Lunar material transport vehicle

The proposed vehicle, the Lunar Material Transport Vehicle (LMTV), has a mission objective of efficient lunar soil material transport. The LMTV was designed to meet a required set of performance specifications while operating under a given set of constraints. The LMTV is essentially an articulated steering, double-ended dump truck. The vehicle moves on four wheels and has two identical chassis halves. Each half consists of a chassis frame, a material bucket, two wheels with integral curvilinear synchronous motors, a fuel cell and battery arrangement, an electromechanically actuated dumping mechanism, and a powerful microprocessor. The vehicle, as designed, is capable of transporting up to 200 cu ft of material over a one mile round trip per hour. The LMTV is capable of being operated from a variety of sources. The vehicle has been designed as simply as possible with attention also given to secondary usage of components

Analysis of the flavonoid component of bioactive New Zealand mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) honey and the isolation, characterisation and synthesis of an unusual pyrrole

The flavonoid components of New Zealand mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) honey have been quantified in a series of 31 honeys of varying non-peroxide antibacterial activity to clarify discrepancies between previous studies reported in the literature. Total flavonoid content was 1.16 mg/100 g honey. The principal flavonoids present were pinobanksin, pinocembrin, luteolin and chrysin and together these represented 61% of the total flavonoid content. 1, 2-formyl-5-(2-methoxyphenyl)-pyrrole, which was weakly correlated with the non-peroxide antibacterial activity, was isolated from the flavonoid fraction and separately synthesised. 1 did not display inhibitory activity against Staphylococcus aureus in vitro and thus the origin of the correlation, which is still unknown, is not a direct contribution

Unusual sequelae after percutaneous mitral valvuloplasty: A Doppler echocardiographic study

AbstractPercutaneous mitral valvuloplasty is a promising new technique for the treatment of mitral stenosis, with a relatively low complication rate reported to date. To assess the sequelae of this procedure, Doppler echocardiographic studies were prospectively performed before and after percutaneous mitral valvuloplasty in a series of 172 patients (mean age 53 ± 17 years). After balloon dilation, mitral valve area increased from 0.9 ± 0.3 to 2 ± 0.8 cm2(p < 0.0001), mean gradient decreased from 16 ± 6 to 6 ± 3 mm Hg (p < 0.0001) and mean left atrial pressure decreased from 24 ± 7 to 14 ± 6 mm Hg (p < 0.0001).Although most patients were symptomatically improved, six (4%) were identified who had unusual sequelae evident on Doppler echocardiographic examination immediately after percutaneous mitral valvuloplasty. These included rupture of a posterior mitral valve leaflet, producing a flail distal leaflet portion with severe mitral regurgitation detected on Doppler color flow mapping (n = 1); asymptomatic rupture of the chordae tendineae attached to the anterior mitral valve leaflet with systolic anterior motion of the ruptured chordae into the left ventricular outflow tract (n = 1); a double-orifice mitral valve (n = 1); and evidence of a tear in the anterior mitral valve leaflet (n = 3), producing on both pulsed Doppler ultrasound and color flow mapping a second discrete jet of mitral regurgitation in addition to regurgitation through the main mitral valve orifice. All six patients made a satisfactory recovery and none has required mitral valve replacement.In a small percent of cases, percutaneous mitral valvuloplasty may produce unusual disruption of the mitral valve and supporting apparatus that may be readily detected by Doppler echocardiographic studies

A novel class of CoA-transferase involved in short-chain fatty acid metabolism in butyrate-producing human colonic bacteria

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The transcription factor PPARα is overexpressed and is associated with a favourable prognosis in IDH-wildtype primary glioblastoma

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Aims: PPARα agonists are in current clinical use as hypolipidaemic agents and show significant antineoplastic effects in human glioblastoma models. To date however, the expression of PPARα in large-scale glioblastoma datasets has not been examined. We aimed to investigate the expression of the transcription factor PPARα in primary glioblastoma, the relationship between PPARα expression and patients’ clinicopathological features and other molecular markers associated with gliomagenesis. Methods and results: With protein immunoblotting techniques and reverse transcription quantitative real-time PCR, PPARα was found to be significantly overexpressed in glioblastoma compared with control brain tissue (P = 0.032 and P = 0.005). PPARA gene expression was found to be enriched in the classical glioblastoma subtype within The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset. Although not associated with overall survival when assessed by immunohistochemistry, cross-validation with the TCGA dataset and multivariate analyses identified PPARA gene expression as an independent prognostic marker for overall survival (P = 0.042). Finally, hierarchical clustering revealed novel, significant associations between high PPARA expression and a putative set of glioblastoma molecular mediators including EMX2, AQP4, and NTRK2. Conclusions: PPARα is overexpressed in primary glioblastoma and high PPARA expression functions as an independent prognostic marker in the glioblastoma TCGA dataset. Further studies are required to explore genetic associations with high PPARA expression and to analyse the predictive role of PPARα expression in glioblastoma models in response to PPARα agonists

Time-course proteome analysis reveals the dynamic response of cryptococcus gattii cells to fluconazole

Cryptococcus gattii is an encapsulated fungus capable of causing fatal disease in immunocompetent humans and animals. As current antifungal therapies are few and limited in efficacy, and resistance is an emerging issue, the development of new treatment strategies is urgently required. The current study undertook a time-course analysis of the proteome of C. gattii during treatment with fluconazole (FLC), which is used widely in prophylactic and maintenance therapies. The aims were to analyze the overall cellular response to FLC, and to find fungal proteins involved in this response that might be useful targets in therapies that augment the antifungal activity of FLC. During FLC treatment, an increase in stress response, ATP synthesis and mitochondrial respiratory chain proteins, and a decrease in most ribosomal proteins was observed, suggesting that ATP-dependent efflux pumps had been initiated for survival and that the maintenance of ribosome synthesis was differentially expressed. Two proteins involved in fungal specific pathways were responsive to FLC. An integrative network analysis revealed co-ordinated processes involved in drug response, and highlighted hubs in the network representing essential proteins that are required for cell viability. This work demonstrates the dynamic cellular response of a typical susceptible isolate of C. gattii to FLC, and identified a number of proteins and pathways that could be targeted to augment the activity of FLC. © 2012 Chong et al

Evaluation of the quality of RNA extracted from archival FFPE glioblastoma and epilepsy surgical samples for gene expression assays

AimsHistopathological tissue samples are being increasingly used as sources of nucleic acids in molecular pathology translational research. This study investigated the suitability of glioblastoma and control central nervous system (CNS) formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue-derived RNA for gene expression analyses.MethodsTotal RNA was extracted from control (temporal lobe resection tissue) and glioblastoma FFPE tissue samples. RNA purity (260/280 ratios) was determined and RNA integrity number (RIN) analysis was performed. RNA was subsequently used for RT-qPCR for two reference genes,18SandGAPDH.ResultsReference gene expression was equivalent between control and glioblastoma tissue when using RNA extracted from FFPE tissue, which has key implications for biological normalisation for CNS gene expression studies. There was a significant difference between the mean RIN values of control and glioblastoma FFPE tissue. There was no significant correlation between 260/280 or RIN values versus total RNA yield. The age of the tissue blocks did not influence RNA yield, fragmentation or purity. There was no significant correlation between RIN or 260/280 ratios and mean qPCR cycle threshold for either reference gene.ConclusionsThis study showed that routinely available CNS FFPE tissue is suitable for RNA extraction and downstream gene expression studies, even after 60 months of storage. Substantial RNA fragmentation associated with glioblastoma and control FFPE tissue blocks did not preclude downstream RT-qPCR gene expression analyses. Cross validation with both archival and prospectively collated FFPE specimens is required to further demonstrate that CNS tissue blocks can be used in novel translational molecular biomarker studies.</jats:sec

Gravitational radiation from gamma-ray bursts as observational opportunities for LIGO and VIRGO

Gamma-ray bursts are believed to originate in core-collapse of massive stars. This produces an active nucleus containing a rapidly rotating Kerr black hole surrounded by a uniformly magnetized torus represented by two counter-oriented current rings. We quantify black hole spin-interactions with the torus and charged particles along open magnetic flux-tubes subtended by the event horizon. A major output of Egw=4e53 erg is radiated in gravitational waves of frequency fgw=500 Hz by a quadrupole mass-moment in the torus. Consistent with GRB-SNe, we find (i) Ts=90s (tens of s, Kouveliotou et al. 1993), (ii) aspherical SNe of kinetic energy Esn=2e51 erg (2e51 erg in SN1998bw, Hoeflich et al. 1999) and (iii) GRB-energies Egamma=2e50 erg (3e50erg in Frail et al. 2001). GRB-SNe occur perhaps about once a year within D=100Mpc. Correlating LIGO/Virgo detectors enables searches for nearby events and their spectral closure density 6e-9 around 250Hz in the stochastic background radiation in gravitational waves. At current sensitivity, LIGO-Hanford may place an upper bound around 150MSolar in GRB030329. Detection of Egw thus provides a method for identifying Kerr black holes by calorimetry.Comment: to appear in PRD, 49