Modeling the Relationships Between Wood Properties and Quality of Veneer and Plywood of Chinese Plantation Poplars

Following our earlier studies on the relationships between wood properties and the quality of veneer and plywood of Chinese plantation poplars, this study attempted to model their relationships with stepwise and multiple linear regression. The results show that the selected three indices of wood quality of veneer and plywood of plantations poplars grown on the shore of the Yangtse River in China, which are the variance of veneer thickness (VVT), the ratio of lathe check in veneer (ratio of the depth of check to the thickness of veneer) (RLC), and the glue-bond strength of plywood (GS), can be satisfactorily predicted with the key wood properties using the individual regression equations. The variance of veneer thickness (VVT) is a function of fiber width (FW), proportion of vessel (VP), and fiber (FP): VVT = -3.414 + 0.063 FW + 0.049 FP - 0.033 VP. The ratio of lathe check in veneer (RLC) is a function of wood hardness on tangential surface (TH), modulus of elasticity in bending (MOE), air-dry wood density (WD), and total volumetric shrinkage of wood (SV): RLC = 9.472 + 0.005 TH + 0.003 MOE + 8.366 WD - 2.302 SV. The glue-bond strength of plywood (GS) is a function of pH values (PH), fiber length (FL), fiber width (FW), vessel length (VL), and proportion of vessel (VP) and ray (RP): GS = 3.326 - 0.268 PH - 0.002 FL + 0.191 FW - 0.004 VL - 0.033 VP + 0.095 RP. The correlation coefficients (r) of the above regression equations are 0.73-0.93. The determination coefficients (r2) for the regression equations are 0.54-0.88. The regression equations are highly statistically significant at the 1% level. The differences between the model predicted and experimentally measured values are not statistically significant

An sTGC Prototype Readout System for ATLAS New-Small-Wheel Upgrade

This paper presents a readout system designed for testing the prototype of Small-Strip Thin Gap Chamber (sTGC), which is one of the main detector technologies used for ATLAS New-Small-Wheel Upgrade. This readout system aims at testing one full-size sTGC quadruplet with cosmic muon triggers

SHetA2, a New Cancer-Preventive Drug Candidate

SHetA2 (NSC 721689) is a novel synthetic flexible heteroarotinoid that has promising cancer-preventive activity, and has exhibited growth inhibition on 60 cancer cell lines in vitro, along with ovarian, lung, and kidney cancers in vivo. It binds and interferes with the function of a molecular chaperone, mortalin, leading to mitochondrial swelling and mitophagy that induce apoptosis in cancer cells without harming normal cells. It showed minimal toxicity in preclinical studies and thus is now in Phase-0 clinical trial. This chapter summarizes its evolution, synthesis, structure-activity relationship, mechanism of action, pharmacokinetics, and potential clinical applications in last 12 years. It also provides insights into designing more potent and safer SHetA2 analogs for future cancer-preventive drug development

Edge-guided Representation Learning for Underwater Object Detection

Underwater object detection (UOD) is crucial for marine economic development, environmental protection, and the planet's sustainable development. The main challenges of this task arise from low-contrast, small objects, and mimicry of aquatic organisms. The key to addressing these challenges is to focus the model on obtaining more discriminative information. We observe that the edges of underwater objects are highly unique and can be distinguished from low-contrast or mimicry environments based on their edges. Motivated by this observation, we propose an Edge-guided Representation Learning Network, termed ERL-Net, that aims to achieve discriminative representation learning and aggregation under the guidance of edge cues. Firstly, we introduce an edge-guided attention module to model the explicit boundary information, which generates more discriminative features. Secondly, a feature aggregation module is proposed to aggregate the multi-scale discriminative features by regrouping them into three levels, effectively aggregating global and local information for locating and recognizing underwater objects. Finally, we propose a wide and asymmetric receptive field block to enable features to have a wider receptive field, allowing the model to focus on more small object information. Comprehensive experiments on three challenging underwater datasets show that our method achieves superior performance on the UOD task

Novel flexible heteroarotinoid, SL-1-39, inhibits HER2-positive breast cancer cell proliferation by promoting lysosomal degradation of HER2.

SL-1-39 [1-(4-chloro-3-methylphenyl)-3-(4-nitrophenyl)thiourea] is a new flexible heteroarotinoid (Flex-Het) analog derived from the parental compound, SHetA2, previously shown to inhibit cell growth across multiple cancer types. The current study aims to determine growth inhibitory effects of SL-1-39 across the different subtypes of breast cancer cells and delineate its molecular mechanism. Our results demonstrate that while SL-1-39 blocks cell proliferation of all breast cancer subtypes tested, it has the highest efficacy against HER2+ breast cancer cells. Molecular analyses suggest that SL-1-39 prevents S phase progression of HER2+ breast cancer cells (SKBR3 and MDA-MB-453), which is consistent with reduced expression of key cell-cycle regulators at both the protein and transcriptional levels. SL-1-39 treatment also decreases the protein levels of HER2 and pHER2 as well as its downstream effectors, pMAPK and pAKT. Reduction of HER2 and pHER2 at the protein level is attributed to increased lysosomal degradation of total HER2 levels. This is the first study to show that a flexible heteroarotinoid analog modulates the HER2 signaling pathway through lysosomal degradation, and thus further warrants the development of SL-1-39 as a therapeutic option for HER2+ breast cancer

Thermal coupling analysis for a multi-chip paralleled IGBT module in a doubly fed wind turbine power converter

Thermal coupling between adjacent IGBT or diode chips is the result of non-uniform temperature distribution in a multi-chip IGBT module. This affects the junction temperatures and hence the total power loss predicted for the module. The study first investigates the impact of thermal coupling effect on the junction temperatures through finite element method (FEM), and then develops a thermal coupling impedance model to represent such effect. The effect is shown to reduce with the distance exponentially. The model result agrees well with test. The validated model is then used to predict the junction temperature swings during operational power cycling in a DFIG wind turbine, showing the difference between the rotor and grid side converters. The model presented and the results obtained may be important for reliability evaluation and condition monitoring in the wind turbine power converters as well as in other multi-chip paralleled power electronic systems

Advances in mining safety theory, technology, and equipment

Mineral resources are an important pillar of human social development. With the gradual depletion of shallow resources, deep mining is an inevitable choice for ensuring energy security in various countries in the future. The complex and harsh environment in deep mining areas has led to frequent occurrences of hazardous events such as rockburst, coal and gas outburst, and mine fires. Mining safety science and engineering issues are receiving increasing attention. In August 2023, the 6th International Symposium on Mine Safety Science and Engineering was held in Harbin to promote innovative development of mining safety, and foster international collaborations among scholars in the field of mining safety. It served as a platform for the exchange of the most recent advancements in mining safety scientific theories, technologies, and equipment by bringing together global talent. Over 400 delegates representing 9 countries, including Australia, Russia, United State, Kazakhstan, and Canada, engaged in academic discussions and knowledge sharing on new theories, technologies, equipment, and methods in mining safety science and engineering. The latest research results are of great significance in enhancing the practices of preventing mine disaster and ensuring the safety of mining operations.Document Type: EditorialCited as: He, S., He, X., Mitri, H., Meng, S., Wu, Q., Ren, T., Liu, S. Advances in mining safety theory, technology, and equipment. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2023, 10(2): 71-76. https://doi.org/10.46690/ager.2023.11.0