Loss of parathyroid hormone-stimulated 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 production in aging does not involve protein kinase A or C pathways

Intestinal calcium absorption declines with aging as a result of decreased renal 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 [1,25-(OH)2D3] biosynthesis. At least part of the decline in 1,25-(OH)2D3 may be due to acquired resistance to parathyroid hormone (PTH) stimulation of renal 25-hydroxyvitamin D1-hydroxylase (1-OHase) activity. To test whether aging rats can increase 1,25-(OH)2D3 production in response to PTH, male rats of the same litter were fed a normal Ca diet and were sacrificed at 175-225 g (young rats) or 3 months later at 350-425 g (aging rats). At sacrifice, basal serum 1,25-(OH)2D3 levels (88 +/- 16 versus 49 +/- 8 pg/ml, P < 0.05) and in vitro renal proximal tubule 1-OHase activity (178 +/- 15 versus 77 +/- 5 pmol/mg protein/5 minutes, n = 6, P < 0.001) were lower in aging animals. rPTH-(1-34) (10(-11) or 10(-7) M) increased in vitro 1,25-(OH)2D3 secretion by perifused renal proximal tubules from young but not aging rats. For young and aging rats, rPTH-(1-34) (10(-7) M) increased proximal tubule cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) activity, and lower concentrations (10(-11) M) stimulated translocation of protein kinase C (PKC) activity from cytosolic to soluble membrane proximal tubule cell fractions. The results of this study show that PTH activation of 1,25-(OH)2D3 production may involve both signaling pathways, with the PKC pathway responsive to lower concentrations of the hormone. The acquired resistance to PTH stimulation of 1,25-(OH)2D3 production in aging appears not to involve the hormonal activation of PKA or PKC.     

Functionalized Cellulose for Water Purification,Antimicrobial Applications,and Sensors

As the most abundant natural polymer, cellulose presents a unique advantage for large‐scale applications. To fully unlock its potential, the introduction of desired functional groups onto the cellulose backbone is required, which can be realized by either chemical bonding or physical surface interactions. This review gives an overview of the chemistry behind the state‐of‐the‐art functionalization methods (e.g., oxidation, esterification, grafting) for cellulose in its various forms, from nanocrystals to bacterial cellulose. The existing and foreseeable applications of the obtained products are presented in detail, spanning from water purification and antibacterial action, to sensing, energy harvesting, and catalysis. A special emphasis is put on the interactions of functionalized cellulose with heavy metals, focusing on copper as a prime example. For the latter, its toxicity can either have a harmful influence on aquatic life, or it can be conveniently employed for microbial disinfection. The reader is further introduced to recent sensing technologies based on functionalized cellulose, which are becoming crucial for the near future especially with the emergence of the internet of things. By revealing the potential of water filters and conductive clothing for mass implementation, the near future of cellulose‐based technologies is also discussed.     

Prediction of forced convective boiling heat transfer coefficient of pure refrigerants and binary refrigerant mixtures inside a horizontal tube

Forced convective boiling heat transfer coefficients were predicted for an annular flow inside a horizontal tube for pure refrigerants and nonazeotropic binary refrigerant mixtures. The heat transfer coefficients were calculated based on the turbulent temperature profile in liquid film and vapor core considering the composition difference in vapor and liquid phases, and the nonlinearity in mixing rules for the calculation of mixture properties. The heat transfer coefficients of pure refrigerants were estimated within a standard deviation of 14% compared with available experimental data. For nonazeotropic binary refrigerant mixtures, prediction of the heat transfer coefficients was made with a standard deviation of 18%. The heat transfer coefficients of refrigerant mixtures were lower than linearly interpolated values calculated from the heat transfer coefficients of pure refrigerants. This degradation was represented by several factors such as the difference between the liquid and the overall compositions, the conductivity ratio and the viscosity ratio of both components in refrigerant mixtures. The temperature change due to the concentration gradient was a major factor for the heat transfer degradation and the mass flux itself at the interface had a minor effect.     

Solubilities of carbon in CaO-Al2O3-SiO2 slags saturated with liquid iron

By equilibrating the CaO-Al₂O₃-SiO₂ slags with Fe - 0.0003～0.07% Al - 0.002～3.5% Si - 0.9～2.0% C alloys (mass contents in %) at 1873 K, the solubilities of carbon were measured as a function of Si contents in metal, using an alumina or lime crucible. The distribution ratios of carbon as a C^2- -ion were found to be linearly related to Si contents with a slope of 1/2 at a given slag composition. The carbide capacity, , defined by (% C) , increased with increasing SiO₂ contents at a given CaO/AlO_1.5 molar ratio in the CaO-AlO_1.5SiO₂ system.     

Boosting CUDA Applications with CPU–GPU Hybrid Computing

This paper presents a cooperative heterogeneous computing framework which enables the efficient utilization of available computing resources of host CPU cores for CUDA kernels, which are designed to run only on GPU. The proposed system exploits at runtime the coarse-grain thread-level parallelism across CPU and GPU, without any source recompilation. To this end, three features including a work distribution module, a transparent memory space, and a global scheduling queue are described in this paper. With a completely automatic runtime workload distribution, the proposed framework achieves speedups of 3.08 $\times $ in the best case and 1.42 $\times $ on average compared to the baseline GPU-only processing.     

A comparative study of preprocessing mismatch effects in color image based face recognition

Face color information can play an important role in face recognition (FR) and it can be used to considerably improve FR performance obtained using only grayscale images. The color-based FR methods involve a preprocessing step where a color image is converted into either a monochromatic image or an image having a different color representation. In practical FR systems, the recording or transmission format of the testing images may be arbitrary or inconsistent depending on the application (e.g., face images could consist of grayscale or color pixels either in compressed or uncompressed form). Further, a wide variety of grayscale and color conversions can be used in the preprocessing step. This could lead to a so-called preprocessing mismatch in color-based FR methods: the training and testing face images, generated after preprocessing, do not match in terms of their degree of compression or in terms of their grayscale or color representations. In contrast to grayscale-based FR, a practical color-based FR system has a higher chance of being confronted with a preprocessing mismatch. The aim of this paper is to present a comparative study that addresses the impact of a preprocessing mismatch on color-image based FR methods. We explore three different types of preprocessing mismatches, which practical color-based FR system are highly likely to encounter. In addition, comparative and extensive experiments have been carried out to analyze the effects of the preprocessing mismatches on an FR performance, using Color FRETET, CMU-PIE, AR, and SCface public face databases. The important conclusions drawn from our experiments include: (1) of all color-based FR methods under consideration, color-based FR using feature-level fusion is the most robust approach to preprocessing mismatches; (2) the preprocessing mismatch caused by the use of compressed color images can significantly deteriorate FR performance of color-based FR methods; (3) grayscale testing images can be critical for the feasibility of color-based FR using an input-level fusion; (4) the preprocessing mismatch in terms of grayscale representation has little effect on the FR performances of color-based FR methods.     

IncogniSense: An anonymity-preserving reputation framework for participatory sensing applications

Reputation systems are fundamental for assessing the quality of user contributions in participatory sensing. However, naively associating reputation scores to contributions allows adversaries to establish links between multiple contributions and thus de-anonymize users. We present the IncogniSense framework as a panacea to these privacy threats. IncogniSense utilizes periodic pseudonyms generated using blind signature and relies on reputation transfer between these pseudonyms. Simulations are used to analyze various reputation cloaking schemes that address the inherent trade-off between anonymity protection and loss in reputation. Our threat analysis confirms the robustness of IncogniSense and a prototype demonstrates that associated overheads are minimal.     

HPC optimal parallel communication algorithm for the simulation of fractional-order systems

A parallel numerical simulation algorithm is presented for fractional-order systems involving Caputo-type derivatives, based on the Adams–Bashforth–Moulton predictor–corrector scheme. The parallel algorithm is implemented using several different approaches: a pure MPI version, a combination of MPI with OpenMP optimization and a memory saving speedup approach. All tests run on a BlueGene/P cluster, and comparative improvement results for the running time are provided. As an applied experiment, the solutions of a fractional-order version of a system describing a forced series LCR circuit are numerically computed, depicting cascades of period-doubling bifurcations which lead to the onset of chaotic behavior.