Mapping the city scale anthropogenic heat emissions from buildings in Kuala Lumpur through a top-down and a bottom-up approach

The warming urban climates increase the building energy consumption by changing the heating/cooling loads of the buildings. On the other hand, building induced anthropogenic heat emissions can also contribute to the urban heating, creating a warming feedback loop. Such impact is more profound in the (sub)tropical and hot/arid context, where Air Conditioning (AC) systems are widely used. A better understanding of the building energy consumption and its contribution to urban heating can therefore help mitigate urban heating. To this end, we aim to estimate building energy use and induced heat emissions in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, using both a bottom-up strategy based on building energy modelling and a top-down strategy based on national scale energy inventory. We further integrate the building energy model with measured diurnal temperature profiles at different land use areas, to discuss the impact of urban heat island (UHI) on energy use, and potential mitigation strategies through different urban morphologies. The estimated energy use obtained via both bottom-up and the top-down approaches were within the range of actual energy use from case studies available for Kuala Lumpur. It also highlights the need to adapt multi-scale strategies to mitigate the building energy use, and the associated impacts on the UHI

Evolution of superconductivity in K2-xFe4+ySe5: Spectroscopic studies of X-ray absorption and emission.

This study investigates the evolution of superconductivity in K2-xFe4+ySe5 using temperature-dependent X-ray absorption and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering techniques. Magnetization measurements show that polycrystalline superconducting (SC) K1.9Fe4.2Se5 has a critical temperature (T c) of ∼31 K with a varying superconducting volume fraction, which strongly depends on its synthesis temperature. An increase in Fe-structural/vacancy disorder in SC samples with more Fe atoms occupying vacant 4d sites is found to be closely related to the decrease in the spin magnetic moment of Fe. Moreover, the nearest-neighbor Fe-Se bond length in SC samples exceeds that in the non-SC (NS) sample, K2Fe4Se5, which indicates a weaker hybridization between the Fe 3d and Se 4p states in SC samples. These results clearly demonstrate the correlations among the local electronic and atomic structures and the magnetic properties of K2-xFe4+ySe5 superconductors, providing deeper insight into the electron pairing mechanisms of superconductivity

Inhibitory Effect of Polysaccharides from Scutellaria barbata D. Don on Invasion and Metastasis of 95-D Cells Lines via Regulation of C-MET and E-CAD Expressions

Purpose: To investigate the inhibitory effect of polysaccharides from Scutellaria barbata (PSB) on invasion and metastasis of lung cancer, and study the possible mechanism.Methods: PSB was extracted with water and by alcohol precipitation, and purified by DEAE-52 column chromatography. A highly invasive and metastatic lung carcinoma cell, 95-D cell line, was used for the study. Cell adhesion and invasion assays in vitro were performed to evaluate the anti-invasive and antimetastatic effects of PSB (50 - 200 μg/ml) on 95-D cell. Immunocytochemical staining and Western blot techniques were employed to study the regulatory effects of PSB on the expression of C-MET and ECAD.Results: The results indicate that PSB significantly inhibited cell invasion and migration of 95-D in a concentration-dependent manner (p < 0.05). The adhesion of 95-D cells to fibronectin was also inhibited by PSB (p < 0.05). The expression of C-MET and E-CAD in 95-D cells treated with PSB were significantly down-regulated and up-regulated, respectivelt (p < 0.05).Conclusion: Treatment with PSB can significantly inhibit the invasion and metastasis of 95-D cells in vitro, probably through the regulation of C-MET and E-CAD.Keywords: Polysaccharide, Scutellaria barbata, 95-D cell lines, Invasion, Metastasi

Fingerprint oxygen redox reactions in batteries through high-efficiency mapping of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering

Realizing reversible reduction-oxidation (redox) reactions of lattice oxygen in batteries is a promising way to improve the energy and power density. However, conventional oxygen absorption spectroscopy fails to distinguish the critical oxygen chemistry in oxide-based battery electrodes. Therefore, high-efficiency full-range mapping of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (mRIXS) has been developed as a reliable probe of oxygen redox reactions. Here, based on mRIXS results collected from a series of Li Ni Co Mn O electrodes at different electrochemical states and its comparison with peroxides, we provide a comprehensive analysis of five components observed in the mRIXS results. While all the five components evolve upon electrochemical cycling, only two of them correspond to the critical states associated with oxygen redox reactions. One is a specific feature at 531.0 eV excitation and 523.7 eV emission energy, the other is a low-energy loss feature. We show that both features evolve with electrochemical cycling of Li Ni Co Mn O electrodes, and could be used for characterizing oxidized oxygen states in the lattice of battery electrodes. This work provides an important benchmark for a complete assignment of all mRIXS features collected from battery materials, which sets a general foundation for future studies in characterization, analysis, and theoretical calculation for probing and understanding oxygen redox reactions. 1.17 0.21 0.08 0.54 2 1.17 0.21 0.08 0.54

Objective and violation upper bounds on a DIRECT-filter method for global optimization

This paper addresses the problem of solving a constrained global optimization problem using a modification of the DIRECT method that incorporates the filter methodology to simultaneously minimize the objective function and the constraints violation. Thus, in the “Selection” step of the herein proposed DIRECT-filter algorithm, the hyperrectangles are classified in four categories and subsequently handled separately. The new algorithm also imposes upper bounds on the objective function and constraints violation aiming to discard some hyperrectangles from the process of identifying the potentially optimal ones. A heuristic to avoid the exploration of the hyperrectangles that have been mostly divided is also implemented. Preliminary numerical experiments are carried out to show the effectiveness of the imposed upper bounds on the objective and violation as well as the goodness of the heuristic.The authors wish to thank two anonymous referees for theircomments and suggestions to improve the paper. This work has been supported by FCT{ Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Projects Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019 and UID/MAT/00013/2013

CLDN3 inhibits cancer aggressiveness via Wnt-EMT signaling and is a potential prognostic biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common fatal malignancies but the molecular genetic basis of this disease remains unclear. By using genome-wide methylation profiling analysis, we identified CLDN3 as an epigenetically regulated gene in cancer. Here, we investigated its function and clinical relevance in human HCC. CLDN3 downregulation occurred in 87/114 (76.3%) of primary HCCs, where it was correlated significantly with shorter survival of HCC patients (P=0.021). Moreover, multivariate cyclooxygenase regression analysis showed that CLDN3 was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (P=0.014). Absent expression of CLDN3 was also detected in 67% of HCC cell lines, which was significantly associated with its promoter hypermethylation. Ectopic expression of CLDN3 in HCC cells could inhibit cell motility, cell invasiveness, and tumor formation in nude mice. Mechanistic investigations suggested through downregulation of GSK3B, CTNNB1, SNAI2, and CDH2, CLDN3 could significantly suppress metastasis by inactivating the Wnt/β-catenin-epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) axis in HCC cells. Collectively, our findings demonstrated that CLDN3 is an epigenetically silenced metastasis suppressor gene in HCC. A better understanding of the molecular mechanism of CLDN3 in inhibiting liver cancer cell metastasis may lead to a more effective management of HCC patients with the inactivation of CLDN3.published_or_final_versio

Determinación cuantitativa de indigotina e indirubina en el índigo natural mediante cromatografía líquida de alto rendimiento (HPLC)

A high-performance liquid chromatographic separation and quantitative method using a RP-18 columneluted isocratically with methanol and water (73:27, v/v) was developed to analyze the isomeric activecompounds, indigotin and indirubin, present in the chloroform extract of indigo naturalis. Standardizedsolutions of indigotin and indirubin were used to evaluate linearity, precision (repeatability), accuracyand specificity of the method were evaluated. The results exhibited a linearity (r2 > 0.999) of between1.8 - 16.2 μg/ml and 1.6 - 14.4 μg/ml for indigotin and indirubin, respectively. A high degree ofspecificity and robustness, as well as repeatability (relative standard deviation less than 5% for bothstandards and the extracts) and accuracy (% recoveries greater than 95%) were also achievedSe desarrolló un método de cromatografía líquida de alto rendimiento cuantitativa y de separaciónutilizando una columna RP-18 eluida isocráticamente con metanol y agua (73:27, v/v) para analizar loscompuestos activos isoméricos indigotina e indirubina presentes en el extracto de cloroformo del índigonatural. Se utilizaron soluciones estandarizadas de indigotina e indirubina para evaluar la linealidad, laprecisión (replicabilidad), la exactitud y la especificidad del método. Los resultados mostraron unalinealidad (r2 > 0,999) de entre 1,8 y 16,2 μg/ml para la indigotina y entre 1,6 y 14,4 μg/ml para laindirubina. También se obtuvo un alto grado de especificidad, robustez, replicabilidad (desviaciónestándar relativa inferior al 5% para estándares y extractos) y exactitud (% de recuperaciones superioral 95%)

Joint Protection of Energy Security and Information Privacy for Energy Harvesting: An Incentive Federated Learning Approach

Energy harvesting (EH) is a promising and critical technology to mitigate the dilemma between the limited battery capacity and the increasing energy consumption in the Internet of everything. However, the current EH system suffers from energy-information cross threats, facing the overlapping vulnerability of energy deprivation and private information leakage. Although some existing works touch on the security of energy and information in EH, they treat these two issues independently, without collaborative and intelligent protection cross the energy side and information side. To address the above challenge, this paper proposes a joint protection framework of energy security and information privacy for EH with an incentive federated learning approach. First, we design a federated learning-based malicious energy user detection method according to energy status and behaviors to provide energy security protection. Secondly, a differential privacy-empowered information preservation scheme is devised, where sensitive information is perturbed and protected by the customized demand-based noise. Thirdly, a non-cooperative game-enabled incentive mechanism is established to encourage EH nodes to participate in the joint energy-information protection system. The proposed incentive mechanism derives the optimal energy-information security strategy for EH nodes and achieve a tradeoff between the protection of energy security and information privacy. Evaluation results have verified the effectiveness of our proposed joint protection mechanism

Climate changes reconstructed from a glacial lake in High Central Asiaover the past two millennia

Climatic changes in Arid Central Asia (ACA) over the past two millennia have been widely concerned. However, less attention has been paid to those in the High Central Asia (HCA), where the Asian water tower nurtures the numerous oases by glacier and/or snow melt. Here, we present a new reconstruction of the temperature and precipitation change over the past two millennia based on grain size of a well-dated glacial lake sediment core in the central of southern Tianshan Mountains. The results show that the glacial lake catchment has experienced cold-wet climate conditions during the Dark Age Cold Period (&sim;300&ndash;600 AD; DACP) and the Little Ice Age (&sim;1300&ndash;1870 AD; LIA), whereas warm-dry conditions during the Medieval Warm Period (&sim;700&ndash;1270 AD; MWP). Integration of our results with those of previously published lake sediment records, stalagmite &delta;18O records, ice core net accumulation rates, tree-ring based temperature reconstructions, and mountain glacier activities suggest that there has a broadly similar hydroclimatic pattern over the HCA areas on centennial time scale during the past two millennia. Comparison between hydroclimatic pattern of the HCA and that of the ACA areas suggests a prevailing &#39;warm-dry and cold-wet&#39; hydroclimatic pattern over the whole westerlies-dominated central Asia areas during the past two millennia. We argue that the position and intensity of the westerlies, which are closely related to the phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and the strength of the Siberian High pressure (SH), could have jointly modulated the late Holocene central Asia hydroclimatic changes.<br /

Characteristics of coastline changes in mainland China since the early 1940s

Based on multi-temporal topographic maps, remote sensing images and field surveys covering the entire coastal zone of mainland China, the coastlines of six periods since the early 1940s were extracted. Coastline changes over the last 70 years were then analyzed in terms of coastline structure, coastline fractals, coastline change rates, land-sea patterns, and bay areas. The results showed that mainland coastline structure changed dramatically, and due to the significant coastline artificialization mainly driven by sea reclamation and coastal engineering, the remaining natural coastline merely accounts for less than one third at present. Coastline fractal dimension represented an overall spatial pattern of "north < entirety < south"; however, the discrepancy between the north and south coast was apparently narrowed due to dramatic coastline artificialization of northern China which in turn altered the whole pattern. Patterns and processes of land-sea interchange along the mainland coast were complex and varied spatially and temporally, with over 68% advancing toward sea and 22% retreating toward land. The net growth of land area was nearly 14.2 x10(3) km(2) with an average growth rate of 202.82 km(2) a(-1); and coast retreat was characterized by area decrease of 93 bays with a magnitude of 10.1 x10(3) km(2) and an average shrinking rate up to 18.19% or an average shrinking speed up to 144.20 km(2) a(-1), among which the total area of Bohai shrunk by 7.06%, with an average annual loss amounting to 82 km(2). The dramatic coastline changes along mainland China have brought about kinds of challenges to the coastal environment, therefore the integrated management, effective environment protection and sustainable utilization of coastlines is urgent