12,033 research outputs found
Moving horizon estimation for networked systems with quantized measurements and packet dropouts
published_or_final_versio
Pilot Study of a Brief WeChat Intervention in China to Increase Students’ Willingness to Assist a Flushing Student to Reduce Alcohol Use
Objectives: This pilot study tested the effectiveness of a brief alcohol-related intervention delivered by the social media app WeChat to teach about ethanol-induced facial flushing and increase the willingness of students who see another student flushing to suggest that he or she should reduce or stop drinking. In the context of Chinese drinking culture, it is sometimes socially difficult to refuse a drink, even when experiencing physical discomfort, such as flushing. Methods: Classrooms of students in a medical university in China were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. Students in the intervention group were invited to view 3 alcohol education lessons on WeChat during a 2-week period. A pretest and posttest before and after the 2-week period assessed changes in students’ willingness to intervene if they saw someone flush while drinking. Data were collected about students’ alcohol use and their ratings of the lessons. Results: Mixed-design analysis of variance yielded a significant time-by-treatment interaction effect on the variable of willingness to suggest that a flushing person stop or slow down their drinking, and the change was significant between the intervention and control groups. One-way analysis of covariance yielded a significant treatment effect at the posttest, after controlling for the pretest score. Students rated the lessons above the midpoint of the scale for being informative, interesting, and useful. Conclusions: The pilot study showed that a brief alcohol-related intervention delivered by WeChat could produce a measurable positive change in the willingness of university students to suggest that a student who flushes should stop drinking. This pilot study also suggested improvements for future lessons and evaluation design
RUNDC3A regulates SNAP25-mediated chemotherapy resistance by binding AKT in gastric neuroendocrine carcinoma (GNEC)
Gastric neuroendocrine carcinoma (GNEC) is a common type of neuroendocrine carcinoma (NEC) with a poor prognosis and limited therapeutic options. The underlying mechanisms of chemoresistance in patients with GNEC and those with NEC are largely unknown, and thus, reliable biomarkers and therapeutic targets that could improve treatment outcomes in patients with NECs are lacking. The aim of this study was to identify specific targets and investigate their roles in GNEC progression and treatment resistance. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in GNEC specimens and were further analysed by focusing on their roles in chemoresistance. Gene Ontology (GO) and pathway enrichment analyses of GNEC DEGs revealed that synapse-related function was the most prominent cellular function perturbed in GNEC. SNAP25 was identified as the target gene involved in most of the enriched pathways. In vitro and in vivo experiments showed that SNAP25 plays a role in proliferation and chemoresistance in GNEC cell lines. AKT has been identified as a downstream target, and SNAP25 binds to AKT protein and promotes AKT protein half-life. Further analysis of other types of NEC as well as small cell lung cancer, which resembles NEC on a molecular level, has identified RUNDC3A as an upstream molecule that regulates SNAP25 expression and the associated phenotypes that could enhance chemoresistance in NECs. Our results show that SNAP25 expression in GNEC is mediated by RUNDC3A and promotes GNEC progression and chemoresistance via posttranslational modification of AKT. Thus, our results suggest that the RUNDC3A/SNAP25/Akt axis could be a potential therapeutic target in GNEC
What limits supercurrents in high temperature superconductors? A microscopic model of cuprate grain boundaries
The interface properties of high-temperature cuprate superconductors have
been of interest for many years, and play an essential role in Josephson
junctions, superconducting cables, and microwave electronics. In particular,
the maximum critical current achievable in high-Tc wires and tapes is well
known to be limited by the presence of grain boundaries, regions of mismatch
between crystallites with misoriented crystalline axes. In studies of single,
artificially fabricated grain boundaries the striking observation has been made
that the critical current Jc of a grain boundary junction depends exponentially
on the misorientation angle. Until now microscopic understanding of this
apparently universal behavior has been lacking. We present here the results of
a microscopic evaluation based on a construction of fully 3D YBCO grain
boundaries by molecular dynamics. With these structures, we calculate an
effective tight-binding Hamiltonian for the d-wave superconductor with a grain
boundary. The critical current is then shown to follow an exponential
suppression with grain boundary angle. We identify the buildup of charge
inhomogeneities as the dominant mechanism for the suppression of the
supercurrent.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure
Laser-induced etching of few-layer graphene synthesized by Rapid-Chemical Vapour Deposition on Cu thin films
The outstanding electrical and mechanical properties of graphene make it very
attractive for several applications, Nanoelectronics above all. However a
reproducible and non destructive way to produce high quality, large-scale area,
single layer graphene sheets is still lacking. Chemical Vapour Deposition of
graphene on Cu catalytic thin films represents a promising method to reach this
goal, because of the low temperatures (T < 900 Celsius degrees) involved during
the process and of the theoretically expected monolayer self-limiting growth.
On the contrary such self-limiting growth is not commonly observed in
experiments, thus making the development of techniques allowing for a better
control of graphene growth highly desirable. Here we report about the local
ablation effect, arising in Raman analysis, due to the heat transfer induced by
the laser incident beam onto the graphene sample.Comment: v1:9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to SpringerPlus; v2: 11 pages,
PDFLaTeX, 9 figures, revised peer-reviewed version resubmitted to
SpringerPlus; 1 figure added, figure 1 and 4 replaced,typos corrected,
"Results and discussion" section significantly extended to better explain
etching mechanism and features of Raman spectra, references adde
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