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Endometriosis (EMS) is a chronic benign inflammatory disease characterized by the growth of endometrial-like tissue in aberrant locations outside of the uterine cavity. Angiogenesis and abnormal immune responses are the fundamental requirements of endometriotic lesion survival in the peritoneal cavity. Follistatin-like I (FSTL1) is a secreted glycoprotein that exhibits varied expression levels in cardiovascular disease, cancer and arthritis. However, the role of FSTL1 in the development of EMS remains to be fully elucidated. Results of the present study demonstrated that the expression of FSTL1 was significantly increased in ectopic endometrial stromal cells (ESCs) and peritoneal fluid from patients with EMS, compared to the control group. Both conditions of hypoxia and estrogen treatment induced human ESCs to produce increased levels of FSTL1 and disco-interacting protein 2 homolog A (DIP2A). Furthermore, the expression levels of DIP2A, IL8 and IL1β were increased in FSTL1 overexpressed HESCs. Additionally, FSTL1 treatment increased the proliferation of HUVECs in a dose-dependent manner in vitro and markedly increased the tube formation of HUVECs. Moreover, treatment with FSTL1 facilitated M1 polarization of macrophages, increased the secretion of proinflammatory factors and inhibited the expression of scavenger receptor CD36. Results of the present study suggested that the elevated expression of FSTL1 may play a key role in accelerating the development of EMS via enhancing the secretion of proinflammatory factors and promoting angiogenesis.

The magnetic and magneto-transport properties of amorphous CoO 1− v films have been systematically studied and manipulated by changing the concentration of oxygen vacancies. A giant exchange bias field H E ≈4380 Oe and a large coercivity H C ≈8500 Oe are observed at 5 K for the composite films. And, a metal to insulator transition has been demonstrated in CoO 1− v films by decreasing the concentration of oxygen vacancies. Moreover, a remarkable decrease of the exchange bias and a slight increase of the saturation magnetization can be obtained by modifying the microstructures through post-thermal annealing.

The derating control strategy for motor stator temperature is a very effective protection measures. It not only can make better use of motor ability but also can satisfy the requirement of the vehicle. This paper presents a derating control strategy based on the temperature of stator winding ends since it is the highest temperature point from the simulation results. The motor stator temperature is divided into several regions applied with the various derating control rules. To limit the peak phase current instead of the torque is proposed to inhibit the temperature rise especially in the field weakening region because a large extra demagnetizing current is required in this region.

This paper presents a method for determining the rotor temperature of an electric motor by observing the dq-axis flux linkage. A reference dq-axis flux linkage is obtained at a defined rotor temperature. The difference between calculated and reference flux in the d-axis is supposed to be caused by temperature, therefore the temperature can be back-calculated according to the permanent magnet temperature characteristic. The proposed method was confirmed to be correct and effective by the test results.

The resolver is widely used in the production applications due to the robust mounting and high accuracy at full range. However, the mounting accuracy of such sensors will significantly limit the torque accuracy and performance if the initial positions are not calibrated at the end-of-line (EOL) test. An initial position EOL test system is designed base on the production requirements. A simple initial position measurement method is introduced and applied to the PMSM motor, which measures the back EMF and the North mark (NM) signal of the resolver. The time difference between the back EMF zero crossing point and NM signal is divided by the back EMF period and then the initial position is calculated. The method is validated on the target bench and experiments prove the EOL test system is suit for the mass production.

The dq-axis inductances are important for the voltage decoupling control, torque estimation and steady-state performance analysis of a PMSM machine. In this paper, a measurement method is proposed based on the dq-axis instantaneous flux linkages calculation. The rotor is locked by a positive d-axis current, and then a proper AC current is assigned respectively to the d and q-axis reference current in order to cover the various current ranges. The instantaneous flux linkages are calculated by the integration of dq-axis current and voltage offline. Finally, dq-axis inductances are computed by the integrated flux linkages divided by the dq-axis current.

For electric power steering (EPS) system to the requirement of real-time and stability of the control system, a fuzzy control algorithm applied to the EPS was proposed, and composed a fuzzy controller for appling to the EPS controller. Taking into account both portability and stability of steering, testing the designed fuzzy controller on EPS experiment platform and adjusting fuzzy control parameters online to make the EPS steering feel the best. Experimental results showed that the proposed fuzzy control algorithm had good tracking performance, can meet the requirements of EPS fast and frequent start-stop and the portability and stability of steering.

1. The objective of this study was to investigate the pharmacokinetics, excretion, and metabolic fate of cycloastragenol (CA) in rats. 2. An LC-MS method was developed and used to quantify CA in biological samples. Rats were orally administrated with CA at 10, 20, and 40 mg/kg or intravenously administrated at 10 mg/kg to determine pharmacokinetic parameters of CA. For excretion experiment, urine, feces, and bile were collected at 24 h after oral administration (40 mg/kg), also at 12 h after intravenous administration (10 mg/kg). An LC-MS/MS method was developed to identify the metabolites of CA. 3. The results showed that the oral bioavailability of CA was about 25.70% at 10 mg/kg. CA was excreted through bile and feces and eliminated predominantly by the kidney in rats. It also might exist an enterohepatic circulation of CA in rats. CA could be metabolized widely in vivo in rat, seven, six, and one phase I metabolites were found in feces, urine, and bile samples respectively, but no phase II metabolite was found. 4. In summary, this study defined pharmacokinetics characteristics of CA, described its excretion, and established its in vivo metabolism in rats.

A non-close-packed three-dimensional photonic crystal of titania hollow spheres has been fabricated. The fabricated process is based on the silica template technique, thermal sintering, and the sol–gel process. The band-structure calculations and optical measurements both indicate that a quasi-full three-dimensional photonic bandgap located at the visible wavelength has been presented between the eighth and ninth bands. This indicates that the non-close-packed structure of titania hollow spheres was easier to open the complete photonic bandgaps than other face-centered cubic structures made by self-assembling methods at the visible region.

A calculation of band structure is carried out and demonstrates that a hollow spherical non-closed-packed face-centered cubic uniaxial structure possesses a robust complete photonic band gap between the low-frequency bands (2nd and 3rd bands). The results show that the relative gap size can reach a value of 6.1% at a low dielectric contrast of 7.84 appropriate to the transparent TiO2. The influence of structure variations on the band gap, such as hollow spheres, cylindrical tubes and dielectric contrast, is also discussed.

Electric-field control of magnetic and transport properties of magnetic tunnel junctions has promising applications in spintronics. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a reversible electrical manipulation of memristance, magnetoresistance, and exchange bias in Co/CoO-ZnO/Co magnetic tunnel junctions, which enables the realization of four nonvolatile resistance states. Moreover, greatly enhanced tunneling magnetoresistance of 68% was observed due to the enhanced spin polarization of the bottom Co/CoO interface. The ab initio calculations further indicate that the spin polarization of the Co/CoO interface is as high as 73% near the Fermi level and plenty of oxygen vacancies can induce metal-insulator transition of the CoO(1-v) layer. Thus, the electrical manipulation mechanism on the memristance, magnetoresistance and exchange bias can be attributed to the electric-field-driven migration of oxygen ions/vacancies between very thin CoO and ZnO layers.

High-performance titania inverse opal films have been derived from a sol–gel procedure using polystyrene colloidal crystals as templates. By carefully controlling the synthetic procedures, the titania inverse opal films display a uniform color over centimeter dimensions. Scanning electron microscopy is employed to characterize the qualities of the titania inverse opal films. Electron diffraction pattern shows a polycrystalline anatase structure of TiO2.

We report a photonic crystal model, which consists of hollow spheres located at face-centered cubic lattice sites and each sphere connected to all of its 12 nearest neighbors by cylindrical rods. Theoretical calculations show that this kind of structure exhibits two large complete photonic band gaps. The maximum relative gap sizes reach 17.3% between the eighth and ninth bands, and 15.1% between the 13th and 14th bands for a dielectric contrast of 11.9, and the minimal dielectric contrasts needed to open the two gaps are 5.8 and 7.3, respectively, which are lower than that of other face-centered cubic photonic crystal structures.

The spin memristive devices combining memristance and tunneling magnetoresistance have promising applications in multibit nonvolatile data storage and artificial neuronal computing. However, it is a great challenge for simultaneous realization of large memristance and magnetoresistance in one nanoscale junction, because it is very hard to find a proper spacer layer which not only serves as good insulating layer for tunneling magnetoresistance but also easily switches between high and low resistance states under electrical field. Here we firstly propose to use nanon composite barrier layers of CoO-ZnO to fabricate the spin memristive Co/CoO-ZnO/Co magnetic tunnel junctions. The bipolar resistance switching ratio is high up to 90 and the TMR ratio of the high resistance state gets to 8% at room temperature, which leads to three resistance states. The bipolar resistance switching is explained by the metal-insulator transition of CoO1−v layer due to the migration of oxygen ions between CoO1−v and ZnO1−v.

With the help of self-assembly, thermal sintering, selective etching techniques and sol–gel process, the non-close packed (ncp) face-centered cubic (fcc) photonic crystals of titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) hollow spheres connected by TiO 2 cylindrical tubes have been fabricated using silica template. The photonic bandgap calculations indicate that the ncp structure of TiO 2 hollow spheres was easier to open the pseudogaps than close packed system at the lowest energy.