Aurora B expression directly correlates with prostate cancer malignancy and influence prostate cell proliferation.

BACKGROUND: Chromosomal instability is one of the most common features of prostate cancer (PC), especially in advanced stages. Recent studies suggest that defects in mitotic checkpoints play a role in carcinogenesis. Lack of mitotic regulation induces aneuploidy in cancer cells acting thereafter as a driving force for malignant progression. Serine/threonine protein kinases of the Aurora genes family play an important throughout the entire cell cycle. In that Aurora B regulates chromosome segregation by ensuring the orientation of sister chromatids. As a consequence, the overexpression of Aurora B in diploid human cells NHDF induces the appearance of multinucleate cells. METHODS: Archive samples of normal and neoplastic prostate tissue, and prostate derived cell lines were screened for the expression of Aurora B. RESULTS: Immunohistochemical analysis showed increased nuclear expression of Aurora-B in high Gleason grade PCs respect to low and intermediate grade cases and in all cancers in respect to hyperplastic and normal glands. Furthermore, in the high Gleason grade anaplastic cancer tissues Aurora B expression was accompanied by the phosphorylation of the histone H3. In analogy to the in vivo situation, Aurora B was vigorously expressed in the androgen independent PC cell lines PC3 and DU145, while a very modest expression of the kinase was observed in the androgen sensitive LnCap cells and in the EPN cells, a line of epithelial cells derived from normal prostate tissue. In addition, in PC3 cells Aurora B expression is accompanied the by the phosphorylation of the histone H3. The block of Aurora B expression induced by an inhibitor of Aurora kinase activity significantly reduced the growth of prostate carcinoma cells, but not that of non-transformed EPN cells. CONCLUSIONS: Our data are the first demonstration of a role of Aurora B in PC progression. In addition, the observation that Aurora B specific inhibitors interfere with PC cell proliferation but not with that of non-transformed prostate epithelial cells suggest that Aurora B is a potential therapeutic target for PC

On the model flexibility of the geographical distributed real-time co-simulation: The example of ENET-RT lab

The decarbonisation of the energy sector represents a challenge that requires new tools and approaches of analysis. This paper aims to demonstrate the fundamental role that geographical distributed real-time co-simulations (GD-RTDS) can play in this regard. To this end, three different case studies have been analysed with GD-RTDS, covering a wide range of applications for the energy sector decarbonization: a) implementation of Renewable Energy Communities for supporting the share increase of Renewable Energy Sources, b) the integration and management of Onshore Power Supply, and c) the integration of a forecasting tool for the management of the Electric Vehicle charging. The performed experiments included fully simulated components, together with (power) hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop elements. These components have been simulated in different laboratory facilities in Italy and Germany, all operating in a synchronised manner under the presented geographically-distributed setup. The results show that the proposed architecture is flexible enough to be used for modelling all the different case studies; moreover, they highlight the significant contribution that the GD-RTDS methodology can give in informing and driving energy transition policies and the fundamental role of power systems to spearhead the complete decarbonisation of the energy sector

Performance Analysis of Low Earth Orbit Satellites for Power System Communication

In this paper the main performances of communication services based on low earth orbit satellites (LEOs) have been analyzed in order to evaluate their suitability for a typical set of power system monitoring functionalities. As an experimental test bed, an intelligent electronic device (IED) for remote monitoring and protection of power components equipped with a bi-directional communication system based on the LEO satellites of the Globalstar® consortium has been prototyped. Thanks to the adoption of this facility the main parameters characterizing the performance of the satellite TCP/IP services have been evaluated. They comprise in particular the connection time, the degradation of service and data latency for both packet and asynchronous data services. The experimental results obtained show that the application of LEO satellites based communication technologies exhibits a set of intrinsic advantages that could be particularly useful in several fields of power system communication

An Interval Computation Approach for Power Components Overload Protection in the presence of Data Uncertainty

The embedding of microprocessor-based relays in power components enables improved overload protection because of higher computational resources, adaptiveness and flexibility. The increased computing power that is now embedded in power component devices makes possible the real-time simulation of built-in thermal models. However, the use of model-based protective systems is exposed to the uncertainty affecting some model components. The effect of these uncertainties could compromise the overall protective function reliability. To address this problem, we use Affine Arithmetic (AA). In particular, AA can be used to calculate the component’s hot spot temperature by solving a thermal dynamic model where parameters are imprecise, and the uncertainty is represented by affine forms. The proposed solution method is implemented on a microcontroller-based unit to develop a prototype thermal relay equipped with robust tools for uncertainty data management. Various experimental results are presented and discussed

Prototyping of a distributed JAVA based client/server architecture for e-assessment of power equipments loading capability

This paper proposes the development of a JAVA® based client/server architecture for transmission networks capability analyses. The architecture employs a network of distributed units remotely controlled by advanced TCP/IP based communication services to assess dynamically the components thermal state, a Data Base Management System to periodically adjourn the network loadability data, and a mathematical solution engine to support post processing activities as network security analysis or Optimal Power Flow studies. Dynamic load capability is assessed by innovative grey-box identification techniques that integrate physical knowledge modelling (a.k.a. white-box) with machine learning techniques (a.k.a. black-box). Experimental results shown the effectiveness of the proposed methodologies