TGF-β Signalling Mediates the Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Enamel Matrix Derivative In Vitro

Enamel matrix derivative (EMD) prepared from extracted porcine fetal tooth material can support the regrow of periodontal tissues. Previous findings suggest that EMD has anti-inflammatory properties and TGF-β activity in vitro. However, the anti-inflammatory activity of EMD is mediated via TGF-β has not been considered. To this aim, we first established a bioassay to confirm the anti-inflammatory activity of EMD. The bioassay was based on the RAW 264.7 macrophage cell line and proven with primary macrophages where EMD significantly reduced the forced expression of IL-6. We then confirmed the presence of TGF-β1 in EMD by immunoassay and by provoking the Smad2/3 nuclear translocation in RAW 264.7 macrophages. Next, we took advantage of the TGF-β receptor type I kinase-inhibitor SB431542 to block the respective signalling pathway. SB431542 reversed the anti-inflammatory activity of EMD and TGF-β in a bioassay when IL-6 and CXCL2 expression was driven by the LPS stimulation of RAW 264.7 macrophages. This central observation was supported by showing that SB431542 reversed the anti-inflammatory activity of EMD using IL-1β and TNF-α-stimulated ST2 bone marrow stromal cells. Together, these findings implicate that the TGF-β activity mediates at least part of the anti-inflammatory activity of EMD in vitro.     

Preventing Cloud Network from Spamming Attacks Using Cloudflare and KNN

Cloud computing is one of the most attractive and cost-saving models, which provides online services to end-users. Cloud computing allows the user to access data directly from any node. But nowadays, cloud security is one of the biggest issues that arise. Different types of malware are wreaking havoc on the clouds. Attacks on the cloud server are happening from both internal and external sides. This paper has developed a tool to prevent the cloud server from spamming attacks. When an attacker attempts to use different spamming techniques on a cloud server, the attacker will be intercepted through two effective techniques: Cloudflare and K-nearest neighbors (KNN) classification. Cloudflare will block those IP addresses that the attacker will use and prevent spamming attacks. However, the KNN classifiers will determine which area the spammer belongs to. At the end of the article, various prevention techniques for securing cloud servers will be discussed, a comparison will be made with different papers, a conclusion will be drawn based on different results.     

Microneedle Technologies for Food and Crop Health: Recent Advances and Future Perspectives

The global food supply constantly faces the threats of emerging crop diseases initiated by pathogens such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Plant diseases can cause significant economic and production losses in the agriculture industry, and early disease detection significantly mitigates losses. Monitoring the food quality and detecting pathogens during the food supply chain is essential in confirming the food's safety and reducing crop loss. This results in lowering production costs and increasing average yield in the agriculture industry. Considering the significant development of nanotechnology in biomedicine for human health monitoring, diagnostics, and treatment, there is an increasing interest in using nanotechnology in crop production, health, and plant science. This technology can allow continuous monitoring of plant health and on-site diagnostics of plant diseases. While many microneedle-based devices are previously reported for human health monitoring, diagnostics, and treatment, the application of this technology to agriculture started relatively recently. This review investigates the recent development of microneedle technology in food and crop health, where the most state-of-the-art microneedle-based devices are utilized for plant drug delivery, disease monitoring, and diagnosis. Finally, the current challenges and future directions in developing microneedle technology for food and crop health are discussed.     

Innovative Diagnostic Peptide-Based Technologies for Cancer Diagnosis: Focus on EGFR-Targeting Peptides

Active targeting using biological ligands has emerged as a novel strategy for the targeted delivery of diagnostic agents to tumor cells. Conjugating functional targeting moieties with diagnostic probes can increase their accumulation in tumor cells and tissues, enhancing signal detection and, thus, the sensitivity of diagnosis. Due to their small size, ease of chemical synthesis and site-specific modification, high tissue penetration, low immunogenicity, rapid blood clearance, low cost, and biosafety, peptides offer several advantages over antibodies and proteins in diagnostic applications. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is one of the most promising cancer biomarkers for actively targeting diagnostic and therapeutic agents to tumor cells due to its active involvement and overexpression in various cancers. Several peptides for EGFR-targeting have been identified in the last decades, which have been obtained by multiple means including derivation from natural proteins, phage display screening, positional scanning synthetic combinatorial library, and in silico screening. Many studies have used these peptides as a targeting moiety for diagnosing different cancers in vitro, in vivo, and in clinical trials. This review summarizes the progress of EGFR-targeting peptide-based assays in the molecular diagnosis of cancer.     

Molecularly Capped Omniphobic Polydimethylsiloxane Brushes with Ultra-Fast Contact Line Dynamics

Droplet friction is common and significant in any field where liquids interact with solid surfaces. This study explores the molecular capping of surface-tethered, liquid-like polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) brushes and its substantial effect on droplet friction and liquid repellency. By exchanging polymer chain terminal silanol groups for methyls using a single-step vapor phase reaction, the contact line relaxation time is decreased by three orders of magnitude–from seconds to milliseconds. This leads to a substantial reduction in the static and kinetic friction of both high- and low-surface tension fluids. Vertical droplet oscillatory imaging confirms the ultra-fast contact line dynamics of capped PDMS brushes, which is corroborated by live contact angle monitoring during fluid flow. This study proposes that truly omniphobic surfaces should not only have very small contact angle hysteresis, but their contact line relaxation time should be significantly shorter than the timescale of their useful application, i.e., a Deborah number less than unity. Capped PDMS brushes that meet these criteria demonstrate complete suppression of the coffee ring effect, excellent anti-fouling behavior, directional droplet transport, increased water harvesting performance, and transparency retention following the evaporation of non-Newtonian fluids.     

Stabilizing a class of nonlinear parameter-varying systems using interval observer based on a piecewise framework

This article addresses an interval observer-based control for stabilizing a class of nonlinear parameter-varying systems with noisy output by designing a switching surface. An input-dependent interval observer is firstly developed to estimate the lower and upper bounds of the states. Next, a switching-based controller is designed to stabilize the interval observer which implies the stability of the main parameter-varying system. The developed stabilizing switching surfaces are designed based on the outputs of the main system and the bounds of the states of the observer. By choosing an appropriate piecewise Lyapunov function, the closed-loop stability analysis of the interval observer system leads to a set of linear matrix inequalities including stability and Metzler constraints, simultaneously. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified using the simulation results.     

The effect of heat transfer characteristics of macromolecule fouling on heat exchanger surface: A dynamic simulation study

At the city gate gas pressure reduction stations (CGSs), to prevent natural gas from forming a hydrate in the throttle valve, the natural gas is heated by the heater before reaching the pressure relief valve. Heat exchangers are an essential component of industrial processes that contribute significantly to total system energy. Since the element impacting heat exchanger performance is the fouling process, all fouling processes and models were dynamically simulated in this study. Through coding in the C++ language and simultaneous use of fluent functions, or, in other words, user-defined function (UDF), fouling-related models were defined for this software. The dynamic simulation was performed, and parameters such as fouling strength and layer thickness were calculated. The effects of changing operating conditions, such as gas inlet velocity, surface temperature, and fouling species concentration on fouling growth, were also evaluated. As the concentration of fouling species increased, the fouling rate also increased. The amount of supersaturation and fouling rate increased as the surface temperature increased. Due to the operational limitations of the system, to reduce the fouling rate, the gas inlet velocity should be as high as possible, and the fluid inlet temperature, surface temperature, and concentration of fouling species should be as low as possible. In this study, the required time to reach the efficiency of 70% of the heat exchanger was calculated using the modelling of this chamber, which was equivalent to 190 days. Additionally, the critical thickness of the fouling layer at this time was 3.5 cm.     

The Effect of NaY nano-Zeolite on the Mechanical Properties of Silicon Insoles

Silicon - The chemical composition of the insoles inbounded materials influences some of the mechanical properties of silicon insoles including; tensile strain and modules and moisture adsorption...     

A cloud database route scheduling method using a hybrid optimization algorithm

Cloud computing has appeared as a technology allowing a company to employ computing resources such as applications, software, and hardware to calculate over the Internet. Scholars have paid great attention to cloud computing because of its cutting-edge availability, cost decrement, and boundless applications. A cloud database is a data storage site on the web where the optimal path is spotted to access the needed database. So, placing the ideal path to a database is crucial. The cloud database defined the scheduling problem to choose the perfect route. Cloud database path scheduling is a multifaceted procedure consisting of congestion control, routing list, and network flow distribution. It has a postponement in searching for the needed source route from the cloud database. Offering numerous infinite resources with the growing database workload is an NP-Hard optimization problem where the query request needs optimal schedules to respond to the required services. So, we have used a hybrid cuckoo search (CS) and genetic algorithm (GA), motivated by a social bird's phenomenon, to solve this problem. Integrating genetic operators has dramatically enhanced the balance between the capability of searching and utilization.     

Emulsion Based Nanoarchitectonics for Styrene–Butyl Acrylate Copolymerization upon Pickering Mechanism

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - The modification of graphene oxide (GO) with octadecylamine was performed to emulsify dimethyl formamide droplets in octane via...