Pertussis Toxin Inhibits Encephalitogenic T-Cell Infiltration and Promotes a B-Cell-Driven Disease during Th17-EAE

Pertussis toxin (PTX) is a required co-adjuvant for experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) induced by immunization with myelin antigen. However, PTX’s effects on EAE induced by the transfer of myelin-specific T helper cells is not known. Therefore, we investigated how PTX affects the Th17 transfer EAE model (Th17-EAE). We found that PTX significantly reduced Th17-EAE by inhibiting chemokine-receptor-dependent trafficking of Th17 cells. Strikingly, PTX also promoted the accumulation of B cells in the CNS, suggesting that PTX alters the disease toward a B-cell-dependent pathology. To determine the role of B cells, we compared the effects of PTX on Th17-EAE in wild-type (WT) and B-cell-deficient (µMT) mice. Without PTX treatment, disease severity was equivalent between WT and µMT mice. In contrast, with PTX treatment, the µMT mice had significantly less disease and a reduction in pathogenic Th17 cells in the CNS compared to the WT mice. In conclusion, this study shows that PTX inhibits the migration of pathogenic Th17 cells, while promoting the accumulation of pathogenic B cells in the CNS during Th17-EAE. These data provide useful methodological information for adoptive-transfer Th17-EAE and, furthermore, describe another important experimental system to study the pathogenic mechanisms of B cells in multiple sclerosis.     

AMBO: All Members-Based Optimizer for Solving Optimization Problems

There are many optimization problems in different branches of science that should be solved using an appropriate methodology. Population-based optimization algorithms are one of the most efficient approaches to solve this type of problems. In this paper, a new optimization algorithm called All Members-Based Optimizer (AMBO) is introduced to solve various optimization problems. The main idea in designing the proposed AMBO algorithm is to use more information from the population members of the algorithm instead of just a few specific members (such as best member and worst member) to update the population matrix. Therefore, in AMBO, any member of the population can play a role in updating the population matrix. The theory of AMBO is described and then mathematically modeled for implementation on optimization problems. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on a set of twenty-three standard objective functions, which belong to three different categories: unimodal, high-dimensional multimodal, and fixed-dimensional multimodal functions. In order to analyze and compare the optimization results for the mentioned objective functions obtained by AMBO, eight other well-known algorithms have been also implemented. The optimization results demonstrate the ability of AMBO to solve various optimization problems. Also, comparison and analysis of the results show that AMBO is superior and more competitive than the other mentioned algorithms in providing suitable solution.     

Design and investigations on a compact,UWB, monopole antenna with reconfigurable band notches for 5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN and 5.5 GHz Wi‐MAX bands

This article represents a microstrip line–fed novel circular monopole antenna with ultra‐wideband (UWB) characteristics. The compact antenna provides reconfigurable notches at WLAN (5.2/5.8 GHz) and Wi‐MAX (5.5 GHz) frequency bands. The band rejection is achieved by etching an open‐ended L‐shaped slot in the ground plane, which effectively mitigates the interference between WLAN, Wi‐MAX, and UWB systems with an effective patch area of 36.26%. The proposed antenna operates from 3.05 to 12.11 GHz with VSWR 2 except at stopband (3.89‐5.93 GHz) to filter the WLAN and Wi‐MAX signals. The simulated return loss, gain, and radiation pattern of the proposed antenna has been experimentally verified with the fabricated one which holds a good agreement.     

A combined theoretical and experimental investigation of the valorization of mechanical and thermal properties of the fly ash-reinforced polypropylene hybrid composites

Journal of Materials Science - Fly ash (FA) particles were surface modified with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (Ctab) and hybridized with graphene oxide (GO) and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)...     

A novel hybrid hypervolume indicator and reference vector adaptation strategies based evolutionary algorithm for many-objective optimization

Engineering with Computers - A novel hybrid many-objective evolutionary algorithm called Reference Vector Guided Evolutionary Algorithm based on hypervolume indicator (H-RVEA) is proposed in this...     

KAGO: an approximate adaptive grid-based outlier detection approach using kernel density estimate

Pattern Analysis and Applications - Outlier detection approaches show their efficacy while extracting unforeseen knowledge in domains such as intrusion detection, e-commerce, and fraudulent...     

Subcutoff microwave driven plasma ion sources for multielemental focused ion beam systems

A compact microwave driven plasma ion source for focused ion beam applications has been developed. Several gas species have been experimented including argon, krypton, and hydrogen. The plasma, confined by a minimum B multicusp magnetic field, has good radial and axial uniformity. The octupole multicusp configuration shows a superior performance in terms of plasma density (~1.3 x 10(11) cm(-3)) and electron temperature (7-15 eV) at a power density of 5-10 Wcm(2). Ion current densities ranging from a few hundreds to over 1000 mA/cm(2) have been obtained with different plasma electrode apertures. The ion source will be combined with electrostatic Einzel lenses and should be capable of producing multielemental focused ion beams for nanostructuring and implantations. The initial simulation results for the focused beams have been presented.     

Matched feeds for offset reflector antenna using circular microstrip patch antenna

This article presents two designs of matched feed for an offset fed reflector. Circular microstrip patch antennas are used in the proposed designs. Both the matched feeds achieve conjugate field matching by generating TM₂₁ mode at an appropriate ratio to the fundamental TM₁₁ mode. The first matched feed generates the required dual mode field distributions using a dual layer stacked patch antenna. The second matched feed is a novel design using centered circular array with the central element generating the required TM₂₁ mode and the surrounding circular ring antenna elements operating in the TM₁₁ mode. Both the designs are studied analytically using cavity model and are implemented in High frequency System Simulator (HFSS) and Computer Simulation Technology (CST). The matched feed designs are investigated for an offset reflector with the projected diameter, D = 50λ, focal length, F = 30λ and clearance height, H = 5λ operating at 20 GHz. The secondary field patterns of the offset reflector fed by the matched feeds are evaluated numerically using a MATLAB code based on geometrical optics technique and verified by HFSS‐PO results. Offset reflector performance such as cross‐polarization, ?30 dB cross‐polar bandwidth, gain, and first side‐lobe level are investigated for the both matched feeds.