Experimental and Modeling Investigation of <i>n</i>‑Decane Pyrolysis at Supercritical Pressures

The pyrolysis mechanism of fuel under supercritical conditions is an important concern for developing regenerative cooling technology of advanced aircraft using hydrocarbon fuel as the primary coolant. <i>n</i>-Decane as a component of some jet fuels was studied at the temperature range from 773 to 943 K in a flow reactor under the pressure of 3, 4, and 5 MPa. Gas chromatograph/mass spectrometry was used to analyze the pyrolysis products, which were mainly alkanes from C₁–C₉ and alkenes from C₂–C₉. A kinetic model containing 164 species and 842 reactions has been developed and validated by the experimental results including the distributions of products and the chemical heat sink of fuel. The decomposition pathways of <i>n</i>-decane were illustrated through the reaction flux analysis. It is concluded that the C₄–C₉ alkanes are mainly generated by the recombinations of alkyls, while the small alkanes (C₁–C₃) are formed by H-abstraction reactions by C₁–C₃ alkyl radicals. The applicability at supercritical pressure and high fuel concentration condition of previous models was discussed, and the performance of the present model in reproducing the experimental data is reasonably good

RNA-seq profiling reveals differentially expressed genes as potential markers for vital reaction in skin contusion: a pilot study

<p>Detection of the vitality of wounds is essential in forensic practice. The present study used Illumina RNA-seq technology to determine gene expression profiles in contused mouse skin. In obtained high quality sequencing reads, the reads were mapped onto a reference transcriptome (Mus_musculus.GRCm38.83). The results revealed that there were 659 up-regulated and 996 down-regulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in contused mouse skin. The DEGs were further analyzed using the Gene Ontology and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes databases. Genes from different functional categories and signalling pathways were enriched, including the immune system process, immune response, defense response, cytokine–cytokine receptor interaction, complement and coagulation cascades and chemokine signalling pathway. Expression patterns of 11 DEGs were verified by RT-qPCR in mice skins. In addition, alterations of five DEGs were also analyzed in postmortem human wound samples. The results were in concordance with the results of RNA-seq. These findings suggest that RNA-seq is a powerful tool to reveal DEGs as potential markers for vital reaction in terms of forensic practices.</p