Detection of ROS and translocation of ERP-57 in apoptotic induced human neuroblastoma (SH-SY5Y) cells

Several toxic compounds are known to induce apoptosis in mammalian cell lines. The human neuroblastomacells (SH-SY5Y) were exposed to the phosphatase inhibiting toxin okadaic acid (OA) or hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)to induce apoptosis as well as generate reactive oxygen species (ROS). Mitoxantrone (MXT) was used as a positivecontrol for apoptosis. The SH-SY5Y cells were transfected with eukaryotic expression plasmid pHyPer-dMito encodingmitochondrial-targeted fluorescent or pHyPer-dCito encoding cytoplasmic-targeted fluorescent sensor for hydrogenperoxide (HyPer). The ERp57, also called GRP58 (Glucose-regulated protein 58), is a stress protein induced inconditions like glucose starvation and viral infection. Recently ERp57 was shown to translocate from the endoplasmaticreticulum to the cell surface in anthracycline-induced apoptotic cells. ERp57 co-translocation together with calreticulinhas been suggested to be crucial for recognizing tumor cells to induce immunogenic cell death. ERp57 translocationafter exposure to okadaic acid was studied using immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy. These studies indicatedthat okadaic acid has induced the translocation of ERp57 to the cellular membrane.     

An effective wavelet-based feature extraction method for classification of power quality disturbance signals

This paper presents a wavelet norm entropy-based effective feature extraction method for power quality (PQ) disturbance classification problem. The disturbance classification schema is performed with wavelet-neural network (WNN). It performs a feature extraction and a classification algorithm composed of a wavelet feature extractor based on norm entropy and a classifier based on a multi-layer perceptron. The PQ signals used in this study are seven types. The performance of this classifier is evaluated by using total 2800 PQ disturbance signals which are generated the based model. The classification performance of different wavelet family for the proposed algorithm is tested. Sensitivity of WNN under different noise conditions which are different levels of noises with the signal to noise ratio is investigated. The rate of average correct classification is about 92.5% for the different PQ disturbance signals under noise conditions.     

Microstructure and dispersion of Cu-TiC X master alloys into molten Cu and the relation to contact angle data

Cu-TiC _x composites have been made self-propagating high temperature synthesis of Cu-Ti-C mixtures. It was found that as the C/Ti ratio decreases, wetting of the carbide, by what is effectively a molten Cu-Ti alloy, is improved and the distribution of the carbides in the master-alloy becomes ideal for subsequent dispersion, i.e. discrete particles are formed. Increasing quantity of Cu in the reactants from 10 to 50 wt% Cu had a similar effect to decreasing the C/Ti ratio and enabled the size of the TiC _x particles to be varied in the approximate range 20–0.5 μm. Incorporation and dispersion of the master alloy into molten copper was possible when the C/Ti ratio in the products was below approximately 0.73, which agreed well with contact angle data in the literature.     

An investigation of thermal comfort inside an automobile during the heating period

This paper describes a combined theoretical and experimental study of thermal comfort during the heating period inside an automobile. To investigate the effects of thermal conditions on the human physiology and thermal comfort during the heating period, temperature, humidity and air velocity were measured at a number of points inside the automobile, so thermal conditions were accurately determined. The human body was divided into 16 sedentary segments, and the change of temperature was observed both experimentally and theoretically. During transient conditions of the heating period, heat and mass transfer between the human body and the interior environment of an automobile were simulated by a computational model, and predictions were compared with the measured data. It is shown that there is a good agreement between the model predictions and experimental results. By means of the present model, the effects of the fast transient conditions of the heating period on the sensible and latent heat transfer from the body, body segments skin temperatures and thermal sensation were investigated in detail.     

Prediction of flashover voltage of insulators using least squares support vector machines

The importance of the research on insulator pollution has been increased considerably with the rise of the voltage of transmission lines. In order to determine the flashover behavior of polluted high voltage insulators and to identify to physical mechanisms that govern this phenomenon, the researchers have been brought to establish a modeling. In this paper, a dynamic model of AC flashover voltages of the polluted insulators is constructed using the least square support vector machine (LS-SVM) regression method. For this purpose, a training set is generated by using a numerical method based on Finite Element Method (FEM) for several of common insulators with different geometries. To improve the resulting model’s generalization ability, an efficient optimization algorithm known as the grid search are adopted to tune parameters in LS-SVM design.In addition, two different testing set, which are not introduced to the LS-SVM during the training procedures, is used to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method. Then, optimum LS-SVM model is firstly obtained and the performance of the proposed system with other intelligence method based on ANN is compared. It can be concluded that the performance of LS-SVM model outperforms those of ANN, for the data set available, which indicates that the LS-SVM model has better generalization ability.     

Drug-Eluting Shear-Thinning Hydrogel for the Delivery of Chemo- and Immunotherapeutic Agents for the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignant and deadly form of liver cancer with limited treatment options. Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, a procedure that delivers embolic and chemotherapeutic agents through blood vessels, is a promising cancer treatment strategy. However, it still faces limitations, such as inefficient agent delivery and the inability to address tumor-induced immunosuppression. Here, a drug-eluting shear-thinning hydrogel (DESTH) loaded with chemotherapeutic and immunotherapeutic agents in nanocomposite hydrogels composed of gelatin and nanoclays is presented as a therapeutic strategy for a catheter-based endovascular anticancer approach. DESTH is manually deliverable using a conventional needle and catheter. In addition, drug release studies show a sustained and pH-dependent co-delivery of the chemotherapy doxorubicin (acidic pH) and the immune-checkpoint inhibitor aPD-1 (neutral pH). In a mouse liver tumor model, the DESTH-based chemo/immunotherapy combination has the highest survival rate and smallest residual tumor size. Finally, immunofluorescence analysis confirms that DESTH application enhances cell death and increases intratumoral infiltration of cytotoxic T-cells. In conclusion, the results show that DESTH, which enables efficient ischemic tumor cell death and effective co-delivery of chemo- and immunotherapeutic agents, may have the potential to be an effective therapeutic modality in the treatment of HCC.     

The pollution flashover on high voltage insulators

The pollution flashover, observed on insulators used in high voltage transmission, is one of the most important problems for power transmission. It is a very complex problem due to several factors such as the modeling difficulties of complex shapes of the insulators, different pollution density at different regions, non-homogeneous pollution distribution on the insulator surface and unknown effect of humidity on the pollution. In the literature, some static and dynamic models were developed by making some assumptions and omissions to predict the flashover voltages of polluted insulators. In this study, historical development of insulator modeling was investigated and a dynamic arc model was proposed. For this purpose, scaled shape of a concerned insulator was firstly partitioned into triangular elements, then finite element method (FEM) was implemented and finally potential distribution on the insulator surface, variation of pollution resistance and flashover voltage were determined. The computed flashover voltage values of the selected string insulator have been compared to results from other research.