Upregulated Expression of Activation-Induced Cytidine Deaminase in Ocular Adnexal Marginal Zone Lymphoma with IgG4-Positive Cells

Immunoglobulin G4-related disease (IgG4-RD) is a systemic disorder characterized by tissue fibrosis and intense lymphoplasmacytic infiltration, causing progressive organ dysfunction. Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID), a deaminase normally expressed in activated B-cells in germinal centers, edits ribonucleotides to induce somatic hypermutation and class switching of immunoglobulin. While AID expression is strictly controlled under physiological conditions, chronic inflammation has been noted to induce its upregulation to propel oncogenesis. We examined AID expression in IgG4-related ophthalmic disease (IgG4-ROD; n = 16), marginal zone lymphoma with IgG4-positive cells (IgG4+ MZL; n = 11), and marginal zone lymphoma without IgG4-positive cells (IgG4- MZL; n = 12) of ocular adnexa using immunohistochemical staining. Immunohistochemistry revealed significantly higher AID-intensity index in IgG4-ROD and IgG4+ MZL than IgG4- MZL (p < 0.001 and = 0.001, respectively). The present results suggest that IgG4-RD has several specific causes of AID up-regulation in addition to inflammation, and AID may be a driver of oncogenesis in IgG4-ROD to IgG4+ MZL.     

Super‐Tough,Self‐Healing Polyurethane Based on Diels‐Alder Bonds and Dynamic Zinc–Ligand Interactions

Self‐healing polymer materials have attracted extensive attention and have been explored due to their ability of crack repairing in materials. This paper aims to develop a novel polyurethane‐based material with high self‐healing efficiency and excellent mechanical properties under 80 °C on the basis of reversible Diels–Alder bonds as well as zinc–ligand structure (DA‐ZN‐PU). By integrating DA bonds and zinc–ligand structure, as‐prepared DA‐ZN‐PU samples reach the maximum tensile strength as much as 28.45 MPa. After self‐healing, the tensile strength is 25.85 MPa, leading to the high self‐healing efficiency of 90.8%. In addition, by introducing carbonyl iron powder (CIP), a new polyurethane containing carbonyl iron powder (DA‐ZN‐CIP‐PU) can be achieved, exhibiting microwave‐assisted self‐healing property. And the self‐healing efficiency can be reached to 92.6% in 3 min. Due to high self‐healing efficiency and excellent mechanical properties of the prepared novel polyurethane, it has application attributes in crack repair of functional composite materials.     

Preparation of Polymer-Based Nanocomposites Composed of Sustainable Organo-Modified Needlelike Nanoparticles and Their Particle Dispersion States in the Matrix

Polymer-based nanohybrid materials were created using sustainable sepiolite clay composed from ubiquitous elements. Although sepiolite is generally recognized as a fibrous natural clay mineral, it turned out to be an acicular microcrystal because of the organo-modification of the outermost surface. Surface modification was performed using phosphonic acid derivatives containing hydrocarbon chains or fluorocarbon chains. Formation of a bidentate bond enhanced the desorption temperature and made nanocomposite preparation possible by melt compounding with polymers having a high melting point. As a result of organo-modification, amphiphilic sepiolite was obtained, and nanodispersion in an organic solvent was achieved. This technology was useful for detailed evaluation of sepiolite morphology. The nanocomposite of crystalline polymers/organo-modified sepiolites achieved uniform dispersion of these nanofillers in the matrix polymer. The introduction of 1 wt% nanofillers did not impair the transparency of the matrix polymer. As a result, a lamellae structure of the polymer developed, the crystallinity increased, and the mechanical properties improved. In addition, the crystallization temperature was improved, indicating that organo-modified sepiolites may act as a nucleating agent. It was found that sepiolite nanofiller with a highly aggregated tendency can achieve a well-nanodispersed state, even in phase-separable fluoropolymers, by applying fluorocarbon modification. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 60:541–552, 2020. © 2019 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Urban building roof segmentation from airborne lidar point clouds

This article presents a new approach to segmenting building rooftops from airborne lidar point clouds. A progressive morphological filter technique is first applied for separation between ground and non-ground points. For the non-ground points, a region-growing algorithm based on a plane-fitting technique is used to separate building points from vegetation points. Then, an adaptive Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) algorithm based on a grid structure is developed to improve the probability of selecting an uncontained sample from the localized sampling. The distance, standard deviation and normal vector are integrated to keep topological consistency among building rooftop patches during building rooftop segmentation. Finally, the remaining points are mapped on to the extracted planes by a post-processing technique to improve the segmentation accuracy. The results for buildings with different roof complexities are presented and evaluated.     

Rate of droplet deposition in steam-water annular flow and effect of a flow obstacle

Deposition rate of droplets in steam-water annular two-phase flow was measured using a 5 mm diameter vertical round tube as a test section. In the experimental conditions tested in this work, the droplet mass transfer coefficient decreased with an increase in the droplet concentration in the gas core flow and with an increase in the length of a deposition section. The dependence on these two parameters agreed fairly well with predictions by available correlations. Placing a small cylindrical tube concentrically in the test section round tube, the effect of a flow obstacle on the deposition rate of droplets was also experimentally investigated. It was found that the obstacle effect was significant and the deposition rate of droplets increased approximately three times in average. The obstacle effect measured in this work was compared with an empirical correlation and a simple mechanistic model that were developed using experimental results of air-water annular flows. Fairly good agreement was achieved in both cases, which would indicate that the mechanism of deposition enhancement induced by the flow obstacle is similar between air-water and steam-water flows.     

Advanced energy saving in the reaction section of the hydro-desulfurization process with self-heat recuperation technology

The reaction section of the naphtha hydro-desulfurization (HDS) process is a heating and cooling thermal process consisting of a feed/effluent heat exchanger and a fired heater. Energy savings are fundamentally made as a result of the maximized heat recovery in the heat exchanger and the reduced heat duty of the fired heater. To achieve further energy saving in the process, “self-heat recuperation technology” (SHRT) was adopted. In this technology, a compressor was introduced. The suction side of the compressor needed a lower pressure and the feed stream evaporated much easily. The discharged side of the compressor satisfied the operating conditions of both pressure and temperature at the inlet of the reactor. And the reactor effluent stream was able to be used completely to preheat and vaporize the feed stream. All the heat in the process stream was re-circulated without using a fired heater. SHRT was applied to the naphtha HDS process of 18,000 barrel per stream day (BPSD) in the refinery and the mass and energy balance of the process was calculated using commercially available simulation software, Invensys PROII version 8.1. This process-simulation case study confirmed that despite there being no more energy saving potential in the conventional process that makes use of a fired heater, the advanced process with SHRT can reduce the energy consumption significantly by using the recuperated heat of the feed stream.