A waste heat-driven cooling system based on combined organic Rankine and vapour compression refrigeration cycles

In this paper, a heat driven cooling system that essentially integrated an organic Rankine cycle power plant with a vapour compression cycle refrigerator was investigated, aiming to provide an alternative to absorption refrigeration systems. The organic Rankine cycle (ORC) subsystem recovered energy from the exhaust gases of internal combustion engines to produce mechanical power. Through a transmission unit, the produced mechanical power was directly used to drive the compressor of the vapour compression cycle system to produce a refrigeration effect. Unlike the bulky vapour absorption cooling system, both the ORC power plant and vapour compression refrigerator could be scaled down to a few kilowatts, opening the possibility for developing a small-scale waste heat-driven cooling system that can be widely applied for waste heat recovery from large internal combustion engines of refrigerated ships, lorries, and trains. In this paper, a model was firstly established to simulate the proposed concept, on the basis of which it was optimized to identify the optimum operation condition. The results showed that the proposed concept is very promising for the development of heat-driven cooling systems for recovering waste heat from internal combustion engines’ exhaust gas

Prenatal inflammation exposure-programmed cardiovascular diseases and potential prevention

In recent years, the rapid development of medical and pharmacological interventions has led to a steady decline in certain noncommunicable chronic diseases (NCDs), such as cancer. However, the overall incidence of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) has not seemed to decline. CVDs have become even more prevalent in many countries and represent a global health threat and financial burden. An increasing number of epidemiological and experimental studies have demonstrated that maternal insults not only can result in birth defects but also can cause developmental functional defects that contribute to adult NCDs. In the current review, we provide an overview of evidence from both epidemiological investigations and experimental animal studies supporting the concept of developmental reprogramming of adult CVDs in offspring that have experienced prenatal inflammation exposure (PIE) during fetal development (PIE-programmed CVDs), a disease-causing event that has not been effectively controlled. This review describes the epidemiological observations, data from animal models, and related mechanisms for the pathogenesis of PIE-programmed CVDs. In addition, the potential therapeutic interventions of PIE-programmed CVDs are discussed. Finally, we also deliberate the need for future mechanistic studies and biomarker screenings in this important field, which creates a great opportunity to combat the global increase in CVDs by managing the adverse effects of inflammation for prepregnant and pregnant individuals who are at risk for PIE-programmed CVDs

Revealing the cosmic web dependent halo bias

Halo bias is the one of the key ingredients of the halo models. It was shown at a given redshift to be only dependent, to the first order, on the halo mass. In this study, four types of cosmic web environments: clusters, filaments, sheets and voids are defined within a state of the art high resolution $N$-body simulation. Within those environments, we use both halo-dark matter cross-correlation and halo-halo auto correlation functions to probe the clustering properties of halos. The nature of the halo bias differs strongly among the four different cosmic web environments we describe. With respect to the overall population, halos in clusters have significantly lower biases in the {$10^{11.0}\sim 10^{13.5}h^{-1}\rm M_\odot$} mass range. In other environments however, halos show extremely enhanced biases up to a factor 10 in voids for halos of mass {$\sim 10^{12.0}h^{-1}\rm M_\odot$}. Such a strong cosmic web environment dependence in the halo bias may play an important role in future cosmological and galaxy formation studies. Within this cosmic web framework, the age dependency of halo bias is found to be only significant in clusters and filaments for relatively small halos \la 10^{12.5}\msunh.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, ApJ accepte

ELUCID - Exploring the Local Universe with reConstructed Initial Density field III: Constrained Simulation in the SDSS Volume

A method we developed recently for the reconstruction of the initial density field in the nearby Universe is applied to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. A high-resolution N-body constrained simulation (CS) of the reconstructed initial condition, with $3072^3$ particles evolved in a 500 Mpc/h box, is carried out and analyzed in terms of the statistical properties of the final density field and its relation with the distribution of SDSS galaxies. We find that the statistical properties of the cosmic web and the halo populations are accurately reproduced in the CS. The galaxy density field is strongly correlated with the CS density field, with a bias that depend on both galaxy luminosity and color. Our further investigations show that the CS provides robust quantities describing the environments within which the observed galaxies and galaxy systems reside. Cosmic variance is greatly reduced in the CS so that the statistical uncertainties can be controlled effectively even for samples of small volumes.Comment: submitted to ApJ, 19 pages, 22 figures. Please download the high-resolution version at http://staff.ustc.edu.cn/~whywang/paper

Dihydropyrano[2,3-c]pyrazole-induced apoptosis in lung cancer cells is associated with ROS generation and activation of p38/JNK pathway

Purpose: To investigate the effect of 2,4-dihydropyrano[2,3-c]pyrazole (DHPP) on lung cancer cells, and the associated mechanism.Methods: The effect of DHPP on cell proliferation was measured using sulphorhodamine B (SRB) assay. Apoptosis of cells was determined using Olympus IX71 inverted microscope connected to FITC and rhodamine filters.Results: DHPP significantly suppressed the proliferation of A549 and H1299 cells at doses of 0.5-8.0 μM, but did not affect normal cells (MRC5 and BEAS-2B). In DHPP-treated A549 and H1299 cells, caspase-3 activity was markedly enhanced. At 24 h of treatment with 8.0 μM DUPP, apoptosis in A549 and H1299 cells was increased to 67.89 and 61.35 %, respectively. Phosphorylation levels of JNK-1/2 and p38 in DHPP-treated A549 and H1299 cells were markedly enhanced. The p-ERK-1/2 expressions in DHPP-treated A549 and H1299 cells were suppressed significantly at 24 h. In DHPP-treated A549 and H1299 cells, DCF-fluorescence was increased 10 folds and 8.5 folds, respectively. Pretreatment with FeTMPyP, an antioxidant, effectively alleviated DHPP-induced increase in expressions of p-p38 and p-JNK, and suppression of expression of p-ERK-1/2. In FeTMPyP-pre-treated cells, the DHPPinduced increase in caspase-3 activity was markedly reduced.Conclusion: DHPP selectively inhibits lung cancer cell growth via oxidative stress which subsequently causes cell apoptosis. Moreover, it activates caspase-3 protein and p38/JNK signaling, with simultaneous inactivation of ERK-1/2. Therefore, DHPP has a potential to be developed for the treatment of lung cancer. However; more studies are required to confirm these findings. Keywords: Lung cancer, Anti-oxidant, Apoptosis, Caspase-3, Chemotherap

Gabexate in the prophylaxis of post-ERCP pancreatitis: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Acute pancreatitis is a common complication of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography and the benefit of its pharmacological treatment is unclear. Although prophylactic use of gabexate for the reduction of pancreatic injury after ERCP has been evaluated, the discrepancy about gabexate's beneficial effect on pancreatic injury still exists. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of gabexate in the prophylaxis of post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography pancreatitis (PEP). METHODS: We employed the method recommended by the Cochrane Collaboration to perform a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of gabexate in the prevention of post-ERCP pancreatitis (PEP) including three RCTs conducted in Italy and one in China. RESULTS: All of the four RCTs were of high quality. When the RCTs were analyzed, odds ratios (OR) for gabexate mesilate were 0.67 [95% CI (0.31~1.47), p = 0.32] for PEP, 3.78 [95% CI (0.62~22.98), p = 0.15] for severe PEP, 0.68 [95% CI (0.19~2.43), p = 0.56] for the case-fatality of PEP, 0.88 [95% CI (0.72~1.07), p = 0.20] for post-ERCP hyperamylasemia, 0.69 [95% CI (0.39~1.21), p = 0.19] for post-ERCP abdominal pain, thus indicating no beneficial effects of gabexate on acute pancreatitis, the death rate of PEP, hyperamylasemia and abdominal pain. No evidence of publication bias was found. CONCLUSION: Gabexate mesilate can not prevent the pancreatic injury after ERCP. It is not recommended for the use of gabexate mesilate in the prophylaxis of PEP

Mapping the real space distributions of galaxies in SDSS DR7: I. Two Point Correlation Functions

Using a method to correct redshift space distortion (RSD) for individual galaxies, we mapped the real space distributions of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7). We use an ensemble of mock catalogs to demonstrate the reliability of our method. Here as the first paper in a series, we mainly focus on the two point correlation function (2PCF) of galaxies. Overall the 2PCF measured in the reconstructed real space for galaxies brighter than $^{0.1}{\rm M}_r-5\log h=-19.0$ agrees with the direct measurement to an accuracy better than the measurement error due to cosmic variance, if the reconstruction uses the correct cosmology. Applying the method to the SDSS DR7, we construct a real space version of the main galaxy catalog, which contains 396,068 galaxies in the North Galactic Cap with redshifts in the range $0.01 \leq z \leq 0.12$. The Sloan Great Wall, the largest known structure in the nearby Universe, is not as dominant an over-dense structure as appears to be in redshift space. We measure the 2PCFs in reconstructed real space for galaxies of different luminosities and colors. All of them show clear deviations from single power-law forms, and reveal clear transitions from 1-halo to 2-halo terms. A comparison with the corresponding 2PCFs in redshift space nicely demonstrates how RSDs boost the clustering power on large scales (by about $40-50\%$ at scales $\sim 10 h^{-1}{\rm {Mpc}}$) and suppress it on small scales (by about $70-80\%$ at a scale of $0.3 h^{-1}{\rm {Mpc}}$).Comment: 19 pages, 13 figure

Mapping the Real Space Distributions of Galaxies in SDSS DR7: II. Measuring the growth rate, clustering amplitude of matter and biases of galaxies at redshift 0.10.1

We extend the real-space mapping method developed in Shi et at. (2016) so that it can be applied to flux-limited galaxy samples. We use an ensemble of mock catalogs to demonstrate the reliability of this extension, showing that it allows for an accurate recovery of the real-space correlation functions and galaxy biases. We also demonstrate that, using an iterative method applied to intermediate-scale clustering data, we can obtain an unbiased estimate of the growth rate of structure $f\sigma_8$, which is related to the clustering amplitude of matter, to an accuracy of $\sim 10\%$. Applying this method to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7), we construct a real-space galaxy catalog spanning the redshift range $0.01 \leq z \leq 0.2$, which contains 584,473 galaxies in the north Galactic cap (NGC). Using this data, we infer \fss at a median redshift $z=0.1$, which is consistent with the WMAP9 cosmology at the $1\sigma$ level. By combining this measurement with the real-space clustering of galaxies and with galaxy-galaxy weak lensing measurements for the same sets of galaxies, we are able to break the degeneracy between $f$, $\sigma_8$, and $b$. From the SDSS DR7 data alone, we obtain the following cosmological constraints at redshift $z=0.1$: $f=$$0.464^{+0.040}_{-0.040}$, $\sigma_8=0.769^{+0.121}_{-0.089}$, and $b=1.910^{+0.234}_{-0.268}$, $1.449^{+0.194}_{-0.196}$, $1.301^{+0.170}_{-0.177}$, and $1.196^{+0.159}_{-0.161}~$ for galaxies within different absolute magnitude bins $^{0.1}{\rm M}_r-5\log h=[-23,0, -22.0], [-22,0, -21.0], [-21.0, -20.0]$ and $[-20.0, -19.0]$, respectively