Promotion of tumor development in prostate cancer by progerin

Progerin is a truncated form of lamin A. It is identified in patients with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), a disease characterized by accelerated aging. The contribution of progerin toward aging has been shown to be related to increased DNA damages. Since aging is one major risk factor for carcinogenesis, and genomic instability is a hallmark of malignant cancers, we investigated the expression of progerin in human cancer cells, and whether its expression contributes to carcinogenesis. Using RT-PCR and Western blotting, we detected the expression of progerin in prostate PC-3, DU145 and LNCaP cells at mRNA and protein levels. Ectopic progerin expression did not cause cellular senescence in PC-3 or MCF7 cells. PC-3 cells progerin transfectants were sensitized to DNA damage agent camptothecin (CPT); and persistent DNA damage responses were observed, which might be caused by progerin induced defective DNA damage repair. In addition, progerin transfectants were more tumorigenic in vivo than vector control cells. Our study for the first time describes the expression of progerin in a number of human cancer cell lines and its contributory role in tumorigenesis

A Co9S8 microsphere and N-doped carbon nanotube composite host material for lithium-sulfur batteries

Lithium-sulfur batteries have emerged as extraordinarily favorable energy storage devices due to their high specific capacity and energy density, safety and low cost. Unfortunately, the wide applications of lithium-sulfur batteries are hampered by several issues, such as the low electronic conductivity and slow redox kinetics, serious volumetric expansion and polysulfide “shuttle effect”. To overcome these issues, in our work, we design and synthesize a composite sulfur host material of Co9S8 microspheres and N-doped carbon nanotubes, where the metallic sulfide Co9S8 with a good conductivity enables the immobilization of the polar lithium polysulfides owing to the strong polar chemisorptive capability, and the one dimensional N-doped carbon nanotubes can provide channels for fast electron and lithium-ion transport. As the lithium polysulfides are well confined, and the redox conversions are promoted, the Co9S8@N-CNTs/S-based lithium-sulfur battery possesses a superior energy storage performance, exhibiting a large specific capacity of 1233 mAh g-1 at 0.1 C and an outstanding cyclic performance, with a low decay of 0.045% per cycle and a Coulombic efficiency of more than 99% after 1000 cycles

Near-trapping effect of wave-cylinders interaction on pore water pressure and liquefaction around a cylinder array

YesThe near-trapping effects on wave-induced dynamic seabed response and liquefaction close to a multi-cylinder foundation in storm wave conditions are examined. Momentary liquefaction near multi-cylinder structures is simulated using an integrated wave-structure-seabed interaction model. The proposed model is firstly validated for the case of interaction of wave and a four-cylinder structure, with a good agreement with available experimental measurements. The validated model is then applied to investigate the seabed response around a four-cylinder structure at 0° and 45° incident angles. The comparison of liquefaction potential around individual cylinders in an array shows that downstream cylinder is well protected from liquefaction by upstream cylinders. For a range of incident wave parameters, the comparison with the results for a single pile shows the amplification of pressure within the seabed induced by progressive wave. This phenomenon is similar to the near-trapping phenomenon of free surface elevation within a cylinder array.Energy Technology Partnership (ETP), Wood GroupFull-text of this article will be released for public view at the end of the publisher embargo on 10 Oct 2021

The Effect of Spiritual Leadership on Employee Effectiveness: An Intrinsic Motivation Perspective

Drawing on spiritual leadership theory and intrinsic motivation theory, we proposed a homologous multilevel model to explore the effectiveness of spiritual leadership on employees’ task performance, knowledge sharing behaviors and innovation behaviors at the individual level. With questionnaires rated by 306 pairs of employees and their supervisors in 26 teams from the energy industry in mainland China, we conduct multilevel analysis to examine our hypotheses. The results show that spiritual leadership was positively related to employee task performance, knowledge sharing behaviors and innovation behavior, when we controlled for possible confounding effects of moral leadership and benevolent leadership, and ruled out alternative explanation of ethical leadership. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed

DTF-Net: Category-Level Pose Estimation and Shape Reconstruction via Deformable Template Field

Estimating 6D poses and reconstructing 3D shapes of objects in open-world scenes from RGB-depth image pairs is challenging. Many existing methods rely on learning geometric features that correspond to specific templates while disregarding shape variations and pose differences among objects in the same category. As a result, these methods underperform when handling unseen object instances in complex environments. In contrast, other approaches aim to achieve category-level estimation and reconstruction by leveraging normalized geometric structure priors, but the static prior-based reconstruction struggles with substantial intra-class variations. To solve these problems, we propose the DTF-Net, a novel framework for pose estimation and shape reconstruction based on implicit neural fields of object categories. In DTF-Net, we design a deformable template field to represent the general category-wise shape latent features and intra-category geometric deformation features. The field establishes continuous shape correspondences, deforming the category template into arbitrary observed instances to accomplish shape reconstruction. We introduce a pose regression module that shares the deformation features and template codes from the fields to estimate the accurate 6D pose of each object in the scene. We integrate a multi-modal representation extraction module to extract object features and semantic masks, enabling end-to-end inference. Moreover, during training, we implement a shape-invariant training strategy and a viewpoint sampling method to further enhance the model's capability to extract object pose features. Extensive experiments on the REAL275 and CAMERA25 datasets demonstrate the superiority of DTF-Net in both synthetic and real scenes. Furthermore, we show that DTF-Net effectively supports grasping tasks with a real robot arm.Comment: The first two authors are with equal contributions. Paper accepted by ACM MM 202

Temperature fluctuation and acute myocardial infarction in Beijing: an extended analysis of temperature ranges and differences

PurposeFew studies examined the relationship between temperature fluctuation metrics and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) hospitalizations within a single cohort. We aimed to expand knowledge on two basic measures: temperature range and difference.MethodsWe conducted a time-series analysis on the correlations between temperature range (TR), daily mean temperature differences (DTDmean), and daily mean-maximum/minimum temperature differences (TDmax/min) and AMI hospitalizations, using data between 2013 and 2016 in Beijing, China. The effects of TRn and DTDmeann over n-day intervals were compared, respectively. Subgroup analysis by age and sex was performed.ResultsA total of 81,029 AMI hospitalizations were included. TR1, TDmax, and TDmin were associated with AMI in J-shaped patterns. DTDmean1 was related to AMI in a U-shaped pattern. These correlations weakened for TR and DTDmean with longer exposure intervals. Extremely low (1st percentile) and high (5°C) DTDmean1 generated cumulative relative risk (CRR) of 2.73 (95% CI: 1.56–4.79) and 2.15 (95% CI: 1.54–3.01). Extremely high TR1, TDmax, and TDmin (99th percentile) correlated with CRR of 2.00 (95% CI: 1.73–2.85), 1.71 (95% CI: 1.40–2.09), and 2.73 (95% CI: 2.04–3.66), respectively. Those aged 20–64 had higher risks with large TR1, TDmax, and TDmin, while older individuals were more affected by negative DTDmean1. DTDmean1 was associated with a higher AMI risk in females.ConclusionTemperature fluctuations were linked to increased AMI hospitalizations, with low-temperature extremes having a more pronounced effect. Females and the older adult were more susceptible to daily mean temperature variations, while younger individuals were more affected by larger temperature ranges

Energetics of lipid transport by the ABC transporter MsbA is lipid dependent.

Funder: China Scholarship Council (CSC); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004543Funder: Cambridge Commonwealth Trust; doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003342The ABC multidrug exporter MsbA mediates the translocation of lipopolysaccharides and phospholipids across the plasma membrane in Gram-negative bacteria. Although MsbA is structurally well characterised, the energetic requirements of lipid transport remain unknown. Here, we report that, similar to the transport of small-molecule antibiotics and cytotoxic agents, the flopping of physiologically relevant long-acyl-chain 1,2-dioleoyl (C18)-phosphatidylethanolamine in proteoliposomes requires the simultaneous input of ATP binding and hydrolysis and the chemical proton gradient as sources of metabolic energy. In contrast, the flopping of the large hexa-acylated (C12-C14) Lipid-A anchor of lipopolysaccharides is only ATP dependent. This study demonstrates that the energetics of lipid transport by MsbA is lipid dependent. As our mutational analyses indicate lipid and drug transport via the central binding chamber in MsbA, the lipid availability in the membrane can affect the drug transport activity and vice versa.This research was funded by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant BB/R00224X/1 (to H.W.V.V). D.G. and Y.T. were funded by China Scholarship Council – Cambridge Trust PhD Scholarships. C.G. was funded by a BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) Targeted PhD studentship (project 2114197). T.N. received a student grant from Christ’s College Cambridge

Investigation of nonlinear wave-induced seabed response around mono-pile foundation

YesStability and safety of offshore wind turbines with mono-pile foundations, affected by nonlinear wave effect and dynamic seabed response, are the primary concerns in offshore foundation design. In order to address these problems, the nonlinear wave effect on dynamic seabed response in the vicinity of mono-pile foundation is investigated using an integrated model, developed using OpenFOAM, which incorporates both wave model (waves2Foam) and Biot’s poro-elastic model. The present model was validated against several laboratory experiments and promising agreements were obtained. Special attention was paid to the systematic analysis of pore water pressure as well as the momentary liquefaction in the proximity of mono-pile induced by nonlinear wave effects. Various embedment depths of mono-pile relevant for practical engineering design were studied in order to attain the insights into nonlinear wave effect around and underneath the mono-pile foundation. By comparing time-series of water surface elevation, inline force, and wave-induced pore water pressure at the front, lateral, and lee side of mono-pile, the distinct nonlinear wave effect on pore water pressure was shown. Simulated results confirmed that the presence of mono-pile foundation in a porous seabed had evident blocking effect on the vertical and horizontal development of pore water pressure. Increasing embedment depth enhances the blockage of vertical pore pressure development and hence results in somewhat reduced momentary liquefaction depth of the soil around the mono-pile foundation.Energy Technology Partnership (ETP), Wood Group Kenny, and University of Aberdeen; the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (51425901) and the 111 project (B12032)

Rainfall and soil water content data

Rainfall and soil water content data. All the abbreviation and the unit can be observed in the manuscript