Proteomic and Bioinformatics Analyses of Mouse Liver Microsomes

Microsomes are derived mostly from endoplasmic reticulum and are an ideal target to investigate compound metabolism, membrane-bound enzyme functions, lipid-protein interactions, and drug-drug interactions. To better understand the molecular mechanisms of the liver and its diseases, mouse liver microsomes were isolated and enriched with differential centrifugation and sucrose gradient centrifugation, and microsome membrane proteins were further extracted from isolated microsomal fractions by the carbonate method. The enriched microsome proteins were arrayed with two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DE) and carbonate-extracted microsome membrane proteins with one-dimensional gel electrophoresis (1DE). A total of 183 2DE-arrayed proteins and 99 1DE-separated proteins were identified with tandem mass spectrometry. A total of 259 nonredundant microsomal proteins were obtained and represent the proteomic profile of mouse liver microsomes, including 62 definite microsome membrane proteins. The comprehensive bioinformatics analyses revealed the functional categories of those microsome proteins and provided clues into biological functions of the liver. The systematic analyses of the proteomic profile of mouse liver microsomes not only reveal essential, valuable information about the biological function of the liver, but they also provide important reference data to analyze liver disease-related microsome proteins for biomarker discovery and mechanism clarification of liver disease

Hypoxia-ameliorated photothermal manganese dioxide nanoplatform for reversing doxorubicin resistance

Drug resistance is a huge hurdle in tumor therapy. Tumor hypoxia contributes to chemotherapy resistance by inducing the hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) pathway. To reduce tumor hypoxia, novel approaches have been devised, providing significant importance to reverse therapeutic resistance and improve the effectiveness of antitumor therapies. Herein, the nanosystem of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-templated manganese dioxide (MnO2) nanoparticles (BSA/MnO2 NPs) loaded with doxorubicin (DOX) (DOX-BSA/MnO2 NPs) developed in our previous report was further explored for their physicochemical properties and capacity to reverse DOX resistance because of their excellent photothermal and tumor microenvironment (TME) response effects. The DOX-BSA/MnO2 NPs showed good biocompatibility and hemocompatibility. Meanwhile, DOX-BSA/MnO2 NPs could greatly affect DOX pharmacokinetic properties, with prolonged circulation time and reduced cardiotoxicity, besides enhancing accumulation at tumor sites. DOX-BSA/MnO2 NPs can interact with H2O2 and H+ in TME to form oxygen and exhibit excellent photothermal effect to further alleviate hypoxia due to MnO2, reversing DOX resistance by down-regulating HIF-1α expression and significantly improving the antitumor efficiency in DOX-resistant human breast carcinoma cell line (MCF-7/ADR) tumor model. The hypoxia-ameliorated photothermal MnO2 platform is a promising strategy for revering DOX resistance

Surface in-situ reconstruction of LiNi 0.8 Co 0.1 Mn 0.1 O 2 cathode materials interacting with antimony compounds and the electrochemical performances

Abstract(#br)Interfacial stability is regarded as one of the greatest challenges in the commercialization of Ni-rich layered cathode materials for lithium battery. Surface modification can solve these issues to obtain superior electrochemical performances. Herein, LiNi 0.8 Co 0.1 Mn 0.1 O 2 (NCM811) cathode surface is reconstructed by a simple solid-state method using antimony oxides as modified agents. The modified mechanisms study show that the antimony oxides (Sb 2 O 5 ) can react with the surface lithium residues effectively and partial surface lattice lithium on the NCM811 surface to further construct the LiSbO 3 /Li–Sb– Me –O ( Me = Ni, Co, Mn) mixed coating layers. The uniform coating layer is mainly ascribed to the droplet spreading behaviors of the low smelting antimony oxides. The electrochemical measurements show that the Sb-modified NCM811 electrodes deliver 90.27% (180 mA g −1 ) and 96.07% (1440 mA g −1 ) capacity retentions over 3.0–4.3 V after 200 cycles, respectively, which are higher than 77.40 and 74.75% of the bare NCM811. The enhanced electrochemical performances are mainly benefitted to the enhanced the lithium transportation, the suppressed impedances increase and the more stable crystal structure

The total antioxidant content of more than 3100 foods, beverages, spices, herbs and supplements used worldwide

Background: A plant-based diet protects against chronic oxidative stress-related diseases. Dietary plants contain variable chemical families and amounts of antioxidants. It has been hypothesized that plant antioxidants may contribute to the beneficial health effects of dietary plants. Our objective was to develop a comprehensive food database consisting of the total antioxidant content of typical foods as well as other dietary items such as traditional medicine plants, herbs and spices and dietary supplements. This database is intended for use in a wide range of nutritional research, from in vitro and cell and animal studies, to clinical trials and nutritional epidemiological studies. Methods: We procured samples from countries worldwide and assayed the samples for their total antioxidant content using a modified version of the FRAP assay. Results and sample information (such as country of origin, product and/or brand name) were registered for each individual food sample and constitute the Antioxidant Food Table. Results: The results demonstrate that there are several thousand-fold differences in antioxidant content of foods. Spices, herbs and supplements include the most antioxidant rich products in our study, some exceptionally high. Berries, fruits, nuts, chocolate, vegetables and products thereof constitute common foods and beverages with high antioxidant values. Conclusions: This database is to our best knowledge the most comprehensive Antioxidant Food Database published and it shows that plant-based foods introduce significantly more antioxidants into human diet than non-plant foods. Because of the large variations observed between otherwise comparable food samples the study emphasizes the importance of using a comprehensive database combined with a detailed system for food registration in clinical and epidemiological studies. The present antioxidant database is therefore an essential research tool to further elucidate the potential health effects of phytochemical antioxidants in diet

Un curs interactiu sobre electrònica de potència mitjançant animacions

Considerant que l'electrònica de potència és una gran necessitat per al desenvolupament futur d’un enginyer, s’ha decidit de fer aquest treball fi de grau per aprofundir-se el seu coneixement d’aquest camp. L’objectiu principal d’aquest treball és simular els circuits d’electrònica de potència de l’assignatura “Electrònica” a través del programa en línia Falstad. L’electrònica de potència que és un bloc de coneixement que forma una part del pla d’estudis del GETI de l’ETSEIB. Un altre objectiu d’aquest treball consisteix en donar les explicacions essencials per ajudar i facilitar als lectors que vulguin entendre el funcionament principal de l’electrònica de potència, donar-los accés directament a les animacions que s’han creat i finalment que puguin fer les seves animacions amb els valors que desitgin. Al començament d’aquest treball, s’han introduït i comparat els diferents simuladors per l'electrònica de potència. Llavors, per poder fer les animacions, s’han explicat els elements principals del programa Falstad, i el seu funcionament bàsic. S’ha destacat que és un programa gratuït, conté una amplia galeria de components electrònics, és fàcil d’accedir-hi, simular i guardar i és capaç de donar el resultat immediatament. Per realitzar aquest treball, primer de tot s’ha estudiat el temari d'electrònica de potència que corresponent els temes 32-35 de l’assignatura “Electrònica” del Q8 del GEIT (ETSEIB). Un cop estudiat, es comença a fer explicacions respecte cada circuit, es considera que d’aquesta manera es pot ajudar a l’hora de simular. Després es comencen a simular els circuits de cada tema. Finalment, es revisen totes les animacions que s’han fet, perquè siguin correctes i coherents. S’han pogut fer totes les animacions menys els cicloconvertidors, amb un total de 24 animacions i s’ha avaluat el programa Falstad. Encara que no s’hagin arribat a simular els cicloconvertidors perquè no disposa dels blocs nadius de generació de polsos, considerant els altres aspectes, és un programa molt potent i ideal per crear les animacions d’electrònic

Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of an Ultrasonic Spot Welded Aluminum Alloy: The Effect of Welding Energy

The aim of this study is to evaluate the microstructures, tensile lap shear strength, and fatigue resistance of 6022-T43 aluminum alloy joints welded via a solid-state welding technique–ultrasonic spot welding (USW)–at different energy levels. An ultra-fine necklace-like equiaxed grain structure is observed along the weld line due to the occurrence of dynamic crystallization, with smaller grain sizes at lower levels of welding energy. The tensile lap shear strength, failure energy, and critical stress intensity of the welded joints first increase, reach their maximum values, and then decrease with increasing welding energy. The tensile lap shear failure mode changes from interfacial fracture at lower energy levels, to nugget pull-out at intermediate optimal energy levels, and to transverse through-thickness (TTT) crack growth at higher energy levels. The fatigue life is longer for the joints welded at an energy of 1400 J than 2000 J at higher cyclic loading levels. The fatigue failure mode changes from nugget pull-out to TTT crack growth with decreasing cyclic loading for the joints welded at 1400 J, while TTT crack growth mode remains at all cyclic loading levels for the joints welded at 2000 J. Fatigue crack basically initiates from the nugget edge, and propagates with “river-flow” patterns and characteristic fatigue striations

Robust Video Hashing Based on Multidimensional Scaling and Ordinal Measures

Multimedia hashing is a useful technology of multimedia management, e.g., multimedia search and multimedia security. This paper proposes a robust multimedia hashing for processing videos. The proposed video hashing constructs a high-dimensional matrix via gradient features in the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain of preprocessed video, learns low-dimensional features from high-dimensional matrix via multidimensional scaling, and calculates video hash by ordinal measures of the learned low-dimensional features. Extensive experiments on 8300 videos are performed to examine the proposed video hashing. Performance comparisons reveal that the proposed scheme is better than several state-of-the-art schemes in balancing the performances of robustness and discrimination

Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Ultrasonic Spot Welded Mg/Al Alloy Dissimilar Joints

Lightweight structural applications of magnesium and aluminum alloys inevitably necessitate welding and joining, especially dissimilar welding between these alloys. The objective of this study was to examine the feasibility of joining ZEK100 Mg alloy to Al6022 alloy via ultrasonic spot welding, focusing on effects of welding energy. An interface diffusion layer consisting of α-Mg and Al12Mg17 eutectic structure was observed to form, with its thickness increased from ~0.5 µm to ~30 µm with increasing welding energy from 500 J to 2000 J. The tensile lap shear peak load or strength and critical stress intensity of the welded joints first increased and then decreased with increasing welding energy, with their peak values achieved at 750 J. Fatigue life of the joints made at 750 J and 2000 J was equivalent at the lower cyclic loading levels, while it was longer for the joints made at 750 J at the higher cyclic loading levels. Fatigue fracture mode changed from interfacial failure to mainly transverse-through-thickness crack growth with decreasing cyclic loading level, which corresponded well to the bi-linear characteristic of S-N curves. Crack initiation basically occurred at the weld nugget border and at the interface between the two sheets, which can be understood via a theoretical stress analysis