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Mesh generation and deformation are critical elements in gradient-based aerodynamic shape optimization (ASO). Improperly generated or deformed meshes may contain bad-quality cells that degrade the ...

Simple Summary Chronic disease-related muscle atrophy is a serious public health problem since it reduces mobility and contributes to increases in hospitalization costs. Unfortunately, there is no approved treatment for muscle wasting at present. Thus, an understanding of the mechanisms underlying the control of muscle mass and function under chronic diseases can pave the way for the discovery of innovative therapeutic strategies to counteract muscle wasting. Since numerous types of cancer induce cachexia, which has no cure nor an effective treatment, the main proposal here was to study the effects of AET in cancer cachexia, and to investigate, through in vivo manipulation of the Akt/mTORC1 pathway, whether the cachectic muscle still presents conditions to respond adaptively to hypertrophic stimuli. Our results could provide a basis for innovative research lines to better understand muscle plasticity and to investigate potential therapeutic approaches necessary to prevent muscle loss. Abstract Cancer cachexia is a multifactorial and devastating syndrome characterized by severe skeletal muscle mass loss and dysfunction. As cachexia still has neither a cure nor an effective treatment, better understanding of skeletal muscle plasticity in the context of cancer is of great importance. Although aerobic exercise training (AET) has been shown as an important complementary therapy for chronic diseases and associated comorbidities, the impact of AET on skeletal muscle mass maintenance during cancer progression has not been well documented yet. Here, we show that previous AET induced a protective mechanism against tumor-induced muscle wasting by modulating the Akt/mTORC1 signaling and eukaryotic initiation factors, specifically eIF2-α. Thereafter, it was determined whether the in vivo Akt activation would induce a hypertrophic profile in cachectic muscles. As observed for the first time, Akt-induced hypertrophy was able and sufficient to either prevent or revert cancer cachexia by modulating both Akt/mTORC1 pathway and the eIF-2α activation, and induced a better muscle functionality. These findings provide evidence that skeletal muscle tissue still preserves hypertrophic potential to be stimulated by either AET or gene therapy to counteract cancer cachexia.

We tested the hypothesis that cancer cachexia progression would induce oxidative post-translational modifications (Ox-PTMs) associated with skeletal muscle wasting, with different responses in muscles with the prevalence of glycolytic and oxidative fibers. We used cysteine-specific isotopic coded affinity tags (OxICAT) and gel-free mass spectrometry analysis to investigate the cysteine Ox-PTMs profile in the proteome of both plantaris (glycolytic) and soleus (oxidative) muscles in tumor-bearing and control rats. Histological analysis revealed muscle atrophy in type II fibers in plantaris muscle, with no changes in plantaris type I fibers and no differences in both soleus type I and II fibers in tumor-bearing rats when compared to healthy controls. Tumor progression altered the Ox-PTMs profile in both plantaris and soleus. However, pathway analysis including the differentially oxidized proteins revealed tricarboxylic acid cycle and oxidative phosphorylation as main affected pathways in plantaris muscle from tumor-bearing rats, while the same analysis did not show main metabolic pathways affected in the soleus muscle. In addition, cancer progression affected several metabolic parameters such as ATP levels and markers of oxidative stress associated with muscle atrophy in plantaris muscle, but not in soleus. However, isolated soleus from tumor-bearing rats had a reduced force production capacity when compared to controls. These novel findings demonstrate that tumor-bearing rats have severe muscle atrophy exclusively in glycolytic fibers. Cancer progression is associated with cysteine Ox-PTMs in the skeletal muscle, but these modifications affect different pathways in a glycolytic muscle compared to an oxidative muscle, indicating that intrinsic muscle oxidative capacity determines the response to cancer cachectic effects.

Mesh generation for high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulations and aerodynamic shape optimization is a time-consuming task. Complex geometries can be accurately modeled using overset me...

Background: The effects of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) in cancer progression are still unknown. Here, we aimed to evaluate whether a short-term HIIT protocol would counteract tumor progression in an experimental model of lung cancer. Methods: Mice were injected subcutaneously with Lewis Lung Carcinoma (LLC) cells and then randomly assigned into two groups: sedentary mice (LLC group) or mice submitted to HIIT (LLC + HIIT group). Results: LLC + HIIT group had lower tumor mass than LLC group (-52% after 18 days), even though no differences were found for tumor morphology or glycolytic capacity. HIIT increased Cd274 (PD-L1) mRNA levels by ~6 fold and tended to increase Tnfa and Il6 mRNA levels in LLC tumors. Moreover, HIIT increased Vegfa mRNA levels by 2.5 fold and tended to increase Pparg1a mRNA levels, suggesting that HIIT stimulates local inflammation and angiogenesis in LLC tumors. Additionally, HIIT improved running capacity and skeletal muscle contractile function in LLC tumor-bearing mice. Conclusions: HIIT attenuates tumor growth and increases the mRNA levels of genes involved in inflammation and angiogenesis in LLC tumor-bearing mice. Additionally, HIIT improves running capacity and skeletal muscle function in LLC tumor-bearing mice. Therefore, this study provides pre-clinical evidence that HIIT may be a beneficial co-therapy for lung cancer.

Este documento presenta el diseño de una red eléctrica inteligente que permita gestionar de forma eficiente el consumo energético del edificio Nº 3 de docentes de la UTM. Por tal razón, se utilizan las técnicas y herramientas de IA e IC con la finalidad de encontrar un sistema que se adapte a las situaciones requeridas por el sistema eléctrico de la edificación. Con las consideraciones antes mencionadas se utilizó una arquitectura de RNA con RBF, la cual analizará los diferentes parámetros eléctricos con la finalidad de brindar los resultados esperados con los que se pueda dar paso a la toma de decisión que tendrá la red eléctrica inteligente. El sistema desarrollado fue implementado en el entorno Matlab 2018a. N/A

The strut-braced wing aircraft configuration promises to reduce fuel burn by enabling higher spans that reduce lift-induced drag. A successful design for this configuration depends on a careful tra...

Noninvasive imaging using positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) and single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography (SPECT/CT) are considered revolutionized approaches to detect bone cancer. Both PET/CT and SPECT/CT technologies have advanced to permit miniaturization, which has provided the advantage of including animals as their own controls in longitudinal studies. The present study was designed to evaluate the potential of PET/CT and SPECT/CT as research tools to detect bone cancer in rats. We used a rat model of bone cancer induced by injecting Walker 256 tumor cells into the femoral cavity. Computed tomography demonstrated that rats presented a solid tumor at 15 days post injection (dpi). However, CT was not an effective method for identifying tumors at an earlier time point (8 dpi), when mechanical hyperalgesia (the most common symptom during bone cancer progression) had already initiated. At this early stage, PET/CT and SPECT/CT analysis detected higher uptake in the injected femur of the tracers 18F-Fluoride and 99mTc-Methyl diphosphonate (99mTc-MDP), respectively. These findings demonstrated for the first time that both 18F-Fluoride PET/CT and 99mTc-MDP SPECT/CT can detect cancer at early stages in rats and advocates for the PET/SPECT/CT as research tools to evaluate bone cancer in further longitudinal studies involving small animals.

Aims Resistance exercise training (RET) has been adopted as non-pharmacological anti-catabolic strategy. However, the role of RET to counteract cancer cachexia is still speculative. This study aimed to verify whether short-term RET would counteract skeletal muscle wasting in a severe cancer cachexia rat model. Main methods Wistar rats were randomly allocated into four experimental groups; 1) untrained control rats (control), 2) rats submitted to RET (control + RET), 3) untrained rats injected with Walker 256 tumor cells in the bone marrow (tumor) and 4) rats injected with Walker 256 tumor cells in the bone marrow and submitted to RET (tumor + RET). Key findings Tumor group displayed skeletal muscle atrophy fifteen days post tumor cells injection as assessed by plantaris (− 20.5%) and EDL (− 20.0%) muscle mass. EDL atrophy was confirmed showing 43.8% decline in the fiber cross sectional area. Even though RET increased the lactate dehydrogenase protein content and fully restored phosphorylated form of 4EBP-1 to the control levels in skeletal muscle, it failed to rescue muscle morphology in tumor-bearing rats. Indeed, RET did not mitigated loss of muscle function, anorexia, tumor growth or mortality rate. However, loss of strength capacity (assessed by 1-RM test performance) demonstrated a negative correlation with rats' survival (p = 0.02; r = 0.40), suggesting that loss of strength capacity might predict cancer mortality. Significance These results demonstrated that bone marrow injection of Walker 256 tumor cells in rats induces cancer cachexia, strength capacity is associated with cancer survival and short-term RET promotes only modest effects during cachexia progression.

In the work the design of a connectionist expert system is realized, which uses tools of the artificial intelligence that allow the decision making for the establishment of adaptive thresholds as classifiers of the type of maintenance to be used. For the selection of a maintenance in electrical systems in general, parameters and conditions are taken into account that facilitate an adequate selection of the maintenance to be applied, for that reason the incidences of a failure, are limited in selection ranges of a maintenance for each incidence ; From 0 - 0.49 preventive maintenance is considered, taking into account the technology of the material to be used, the experience acquired by the personnel in charge of maintenance and considering the presence of a passive hot spot in all the electrical installations in full operation; Of 0.5 -0.69 is considered a predictive maintenance, with presence of an active hot spot, in this maintenance an additional range of 0.7 - 0.79 is considered considering a proactive maintenance due to the possibility of some failure, Of 0.8 - 1.0 is considered a corrective maintenance, for the equipment change. It builds the system starting from the acquisition of the data for the construction of the database, the machine inference expert system based on the operators' expertise and the human machine interface in a comfortable, friendly and reliable manner. The results are displayed on the computer screen, and the connection system database is available for other applications. Index Terms— artificial intelligence, expert system, failures, maintenance, classifiers.

A simulation model of multipath propagation will be used to characterize the relationship between the cross-polarization discrimination and the co-polar attenuation in frequency-reuse line-of-sight microwave links. The behavior of several links described in the literature will then be simulated, and the results will be compared with the corresponding measurements, to test the prediction capability of the model. A reasonable agreement between the corresponding results will be displayed. Further, it will also be shown that the cross-polar phase patterns of the antennas could significantly affect the behavior of the cross-polarization discrimination.