32 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Bridging the gap between energy consumption and the indoor environmental quality of a 1960s-educational building
The fundamental purpose of a building has evolved from merely providing protection from external environmental climate to more emphasis on integrating building services through building regulations to provide the synergy of comfort, efficiency and safety to the indoor environment. This research recognizes the rising demand and increasing quality of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in the modern society compared to the acceptable level of previous traditional buildings. Generally due to its varied operations, educational buildings, in this case University libraries have its own set of challenges and barriers such as minimizing damages and decay of books and maintaining indoor conditions with an oversight of providing good IEQ to occupants. This paper presents a detailed evaluation of a 1960s-educational library with 24-hour access at the University of Reading. Through in-situ measurements, modelling and simulations of the building’s energy consumption, IEQ parameters and occupancy patterns, investigations have been performed. Varied scenarios using the Integrated Environmental Solution (IES) software were also investigated. The findings illustrate that due to mixed façade configuration (i.e. sandstone and bricks) there is the unflinching need to balance aesthetics of the facade and functionality of a building to reduce excessive energy use via heating, without compromising on occupant comfort and well-being Although it is envisaged that refurbishing the library building will provide energy savings of up to 40%, this is farfetched and can only be achieved at the detriment of occupant comfort levels as evident in the simulation results, where these savings could not be realised. This paper further discusses the methods, scenarios, and results of ensuring good IEQ, comfort and energy efficiency are not been seen as mutually exclusive. This study forms part of ongoing research into the impact of educational buildings
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF AMOMUM VILLOSUM: A SYSTEMATIC INVESTIGATION ON THREE DIFFERENT PRODUCTION MODES
Background: Amomum Villosum (A. Villosum), called Chunsharen in Chinese, is widely used in treating gastrointestinal disease. Its
clinical benefits have been confirmed by both in vitro and in vivo studies. Facing the shortage of wild A. Villosum, artificial
cultivating and natural fostering have been practiced in recent years. Therefore, it would be wondered whether the three different
types of A. Villosum are comparable or not, particularly the herbal qualities, technological challenges, ecological impacts and
economic benefits.
Material and methods: In this study, we combined quality research by using GC-MS, and field investigation to provide a systematic
assessment about the three types of A. Villosum from these four aspects.
Results: It found that the wild type had low output and was in an endangered situation. The artificial cultivation had larger
agriculturing area with higher productivity, but faced the ecological challenges. Lastly, the natural fostering type generated the
highest economic benefit and relatively low ecological impact. In addition, the natural fostering type had relatively better quality
than the other types.
Conclusion: Therefore, it suggests that natural fostering can be applied for long-term sustainable development of A. Villosum
31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two
Background
The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd.
Methods
We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background.
Results
First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001).
Conclusions
In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival