Enhanced thermal and electrical properties by Ag nanoparticles decorated GO-CNT nanostructures in PEEK composites

A nanostructure of graphene oxide (GO) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) decorated with silver nanoparticles (AgGNT) has been prepared via a molecular-level-mixing (MLM) method followed by a subsequent freeze-drying and reduction process. The obtained well-dispersed AgGNT nanostructures were then applied as fillers to reinforce the poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) matrix. AgGNT-PEEK composites have then demonstrated excellent electrical and thermal conduction performances as well as high thermal durability compared with pure PEEK and its pure Ag or GO-CNT (GNT) enhanced composites. Owing to the unique morphology of AgGNT nanostructures, which made them uniformly dispersed in the PEEK matrix and formed a 3D network structure, the AgGNT-PEEK composites displayed 60% higher thermal conductivity and around 109 times better electrical conduction performance than pure PEEK, and superior thermal durability even above the melting temperature of pure PEEK. Thus, the AgGNT-PEEK composites have shown great potential for applications such as semiconductors, high-temperature electrical applications, aerospace, and automobile materials

Research on indoor thermal environment evaluation and thermal adaptation in winter of Japanese wood-framed detached houses

Indoor space is the place where human beings live, and how to meet people's indoor thermal comfort needs in the context of energy scarcity is one of the important issues for sustainable development of buildings, and the evaluation of the indoor thermal environment has become the key to it. In the case of Japanese wood-framed detached houses, which contain different types of space forms, it is difficult to accurately apply the existing thermal environment evaluation results. In this study, detached houses in Kitakyushu City, Japan, were selected as the research object, and continuous measurements and subjective questionnaires of the indoor thermal environments were conducted based on three modes of no heating, continuous heating, and intermittent heating, in order to grasp the current information of the thermal comfort in detached houses. The results showed that: 1. The average indoor temperatures in both Washitsu and Yoshitsu were lower than the human thermal comfort range; 2. The thermally neutral temperature of 15.9 °C in Washitsu was lower than that of 17.7 °C in Yoshitsu, and the acceptable temperature zones were (14.3–17.5 °C) and (15.6–18.9 °C), respectively; 3. Develop modified models (PMVe) and adaptive predicted mean vote (aPMV) model suitable for thermal comfort evaluation of detached houses in Japan. The results of this study will help to improve the indoor thermal environment and thermal comfort evaluation system of Japanese detached houses, and provide a useful reference for the study of the renewal and renovation of houses in this area

Energy and Delay Optimization of Heterogeneous Multicore Wireless Multimedia Sensor Nodes by Adaptive Genetic-Simulated Annealing Algorithm

Energy efficiency and delay optimization are significant for the proliferation of wireless multimedia sensor network (WMSN). In this article, an energy-efficient, delay-efficient, hardware and software cooptimization platform is researched to minimize the energy cost while guaranteeing the deadline of the real-time WMSN tasks. First, a multicore reconfigurable WMSN hardware platform is designed and implemented. This platform uses both the heterogeneous multicore architecture and the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) technique. By this means, the nodes can adjust the hardware characteristics dynamically in terms of the software run-time contexts. Consequently, the software can be executed more efficiently with less energy cost and shorter execution time. Then, based on this hardware platform, an energy and delay multiobjective optimization algorithm and a DVFS adaption algorithm are investigated. These algorithms aim to search out the global energy optimization solution within the acceptable calculation time and strip the time redundancy in the task executing process. Thus, the energy efficiency of the WMSN node can be improved significantly even under strict constraint of the execution time. Simulation and real-world experiments proved that the proposed approaches can decrease the energy cost by more than 29% compared to the traditional single-core WMSN node. Moreover, the node can react quickly to the time-sensitive events

PTHrP prevents chondrocyte premature hypertrophy by inducing cyclin-D1-dependent Runx2 and Runx3 phosphorylation, ubiquitylation and proteasomal degradation

In chondrocytes, PTHrP maintains them in a proliferative state and prevents premature hypertrophy. The mechanism by which PTHrP does this is not fully understood. Both Runx2 and Runx3 are required for chondrocyte maturation. We recently demonstrated that cyclin D1 induces Runx2 protein phosphorylation and degradation. In the present studies, we tested the hypothesis that PTHrP regulates both Runx2 and Runx3 protein stability through cyclin D1. We analyzed the effects of cyclin D1 on Runx3 protein stability and function using COS cells, osteoprogenitor C3H10T1/2 cells and chondrogenic RCJ3.1C5.18 cells. We found that cyclin D1 induced Runx3 degradation in a dose-dependent manner and that both Myc-tagged Runx3 and endogenous Runx3 interact directly with CDK4 in COS and RCJ3.1C5.18 cells. A conserved CDK recognition site was identified in the C-terminal region of Runx3 by sequence analysis (residues 356-359). Pulse-chase experiments showed that the mutation of Runx3 at Ser356 to alanine (SA-Runx3) increased the half-life of Runx3. By contrast, the mutation at the same serine residue to glutamic acid (SE-Runx3) accelerated Runx3 degradation. In addition, SA-Runx3 was resistant to cyclin D1-induced degradation. GST-Runx3 was strongly phosphorylated by CDK4 in vitro. By contrast, CDK4 had no effect on the phosphorylation of SA-Runx3. Although both wild-type and SE-Runx3 were ubiquitylated, this was not the case for SA-Runx3. Runx3 degradation by cyclin D1 was completely blocked by the proteasome inhibitor PS1. In C3H10T1/2 cells, SA-Runx3 had a greater effect on reporter activity than SE-Runx3. The same was true for ALP activity in these cells. To investigate the role of cyclin D1 in chondrocyte proliferation and hypertrophy, we analyzed the growth plate morphology and expression of chondrocyte differentiation marker genes in Ccnd1-knockout mice. The proliferating and hypertrophic zones were significantly reduced and expression of chondrocyte differentiation marker genes and ALP activity were enhanced in 2-week-old Ccnd1-knockout mice. PTHrP significantly suppressed protein levels of both Runx2 and Runx3 in primary chondrocytes derived from wild-type mice. By contrast, the suppressive effect of PTHrP on Runx2 and Runx3 protein levels was completely abolished in primary chondrocytes derived from Ccnd1-knockout mice. Our findings demonstrate that the cell cycle proteins cyclin D1 and CDK4 induce Runx2 and Runx3 phosphorylation, ubiquitylation and proteasomal degradation. PTHrP suppresses Runx2 and Runx3 protein levels in chondrocytes through cyclin D1. These results suggest that PTHrP might prevent premature hypertrophy in chondrocytes, at least in part by inducing degradation of Runx2 and Runx3 in a cyclin-D1-dependent manner

The Prognostic Value and the Oncogenic and Immunological Roles of Vacuolar Protein Sorting Associated Protein 26 A in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

The identification of the prognostic markers and therapeutic targets might benefit the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD), one of the most aggressive malignancies. Vacuolar protein sorting associated protein 26 A (VPS26A) is a candidate prognosis gene for hepatocellular carcinoma, but its expression and function in PAAD remain unknown. The mRNA and protein expression of VPS26A in PAAD was explored and validated by bioinformatics and immunohistochemical analysis. The correlation between VPS26A expression and various clinical parameters, genetic status, diagnostic and prognostic value, survival and immune infiltration were evaluated, and the co-expressed gene-set enrichment analysis for VPS26A was performed. Cytologic and molecular experiments were further carried out to investigate the role and potential mechanism of VPS26A in PAAD. The mRNA and protein levels of VPS26A were elevated in PAAD tissues. High VPS26A expression was associated with the advanced histological type, tumor stage simplified, smoking status and tumor mutational burden score, and the poor prognosis of PAAD patients. VPS26A expression was significantly correlated with immune infiltration and immunotherapy response. VPS26A-co-expressed genes were mainly enriched in the regulation of cell adhesion and actin cytoskeleton and the immune-response-regulating signaling pathway. Our experiments further demonstrated that VPS26A promoted the proliferation, migration and invasion potentials of PAAD cell lines through activating the EGFR/ERK signaling. Our study suggested that VPS26A could be a potential biomarker and a therapeutic target for PAAD through comprehensive regulation of its growth, migration and immune microenvironment