Roadmap on Li-ion battery manufacturing research

Growth in the Li-ion battery market continues to accelerate, driven primarily by the increasing need for economic energy storage for electric vehicles. Electrode manufacture by slurry casting is the first main step in cell production but much of the manufacturing optimisation is based on trial and error, know-how and individual expertise. Advancing manufacturing science that underpins Li-ion battery electrode production is critical to adding to the electrode manufacturing value chain. Overcoming the current barriers in electrode manufacturing requires advances in materials, manufacturing technology, in-line process metrology and data analytics, and can enable improvements in cell performance, quality, safety and process sustainability. In this roadmap we explore the research opportunities to improve each stage of the electrode manufacturing process, from materials synthesis through to electrode calendering. We highlight the role of new process technology, such as dry processing, and advanced electrode design supported through electrode level, physics-based modelling. Progress in data driven models of electrode manufacturing processes is also considered. We conclude there is a growing need for innovations in process metrology to aid fundamental understanding and to enable feedback control, an opportunity for electrode design to reduce trial and error, and an urgent imperative to improve the sustainability of manufacture

The future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Strategic focus area

This volume has been created as a continuation of the previous one, with the aim of outlining a set of focus areas and actions that the Italian Nation research community considers essential. The book touches many aspects of cyber security, ranging from the definition of the infrastructure and controls needed to organize cyberdefence to the actions and technologies to be developed to be better protected, from the identification of the main technologies to be defended to the proposal of a set of horizontal actions for training, awareness raising, and risk management

Chemotherapeutic Sensitization of Leptomycin B Resistant Lung Cancer Cells by Pretreatment with Doxorubicin

The development of novel targeted therapies has become an important research focus for lung cancer treatment. Our previous study has shown leptomycin B (LMB) significantly inhibited proliferation of lung cancer cells; however, p53 wild type lung cancer cells were resistant to LMB. Therefore, the objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a novel therapeutic strategy to sensitize LMB-resistant lung cancer cells by combining LMB and doxorubicin (DOX). Among the different treatment regimens, pretreatment with DOX (pre-DOX) and subsequent treatment with LMB to A549 cells significantly decreased the 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) as compared to that of LMB alone (4.4 nM vs. 10.6 nM, P<0.05). Analysis of cell cycle and apoptosis by flow cytometry further confirmed the cytotoxic data. To investigate molecular mechanisms for this drug combination effects, p53 pathways were analyzed by Western blot, and nuclear proteome was evaluated by two dimensional-difference gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) and mass spectrometry. In comparison with control groups, the levels of p53, phospho-p53 (ser15), and p21 proteins were significantly increased while phospho-p53 (Thr55) and survivin were significantly decreased after treatments of pre-DOX and LMB (P<0.05). The 2D-DIGE/MS analysis identified that sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1/p62) had a significant increase in pre-DOX and LMB-treated cells (P<0.05). In conclusion, our results suggest that drug-resistant lung cancer cells with p53 wild type could be sensitized to cell death by scheduled combination treatment of DOX and LMB through activating and restoring p53 as well as potentially other signaling pathway(s) involving sequestosome 1

The impact of ventilation cooling towers on plus energy houses in southern Europe

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Taylor and Francis under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Cooling homes is often important to maintain acceptable internal comfort. This can be achieved by both active and passive solutions. This research focused on passive systems and has examined one hypothesis: that evaporative cooling towers are an important element of plus-energy houses in southern Europe. Refinements to the design of the existing ventilation tower of a Solar Decathlon House developed by the Hochschule für Technik Stuttgart are proposed and tested in eight locations in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain using dynamic thermal and computational fluid dynamics simulations in order to predict energy consumption, mean and peak CO2 levels, temperatures, ventilation rates, cooling potential, fresh air distribution, indoor air quality and water consumption of the evaporative cooling system implemented within the tower. Results show that a 50% reduction of the annual energy demand for space cooling to be satisfied by other systems is achieved without compromising the internal comfort

Integrated Circuits Based on Bilayer MoS

Two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), have been shown to exhibit excellent electrical and optical properties. The semiconducting nature of MoS2 allows it to overcome the shortcomings of zero-bandgap graphene, while still sharing many of graphene’s advantages for electronic and optoelectronic applications. Discrete electronic and optoelectronic components, such as field-effect transistors, sensors, and photodetectors made from few-layer MoS2 show promising performance as potential substitute of Si in conventional electronics and of organic and amorphous Si semiconductors in ubiquitous systems and display applications. An important next step is the fabrication of fully integrated multistage circuits and logic building blocks on MoS2 to demonstrate its capability for complex digital logic and high-frequency ac applications. This paper demonstrates an inverter, a NAND gate, a static random access memory, and a five-stage ring oscillator based on a direct-coupled transistor logic technology. The circuits comprise between 2 to 12 transistors seamlessly integrated side-by-side on a single sheet of bilayer MoS2. Both enhancement-mode and depletion-mode transistors were fabricated thanks to the use of gate metals with different work functions.United States. Office of Naval Research (Young Investigator Program)Microelectronics Advanced Research Corporation (MARCO) (Focus Center for Materials, Structure and Device (MARCO MSD))National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF DMR 0845358)United States. Army Research Offic

Active ageing, pensions and retirement in the UK

The ageing population has led to increasing concerns about pensions and their future sustainability. Much of the dominant policy discourse around ageing and pension provision over the last decade has focussed on postponing retirement and prolonging employment. These measures are central to productive notions of ‘active ageing’. Initially the paper briefly sets out the pension developments in the UK. Then it introduces active ageing and active ageing policy, exploring its implications for UK pension provision. It demonstrates that a more comprehensive active ageing framework, which incorporates a life-course perspective, has the potential to assist the UK to respond to the challenges of an ageing population. In doing so it needs to highlight older people as an economic and social resource, and reduce barriers to older people’s participation in society

Growth of Large-Area and Highly Crystalline MoS2 Thin Layers on Insulating Substrates

The two-dimensional layer of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has recently attracted much interest due to its direct-gap property and potential applications in optoelectronics and energy harvesting. However, the synthetic approach to obtain high quality and large-area MoS2 atomic thin layers is still rare. Here we report that the high temperature annealing of a thermally decomposed ammonium thiomolybdate layer in the presence of sulfur can produce large-area MoS2 thin layers with superior electrical performance on insulating substrates. Spectroscopic and microscopic results reveal that the synthesized MoS2 sheets are highly crystalline. The electron mobility of the bottom-gate transistor devices made of the synthesized MoS2 layer is comparable with those of the micromechanically exfoliated thin sheets from MoS2 crystals. This synthetic approach is simple, scalable and applicable to other transition metal dichalcogenides. Meanwhile, the obtained MoS2 films are transferable to arbitrary substrates, providing great opportunities to make layered composites by stacking various atomically thin layers.Comment: manuscript submitted on 11-Dec-2011, revision submitted on 16-Feb-201

SIRT1 Promotes N-Myc Oncogenesis through a Positive Feedback Loop Involving the Effects of MKP3 and ERK on N-Myc Protein Stability

The N-Myc oncoprotein is a critical factor in neuroblastoma tumorigenesis which requires additional mechanisms converting a low-level to a high-level N-Myc expression. N-Myc protein is stabilized when phosphorylated at Serine 62 by phosphorylated ERK protein. Here we describe a novel positive feedback loop whereby N-Myc directly induced the transcription of the class III histone deacetylase SIRT1, which in turn increased N-Myc protein stability. SIRT1 binds to Myc Box I domain of N-Myc protein to form a novel transcriptional repressor complex at gene promoter of mitogen-activated protein kinase phosphatase 3 (MKP3), leading to transcriptional repression of MKP3, ERK protein phosphorylation, N-Myc protein phosphorylation at Serine 62, and N-Myc protein stabilization. Importantly, SIRT1 was up-regulated, MKP3 down-regulated, in pre-cancerous cells, and preventative treatment with the SIRT1 inhibitor Cambinol reduced tumorigenesis in TH-MYCN transgenic mice. Our data demonstrate the important roles of SIRT1 in N-Myc oncogenesis and SIRT1 inhibitors in the prevention and therapy of N-Myc–induced neuroblastoma