Impact of inclusive leadership on employee innovative behavior : Perceived organizational support as a mediator

This research was financially supported by the National Social Science Foundation (14BGL073), Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Sciences Research Planning Fund Project (19YJA0056), Shandong Social Science Planning Fund Program (17CLYJ26), Major Program of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shandong University (17RWZD21), Bing Liu as the funding recipients.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Research Progress in Finerenone in Cardiovascular Diseases

Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRA) have significant therapeutic effects on heart failure, hypertension, chronic kidney disease and primary aldosteronism. However, steroid MRA can cause hyperkalemia, deterioration of renal insufficiency, menstrual disorder and male breast development, and consequently has found limited clinical applications. In recent years, basic and clinical studies have confirmed that finerenone is a new non-steroidal MRA with high receptor affinity and selectivity, which can decrease adverse effects such as hyperkalemia and exert powerful cardioprotective effects. Herein, the structure, function, pharmacological mechanism and adverse effects of finerenone are summarized, and its cardiovascular protective effects and clinical applications are described in detail, to aid in understanding of the roles of finerenone in treating cardiovascular diseases and to explore future directions

Separation of Water-in-Heavy Oil Emulsions Using Porous Particles in Coalescence Column

Separation of water from water-in-heavy-oil (W/O) emulsions has been a costly problem. Due to the high viscosity of heavy oil, increasing the temperature of the emulsion has been one of the most common methods of separating water from W/O emulsions. The other methods include adding demulsifiers and using coalescence media. For the treatment of water in oil emulsions, providing a strongly water-wet coalescing media is the key for the coalescence of water droplets when the oil is the continuous phase. Laboratory tests and field applications have shown that use of the coalescence media can significantly improve the oil-water separation efficiency by reducing demulsifier concentration, treatment temperature, and residence time of the emulsion stream in separators. Various pack materials and methods have been tested for coalescence media by many researchers with no success due to the fact that water-wet material packed in a coalescence column is not able to remain water-wet in a heavy oil environment. In this study the principle of capillarity and the mechanism of wetting film in porous media are applied in designing the coalescence media. Water-wet porous particles are used for the first time in the coalescing column to enhance the separation of water form water-in-heavy-oil emulsions. Experimental results of this study show this type of particles can remain water-wet in an oil environment and can significantly enhance the coalescence of water droplets in water-in-heavy-oil emulsions. The coalescing column test results show that the flow of the emulsion through the 10 cm coalescing column reduced water content from 44.37% to 21.54% (51% reduction) at 80oC, without using demulsifier. This result indicates that the coalescing column is effective in helping water droplets coalesce. The results also demonstrate that the coalescing column can reduce the water content beyond what was reached in gravity separation with a high dosage of demulsifier. At a fixed temperature of 80oC, and with a settling time of 4 hours, when the dosage of the selected demulsifier changed from 50 to 100 to 150 ppm, water content reached 10.49%, 1.32% and 0.64%, respectively, with the use of a 10 cm coalescing column. Using the coalescing column reduced water content in the heavy oil by 38%, 89%, and 93%, compared to the water contents reached in the separation with demulsifier dosages of 50, 100, and 150ppm, respectively, without using the column. These results indicate that the effect of adding a coalescing column to water separation is significant, as compared to just using a demulsifier in gravity separation. More importantly, flow through the coalescing column could reduce the water content in the heavy oil to a very low level (<1.0%) and, at the same time, reduce the consumption of demulsifier.2 year

Data-driven gradient-based point-to-point iterative learning control for non-linear systems

Iterative learning control (ILC) is a well established methodology which has proven successful in achieving accurate tracking control for repeated tasks. However, the majority of ILC algorithms require a nominal plant model and are sensitive to modelling mismatch. This paper focusses on the class of gradient based ILC algorithms and proposes a data-driven ILC implementation applicable to a general class of nonlinear systems, in which an explicit model of the plantdynamics is not required. The update of the control signal is generated by an additional experiment executed between ILC trials. The framework is furtherextended by allowing only specific reference points to be tracked, thereby enabling faster convergence. Necessary convergence conditions and corresponding convergence rates for both approaches are derived theoretically.The proposed data-driven approaches are demonstrated through application to a stroke rehabilitation problem requiring accurate control of nonlinear artificially stimulated muscle dynamics

A Novel Postconditioning Approach Attenuates Myocardial Ischaemia-Reperfusion Injury in Rats

Background: Ischaemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) is the damage that occurs when blood flow is restored to a tissue or organ after a period of ischaemia. Postconditioning is a therapeutic strategy aimed at reducing the tissue damage caused by IRI. Postconditioning in rodents is a useful tool to investigate the potential mechanisms of postconditioning. Currently, there is no convenient approach for postconditioning rodents. Methods: Rats were subjected to a balloon postconditioning procedure. A balloon was used to control the flow in the vessel. This allowed for easy and precise manipulation of perfusion. Evans blue and triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) double staining were used to determine the infarct size. Apoptosis in the myocardium was visualised and quantified by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL). Western blotting was performed to assess the expression of key apoptotic proteins, i.e., B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2), Bcl-2 Associated X (Bax), and cleaved caspase-3. Results: The balloon control approach to postconditioning provided accurate control of coronary blood flow and simplified the postconditioning manipulation. Infarct size reduction was observed in IRI rats after post-conditioning. There was a decrease in cardiac apoptosis in IRI rats after conditioning, as detected by TUNEL staining. IRI rats showed increased Bcl-2 levels and decreased Bax and cleaved caspase-3 levels in the myocardium. Conclusions: Postconditioning was successfully applied in rats using this novel approach. Postconditioning with this approach reduced infarct size and apoptosis in the area at risk

Disturbance observer based iterative learning control for upper limb rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is essential to recover the motor function of patients after stroke. In clinic cure, voluntary movements are encouraged to accelerate the recovery. However, for the rehabilitation system based on functional electrical stimulation (FES), voluntary movements are unpredictable and act as input disturbance, which would reduce the control precision. In addition, an accurate model of the human musculoskeletal dynamics is usually not available. In this paper, the upper-limb rehabilitation is described first and simplified to a linear nominal model. To deal with the aperiodic voluntary movements and model uncertainty, disturbance observer (DOB) is introduced as the inner-loop of the rehabilitation control system. The suppression of DOB for voluntary movements and model uncertainty is analysed in frequency domain. The stability of DOB is discussed and a criterion is given. To achieve high precision tracking control, iterative learning control (ILC) is employed. Combined with DOB, a variant gain gradient ILC method is designed based on the nominal model, which could enhance the performance and speed up the convergence. To validate the proposed methods, simulations are performed and compared in the end