Gig1, a novel antiviral effector involved in fish interferon response

Vertebrate interferon (IFN) response defenses against viral infection through the induction of hundreds of IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs). Most ISGs are conserved across vertebrates; however, little is known about the species-specific ISGs. In this study, we reported that grass carp reovirus (GCRV)-induced gene 1 (Gig1), previously screened as a virus-induced gene from UV-inactivated GCRV-infected crucian carp (Carassius auratus) blastulae embryonic (CAB) cells, was a typical fish ISG, which was significantly induced by intracellular poly(I:C) through retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I)-like receptors-triggered IFN signaling pathway. Transient or stable overexpression of Gig1 prevented GCRV replication efficiently in cultured fish cells. Strikingly, Gig1 homologs were found exclusively in fish species forming a novel gene family. These results illustrate that there exists a Gig1 gene family unique to fish species and the founding gene mediates a novel fish IFN antiviral pathway. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Vertebrate interferon (IFN) response defenses against viral infection through the induction of hundreds of IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs). Most ISGs are conserved across vertebrates; however, little is known about the species-specific ISGs. In this study, we reported that grass carp reovirus (GCRV)-induced gene 1 (Gig1), previously screened as a virus-induced gene from UV-inactivated GCRV-infected crucian carp (Carassius auratus) blastulae embryonic (CAB) cells, was a typical fish ISG, which was significantly induced by intracellular poly(I:C) through retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I)-like receptors-triggered IFN signaling pathway. Transient or stable overexpression of Gig1 prevented GCRV replication efficiently in cultured fish cells. Strikingly, Gig1 homologs were found exclusively in fish species forming a novel gene family. These results illustrate that there exists a Gig1 gene family unique to fish species and the founding gene mediates a novel fish IFN antiviral pathway. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

ZVS turn-on integrated triangular current mode three-phase AC-DC PFC for EV on-board chargers

An efficient, compact, and lightweight three-phase AC-DC power factor correction (PFC) converter becomes a necessity for the On-board chargers (OBCs) of the electric vehicle (EV) in conventional grid-to-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging scenarios. The commercially available OBCs have very limited power density despite the moderate efficiency under specific power levels.In this dissertation, the integrated triangular current mode (iTCM) control is implemented to improve the power density (kW/L) and specific power (kW/kg) of the three-phase PFC converter (the front stage of OBCs) while maintaining high efficiency. Zero voltage switching (ZVS) turn-on is realized in the iTCM control with a higher switching frequency to reduce the LCL filter size without sacrificing the efficiency.By adding an LC branch between the bridge leg and the mid-point of the DC link, the high-frequency and low-frequency current is split to minimize the inductor loss and to achieve a better inductor design. Analytical modeling and simulation in PLECS are firstly conducted to verify the idea of iTCM. Besides, the capacitor-current feedback achaotive damping method is implemented to prevent instability from the LC and LCL filters. Finally, the designed 11 kW three-phase AC-DC PFC converter, including the input LCL filter, achieves an efficiency of 98.61%, a power density of 6.5 kW/L and a specific power per weight of 0.72 kW/kg.The proposed three-phase iTCM control is validated in a 3 kW SiC MOSFET-based AC-DC converter. The current and voltage waveform of iTCM, TCM and CCM is verified in the hardware platform with (DSP)-TMS320F28379D. The efficiency of the iTCM control achieves 96.38%, which improves by around 1% compared to CCM at the same power density level.Electrical Engineerin

An operational simulation framework for modelling the multi-interaction of two-wheelers on mixed-traffic road segments

In recent years, the interest in riding in cities using the two-wheeler (e.g., bicycles, electric bicycles, electric mopeds, etc.) increases. Mixed-traffic road segments are one of the most common traffic scenes where the mixed two-wheeler flows exist. Because the movements are often not restricted by lanes, the two-wheeler uses lateral road space more freely and shows obvious multilateral interactions (i.e. multi-interaction) with others, bringing issues that endanger traffic safety. A precise estimation of its impacts on traffic operation and safety is necessary, while the microscopic simulation model can satisfy the need as a helpful tool. However, most existing simulation models of these three types of two-wheelers are essentially focusing on handling the one-on-one interaction. The capability to deal with the two-wheeler multi-interaction in mixed traffic is still rare, and the description of what endogenous tasks are contained by the multi-interaction has also not given by literature. To this end, this paper first defines what the multi-interaction entails on the operational behaviour level, claiming that it contains three intertwined processes, namely a (mental) perception, a (mental) decision, and a physical process. The (mental) perception and decision processes represent the recognition of interactions and the response to traffic conditions, while the physical process refers to the execution of these mental activities. A three-layer simulation framework has then been developed, where each layer sequentially corresponds to one of the operational behaviour tasks. Integrated component models are also proposed in each layer to cover these operational tasks. A Comfort Zone model is hence put forward to dynamically perceive the multiple interactive road users, while a Bayesian network model is developed to deal with the decision-making process under multi-interaction situations. Meanwhile, a behaviour force model is also proposed to capture the non-lane based movements following the selected behaviour and current interaction states. Finally, we face validate the proposed models by the comparison between simulation results and observations obtained from trajectory dataset. Results indicate the model performance matches the observed interaction and motion well.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport and Plannin

Unprotected Left-Turn Behavior Model Capturing Path Variations at Intersections

Path dispersion (the spatial distribution of vehicular paths) is an important feature of traffic flow inside intersections and differs from traffic flow running along traffic lanes at road segment, especially under conflicting movements. The path dispersion reflects the operational features of traffic flow and is related to driving behaviour, arrival flow patterns, layout design, and the traffic control and management scheme. This study aims to improve the understanding of the overall path dispersion of unprotected left-turns and the opposing through movement. A behavioural simulation model was established to represent the overall path dispersion. Human behaviours regarding vehicle trajectory planning with and without conflicting vehicles were modelled based on optimal control and integrated into the proposed discrete event simulation framework. The descriptive power and accuracy of the proposed simulation model were validated using empirical data. The effects of the spatial size of the intersection, crossing angle, and traffic volume on the path dispersion of the left-turn and through movement were explored based on numerical experiments. The results show that the proposed simulation model can represent the path dispersion of left-turn and opposing through movement well for both the calibrated intersections and newly added intersections without model parameter recalibration with an average error of 8.92%.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport and PlanningTransport and Plannin

ZVS Turn-on integrated Triangular Current Mode Three-phase PFC for EV On-board Chargers

An efficient, compact and lightweight three-phase AC-DC power factor correction (PFC) converter becomes a necessity for electric vehicles (EVs) On-board chargers (OBCs) in conventional grid-to-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging methods. The commercially available OBCs have very limited power density despite the moderate efficiency under specific power levels. In this paper, the integrated triangular current mode (iTCM) control is implemented to improve the power density (kW/L) and specific power (kW/kg) of the three-phase PFC converter stage while maintaining high efficiency. Zero voltage switching (ZVS) turn-on is realized in the iTCM control with a higher switching frequency to reduce the LCL filter size without sacrificing efficiency. By adding an LC branch between the bridge leg and mid-point of the DC link, the high-frequency and low-frequency currents are split to minimize the inductor loss and to derive a better inductor design. Analytical modeling and simulation in PLECS are conducted to verify the idea of iTCM. The capacitor-current feedback active damping method is implemented to prevent instability from the LC and LCL filters. The design of an 11kW three-phase AC-DC PFC converter, including the input LCL filter, achieves an efficiency of 98.81%, a power density of 12.46 kW/L and a specific power per weight of 1.87 kW/kg. The proposed three-phase iTCM control is benchmarked in a 3 kW SiC MOSFET-based AC-DC converter.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.DC systems, Energy conversion & Storag

A recognition model of driving risk based on Belief Rule-Base methodology

This paper aims to recognize driving risks in individual vehicles online based on a data-driven methodology. Existing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) have difficulties in effectively processing multi-source heterogeneous driving data. Furthermore, parameters adopted for evaluating the driving risk are limited in these systems. The approach of data-driven modeling is investigated in this study for utilizing the accumulation of on-road driving data. A recognition model of driving risk based on belief rule-base (BRB) methodology is built, predicting driving safety as a function of driver characteristics, vehicle state and road environment conditions. The BRB model was calibrated and validated using on-road data from 30 drivers. The test results show that the recognition accuracy of our proposed model can reach about 90% in all situations with three levels (none, medium, large) of driving risks. Furthermore, the proposed simplified model, which provides real-time operation, is implemented in a vehicle driving simulator as a reference for future ADAS and belongs to research on artificial intelligence (AI) in the automotive field.Intelligent Vehicle

On the origin of critical temperature enhancement in atomically thin superconductors

Recent experiments showed that thinning gallium, iron selenide and 2H tantalum disulfide to single/several monoatomic layer(s) enhances their superconducting critical temperatures. Here, we characterize these superconductors by extracting the absolute values of the London penetration depth, the superconducting energy gap, and the relative jump in specific heat at the transition temperature from their self-field critical currents. Our central finding is that the enhancement in transition temperature for these materials arises from the opening of an additional superconducting gap, while retaining a largely unchanged 'bulk' superconducting gap. Literature data reveals that ultrathin niobium films similarly develop a second superconducting gap. Based on the available data, it seems that, for type-II superconductors, a new superconducting band appears when the film thickness becomes smaller than the out-of-plane coherence length. The same mechanism may also be the cause of enhanced interface superconductivity.QN/van der Zant La

Chiral Phosphoric Acid Catalyzed Enantioselective Allylation of Aldehydes with Allyltrichlorosilane

Easily accessible chiral phosphoric acid 1b has been applied as efficient organocatalyst for the asymmetric allylation of aldehydes with allyltrichlorosilane. In the presence of 20 mol% of 1b, the allylation of a broad range of aldehydes proceeded smoothly to give the corresponding homoallylic alcohol with up to 87% ee and 97% yield

Flavokawain B induces apoptosis of non-small cell lung cancer H460 cells via Bax-initiated mitochondrial and JNK pathway

Flavokawain B (FKB) possesses strong anti-neoplastic activity against many cancer cells. Here we assessed its antitumor activity and molecular mechanisms in lung cancer H460 cells in vitro. FKB significantly inhibited cell proliferation and caused arrest of the cell cycle G2-M of H460 cells in a dose-dependent manner. FKB also inducted apoptosis, which was associated with cytochrome c release, caspase-7 and caspase-9 activation and Bcl-xL/Bax dys-regulation. FKB significantly down-regulated survivin and XIAP, and the inhibitory effect induced by FKB was greatly attenuated by through over-expression of survivin or Bax(-/-) MEFs. Furthermore, FKB activated the mitogen-activated protein kinases and the JNK inhibitor SP600125 significantly decreased the growth-inhibitory and apoptotic effects of FKB. Together, these results suggest the anti-lung cancer potential of flavokawain B for the prevention and treatment of lung cancer

Remediation effect of pond-ditch circulation on rural wastewater in southern China

To mitigate water pollution caused by rapid urbanization in the rural areas of China, it is urgent to develop suitable wastewater treatment technologies, which are socio-economic, environmentally sustainable and easily maintained. This study investigates the remediation effect of a pond-ditch circulation system on water quality. This system is composed of connected ponds and ditches in rural areas. We constructed the treatment systems as follows: system I (S1) was circulated 24 h/day (13.2 L/h), system II (S2) was static with macrophytes, and system III (S3) was circulated with macrophytes. Our results indicated that after 60 days of treatment, the levels of the total nitrogen, total phosphorus, ammonia nitrogen, chemical oxygen demand, chlorophyll a and turbidity of water significantly decreased in the ponds/ditches of S1 and S3. Similar significant decreases of these parameters were observed in the water of the ditch in S2, whereas the concentrations of TN, TP and NH4+-N of water from the two ponds in S2 increased. Moreover, the increase of the species numbers and the diversity index of zooplankton and the decrease of heterotrophic index in three ponds/ditches of S1 and S3 and the ditch of S2 demonstrated the improvement in water quality. The significant relationship between the zooplankton community structure and the environmental variables was confirmed by redundancy analysis (RDA) and Pearson's correlation analysis. In conclusion, the pond-ditch circulation system can effectively remove excessive nutrient loads and improvewater quality and hence represents a simple and economical solution for the restoration of a degraded rural water environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved