Comparative Proteomic Analysis of Serum from Patients with Systemic Sclerosis and Sclerodermatous GVHD. Evidence of Defective Function of Factor H

BACKGROUND: Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease characterized by immunological and vascular abnormalities. Until now, the cause of SSc remains unclear. Sclerodermatous graft-versus-host disease (ScGVHD) is one of the most severe complications following bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for haematological disorders. Since the first cases, the similarity of ScGVHD to SSc has been reported. However, both diseases could have different etiopathogeneses. The objective of this study was to identify new serum biomarkers involved in SSc and ScGVHD. METHODOLOGY: Serum was obtained from patients with SSc and ScGVHD, patients without ScGVHD who received BMT for haematological disorders and healthy controls. Bi-dimensional electrophoresis (2D) was carried out to generate maps of serum proteins from patients and controls. The 2D maps underwent image analysis and differently expressed proteins were identified. Immuno-blot analysis and ELISA assay were used to validate the proteomic data. Hemolytic assay with sheep erythrocytes was performed to evaluate the capacity of Factor H (FH) to control complement activation on the cellular surface. FH binding to endothelial cells (ECs) was also analysed in order to assess possible dysfunctions of this protein. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Fourteen differentially expressed proteins were identified. We detected pneumococcal antibody cross-reacting with double stranded DNA in serum of all bone marrow transplanted patients with ScGVHD. We documented higher levels of FH in serum of SSc and ScGVHD patients compared healthy controls and increased sheep erythrocytes lysis after incubation with serum of diffuse SSc patients. In addition, we observed that FH binding to ECs was reduced when we used serum from these patients. CONCLUSIONS: The comparative proteomic analysis of serum from SSc and ScGVHD patients highlighted proteins involved in either promoting or maintaining an inflammatory state. We also found a defective function of Factor H, possibly associated with ECs damage

EFFECTS OF DRAWING STRAIN AND ANNEALING ON THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES FOR HEAVILY COLD DRAWN HYPER-EUTECTOID STEEL WIRES

In this study, the effects of drawing strain and annealing at low temperature on the mechanical properties have been investigated. The mechanical properties, such as hardness and strength and fatigue, were performed. The fatigue tests of hyper eutectoid steel wires were performed by the Hunter-type tester, specially designed for ultra thin wires (< 0.2mm phi), under the bending stress. The mechanical properties of the steel wires increased with increase of annealing temperature, and the increase was more significant with higher drawing strain. Also, as annealing temperature increased, the hardness and tensile strength gradually increased up to 200 degrees C and then dramatically decreased at above temperature. However, bending fatigue limit, including fatigue life, showed the some different phenomena with increase of annealing temperature. These different behaviors depending on annealing temperature were discussed in terms of microstructural parameter changes such as pearlite morphology, rearrangement and coalescence of the dislocations.11sciescopu

Integrated group technology, cell formation, process planning, and production planning with application to the emergency room

In this paper an integrated approach for the formation of parts and machine families in group technology is developed. The integrated approach is used to solve cell formation, process planning, and production planning simultaneously. The given information is part processing sequence, part production volume, part alternative processing plans, and part processing times. The approach is used to determine the machine-part cells and part processing plans, while the total intercell part flow is minimized. Also, the convergence of the algorithm is investigated. The approach goes across and beyond the group technology methods by considering sequencing, production planning, process planning, and part-machine cellular information simultaneously. Two methods are investigated: exact (optimal) and heuristic. The approach first solves an integer programming problem to find processing plans and then uses a procedure to form the machine-part cells. The proposed approach solves the problem iteratively until a set of plans for machinepart cell formations is obtained with minimal intercell part flow or interflow cost. An example is presented to explain the developed approach. Experimental results are also provided. An extension of the approach for solving the operations planning of an emergency room is also covered. In this extension of the approach, the application of cell formation provides a solution to efficiently managing patients and utilizing resources. By grouping patients by their needed medical procedures, time and resource efficiency is accomplished. An application to ER of University Hospitals of Case Western Reserve University is given

Minimum-latency data gathering scheduling in multi-channel wireless sensor networks using only secure links

© 2019 IEEE. Many applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are time-critical as well as requiring secure operations, and have serious consequences if the network is compromised. WSNs are often deployed in hostile environments where communication is monitored and the sensor nodes are subject to be compromised or manipulated by adversaries. For such WSNs, it is very important to have secure communications among the sensors. The m-composite key pre-distribution schemes proposed in [3] is one of the most popular mechanisms for communication security of WSNs. With such a security scheme, two nodes within each other\u27s transmission range have a secure link between them if their key rings have at least m keys in common. In this paper, we develop an efficient scheduling algorithm for data gathering on secure WSNs. The link between two nearby sensors may not be secure and cannot be used for communication. Such a nature of secure WSNs makes the analysis of any scheduling algorithm for gathering much more challenging than on WSNs that can be modeled as disk graphs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that develops fast gathering schedules for multihop WSNs where the network topology cannot be modeled as a disk graph