A study on the effect of resveratrol on lipid metabolism in hyperlipidemic mice

Background: The content of resveratrol is relatively high in Polygonum cuspidatum Sieb. et Zucc., and the resveratrol has the effect of blood vessel dilating, microcirculation improving, platelet aggregation inhibiting and anti-cancer. The objective of this paper was to study the effect of resveratrol on lipid metabolism in hyperlipidemia mice.Materials andMethods: Through the establishment of an experimental mouse model of hyperlipidemia, the effect of resveratrol on change in total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c) levels in mouse serum were determined.Results: Resveratrol group can apparently reduce TC, TG, LDL-c and AI of hyperlipidemic mice in a dose effect manner.Conclusion: We concluded that resveratrol can effectively reduce blood lipid levels of hyperlipidemic mice.Keywords: Resveratrol; hyperlipidemia; TC; TG; HDL-c; LDL-

Nonmethane hydrocarbon measurements in the North Atlantic Flight Corridor during the Subsonic Assessment Ozone and Nitrogen Oxide Experiment

Mixing ratios of nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) were not enhanced in whole air samples collected within the North Atlantic Flight Corridor (NAFC) during the fall of 1997. The investigation was conducted aboard NASA's DC-8 research aircraft, as part of the Subsonic Assessment (SASS) Ozone and Nitrogen Oxide Experiment (SONEX). NMHC enhancements were not detected within the general organized tracking system of the NAFC, nor during two tail chases of the DC-8's own exhaust. Because positive evidence of aircraft emissions was demonstrated by enhancements in both nitrogen oxides and condensation nuclei during SONEX, the NMHC results suggest that the commercial air traffic fleet operating in the North Atlantic region does not contribute at all or contributes negligibly to NMHCs in the NAFC. Copyright 2000 by the American Geophysical Union

First-principles calculations and experimental studies of: XYZ 2 thermoelectric compounds: Detailed analysis of van der Waals interactions

First-principles calculations can accelerate the search for novel high-performance thermoelectric materials. However, the prediction of the thermoelectric properties is strongly dependent on the approximations used for the calculations. Here, thermoelectric properties were calculated with different computational approximations (i.e., PBE-GGA, HSE06, spin-orbit coupling and DFT-D3) for three layered XYZ2 compounds (TmAgTe2, YAgTe2, and YCuTe2). In addition to the computations, the structural, electrical and thermal properties of these compounds were measured experimentally and compared to the computations. An enhanced prediction of the crystal structure and heat capacity was achieved with the inclusion of van der Waals interactions due to more accurate modeling of the interatomic forces. In particular, a large shift of the acoustic phonons and low-frequency optical phonons to lower frequencies was observed from the dispersion-optimized structure. From the phonon dispersion curves of these compounds, the ultralow thermal conductivity in the investigated XYZ2 compounds could be described by a recent developed minimum thermal conductivity model. For the prediction of the electrical conductivity, a temperature-dependent relaxation time was used, and it was limited by acoustic phonons. While HSE06 has only a small influence on the electrical properties due to a computed band gap energy of >0.25 eV, the inclusion of both van der Waals interactions and spin-orbit coupling leads to a more accurate band structure, resulting in better prediction of electrical properties. Furthermore, the experimental thermoelectric properties of YAgTe2, TmAg0.95Zn0.05Te2 and TmAg0.95Mg0.05Te2 were measured, showing an increase in zT of TmAg0.95Zn0.05Te2 by more than 35% (zT = 0.47 ± 0.12) compared to TmAgTe2

Model Adaptation with Synthetic and Real Data for Semantic Dense Foggy Scene Understanding

This work addresses the problem of semantic scene understanding under dense fog. Although considerable progress has been made in semantic scene understanding, it is mainly related to clear-weather scenes. Extending recognition methods to adverse weather conditions such as fog is crucial for outdoor applications. In this paper, we propose a novel method, named Curriculum Model Adaptation (CMAda), which gradually adapts a semantic segmentation model from light synthetic fog to dense real fog in multiple steps, using both synthetic and real foggy data. In addition, we present three other main stand-alone contributions: 1) a novel method to add synthetic fog to real, clear-weather scenes using semantic input; 2) a new fog density estimator; 3) the Foggy Zurich dataset comprising $3808$ real foggy images, with pixel-level semantic annotations for $16$ images with dense fog. Our experiments show that 1) our fog simulation slightly outperforms a state-of-the-art competing simulation with respect to the task of semantic foggy scene understanding (SFSU); 2) CMAda improves the performance of state-of-the-art models for SFSU significantly by leveraging unlabeled real foggy data. The datasets and code are publicly available.Comment: final version, ECCV 201

Influence of southern hemispheric biomass burning on midtropospheric distributions of nonmethane hydrocarbons and selected halocarbons over the remote South Pacific

Aircraft measurements of nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) and halocarbons were made over the remote South Pacific Ocean during late August-early October 1996 for NASA's Global Tropospheric Experiment (GTE) Pacific Exploratory Mission-Tropics A (PEM-Tropics A). This paper discusses the large-scale spatial distributions of selected trace gases encountered during PEM-Tropics A. The PEM-Tropics A observations are compared to measurements made over the southwestern pacific in early November 1995 as part of Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE 1). Continental pollution in the form of layers containing elevated levels of O3 was observed during a majority of PEM-Tropics flights, as well as during several ACE 1 flights. The chemical composition of these air masses indicates that they were not fresh and were derived from nonurban combustion sources. The substantial impact of biomass burning on the vertical structure of the South Pacific troposphere is discussed. Copyright 1999 by the American Geophysical Union

In-situ micro-tensile testing of AA2024-T3 fibre laser welds with digital image correlation as a function of welding speed

In this paper, the influence of welding speed on tensile properties of AA2024-T3 fibre laser welds was investigated by monitoring the deformation behaviour during tensile loading. In-situ micro-tensile testing combined with a high-resolution optical microscope and DIC was used to measure strain distribution in narrow weld regions showing characteristics of fibre laser beam welding with limited metallurgical modifications. A chemical etching technique was used to generate a micro-scale random speckle pattern by revealing the weld microstructure. Such pattern enabled a sufficient spatial resolution of strain while keeping the weld seam visible during deformation. The results of microstructural and mechanical properties determined under numerous welding speeds indicated that increasing the welding speed led to the transition of weld pool shape from circular to elliptical to teardrop with a greater fraction of equiaxed dendrites. The weaker strength of the weld, as measured by local lower micro-hardness values, constrained significant plasticity development locally within the weld. Tensile tests revealed that increasing the welding speed resulted in greater yield strength and ultimate tensile strength, whereas, total elongation to failure dropped. The tensile properties improved with increasing welding speed as the fraction of equiaxed dendrites increased

Wet-chemical synthesis of enhanced-thermopower Bi1-xSbx nanowire composites for solid-state active cooling of electronics

In 1993, Hicks and Dresselhaus [Thermoelectric figure of merit of a one-dimensional conductor, Phys. Rev. B 47, 16631 (1993).] suggested that Bi nanowires could result in values of the thermoelectric figure of merit zT > 1. The Dresselhaus group also calculated a ternary phase diagram for Bi1-xSbx nanowires as a function of x and wire diameter. This manuscript reports a wet-chemical method to synthesize Bi1-xSbx-silica nanowire composites. Resistivity, Hall electron concentration, electron mobility, Seebeck and Nernst coefficients, and thermal conductivity of composites are measured and compared to bulk polycrystalline Bi1-xSbx samples prepared either by ingot casting or by the same wet chemistry but without nanostructuring. A clear increase of the thermopower in 20-nm Bi94Sb6-silica is reported when compared to bulk samples, and the values are among the highest found in the literature from 300 to 380 K, even though the electron concentration is higher than in the bulk. This suggests that consistent with theory, size quantization is responsible for the thermopower increase