Theoretical and experimental investigations on conformal polishing of microstructured surfaces

Microstructured surfaces play a pivotal role in various fields, notably in lighting, diffuser devices, and imaging systems. The performance of these components is intricately related to the accuracy of their shapes and the quality of their surfaces. Although current precision machining technologies are capable of achieving conformal shapes, the post-machining surface quality often remains uncertain. To appropriately address this challenge, this paper introduces a novel conformal polishing methodology, specifically designed to enhance the surface quality of microstructured surfaces while maintaining their shape accuracy. As part of the investigations, specialized tools, namely the damping tool and profiling damping tool, are methodically developed for polishing rectangular and cylindrical surfaces. A shape evolution model is established based on the simulation of individual microstructures, incorporating the concept of finite-slip on the microstructured surface. The findings reveal that principal stresses and velocities experience abrupt variations at the convex and concave corners of rectangular surfaces as well as at the ends of cylindrical surfaces. The numerically predicted surface shape errors after polishing demonstrate reasonably good agreement with experimental results such that their discrepancies are less than 1 μm. Additionally, this method is able to successfully eradicate pre-machining imperfections such as residual tool marks and burrs on the microstructured surfaces. The arithmetic roughness (Ra) of the rectangular surface is measured to be an impressively low 0.4 nm, whereas the cylindrical surface exhibits Ra = 6.2 nm. These results clearly emphasize the effectiveness of the conformal polishing method in achieving high-quality surface finishes

A numerical study of THM effects on the near-field safety of a hypothetical nuclear waste repository - BMT1 of the DECOVALEX III project. Part 3: Effects of THM coupling in sparsely fractured rocks

As a part of the international DECOVALEX III project, and the European BENCHPAR project, the impact of thermal-hydrological-mechanical (THM) couplings on the performance of a bentonite-back-filled nuclear waste repository in near-field crystalline rocks is evaluated in a Bench-Mark Test problem (BMT1) and the results are presented in a series of three companion papers in this issue. This is the third paper with focuses on the effects of THM processes at a repository located in a sparsely fractured rock. Several independent coupled THM analyses presented in this paper show that THM couplings have the most significant impact on the mechanical stress evolution, which is important for repository design, construction and post-closure monitoring considerations. The results show that the stress evolution in the bentonite-back-filled excavations and the surrounding rock depends on the post-closure evolution of both fields of temperature and fluid pressure. It is further shown that the time required to full resaturation may play an important role for the mechanical integrity of the repository drifts. In this sense, the presence of hydraulically conducting fractures in the near-field rock might actually improve the mechanical performance of the repository. Hydraulically conducting fractures in the near-field rocks enhances the water supply to the buffers/back-fills, which promotes a more timely process of resaturation and development of swelling pressures in the back-fill, thus provides timely confining stress and support to the rock walls. In one particular case simulated in this study, it was shown that failure in the drift walls could be prevented if the compressive stresses in back-fill were fully developed within 50 yr, which is when thermally induced rock strain begins to create high differential (failure-prone) stresses in the near-field rocks

Global microRNA profiles and signaling pathways in the development of cardiac hypertrophy

Hypertrophy is a major predictor of progressive heart disease and has an adverse prognosis. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) that accumulate during the course of cardiac hypertrophy may participate in the process. However, the nature of any interaction between a hypertrophy-specific signaling pathway and aberrant expression of miRNAs remains unclear. In this study, Spague Dawley male rats were treated with transverse aortic constriction (TAC) surgery to mimic pathological hypertrophy. Hearts were isolated from TAC and sham operated rats (n=5 for each group at 5, 10, 15, and 20 days after surgery) for miRNA microarray assay. The miRNAs dysexpressed during hypertrophy were further analyzed using a combination of bioinformatics algorithms in order to predict possible targets. Increased expression of the target genes identified in diverse signaling pathways was also analyzed. Two sets of miRNAs were identified, showing different expression patterns during hypertrophy. Bioinformatics analysis suggested the miRNAs may regulate multiple hypertrophy-specific signaling pathways by targeting the member genes and the interaction of miRNA and mRNA might form a network that leads to cardiac hypertrophy. In addition, the multifold changes in several miRNAs suggested that upregulation of rno-miR-331*, rno-miR-3596b, rno-miR-3557-5p and downregulation of rno-miR-10a, miR-221, miR-190, miR-451 could be seen as biomarkers of prognosis in clinical therapy of heart failure. This study described, for the first time, a potential mechanism of cardiac hypertrophy involving multiple signaling pathways that control up- and downregulation of miRNAs. It represents a first step in the systematic discovery of miRNA function in cardiovascular hypertrophy

Data from: Deciphering the genomic architecture of the stickleback brain with a novel multi-locus gene-mapping approach

Quantitative traits important to organismal function and fitness, such as brain size, are presumably controlled by many small-effect loci. Deciphering the genetic architecture of such traits with traditional quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping methods is challenging. Here, we investigated the genetic architecture of brain size (and the size of five different brain parts) in nine-spined sticklebacks (Pungitius pungitius) with the aid of novel multi-locus QTL mapping approaches based on a de-biased LASSO method. Apart from having more statistical power to detect QTL and reduced rate of false positives than conventional QTL mapping approaches, the developed methods can handle large marker panels and provide estimates of genomic heritability. Single-locus analyses of an F2-interpopulation cross with 239 individuals and 15 198 fully informative single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) uncovered 79 QTL associated with variation in stickleback brain size traits. Many of these loci were in strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) with each other, and consequently, a multi-locus mapping of individual SNPs, accounting for LD structure in the data, recovered only four significant QTL. However, a multi-locus mapping of SNPs grouped by linkage group (LG) identified 14 LGs (1-6 depending on the trait) that influence variation in brain traits. For instance, 17.6% of the variation in relative brain size was explainable by cumulative effects of SNPs distributed over six LGs, whereas 42% of the variation was accounted for by all 21 LGs. Hence, the results suggest that variation in stickleback brain traits is influenced by many small-effect loci. Apart from suggesting moderately heritable (h2 ≈ 0.15-0.42) multifactorial genetic architecture of brain traits, the results highlight the challenges in identifying the loci contributing to variation in quantitative traits. Nevertheless, the results demonstrate that the novel QTL mapping approach developed here has distinctive advantages over the traditional QTL mapping methods in analyses of dense marker panels

Becoming Attuned to Each Other Over Time: A Computational Neural Agent Model for the Role of Time Lags in Subjective Synchrony Detection and Related Behavioral Adaptivity

Interpersonal synchrony usually means that people mutually adapt their behavior to each other over time. Such behavioral adaptivity is assumed to be driven by some form of subjective internal synchrony detection. In contrast to objective synchrony detection by an external (third-party) observer, subjective synchrony detection relies solely on information that is perceived by each of the synchronizing persons. Simultaneous actions of the two persons in principle cannot be sensed instantaneously by one of the two persons, but will involve time lags. These time lags reflect the time differences between a person’s own actions and the sensing of the actions of the other person. In the computational agent model described in this paper, we explore the role of time lags in different types of subjective synchrony detection and its involvement in behavioral adaptivity. Multiple simulation experiments show expected types of patterns of subjective time-lagged synchrony detection and related behavioral adaptivity

Data for QTL mapping on brain size in sticklebacks

The data set is used in a quantitative trait locus mapping study on six brain volume traits including bulbus olfactorious, telecephalon, optic tectum, hypothalamus, cerebellum and total brain size of a F2 nine stickleback population. The data consists of 239 individuals, and 15198 non-identical SNPs. A linkage map has been constructed, and divide the SNPs into 21 linkage groups. The data are distributed as following: File1: brain_phenotype.txt -The phenotype data of six brain traits, which have been corrected by the sex and bodysize effects. File2: genotype.txt -The SNP data, each row represents the individuals which is one-to-one match to the phenotype data file, and each column represents the SNPs which is one-to-one match to the linkage map file. The missing genotype data have been imputed, and coded as 1,0,-1 for the genotypes AA, AB and BB, respectively. File3: linkage_map.csv -The linkage map information, column1 is the marker ID, column2 is the linkage group info, and column3 is the linkage position of each SN

Synthetic hydrogels as scaffolds for manipulating endothelium cell behaviors

Synthetic hydrogels can be used as scaffolds that not only favor endothelial cells (ECs) proliferation but also manipulate the behaviors and functions of the ECs. In this review paper, the effect of chemical structure, Young's modulus (E) and zeta potential (ζ) of synthetic hydrogel scaffolds on static cell behaviors, including cell morphology, proliferation, cytoskeleton structure and focal adhesion, and on dynamic cell behaviors, including migration velocity and morphology oscillation, as well as on EC function such as anti-platelet adhesion, are reported. It was found that negatively charged hydrogels, poly(2-acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic sodium) (PNaAMPS) and poly(sodium p-styrene sulphonate) (PNaSS), can directly promote cell proliferation, with no need of surface modification by any cell-adhesive proteins or peptides at the environment of serum-containing medium. In addition, the Young's modulus (E) and zeta potential (ζ) of hydrogel scaffolds are quantitatively tuned by copolymer hydrogels, poly(NaAMPS-co-DMAAm) and poly(NaSS-co-DMAAm), in which the two kinds of negatively charged monomers NaAMPS and NaSS are copolymerized with neutral monomer, N,N-dimethylacrylamide (DMAAm). It was found that the critical zeta potential of hydrogels manipulating EC morphology, proliferation, and motility is ζcritical = -20.83 mV and ζcritical = -14.0 mV for poly(NaAMPS-co-DMAAm) and poly(NaSS-co-DMAAm), respectively. The above mentioned EC behaviors well correlate with the adsorption of fibronectin, a kind of cell-adhesive protein, on the hydrogel surfaces. Furthermore, adhered platelets on the EC monolayers cultured on the hydrogel scaffolds obviously decreases with an increase of the Young's modulus (E) of the hydrogels, especially when E > 60 kPa. Glycocalyx assay and gene expression of ECs demonstrate that the anti-platelet adhesion well correlates with the EC-specific glycocalyx. The above investigation suggests that understanding the relationship between physic-chemical properties of synthetic hydrogels and cell responses is essential to design optimal soft & wet scaffolds for tissue engineering