Partially Penalized Immersed Finite Element Methods for Elliptic Interface Problems

This article presents new immersed finite element (IFE) methods for solving the popular second order elliptic interface problems on structured Cartesian meshes even if the involved interfaces have nontrivial geometries. These IFE methods contain extra stabilization terms introduced only at interface edges for penalizing the discontinuity in IFE functions. With the enhanced stability due to the added penalty, not only these IFE methods can be proven to have the optimal convergence rate in the H1-norm provided that the exact solution has sufficient regularity, but also numerical results indicate that their convergence rates in both the H1-norm and the L2-norm do not deteriorate when the mesh becomes finer which is a shortcoming of the classic IFE methods in some situations. Trace inequalities are established for both linear and bilinear IFE functions that are not only critical for the error analysis of these new IFE methods, but also are of a great potential to be useful in error analysis for other IFE methods

Radiation and Environmental Biophysics: From Single Cells to Small Animals

In this chapter, two of very unique and novel radiation technologies for modern radiobiology studies are reviewed. First of all, it is concentrated on the developments of accelerator-based particle microbeam system, which has been effectively used for studying the puzzle of “radiation-induced bystander effect.” In addition, a recent published single-cell microbeam study, which is aiming to directly measure a cell’s radio-sensitivity combining microbeam system with self-referencing biosensor, is included. Then, toward the study of realistic irradiation scenarios in radiation biology in particular, such as a nuclear attack for homeland security concerns or a potential large-scale radiological event, there would be a major need to ascertain, within a few days, the radiation doses received by tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals. Specifically, biological tests would need to be established to estimate the likelihood of such radiation exposure to result in serious health consequences; tests that would then be applied to decide on the correct treatments that might mitigate the short- and long-term health effects of such radiation exposure. However, because of the complexity and difficulty of conducting tests in such circumstance, innovative irradiation systems and technology are required. So the new developments of small animal irradiation system for evaluating the radiation risk and carrying out animal model radiobiology experiments within the mimicked radiation scenarios are covered in the second half of this chapter

Cytoplasmic chromatin triggers inflammation in senescence and cancer

Chromatin is traditionally viewed as a nuclear entity that regulates gene expression and silencing. However, we recently discovered the presence of cytoplasmic chromatin fragments that pinch off from intact nuclei of primary cells during senescence, a form of terminal cell-cycle arrest associated with pro-inflammatory responses. The functional significance of chromatin in the cytoplasm is unclear. Here we show that cytoplasmic chromatin activates the innate immunity cytosolic DNA-sensing cGAS-STING (cyclic GMP-AMP synthase linked to stimulator of interferon genes) pathway, leading both to short-term inflammation to restrain activated oncogenes and to chronic inflammation that associates with tissue destruction and cancer. The cytoplasmic chromatin-cGAS-STING pathway promotes the senescence-associated secretory phenotype in primary human cells and in mice. Mice deficient in STING show impaired immuno-surveillance of oncogenic RAS and reduced tissue inflammation upon ionizing radiation. Furthermore, this pathway is activated in cancer cells, and correlates with pro-inflammatory gene expression in human cancers. Overall, our findings indicate that genomic DNA serves as a reservoir to initiate a pro-inflammatory pathway in the cytoplasm in senescence and cancer. Targeting the cytoplasmic chromatin-mediated pathway may hold promise in treating inflammation-related disorders

Superconvergent P1 honeycomb virtual elements and lifted P3 solutions

When solving the Poisson equation on honeycomb hexagonal grids, we show that the $P_1$ virtual element is three-order superconvergent in $H^1$-norm, and two-order superconvergent in $L^2$ and $L^\infty$ norms. We define a local post-process which lifts the superconvergent $P_1$ solution to a $P_3$ solution of the optimal-order approximation. The theory is confirmed by a numerical test

Pharmaceutical enterprises drug quality strategy Moran analysis considering government supervision and new media participation

The improvement of drug quality requires not only the supervision of government, but also the participation of new media. Therefore, this paper considers the impact of government regulation and new media reports on pharmaceutical enterprises, constructs a Moran Process evolutionary game model, and analyzes the evolution trajectory of pharmaceutical enterprises' choice of drug quality improvement strategy and drug cost reduction strategy. We obtain the conditions for the two strategies to achieve evolutionary stability under the dominance of external factors and the dominance of expected returns. To verify the theoretical results, we conduct a numerical simulation by the software MATLAB 2021b. The results show that, first of all, when the government penalty is high, the drug quality improvement strategy tends to become an evolutionary stable solution, increasing the penalty amount will help promote the improvement of drug quality. What's more, when the government penalty is low and the new media influence is low, the drug cost reduction strategy is easier to dominate. The higher the new media influence, the higher the probability that pharmaceutical enterprises choose the drug quality improvement strategy. Thirdly, when the number of pharmaceutical enterprises is lower than a threshold, the drug quality improvement strategy is easier to dominate. Finally, the drug quality improvement strategy is dominant when the quality cost factor is low and the government penalty is high, the drug cost reduction strategy is dominant when the quality cost factor is high and the government penalty is low. Above all, this paper provides countermeasures and suggestions for the drug quality improvement of pharmaceutical enterprises in practice

Circulating adiponectin and cardiovascular mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: evidence of sexual dimorphism

Background: The pathogenesis of cardiovascular (CV) mortality, whose rate is increased in type 2 diabetes, is poorly understood. While high serum adiponectin is associated with increased CV mortality in the general population, no data are available in type 2 diabetes. We here investigated whether this counterintuitive association was observable also in diabetic patients and whether it was sex-specific. Methods: Three prospective cohorts were analyzed: 1) Gargano Heart Study (GHS; 359 patients, 58 events/1,934 person-years; py); 2) Health Professional Follow-up Study (HPFS; 833 men, 146 events/10,024 py); 3) Nurses’ Health Study (NHS; 902 women, 144 events/15,074 py). Results: In GHS serum adiponectin predicted CV mortality in men (hazard ratio, HR, and 95% CI per standard deviation, SD, increment = 1.54, 1.19-2.01), but not women (HR = 0.98, 0.48-2.01). Circulating adiponectin predicted CV mortality in men from HPFS (HR = 1.44, 1.21-1.72), but not in women from NHS (HR = 1.08, 0.86-1.35), used as replication samples. In a pooled analysis, HRs were 1.47 (1.27-1.70) in 1,075 men and 1.07 (0.86-1.33) in 1,019 women (p for HRs heterogeneity across sexes = 0.018). Conclusions: This is the first report showing that high circulating adiponectin predicts increased CV mortality in men, but not in women with type 2 diabetes. Further studies are necessary to unravel the mechanisms through which adiponectin influences CV mortality in a sex-specific manner. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12933-014-0130-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users