Collagen I Modifies Connexin-43 Hemichannel Activity via Integrin α2β1 Binding in TGFβ1-Evoked Renal Tubular Epithelial Cells

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is associated with sustained inflammation and progressive fibrosis, changes that have been linked to altered connexin hemichannel-mediated release of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Kidney fibrosis develops in response to increased deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM), and up-regulation of collagen I is an early marker of renal disease. With ECM remodeling known to promote a loss of epithelial stability, in the current study we used a clonal human kidney (HK2) model of proximal tubular epithelial cells to determine if collagen I modulates changes in cell function, via connexin-43 (Cx43) hemichannel ATP release. HK2 cells were cultured on collagen I and treated with the beta 1 isoform of the pro-fibrotic cytokine transforming growth factor (TGFβ1) ± the Cx43 mimetic Peptide 5 and/or an anti-integrin α2β1 neutralizing antibody. Phase microscopy and immunocytochemistry observed changes in cell morphology and cytoskeletal reorganization, whilst immunoblotting and ELISA identified changes in protein expression and secretion. Carboxyfluorescein dye uptake and biosensing measured hemichannel activity and ATP release. A Cytoselect extracellular matrix adhesion assay assessed changes in cell-substrate interactions. Collagen I and TGFβ1 synergistically evoked increased hemichannel activity and ATP release. This was paralleled by changes to markers of tubular injury, partly mediated by integrin α2β1/integrin-like kinase signaling. The co-incubation of the hemichannel blocker Peptide 5, reduced collagen I/TGFβ1 induced alterations and inhibited a positive feedforward loop between Cx43/ATP release/collagen I. This study highlights a role for collagen I in regulating connexin-mediated hemichannel activity through integrin α2β1 signaling, ahead of establishing Peptide 5 as a potential intervention.     

In Vitro Characterization of Neutralizing Hen Antibodies to Coxsackievirus A16

Coxsackievirus A16 (CA16) is one of the major causative agents of hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD). Children aged <5 years are the most affected by CA16 HFMD globally. Although clinical symptoms of CA16 infections are usually mild, severe complications, such as aseptic meningitis or even death, have been recorded. Currently, no vaccine or antiviral therapy for CA16 infection exists. Single-chain variable fragment (scFv) antibodies significantly inhibit viral infection and could be a potential treatment for controlling the infection. In this study, scFv phage display libraries were constructed from splenocytes of a laying hen immunized with CA16-infected lysate. The pComb3X vector containing the scFv genes was introduced into ER2738 Escherichia coli and rescued by helper phages to express scFv molecules. After screening with five cycles of bio-panning, an effective scFv antibody showing favorable binding activity to proteins in CA16-infected lysate on ELISA plates was selected. Importantly, the selected scFv clone showed a neutralizing capability against the CA16 virus and cross-reacted with viral proteins in EV71-infected lysate. Intriguingly, polyclonal IgY antibody not only showed binding specificity against proteins in CA16-infected lysate but also showed significant neutralization activities. Nevertheless, IgY-binding protein did not cross-react with proteins in EV71-infected lysate. These results suggest that the IgY- and scFv-binding protein antibodies provide protection against CA16 viral infection in in vitro assays and may be potential candidates for treating CA16 infection in vulnerable young children.     

Plasma graft polymerization of acrylamide onto crosslinked HTPB based PU membrane for pervaporation

Pervaporation of water-ethanol mixtures through plasma graft polymerization of acrylamide onto crosslinked hydroxyl terminated poly-butadiene (HTPB) based PU membranes, plasma graft polymerization of acrylamide onto crosslinked PU membrane (AAm-p-CPU), were investigated. The grafting was dependent on the discharge power and pretreatment period. The effects of crosslinking, plasma treatment conditions, feed compositions, and feed temperature on the performance of these membranes were studied. The physical properties of crosslinked membrane were better than those of the uncrosslinked membrane. In addition, compared with crosslinked PU membranes (CPU), the plasma modified crosslinked PU membranes effectively improve the pervaporation separation performances.     

Catalytic removal of SO2, NO and HCl from incineration flue gas over activated carbon-supported metal oxides

Activated carbon-supported copper, iron, or vanadium oxide catalysts were exposed to incineration flue gas to investigate the simultaneous catalytic oxidation of sulfur dioxide/hydrogen chloride and selective catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxide by carbon monoxide. The results show that AC-supported catalysts exhibit higher activities for SO₂ and HCl oxidation than traditional γ-Al₂O₃-supported catalysts and the iron and vanadium catalysts act as catalysts instead of sorbents, and can decompose sulfate with evolution of SO₃ and then regenerate for more SO₂ adsorption to take place. The AC-supported catalysts also display a high activity for NO reduction with CO generated from a flue gas incineration process and the presence of SO₂ in the incineration flue gas can significantly promote catalytic activity. Using CO as the reducing agent for NO reduction is more effective than using NH₃, because NH₃ may be partially oxidized in the presence of excess O₂ (12 vol%. in the incineration flue gas used) to form N₂, which can decrease the overall extent of NO reduction.     

A power-efficient vertical handover with MIH-based network scanning through consistency check

We propose an power-efficient scanning scheme considering the consistency of the Information Element (IE) for the Media Independent Handover (MIH) based Vertical Handover. Since the Green IT is one of the key issues of the science, we suggested the power saving scheme by extending the information and the event service of the MIH framework to reduce the number of full scanning. We proposed the criteria to select the update MT to quantify the power consumption alongside various network scanning methods. Since the frequent and multiple network scanning incurred by small mobile terminals (MT) is considerable, the scanning avoidance is essential for the framework we suggest. The MIH Information Service (MIIS) provides many usable factors and features for the scanning avoidance. However, because of the absence of the criteria to select the update node, these values are not actually usable. Therefore, we suggest an Energy Efficient Function, which tests the validity of MIIS values and makes a decision on whether to avoid the scanning or not.     

Miscibility, crystallization and morphologies of syndiotactic polystyrene blends with isotactic polystyrene and with atactic polystyrene

Two-component blends of differing polystyrene (PS), one syndiotactic (sPS) and the other isotactic (iPS) or atactic (aPS), were discussed. The phase behavior, crystallization and microstructure of binary polystyrene blends of sPS/iPS and sPS/aPS with a specific composition of 5/5 weight ratio were investigated using optical microscopy (OM), differential scanning calorimetry, wide-angle X-ray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM). Based on the kinetics of enthalpy recovery, complete miscibility was found for the sPS/aPS blends where a single recovery peak was obtained, whereas phase separation was concluded for the sPS/iPS blends due to the presence of an additional recovery shoulder indicating the heterogeneity in the molten state. These findings were consistent with OM and SEM observations; sPS/iPS exhibits the dual interconnectivity of phase-separated phases resulting from spinodal decomposition.Both iPS and aPS have the same influence on the sPS crystal structure, i.e., dominant β-form sPS and mixed α-/β-form sPS obtained for melt-crystallization at high and low temperatures respectively, but imperfect α-form sPS developed when cold-crystallized at 175 °C. Co-crystallization of iPS and sPS into the common lattice was not observed regardless the thermal treatments, either cold or melt crystallization. Due to its slow process, crystallization of iPS was found to commence always after the completion of sPS crystallization in one-step crystallization kinetics. Segregation of rejected iPS component during sPS crystallization was extensively observed from TEM and SEM images which showed iPS pockets located between sPS lamellar stacks within spherulites, leading to the interfibrillar segregation, which was similar with that observed in the sPS/aPS blends. The addition of iPS (or aPS) component will reduce the overall crystallization rate of the sPS component and the retardation of crystal growth rates can be simply accounted by a dilution effect, keeping the surface nucleation intact. The phase-separated structure in the sPS/iPS blend shows a negligible effect on sPS crystallization and the signature of phase separation disappears after sPS crystallization. Depending on the relative dimensions of the segregated domains and iPS lamellar nucleus, subsequent crystallization of iPS can proceed to result in a crystalline/crystalline blend, or be inhibited to give a crystalline/amorphous blend morphology similar with that of sPS/aPS blends.     

Ultrasonic Spray Pyrolysis for Synthesis of Spherical Zirconia Particles

This paper presents new findings on ultrasonic spray pyrolysis of zirconium hydroxyl acetate precursor drops whose sizes were precisely measured using laser light diffraction technique. Precursor concentration plays a predominant role in determination of product particle size. At 0.01 wt% precursor concentration, conventional spray pyrolysis at 750°C using precursor drops 5–8 μm in diameter, generated by an ultrasonic nebulizer at 2.66 MHz, yielded uniform spherical yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) particles 73 nm in diameter measured by scanning electron microscopy. The YSZ particle diameters were much smaller than those predicted by the one-particle-per-drop mechanism. Under similar reaction conditions, the high-throughput ultrasound-modulated two-fluid (UMTF) spray pyrolysis of larger precursor drops (28-μm peak diameter) also yielded spherical dense particles; they were significantly smaller in size than those produced by the low-throughput conventional ultrasonic spray pyrolysis of smaller drops (6.8-μm peak diameter).     

On detecting co-resident cloud instances using network flow watermarking techniques

Virtualization is the cornerstone of the developing third-party compute industry, allowing cloud providers to instantiate multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single set of physical resources. Customers utilize cloud resources alongside unknown and untrusted parties, creating the co-resident threat—unless perfect isolation is provided by the virtual hypervisor, there exists the possibility for unauthorized access to sensitive customer information through the exploitation of covert side channels. This paper presents co-resident watermarking, a traffic analysis attack that allows a malicious co-resident VM to inject a watermark signature into the network flow of a target instance. This watermark can be used to exfiltrate and broadcast co-residency data from the physical machine, compromising isolation without reliance on internal side channels. As a result, our approach is difficult to defend against without costly underutilization of the physical machine. We evaluate co-resident watermarkingunder a large variety of conditions, system loads and hardware configurations, from a local laboratory environment to production cloud environments (Futuregrid and the University of Oregon’s ACISS). We demonstrate the ability to initiate a covert channel of 4 bits per second, and we can confirm co-residency with a target VM instance in $<$ 10 s. We also show that passive load measurement of the target and subsequent behavior profiling is possible with this attack. We go on to consider the detectability of co-resident watermarking, extending our scheme to create a subtler watermarking attack by imitating legitimate cloud customer behavior. Our investigation demonstrates the need for the careful design of hardware to be used in the cloud.     

Growth of CeO2 Films on Sapphire and MgO by rf Magnetron Sputtering

pitaxial CeO₂ films on (1102) sapphire and (100) MgO were grown by rf magnetron sputtering. Substrate temperature, total pressure, and oxygen-to-argon mole ratio were varied to explore the optimal deposition condition. The X-ray diffraction spectra indicate that the degree of crystallinity of the deposited CeO₂ films depends on the oxygen- to-argon mole ratio and the substrate temperature. Atomic force microscopy images of the films on sapphire and MgO showed that substrate temperature and total pressure affect surface roughness. The best film surface is smooth with a 0.89 nm root-mean-square roughness. The quality of the films on MgO showed a strong dependence on substrate pretreatments. Epitaxial CeO₂ films could be grown on pre- annealed or pre-etched MgO if substrate temperatures reached higher than 790^deg;C. Additionally, the effect of ion bombardment at low total pressures on the crystallinity of the films was examined by growing the films outside the plasma region. Experimental results indicate that the ion bombardment does not prevent the films from preferred orientation.     

Fabrication of High-Curie-Point Barium-Lead Titanate PTCR Ceramics

High-Curie-point semiconducting barium-lead titanate positive temperature coefficient of resistivity (PTCR) ceramics of composition Ba_0.897Pb_0.1La_0.003TiO₃ and Ba_0.5Pb_0.5La_0.003TiO₃ were prepared. The starting powders were synthesized by reacting commercial BaTiO₃, PbO, and TiO₂. To avoid the nonstoichiometry due to the volatilization of Pb during the sintering process, a lead atmosphere sintering approach with PbTiO₃ as packing powder was used. The samples being fabricated by this method show a PTCR effect of 3 to 4.5 orders of magnitude above the Curie point. The curie points were about 180°C for Ba_0.897Pb_0.1La_0.003TiO₃ and about 360°C for Ba_0.497Pb_0.5La_0.003TiO₃.