4,902 research outputs found
Nondestructive testing of high strength conductors for high field pulsed magnets
High field pulsed magnets at the NHMFL use high strength conductor wires up
to 90% of their ultimate tensile strength. Therefore it is very important to
ensure that the wires are free of flaws. It is known that in the conductors
cold drawing process, internal chevron crack could occur due to unsuitable
drawing die schedule or inadequate lubrication. These internal cracks occurs
infrequently along the wire, so tensile tests of short samples cut from the
ends of a long length conductor often miss the problem. In addition, small
inclusions on the wire surface can compromise wires fatigue properties. In this
paper, we present results of our non-destructive testing (NDT) inspection of
Glidcop AL60 wires using eddy current testing (ECT), ultrasonic testing (UT)
and x-ray radiography (2D and 3D). Chevron cracks were found in some AL60
conductors by all three NDT techniques. Surface inclusions were found by ECT.
We have developed a long length ECT wire inspection capability.Comment: 4 pages, 9 figure
Loss of ATF3 exacerbates liver damage through the activation of mTOR/p70S6K/ HIF-1α signaling pathway in liver inflammatory injury.
Activating transcription factor 3 (ATF3) is a stress-induced transcription factor that plays important roles in regulating immune and metabolic homeostasis. Activation of the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) and hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) transcription factors are crucial for the regulation of immune cell function. Here, we investigated the mechanism by which the ATF3/mTOR/HIF-1 axis regulates immune responses in a liver ischemia/reperfusion injury (IRI) model. Deletion of ATF3 exacerbated liver damage, as evidenced by increased levels of serum ALT, intrahepatic macrophage/neutrophil trafficking, hepatocellular apoptosis, and the upregulation of pro-inflammatory mediators. ATF3 deficiency promoted mTOR and p70S6K phosphorylation, activated high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) and TLR4, inhibited prolyl-hydroxylase 1 (PHD1), and increased HIF-1α activity, leading to Foxp3 downregulation and RORγt and IL-17A upregulation in IRI livers. Blocking mTOR or p70S6K in ATF3 knockout (KO) mice or bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMMs) downregulated HMGB1, TLR4, and HIF-1α and upregulated PHD1, increasing Foxp3 and decreasing IL-17A levels in vitro. Silencing of HIF-1α in ATF3 KO mice ameliorated IRI-induced liver damage in parallel with the downregulation of IL-17A in ATF3-deficient mice. These findings demonstrated that ATF3 deficiency activated mTOR/p70S6K/HIF-1α signaling, which was crucial for the modulation of TLR4-driven inflammatory responses and T cell development. The present study provides potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of liver IRI followed by liver transplantation
Critical Current Longitudinal and Transverse Strain Sensitivities of High JC Nb3Sn Conductors
Characterizing critical current IC of Nb3Sn strands as function of a strain
is very important for large high field superconducting magnet applications such
as the superconducting outsert coil of the series-connected hybrid at the NHMFL
and the ITER magnets. Apparatuses for measuring IC versus longitudinal strain
and transverse stress have been developed and used at the NHMFL. We have
characterized the IC strain sensitivities of a few candidate strands for the
series-connected-hybrid. In addition, IC irreversibility strains are measured
for the recently developed ITER high JC strands. The different strain
sensitivities for different strands are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure
Adiponectin improves coronary no-reflow injury by protecting the endothelium in rats with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
To determine the effect of adiponectin (APN) on the coronary no-reflow (NR) injury in rats with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), 80 male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed with a high-sugar-high-fat diet to build a T2DM model. Rats received vehicle or APN in the last week and then were subjected to myocardial ischemia reperfusion (MI/R) injury. Endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation of the thoracic aorta was significantly decreased and serum levels of endothelin-1 (ET-1), intercellular cell adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) were noticably increased in T2DM rats compared with rats without T2DM. Serum APN was positively correlated with the endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation, but negatively correlated with the serum level of ET-1. Treatment with APN improved T2DM-induced endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation, recovered cardiac function, and decreased both NR size and the levels of ET-1, ICAM-1 and VCAM-1. Hypoadiponectinemia was associated with the aggravation of coronary NR in T2DM rats. APN could alleviate coronary NR injury in T2DM rats by protecting the endothelium and improving microcirculation
Investigating Zero-Shot Generalizability on Mandarin-English Code-Switched ASR and Speech-to-text Translation of Recent Foundation Models with Self-Supervision and Weak Supervision
This work evaluated several cutting-edge large-scale foundation models based
on self-supervision or weak supervision, including SeamlessM4T, SeamlessM4T v2,
and Whisper-large-v3, on three code-switched corpora. We found that
self-supervised models can achieve performances close to the supervised model,
indicating the effectiveness of multilingual self-supervised pre-training. We
also observed that these models still have room for improvement as they kept
making similar mistakes and had unsatisfactory performances on modeling
intra-sentential code-switching. In addition, the validity of several variants
of Whisper was explored, and we concluded that they remained effective in a
code-switching scenario, and similar techniques for self-supervised models are
worth studying to boost the performance of code-switched tasks.Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 2024 Self-supervision in Audio, Speech and Beyond
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An easy two-step microwave assisted synthesis of SnO2/CNT hybrids
Tin oxide (SnO2) - decorated carbon nanotube (CNT) heterostructures were synthesized by microwave assisted wet impregnation method. CNTs of three different aspect ratios were compared. The hybrid samples were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, high resolution transmission electron microscopy, BET surface area analysis and DC conductivity measurement. The results showed that the microwave assisted synthesis is a very efficient method in producing CNTs that are heavily decorated by SnO2 nanoparticles in a very short time (total reaction time of 10 min.), irrespective of their length and diameter. The hybrids showed 100 times increase in electrical conductivity when compared to the unmodified CNTs
MTHFR Gene Polymorphism Association With Psoriatic Arthritis Risk and the Efficacy and Hepatotoxicity of Methotrexate in Psoriasis.
Aims
To assess whether MTHFR rs1801131 and rs1801133 SNPs are associated with concomitant psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and investigate the efficacy and hepatotoxicity of MTX in patients with psoriasis in the Han Chinese population.
Methods
This prospective, single-arm, interventional study recruited a total of 309 patients with psoriasis, 163 with psoriatic arthritis and 146 without psoriatic arthritis, who completed a 12-week MTX treatment and 1,031 healthy controls. Patients' characteristics including age, gender, disease duration, height, weight, smoking status, alcohol consumption, medical history, disease severity and liver function test results were accessed and recorded. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping of rs1801131 and rs1801133 in the MTHFR gene was performed.
Results
The rs1801133 CC genotype was more frequent in patients with PsA than those with PsO and healthy controls (42.3% vs. 28.8% vs. 33.1%, p < 0.05). The 90% reduction from baseline PASI score (PASI 90) response rates to MTX were significantly higher in patients with the rs1801133 TT genotype than those with the CT and CC genotype (33.96% vs. 19.31% vs. 14.41%, OR = 2.76, p = 0.006). The rs1801133 CT+TT genotype was more frequent in PsA patients with abnormal liver function than in those with normal liver function (p < 0.05). In addition, patients with the rs1801131 CT genotype had lower PASI 75 response rates to MTX (OR = 0.49, p = 0.01), and lower risk of ALT elevation (OR = 0.46, p = 0.04).
Conclusions
This study provided some evidence for MTHFR polymorphism association with the risk of PsA and the efficacy and hepatotoxicity of the low-dose MTX in the Chinese population. Given the relatively small sample size and potentially missed diagnosis of PsA, the results from this study warrant further investigation
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