Experimental Investigation of Compact 2 K GM Cryocoolers

AbstractOn the basis of a conventional 4K Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocooler, we developed a new 2 K GM crycooler, which can provide considerable cooling capacity and yet being highly compact in physical size. A series of experiments were conductedto confirm and show the cooling characteristic and cooling capability of this new cryocooler. Under no-load condition, the lowest temperature reached about 2.1K on the secondstageand the temperature oscillation displacement was less than ±20mK. Even under a thermal-load of 1W/20 mW, temperature reached 44.4K on the first stage and 2.23K on the second stage. Detailed cooling load-map and cool-down curve will also be introduced in this paper

An integrated switched reluctance motor drive topology with voltage-boosting and on-board charging capabilities for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)

This paper presents a new topology of switched reluctance motor (SRM) drive for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Six operating modes can be achieved as a result. Three of those modes are applied for driving and the others for charging. During the driving mode, the topology can be converted to a four-level one. During the charging mode, two battery packs are charged in parallel with the boost circuit by the external AC source or generators. The main contributions of the proposed topology are as follows: 1) A four-level converter is formed by adopting different ways of connection (series or parallel) of the two battery packs (or the two capacitors), which can accelerate the excitation and demagnetization procedures of SRMs. Moreover, the topology contributes to decreasing the switching losses and extending the constant torque region to improve the drive performance as well. 2) The state of charge (SOC) of the two battery packs (or the voltages of two capacitors) can keep balance on their own by parallel operation of the two battery packs. Furthermore, a detailed comparison between two drive modes of the proposed topology and asymmetric half bridge inverters is undertaken with simulation and experimental studies, the results of which demonstrate the validity of the proposed topology

Testing Genetic Association With Rare Variants in Admixed Populations: Rare Variant Analysis in Admixed Populations

Recent studies suggest that rare variants play an important role in the etiology of many traits. Although a number of methods have been developed for genetic association analysis of rare variants, they all assume a relatively homogeneous population under study. Such an assumption may not be valid for samples collected from admixed populations such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans as there is a great extent of local variation in ancestry in these populations. To ensure valid and more powerful rare variant association tests performed in admixed populations, we have developed a local ancestry-based weighted dosage test, which is able to take into account local ancestry of rare alleles, uncertainties in rare variant imputation when imputed data are included, and the direction of effect that rare variants exert on phenotypic outcome. We used simulated sequence data to show that our proposed test has controlled type I error rates, whereas naïve application of existing rare variants tests and tests that adjust for global ancestry lead to inflated type I error rates. We showed that our test has higher power than tests without proper adjustment of ancestry. We also applied the proposed method to a candidate gene study on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Our results suggest that it is important to appropriately control for potential population stratification induced by local ancestry difference in the analysis of rare variants in admixed populations

MaCH-Admix: Genotype Imputation for Admixed Populations: MaCH-Admix: Imputation for Admixed Populations

Imputation in admixed populations is an important problem but challenging due to the complex linkage disequilibrium (LD) pattern. The emergence of large reference panels such as that from the 1,000 Genomes Project enables more accurate imputation in general, and in particular for admixed populations and for uncommon variants. To efficiently benefit from these large reference panels, one key issue to consider in modern genotype imputation framework is the selection of effective reference panels. In this work, we consider a number of methods for effective reference panel construction inside a hidden Markov model and specific to each target individual. These methods fall into two categories: identity-by-state (IBS) based and ancestry-weighted approach. We evaluated the performance on individuals from recently admixed populations. Our target samples include 8,421 African Americans and 3,587 Hispanic Americans from the Women’s Health Initiative, which allow assessment of imputation quality for uncommon variants. Our experiments include both large and small reference panels; large, medium, and small target samples; and in genome regions of varying levels of LD. We also include BEAGLE and IMPUTE2 for comparison. Experiment results with large reference panel suggest that our novel piecewise IBS method yields consistently higher imputation quality than other methods/software. The advantage is particularly noteworthy among uncommon variants where we observe up to 5.1% information gain with the difference being highly significant (Wilcoxon signed rank test P-value < 0.0001). Our work is the first that considers various sensible approaches for imputation in admixed populations and presents a comprehensive comparison

GPR48-Induced keratinocyte proliferation occurs through HB-EGF mediated EGFR transactivation

AbstractGPR48 can mediate keratinocyte proliferation and migration. Our investigations showed that AG1478, an inhibitor of EGFR tyrosine kinase, could block GPR48-mediated cellular processes. AG1478 treatment of Gpr48+/+ cells also decreased phosphorylation of EGFR, ERK and STAT3. Subsequent screening using conditioned media immunodepleted of EGFR ligands identified HB-EGF as the ligand responsible for phosphorylation of EGFR, ERK and STAT3. HB-EGF was reduced in Gpr48−/− cell culture medium, but its addition restored the phosphorylation of EGFR, ERK, STAT3, as well as cell proliferation. Confirmation that GPR48 mediates EGFR signaling pathway through HB-EGF was subsequently performed using an inhibitor of HB-EGF

A switched reluctance motor torque ripple reduction strategy with deadbeat current control

This paper presents a switched reluctance motor (SRM) torque ripple reduction strategy with deadbeat current control. In this method, the SRM torque is indirectly controlled by the phase current. The deadbeat control method can predict the duty cycle of the switching signal for the next control period according to current error, and achieve an accurate current tracking. Thus, SRM torque control error can be reduced significantly. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed strategy have been verified in both simulation and experimental studies