How Cells Communicate with Each Other in the Tumor Microenvironment: Suggestions to Design Novel Therapeutic Strategies in Cancer Disease

Connexin- and pannexin (Panx)-formed hemichannels (HCs) and gap junctions (GJs) operate an interaction with the extracellular matrix and GJ intercellular communication (GJIC), and on account of this they are involved in cancer onset and progression towards invasiveness and metastatization. When we deal with cancer, it is not correct to omit the immune system, as well as neglecting its role in resisting or succumbing to formation and progression of incipient neoplasia until the formation of micrometastasis, nevertheless what really occurs in the tumor microenvironment (TME), which are the main players and which are the tumor or body allies, is still unclear. The goal of this article is to discuss how the pivotal players act, which can enhance or contrast cancer progression during two important process: “Activating Invasion and Metastasis” and the “Avoiding Immune Destruction”, with a particular emphasis on the interplay among GJIC, Panx-HCs, and the purinergic system in the TME without disregarding the inflammasome and cytokines thereof derived. In particular, the complex and contrasting roles of Panx1/P2X7R signalosome in tumor facilitation and/or inhibition is discussed in regard to the early/late phases of the carcinogenesis. Finally, considering this complex interplay in the TME between cancer cells, stromal cells, immune cells, and focusing on their means of communication, we should be capable of revealing harmful messages that help the cancer growth and transform them in body allies, thus designing novel therapeutic strategies to fight cancer in a personalized manner.     

两级伸缩式液压缸与四柱两级滑轨的故障分析与排除

本文通过对两级伸缩式液压缸与四柱滑轨结合使用中所出现问题及处理过程的阐述,提出了在液压系统设计与制造中,准确的原理仅仅是基础,其上还有许许多多的细枝末节需要仔细修剪,比如污染、噪声、温度、泄漏以及与机械的协调等等。     

Event-triggered variable horizon Supervisory Predictive control of hybrid power plants

The supervision of a hybrid power plant, including solar panels, a gas microturbine and a storage unit operating under varying solar power profiles is considered. The Economic Supervisory Predictive controller assigns the power references to the controlled subsystems of the hybrid cell using a financial criterion. A prediction of the renewable sources power is embedded into the supervisor. Results deteriorate when the solar power is unsteady, owing to the inaccuracy of the predictions for a long-range horizon of 10 s. The receding horizon is switched between an upper and a lower value according to the amplitude of the solar power trend. Theoretical results show the relevance of horizon switching, according to a tradeoff between performance and prediction accuracy. Experimental results, obtained in a Hardware In the Loop (HIL) framework, show the relevance of the variable horizon approach. Power amplifiers allow us to simulate virtual components, such as a gas microturbine, and to blend their powers with that of real devices (storage unit, real solar panels). In this case, fuel savings, reaching 15%, obtained under unsteady operating conditions lead to a better overall performance of the hybrid cell. The overall savings obtained in the experiments amount to 12%.     

Rethinking Enterprise Architecture for Sustainable Energy System Development

The development of a sustainable energy system throughout an enterprise is a complex task, which requires an agile holistic approach. Such an approach needs to include a variety of objectives including energy strategy formation and strategic decision-making, which are directly related to the analysis and management of the main areas of sustainable development:The economic, technological, environmental, and social. These multidimensional requirements of sustainability are often difficult to achieve within the enterprise, because these aspects are interrelated and influenced by various internal and external environment factors. This paper first reviews the main challenges for an energy system, and then demonstrates how a strategic agile enterprise architecture driven approach could effectively guide the sustainable energy system development. The study presented in this paper provides a holistic approach that contributes to the advancement and usage of literature dealing with issues of sustainable energy system development and agile enterprise architecture, which has not been discussed before to any great extent.     

Novel organic dyes containing N-bridged oligothiophene coplanar cores for dye-sensitized solar cells

Three novel organic dyes adopting fully-fused coplanar heteroarene as the donor moieties end-capped with two cyanoacrylic acids as acceptors and anchoring groups have been synthesized, characterized, and used as the sensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The photophysical and electrochemical properties of the novel dyes and the characteristics of the DSSCs based on the novel organic dyes were investigated. The incorporation of the coplanar cores with electron-donating N-bridges are beneficial for the better intramolecular charge transfer (ICT), giving these new dyes good light-harvesting capability. The LUMO energy levels of these coplanar heteroacene-based dyes are sufficiently high for the efficient electron injection to TiO₂ upon photo-excitation, while the suitable HOMOs allow the regeneration of oxidized dyes with the electrolyte redox (I⁻/I₃⁻). The structural features of the coplanar cores (penta vs. hexa heteroarene) as well as the alkyl substitutions play crucial roles in governing the physical properties and device performance. Among these three novel organic sensitizers, the EHTt dye composed of a fully fused hexa-arene core and less bulky N-alkyl groups caused the DSSC to show the best photovoltaic performance with an open-circuit voltage (V_OC) of 0.58 V, a short-circuit photocurrent density (J_SC) of 13.72 mA/cm², and a fill factor (FF) of 0.69, yielding an overall power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.52% under AM 1.5G solar irradiation.     

Mathematical representation of radiality constraint in distribution system reconfiguration problem

Distribution systems are most commonly operated in a radial configuration for a number of reasons. In order to impose radiality constraint in the optimal network reconfiguration problem, an efficient algorithm is introduced in this paper based on graph theory. The paper shows that the normally followed methods of imposing radiality constraint within a mixed-integer programming formulation of the reconfiguration problem may not be sufficient. The minimum-loss network reconfiguration problem is formulated using different ways to impose radiality constraint. It is shown, through simulations, that the formulated problem using the proposed method for representing radiality constraint can be solved more efficiently, as opposed to the previously proposed formulations. This results in up to 30% reduction in CPU time for the test systems used in this study.     

Φ177mm PQF无缝管连轧机前横移系统改进

对鞍钢股份无缝钢管厂连轧机前毛管坯横移装置存在的设计缺陷进行了分析,并提出改进方案,将原横移装置由高架轨道横移机构及上下升降链传动装置,改进为地面轨道横移系统及同步旋转臂实现取管、放管过程。实施后消除了生产故障,缩短了轧制周期,降低生产成本。     

仙游抽水蓄能电站尾水系统充排水试验

为检查工程质量,查找输水系统可能存在的问题并消除隐患,保障电站安全运行,福建仙游抽水蓄能电站在投产发电前,要对输水发电系统进行充水试验与放空排水试验,在试验过程中监测输水系统的应力、应变与渗漏水情况。本文以尾水系统为例,介绍了试验所应具备的工程条件、工作程序及技术要求、试验成果分析和存在问题处理等。试验表明,仙游抽水蓄能电站尾水系统设计合理,施工质量优良,结构可靠,可供同类工程参考与借鉴。     

TCBR-HMM: An HMM-based text classifier with a CBR system

This paper presents an innovative solution to model distributed adaptive systems in biomedical environments. We present an original TCBR-HMM (Text Case Based Reasoning-Hidden Markov Model) for biomedical text classification based on document content. The main goal is to propose a more effective classifier than current methods in this environment where the model needs to be adapted to new documents in an iterative learning frame. To demonstrate its achievement, we include a set of experiments, which have been performed on OSHUMED corpus. Our classifier is compared with Naive Bayes and SVM techniques, commonly used in text classification tasks. The results suggest that the TCBR-HMM Model is indeed more suitable for document classification. The model is empirically and statistically comparable to the SVM classifier and outperforms it in terms of time efficiency.     

Adaptive robust boundary control of shaft vibrations under perturbations with unknown upper bounds

This paper presents robust and adaptive boundary control designs to stabilize the two‐dimensional vibration of hybrid shaft model. The hybrid shaft is mathematically represented by a set of partial differential equations, governing the shaft vibrations, coupled to ordinary differential equations, describing rigid body spinning and dynamic boundary conditions. The control objective is to stabilize the transverse vibrations of the perturbed shaft while regulating the spinning rate. To achieve this, the paper first establishes robust boundary control laws that fulfil the control objective in the presence of modeling uncertainties and external disturbances operating over the shaft domain and boundary. Lyapunov‐based analyses show that the proposed robust control exponentially stabilizes the shaft with vanishing distributive perturbations, while assuring ultimately bounded vibrations in the case of nonvanishing perturbations. Then, adaptive control philosophy is utilized to achieve redesigned robust controllers that only use online adaptation of control gains without acquiring the knowledge of bounds on perturbations, as well as dynamic parameters. An advantage of this design is avoiding an overconservative robust control law, which may induce poor stability and chattering in tackling system perturbations with unknown upper bounds. Simulations through finite element method illustrate the results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.