Doxycycline Regulated Induction of AKT in Murine Prostate Drives Proliferation Independently of p27 Cyclin Dependent Kinase Inhibitor Downregulation

The PI3 kinase/AKT pathway has been shown to increase degradation of the p27 cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor through phosphorylation of consensus AKT sites on p27 and SKP2, and AKT driven proliferation may be checked by feedback mechanisms that increase p27 expression and induce senescence. However, these AKT sites are not conserved in mouse, and it has not been clear whether AKT negatively regulates murine p27. Transgenic mice with a probasin promoter controlled prostate specific reverse tetracycline transactivator (ARR2Pb-rtTA) were generated and used to achieve doxycycline inducible expression of a tetracycline operon regulated constitutively active myristoylated AKT1 transgene (tetO-myrAKT). Doxycycline induction of myrAKT occurred within 1 day and rapidly induced proliferation (within 4 days) and the development of prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN) lesions in ventral prostate, which did not progress to prostate cancer. Cells in these lesions expressed high levels of p27, had increased proliferation, and there was apoptosis of centrally located cells. Doxycycline withdrawal resulted in apoptosis of cells throughout the lesions and rapid clearing of hyperplastic glands, confirming in vivo the critical antiapoptotic functions of AKT. Significantly, analyses of prostates immediately after initiating doxycycline treatment further showed that p27 expression was rapidly increased, coincident with the induction of myrAKT and prior to the development of hyperplasia and PIN. These findings establish in vivo that murine p27 is not negatively regulated by AKT and indicate that proliferation in PI3 kinase/AKT pathway driven mouse models is mediated by p27 independent mechanisms that may be distinct from those in human. Further studies using prostate specific doxycycline regulated transgene expression may be useful to assess the acute effects of inducing additional transgenes in adult murine prostate epithelium, and to assess the requirements for continued transgene expression in transgene induced tumors

Modeling Magnesia-Phosphate Cement Paste at the Micro-Scale

In this paper, a computer model is established to simulate the microstructure of magnesia-phosphate cement paste at the micro-scale. The chemical reaction in the paste is analyzed first, based on which the microstructure is modeled through interacted growing and eroding spherical particles representing the solid phases. The pore structure of the simulated paste is characterized by a closing operation based algorithm. It is found that the simulated pore size distribution curves are consistent with corresponding experimental results

EQUIPMENT RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION BASED ON EFFICIENCY EVALUATION AND COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

In this study, a method for optimizing equipment resources based on efficiency evaluation and the relative advantage relationship is proposed. An efficiency evaluation and optimization model are also constructed, and the corresponding algorithm is designed. The effects of altering the decision-matrix canonical method and quantity discount on multi-attribute decision-making are studied by investigating the available feasible solutions. The results show that the proposed efficiency evaluation and optimization model can yield several groups of optimal feasible solutions. Additionally, combining it with a multi-attribute decision model can enable it to effectively select and rank feasible solutions while avoiding the adverse effect of different decision-specification methods on the decision-making result. The decision method and quantity discount considerably influence the multi-attribute decision-making results, implying their importance when optimizing the equipment resources with respect to a manufacturing process

Bilateral association tracking with parzen window density estimation

Abstract Multi‐object tracking is an important branch of computer vision, which is mostly used for behavior recognition and event analysis. At present, most of the research focuses on the accuracy of tracking. However, the real‐time performance is also urgently desired but there is lack of research. As a result, Deepsort, proposed 5 years ago, is still the most widely used tracker in real applications. In this paper, a Bilateral Association Tracking (BAT) framework is proposed. It uses tracklet as the basic node instead of discrete detection for tracking. Meanwhile, a Parzen density based Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (P‐HAC) algorithm is introduced to describe the density distribution of targets and generate tracklets with high confidence. In addition, Dual Appearance Features (DAF) is proposed which considers both spatial and temporal features of tracklets and promotes the accuracy of tracklet association. Experiments are conducted on popular benchmarks such as MOT2017, Visdrone and KITTI. BAT outperforms Deepsort on both association accuracy and trajectory integrity without obvious efficiency decline. Compared with other state‐of‐the‐art trackers, BAT shows significant advantage on computational cost while performing competitive tracking accuracy as well. It is hoped that the research can promote the applications on real‐time tracking in the near future

Low ambient temperature and air pollution are associated with hospitalization incidence of coronary artery disease: Insights from a cross-sectional study in Northeast China

Previous studies have established a link between fluctuations in climate and increased mortality due to coronary artery disease (CAD). However, there remains a need to explore and clarify the evidence for associations between meteorological changes and hospitalization incidences related to CAD and its subtypes, especially in cold regions. This study aimed to systematically investigate the relationship between exposure to meteorological changes, air pollutants, and hospitalization for CAD in cold regions

Synthesis and characterization of nitrogen doped ZnO tetrapods and application in photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants under visible light

In this report, the nitrogen doped ZnO tetrapods are prepared by using the solid reaction of ZnO tetrapods and urea at 600 degrees C. XRD shows that the crystal structure of nitrogen doped ZnO is unchanged maybe due to the low percentage of the nitrogen doping. SEM proves that the nitrogen doping occurs on the surface of ZnO. Furthermore, the photocatalytic activity of the nitrogen doped ZnO tetrapods is evaluated for Bisphenol A photodegradation under visible light irradiation. The results show that the photocatalytic activity of nitrogen doped ZnO tetrapods is higher than those of pure ZnO tetrapods and Degussa TiO2 P25, indicating the great effect of nitrogen doping on the photocatalytic activity of nitrogen doped ZnO tetrapods. Finally, a mechanism is proposed to explain the photodegradation of BPA over nitrogen doped ZnO tetrapods photocatalyst under visible light irradiation. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Mechanical Properties and Tensile Model of Hemp-Fiber-Reinforced Poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) Composite

The preparation of a high-strength biodegradable plastic has always been the focus of academia. Here, we prepared two biodegradable composites using silane coupling-agent-modified hemp fibers (Si-HF) and unmodified hemp fibers (HF) with butylene adipate-co-terephthalate (PBAT), respectively. We compared the differences of Si-HF/PBAT and HF/PBAT in terms of micromorphology, density, mechanical properties, thermal stability and biodegradability. The Si-HF has better interface interaction between the hemp and the PBAT matrix than the HF, which makes Si-HF/PBAT have better tensile properties. Moreover, Si-HF/PBAT has stronger tensile strength and modulus than HF/PBAT. Our results also show that the two composites have good biodegradability. This study provides an important reference for the subsequent development and utilization of hemp fibers