Analysis of the Rice Husk Pyrolysis Products from a Fluidized Bed Reactor

AbstractRice husks are pyrolyzed in a fluidized bed pyrolyzer using glass beads as the fluidizing media. The effects of the rice husk feeding rate and the fluidizing nitrogen gas flow rates on the mass fraction of the produced syngas, bio-oil and char are studied. The highest bio-oil mass fraction in the product is around 30% when the rice husk feeding rate and the fluidizing nitrogen gas flow rate are 10g/min and 40 L/min, respectively. The chars collected at different parts of the system are analyzed by TGA. The results indicate that although the chars have different content of volatiles, they are relatively clean. GC/MS analysing results indicate that the major compounds in the bio-oil are aromatic compounds, including toluene, phenol, furfural, methylphenol, ethylphenol, benzenediol, and etc

Association between chronic viral hepatitis infection and breast cancer risk: a nationwide population-based case-control study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In Taiwan, there is a high incidence of breast cancer and a high prevalence of viral hepatitis. In this case-control study, we used a population-based insurance dataset to evaluate whether breast cancer in women is associated with chronic viral hepatitis infection.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>From the claims data, we identified 1,958 patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer during the period 2000-2008. A randomly selected, age-matched cohort of 7,832 subjects without cancer was selected for comparison. Multivariable logistic regression models were constructed to calculate odds ratios of breast cancer associated with viral hepatitis after adjustment for age, residential area, occupation, urbanization, and income. The age-specific (<50 years and ≥50 years) risk of breast cancer was also evaluated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were no significant differences in the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, hepatitis B virus (HBV), or the prevalence of combined HBC/HBV infection between breast cancer patients and control subjects (<it>p </it>= 0.48). Multivariable logistic regression analysis, however, revealed that age <50 years was associated with a 2-fold greater risk of developing breast cancer (OR = 2.03, 95% CI = 1.23-3.34).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>HCV infection, but not HBV infection, appears to be associated with early onset risk of breast cancer in areas endemic for HCV and HBV. This finding needs to be replicated in further studies.</p

γ\gamma-SUP: A clustering algorithm for cryo-electron microscopy images of asymmetric particles

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has recently emerged as a powerful tool for obtaining three-dimensional (3D) structures of biological macromolecules in native states. A minimum cryo-EM image data set for deriving a meaningful reconstruction is comprised of thousands of randomly orientated projections of identical particles photographed with a small number of electrons. The computation of 3D structure from 2D projections requires clustering, which aims to enhance the signal to noise ratio in each view by grouping similarly oriented images. Nevertheless, the prevailing clustering techniques are often compromised by three characteristics of cryo-EM data: high noise content, high dimensionality and large number of clusters. Moreover, since clustering requires registering images of similar orientation into the same pixel coordinates by 2D alignment, it is desired that the clustering algorithm can label misaligned images as outliers. Herein, we introduce a clustering algorithm $\gamma$-SUP to model the data with a $q$-Gaussian mixture and adopt the minimum $\gamma$-divergence for estimation, and then use a self-updating procedure to obtain the numerical solution. We apply $\gamma$-SUP to the cryo-EM images of two benchmark macromolecules, RNA polymerase II and ribosome. In the former case, simulated images were chosen to decouple clustering from alignment to demonstrate $\gamma$-SUP is more robust to misalignment outliers than the existing clustering methods used in the cryo-EM community. In the latter case, the clustering of real cryo-EM data by our $\gamma$-SUP method eliminates noise in many views to reveal true structure features of ribosome at the projection level.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AOAS680 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

JiaWeiDangGui Decoction Ameliorates Proteinuria and Kidney Injury in Adriamycin-Induced Rat by Blockade of TGF- β

JiaWeiDangGui (JWDG) decoction has anti-inflammatory and antifibrotic effects, which is used widely for the treatment of various kidney diseases. In previous studies, we have found that JWDG decoction can reduce the quantity of proteinuria, but the mechanism was unknown. Here, we studied the protective effect of JWDG decoction in adriamycin-induced nephropathy on rat. JWDG decoction, at 10 mL/kg/d, 20 mL/kg/d, and 40 mL/kg/d, was orally administered daily for 12 weeks. Therapeutic effects and mechanisms were further examined. The kidney function related biochemical indexes were measured by automatic biochemistry analyzer. The pathomorphological changes were observed using light and transmission electron microcopies. The proteins expressions of podocin, nephrin, collagen IV, and fibronectin (FN) were examined by immunohistochemical staining, and key proteins involved in TGF-β/Smad signaling were evaluated by RT-PCR and western blotting. Compared with vehicle-treated controls, JWDG decoction decreased the quantity of proteinuria; reduced glomerulosclerotic lesions induced by ADR; and preserved the expression of podocin and nephrin. JWDG decoction also inhibited the expression of the collagen IV, FN, and fibrogenic TGF-β. Further studies revealed that inhibition of renal fibrosis was associated with the blockade of TGF-β/Smad signaling and downregulation of snail expression dose dependently. JWDG decoction prevents proteinuria production, podocyte dysfunction, and kidney injury in adriamycin nephropathy by inhibiting TGF-β/Smad signaling