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BackgroundDietary sodium and potassium affect the fluctuation in blood pressure (BP) and renal function. Corin, with its enzymatic activity to convert pro-atrial natriuretic peptide (pro-ANP) to biologically active ANP, regulates BP, cardiac, and renal functions. We investigated whether corin expression responds to a high-salt (HS) diet to regulate salt and water balance.MethodsForty-two volunteers followed 3 sequential diets for 7 days each: a low-salt (LS) diet (3.0 g/day NaCl), a HS diet (18.0 g/day NaCl), followed by an HS diet with K+ supplementation (HS + K+) (18.0 g/day NaCl and 4.5 g/day KCl).ResultsCorin level was higher with the HS diet than the LS and HS + K+ diets and was positively correlated with systolic BP (SBP) and 24-hour urinary Na+ and microalbumin (U-mALB) excretion. In rodents, serum and renal levels of corin were transiently increased with the HS diet and were decreased if the HS diet was continued for up to 7 days. HS loading increased SBP, 24-hour urinary Na+, U-mALB excretion, and the expression of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin-6 (PCSK6), a corin activator. Knockdown of PCSK6 or corin in high salt-treated M1-cortical collecting duct (M1-CCD) cells increased the expression of aquaporin 2 (AQP2) and β-epithelial Na+ channel (β-ENaC).ConclusionsShort-term HS may induce the PCSK6-corin-ANP-AQP2/β-ENaC pathway in the kidney. Enhanced serum corin level in humans and rodents is positively correlated with HS-induced SBP and 24-hour urinary Na+ and U-mALB excretion, which suggests that corin is involved in the salt-water balance in response to HS intake.Clinical trials registrationPublic Trials Registry Number NCT02915315.

Analysis of passenger travel habits is always an important item in traffic field. However, passenger travel patterns can only be watched through a period time, and a lot of people travel by public transportation in big cities like Beijing daily, which leads to large-scale data and difficult operation. Using SPARK platform, this paper proposes a trip reconstruction algorithm and adopts the density-based spatial clustering of application with noise (DBSCAN) algorithm to mine the travel patterns of each Smart Card (SC) user in Beijing. For the phenomenon that passengers swipe cards before arriving to avoid the crowd caused by the people of the same destination, the algorithm based on passenger travel frequent items is adopted to guarantee the accuracy of spatial regular patterns. At last, this paper puts forward a model based on density and node importance to gather bus stations. The transportation connection between areas formed by these bus stations can be seen with the help of SC data. We hope that this research will contribute to further studies., 1. Introduction Traditional studies on passenger travel patterns and passenger segmentation solely focus on passenger physical characteristics or the use of transit user surveys. This classification has little help of [...]

Continual knowledge sharing is the key to improve the competitive ability, operation ability and innovative ability of the organization. Through the comparison of the game theory, knowledge market theory and the principal-agent theory, the principal-agent theory is more suitable for the research on the incentive mechanism of tacit knowledge sharing in master-apprentice Pattern. During the process of tacit knowledge sharing in master-apprentice Pattern, different types of tacit knowledge determine the different design of incentive mechanisms.When the master and the apprentice share the inexpressible tacit knowledge, the organization does not need to design any incentive mechanism for promoting the master’s knowledge sharing.When master and apprentice share the expressible tacit knowledge, the organization needs to design different incentive mechanisms for the master and the apprentice respectively. Moreover the organization needs to take into account the different master-apprentice models in different departments. So the organization needs to design different incentive mechanisms for different departments in order to furtherance the tacit knowledge sharing in master-apprentice pattern.

(Pb,La)(Zr,Ti)O antiferroelectric 1.4 μm-thick films have been prepared on Pt (111)/Ti/SiO/Si(100) substrates by sol-gel process. The structures and dielectric properties of the antiferroelectric thick films were investigated. The films displayed pure perovskite structure with (100)-preferred orientation. The surface of the films was smooth, compact and uniform. The antiferroelectric (AFE) characterization have been demonstrated by P (polarization)-E (electric field) and C(capacitance)-V (DC bias) curves. The AFE-ferroelectric (FE) and FE-to-paraelectric (PE) phase transition were also investigated as coupling functions of temperature and direct current electric field. With the applied field increased, the temperature of AFE-to-FE phase transition decreased and the FE-to-PE phase shifted to high temperature. The AFE-to-FE phase transition was adjustable by direct current electric field. (Pb,La) (Zr,Ti) O antiferroelectric films have broad application prospects in microelectromechanical systems because of the phase transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The microcantilevers based on the antiferroelectric (AFE) (Pb0.97La0.02)(Zr0.95Ti0.05)O3 (PLZT) thick films were fabricated by bulk silicon micromachining process. The conspicuous electrostrictive strain properties with phase transition of the AFE PLZT films induced by electric field were investigated. The resonant vibration velocity and tip deflection on a 650-\mum-long cantilever were up to 6767 mm/s and 45.7 \mum, under the square wave excitation with the voltage of 40 V, matched to the AFE-ferroelectric phase transition electric field of 210 kV/cm. The ratio of induced tip displacement and cantilever length per unit voltage [d(\delta)/L/dV] was proposed to show the mutation response ability. In addition, the new AFE PLZT microcantilevers exhibited superior value of 10.77/kV, further higher than the traditional ones. Extensive application requirements for microdevices would be met in various fields of microelectromechanical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]