Towards an Open-Source Industry CAD: A Review of System Development Methods

Due to the industry knowledge barrier, general computer aided design (CAD) software cannot do everything in digital manufacturing by itself, and industry CAD, therefore, occupies a crucial position in the CAD industry. To develop industry CAD smoothly, open-source is the best choice. We analyzed recent examples of industry CAD development and divided the development methods into four types: development based on the graphics development environment, development based on geometric modelling kernel, secondary development based on general CAD, and hybrid development. We analyzed the characteristics of various methods and believe that the method based on the hybrid development of the geometric modelling kernel and the graphics development environment is the best open-source industry CAD development method. We proposed a system architecture of open-source industry CAD for reference and conducted a preliminary exploration of the reference architecture to verify its feasibility

Differential selective pressure alters rate of drug resistance acquisition in heterogeneous tumor populations

Recent drug discovery and development efforts have created a large arsenal of targeted and chemotherapeutic drugs for precision medicine. However, drug resistance remains a major challenge as minor pre-existing resistant subpopulations are often found to be enriched at relapse. Current drug design has been heavily focused on initial efficacy, and we do not fully understand the effects of drug selective pressure on long-term drug resistance potential. Using a minimal two-population model, taking into account subpopulation proportions and growth/kill rates, we modeled long-term drug treatment and performed parameter sweeps to analyze the effects of each parameter on therapeutic efficacy. We found that drugs with the same overall initial kill may exert differential selective pressures, affecting long-term therapeutic outcome. We validated our conclusions experimentally using a preclinical model of Burkitt’s lymphoma. Furthermore, we highlighted an intrinsic tradeoff between drug-imposed overall selective pressure and rate of adaptation. A principled approach in understanding the effects of distinct drug selective pressures on short-term and long-term tumor response enables better design of therapeutics that ultimately minimize relapse.Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research (Support (core) Grant P30-CA14051)National Cancer Institute (U.S.). Integrative Cancer Biology Program (Grant U54-CA112967)National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.) (Interdepartmental Biotechnology Training Program 5T32GM008334

General synthesis of transition metal oxide ultrafine nanoparticles embedded in hierarchically porous carbon nanofibers as advanced electrodes for lithium storage

A unique general, large-scale, simple, and cost-effective strategy, i.e., foaming-assisted electrospinning, for fabricating various transition metal oxides into ultrafine nanoparticles (TMOs UNPs) that are uniformly embedded in hierarchically porous carbon nanofibers (HPCNFs) has been developed. Taking advantage of the strong repulsive forces of metal azides as the pore generator during carbonization, the formation of uniform TMOs UNPs with homogeneous distribution and HPCNFs is simultaneously implemented. The combination of uniform ultrasmall TMOs UNPs with homogeneous distribution and hierarchically porous carbon nanofibers with interconnected nanostructure can effectively avoid the aggregation, dissolution, and pulverization of TMOs, promote the rapid 3D transport of both Li ions and electrons throughout the whole electrode, and enhance the electrical conductivity and structural integrity of the electrode. As a result, when evaluated as binder-free anode materials in Li-ion batteries, they displayed extraordinary electrochemical properties with outstanding reversible capacity, excellent capacity retention, high Coulombic efficiency, good rate capability, and superior cycling performance at high rates. More importantly, the present work opens up a wide horizon for the fabrication of a wide range of ultrasmall metal/metal oxides distributed in 1D porous carbon structures, leading to advanced performance and enabling their great potential for promising large-scale applications

Graphene-wrapped reversible reaction for advanced hydrogen storage

Here, we report the fabrication of a graphene-wrapped nanostructured reactive hydride composite, i.e., 2LiBH4-MgH2, made by adopting graphene-supported MgH2 nanoparticles (NPs) as the nanoreactor and heterogeneous nucleation sites. The porous structure, uniform distribution of MgH2 NPs, and the steric confinement by flexible graphene induced a homogeneous distribution of 2LiBH4-MgH2 nanocomposite on graphene with extremely high loading capacity (80 wt%) and energy density. The well-defined structural features, including even distribution, uniform particle size, excellent thermal stability, and robust architecture endow this composite with significant improvements in its hydrogen storage performance. For instance, at a temperature as low as 350 °C, a reversible storage capacity of up to 8.9 wt% H2, without degradation after 25 complete cycles, was achieved for the 2LiBH4-MgH2 anchored on graphene. The design of this three-dimensional architecture can offer a new concept for obtaining high performance materials in the energy storage field

Yangjing capsule attenuates cyclophosphamide-induced deficiency of testicular microcirculation in mice

Purpose: To explore the protective effects of Yangjing capsule (YC) on testicular microcirculation in a mouse model of deficiency of testicular microcirculation. Methods: Immunohistochemistry was applied to determine the effects of YC on microvascular density of mice. The protein level of CD34 and vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF A) was measured by western blot. The viability of Testicular cell line (TM4 cells) was examined by CCK-8 assay. Results: Histopathological changes demonstrated that CP-induced decrease of microvascular density of the mice was rescued by YC dose-dependently (p < 0.5). Western blot data showed that the protein levels of CD34 and VEGF A in CP group were significantly decreased, but dose-dependently increased by YC, respectively, following co-administration of CP + YC, compared with those in CP group (p < 0.5). The results from CCK-8 assay showed that the cell viability of TM4 cells increased with the amount of YC administered, and that high concentrations of YC (0.1 and 1 mg/mL) showed significant effects (p < 0.5). Moreover, YC showed little effect on VEGF A mRNA and protein expression in TM4 cells. Conclusion: YC may be considered an alternative therapeutic agent for the management of testicular microcirculation disease. However, further studies are required to ascertain this. Keywords: Yangjing Capsule, Testicular microcirculation, Cyclophosphamide, Vascular endothelial growth factor

Using restored two-dimensional X-ray images to reconstruct the three-dimensional magnetopause

Astronomical imaging technologies are basic tools for the exploration of the universe, providing basic data for the research of astronomy and space physics. The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) carried by the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) aims to capture two-dimensional (2-D) images of the Earth’s magnetosheath by using soft X-ray imaging. However, the observed 2-D images are affected by many noise factors, destroying the contained information, which is not conducive to the subsequent reconstruction of the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of the magnetopause. The analysis of SXI-simulated observation images shows that such damage cannot be evaluated with traditional restoration models. This makes it difficult to establish the mapping relationship between SXI-simulated observation images and target images by using mathematical models. We propose an image restoration algorithm for SXI-simulated observation images that can recover large-scale structure information on the magnetosphere. The idea is to train a patch estimator by selecting noise–clean patch pairs with the same distribution through the Classification–Expectation Maximization algorithm to achieve the restoration estimation of the SXI-simulated observation image, whose mapping relationship with the target image is established by the patch estimator. The Classification–Expectation Maximization algorithm is used to select multiple patch clusters with the same distribution and then train different patch estimators so as to improve the accuracy of the estimator. Experimental results showed that our image restoration algorithm is superior to other classical image restoration algorithms in the SXI-simulated observation image restoration task, according to the peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity. The restoration results of SXI-simulated observation images are used in the tangent fitting approach and the computed tomography approach toward magnetospheric reconstruction techniques, significantly improving the reconstruction results. Hence, the proposed technology may be feasible for processing SXI-simulated observation images

Adaptive probabilistic load forecasting for individual buildings

Building-level load forecasting has become essential with the support of fine-grained data collected by widely deployed smart meters. It acts as a basis for arranging distributed energy resources, implementing demand response, etc. Compared to aggregated-level load, the electric load of an individual building is more stochastic and thus spawns many probabilistic forecasting methods. Many of them resort to artificial neural networks (ANN) to build forecasting models. However, a well-designed forecasting model for one building may not be suitable for others, and manually designing and tuning optimal forecasting models for various buildings are tedious and time-consuming. This paper proposes an adaptive probabilistic load forecasting model to automatically generate high-performance NN structures for different buildings and produce quantile forecasts for future loads. Specifically, we cascade the long short term memory (LSTM) layer with the adjusted Differential ArchiTecture Search (DARTS) cell and use the pinball loss function to guide the model during the improved model fitting process. A case study on an open dataset shows that our proposed model has superior performance and adaptivity over the state-of-the-art static neural network model. Besides, the improved fitting process of DARTS is proved to be more time-efficient than the original one

Complete genome sequence of Staphylothermus marinus Stetter and Fiala 1986 type strain F1

Staphylothermus marinus Fiala and Stetter 1986 belongs to the order Desulfurococcales within the archaeal phylum Crenarchaeota. S. marinus is a hyperthermophilic, sulfur-dependent, anaerobic heterotroph. Strain F1 was isolated from geothermally heated sediments at Vulcano, Italy, but S. marinus has also been isolated from a hydrothermal vent on the East Pacific Rise. We report the complete genome of S. marinus strain F1, the type strain of the species. This is the fifth reported complete genome sequence from the order Desulfurococcales

The Protective Effects of Bushen Daozhuo Granule on Chronic Non-bacterial Prostatitis

Background: Chronic non-bacterial prostatitis (CNP), one of the most common chronic diseases in urology, leads to pain in the prostate and dysuria, critically affecting the physical or mental health of patients. However, there are no standard treatment approaches for the treatment of CNP in the clinic. Although the clinical application of Bushen Daozhuo granule (BSDZG) offers hope to CNP patients in China, the mechanisms of BSDZG in treating CNP are still not entirely clear. Hence, we aimed to investigate the novel therapeutic mechanisms of BSDZG on CNP.Methods: In this study, we first assayed the prostate index of rats and then determined the anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects of BSDZG on CNP in vivo and in vitro by employing ELISA kits and TUNEL staining. Next, we investigated whether the anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic mechanisms of BSDZG on prostate protein-induced rats and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced RWPE-1 cells were related to the AKT, p38 MAPK, and NF-κB pathways with the help of Western blot. Finally, the influence of BSDZG on the interaction between the p38 MAPK and NF-κB pathway in LPS-induced RWPE-1 cells was explored by adopting dehydrocorydaline (DHC, p38 MAPK activator) with the help of ELISA kits and Western blot.Results:In vivo, BSDZG effectively reduced the prostate index. In vivo and in vitro, BSDZG dramatically declined the level of two pro-inflammatory cytokines, TNF-α and IL-1β, as well as the apoptosis rate. Moreover, in vivo and in vitro, BSDZG memorably upregulated the expression level of p-AKT, and substantially downregulated the expression level of p-p38 MAPK and NF-κB2. The activation of p38 MAPK significantly reversed the moderation effects of BSDZG on the level of TNF-α and IL-1β, as well as the expression level of p-p38 MAPK and NF-κB2 in vitro.Conclusion: To sum up, the in vivo and in vitro therapeutic mechanisms of BSDZG on CNP were reflected as the anti-inflammation and anti-apoptosis that was formed by inhibiting the level of pro-inflammatory cytokines, TNF-α and IL-1β, to regulate the AKT, p38 MAPK, and NF-κB pathways, and the anti-inflammatory effect of BSDZG was realized by suppressing the p38 MAPK pathway to inhibit the downstream NF-κB pathway

The Stimulative Effect of Yangjing Capsule on Testosterone Synthesis through Nur77 Pathway in Leydig Cells

Yangjing Capsule (YC), an innovative Chinese medicine based on traditional prescription, promotes testosterone synthesis by upregulating the expression of steroidogenic enzymes. Nur77 as a nuclear receptor is known to regulate the expression of many steroid synthetases. This study aimed to explore the potential mechanisms by which YC regulates testosterone synthesis in Leydig cells. Real-time PCR and Western blot analysis were employed to assess the expressions of steroidogenic enzymes and Nur77 after treating MLTC-1 cells with YC. The luciferase reporter gene assay was performed to detect the activity of Nur77 gene promoter. Also, the expressions of steroid synthases were detected after Nur77 gene was knocked down. YC significantly stimulated Nur77 production and upregulated StAR and HSD3B expression, and this agrees with the activity of Nur77 gene promoter that was significantly enhanced by YC. Interestingly, knockdown of Nur77 blocked the above YC’s effects and consequently inhibited testosterone synthesis in MLTC-1 cells. YC promotes StAR and HSD3B expression and upregulates testosterone synthesis in Leydig cells, which is mediated by Nur77 pathway