Free Subcooling with the Sky: Improving the efficiency of air conditioning systems

Radiative sky cooling is a passive process that can be harnessed to subcool refrigerants in air conditioning and refrigeration systems, thereby increasing the cooling capacity of the refrigerant, and improving the underlying efficiency of the base cooling system. Here, we demonstrate for the first time the use of a radiative sky cooling-enabled passive fluid cooling panel to improve the efficiency of an air conditioning system by subcooling. The panel’s passive cooling capability is enabled by a multilayer optical film that enables the sky cooling effect 24-hours a day. The film is simultaneously a good reflector of solar energy and a strong emitter of infrared heat in the 8 to 13 micron wavelength range. Multiple such panels were built and then connected in a closed fluid loop to two 1-ton split air conditioning units in a field trial in Davis, CA. The panels were used to subcool refrigerant out of the condenser by rejecting heat to the sky via a closed fluid loop. Refrigerant R410A was passed through a counterflow plate heat exchanger, where the cold fluid source was the circulating water/glycol solution in the panels. As much as 15˚F of additional subcooling was observed during the hottest time of the day. This resulted in calculated net efficiency improvements up to 8%. The only added operating electricity required was to run a small circulating water pump, which consumed less than \u3c 1% of total compressor power. These results reveal the remarkable ability of radiative sky cooling to markedly improve the efficiency of vapor compression systems.as an add-on technology

Comparative evaluation of [(99m)tc]tilmanocept for sentinel lymph node mapping in breast cancer patients: results of two phase 3 trials.

BackgroundSentinel lymph node (SLN) surgery is used worldwide for staging breast cancer patients and helps limit axillary lymph node dissection. [(99m)Tc]Tilmanocept is a novel receptor-targeted radiopharmaceutical evaluated in 2 open-label, nonrandomized, within-patient, phase 3 trials designed to assess the lymphatic mapping performance.MethodsA total of 13 centers contributed 148 patients with breast cancer. Each patient received [(99m)Tc]tilmanocept and vital blue dye (VBD). Lymph nodes identified intraoperatively as radioactive and/or blue stained were excised and histologically examined. The primary endpoint, concordance (lower boundary set point at 90 %), was the proportion of nodes detected by VBD and [(99m)Tc]tilmanocept.ResultsA total of 13 centers contributed 148 patients who were injected with both agents. Intraoperatively, 207 of 209 nodes detected by VBD were also detected by [(99m)Tc]tilmanocept for a concordance rate of 99.04 % (p < 0.0001). [(99m)Tc]tilmanocept detected a total of 320 nodes, of which 207 (64.7 %) were detected by VBD. [(99m)Tc]Tilmanocept detected at least 1 SLN in more patients (146) than did VBD (131, p < 0.0001). In 129 of 131 patients with ≥1 blue node, all blue nodes were radioactive. Of 33 pathology-positive nodes (18.2 % patient pathology rate), [(99m)Tc]tilmanocept detected 31 of 33, whereas VBD detected only 25 of 33 (p = 0.0312). No pathology-positive SLNs were detected exclusively by VBD. No serious adverse events were attributed to [(99m)Tc]tilmanocept.Conclusion[(99m)Tc]Tilmanocept demonstrated success in detecting a SLN while meeting the primary endpoint. Interestingly, [(99m)Tc]tilmanocept was additionally noted to identify more SLNs in more patients. This localization represented a higher number of metastatic breast cancer lymph nodes than that of VBD

Brain‐wide associations between white matter and age highlight the role of fornix microstructure in brain ageing

Unveiling the details of white matter (WM) maturation throughout ageing is a fundamental question for understanding the ageing brain. In an extensive comparison of brain age predictions and age-associations of WM features from different diffusion approaches, we analyzed UK Biobank diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) data across midlife and older age (N = 35,749, 44.6–82.8 years of age). Conventional and advanced dMRI approaches were consistent in predicting brain age. WM-age associations indicate a steady microstructure degeneration with increasing age from midlife to older ages. Brain age was estimated best when combining diffusion approaches, showing different aspects of WM contributing to brain age. Fornix was found as the central region for brain age predictions across diffusion approaches in complement to forceps minor as another important region. These regions exhibited a general pattern of positive associations with age for intra axonal water fractions, axial, radial diffusivities, and negative relationships with age for mean diffusivities, fractional anisotropy, kurtosis. We encourage the application of multiple dMRI approaches for detailed insights into WM, and the further investigation of fornix and forceps as potential biomarkers of brain age and ageing.publishedVersio

An intestinal commensal symbiosis factor controls neuroinflammation via TLR2-mediated CD39 signaling

The mammalian immune system constitutively senses vast quantities of commensal bacteria and their products through pattern recognition receptors, yet excessive immune reactivity is prevented under homeostasis. Intestinal microbiome can influence host susceptibility to extra-intestine autoimmune disorders. Here we report that polysaccharide A (PSA), a symbiosis factor for human intestinal commensal Bacteroides fragilis, protects against central nervous system demyelination and inflammation during experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an animal model for multiple sclerosis, through toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2). TLR2 mediates tissue-specific expansion of a critical regulatory CD39+ CD4 T cell subset by PSA. Ablation of CD39 signaling abrogates PSA control of EAE manifestations and inflammatory cytokine responses. Further, CD39 confers immune-regulatory phenotypes to total CD4 T cells and Foxp3+ CD4 Tregs. Importantly, CD39-deficient CD4 T cells show an enhanced capability to drive EAE progression. Our results demonstrate the therapeutic potential and underlying mechanism by which an intestinal symbiont product modulates CNS-targeted demyelination

An Intestinal Commensal Symbiosis Factor Controls Neuroinflammation via Tlr2-Mediated Cd39 Signalling

The mammalian immune system constitutively senses vast quantities of commensal bacteria and their products through pattern recognition receptors, yet excessive immune reactivity is prevented under homeostasis. Intestinal microbiome can influence host susceptibility to extra-intestine autoimmune disorders. Here we report that polysaccharide A (PSA), a symbiosis factor for human intestinal commensal Bacteroides fragilis, protects against central nervous system demyelination and inflammation during experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an animal model for multiple sclerosis, through toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2). TLR2 mediates tissue-specific expansion of a critical regulatory CD39+ CD4 T cell subset by PSA. Ablation of CD39 signaling abrogates PSA control of EAE manifestations and inflammatory cytokine responses. Further, CD39 confers immune-regulatory phenotypes to total CD4 T cells and Foxp3+ CD4 Tregs. Importantly, CD39-deficient CD4 T cells show an enhanced capability to drive EAE progression. Our results demonstrate the therapeutic potential and underlying mechanism by which an intestinal symbiont product modulates CNS-targeted demyelination

Mycobacterium tuberculosis Induces Interleukin-32 Production through a Caspase- 1/IL-18/Interferon-γ-Dependent Mechanism

BACKGROUND: Interleukin (IL)–32 is a newly described proinflammatory cytokine that seems likely to play a role in inflammation and host defense. Little is known about the regulation of IL-32 production by primary cells of the immune system. METHODS AND FINDINGS: In the present study, freshly obtained human peripheral blood mononuclear cells were stimulated with different Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonists, and gene expression and synthesis of IL-32 was determined. We demonstrate that the TLR4 agonist lipopolysaccharide induces moderate (4-fold) production of IL-32, whereas agonists of TLR2, TLR3, TLR5, or TLR9, each of which strongly induced tumor necrosis factor α and IL-6, did not stimulate IL-32 production. However, the greatest amount of IL-32 was induced by the mycobacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis and M. bovis BCG (20-fold over unstimulated cells). IL-32-induced synthesis by either lipopolysaccharide or mycobacteria remains entirely cell-associated in monocytes; moreover, steady-state mRNA levels are present in unstimulated monocytes without translation into IL-32 protein, similar to other cytokines lacking a signal peptide. IL-32 production induced by M. tuberculosis is dependent on endogenous interferon-γ (IFNγ); endogenous IFNγ is, in turn, dependent on M. tuberculosis–induced IL-18 via caspase-1. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, IL-32 is a cell-associated proinflammatory cytokine, which is specifically stimulated by mycobacteria through a caspase-1- and IL-18-dependent production of IFNγ

Bio-psycho-social factors’ associations with brain age: a large-scale UK Biobank diffusion study of 35,749 participants

Brain age refers to age predicted by brain features. Brain age has previously been associated with various health and disease outcomes and suggested as a potential biomarker of general health. Few previous studies have systematically assessed brain age variability derived from single and multi-shell diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data. Here, we present multivariate models of brain age derived from various diffusion approaches and how they relate to bio-psycho-social variables within the domains of sociodemographic, cognitive, life-satisfaction, as well as health and lifestyle factors in midlife to old age (N = 35,749, 44.6–82.8 years of age). Bio-psycho-social factors could uniquely explain a small proportion of the brain age variance, in a similar pattern across diffusion approaches: cognitive scores, life satisfaction, health and lifestyle factors adding to the variance explained, but not socio-demographics. Consistent brain age associations across models were found for waist-to-hip ratio, diabetes, hypertension, smoking, matrix puzzles solving, and job and health satisfaction and perception. Furthermore, we found large variability in sex and ethnicity group differences in brain age. Our results show that brain age cannot be sufficiently explained by bio-psycho-social variables alone. However, the observed associations suggest to adjust for sex, ethnicity, cognitive factors, as well as health and lifestyle factors, and to observe bio-psycho-social factor interactions’ influence on brain age in future studies.publishedVersio

Aggregated Channels Network for Real-Time Pedestrian Detection

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have demonstrated their superiority in numerous computer vision tasks, yet their computational cost results prohibitive for many real-time applications such as pedestrian detection which is usually performed on low-consumption hardware. In order to alleviate this drawback, most strategies focus on using a two-stage cascade approach. Essentially, in the first stage a fast method generates a significant but reduced amount of high quality proposals that later, in the second stage, are evaluated by the CNN. In this work, we propose a novel detection pipeline that further benefits from the two-stage cascade strategy. More concretely, the enriched and subsequently compressed features used in the first stage are reused as the CNN input. As a consequence, a simpler network architecture, adapted for such small input sizes, allows to achieve real-time performance and obtain results close to the state-of-the-art while running significantly faster without the use of GPU. In particular, considering that the proposed pipeline runs in frame rate, the achieved performance is highly competitive. We furthermore demonstrate that the proposed pipeline on itself can serve as an effective proposal generator

Revisiting Egyptian Foreign Policy towards Israel under Mubarak: From Cold Peace to Strategic Peace

This article is the first academic study of Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel under Hosni Mubarak (1981–2011). It challenges a deeply entrenched conventional wisdom that Egypt pursued a cold-peace foreign policy towards Israel throughout this period. We demonstrate that Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel was dynamic – comprising cold peace (1981–91), a hybrid foreign policy of cold peace and strategic peace (1991–2003), and a pure strategic peace posture (2003–11). We also use the case of Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel as a heuristic to develop a conception of a new type of peace, strategic peace, as an intermediary analytical category between cold and stable peace