Left Ventricular Metastasis From Renal Cell Carcinoma Causing Left Ventricular Outflow Tract Obstruction

Most cases of cardiac metastasis from renal cell carcinoma (RCC) involve the vena cava or right atrium. Left ventricular metastases from RCC without involving the vena cava or right atrium are extremely rare. Herein we report a case of RCC with left ventricular metastasis causing left ventricular outflow obstruction (LVOT)

Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-Induced JNK Activation Is a Critical Event Leading to Mitochondria-Mediated Cell Death Caused by β-Lapachone Treatment

β-lapachone (β-lap) is a bioreductive agent that is activated by the two-electron reductase NAD(P)H quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1). Although β-lap has been reported to induce apoptosis in various cancer types in an NQO1-dependent manner, the signaling pathways by which β-lap causes apoptosis are poorly understood.β-lap-induced apoptosis and related molecular signaling pathways in NQO1-negative and NQO1-overexpressing MDA-MB-231 cells were investigated. Pharmacological inhibitors or siRNAs against factors involved in β-lap-induced apoptosis were used to clarify the roles played by such factors in β-lap-activated apoptotic signaling pathways. β-lap leads to clonogenic cell death and apoptosis in an NQO1- dependent manner. Treatment of NQO1-overexpressing MDA-MB-231 cells with β-lap causes rapid disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential, nuclear translocation of AIF and Endo G from mitochondria, and subsequent caspase-independent apoptotic cell death. siRNAs targeting AIF and Endo G effectively attenuate β-lap-induced clonogenic and apoptotic cell death. Moreover, β-lap induces cleavage of Bax, which accumulates in mitochondria, coinciding with the observed changes in mitochondria membrane potential. Pretreatment with Salubrinal (Sal), an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress inhibitor, efficiently attenuates JNK activation caused by β-lap, and subsequent mitochondria-mediated cell death. In addition, β-lap-induced generation and mitochondrial translocation of cleaved Bax are efficiently blocked by JNK inhibition.Our results indicate that β-lap triggers induction of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, thereby leading to JNK activation and mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. The signaling pathways that we revealed in this study may significantly contribute to an improvement of NQO1-directed tumor therapies

Active-semantic localization with a single consumer-grade camera

Abstract—This study addressed the problem of active lo-calization, which requires massive computation. To solve the problem, we developed abstracted measurements that consist of qualitative metrics estimated by a single camera. These are contextual representations consisting of perceived landmarks and their spatial relations, and they can be shared by humans and robots. Next, we enhanced the Markov localization method to support contextual representations with which a robot’s location can be sufficiently estimated. In contrast to passive methodologies, our approach actively uses the greedy technique to select a robot’s action and improve localization results. The experiment was carried out in an indoor environment, and results indicate that the proposed active-semantic localization yields more efficient localization. Index Terms—Contextual map, Active-Semantic Localization, Information Gain I

폐타이어로부터 활성탄 제조에 관한 연구 A study on preparation of activated carbon from waste tire

Abstract In this study we investigated the manufacturing method for the activated carbon using the char from the pyrolysis of waste tire. The physical activation method using the steam in the fixed-bed quartz reactor was used for preparation of activated carbon. The primary experiment parameters are the activation temperature, activation time, heating rate, and the injection quantity of active agent. From the results of pore distribution of activated carbon, the micropore which was made in 850℃ of activation temperature, 5 ℃/min of heating rate, and 3 hours of activation time was developed in biggest quantity, and mesopore and macropore were developed in the biggest quantity too. The optimum conditions for producing the activated carbon using the pyrolysis residue were 850℃ of activation temperature, 3 hours of activation time, 5 ℃/min of heating rate, and 3 g H2O/char-gㆍhr of active agent through this study. The produced activated carbon in these conditions showed that the potentiality of utilization as activated carbon because the BET specific surface area was 517.6 m 2 /g and total pore volume was 0.648 c

The Improvement of the Relative Positioning Precision for GPS L1 Single Frequency Receiver Using the Weighted Smoothing Techniques

To improve the precision of relative positioning for GPS single frequency(L1) receiver, we accomplished the GPS data processing using the weighted smoothing techniques. The weighted phase smoothing technique is used to minimize the measurement error of pseudorange and position domain smoothing technique is adopted to make the complement of cycle-slip affection. we also considered some component errors like as ionospheric error, which are related with baseline length, and processed for several baselines (5, 10, 30, 40, and 150 km) to check the coverage area of this algorithm. This paper shows that weighted phase smoothing technique give more stable results after using this technique and the position domain smoothing technique can reduce the errors which are sensitive to the observational environment. Based on the results, we could find out that this algorithm is available for post-time and real-time applications and these techniques can be substitution methods which is able to get the high accuracy and precision without resolving the Integer ambiguity