MicroRNA-141-3p mediates epithelial cell proliferation, apoptosis, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition and alleviates pulmonary fibrosis in mice via Spred2

Objective. This study probed the mechanism of microRNA (miR)-141-3p in the progression of pulmonary fibrosis (PF). Methods. Mice were intratracheally administered with bleomycin (BLM) to establish a PF mouse model. To investigate the effects of miR-141-3p/Spred2 on PF in mice, PF mice received tail vein injections with agomir-141-3p and/or adenovirus vectors overexpressing Spred2 one week after BLM treatment. Then, the pathological changes of lung tissues were analyzed with H&E and Masson’s trichrome staining, and hydroxyproline contents in lung tissues were measured. For cell experiments, after loss- and gain-of-function assays, the role of miR-141-3p/Spred2 in the apoptosis and viability of TGF-β1-stimulated MLE-12 cells was examined by flow cytometry and CCK-8 assay, respectively. miR-141-3p, Spred2, COl 1, and α-SMA expression was determined in cells and mice. Then, the binding of miR-141-3p to Spred2 was tested with a dualluciferase reporter assay. Results. There were abnormally upregulated Spred2 and downregulated miR-141-3p in lung tissues of PF mice. TGF-β1 decelerated viability and augmented apoptosis and COl 1 and α-SMA expression in MLE-12 cells. Spred2 knockdown diminished apoptosis and αSMA and COl 1 expression while enhancing proliferation in TGF-β1-treated MLE-12 cells. Mechanistically, Spred2 was a target gene of miR-1413p. miR-141-3p upregulation accelerated proliferation and repressed apoptosis and α-SMA and COl 1 expression in TGF-β1-treated MLE-12 cells, which was nullified by further overexpressing Spred2. miR-141-3p alleviated PF in mice by targeting Spred2. Conclusion. miR-141-3p negatively modulates Spred2 to promote proliferation and repress epithelialmesenchymal transition and apoptosis of epithelial cells, as well as ameliorating PF in mic

An Effective Measured Data Preprocessing Method in Electrical Impedance Tomography

As an advanced process detection technology, electrical impedance tomography (EIT) has widely been paid attention to and studied in the industrial fields. But the EIT techniques are greatly limited to the low spatial resolutions. This problem may result from the incorrect preprocessing of measuring data and lack of general criterion to evaluate different preprocessing processes. In this paper, an EIT data preprocessing method is proposed by all rooting measured data and evaluated by two constructed indexes based on all rooted EIT measured data. By finding the optimums of the two indexes, the proposed method can be applied to improve the EIT imaging spatial resolutions. In terms of a theoretical model, the optimal rooting times of the two indexes range in [0.23, 0.33] and in [0.22, 0.35], respectively. Moreover, these factors that affect the correctness of the proposed method are generally analyzed. The measuring data preprocessing is necessary and helpful for any imaging process. Thus, the proposed method can be generally and widely used in any imaging process. Experimental results validate the two proposed indexes

Leakage current simulations of Low Gain Avalanche Diode with improved Radiation Damage Modeling

We report precise TCAD simulations of IHEP-IME-v1 Low Gain Avalanche Diode (LGAD) calibrated by secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS). Our setup allows us to evaluate the leakage current, capacitance, and breakdown voltage of LGAD, which agree with measurements' results before irradiation. And we propose an improved LGAD Radiation Damage Model (LRDM) which combines local acceptor removal with global deep energy levels. The LRDM is applied to the IHEP-IME-v1 LGAD and able to predict the leakage current well at -30 $^{\circ}$C after an irradiation fluence of $\Phi_{eq}=2.5 \times 10^{15} ~n_{eq}/cm^{2}$. The charge collection efficiency (CCE) is under development

Fast reconstruction of computerized tomography images based on the cross-entropy method

Computerized tomography (CT) has been applied to multi-phase flow measurement in recent years. Image reconstruction of CT often involves repeatedly solving large-dimensional matrix equations, which are computationally expensive, especially for the case of on-line flow regime identification. In this paper, a minimum cross-entropy (MCE) reconstruction based on wavelet multi-resolution processing, i.e., an MRMCE method, is proposed for fast reconstruction of CT images. Each row of the system’s matrix is transformed by 1-D wavelet decomposition. A regularized MCE solution is obtained using the simultaneous multiplicative algebraic reconstruction technique (SMART) at a coarse resolution level, where important information of the reconstructed image is contained. Then the solution in the finest resolution is obtained by inverse fast wavelet transformation (IFWT). Both computer simulation and experimental work were carried out for oil–gas two-phase flow regimes. Results obtained indicate that the MRMCE method improves the resolution of the reconstructed images and dramatically reduces the computation time compared with the traditional linear back-projection (LBP), MCE and algebraic reconstruction technique (ART) methods. Furthermore, the new method can also be used to accurately estimate the local time-averaged void fraction of dynamic two-phase flow. It is suitable for on-line multi-phase flow measurement

The effects of emotion-understanding ability and tournament incentives on supervisors’ propensity to acquire subordinate-type information to use in control decisions

We investigate how emotion-understanding ability, a component of emotional intelligence, and tournament incentives jointly influence supervisors' propensity to acquire information about their subordinates' trustworthiness and tailor their control decisions to this information. We predict and find that when receiving piece-rate incentives, high emotion-understanding supervisors are more likely than low emotion-understanding supervisors to acquire subordinate-type information and use it in their control decisions. In addition, relative to piece-rate incentives, tournament incentives increase supervisors’ propensity to acquire subordinate-type information more for low emotion-understanding supervisors than high emotion-understanding supervisors. Taken together, our results suggest that hiring high emotion-understanding supervisors and giving supervisors tournament incentives are at least partial substitutes in motivating supervisors to acquire and, thus, use subordinate-type information in their control decisions. Our results offer important insights into the process through which supervisors make discretionary control decisions and contribute to the understanding of the forces that shape managerial controls within organizations.Ministry of Education (MOE)We gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (RG58/20)