Joint Meeting of the Greek and Italian Sections of The Combustion Institute 1

ABSTRACT The effect of a secondary "weak" jet on a "strong" jet's flow field is of great importance for the evaluation of many staged combustion schemes. The present work is part of ongoing research on turbulent mixing characteristics of the interaction of a weak and a strong jet inside a confining area, with experimental and numerical tools. Preliminary experimental results, obtained with laser Doppler anemometry, will be presented. Measurements of mean and turbulent velocity statistics of a single turbulent axisymmetric jet are presented for reference. At a distance of thirty strong jet's diameters, mean and rms velocity profiles of jets' merging are presented for isothermal conditions. In this test case momentum flux ratio of jets is rather high. Two local maximums corresponding to the central region of each jet are identified. A slight displacement of weak jet's maximum and a small increase of turbulent components at the edges of jets indicate early stages of mixing

Publisher correction: Genome-wide association of polycystic ovary syndrome implicates alterations in gonadotropin secretion in European ancestry populations.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper

Prolactin Receptor in Primary Hyperparathyroidism – Expression, Functionality and Clinical Correlations

<div><h3>Background</h3><p>Primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is an endocrine disorder most commonly affecting women, suggesting a role for female hormones and/or their receptors in parathyroid adenomas. We here investigated the prolactin receptor (PRLr) which is associated with tumours of the breast and other organs.</p> <h3>Methodology/Principal Findings</h3><p>PRLr expression was investigated in a panel of 37 patients with sporadic parathyroid tumours and its functionality in cultured parathyroid tumour cells. In comparison with other tissues and breast cancer cells, high levels of prolactin receptor gene (<em>PRLR</em>) transcripts were demonstrated in parathyroid tissues. PRLr products of 60/70 kDa were highly expressed in all parathyroid tumours. In addition varying levels of the 80 kDa PRLr isoform, with known proliferative activity, were demonstrated. In parathyroid tumours, PRLr immunoreactivity was observed in the cytoplasm (in all cases, n = 36), cytoplasmic granulae (n = 16), the plasma membrane (n = 12) or enlarged lysosomes (n = 4). In normal parathyroid rim (n = 28), PRLr was uniformly expressed in the cytoplasm and granulae. In <em>in vitro</em> studies of short-term cultured human parathyroid tumour cells, prolactin stimulation was associated with significant transcriptional changes in JAK/STAT, RIG-I like receptor and type II interferon signalling pathways as documented by gene expression profiling. Moreover, <em>PRLR</em> gene expression in parathyroid tumours was inversely correlated with the patients’ plasma calcium levels.</p> <h3>Conclusions</h3><p>We demonstrate that the prolactin receptor is highly abundant in human parathyroid tissues and that PRLr isoforms expression and PRLr subcellular localisation are altered in parathyroid tumours. Responsiveness of PRLr to physiological levels of prolactin was observed in the form of increased PTH secretion and altered gene transcription with significant increase of RIG-I like receptor, JAK-STAT and Type II interferon signalling pathways. These data suggest a role of the prolactin receptor in parathyroid adenomas.</p> </div

INFRARED HEATING OF GREENHOUSES REVISITED: AN EXPERIMENTAL AND MODELING STUDY

The potential advantages of night-time heating of greenhouses by modern infrared (IR) radiative sources, instead of forced hot air, are examined experimentally and theoretically. Measurements of indoor and outdoor conditions during typical cold nights in central Greece were taken in an experimental greenhouse using either forced hot air or IR heating. A simple theoretical model that contains all the essential physics was developed and subsequently used in parametric studies. Experimental and simulation results confirmed that, with IR heating, inside air temperatures several degrees lower than the desired plant canopy temperature were sustained, and that this temperature difference increased proportionally to the nightly drop in outside temperature. The model estimated energy savings in the order of 45% to 50% using the IR sources currently available, and predicted significant further benefits from improvements in the radiative efficiency of the IR sources