古代東亞各國所見的大酺活動

歷代施政，能受人民以歡樂心情迎接者，爲數不多，或歷時不久。筆者歷思往事，以爲實施時間久，百姓實質受惠大，而無太大弊端者，蓋有三事：一日鄉飲酒，二日養老，三日大酺。大酺一事，由朝廷允許百姓自由歡樂飲酒若干日。事自受人民歡迎，然自戰國晚葉趙國率先實施起，大盛於唐之高宗、則天兩朝，至宋朝猶見其尾聲，堪稱史上最受歡迎禮典之一。不僅此也，韓、日、越等東亞各國亦斷斷續續舉行大酺禮典，堪稱頗有意趣之活動，可惜學界多不甚注意。筆者以爲學界可研究之事本不爲少，且史上之佳話並非無有，故取歡樂之事研究之，似亦人生可爲之事，大酺活動不失爲其中一種。 Not many rulers in history received people’s warm welcome, at least not for long even if they did. The author argues long rulership that brought forth a thriving time and without fundamental flaws usually performed three rituals: 1. xiang yinjiu 鄉飲酒 (district wine drinking); 2. yang lao 養老 (veneration for the elderly); 3. da pu 大酺 (feasting). Da pu refers to the ritual that the royal court approved of people’s feasting and drinking for a few days. One of the most welcomed rituals in history, da fu started in the State of Zhao in the late Warring States period, enjoyed its heyday during the rules of Emperor Gaozong and Empress Wu in the Tang dynasty, and gradually saw its end in the Song dynasty. Da pu not only was held in China, but also was seen in many East Asian countries including Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc. However, this ritual has not attracted sufficient scholarly treatment. The authors fills this gap by researching on the praises of da pu, this enjoyable ritual

Ni-Doped Sr\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3eFe\u3csub\u3e1.5\u3c/sub\u3eMo\u3csub\u3e0.5\u3c/sub\u3eO\u3csub\u3e6-δ\u3c/sub\u3e as Anode Materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

10% Ni-doped Sr2Fe1.5Mo0.5O6-δ with A-site deficiency is prepared to induce in situ precipitation of B-site metals under anode conditions in solid oxide fuel cells. XRD, SEM and TEM results show that a significant amount of nano-sized Ni-Fe alloy metal phase has precipitated out from Sr1.9Fe1.4Ni0.1Mo0.5O6-δ upon reduction at 800◦C in H2. The conductivity of the reduced composite reaches 29 S cm−1 at 800◦C in H2. Furthermore, fuel cell performance of the composite anode Sr1.9Fe1.4Ni0.1Mo0.5O6-δ-SDC is investigated using H2 as fuel and ambient air as oxidant with La0.8Sr0.2Ga0.87Mg0.13O3 electrolyte and La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe0.8O3 cathode. The cell peak power density reaches 968 mW cm−2 at 800◦C and the voltage is relatively stable under a constant current load of 0.54 A cm−2. After 5 redox cycles of the anode at 800◦C, the fuel cell performance doesn’t suffer any degradation, indicating good redox stability of Sr1.9Fe1.4Ni0.1Mo0.5O6-δ. Peak power density of 227 mW cm−2 was also obtained when propane is used as fuel. These results indicate that a self-generated metal-ceramic composite can been successfully derived from Sr2Fe1.5Mo0.5O6-δ by compositional modifications and Sr1.9Fe1.4Ni0.1Mo0.5O6-δ is a very promising solid oxide fuel cell anode material with enhanced catalytic activity and inherited good redox stability from the parent ceramic material

Optimisation of a piezoelectric system for energy harvesting from traffic vibrations

Piezoelectric systems are viewed as a promising approach to energy harvesting from environmental vibrations. The energy harvested from real vibration sources is usually difficult to estimate analytically. Therefore, it is hard to optimise the associated energy harvesting system. This work investigates the optimisation of a piezoelectric cantilever system using a genetic algorithm based approach with numerical simulations. The genetic algorithm globally considers the effects of each parameter to produce an optimal frequency response to scavenge more energy from the real vibrations while the conventional sinusoidal based method can only optimise the resistive load for a given resonant frequency. Experimental acceleration data from the vibrations of a vehicle-excited manhole cover demonstrates that the optimised harvester automatically selects the right frequency and also synchronously optimises the damper and the resistive load. This method shows great potential for optimizing the energy harvesting systems with real vibration data

Absolute quantification of a plasma tRNA-derived fragment for the diagnosis and prognosis of gastric cancer

BackgroundThe transition from a healthy gastric mucosa to gastric cancer is a multi-step process. Early screening can significantly improve the survival rate of gastric cancer patients. A reliable liquid biopsy for gastric cancer prediction is urgently needed and since tRNA-derived fragments (tRFs) are abundant in various body fluids, tRFs are possible new biomarkers for gastric cancer.MethodsA total of 438 plasma samples from patients with different gastric mucosal lesions as well as healthy individuals were collected. A specific reverse transcription primer, a forward primer, a reverse primer, and a TaqMan probe were designed. A standard curve was constructed and an absolute quantitation method was devised for detection of tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP in plasma samples of individuals with differing gastric mucosa lesions. Receiver operating characteristic curves were constructed to evaluate the diagnostic values of tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP for individual with differing gastric mucosa. A Kaplan–Meier curve was established to calculate the prognostic value of tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP for advanced gastric cancer patients. Finally, a multivariate Cox regression analysis was performed to assess the independent prognostic value of tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP for advanced gastric cancer patients.ResultsA detection method for plasma tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP was successfully established. Levels of plasma tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP were shown to reflect a gradient change from healthy individuals to gastritis patients to early and advanced gastric cancer patients. Significant differences were found among individuals with differing gastric mucosa, with reduced levels of tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP significantly related to a poor prognosis. tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP was found to be an independent predictor of an unfavorable survival outcome.ConclusionsIn this study, we developed a quantitative detection method for plasma tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP that exhibited hypersensitivity, convenience, and specificity. Detection of tRF-33-P4R8YP9LON4VDP was found to be a valuable means by which to monitor different gastric mucosa and to predict patient prognosis

Multi-Point Integrated Sensing and Communication: Fusion Model and Functionality Selection

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) represents a paradigm shift, where previously competing wireless transmissions are jointly designed to operate in harmony via the shared use of the hardware platform for improving the spectral and energy efficiencies. However, due to adversarial factors such as fading and interference, ISAC may suffer from high sensing uncertainties. This paper presents a multi-point ISAC (MPISAC) system that fuses the outputs from multiple ISAC devices for achieving higher sensing performance by exploiting multi-view data redundancy. Furthermore, we propose to effectively explore the performance trade-off between sensing and communication via a functionality selection module that adaptively determines the working state (i.e., sensing or communication) of an ISAC device. The crux of our approach is to derive a fusion model that predicts the fusion accuracy via hypothesis testing and optimal voting analysis. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of MPISAC over various benchmark schemes and show that the proposed approach can effectively span the trade-off region in ISAC systems.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to appear in IEEE Wireless Communications Letter

Coordinative control of G2/M phase of the cell cycle by non-coding RNAs in hepatocellular carcinoma

Objective To investigate the interaction of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods We compared the ncRNAs and mRNAs expression profiles of hepatocellular carcinoma and adjacent tissue by microarray and RT-PCR. The relationship between different ncRNAs and mRNA was analyzed using bioinformatics tools. A regulatory model of ncRNAs in hepatocellular carcinoma cells was developed. Results A total of 1,704 differentially expressed lncRNAs, 57 miRNAs, and 2,093 mRNAs were identified by microarray analyses. There is a co-expression relationship between two ncRNAs (miRNA-125b-2-3p and lncRNA P26302). Bioinformatics analysis demonstrated cyclin-dependent kinases 1 and CyclinA2 as potential targets of miR-125b-2-3p and Polo-like kinase 1 as potential target of lncRNAP26302. All three gene are important components in the G2/M phase of cell cycle. Subsequently real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) studies confirmed these microarray results. Conclusion MiR-125b-2-3p and lncRNAP26302 may affect the G2/M phase of the cell cycle through the regulation of their respective target genes. This study shows a role of ncRNAs in pathogenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma at molecular level, providing a basis for the future investigation aiming at early diagnosis and novel treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Hybrid Optimization Algorithm of Particle Swarm Optimization and Cuckoo Search for Preventive Maintenance Period Optimization

All equipment must be maintained during its lifetime to ensure normal operation. Maintenance is one of the critical roles in the success of manufacturing enterprises. This paper proposed a preventive maintenance period optimization model (PMPOM) to find an optimal preventive maintenance period. By making use of the advantages of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and cuckoo search (CS) algorithm, a hybrid optimization algorithm of PSO and CS is proposed to solve the PMPOM problem. The test functions show that the proposed algorithm exhibits more outstanding performance than particle swarm optimization and cuckoo search. Experiment results show that the proposed algorithm has advantages of strong optimization ability and fast convergence speed to solve the PMPOM problem

High density lipoprotein downregulates angiotensin II type 1 receptor and inhibits angiotensin II-induced cardiac hypertrophy

Angiotensin II (AngII) and its type receptor (AT1-R) play important roles in the development of cardiac hypertrophy. Low level of high density lipoprotein (HDL) is also an independent risk factor for cardiac hypertrophy. We therefore investigated in the present study whether HDL inhibits cardiac hypertrophy relatively to inhibition of AngII and AT1-R in both in vitro and in vivo experiments. Stimulation of cultured cardiomyocytes of neonatal rats with AngII for 24 h and infusion of AngII in mice for 2 weeks resulted in marked cardiac hypertrophic responses including increased protein synthesis, enlarged sizes of cardiomyocytes and hearts, upregulated phosphorylation levels of protein kinases and reprogrammed expression of specific genes, all of which were significantly attenuated by the treatment with HDL. Furthermore, AngII-treatment induced upregulation of AT-R expression either in cultured cardiomyocytes or in hearts of mice and HDL significantly suppressed the upregulation of AT1-R. Our results suggest that HDL may abrogate AngII-induced cardiac hypertrophy through downregulation of AT1-R expression. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved