated by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), ultraviolet-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-vis DRS) and Brunauer&ndash, Emmett&ndash, Teller (BET) analysis, which found that pure TiO2 had a particle size of about 12.5 nm, good dispersibility and a complete anatase crystal at the rotating speed of packing of 800 rpm and calcination temperature of 500 &deg, C. The addition of Fe3+ did not change the crystalline structure of TiO2. Iron was highly dispersed in TiO2 without the detection of aggregates and was found to exist in a positive trivalent form by XPS. With the increase of iron doping, the photoresponse range of TiO2 to visible light was broadened from 3.06 eV to 2.26 eV. The degradation efficiency of gaseous toluene by Fe-TiO2 under ultraviolet light was higher than that of pure TiO2 and commercial P25 due to Fe3+ effectively suppressing the recombination of TiO2 electrons and holes, the highest efficiency produced by 1.0% Fe-TiO2 was 95.7%.

The paper introduces the characteristics of cloud desktop and cloud desktop system composition structure, including hardware structure and software structure, it can be done from cloud desktop functionality in the application of computer network laboratory is put forward.

Bi 1.5 Zn 0.5 Nb 0.5 Ti 1.5 O 7 (BZNT) thin films with different thicknesses as cover layers were deposited on the Ba 0.6 Sr 0.4 TiO 3 (BST) thin films on the Pt/Ti/SiO 2 /Si substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering method. The microstructure, surface morphology, dielectric and tunable properties of BST/BZNT heterogeneous bilayered films were investigated as a function of the thickness of BZNT films and the effect of BZNT films on the asymmetric electrical properties of BST/BZNT bilayered films was discussed. It was found that BZNT cover layer significantly improved the leakage current and the dielectric loss, and the dielectric constant and tunability of BST/BZNT bilayered thin films simultaneously decreased with the increasing thickness of BZNT films. The BST/BZNT bilayered thin film with a 50 nm BZNT cover layer gave the largest figure of merit (FOM) of 33.48 with the upper tunability of 55.38%. The asymmetric electrical behavior of BST/BZNT bilayered films is probably related to an internal electric field caused by built-in voltages at Pt/BST and BZNT/Au interfaces.

—A microphone clustering and back propagation (BP) neural network based acoustic source localization method using distributed microphone arrays in an inte lligent meeting room is proposed. In the propos ed method, a novel clustering method is first used to divide all microphones into several clusters where each one corresponds to a specified BP network. Afterwards, the energy-based cluster selecting scheme is applied to the select the clusters which are small and close to the acoustic source. In each chosen cluster, the time difference of arrival of each microphone pair is estimated, and then all estimated time delays act as input of the corresponding BP network for position estimation. Finally, all estimated positions from the chosen clusters are fused for global position estimation. Only subsets rather than all the microphones are responsible for acoustic source localization, which leads to less computational cost; moreover, the local estimation in each chosen cluster can be processed in parallel, which expects to improve the localization speed potentially. Simulation results from comparison with other related localization methods confirm the validity of the proposed method. Index Terms—acoustic source localization, BP neural network, microphone clustering, GCC-PHAT, TDOA.

Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 (BST) and 0.06Nd(Zn1/2Ti1/2)O3–0.94Ba x Sr1−x TiO3 (NZT–BST) thin films with x = 0.6, 0.7, 0.75, and 0.8 were fabricated on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates by sol–gel method. The structures, surface morphology, dielectric, and ferroelectric properties, and thermal stability of BST and NZT–BST thin films were investigated as a function of NZT and Ba content. It was found that introducing NZT into BST decreased significantly dielectric loss, however, along with the tunability. On this basis, increasing Ba/Sr in NZT–BST thin films led to the simultaneous increase of dielectric constant and tunability of thin films. As a result, optimized dielectric and tunable properties were obtained for 0.06Nd(Zn1/2Ti1/2)O3–0.94Ba0.7Sr0.3TiO3 thin film with the highest FOM value of 43.22. It awakens us that, for reducing dielectric loss, introducing a certain amount of low permittivity oxides or non-ferroelectrics like NZT into weak ferroelectric perovskite tunable materials, not into paraelectric perovskite tunable materials, may obtain more excellent dielectric and tunable performances.

Rapid evaporation of liquid during depressurization is a common phenomenon observed in industrial applications or during nuclear reactor accidents. The experimental study on rapid evaporation of high-pressure R113 liquid bulk during quick depressurization has been conducted. It is confirmed that initial pressure and initial fluid temperature are the principal factors affecting liquid temperature and pattern transitions. During the fast depressurization, the higher the initial pressure is, the faster the liquid temperature decreases with the same initial fluid temperature, and the lower the minimum temperature reaches. The higher the initial fluid temperature is, the faster the liquid temperature decreases with the same initial pressure. It is found that a larger depressurization increases the intensity of liquid bulk evaporation, and speeds up the liquid temperature decline. Results indicate that the pressure change in the test vessel is divided into two stages during depressurization. First the temperature of liquid decreases suddenly for the initial 0.5 s after opening the solenoid valve, and second the liquid temperature changes slowly when the pressure in the test vessel keeps a steady-state value.

xNd(Zn1/2Ti1/2)O3–(1−x)Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 (xNZT–BST) thin films were fabricated on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates by sol–gel method with x = 0, 3%, 6%, and 10%. The structures, surface morphology, dielectric and ferroelectric properties, and thermal stability of xNZT–BST thin films were investigated as a function of NZT content. It was observed that the introduction of NZT into BST decreased grain size, dielectric constant, ferroelectricity, tunability, and significantly improved dielectric loss and dielectric thermal stability. The corresponding reasons were discussed. The 10%NZT–BST thin film exhibited the least dielectric loss of 0.005 and the lowest temperature coefficient of permittivity (TCP) of 3.2 × 10−3/°C. In addition, the figure of merit (FOM) of xNZT–BST (x = 3%, 6%, and 10%) films was higher than that of pure BST film. Our results showed that the introduction of appropriate NZT into BST could modify the dielectric quality of BST thin films with good thermal stability. Especially for the 3%NZT–BST thin film, it showed the highest FOM of 33.58 for its appropriate tunability of 32.87% and low dielectric loss of 0.0098.

Compare the microRNA (miRNA) trancriptomes of goat and sheep skin using Solexa sequencing to understand the development of skin and hair follicles (HFs). miRNA expression patterns vary in the two small RNA libraries from goat (G library) and sheep (S library) telogen skin samples. Analysis of the size distribution of 25.32 million clean reads revealed that most are 21-23 nucleotides. A total of 1910 known miRNAs and 2261 novel mature miRNAs were identified in this study. Among them, 107 novel miRNAs and 1246 known miRNAs were differentially expressed in the two libraries; 10 of the known miRNAs were identified using stem-loop quantitative real-time PCR. Furthermore, GO and KEGG pathway analysis of predicted miRNA targets illustrated the roles of these differentially expressed miRNAs in telogen HF development and growth. This study provides important information about the role of miRNAs in the regulation of HF development and their function in the telogen phase. This observation may help future investigations of the regulation of miRNAs during wool quality improvement.

Morin, a bioactive flavonoid extracted from the bark of Moraceae plants and many medicinal herbs, has anti-inflammatory and antioxidative effects. In this research, we explored the protective effects of morin against lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and d-galactosamine (D-GalN) induced acute liver injury in mice. Mice were given an intraperitoneal injection of morin before LPS and D-GalN treatment and the HepG2 cells were only given morin to investigate its effects. The results showed that morin markedly inhibited the production of serum alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) and hepatic TNF-α, IL-6, and myeloperoxidase (MPO) induced by LPS/D-GalN. In order to evaluate morin effect in the future, we investigated the expression of nuclear factor E2 related factor 2 (Nrf2), nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-κB), toll like receptor 4 (TLR4) on liver injury. Taken together, these results suggested that morin could exert the anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative effects against LPS/D-GalN-induced acute liver injury by activating Nrf2 signal pathways and inhibiting NF-κB activation.

This paper proposes the novel E-Commerce recommendation system model based on the pattern recognition and user behavior preference analysis. With the development of Internet and the generation of the huge amounts of data, information overload problem is increasingly serious, user drown in an ocean of data, it is difficult to effectively find themselves interested in the general information. Recommendation system technology was put forward and is widely used in this case, the recommendation system analysis of the user's past behavior records, while using the recommended algorithm automatically recommend users might be interested in the information to the general user. Standard utility of the log file format stored physical information about the client connection, if it can be some of the files stored in the mining analysis as can see the customer's behavior. From this starting point, we propose the new recommendation system architecture with the integration of pattern recognition algorithm that is innovative.

This paper proposes a novel E-commerce recommendation algorithm based on the neural network and collaborative analysis. With the rapid development of Internet, online shopping becomes one of the most important ways of shopping consumer. In the face of the shopping website product information, the amount of recommendation system to help users quickly searches for products that meet the requirements. The Internet rapidly expanding creates the personalized information recommendation service. This class provides personalized recommendation service system of intelligent algorithm are adopted to decrease the users' information overload that save for the user search costs, improve the quality of decision-making, enhance customer trust, satisfaction, loyalty to the businessman, even promote the purchase. Our research combines the neural network model to propose the new recommendation algorithm that will help to enhance the performance of the traditional methods which will be meaningful and innovative.

In the industrial fabrication processes of density-graded closed-cell metallic foams, it is of great importance to control the solidification immediately after foams are formed so as to obtain the final products with well distributed density-graded pores and less defects. This paper presented an analytical work aiming to predict the solidification front of density-graded metallic foam under constant temperature boundary condition. Numerical simulations based on ideal density-graded circular pores demonstrated good agreement with the analytical solutions. The 2D porous morphology of a real density-graded aluminum foam was further reconstructed with microCT, on the basis of which the propagation of solidification front inside this real density-graded foam was numerically investigated. An equivalent shape factor for this real foam was calculated to provide an insight for the influence of different pore shapes on solidification. Compared with other pores, the solidification speed of elliptical pores (a common pore shape in real foams) is moderate, i.e., slower than circular pores but quicker than triangular pores for same porosity.Copyright © 2016 by ASME

A new type of reactor, featured with impinging stream-rotating packed bed (IS-RPB) and coil pipes, was designed and used to prepare p -hydroxybenzaldehyde (PHB) by hydrolysis from diazonium salts. The influence of operating parameters, such as reaction temperature, reaction time and high gravity factor, on the yield of PHB was investigated. Compared with the traditional kettle-type reactor, the yield of PHB with the new reactor is increased significantly and the reaction time is much shorter. Under the optimum conditions, the yield of PHB is increased from 51% to 84.1%. The reactor offers an opportunity for replacing the traditional batch mode operation with a continuous process.

Testis-specific serine kinases (TSSKs) are a family of serine/threonine kinases highly expressed in the testes that are responsible for regulating many spermatogenesis-related protein activities. Mutations in this family have a positive relationship with oligospermia and azoospermia in human and mouse. Here, five members of the TSSK family from a Banna mini-pig inbred line (BMI) were cloned, sequenced, and characterized. The full-length coding sequences of BMI TSSKs varied from 807 (TSSK3) to 1095 bp (TSSK1) and encoded 268 to 364 amino acids with molecular weights in the range 30.11 to 41.34 kDa. Following comparison with TSSK4 genes in other species, BMI TSSK4 was found to contain three alternatively spliced variants, inform1, inform 3, and inform 4. BMI TSSK1 and TSSK2 are co-localized on the Sus scrofa chromosome (SSC) 14, and consist of a single exon; TSSK3, TSSK4, and TSSK6 are on SSC6, SSC7, and SSC2, and consist of two, four, and one exon, respectively. Multiple protein sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis showed that the regions spanning the S_TKc domains were more conserved between pig and other animals: with TSSK1 and TSSK2 and TSSK3 and TSSK6 displaying the greatest degree of homology across species, and the TSSK4 protein clearly distinct from other members. Multi-tissue RT-PCR showed BMI TSSK1, TSSK3, and TSSK4 were only expressed in the testes and seminal vesicle, TSSK2 was confined to testes only, while TSSK6 was expressed widely in adult tissues but was highest in the testes.

The interactions between intestinal microbes and parasitic worms play an essential role in the development of the host immune system. However, the effects of gut microbes on Trichinella spiralis are unknown. The aim of this work was to explore microbe-induced alterations in the survival and reproduction of T. spiralis in vitro. To further identify the proteins and genes involved in the response of nematodes to microbes, quantitative proteomic analysis of T. spiralis was conducted by iTRAQ-coupled LCMS/MS technology and quantitative real-time-PCR was used to measure changes in mRNA expression. The results showed Lactobacillus acidophilus, and especially Lactobacillus bulgaricus, significantly enhanced the survival and reproductive rates of nematodes. Salmonella enterica, and especially Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EHEC), had opposite effects. Genetic responses were activated mainly by EHEC. A total of 514 proteins were identified and quantified, and carbohydrate metabolism-related proteins existed in a higher proportion. These findings indicated that some gut bacteria are friendly or harmful to humans and in addition they may have similar beneficial or detrimental effects on parasites. This may be due to the regulation of expression of specific genes and proteins. Our studies provide a basis for developing therapies against parasitic infections from knowledge generated by studying the gut microbes of mammals.

Stochastic predator-prey systems with polluted in environment response are proposed. The first one is without pollute and the second one is with pollute. Firstly the existence of the unique positive solutions in two species delayed stochastic prey-predator systems are discussed Then the permanence of systems (H) and (HM) were investigated. For each system, we can proof that there exists a unique non-negative solution in each system that is permanent in time average under certain conditions.

Functional versatility and elevated expression in cancers have promoted p21-activated kinase 4 (PAK4) as one of the first-in-class anti-cancer drug targets. In this study, a series of novel 1-phenanthryl-tetrahydroisoquinoline analogues have been designed and synthesized as a novel class of small-molecule PAK4 inhibitors to fit into the cavity of PAK4. All of the target compounds were evaluated for their in vitro PAK4 inhibitory activities and antiproliferative activities. Lead optimization identified all the derivatives with more potency than the lead compound, especially compound 21a. Moreover, compound 21a significantly induced the cell cycle in the G1/S phase, and inhibited migration and invasion of MCF-7 cells via the regulation of the PAK4-LIMK1-cofilin signaling pathway. A molecular modeling study showed possible novel binding modes between 21a and PAK4 and provided a structural basis for further structure-guided design of PAK4 inhibitors.

The lymphotoxin beta receptor (LTβR) is a member of the tumor necrosis factor family of receptors (TNFR). It plays a role in regulating lymphoid organogenesis and homeostasis of the immune system. In the present study, the full coding region of a putative LTβR gene of Sus scrofa was amplified by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and cloned for the first time (accession Nos. JX457347 and AFU74012). In addition, analysis of the tissue expression profile was carried out via RT-PCR. The full-length coding region of porcine LTβR had 1266 nucleotides (molecular weight, 45.61 kDa; pI, 5.71) and encoded 421 amino acids. Bioinformatic prediction indicates that LTβR belongs to the TNFR superfamily and contains a TNFR domain. The sequence homology analysis revealed that the amino acid sequences of S. scrofa LTβR had 82.9, 82.4, 81.3, 80.5, 78.7, 74.6, and 73.0% identity with those of Equus caballus, Canis lupus, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, Oryctolagus cuniculus, Bos taurus, Mus musculus, and Homo sapiens, respectively. The phylogenetic tree based on the amino acid sequences of LTβR from 8 species revealed that S. scrofa was more closely related to E. caballus, C. lupus, and A. melanoleuca. RT-PCR analysis showed that the porcine LTβR gene was differentially expressed (e.g., high, moderate, low, or nonexistent) in various tissues (e.g., prostate, pituitary, brainstem, and esophagus, respectively). This may be related to differences in the regulation of LTβR in the different tissues.

Here, we studied hair follicle development of Liaoning Cashmere goats. Every month for 1 year, skin samples were collected from five 1.5-year-old female goats, and made into paraffin sections. A number of parameters were measured of primary and secondary hair follicles via microscopic observation including follicle depth, hair bulb width, dermis and epidermis thickness, changes in follicle activity, and histology. The results showed the presence of three phases in the annual hair cycle: anagen, catagen, and telogen. Primary and secondary hair follicle depth varied across the months; however, no significant difference was obtained between adjacent months (P>0.05). Primary hair follicles had a bigger hair bulb width compared to secondary hair follicles; however, this difference declined during hair follicle developed in anagen. As hair follicle growth slowed, the hair bulb broadened, and hair root depth became shallower. During the entire hair cycle, hair follicle depth and dermis thickness were positively correlated; however, this relationship was not significant (P>0.05) for primary and secondary hair follicle density and the ratio of secondary hair follicle density and primary hair follicle density (S/P ratio). In addition, new and old primary hair follicles coexisted with secondary hair follicles. Finally, secondary hair follicles had a higher activity rate compared to primary hair follicle in adult Liaoning Cashmere goats in certain months.

Vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGFs) play important roles in neovascularization, tissue development, and angiogenesis. In this study, changes in VEGF expression patterns and microvessel density (MVD), and their correlations, were investigated during hair follicle development in epidermal appendages of Liaoning cashmere goats. Polyclonal antibodies to VEGF and microvessels were used for monthly immunohistochemical examinations of normal skin specimens from adult female goats for one year. VEGF was expressed in the hair bulb of primary and secondary hair follicles, the outer and inner root sheaths, sebaceous glands (ductal and secretory portions), eccrine sweat glands (ductal and secretory portions), and the epidermis. Abundant expression of VEGF was observed in the follicular basement membrane zone surrounding the bulb matrix and in ductal and secretory portions of eccrine sweat glands. The change in VEGFs in primary hair follicles showed a bimodal pattern, with the first peak observed from March to May, and the second in August. Maximal expression in secondary hair follicles occurred in May and August. Therefore, VEGF expression in primary and secondary hair follicles is synchronized throughout the year, and is correlated to hair development. In the later telogen and anagen phases, VEGF expression was higher in the secondary, compared to the primary, hair follicle. Changes in MVD also showed a bimodal pattern with peaks in May and August. VEGF expression and MVD showed moderate and strongly positive correlation in the primary and secondary hair follicles, respectively. Therefore, MVD and VEGF are closely related to the processes involved in hair cycle regulation.

The objective of this paper is to study systematically the bifurcation and control of a single-species fish population logistic model with the invasion of alien species based on the theory of singular system and bifurcation. It regardsSpartina anglicaas an invasive species, which invades the fisheries and aquaculture. Firstly, the stabilities of equilibria in this model are discussed. Moreover, the sufficient conditions for existence of the trans-critical bifurcation and the singularity induced bifurcation are obtained. Secondly, the state feedback controller is designed to eliminate the unexpected singularity induced bifurcation by combining harvested effort with the purification capacity. It obviously inhibits the switch of population and makes the system stable. Finally, the numerical simulation is proposed to show the practical significance of the bifurcation and control from the biological point of view.

Compressed sensing (CS) theory provides a new solution for low-rate sampling design of IR-UWB receiver, but the quantization process is usually idealized in existent CS based sampling architectures. In this paper, the influence of quantization noise is fully considered, and an IR-UWB signal reconstruction method with high anti-noise performance is proposed. Based on the analysis of the noise distribution characteristics, the signal reconstruction optimization model is revised, and then the performance of Dantzig-Selector (DS) method is compared with the traditional algorithms. Further, a Joint DS-SP method which can self-adaptively select the reconstruction algorithms between DS and SP (Subspace Pursuit) is proposed. Simulation results show that the Joint DS-SP method can not only get the best performance under different noise regions and quantization precisions, but also show a computational complexity trade-off between DS and SP, thus provides a new strategy of CS signal reconstruction for the design of IR-UWB receiver's digital back-end.

The alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone receptor (MC1R) is one of five G-protein coupled receptors belonging to the melanocortin subfamily, MC1R gene has been known to play a major role in regulating of fur color in mammals, and α-MSH and ACTH are endogenous nonselective agonists for MC1R. However, we found that MC1R was highly expressed in Raw 264.7 cells which were important inflammatory cells involved in the initiation of inflammatory responses. In addition, Cyclic AMP is not only a key molecule in the MC1R signal transduction pathway, but dampen innate immune-mediated responses. These intriguing biological results triggered the further conformation studies; it suggested that MC1R was very likely to be an important role in immunoregulation. In this study, we were to investigate the immunosuppressive effects of MC1R on inflammation in lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulated Raw 264.7 cells and LPS induced vivo 2-chloro-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene (TNCB)-induced atopic dermatitis (AD) model. The effects of the MC1R antagonist psoralen on pro-inflammatory cytokines and signaling pathways were analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, western blot, real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR and Histological analysis. Our results show a consistent and marked effect of high concentrations of MC1R antagonist psoralen increased the level of MC1R mRNA in Raw 264.7 cells by cumulative feedback regulation through preferential binding of MC1R. Moreover, as evidenced by inhibiting the LPS-induced TNF-α, IL-6 and enhancing the expression level of cyclic AMP protein in vitro. In vivo study it was also observed that psoralen promoted on histopathologic changes in the skin tissue of TNCB-induced AD mice. Taken together, our results suggest that MC1R decrease the inflammation in vitro and vivo, and might be a therapeutic signaling pathway to against inflammatory diseases.

This paper reports an experimental investigation of rapid evaporation process of high-pressure ethanol liquid during depressurization. The study focused on pressure and temperature transients with the influence of different initial conditions, and the shape variation was recorded via a high speed camera. During an experiment, the ethanol liquid was contained in a small round tube with a diameter 10mm in the test vessel, and a thermocouple was put within the fluid which was used to measure the fluid temperature during the depressurization. The predetermined pressure was provided by the high-pressure nitrogen gas, and the process of quick depressurization was started by opening the magnetic valve, which was connected with the test vessel. The transitions of the pressure and the fluid temperature were recorded by the NI data collection system. According to the experimental results, during the fast pressure drop, with the same initial temperature and other test conditions, the higher the initial pressure is, the faster the liquid temperature decreases, and the lower the minimum temperature reaches. In addition, the effect of initial fluid conditions, initial environmental pressure on temperature transition and so on are summed up and are experimentally analyzed on the fluid temperature change under the same test equipment. Also, the variation characteristics of kerosene fluid were compared with ethanol liquid under the same experiment conditions.Copyright © 2012 by ASME

Traditionally, high-precision TOA estimation for IR-UWB ranging relies on extremely high-rate sampling, which is difficult to implement with low-cost. In this paper, by introducing the newly emerging compressed sensing (CS) theory to the design of IR-UWB ranging system, low-rate sampling based high-precision TOA estimation is realized. The matching-pursuit search-back (MP-SB) algorithm for TOA estimation is proposed, which utilizes iterative search and threshold comparison to detect the 1st path from the compressed sensing measurements of the received ranging signal. The detection threshold in each iteration step is adaptively optimized. The performance of the proposed method is analyzed through simulations under IEEE 802.15.4a channel models. Results show that the proposed method can obtain high-precision ranging results with measurements far less than Nyquist-rate samples. Therefore, the proposed method serves as an alternative practical high-precision IR-UWB ranging method. 1

Determining the attribute weights is an important process in multiple attribute decision making. Many methods have been proposed for determining the attribute weights, either by making use of decision makers' subjective preference judgments, or by utilizing the objective information of the alternatives, i.e., the decision matrix. However, in uncertain decision environment, sometimes, interval numbers are employed to model the multiple attribute decision making problems. The overall values of alternatives are also interval values, which makes it difficult to find strict preference priority relationships between alternatives when the interval overlaps happen. Thus, there exist superiority possibilities between the alternatives when overlapping happens. Under this circumstance, how to determine the attribute weights based on the interval decision matrix and the preference priority relationships with superiority possibility among the alternatives, is a new problem. Therefore, a new programming model is proposed and illustrated by an example in this study.

This paper proposes a new approach to customer classification with customers' value information being interval information. In the proposed approach, the decision matrix in the form of interval is normalized based on the superiority degree theory, firstly; Then, the attribute weights are determined and the relative distance of each customer to the ideal-point is figured out; in the end, the customers are classified into different groups according to the relative distance of each customer to the ideal-point and the classification rule. An example is used to illustrate the proposed approach.

Based on the combination of global coherence field (GCF) and distributed particle filter (DPF) a speaker tracking method is proposed for distributed microphone networks in this paper. In the distributed microphone network, each node comprises a microphone pair, and its generalized cross-correlation (GCC) function is estimated. Based on the average over all local GCC observations, a global coherence field-based pseudo-likelihood (GCF-PL) function is developed as the likelihood for a DPF. In the proposed method, all nodes share an identical particle set, and each node performs local particle filtering simultaneously. In the local particle filter, the likelihood GCF-PL for each particle weight is computed with an average consensus algorithm. With an identical particle set and the consistent estimate of GCF-PL for each particle weight, all individual nodes possess a common particle presentation for the global posterior of the speaker state, which is utilized by each node for an estimated global speaker position. Employing the GCF-PL as the likelihood for DPF, no assumption is required about the independence of nodes observations as well as observation noise statistics. Additionally, only local information exchange occurs among neighboring nodes; and finally each node has a global estimate of the speaker position. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.