Interview with the ECM Award winner 2022 and introducing the new ECM members

Support statement: J. Cruz acknowledges the support of the Center for Innovative Care and Health Technology (ciTechCare) of the Polytechnic of Leiria, which is funded by Portuguese national funds provided by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) (UIDB/05704/2020).This article presents the interview with the ERS Early Career Member Awardee 2022 (@MathioudakisAG) and provides a brief introduction to the new ECM members https://bit.ly/3BSRgV2 The Early Career Member (ECM) Award is intended to honour promising members of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) at an early stage of their professional career, based on their curriculum vitae, involvement in the ERS and potential for future scientific contributions. This award is given during the ERS International Congress, where the ECM Awardee is invited to give the Mina Gaga lecture during the ECM session. In this article, we present an interview conducted with the 2022 ECM Award winner, Alexander Mathioudakis, where he discussed his work and visions for the future and shared some tips for ECMs starting a career in respiratory research. We also provide a brief introduction to the new members of the ECM Committee (ECMC) from Assemblies 2 (Respiratory intensive care), 3 (Basic and translational sciences), 7 (Paediatrics) and 8 (Thoracic surgery and transplantation).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Cycling of Intracellular Calcium Released in Response to Fluid Shear Stress Is Critical for Migration-Associated Actin Reorganization in Eosinophils

The magnitude of eosinophil mobilization into respiratory tissues drives the severity of inflammation in several airway diseases. In classical models of leukocyte extravasation, surface integrins undergo conformational switches to high-affinity states via chemokine binding activation. Recently, we learned that eosinophil integrins possess mechanosensitive properties that detect fluid shear stress, which alone was sufficient to induce activation. This mechanical stimulus triggered intracellular calcium release and hallmark migration-associated cytoskeletal reorganization including flattening for increased cell–substratum contact area and pseudopodia formation. The present study utilized confocal fluorescence microscopy to investigate the effects of pharmacological inhibitors to calcium signaling and actin polymerization pathways on shear stress-induced migration in vitro. Morphological changes (cell elongation, membrane protrusions) succeeded the calcium flux in untreated eosinophils within 2 min, suggesting that calcium signaling was upstream of actin cytoskeleton rearrangement. The inhibition of ryanodine receptors and endomembrane Ca2+-ATPases corroborated this idea, indicated by a significant increase in time between the calcium spike and actin polymerization. The impact of the temporal link is evident as the capacity of treated eosinophils to move across fibronectin-coated surfaces was significantly hampered relative to untreated eosinophils. Furthermore, we determined that the nature of cellular motility in response to fluid shear stress was nondirectional

Preliminary design of a production automation framework for a pyroprocessing facility

Pyroprocessing technology has been regarded as a promising solution for recycling spent fuel in nuclear power plants. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has been studying the current status of equipment and facilities for pyroprocessing and found that existing facilities are manually operated; therefore, their applications have been limited to laboratory scale because of low productivity and safety concerns. To extend the pyroprocessing technology to a commercial scale, the facility, including all the processing equipment and the material-handling devices, should be enhanced in view of automation. In an automated pyroprocessing facility, a supervised control system is needed to handle and manage material flow and associated operations. This article provides a preliminary design of the supervising system for pyroprocessing. In particular, a manufacturing execution system intended for an automated pyroprocessing facility, named Pyroprocessing Execution System, is proposed, by which the overall production process is automated via systematic collaboration with a planning system and a control system. Moreover, a simulation-based prototype system is presented to illustrate the operability of the proposed Pyroprocessing Execution System, and a simulation study to demonstrate the interoperability of the material-handling equipment with processing equipment is also provided. (C) 2018 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC.Nuclear Research & Development Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) - Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning [2015M2A8A5025906]Open Access Journal.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Synthesis and Biochemical Evaluation of Baicalein Prodrugs

Baicalein (5,6,7-trihydroxy-2-phenyl-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one), a flavonoid analog from Scutellaria baicalensis, possesses several pharmacological activities including antioxidant, antiproliferative, and anti-inflammatory activities. We previously reported that baicalein inhibits the thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP)/TSLP receptor (TSLPR) signaling pathways and can be used as an active ingredient in the treatment of asthma and atopic dermatitis. However, baicalein is rapidly metabolized to baicalin and baicalein-6-O-glucuronide in vivo, which limits its preclinical and clinical use. In this study, we designed, synthesized, and evaluated baicalein prodrugs that protect the OH group at the 7-position of the A ring in baicalein with the amino acid carbamate functional group. Comprehensive in vitro and in vivo studies identified compound 2 as a baicalein prodrug candidate that improved the plasma exposure of baicalein in mouse animal studies. Our results demonstrated that this prodrug approach could be further adopted to discover oral baicalein prodrugs

High-Performance Protonic Ceramic Fuel Cells with Thin-Film Yttrium-Doped Barium Cerate–Zirconate Electrolytes on Compositionally Gradient Anodes

In this study, we used a compositionally gradient anode functional layer (AFL) consisting of Ni–BaCe_0.5Zr_0.35Y_0.15O_3−δ (BCZY) with increasing BCZY contents toward the electrolyte–anode interface for high-performance protonic ceramic fuel cells. It is identified that conventional homogeneous AFLs fail to stably accommodate a thin film of BCZY electrolyte. In contrast, a dense 2 μm thick BCZY electrolyte was successfully deposited onto the proposed gradient AFL with improved adhesion. A fuel cell containing this thin electrolyte showed a promising maximum peak power density of 635 mW cm^–2 at 600 °C, with an open-circuit voltage of over 1 V. Impedance analysis confirmed that minimizing the electrolyte thickness is essential for achieving a high power output, suggesting that the anode structure is important in stably accommodating thin electrolytes