A Geophysical Survey near Blacktail Creek in the Thompson Park area near Butte, Montana

Subsurface electrical information can be obtained by electrical and self-potential methods. These geophysical methods, compared to drilling, provide a much cheaper option for investigating the hydrogeological setting. In this project report, we carried out resistivity and self-potential survey along Blacktail Creek in the Thompson Park area near Butte, Montana to understand the hydrogeological setting. Three geophysical methods have been used: 2D electrical resistivity, 3D electrical resistivity, and self-potential. The least-square inversion resistivity model results showed a general variation of resistivity with depth and delineated the extent of the ground water. The ERT results show three electrical layers, one of them is a water filled alluvial sand layer with a resistivity range of 100- 200 Ωm; the layer under the water layer is weathered granite with resistivity range of 200-800 Ωm; resistivity ranges from 800-1100 Ωm indicating granite bedrock. The survey result from the 3D resistivity profile showed relatively high resistivity in the middle of the survey area interpreted as alluvial sand. The layers above and under the middle layer have low resistant, indicating water flow and water reserves. The self-potential result indicates there is a probable downward flow ground water in the area adjacent to the stream. This downward flow was interpreted as the creek is charging ground water. Environmental managers can refer to this knowledge to have a better sense of locations with high potential to hold ground water so beaver mimicry sites can be better located to leverage water storage

Tertiary lymphoid structures in cancer: maturation and induction

Tertiary lymphoid structure (TLS) is an ectopic lymphocyte aggregate formed in peripheral non-lymphoid tissues, including inflamed or cancerous tissue. Tumor-associated TLS serves as a prominent center of antigen presentation and adaptive immune activation within the periphery, which has exhibited positive prognostic value in various cancers. In recent years, the concept of maturity regarding TLS has been proposed and mature TLS, characterized by well-developed germinal centers, exhibits a more potent tumor-suppressive capacity with stronger significance. Meanwhile, more and more evidence showed that TLS can be induced by therapeutic interventions during cancer treatments. Thus, the evaluation of TLS maturity and the therapeutic interventions that induce its formation are critical issues in current TLS research. In this review, we aim to provide a comprehensive summary of the existing classifications for TLS maturity and therapeutic strategies capable of inducing its formation in tumors

Rattusin, an intestinal a-defensin-related peptide in rats with a unique cysteine spacing pattern and salt-insensitive antibacterial activities

Cationic antimicrobial peptides are essential components of the innate immune system. As a major family of mammalian antimicrobial peptides, defensins are expressed mainly by mucosal epithelial cells and promyelocytes. Despite the capacity to kill a broad spectrum of bacteria through physical disruption of membranes, most defensins show substantially reduced antibacterial activities in the presence of monovalent and divalent cations, thereby limiting their therapeutic potential, particularly for the treatment of systemic infections. Genome-wide computational screening of the rat genome led to the identification of the gene for a novel a-defensin-related peptide that we termed rattusin. Rattusin shares a highly conserved signal and prosequence with mammalian a-defensins, but instead of the canonical a-defensin six-cysteine motif, rattusin consists of five cysteines with a distinctive spacing pattern. Furthermore, rattusin is preferentially expressed in Paneth cells of the distal small intestine with potent antibacterial activity against a broad range of Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains. The MICs were mostly in the range of 2 to 4 uM, with no appreciable toxicity to mammalian cells at up to 100 uM. In contrast to classical a- and B-defensins, rattusin retained its activity in the presence of physiological concentrations of NaCl and Mg2+, making it an attractive antimicrobial candidate for both topical and systemic applications.Peer reviewedAnimal Scienc

Subarrayed Antenna Array Synthesis Using Ternary Adjusting Method

Ternary adjusting method is proposed and combined with particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for subarrayed antenna array synthesis. Ternary variables are introduced to represent element adjustments between adjacent subarrays. Compared to previous methods, rounding-off operations are not required any longer, and the equation constraint of the fixed total element number is also removed, which effectively reduces the complexity of implementation while obtaining improved topology exploration capability simultaneously

Algorithm and Implementation of Distributed ESN Using Spark Framework and Parallel PSO

The echo state network (ESN) employs a huge reservoir with sparsely and randomly connected internal nodes and only trains the output weights, which avoids the suboptimal problem, exploding and vanishing gradients, high complexity and other disadvantages faced by traditional recurrent neural network (RNN) training. In light of the outstanding adaption to nonlinear dynamical systems, ESN has been applied into a wide range of applications. However, in the era of Big Data, with an enormous amount of data being generated continuously every day, the data are often distributed and stored in real applications, and thus the centralized ESN training process is prone to being technologically unsuitable. In order to achieve the requirement of Big Data applications in the real world, in this study we propose an algorithm and its implementation for distributed ESN training. The mentioned algorithm is based on the parallel particle swarm optimization (P-PSO) technique and the implementation uses Spark, a famous large-scale data processing framework. Four extremely large-scale datasets, including artificial benchmarks, real-world data and image data, are adopted to verify our framework on a stretchable platform. Experimental results indicate that the proposed work is accurate in the era of Big Data, regarding speed, accuracy and generalization capabilities

Investigation of mixed convection in an enclosure filled with nanofluids of Al2O3 –water and graphene-ethylene glycol

In this research work, heat transfer enhancement of mixed convection in an enclosure is investigated with a moving top wall. Numerical simulations based on an Al2 O3 –water nanofluid are conducted by using variable thermophysical properties. Flow fields and temperature distributions are analyzed by considering effects of two partially heated walls. Moreover, water–ethylene glycol mixed with graphene nanoplatelets (GnP-WEG) is also considered to analyze effects of the heating procedure, Reynolds number, Rayleigh number and volume fraction of the nanoparticles, as well as on the heat transfer enhancement. It is found that there is a velocity difference between the pure water and the Al2 O3 –water nanofluid due to the increase of the fluid viscosity by an injection of Al2 O3 nanoparticles into the water. Moreover, flow patterns are significantly affected by the Reynolds number and the Rayleigh number. The heat transfer in the enclosure is enhanced by the increase of the top wall moving velocity. Although heat transfer enhancement for most cases are obtained by increasing the volume fraction of graphene nanoplatelets, a mixture of 0.25% graphene nanoplatelets and the water–ethylene glycol (the base fluid) provides the largest enhancement of heat transfer at low Reynolds number (Re = 1)