165 research outputs found
Geotechnical characterization of water treatment plant residuals
Evaluation of engineering properties of water treatment plant (WTP) residuals is a critical part in predicting their behaviors in monofills. In this study, ten WTP residual samples were collected from ten water treatment plants across the United States. Their general chemical/physical and geotechnical properties including liquid and plastic limits, compaction) shear strength, permeability and durability characteristics were determined.
It was observed that the geotechnical properties of WTP residuals are influenced by various factors such as mineral particle composition, organic content, type and amount of chemical additives) and time of aging, etc. Based on this study, the behavior of WTP residual can be primarily attributed to a unique floc structure developed due to their colloidal properties and high ion concentrations. This highly oriented floc structure plays an important role in the development of cementation and thixotropic hardening and has significant influence on the geotechnical properties of WTP residuals.
WTP residuals exhibit low durability characteristics. They usually have low strength at low solids content. Aging, which is believed to be a process in which floc water escapes with the reorientation of floc particles and the development of cementation, has a tendency to improve the strength. The levels of development of strength of different residuals have a wide range which is also believed to be related to thixotropy and cementation developing properties. Coefficients of permeability are all low, of the order of 10-6 - 10-7 cm/s. The compressibility is very high due to the high water retaining ability and the deformation of filoc structure. Low swelling ability and the high pseudo pre-shy;consolidation pressure of these residuals, may be caused by the development of the inter particle bond due to thixotropic hardening
Seismic Response Analysis of a Thick Overburden Consisting of Loose and Soft Soil
It is known that not only local soil conditions but also seismic wave, used in analysis, together with its input conditions had a major effect on the intensity and characteristics of ground motion. In this paper the ground motions to different input depths of base motion under the near epicenter or far epicenter conditions, using EL CENTRO record after adjusting as base motion input, for two representative sites in Shanghai were reviewed and the results of analytical studies were presented to explore the site dependent design spectra suited to local conditions
SGFormer: Semantic Graph Transformer for Point Cloud-based 3D Scene Graph Generation
In this paper, we propose a novel model called SGFormer, Semantic Graph
TransFormer for point cloud-based 3D scene graph generation. The task aims to
parse a point cloud-based scene into a semantic structural graph, with the core
challenge of modeling the complex global structure. Existing methods based on
graph convolutional networks (GCNs) suffer from the over-smoothing dilemma and
can only propagate information from limited neighboring nodes. In contrast,
SGFormer uses Transformer layers as the base building block to allow global
information passing, with two types of newly-designed layers tailored for the
3D scene graph generation task. Specifically, we introduce the graph embedding
layer to best utilize the global information in graph edges while maintaining
comparable computation costs. Furthermore, we propose the semantic injection
layer to leverage linguistic knowledge from large-scale language model (i.e.,
ChatGPT), to enhance objects' visual features. We benchmark our SGFormer on the
established 3DSSG dataset and achieve a 40.94% absolute improvement in
relationship prediction's R@50 and an 88.36% boost on the subset with complex
scenes over the state-of-the-art. Our analyses further show SGFormer's
superiority in the long-tail and zero-shot scenarios. Our source code is
available at https://github.com/Andy20178/SGFormer.Comment: To be published in Thirty-Eighth AAAI Conference on Artificial
Intelligenc
Nitroglycerine-induced nitrate tolerance compromises propofol protection of the endothelial cells against TNF-α: the role of PKC-β2 and NADPH oxidase
published_or_final_versio
DUAL EFFECTS OF BILIRUBIN ON THE PROLIFERATION OF RAT RENAL NRK52E CELLS AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH GAP JUNCTIONS
Objective: The effect of bilirubin on renal pathophysiology is controversial. This study aimed to observe the effects of bilirubin on the proliferation of normal rat renal tubular epithelial cell line (NRK52E) and its potential interplay with gap junction function.
Methods: Cultured NRK52E cells, seeded respectively at high- or low- densities, were treated with varying concentrations of bilirubin for 24 hours. Cell injury was assessed by measuring cell viability and proliferation, and gap junction function was assessed by Parachute dye-coupling assay. Connexin 43 protein was assessed by Western blotting.
Results: At doses from 17.1 to 513μmol/L, bilirubin dose-dependently enhanced cell viability and colony-formation rates when cells were seeded at either high- or low- densities (all p\u3c0.05 vs. solvent group) accompanied with enhanced intercellular fluorescence transmission and increased Cx43 protein expression in high-density cells. However, the above effects of BR were gradually reversed when its concentration increased from 684 to 1026μmol/L. In high-density cells, gap junction inhibitor 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol 13- acetate attenuated bilirubin-induced enhancement of colony-formation and fluorescence transmission. However, in the presence of high concentration bilirubin (1026μmol/L), activation of gap junction with retinoid acid decreased colony-formation rates.
Conclusion: Bilirubin can confer biphasic effects on renal NRK52E cell proliferation potentially by differentially affecting gap junction functions
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A PAX5-OCT4-PRDM1 developmental switch specifies human primordial germ cells.
Dysregulation of genetic pathways during human germ cell development leads to infertility. Here, we analysed bona fide human primordial germ cells (hPGCs) to probe the developmental genetics of human germ cell specification and differentiation. We examined the distribution of OCT4 occupancy in hPGCs relative to human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). We demonstrated that development, from pluripotent stem cells to germ cells, is driven by switching partners with OCT4 from SOX2 to PAX5 and PRDM1. Gain- and loss-of-function studies revealed that PAX5 encodes a critical regulator of hPGC development. Moreover, an epistasis analysis indicated that PAX5 acts upstream of OCT4 and PRDM1. The PAX5-OCT4-PRDM1 proteins form a core transcriptional network that activates germline and represses somatic programmes during human germ cell differentiation. These findings illustrate the power of combined genome editing, cell differentiation and engraftment for probing human developmental genetics that have historically been difficult to study
Arterial Wall Stress Induces Phenotypic Switching of Arterial Smooth Muscle Cells in Vascular Remodeling by Activating the YAP/TAZ Signaling Pathway
Background/Aims: Increasing wall stress or biomechanical stretch experienced by arteries influences the initiation of atherosclerotic lesions. This initiation is mediated by Yes-associated protein (YAP) and transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ), which are both effectors of the Hippo pathway. In this study, the functional roles of YAP/TAZ proteins in the regulation of the stretch-mediated programing of human umbilical arterial smooth muscle cells (HUASMCs) to a proliferative phenotype were examined. Methods: HUASMCs were seeded on a Matrigel-coated silicone chamber and subjected to biomechanical stretch for 24 h after 48 h of growth. YAP/TAZ small interfering RNA was used to specifically knockdown YAP/ TAZ expression in HUASMCs. Results: We observed that YAP/TAZ activation via biomechanical stretching is involved in the regulation of critical aspects of the HUASMC phenotypic switch. YAP/TAZ knockdown significantly attenuated the stretch-induced proliferative and pro-inflammatory phenotypes in HUASMCs. Furthermore, treatment with atorvastatin, an anti-atherosclerotic drug, attenuated the stretch-induced phenotypic switch of HUASMCs from the contractile to synthetic state by suppressing YAP/TAZ expression. Additional investigations demonstrated the role of stretch in inhibiting the Hippo pathway, leading to the activation of PI3-kinase (PI3K) and phosphoinositide dependent kinase (PDK1); the key molecule for the regulation of the PDK1 and Hippo complex interaction was Sav1. These results showed the importance of YAP/TAZ activation, induced by biomechanical stretch, in promoting atheroprone phenotypes in HUASMCs. Conclusion: Taken together, our findings revealed a mechanism by which YAP/TAZ activation contributes to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis
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