MS

thesisMolecular defects in the lipoprotein lipase (LPL) gene account for a significant proportion of the occurrence of the massive hypertriglyceridemia and other clinical manifestations of the chylomicronemia syndrome. Furthermore, some published reports suggest that the heterozygous state for LPL deficiency leads to a reduced capacity to clear triglyceride-rice lipoproteins from plasma; when this clearance is saturated through dietary or hormonal factors, moderate hypertriglyceridemia may be observed. The LPL gene of four hypertriglyceridemia subjects was examined for the presence of molecular variants. In one subject with the classical presentation of the chylomicronemia syndrome and documented deficiency of LPL activity in post heparin plasma, we have identified a mutation leading to the substitution of glutamic acid for glycine at residue 195 of the mature enzyme. The patient was homozygous for this mutation. By in vitro mutagenesis and transient expression in cultured mammalian cells, it was shown that the protein encoded by this mutated sequence lacked catalytic activity, and data on the homologous enzyme pancreatic lipase indicate that this mutation occurred within the catalytic domain of the enzyme. By contrast, we identified two other mutation in two of the three other hypertriglyceridemic subjects with moderate hypertriglyceridemia that did not appear of functional significance. Therefore, we have found no evidence of role of molecular defects of LPL in these milder cases

Myopic Versus Farsighted Behaviors in a Low-Carbon Supply Chain with Reference Emission Effects

The increased carbon emissions cause relatively climate deterioration and attract more attention of governments, consumers, and enterprises to the low-carbon manufacturing. This paper considers a dynamic supply chain, which is composed of a manufacturer and a retailer, in the presence of the cap-and-trade regulation and the consumers’ reference emission effects. To investigate the manufacturer’s behavior choice and its impacts on the emission reduction and pricing strategies together with the profits of both the channel members, we develop a Stackelberg differential game model in which the manufacturer acts in both myopic and farsighted manners. By comparing the equilibrium strategies, it can be found that the farsighted manufacturer always prefers to keep a lower level of emission reduction. When the emission permit price is relatively high, the wholesale/retail price is lower if the manufacturer is myopic and hence benefits consumers. In addition, there exists a dilemma that the manufacturer is willing to act in a farsighted manner but the retailer looks forward to a partnership with the myopic manufacturer. For a relatively high price of emission permit, adopting myopic strategies results in a better performance of the whole supply chain

3D spherical-cap fitting procedure for (truncated) sessile nano- and micro-droplets & -bubbles

In the study of nanobubbles, nanodroplets or nanolenses immobilised on a substrate, a cross-section of a spherical-cap is widely applied to extract geometrical information from atomic force microscopy (AFM) topographic images. In this paper, we have developed a comprehensive 3D spherical cap fitting procedure (3D-SCFP) to extract morphologic characteristics of complete or truncated spherical caps from AFM images. Our procedure integrates several advanced digital image analysis techniques to construct a 3D spherical cap model, from which the geometrical parameters of the nanostructures are extracted automatically by a simple algorithm. The procedure takes into account all valid data points in the construction of the 3D spherical cap model to achieve high fidelity in morphology analysis. We compare our 3D fitting procedure with the commonly used 2D cross-sectional profile fitting method to determine the contact angle of a complete spherical cap and a truncated spherical cap. The results from 3D-SCFP are consistent and accurate, while 2D fitting is unavoidably arbitrary in selection of the cross-section and has a much lower number of data points on which the fitting can be based, which in addition is biased to the top of the spherical cap. We expect that the developed 3D spherical-cap fitting procedure will find many applications in imaging analysis.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure

A direct global superconvergence analysis for Sobolev and viscoelasticity type equations

summary:In this paper we study the finite element approximations to the Sobolev and viscoelasticity type equations and present a direct analysis for global superconvergence for these problems, without using Ritz projection or its modified forms

Finite element analysis for a regularized variational inequality of the second kind

summary:In this paper, we investigate the a priori and the a posteriori error analysis for the finite element approximation to a regularization version of the variational inequality of the second kind. We prove the abstract optimal error estimates in the $H^1$- and $L_2$-norms, respectively, and also derive the optimal order error estimate in the $L_\infty$-norm under the strongly regular triangulation condition. Moreover, some residual--based a posteriori error estimators are established, which can provide the global upper bounds on the errors. These a posteriori error results can be applied to develop the adaptive finite element methods. Finally, we supply some numerical experiments to validate the theoretical results

Axionlike-particle generation by laser-plasma interaction

Axion, a hypothetical particle that is crucial to quantum chromodynamics and dark matter theory, has not yet been found in any experiment. With the improvement of laser technique, much stronger quasi-static electric and magnetic fields can be created in laboratory using laser-plasma interaction. In this article, we discuss the feasibility of axion or axionlike-particle's exploring experiments using planar and cylindrically symmetric laser-plasma fields as backgrounds while probing with an ultrafast superstrong optical laser or x-ray free-electron laser with high photon number. Compared to classical magnet design, the axion source in laser-plasma interaction trades the accumulating length for the source's interacting strength. Besides, a structured field in the plasma creates a tunable transverse profile of the interaction and improves the signal-noise ratio via the mechanisms such as phase-matching. The mass of axion discussed in this article ranges from 1 \textmu eV to 1 eV. Some simple schemes and estimations of axion production and probe's polarization rotation are given, which reveals the possibility of future laser-plasma axion source in laboratory.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure