Abscopal Effect of Frozen Autograft Reconstruction Combined with an Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Analyzed Using a Metastatic Bone Tumor Model

We evaluated the abscopal effect of re-implantation of liquid nitrogen-treated tumor-bearing bone grafts and the synergistic effect of anti-PD-1 (programmed death-1) therapy using a bone metastasis model, created by injecting MMT-060562 cells into the bilateral tibiae of 6–8-week-old female C3H mice. After 2 weeks, the lateral tumors were treated by excision, cryotreatment using liquid nitrogen, excision with anti-PD-1 treatment, and cryotreatment with anti-PD-1 treatment. Anti-mouse PD-1 4H2 was injected on days 1, 6, 12, and 18 post-treatment. The mice were euthanized after 3 weeks; the abscopal effect was evaluated by focusing on growth inhibition of the abscopal tumor. The re-implantation of frozen autografts significantly inhibited the growth of the remaining abscopal tumors. However, a more potent abscopal effect was observed in the anti-PD-1 antibody group. The number of CD8+ T cells infiltrating the abscopal tumor and tumor-specific interferon-γ (IFN-γ)-producing spleen cells increased in the liquid nitrogen-treated group compared with those in the excision group, with no significant difference. The number was significantly higher in the anti-PD-1 antibody-treated group than in the non-treated group. Overall, re-implantation of tumor-bearing frozen autograft has an abscopal effect on abscopal tumor growth, although re-implantation of liquid nitrogen-treated bone grafts did not induce a strong T-cell response or tumor-suppressive effect.     

Remarkable improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio of Mn/Fe in-beam Mössbauer spectroscopy

In-beam Mössbauer spectroscopy utilizing unstable ⁵⁷Mn beams is a powerful method to extract physical and chemical properties at the atomic scale. A parallel plate avalanche counter (PPAC), optimized to detect conversion electrons generated by the Mössbauer effect, can be employed to suppress higher-energy background γ rays. However, β rays are emitted by the ⁵⁷Mn parent nuclei of ⁵⁷Fe, which can significantly degrade the spectrum quality. In the present work, we have developed a new anti-coincidence-detection system with a thin plastic scintillation counter (0.5 mmt), which can be used to detect β rays and reject them from the recorded PPAC events. To demonstrate the anti-coincidence system, we carried out Mössbauer spectroscopy utilizing ⁵⁷Mn nuclei that were implanted into a non-magnetic aluminum metal plate at room temperature. Using the anti-coincidence method, we obtained a typical Mössbauer spectrum of high quality, despite a very low number of implanted ⁵⁷Mn atoms, of ∼5 × 10⁹. The signal to noise ratio of the obtained spectrum was increased remarkably, and the relative peak height above the baseline increased from 10% to 220% using the anti-coincidence method. The developed detection system is applicable to investigation of in situ properties, and avoids the potentially problematic agglomeration of probes in a sample.     

Large eddy simulation of two-phase reacting turbulent flow in a pilot-scale pulverized coal combustion furnace with flamelet model

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - A three-dimensional numerical simulation was performed to investigate the physics and combustion characteristics of a two-phase reacting turbulent...     

Widening of harvesting layer and area of P3HT/PCBM bulk-heterojunction photovoltaic cells

We have fabricated P3HT/PCBM based bulk-heterojunction photovoltaic cells with P3HT layer as the hole transport layer and PCBM layer as the electron transport layer between electrode and blended P3HT/PCBM layer in order to widen the photon harvesting layer. Current density has increased by about 1 mA/cm² by the insertion of P3HT layer and the resulting conversion efficiency has been improved by about 20%. We have also fabricated a centimeter-scale active area with an efficiency of ∼1%.     

Overview of Ferroptosis and Synthetic Lethality Strategies

Ferroptosis, a term first proposed in 2012, is iron-dependent, non-apoptotic regulatory cell death induced by erastin. Ferroptosis was originally discovered during synthetic lethal screening for drugs sensitive to RAS mutant cells, and is closely related to synthetic lethality. Ferroptosis sensitizes cancer stem cells and tumors that undergo epithelial−mesenchymal transition and are resistant to anticancer drugs or targeted therapy. Therefore, ferroptosis-inducing molecules are attractive new research targets. In contrast, synthetic lethal strategies approach mechanisms and genetic abnormalities that cannot be directly targeted by conventional therapeutic strategies, such as RAS mutations, hypoxia, and abnormalities in the metabolic environment. They also target the environment and conditions specific to malignant cells, have a low toxicity to normal cells, and can be used in combination with known drugs to produce new ones. However, the concept of synthetic lethality has not been widely adopted with ferroptosis. In this review, we surveyed the literature on ferroptosis-related factors and synthetic lethality to examine the potential therapeutic targets in ferroptosis-related molecules, focusing on factors related to synthetic lethality, discovery methods, clinical application stages, and issues in drug discovery.     

Co-occurrence prediction in a large location-based social network

Location-based social network (LBSN) is at the forefront of emerging trends in social network services (SNS) since the users in LBSN are allowed to “check-in” the places (locations) when they visit them. The accurate geographical and temporal information of these check-in actions are provided by the end-user GPS-enabled mobile devices, and recorded by the LBSN system. In this paper, we analyze and mine a big LBSN data, Gowalla, collected by us. First, we investigate the relationship between the spatio-temporal co-occurrences and social ties, and the results show that the co-occurrences are strongly correlative with the social ties. Second, we present a study of predicting two users whether or not they will meet (co-occur) at a place in a given future time, by exploring their check-in habits. In particular, we first introduce two new concepts, bag-of-location and bag-of-time-lag, to characterize user’s check-in habits. Based on such bag representations, we define a similarity metric called habits similarity to measure the similarity between two users’ check-in habits. Then we propose a machine learning formula for predicting co-occurrence based on the social ties and habits similarities. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on our dataset, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Banded structure and its distribution in friction stir processing of 316L austenitic stainless steel

Banded structures, which vary with welding parameters, were observed in friction stir processing of 316L austenite stainless steel. Sigma phase precipitation was detected in banded structures by transmission electron microscopy. The amount of banded structure had direct ratio relations with heat input. The higher the heat input, the larger the area of banded structures. This is attributable to slower cooling rate at high heat input, which results in longer exposure to the temperature range for precipitation. The formation of sigma phase produced Cr depletion, which resulted in largely degraded corrosion resistance. The present study suggests that low heat input (i.e. low rotation speeds, low working loads and high welding speed) contributes to restrain sigma phase precipitation.     

Turbulent burning velocity of hydrogen–air premixed propagating flames at elevated pressures

Lewis number represents the thermo-diffusive effects on laminar flames. That of hydrogen–air mixture varies extensively with the equivalence ratio due to the high molecular diffusivity of hydrogen. In this study, the influences of pressure and thermo-diffusive effects on spherically propagating premixed hydrogen–air turbulent flames were studied using a constant volume fan-stirred combustion vessel. It was noted that the ratio of the turbulent to unstretched laminar burning velocity increased with decreasing equivalence ratio and increasing mixture pressure. Turbulent burning velocity was dominated by three factors: (1) purely hydrodynamic factor, turbulence Reynolds number, (2) relative turbulence intensity to reaction speed, the ratio of turbulence intensity to unstretched laminar burning velocity, and (3) sensitivity of the flame to the stretch due to the thermo-diffusive effects, Lewis and Markstein numbers. A turbulent burning velocity correlation in terms of Reynolds and Lewis numbers is presented.     

Heating rate dependence of the shear viscosity of a finemet glassy alloy

Temperature dependencies of the shear viscosity of a Finemet glassy alloy under the heating rates ranging from 0.3 to 100 K/min are obtained. It is shown that isothermal cuts of these dependencies give linear viscosity increase with the inverse heating rate that accords with the flow equation derived within the framework of the directional structural relaxation model.