Biological Evaluation of DNA Biomarkers in a Chemically Defined and Site-Specific Manner

As described elsewhere in this Special Issue on biomarkers, much progress has been made in the detection of modified DNA within organisms at endogenous and exogenous levels of exposure to chemical species, including putative carcinogens and chemotherapeutic agents. Advances in the detection of damaged or unnatural bases have been able to provide correlations to support or refute hypotheses between the level of exposure to oxidative, alkylative, and other stresses, and the resulting DNA damage (lesion formation). However, such stresses can form a plethora of modified nucleobases, and it is therefore difficult to determine the individual contribution of a particular modification to alter a cell’s genetic fate, as measured in the form of toxicity by stalled replication past the damage, by subsequent mutation, and by lesion repair. Chemical incorporation of a modification at a specific site within a vector (site-specific mutagenesis) has been a useful tool to deconvolute what types of damage quantified in biologically relevant systems may lead to toxicity and/or mutagenicity, thereby allowing researchers to focus on the most relevant biomarkers that may impact human health. Here, we will review a sampling of the DNA modifications that have been studied by shuttle vector technique

Sequence Dependent Repair of 1,N6-Ethenoadenine by DNA Repair Enzymes ALKBH2, ALKBH3, and AlkB

Mutation patterns of DNA adducts, such as mutational spectra and signatures, are useful tools for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. Mutational spectra of carcinogens derive from three sources: adduct formation, replication bypass, and repair. Here, we consider the repair aspect of 1,N6-ethenoadenine (εA) by the 2-oxoglutarate/Fe(II)-dependent AlkB family enzymes. Specifically, we investigated εA repair across 16 possible sequence contexts (5′/3′ flanking base to εA varied as G/A/T/C). The results revealed that repair efficiency is altered according to sequence, enzyme, and strand context (ss- versus ds-DNA). The methods can be used to study other aspects of mutational spectra or other pathways of repair

Adaptive Communications in Collaborative Perception with Domain Alignment for Autonomous Driving

Collaborative perception among multiple connected and autonomous vehicles can greatly enhance perceptive capabilities by allowing vehicles to exchange supplementary information via communications. Despite advances in previous approaches, challenges still remain due to channel variations and data heterogeneity among collaborative vehicles. To address these issues, we propose ACC-DA, a channel-aware collaborative perception framework to dynamically adjust the communication graph and minimize the average transmission delay while mitigating the side effects from the data heterogeneity. Our novelties lie in three aspects. We first design a transmission delay minimization method, which can construct the communication graph and minimize the transmission delay according to different channel information state. We then propose an adaptive data reconstruction mechanism, which can dynamically adjust the rate-distortion trade-off to enhance perception efficiency. Moreover, it minimizes the temporal redundancy during data transmissions. Finally, we conceive a domain alignment scheme to align the data distribution from different vehicles, which can mitigate the domain gap between different vehicles and improve the performance of the target task. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in comparison to the existing state-of-the-art works.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Fullerenol inhibits tendinopathy by alleviating inflammation

Tendinopathy is a common disease in orthopaedics, seriously affecting tendon functions. However, the effects of non-surgical treatment on tendinopathy are not satisfactory and surgical treatments possibly impair the function of tendons. Biomaterial fullerenol has been proved to show good anti-inflammatory effects on various inflammatory diseases. For in vitro experiments, primary rat tendon cells (TCs) were treated by interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β) combined with aqueous fullerenol (5, 1, 0.3 μg/mL). Then inflammatory factors, tendon-related markers, migration and signaling pathways were detected. For in vivo experiments, rat tendinopathy model was constructed by local injection of collagenase into Achilles tendons of rats and fullerenol (0.5, 1 mg/mL) was locally injected 7 days after collagenase injection. Inflammatory factors and tendon-related markers were also investigated. Fullerenol with good water-solubility showed excellent biocompatibility with TCs. Fullerenol could increase expression of tendon-related factors (Collagen I and tenascin C) and decrease expression of inflammatory factors (matrix metalloproteinases-3, MMP-3, and MMP-13) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) level. Simultaneously, fullerenol slowed the migration of TCs and inhibited activation of Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway. Fullerenol also attenuated tendinopathy in vivo, including reduction of fiber disorders, decrease of inflammatory factors and increase of tendon markers. In summary, fullerenol is a promising biomaterial that can be used to treat tendinopathy

Charting Null Island

This speculative design-led research investigation is 'sited' on Null Island, a 'mythological' island located in the Atlantic Ocean at 0° latitude and 0° longitude, at the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator. While no physical island is actually located on this site, it is marked by a permanently moored weather buoy called "soul". Looking at the geographical location of Null Island from an East-West perspective, the equator is a 'real' line inscribed on the centre of the globe. From the North-South perspective, the meridian through Greenwich England that we consider to be zero degrees of longitude is an ‘unreal’ line. It was designated the Prime Meridian by the British Empire during its greatest period of colonial upheaval, whilst other nations historically had their own guidelines for where the ‘prime’ meridian was located. Viewed in this sense, the Prime Meridian is culturally charged and 'imaginary'. Today, the 'island' marking the intersection of the equator and the Prime Meridian serves as an absolute cartographic reference for navigation databases in computing and placenames. In this sense, Null Island represents a liminal territory between fiction and reality, a place where a natural order, a constructed order, and a digital order coalesce. In architectural cartography, the spatial potential of the architectural mapping of the unreal, related to the imagination, has been largely absent. The principal aim of this thesis is to explore the dual realms of Null Island - a 'mythical' island at the 'real' intersection of 0° longitude and 0° latitude — by using three-dimensional, speculative cartographic representation as a critical method. The thesis investigation asks:How can three-dimensional, imaginative cartographies establish placeidentity for a placeless place located between fiction and reality?</p

Research on Wear Resistance of AISI 9310 Steel with Micro-Laser Shock Peening

Improving the wear resistance of turbine engine drive components is crucial. This study presented a new Laser Shock Peening (LSP) technique: Micro-Laser Shock Peening (Micro-LSP) technology for surface modification and strengthening of AISI 9310 steel. The effects of different pulse energies (50 mJ, 150 mJ, 200 mJ) on surface morphology, mechanical properties, and wear behavior were investigated. The results showed that the Micro-LSP treatment reduced the wear rate by 56% to 74%. The dimpled structure induced during the strengthening process increased the surface roughness and reduced the contact area; moreover, the coefficient of friction (COF) was reduced. The treatment also had the effect of reducing the wear rate by collecting abrasive debris and changing some of the sliding wear into rolling wear. The reduced wear rate was a result of the combined effect of the dimpled structure and the hardened layer. In addition, a deeper hardened layer also slows down the onset of wear behavior. Micro-LSP technology offers completely new methods and possibilities for wear reduction

Sequence Dependent Repair of 1,N6-Ethenoadenine by DNA Repair Enzymes ALKBH2, ALKBH3, and AlkB

Mutation patterns of DNA adducts, such as mutational spectra and signatures, are useful tools for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. Mutational spectra of carcinogens derive from three sources: adduct formation, replication bypass, and repair. Here, we consider the repair aspect of 1,N6-ethenoadenine (εA) by the 2-oxoglutarate/Fe(II)-dependent AlkB family enzymes. Specifically, we investigated εA repair across 16 possible sequence contexts (5′/3′ flanking base to εA varied as G/A/T/C). The results revealed that repair efficiency is altered according to sequence, enzyme, and strand context (ss- versus ds-DNA). The methods can be used to study other aspects of mutational spectra or other pathways of repair

Annealing process optimization of 3D coil core based on annealing simulation experiment and thermal mechanical coupling model

Annealing is necessary to reduce the residual stress and no-load loss of 3D coil core. In production, because monitoring the changes in temperature and stress of 3D coil core in real time is impossible, the trial and error method is usually used to formulate the annealing process parameters. The annealing simulation experiment of grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) is carried out to explore the influence of soaking time on iron loss and magnetic flux density. The mechanical properties of GOES are tested, and the true stress–strain curves at different temperatures are obtained. Based on the existing research and experimental results, an anisotropic thermal mechanical coupling model of 3D coil core is established. An optimization scheme of 3D coil core annealing process is obtained, considering the temperature difference, stress and strain. According to the onsite measured parameters, the annealing process is simulated and optimized by the coupling model. Results show that the total annealing time is shortened by about 18.7% without increasing the stress and strain

Unconventional High-Value Utilization of Metallurgical Iron-Bearing Dust as Shielding Composite for Medical X-rays

Iron-bearing dust is one of the main solid wastes in the metallurgical industry, and currently, it is mainly disposed of according to accumulation, which brings great environmental risks. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of preparing X-ray shielding materials by hot pressing using iron-bearing dust as the filler and polyimide resin powder as the matrix. A CT imaging system was used to test the X-ray shielding performance of the materials. The results demonstrated that shielding material I-95 had a shielding percentage of more than 95% at a tube voltage of 55 kVp and a tube current of 2 mA, and the thickness of the half-value layer was less than 0.68 mm. The shielding percentage and mass attenuation coefficient of the composites showed an increasing trend with increased filler addition, tube voltage, and tube current intensity, while the half-value layer thickness showed the opposite trend. Furthermore, the shielding percentage of composites with different fillers was affected by the voltage and hardly affected by the current variation. The dominant part of the shielding material interaction across the tested tube voltage range was photoelectric absorption. The prepared composite is a low-cost material and has high efficiency and is an ideal medical X-ray shielding material

Case report: Gene mutations and clinical characteristics of four patients with osteopetrosis

Osteopetrosis is characterized by increased bone density caused by decreased osteoclasts or dysfunction of their differentiation and absorption properties, usually caused by biallelic variants of the TCIRG1(OMIM:604592)and CLCN7(OMIM:602727) genes. Herein, the clinical, biochemical, and radiological manifestations of osteopetrosis in four Chinese children are described. Whole-exome sequencing identified compound heterozygous variants of the CLCN7 and TCIRG1 genes in these patients. In Patient 1, two novel variants were identified in CLCN7:c.880T &gt; G(p.F294V) and c.686C &gt; G(p.S229X). Patient 2 harbored previously reported a single gene variant c.643G &gt; A(p.G215R) in CLCN7. Patient 3 had a novel variant c.569A &gt; G(p.N190S) and a novel frameshift variant c.1113dupG(p.N372fs) in CLCN7. Patient 4 had a frameshift variant c.43delA(p.K15fs) and variant c.C1360T in TCIRG1, resulting in the formation of a premature termination codon (p.R454X), both of which were reported previously. Our results expand the spectrum of identified genetic variation in osteopetrosis and provide a deeper understanding of the relations between genotype and clinical characteristics of this disorder