Search

The deformation instability of surrounding rock and the collapse of rock blocks are two common failure modes observed during the construction of underground caverns. Therefore, a comprehensive safety evaluation method (CSEM) of surrounding rock for application during underground cavern construction is presented in this paper. The method can be used to evaluate the deformation stability of surrounding rock and predict the collapse of rock blocks, rapidly. First, a deformation stability prediction and evaluation method (DSPEM) for rock mass is established. It combines the safety evaluation method based on a deformation statistical analysis and an inverse deformation prediction method using measured deformation data of surrounding rock. This approach possesses the unique characteristics of complementary and mutual verification. In addition, a comprehensive early-warning index system (CWIS) for assessing the deformation stability of surrounding rock is presented. It consists of three types of warning indicators and three levels of warning values. The early-warning values can be adjusted reasonably by the prediction correction method according to the measured displacements. For the collapse of rock blocks controlled by structural surfaces, a rapid prediction method of rock block collapse (RPMBC) based on the block theory is then presented. Finally, combining the DSPEM, RPMBC, and CWIS, the CSEM of surrounding rock for assessing the safety of cavern construction is established. It can provide technical support for decision making on the safety of surrounding rock during the construction of underground caverns.

Accumulating signs have found that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) contribute to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Here, we probed the effect and mechanism of lncRNA DARS-AS1 in HCC. The profiles of DARS-AS1 and Cytoskeleton associated protein 2 (CKAP2) in 50 HCC tissues and non-tumor tissues were examined by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). DARS-AS1 and CKAP2 overexpression and/or knockdown cell models were established. The proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) were determined. CKAP2, and focal adhesion kinase (FAK)-extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) was tested by Western blot (WB). The relationship between DARS-AS1 and CKAP2 was predicted by Bioinformatics, and the dual-luciferase reporter assay was applied to verify the targeting association between miR-3200-5p and DARS-AS1 and CKAP2. DARS-AS1 was overexpressed in HCC tissues (vs. that in non-tumor tissues) and was closely correlated with the patients’ tumor stage. DARS-AS1 facilitated HCC cell proliferation and hampered apoptosis. HCC cell migration and EMT were enhanced by DARS-AS1. DARS-AS1 up-regulated CKAP2, which aggravated HCC. Further investigation illustrated that either DARS-AS1 or CKAP2 activated FAK-ERK pathway, and miR-3200-5p was competitively restrained by DARS-AS1. miR-3200-5p exerted tumor-suppressive effects in HCC and inactivated CKAP2 and FAK-ERK pathway. All in all, this study corroborates that DARS-AS1 facilitates HCC proliferation and metastasis by regulating miR-3200-5p-mediated CKAP2, which provides a potential target for HCC diagnosis and treatment. Abbreviations: CCK-8: cell counting kit-8; CKAP2: Cytoskeleton associated protein 2; cDNA:complementary DNA; DAPI: 4ʹ,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole; DARS-AS1: DARS1 antisense RNA 1; DEPC: diethyl pyrocarbonate; DMEM-F12: Dulbecco’s minimal essential medium/Ham’s-F12; EMT: epithelial-mesenchymal transition; ERK: extracellular signal-regulated kinase; FAK: focal adhesion kinase; FBS: fetal bovine serum; GAPDH: glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase; HCC: hepatocellular carcinoma; HE: hematoxylin-eosin; IHC: Immunohistochemistry; LIHC: Liver hepatocellular carcinoma; lncRNAs: long noncoding RNAs; MIAT: lncRNA myocardial infarction-related transcripts; MT: Mutant; NC: negative control; PBS: phosphate-buffered saline; PMSF: Phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride; PVDF: polyvinylidene difluoride; RT: room temperature; RT-qPCR: real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction; SDS-PAGE: sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis; SPF: specific pathogen-free; TMAP: tumor-associated microtubule-associated protein; TUNEL: TdT-mediated dUTP nick end labeling; V: volume; WT: wild type.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignant tumor originating from liver epithelial cells with a high clinical mortality rate. β-Patchoulene (β-PAE) is a compound extracted from patchouli, which has analgesic, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. This research aims to probe the impacts of β-PAE on hypoxia-induced HCC cell proliferation and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Firstly, hypoxic injury models were constructed in HCC Huh-7 and MHCC97 cells, and the hypoxic injury cell models were then treated with different concentrations of β-PAE. The cell viability, proliferation, migration, invasion and apoptosis were checked by the cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, colony formation assay, Transwell assay, flow cytometry and terminal deoxyribonucleotide transferase (TdT)-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay. The expression of Survivin protein, EMT markers and the NF-κB/HIF-1α pathway was gauged by Western blot (WB) or cellular immunofluorescence or reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The

Graphene is a type of promising electrode material for high-energy and high-power density supercapacitors, but its electrochemical performance is greatly limited by the restacking problem. In this work, we reported a facile approach to synthesis graphene with chemically bonded vanadium oxide (VOx) nanoparticles and demonstrated that chemically-bonded VOx nanoparticles can effectively prevent the graphene sheets from restacking and hence improve the electrochemical performance. The capacitance of VOx-bonded graphene increases to 272 F/g compared to 183 F/g of pristine graphene in 1 M H3PO4 aqueous electrolyte at 2 A/g. The VOx-bonded graphene also showed improved rate capability in both H3PO4 and ionic liquid electrolytes. The capacitance retention increases to 54.5% from 28.5% at 100 A/g (compare to 2 A/g) in H3PO4 and increases to 65.1% from 46.3% at 2 A/g (compare to 0.2 A/g) in neat ionic liquid. A high energy density of 84.4 Wh/kg is obtained within the voltage window of 4 V in ionic liquid. Even at a high-power density of 1000 W/kg, the VOx-bonded graphene shows a high energy density of 47.3 Wh/kg.

Two-dimensional (2D) anatase titanium dioxide (TiO2) is expected to exhibit different properties as compared to anatase nanocrystallites, due to its highly reactive exposed facets. However, access to 2D anatase TiO2 is limited by the non-layered nature of the bulk crystal, which does not allow use of top-down chemical exfoliation. Large efforts have been dedicated to the growth of 2D anatase TiO2 with high reactive facets by bottom-up approaches, which relies on the use of harmful chemical reagents. Here, we demonstrate a novel fluorine-free strategy based on topochemical conversion of 2D 1T-TiS2 for the production of single crystalline 2D anatase TiO2, exposing the {001} facet on the top and bottom and {100} at the sides of the nanosheet. The exposure of these faces, with no additional defects or doping, gives rise to a significant activity enhancement in the hydrogen evolution reaction, as compared to commercially available Degussa P25 TiO2 nanoparticles. Because of the strong potential of TiO2 in many energy-based applications, our topochemical approach offers a low cost, green and mass scalable route for production of highly crystalline anatase TiO2 with well controlled and highly reactive exposed facets.

The wide application of the image super-resolution algorithms significantly improves the visual quality of infrared images. In this paper, an infrared image super-resolution reconstruction method based on a closed-loop regression network is proposed. The residual channel attention block is introduced into the up-sampling module group, which effectively improves the capacity of the network and increases the number of feature maps, enhances the extraction and recovery ability of infrared image features, and is conducive to the recovery of image details. Compared with other infrared information recovery methods previously proposed, the proposed method has obvious advantages in high-resolution detail acquisition capability. Neural network through closed-loop regression, this scheme overcomes the LR image to HR image defects in nonlinear mapping function, by introducing additional constraints on the LR data to reduce the space of the possible functions.

Two-dimensional (2D) anatase titanium dioxide (TiO

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) serve a pivotal role in tumor development and progression, in which miRNA (miR)-139-5p functions as a tumor suppressor. However, the functions and mechanisms of miR-139-5p in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remain unclear. In the present study, it was found that miR-139-5p was markedly decreased in PDAC tissues and cell lines. Noticeably, thymopoietin (TMPO) was predicted and confirmed as a direct target of miR-139-5p using a luciferase reporter system. The expression level of miR-139-5p was inversely associated with the expression of TMPO in PDAC specimens. A series of gain-of-function assays elucidated that the overexpression of miR-139-5p suppressed cell proliferation, and induced cell cycle arrest and cell apoptosis, determined with a Cell Counting Kit-8, colony formation assays and flow cytometry, respectively. Furthermore, the re-expression of TMPO eliminated the effects of miR-139-5p on cell proliferation, cell cycle progression and apoptosis. In summary, these findings demonstrated that miR-139-5p may be a tumor suppressor in PDAC, which may be useful in developing promising therapies for PDAC.

We propose a novel network for low-light-level and visible image fusion enhancement task, which is based on the feature extraction convolution neural network. By extracting the high-frequency information of visible light detector under low illumination, and combining the advantages of wide activation network and channel attention mechanism, the network can automatically filter and extract the useful information in the image to complete the super-resolution reconstruction of low light level image. It makes up for the lack of visible light information and low resolution (LR) of low light level detector at night and can realize all-weather real-time imaging. The experimental results show that our method has better numerical performance than the traditional super-resolution network structure, and also retains more abundant image texture information, which is more in line with the feeling of human eyes.

Terahertz waves refer to electromagnetic waves with frequencies ranging from 0.1THz to 10THz.Due to the ability to penetrate many non-polar materials, terahertz waves can be used to detect hidden objects. A convolutional neural network structure called Attention U-Net to achieve super-resolution of terahertz images is proposed in this paper. The function of the convolutional layer and pooling layer in the encoding path is reducing the size and extracting the edge features of the image, while the role of the deconvolution layer in the decoding path is to up-sample the image and restore the image content. The introduction of skip connection on the feature map of the symmetrical encoding path and decoding path maximizes the utilization of feature information in each layer of the network and effectively solves the problem of gradient disappearance. This network also replaces the convolution on the codec path with the attention mechanism block, including the spatial attention mechanism and the channel attention mechanism, which makes the extracted features more directional, obtains more detailed information about the target that needs to be focused and suppresses other Useless information. The network and algorithm proposed in this paper have good results in experiments and have a wide range of application prospects in the field of security inspection.

In recent decades, with the rapid development of image sensor technology, image acquisition has gradually evolved from a single sensor mode to a multi-sensor mode. The data information obtained by a single sensor is limited, and the use of multi-source data fusion can provide a more accurate understanding of the observation scene. This paper proposes a network structure of infrared visible color night vision image fusion based on deep learning. The network adopts a fusion-encoding-decoding structure for end-to-end learning to achieve the purpose of color night vision image fusion, making the image more in line with human visual effects. The fusion structure contains a multi-scale feature extraction block and a channel attention block, which perform feature extraction on low-resolution infrared images and visible images respectively. The multi-scale feature block can expand the receptive field and avoid losing too much feature information. The channel attention block can improve the sensitivity of the network to channel characteristics. A certain number of convolutional layers and deconvolutional layers are used in the network to realize the encoding and decoding of the feature map to achieve the purpose of restoring the color fusion image. After experimental verification, our method has a good fusion effect, rich colors, and conforms to the human visual effect.

Single image super-resolution (SISR) is a notoriously challenging ill-posed problem that aims to obtain a high-resolution output from one of its low-resolution versions. Recently, powerful deep learning algorithms have been applied to SISR and have achieved state-of-the-art performance. In this paper, a high-efficiency infrared image super-resolution algorithm based on a cascaded deep network is proposed. In this method, the low-resolution infrared image is directly processed without the preprocessing of bicubic interpolation up-sampling that can reduce the complexity of the network and the amount of computation. The network structure consists of two layers of the network. The sub-pixel convolution in each layer can enlarge the image size by twice and make the input image size to reach the final high-resolution image size. Besides, we utilize multi-scale feature extraction blocks to extract features from the same feature image by using multiple convolution kernels of different sizes, which makes the feature image information more abundant. The experimental results show that the test speed of each image in our network is 0.046 seconds, which manifests our proposed algorithm has high efficiency of infrared image super-resolution.

In recent years, the convolution neural network has been widely used in single image super-resolution and has an excellent super-resolution ability. In this paper, a novel convolutional neural network structure based on symmetric skip connection is proposed, which contains multiple convolution layers and deconvolution layers. The role of the convolution layer is to extract the details of image content, and the function of the deconvolution layer is to make the image upsampling and restore the image content details. In addition, we use skip connection between the convolution layer and the deconvolution layer of network structure, which can transfer image information from the front end to the back end. Meanwhile, skip connection can also effectively solve the problem of gradient vanishing. Besides, the residual block is introduced to deepen the network structure. The deeper network structure can learn more complex changes. Different from other papers, this paper uses the method of adding the number of channels for feature fusion. This method can greatly increase the number of feature images, which is helpful to restore image details by deconvolution layer. A large number of experiments show that our network has efficient super-resolution ability of infrared image details.

Enhancing catalytic activity by decorating noble metals in catalysts provides an opportunity for promoting the electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) application. However, there are few systematic studies on regulating the structures of noble metals in catalytic materials and investigating their influence on HER. Herein, Pt catalysts with different structures including single atoms (SAs), clusters, and nanoparticles well-controllably anchored on VS

We report a new computational super-resolution (SR) imaging technique, termed as coded aperture super-resolution imaging (CASR), which is to modulate the point spread function (PSF) of the imaging system by rotating the aperture pattern. The pattern is designed in an anisotropic manner so that the PSF spreads across multiple pixels and contains clues about high-frequency structure. A fundamental difference between our approach and conventional multi-image superresolution is that CASR accounts for the diffraction effect explicitly with no need for relative motion between the scene and the detector. With CASR, we design and construct two sets of programmable aperture photoelectric imaging systems in the visible spectrum. The achievable equivalent Nyquist sampling frequency of the detectors is increased to 3.57×. Furthermore, it can be flexibly applied to long-distance HR detection due to its advantages of fast response, no mechanical movement, and anti-airflow disturbance.

The 3D hierarchical structure in catalysts not only the preserves intrinsic characteristics of each component, but also achieves increased specific surface area and active sites for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, we report a new strategy to synthesize efficient 3D hierarchical catalysts composed of Mo

Chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) is key pathological mechanism of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which induced cardiac dysfunction. Filamin c (FLNC) is a muscle-restricted isoform and predominantly expressed in muscle tissue. In this study, we utilized a recently developed CIH rat model to mimic OSA, investigated the expression of FLNC in cardiomyocytes, and examined the correlations of FLNC with active caspase-3 to ascertain whether FLNC regulates the survival of cardiomyocytes. Forty Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into normoxia and CIH groups. All rats were exposed either to normoxia or CIH 8 h daily for 6 weeks. Echocardiogram and HE staining were used to examine cardiac pathology, structure, and function. Body weight, heart weight, and blood gas values were recorded, respectively. The FLNC, Bax, Bcl-2, BNIP 3, and active caspase-3 proteins were detected by western blot; FLNC was examined by immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence. Association of FLNC with cardiomyocyte apoptosis was detected by immunofluorescence. CIH induced cardiac injuries and caused arterial blood gas disorder. FLNC significantly increased in CIH-induced cardiomyocytes than that in normoxia tissues. Pro-apoptotic BNIP 3 and Bax proteins were significantly increased in CIH, whereas anti-apoptotic member Bcl-2 was decreased. Active caspase-3, a universal marker of apoptosis, was significantly increased in CIH group. Co-localizations of FLNC and active caspase-3 were observed in CIH group. These results suggested FLNC is implicated in the pathogenesis of CIH-induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis, and FLNC may serve as a novel cardioprotective target for OSA patients.

This study examines the effects of hydraulic pressure and tectonic stress on fracture initiation in rock flaws by using the finite element method. A square domain with double flaws is analyzed under vertical load, different horizontal loads (modeling tectonic stresses), and various hydraulic pressures.

Image super-resolution technology successfully overcomes the limitation of excessively large pixel size in infrared detectors and meets the increasing demand for high-resolution infrared image information. In this paper, the super-resolution reconstruction of infrared images based on a convolutional neural network with skip connections is reported. The introduction of global residual learning and local residual learning reduces computational complexity and accelerates network convergence. Multiple convolution layers and deconvolution layers respectively implement the extraction and restoration of the features in infrared images. Skip connections and channel fusion are introduced to the network to increase the number of feature maps and promote the deconvolution layers to restore image details. Compared with the other previously proposed methods for infrared information restoration, our proposed method shows obvious advantages in the ability of high-resolution details acquisition.

With the continuous deepening of the application of big data technology, the education field is also paying attention to the impact of big data. “Internet +” education has become a hot topic in the current education field. This article relies on the big data Hadoop cloud platform technology through integration lines Online and offline resources and a variety of teaching techniques and methods are used to analyze the business English teaching model, and use the mixed teaching model to promote the development from extensive to standardization, aiming to enhance the richness, interaction and effectiveness of business English teaching.

Temperature measurement is critical for many scientific experiments and technological applications. Diverse thermometers have been developed for the thermal sensing at macroscopic length scales. However, in situ and quantitative temperature measurement of nanoscale objects in a convenient approach is still a challenge. Here, we demonstrate a new type of optically readable VO2 nanowire-based thermometer, based on the unique axial gradient phase transition behavior along single-domain VO2 nanowires, which is attributed to the hydrogen doping of single-crystalline VO2 nanowires through hydrothermal fabrication and the hydrogen engineering via a postannealing process. Besides the appropriate microscopic size and user-friendly operation, the as-prepared optically readable VO2 nanowire-based thermometers have ultrahigh relative sensitivity (∼17.4%/K) and temperature resolution (∼0.026 K), enabling the sensitive monitoring of the thermal environment of small spaces or the temperature of even nanoscale structures.

The pronounced decrease of Effective Thermal Conductivity (ETC) due to the cracking behavior of concrete changes the temperature profile in concrete structures, indirectly inducing the redistribution of thermal stresses. To study this phenomenon, a mini-scale numerical method within the framework of finite element method is proposed for both tensile and compressive cracked concrete and this method is applied to obtain quantitative relationships between tensile or compressive strain and ETC. Results show that (a) for tensile dominated failure, concrete ETC decreases by 23% during the plastic stage whereas little decrease is found at complete failure; (b) for compressive dominated failure, ETC decreases by 30% during the plastic stage, and then becomes stable afterwards. In the softening stage ETC linearly decreases with the increase of compressive strain; (c) it is the interfacial thermal resistances induced by the micro-cracks between aggregates and mortar rather than the macro-cracks that play the dominant role in this phenomenon; (d) concrete ETC becomes anisotropic when cracks appear. The experiments show that compressive cracked concrete's ETC vertical to cracks dramatically decreases by 20–25% at plastic drop stage and then becomes stable at the plastic steady stage. The numerical results are used to determine the interfacial thermal resistance factor in Wang Jiajun model. The proposed formulation provides results that are in excellent agreement with experiments.

Enriched macro/mesoporous graphitic-C3N4 (g-C3N4) micro-rods (CNRs) are prepared by direct calcination of reflux treated ethylene diphosphonic acid-melamine complex fiber network. The optimized phosphorous doped CNRs (P-CNRs) exhibit a high hydrogen-evolution rate of 4960 μmol h−1 g−1 (5.5 times that of pristine g-C3N4) with a remarkable recycling stability. The significantly enhanced performance is found to be attributed to the intentionally designed morphology and electronic properties of P-CNRs. This distinctive hierarchical architecture of CNRs enhances the light scattering, and provides a high specific surface area and thus more catalytically active sites. The P doping of g-C3N4 greatly increases the visible light absorption, narrows the band gap. It also results in a boost in the density state of the conduction band as revealed by the electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectra. The strong visible light emission quenching, observed from the photoluminescence of P-CNRs and photocurrent measurements, implies an enhanced charge transfer/separation process. This work presents a very simple and direct method of designing and developing high-performance visible light driven catalysts for hydrogen production.

A unique technique is present to synthesize three dimensional hierarchical vanadium oxides/reduced graphene oxide composites (denoted as 3D VO x /rGO composites) by laser irradiation over the mixture of V 2 O 5 nanobelts and GO nanosheets. Electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) examinations reveal that polydisperse V 2 O 5 /VO 2 heterostructured nanoparticles form strong coupling with rGO. As a result, a specific capacitance of 252 F g −1 is achieved for 3D VO x /rGO composites when used as supercapacitor electrodes, and the capacitance can retain 92% of the initial specific capacitance even after 10000 cycles at a current density of 100 A g −1 . The improvement of supercapacitor performance is achieved by significantly increase on specific surface area of 3D VO x /rGO composites, which favors the easy access of the electrolyte and provides large electroactive surface, and strong V O C bond between VO x nanoparticles and rGO, which benefits the effective charge transfer. We believe that the facile laser irradiation approach represents a major step not only for the simple and efficient fabrication of high performance electrodes but also in the practical application of laser processing to synthesize other functional hierarchical nanocomposites.

Among household refrigerators, air cooled frost-free household refrigerators have become popular in the market because of the advantages of large storage volume and frost-free compartment(s). However, the large power consumed by the process of defrosting the evaporator restricts the widespread application of such refrigerators. In this study, a new type of thermal storage defrosting system combined with bypass cycle is presented, the feasibility of the thermal storage defrosting system is analyzed, four kinds of different PCMs are tested, the operation modes of the overall system are proposed, and the structure of the heat storage exchangers is designed and optimized. Next, the experimental prototype is set up, and the experimental study is carried out for different defrosting modes. The results show that the best defrosting mode enhances the defrosting speed by about 50% more than the original electric heating model as well as reduces defrosting electric power consumption by about 71%.

Hierarchical materials are a favourite for energy storage/harvesting technologies, such as supercapacitors and electrically-driven hydrogen production. In this work, we report a robust and highly active nanomaterial for pseudocapacitors and hydrogen production by growing vanadium pentoxide on the surface of nickel sulfide (denoted as V2O5@Ni3S2). V2O5@Ni3S2 shows a capacitance of up to 854 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1 and good rate capability. The capacitance can retain ca. 60% of the initial specific capacitance even after 1000 cycles at a current density of 1 A g−1. For the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the overpotential of V2O5@Ni3S2 is around 95 mV at 10 mA cm−2. The excellent electrochemical performance of the V2O5@Ni3S2 hybrid is attributed to the synergistic effect between vanadium pentoxide and nickel sulfide for pseudocapacitors, and the V2O5@Ni3S2 interface and V–S active bonding in the hierarchical structure for the HER. This work demonstrates an effective structure design for supercapacitors with high energy density and for efficient hydrogen production with high catalytic activity by incorporating metal oxide with metal sulfide.

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is the third leading cause of cancer-related death. MicroRNA-506 (miR-506) has been reported to exhibit abnormal expression in HCC; however, the role of miR-506 in HCC and the molecular mechanisms underlying miR-506 in HCC remain unclarified. Methods: Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assay was performed to detect the expression of miR-506 and Rho associated coiled-coil containing protein kinase 2 (ROCK2). Cell proliferation and apoptosis were evaluated by MTT assay and flow cytometry, respectively. Bioinformatics analysis and luciferase reporter assays were performed to identify the regulation between miR-506 and ROCK2. Western blot assay was performed to detect the expression of ROCK2, RhoA, and Ras-related C3 botulinum toxin substrate 1 (Rac1). The tumor growth in vivo was evaluated in a HCC xenograft mice model. Results: The mRNA levels of ROCK2 were significantly upregulated, while miR-506 levels were significantly downregulated in HCC tissues and cells. The expression of ROCK2 was negatively correlated with miR-506 in HCC tissues. In vitro, upregulation of miR-506 inhibited proliferation and induced apoptosis, and downregulation of miR-506 promoted proliferation and blocked apoptosis in HepG2 and Hep3B cells. ROCK2 was a target gene of miR-506 and miR-506 regulated the expression of ROCK2 in HepG2 and Hep3B cells. Furthermore, downregulation of miR-506 partially attenuated the tumor-suppressive effect of ROCK2 knockout on HepG2 and Hep3B cells, and upregulation of miR-506 partially attenuated the oncogenic effect of ROCK2 overexpression on HepG2 and Hep3B cells; Overexpression of ROCK2 increased and ROCK2 knockdown decreased the expression of Rac1, which were attenuated by upregulation of miR-506 or downregulation of miR-506, respectively. In addition, ROCK2 overexpression or knockdown hadno significant effect on RhoA expression. In vivo, upregulation of miR-506 suppressed tumor growth, while downregulation of miR-506 promoted tumor growth. Conclusion: miR-506 was involved in cell proliferation and apoptosis by affecting RhoA/ROCK signaling pathway in HCC cells. Our results provide a novel mechanism of miR-506-mediated suppressive effects on HCC tumorigenesis.

The drying process of concrete is a complex unsteady heat and mass transfer process that is greatly affected by the drying temperature. The influence of the drying process on the drying cha...

Background Chronic intermittent hypoxia ( CIH ) is a distinct pathological mechanism of obstructive sleep apnea ( OSA ), which is recognized as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The aims of this study were to ascertain whether CIH induces atrial fibrillation ( AF ), to determine whether cardiac sympathetic denervation ( CSD ) can prevent it and suppress blood pressure, and to explore the potential molecular mechanisms involved. Methods and Results Sixty Sprague‐Dawley male rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: sham, CSD , CIH , CIH + CSD . The rats were exposed either to CIH 8 hours daily or normoxia for 6 weeks. Cardiac pathology and structure were analyzed by hematoxylin and eosin staining and echocardiogram. ECG, blood pressure, body weight, and blood gas were recorded. Connexin 43 and tyrosine hydroxylase were detected by western blot, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence. CIH induced atrial remodeling, and increased AF inducibility. CSD treatment reduced postapneic blood pressure rises and AF susceptibility, which could attenuate CIH ‐associated structural atrial arrhythmogenic remodeling. In addition, CIH ‐induced sympathetic nerve hyperinnervation and CSD treatment reduced sympathetic innervation, which may affect CIH ‐induced AF ‐associated sympathovagal imbalance. Connexin 43 was specifically downregulated in CIH , whereas CSD treatment increased its expression. Conclusions These results suggested CIH induces atrial remodeling, increases AF inducibility, results in sympathetic nerve hyperinnervation, and decreases connexin 43 expression, but CSD treatment reduces AF susceptibility, postapneic blood pressure increase, sympathetic innervation, and the alteration of Cx43, which may be a key point in the genesis of CIH ‐induced AF .

Transition metal chalcogenides with abundant active edge sites and suitable structures for large-scale water splitting in alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are challenging but promising. Herein, hierarchical heterostructured nickel foam–supported Co3S4 nanorod arrays embellished with edge-exposed MoS2 nanoflakes (Edge-MoS2/Co3S4@NFs) as an effective HER catalyst are designed. There into, porous nickel foam and moderately distributed nanorod arrays of Edge-MoS2/Co3S4@NFs provide multiscale pathways for efficient charge and mass transport and significantly enlarge the surfaces for the deposition of MoS2 flakes. The superhydrophilic/aerophobic surface improves the electrolyte transport and facilitates the detachment of hydrogen bubbles from the surface of the catalyst. The MoS2 flakes anchored on nanorods are well dispersed with plentiful active sites exposed which enhance the intrinsic activity of active sites owing to the adequate intersection of charge and mass. In addition, there is a synergetic effect of bimetal sulfides, evidenced by increasing the turnover frequency. Therefore, the Edge-MoS2/Co3S4@NF affords a low overpotential (η10 = 90.3 mV and η1000 = 502.0 mV) and small Tafel slope (61.69 mV dec−1). This study provides a facile strategy to develop electrocatalysts through the synergy of enhanced thermodynamic and kinetic processes, shedding lights on the advanced design of functional materials for energy chemistry.

This paper investigates the free vibration of a homogeneous Euler–Bernoulli beam with multiple transverse cracks under non-symmetric boundary conditions. The differential equation is formulated by introducing Dirac’s delta function into the uniform flexural stiffness, and the close-form solution of mode shapes is then derived by applying the Laplace transform technique. The proposed method is validated against existing experimental method for damaged cantilever beams. With the validated method, a parametric study is performed to study the effect of crack numbers, damage parameters and crack locations on the natural frequencies and mode shapes for three non-symmetric boundary conditions (pinned–clamped, clamped–free shear and pinned–free shear).

Aims Aortic dissection (AD) represents one of the most common aortic emergencies with high incidence of morbidity and mortality. Clinical studies have shown that the increased excitability of the sympathetic nerve may be associated with the formation of AD. In this study, we examined the effects of bilateral superior cervical sympathectomy (SCGx) on the progression of β-aminopropionitrile (BAPN)-induced AD in rats. Main methods Sprague–Dawley rats were randomly divided into three groups, including BAPN, BAPN + SCGx and control groups. For terminal measurements, the mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR) were monitored and the basal sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) was assessed through recording the variation in arterial pressure in response to hexamethonium application. Pathological changes in the aortic wall were observed by histological staining. Matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and MMP-9 concentrations within the aortic wall were analyzed by western blot. Key findings The results show that BAPN administration could elevate SNA and cause the formation of AD in rats with a high incidence (67.7%), while SCGx treatment inhibited the elevation of SNA and significantly reduced the incidence (20%). SCGx may suppress the formation of BAPN-induced AD via restraining the rise of HR and reducing the MMP-9 concentration in aortic wall. Significance These results indicate that surgical techniques such as sympathetic nerve block may be a potentially useful therapy for the prevention of AD.

The superior performance of metal oxide nanocomposites has introduced them as excellent candidates for emerging energy sources and attracted significant attention in recent years. The drawback of these materials is their inherent structural pulverization which adversely impacts their performance and makes the rational design of stable nanocomposites a great challenge. In this work, functional V2O5-C-SnO2 hybrid nanobelts (VCSNs) with a stable structure are introduced where the ultradispersed SnO2 nanocrystals are tightly linked with glucose on the V2O5 surface. The nanostructured V2O5 acts as a supporting matrix as well as an active electrode component. Compared with existing carbon-V2O5 hybrid nanobelts, these hybrid nanobelts exhibit a much higher reversible capacity and architectural stability when used as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries. The superior cyclic performance of VCSNs can be attributed to the synergistic effects of SnO2 and V2O5. However, limited data are available for V2O5-based anodes in lithium-ion battery design.

Y-shaped ZnO nanobelts are fabricated by a simple thermal evaporation method. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) investigation shows that these ZnO nanobelts are crystals with twinned planes {11–21}. Convergent Beam Electron Diffraction studies show that the two sides of twinned nanobelts are O-terminated towards the twinned boundary and Zn-terminated outwards. The two branches of twinned ZnO nanobelts grow along [11–26] from the trunk and then turn to the polarization direction [0001]. The featured Y-shape morphology and TEM characterizations indicate that the growth of these novel nanostructures is driven by an unusual twinned dislocation growth mechanism.

Ordered nanoarchitectures have attracted an intense research interest recently because of their promising device applications. They are always fabricated by self-assembling building blocks such as nanowires, nanodots. This kind of bottom up approaches is limited in poor control over height, lateral resolution, aspect ratio and patterning. Here, we break these limits and realize 3D sculpturing of vertical ZnO nanowire arrays (NAs) based on the conventional photolithography approach. These are achieved by immersing nanowire NAs in thick photoresist (PR) layers, which enable the cutting and patterning of ZnO NAs as well as the tailoring of NAs. Our strategy of 3D sculpturing of NAs promisingly paves the way for designing novel NAs-based nanoarchitectures.

General and simple methods for the syntheses of borides, carbides and nitrides are highly desirable, since those materials have unique physical properties and promising applications. Here, a series of boride (TiB{sub 2}, ZrB{sub 2}, NbB{sub 2}, CeB{sub 6}, PrB{sub 6}, SmB{sub 6}, EuB{sub 6}, LaB{sub 6}), carbide (SiC, TiC, NbC, WC) and nitride (TiN, BN, AlN, MgSiN{sub 2}, VN) micro/nanocrystals were prepared from related oxides and amorphous boron/active carbon/NaN{sub 3} with the assistance of metallic Na and elemental S. In-situ temperature monitoring showed that the reaction temperature could increase quickly to {approx}850 Degree-Sign C, once the autoclave was heated to 100 Degree-Sign C. Such a rapid temperature increase was attributed to the intense exothermic reaction between Na and S, which assisted the formation of borides, carbides and nitrides. The as-obtained products were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, and HRTEM techniques. Results in this report will greatly benefit the future extension of this approach to other compounds. - Graphical abstract: An additive-assisted approach is successfully developed for the syntheses of borides, carbides and nitrides micro/nanocrystals with the assistance of the exothermic reaction between Na and S. Highlights: Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer An additive-assisted synthesis strategy is developed for a number of borides, carbides andmore » nitrides. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer The reaction mechanism is demonstrated by the case of SiC nanowires. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer The formation of SiC nanowires is initiated by the exothermic reaction of Na and S.« less

Uniform YF3 nanorods composed of nanoparticles were successfully prepared via a facile solvothermal method with ethanol as solvent and tetrabutyl ammonium fluoride (TBAF) as fluorine source. The products were characterized with powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The nanorods were with diameters of ca. 60 nm and lengths ranging from 200 to 350 nm. Eu3+ and Tb3+ doped YF3 nanorods were also prepared and their photoluminescence properties were investigated. Cytotoxicity study revealed that these YF3 based nanorods were biocompatible.

In this study, the mechanism by which Ad-p27mt inhibits the growth, invasion and metastasis of transplanted liver tumor was studied by examining the effects of Ad-27mt gene transfer on the expression of Bax, Bcl-2, VEGF and MMP-9 in the transplanted liver tumors in nude mice. The model of transplanted hepatic tumor was established in nude mice. The mice were then divided into three groups, which were injected with PBS, Ad-LacZ and Ad-p27mt and the growth of the transplanted liver tumor was observed. The expressions of P27, Bax and Bcl-2 proteins were detected by Western blotting and the expressions of VEGF and MMP-9 were immunohistochemically determined. Our result showed that the tumor size, expressions of Bax, Bcl-2 proteins, VEGF and MMP-9 were all lower than those in PBS and Ad-LacZ groups and the differences were statistically significant (P

Huahua Tu,1,* Gang Wei,2,* Qinghe Cai,1 Xianxiang Chen,1 Zequn Sun,2 Caitao Cheng,1 Linfei Zhang,1 Yong Feng,1 Huadong Zhou,1 Bo Zhou,1 Tiancai Zeng1 1Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, 2Department of Gastroenterology, Renmin Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally tothis work Abstract: MircroRNA-212 (miR-212) is proposed as a novel tumor-related miRNA and has been found to be significantly deregulated in human cancers. In this study, the miR-212 expression was found to be obviously downregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues as compared with adjacent nontumor tissues. Clinical association analysis indicated that low expression of miR-212 was prominently correlated with poor prognostic features of HCC, including high AFP level, large tumor size, high Edmondson-Steiner grading, and advanced tumor-node-metastasis tumor stage. Furthermore, the miR-212 expression was an independent prognostic marker for predicting both 5-year overall survival and disease-free survival of HCC patients. Our in vitro studies showed that upregulation of miR-212 inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in HepG2 cells. On the contrary, downregulation of miR-212 promoted cell proliferation and suppressed apoptosis in Huh7 cells. Interestingly, we found that upregulation of miR-212 decreased FOXA1 expression in HepG2 cells. Significantly, FOXA1 was identified as a direct target of miR-212 in HCC. FOXA1 was downregulated in HCC tissues as compared with noncancerous tissues. An inverse correlation between FOXA1 and miR-212 expression was observed in HCC tissues. Notably, FOXA1 knockdown inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in HepG2 cells. In conclusion, miR-212 is a potent prognostic marker and may suppress HCC tumor growth by inhibiting FOXA1 expression. Keywords: microRNA-212, hepatocellular carcinoma, proliferation, apoptosis, FOXA1&nbsp