Effects of turbulence-chemistry interactions on auto-ignition and flame structure for n-dodecane spray combustion

The Engine Combustion Network (ECN) spray A under diesel engine conditions is investigated with a non-adiabatic 5D Flamelet Generated Manifolds (FGM) model with the consideration of detailed chemical kinetic mechanisms. The enthalpy deficit due to droplet vapourisation is considered by employing an additional controlling parameter in the FGM library. In this FGM model, ß-PDF is used for the PDF integration over the control variable space. Validation results in non-reacting conditions indicate relatively good agreement between the predicted and experimental data in terms of liquid and vapour penetrations and mixture fraction spatial distribution. In reacting conditions, the effects of variance of mixture fraction and progress variable were examined. The ignition delay time and the quasi-steady flame structure are both affected by the variances. The variance of mixture fraction delays the ignition process and the variance of progress variable accelerates it. For mixture fraction, the ignition process is quicker at any stage in the case of neglecting variance. While things are more complex for progress variable, the ignition process is advanced in the case of neglecting variance at early times, but surpassed by the case of ß-PDF later and until auto-ignition. When variance of mixture fraction is considered, the OH mass fraction shows a wide spatial distribution. While if not, a very thin flame is observed with a higher peak in OH, and a very large lift-off length. The variance of progress variable has little impact on the global flame structure, but makes the flame lift-off length much shorter. This study confirms the general observation, that the variance of mixture fraction is of higher importance in high temperature non-premixed combustion, however, we found that the variance of progress variable is far from negligible.This work was supported by Major Research Plan of the National Natural Sci-ence Foundation of China (No. 91541205); National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 51876140]; the project of National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFE0102800); This project has also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk lodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 713673. Ambrus Both has received financial support through the ”la Caixa” INPhINIT Fellowship Grant for Doctoral studies at Spanish Research Centres of Excellence, ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation, Barcelona, Spain.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A novel 4-(1,3,4-thiadiazole-2-ylthio)pyrimidine derivative inhibits cell proliferation by suppressing the MEK/ERK signaling pathway in colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common types of malignant cancers worldwide. Although molecularly targeted therapies have significantly improved treatment outcomes, most of these target inhibitors are resistant. Novel inhibitors as potential anti-cancer drug candidates are still needed to be discovered. Therefore, in the present study, we synthesized a novel 4-(1,3,4-thiadiazole-2-ylthio)pyrimidine derivative (compound 4) using fragment- and structure-based techniques and then investigated the anti-cancer effect and underlying mechanism of anti-CRC. The results revealed that compound 4 significantly inhibited HCT116 cell proliferation with IC50 values of 8.04 ± 0.94 µmol L–1 after 48 h and 5.52 ± 0.42 µmol L–1 after 72 h, respectively. Compound 4 also inhibited colony formation, migration, and invasion of HCT116 cells in a dose-dependent manner, as well as inducing cell apoptosis and arresting the cell cycle in the G2/M phase. In addition, compound 4 was able to inhibit the activation of the MEK/ERK signaling in HCT116 cells. And compound 4 yielded the same effects as the MEK inhibitor U0126 on cell apoptosis and MEK/ERK-related proteins. These findings suggested that compound 4 inhibited cell proliferation and growth, and induced cell apoptosis, indicating its use as e a novel and potent anti-cancer agent against CRC via the MEK/ERK signaling pathway

SMAUG: End-to-End Full-Stack Simulation Infrastructure for Deep Learning Workloads

In recent years, there has been tremendous advances in hardware acceleration of deep neural networks. However, most of the research has focused on optimizing accelerator microarchitecture for higher performance and energy efficiency on a per-layer basis. We find that for overall single-batch inference latency, the accelerator may only make up 25-40%, with the rest spent on data movement and in the deep learning software framework. Thus far, it has been very difficult to study end-to-end DNN performance during early stage design (before RTL is available) because there are no existing DNN frameworks that support end-to-end simulation with easy custom hardware accelerator integration. To address this gap in research infrastructure, we present SMAUG, the first DNN framework that is purpose-built for simulation of end-to-end deep learning applications. SMAUG offers researchers a wide range of capabilities for evaluating DNN workloads, from diverse network topologies to easy accelerator modeling and SoC integration. To demonstrate the power and value of SMAUG, we present case studies that show how we can optimize overall performance and energy efficiency for up to 1.8-5x speedup over a baseline system, without changing any part of the accelerator microarchitecture, as well as show how SMAUG can tune an SoC for a camera-powered deep learning pipeline.Comment: 14 pages, 20 figure

Identification of BC005512 as a DNA Damage Responsive Murine Endogenous Retrovirus of GLN Family Involved in Cell Growth Regulation

Genotoxicity assessment is of great significance in drug safety evaluation, and microarray is a useful tool widely used to identify genotoxic stress responsive genes. In the present work, by using oligonucleotide microarray in an in vivo model, we identified an unknown gene BC005512 (abbreviated as BC, official full name: cDNA sequence BC005512), whose expression in mouse liver was specifically induced by seven well-known genotoxins (GTXs), but not by non-genotoxins (NGTXs). Bioinformatics revealed that BC was a member of the GLN family of murine endogenous retrovirus (ERV). However, the relationship to genotoxicity and the cellular function of GLN are largely unknown. Using NIH/3T3 cells as an in vitro model system and quantitative real-time PCR, BC expression was specifically induced by another seven GTXs, covering diverse genotoxicity mechanisms. Additionally, dose-response and linear regression analysis showed that expression level of BC in NIH/3T3 cells strongly correlated with DNA damage, measured using the alkaline comet assay,. While in p53 deficient L5178Y cells, GTXs could not induce BC expression. Further functional studies using RNA interference revealed that down-regulation of BC expression induced G1/S phase arrest, inhibited cell proliferation and thus suppressed cell growth in NIH/3T3 cells. Together, our results provide the first evidence that BC005512, a member from GLN family of murine ERV, was responsive to DNA damage and involved in cell growth regulation. These findings could be of great value in genotoxicity predictions and contribute to a deeper understanding of GLN biological functions

Comparative Analysis of Hulless Barley Transcriptomes to Regulatory Effects of Phosphorous Deficiency

Hulless barley is a cold-resistant crop widely planted in the northwest plateau of China. It is also the main food crop in this region. Phosphorus (P), as one of the important essential nutrient elements, regulates plant growth and defense. This study aimed to analyze the development and related molecular mechanisms of hulless barley under P deficiency and explore the regulatory genes so as to provide a basis for subsequent molecular breeding research. Transcriptome analysis was performed on the root and leaf samples of hulless barley cultured with different concentrations of KH2PO4 (1 mM and 10 μM) Hoagland solution. A total of 46,439 genes were finally obtained by the combined analysis of leaf and root samples. Among them, 325 and 453 genes had more than twofold differences in expression. These differentially expressed genes (DEGs) mainly participated in the abiotic stress biosynthetic process through Gene Ontology prediction. Moreover, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes showed that DEGs were mainly involved in photosynthesis, plant hormone signal transduction, glycolysis, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and synthesis of metabolites. These pathways also appeared in other abiotic stresses. Plants initiated multiple hormone synergistic regulatory mechanisms to maintain growth under P-deficient conditions. Transcription factors (TFs) also proved these predictions. The enrichment of ARR-B TFs, which positively regulated the phosphorelay-mediated cytokinin signal transduction, and some other TFs (AP2, GRAS, and ARF) was related to plant hormone regulation. Some DEGs showed different values in their FPKM (fragment per kilobase of transcript per million mapped reads), but the expression trends of genes responding to stress and phosphorylation remained highly consistent. Therefore, in the case of P deficiency, the first response of plants was the expression of stress-related genes. The effects of this stress on plant metabolites need to be further studied to improve the relevant regulatory mechanisms so as to further understand the importance of P in the development and stress resistance of hulless barley

The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Hordeum distichon (Poales: Poaceae)

Hordeum distichon (H. distichon) is a two-row cultivated barley used as food and as a feed crop. Chloroplast genome is an excellent way to study the genetic structure and evolutionary process of natural population of plant species in recent years. In this study, the complete chloroplast genome of H. distichon was sequenced and analyzed: the size of the chloroplast genome is 136,462 bp in length, including a large single copy region (LSC) of 80,597 bp, a small single copy region (SSC) of 12,701 bp, and a pair of inverted repeated regions (IR) of 21,582 bp; the H. distichon chloroplast genome encodes 129 genes, including 83 protein-coding genes, 38 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA genes; the overall GC-content of the chloroplast genome was 38.32%, with the LSC, SSC, and IR regions being 36.31%, 32.33%, and 43.83%, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis based on 32 species with the maximum likelihood (ML) method indicated that H. distichon was closely related to Hordeum vulgare

Identification and functional analysis of the HvWRKY1 gene associated with Qingke (Hordeum vulgare L. var. nudum Hook. f.) leaf stripe disease

To explore the role of WRKY transcription factors (TFs) in the resistance process of Qingke (Hordeum vulgare L. var. nudum Hook. f.), leaves of the leaf stripe disease-resistant variety Kunlun 14 and the susceptible variety Z1141 were sequenced by transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq). A differentially expressed gene HvnWKRY1 was identified, and its disease-resistance function was preliminarily analysed. The result showed that the open reading frame (ORF) of the gene was 1 062 bp and encoded 354 amino acids. It contained the conserved WRKY domain (273-351) and belonged to the WRKY protein family. The phylogenetic tree results showed that HvWRKY1 was most closely related to Hordeum vulgare L. The WRKY family of Qingke, barley, maize and rice were divided into categories I, II, and III, among which HvWRKY1 was located in group III. Results of the quantitative real-time fluorescence PCR (qRT-PCR) showed that the expression of HvWRKY1 was significantly (P < 0.01) higher in leaf stripe infected leaves of Kunlun 14 than that of Z1141. In Arabidopsis thaliana transformed with HvWRKY1, resistance to Botrytis cinerea was enhanced. The RNA-seq analysis showed there were 824 differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Data of the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment indicated, that a plant-pathogen interaction pathway was enriched. This study is expected to provide a theoretical basis for further studies of functioning of  the Qingke gene HvWRKY1 in resistance to the leaf stripe disease

Unveiling the mysteries of HvANS: a study on anthocyanin biosynthesis in qingke (hordeum vulgare L. var. Nudum hook. f.) seeds

Abstract Background Based on our previous research, a full-length cDNA sequence of HvANS gene was isolated from purple and white Qingke. The open reading frame (ORF) in the purple variety Nierumuzha was 1320 base pairs (bp), encoding 439 amino acids, while the ORF in the white variety Kunlun 10 was 1197 bp, encoding 398 amino acids. A nonsynonymous mutation was found at the position of 1195 bp (T/C) in the coding sequence (CDS) of the HvANS gene. We carried out a series of studies to further clarify the relationship between the HvANS gene and anthocyanin synthesis in Qingke. Results The conservative structural domain prediction results showed that the encoded protein belonged to the PLN03178 superfamily. Multiple comparisons showed that this protein had the highest homology with Hordeum vulgare, at 88.61%. The approximately 2000 bp promoter sequence of the HvANS gene was identical in both varieties. The real-time fluorescence PCR (qRT-PCR) results revealed that HvANS expression was either absent or very low in the roots, stems, leaves, and awns of Nierumuzha. In contrast, the HvANS expression was high in the seed coats and seeds of Nierumuzha. Likewise, in Kunlun 10, HvANS expression was either absent or very low, indicating a tissue-specific and variety-specific pattern for HvANS expression. The subcellular localization results indicated that HvANS was in the cell membrane. Metabolomic results indicated that the HvANS gene is closely related to the synthesis of three anthocyanin substances (Idaein chloride, Kinetin 9-riboside, and Cyanidin O-syringic acid). Yeast single hybridization experiments showed that the HvANS promoter interacted with HvANT1, which is the key anthocyanin regulatory protein. In a yeast two-hybrid experiment, we obtained two significantly different proteins (ZWY2020 and POMGNT2-like) and verified the results by qRT-PCR. Conclusions These results provide a basis for further studies on the regulatory mechanism of HvANS in the synthesis of anthocyanins in Qingke purple grains

Bioinformatics, expression analysis, and functional verification of allene oxide synthase gene HvnAOS1 and HvnAOS2 in qingke

BIOINFORMATICS, EXPRESSION ANALYSIS, AND FUNCTIONAL VERIFICATION OF ALLENE OXIDE SYNTHASE GENE HVNAOS1 AND HVNAOS2 IN QINGKE Open life sciences (Rights reserved) (-) Bioinformatics, expression analysis, and functional verification of allene oxide synthase gene HvnAOS1 and HvnAOS2 in qingke / An, Likun (CC BY) (-