Uji Unjuk Kerja dan Durability 5000 Km Mobil Bensin 1497 Cc Berbahan Bakar Campuran Bensin-Bioetanol

Salah satu sumber energi terbarukan yang berpotensi dikembangkan di tanah air ialah etanol. Ethanol memiliki karakteristik yang mirip dengan Premium dengan nilai RON sebesar 108. Dalam penelitian ini, ingin diketahui karakteristik unjuk kerja serta emisi gas buang mesin bensin menggunakan bahan bakar campuran ethanol 99.5% dengan premium setelah uji durability selama 5000 KM. Dalam penelitian ini pula ingin diketahui pengaruh pemakaian campuran ethanol 99.5% dengan premium pada ruang bakar dan minyak pelumas setelah digunakan selama 5000 KM. Pengujian dilakukan dengan uji durability mobil sejauh 5000 km dengan bahan bakar campuran ethanol dan bensin dengan variasi campuran ethanol sebesar 5%, 10%, dan 15%, pengukuran meliputi kandungan minyak pelumas dan visualisasi ruang bakar. Selanjutnya dilakukan pengujian di Laboratorium Teknik Pembakaran dan Bahan Bakar Jurusan Teknik Mesin FTI-ITS dengan menggunakan mesin bensin empat langkah Toyota Vios dengan variasi campuran ethanol sebesar 5%, 10%, dan 15% dengan putaran mesin 3000 hingga 6000 rpm. Pengukuran meliputi torsi, daya, waktu konsumsi bahan bakar, T oli, T radiator, dan T exhaust serta emisi gas HC, CO dan CO2. Hasil uji eksperimental menunjukkan penambahan bioetanol pada bahan bakar bensin premium cenderung meningkatkan densitas dan viskositas tetapi menurunkan nilai kalor. Sedangkan unjuk kerja cenderung mengalami peningkatan performa dan terjadi penurunan emisi. Torsi, daya dan bmep tertinggi didapatkan oleh campuran E10 dengan kenaikan masing-masing sebesar 2,40%, 2,94% dan 2,72% dibandingkan dengan premium. Sedangkan konsumsi bahan bakar spesifik (sfc) terendah didapatkan oleh campuran E10 dengan penurunan sebesar 4,14% dibandingkan dengan premium. Karakteristik minyak pelumas untuk bahan bakar E5, E10 dan E15 relatif stabil seperti bahan bakar premium. Pencampuran bioetanol pada premium cenderung menurunkan suhu operasional mesin, yaitu mencapai 3,02% pada campuaran 15%. Untuk visualisasi ruang bakar pemakaian bahan bakar E5, E10 dan E15 menghasilkan pengotoran relatif lebih tipis dibandingkan bahan bakar premium. Secara akeseluruhan penambahan bioetanol sampai 15% tidak mengalami Perubahan pada kondisi operasional mesin

Myeloid Cell Mediated Immune Suppression in Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), the most common pancreatic cancer, is a nearly-universally lethal malignancy. PDA is characterized by extensive infiltration of immunosuppressive myeloid cells, including tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs). Myeloid cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) inhibit cytotoxic T cell responses promoting carcinogenesis. Immune checkpoint therapy has not been effective in PDA, most likely due to this robust immune suppression, making it critical to elucidate mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Here, we review myeloid cell infiltration and cellular crosstalk in PDA progression and highlight current therapeutic approaches to target myeloid cell-driven immune suppression

Characterization of speech and language phenotype in GLUT1DS

Background: To analyze the oral motor, speech and language phenotype in a sample of pediatric patients with GLUT 1 transporter deficiency syndrome (GLUT1DS). Methods: eight Italian-speaking children with GLUT1DS (aged 4.6–15.4 years) in stable treatment with ketogenic diet from a variable time underwent a specific and standardized speech and language assessment battery. Results: All patients showed deficits with different degrees of impairment in multiple speech and language areas. In particular, orofacial praxis, parallel and total movements were the most impaired in the oromotor domain; in the speech domain patients obtained a poor performance in the diadochokinesis rate and in the repetition of words that resulted as severely deficient in seven out of eight patients; in the language domain the most affected abilities were semantic/phonological fluency and receptive grammar. Conclusions: GLUT1DS is associated to different levels of speech and language impairment, which should guide diagnostic and therapeutic intervention. Larger population data are needed to identify more precisely a speech and language profile in GLUT1DS patients

Rv0579 Is Involved in the Resistance to the TP053 Antitubercular Prodrug

Tuberculosis remains one of the leading causes of death from a single pathogen globally. It is estimated that 1/4 of the world’s population harbors latent tuberculosis, but only a 5–10% of patients will develop active disease. During latent infection, Mycobacterium tuberculosis can persist unaffected by drugs for years in a non-replicating state with low metabolic activity. The rate of the successful tuberculosis treatment is curbed by the presence of these non-replicating bacilli that can resuscitate after decades and also by the spread of M. tuberculosis drug-resistant strains. International agencies, including the World Health Organization, urge the international community to combat this global health emergency. The thienopyrimidine TP053 is a promising new antitubercular lead compound highly active against both replicating and non-replicating M. tuberculosis cells, with an in vitro MIC of 0.125 mg/ml. TP053 is a prodrug activated by the reduced form of the mycothiol-dependent reductase Mrx2, encoded by Rv2466c gene. After its activation, TP053 releases nitric oxide and a highly reactive metabolite, explaining its activity also against M. tuberculosis non-replicating cells. In this work, a new mechanism of TP053 resistance was discovered. M. tuberculosis spontaneous mutants resistant to TP053 were isolated harboring the mutation L240V in Rv0579, a protein with unknown function, but without mutation in Rv2466c gene. Recombineering method demonstrated that this mutation is linked to TP053 resistance. To better characterize Rv0579, the protein was recombinantly produced in Escherichia coli and a direct interaction between the Mrx2 activated TP053 and Rv0579 was shown by an innovative target-fishing experiment based on click chemistry. Thanks to achieved results, a possible contribution of Rv0579 in M. tuberculosis RNA metabolism was hypothesized, linked to toxin antitoxin system. Overall, these data confirm the role of Rv0579 in TP053 resistance and consequently in the metabolism of this prodrug

Core Imaging Library - Part II:multichannel reconstruction for dynamic and spectral tomography

The newly developed core imaging library (CIL) is a flexible plug and play library for tomographic imaging with a specific focus on iterative reconstruction. CIL provides building blocks for tailored regularized reconstruction algorithms and explicitly supports multichannel tomographic data. In the first part of this two-part publication, we introduced the fundamentals of CIL. This paper focuses on applications of CIL for multichannel data, e.g. dynamic and spectral. We formalize different optimization problems for colour processing, dynamic and hyperspectral tomography and demonstrate CIL’s capabilities for designing state-of-the-art reconstruction methods through case studies and code snapshots

Comparing the efficacy in reducing brain injury of different neuroprotective agents following neonatal hypoxia-ischemia in newborn rats: a multi-drug randomized controlled screening trial

Intrapartum hypoxia-ischemia leading to neonatal encephalopathy (NE) results in significant neonatal mortality and morbidity worldwide, with > 85% of cases occurring in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Therapeutic hypothermia (HT) is currently the only available safe and effective treatment of HIE in high-income countries (HIC); however, it has shown limited safety or efficacy in LMIC. Therefore, other therapies are urgently required. We aimed to compare the treatment effects of putative neuroprotective drug candidates following neonatal hypoxic-ischemic (HI) brain injury in an established P7 rat Vannucci model. We conducted the first multi-drug randomized controlled preclinical screening trial, investigating 25 potential therapeutic agents using a standardized experimental setting in which P7 rat pups were exposed to unilateral HI brain injury. The brains were analysed for unilateral hemispheric brain area loss after 7 days survival. Twenty animal experiments were performed. Eight of the 25 therapeutic agents significantly reduced brain area loss with the strongest treatment effect for Caffeine, Sonic Hedgehog Agonist (SAG) and Allopurinol, followed by Melatonin, Clemastine, ß-Hydroxybutyrate, Omegaven, and Iodide. The probability of efficacy was superior to that of HT for Caffeine, SAG, Allopurinol, Melatonin, Clemastine, ß-hydroxybutyrate, and Omegaven. We provide the results of the first systematic preclinical screening of potential neuroprotective treatments and present alternative single therapies that may be promising treatment options for HT in LMIC

Motion estimation and correction for simultaneous PET/MR using SIRF and CIL

SIRF is a powerful PET/MR image reconstruction research tool for processing data and developing new algorithms. In this research, new developments to SIRF are presented, with focus on motion estimation and correction. SIRF's recent inclusion of the adjoint of the resampling operator allows gradient propagation through resampling, enabling the MCIR technique. Another enhancement enabled registering and resampling of complex images, suitable for MRI. Furthermore, SIRF's integration with the optimization library CIL enables the use of novel algorithms. Finally, SPM is now supported, in addition to NiftyReg, for registration. Results of MR and PET MCIR reconstructions are presented, using FISTA and PDHG, respectively. These demonstrate the advantages of incorporating motion correction and variational and structural priors. This article is part of the theme issue 'Synergistic tomographic image reconstruction: part 2'

A New Limit on the Neutrinoless DBD of 130Te

We report the present results of CUORICINO a cryogenic experiment on neutrinoless double beta decay (DBD) of 130Te consisting of an array of 62 crystals of TeO2 with a total active mass of 40.7 kg. The array is framed inside of a dilution refrigerator, heavily shielded against environmental radioactivity and high-energy neutrons, and operated at a temperature of ~8 mK in the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory. Temperature pulses induced by particle interacting in the crystals are recorded and measured by means of Neutron Transmutation Doped thermistors. The gain of each bolometer is stabilized with voltage pulses developed by a high stability pulse generator across heater resistors put in thermal contact with the absorber. The calibration is performed by means of two thoriated wires routinely inserted in the set-up. No evidence for a peak indicating neutrinoless DBD of 130Te is detected and a 90% C.L. lower limit of 1.8E24 years is set for the lifetime of this process. Taking largely into account the uncertainties in the theoretical values of nuclear matrix elements, this implies an upper boud on the effective mass of the electron neutrino ranging from 0.2 to 1.1 eV. This sensitivity is similar to those of the 76Ge experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

PON1 and Neurodevelopment in Children from the CHAMACOS Study Exposed to Organophosphate Pesticides in Utero

BackgroundParaoxonase 1 (PON1) detoxifies oxon derivatives of some organophosphate (OP) pesticides, and its genetic polymorphisms influence enzyme activity and quantity. We previously reported that maternal urinary concentrations of dialkyl phosphate (DAP) metabolites, a marker of OP pesticide exposure, were related to poorer mental development and maternally reported symptoms consistent with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) in 2-year-olds participating in the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) study.ObjectiveWe determined whether PON1 genotypes and enzyme measurements were associated with child neurobehavioral development and whether PON1 modified the association of in utero exposure to OPs (as assessed by maternal DAPs) and neurobehavior.MethodsWe measured DAP concentrations in maternal urine during pregnancy, PON1₁₉₂ and PON1₋₁₀₈ genotypes in mothers and children, and arylesterase (ARYase) and paraoxonase (POase) in maternal, cord, and 2-year-olds' blood. We assessed 353 2-year-olds on the Mental Development Index (MDI) and Psychomotor Development Index (PDI) of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and queried their mothers on the Child Behavior Checklist to obtain a score for PDD.ResultsChildren with the PON1(-108T) allele had poorer MDI scores and somewhat poorer PDI scores. Children were less likely to display PDD when they or their mothers had higher ARYase activity and when their mothers had higher POase activity. The association between DAPs and MDI scores was strongest in children with PON1(-108T) allele, but this and other interactions between DAPs and PON1 polymorphisms or enzymes were not significant.ConclusionPON1 was associated with child neurobehavioral development, but additional research is needed to confirm whether it modifies the relation with in utero OP exposure

Pancreatic cancer is marked by complement-high blood monocytes and tumor-associated macrophages

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is accompanied by reprogramming of the local microenvironment, but changes at distal sites are poorly understood. We implanted biomaterial scaffolds, which act as an artificial premetastatic niche, into immunocompetent tumor-bearing and control mice, and identified a unique tumor-specific gene expression signature that includes high expression of C1qa, C1qb, Trem2, and Chil3 Single-cell RNA sequencing mapped these genes to two distinct macrophage populations in the scaffolds, one marked by elevated C1qa, C1qb, and Trem2, the other with high Chil3, Ly6c2 and Plac8 In mice, expression of these genes in the corresponding populations was elevated in tumor-associated macrophages compared with macrophages in the normal pancreas. We then analyzed single-cell RNA sequencing from patient samples, and determined expression of C1QA, C1QB, and TREM2 is elevated in human macrophages in primary tumors and liver metastases. Single-cell sequencing analysis of patient blood revealed a substantial enrichment of the same gene signature in monocytes. Taken together, our study identifies two distinct tumor-associated macrophage and monocyte populations that reflects systemic immune changes in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients