Implications of particle size to transient stage of deep bed filtration

This study was aimed at investigating the effect of particle size, mostly in the submicron range, on break-through stage of filtration. Latex beads, with diameters ranging from 0.46- to 2.967-μm were filtered through filter grains of diameters 0.1-, 0.175- and 0.45-mm. Experimental conditions were chosen so as to obtain breakthrough curves. The experimental results showed that the initial efficiency follows the pattern reported by previous experimental and theoretical studies, i.e., lower efficiency for 0.825-μm particles which fall in the range of critical size. However, the particle removal during the transient stage increased with an increase in particle size for the range of sizes studied. This pattern is qualitatively confirmed by the theoretical predictions of Vigneswaran and Chang (1986) model. This study also provides experimental verification of the effect of the ratio of particle size and grain size at different stages of filtration.     

Insulin-like growth factor I-dependent regulation of prolidase activity in cultured human skin fibroblasts

In metastatic breast cancer the goal to reach must be the best possible palliation with minimum discomfort for the patient. We reviewed our experience with radiotherapy (20 or 30 Gy), systemic therapy and brace. Among 2200 breast cancer patients, we extracted 28 potential candidates for resection. All of them developed new metastases outside the treated field within one year. Local control was achieved in 68%, and 80% of them had stable or better performance status at 3 months. From our analysis, even patients with a so called "solitary lesion" do not seem to have a better prognosis than others. We conclude that radiotherapy (with systemic therapy and a brace) is still first-choice treatment for vertebral metastases; CT-guided percutaneous biopsy can avoid worthless major operations. The role of surgery should be limited to neurological compression, severe mechanical instability and to salvage the failures of conservative treatment.     

Ethnically bounded homeownership: qualitative insights on Los Angeles immigrant homeowners’ experiences during the U.S. Great Recession

Immigrant homeowners’ function within ethnic boundaries in the housing market may have helped or hindered them during the recent U.S. Great Recession. This research explores this theme through interviews with immigrant and non-immigrant homeowners from four ethnic communities in Los Angeles County and the non-profit organizations that tried to assist them. Immigrant homeowners turned to co-ethnics for advice and support and formed multigenerational households as a strategy to achieve and sustain homeownership. Language and cultural barriers primed them for risky loans and thwarted their pursuit of refinance and modification when they struggled to make mortgage payments. These findings conform to existing evidence of ethnic segmentation in the housing market and imply that analyses of home buying and homeownership in areas with significant immigrant populations should factor in the role of ethnicity.     

Gui-A-Gra Attenuates Testicular Dysfunction in Varicocele-Induced Rats via Oxidative Stress,ER Stress and Mitochondrial Apoptosis Pathway

Gui-A-Gra, a commercial insect powder from Gryllus bimaculatus, is registered as an edible insect by the Korean food and drug administration. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of Gui-A-Gra on testicular damage induced by experimental left varicocele in male Sprague Dawley rats. A total of 72 rats were randomly divided into the following six groups (12 rats in each group): a normal control group (CTR), a group administrated with Gui-A-Gra 1.63 gm/kg (G1.63), a group administrated with Gui-A-Gra 6.5 gm/kg (G6.5), a varicocele (VC)-induced control group (VC), a VC-induced group administrated with Gui-A-Gra 1.63 gm/kg (VC + G1.63), and a VC-induced group administrated with Gui-A-Gra 6.5 gm/kg (VC + G6.5). Rats were administrated 1.63 or 6.5 gm/kg Gui-A-Gra once daily for 42 days. Indicators of sperm parameters, histopathology, reproductive hormones, oxidative stress, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, inflammation, and mitochondrial apoptosis were analyzed to evaluate effects of Gui-A-Gra on VC-induced testicular dysfunction. Gui-A-Gra administration to VC-induced rats significantly (p < 0.05) increased sperm count and sperm motility, Johnsen score, spermatogenic cell density, serum testosterone, testicular superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase, GPx4, and steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) level. Moreover, pretreatment with Gui-A-Gra significantly (p < 0.05) decreased terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL) positive cells/tubules, serum luteinizing hormone (LH), serum follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), testicular tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), malondialdehyde (MDA), reactive oxygen species (ROS)/reactive nitrogen species (RNS) level, glucose-regulated protein-78 (Grp-78), phosphorylated c-Jun-N-terminal kinase (p-JNK), phosphorylated inositol-requiring transmembrane kinase/endoribonuclease 1α (p-IRE1α), cleaved caspase-3, and BCL2 associated X protein: B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bax: Bcl2) ratio in VC rats. These results suggest that protective effects of Gui-A-Gra on VC-induced testicular injury might be due to its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and androgenic activities that might be mediated via crosstalk of oxidative stress, ER stress, and mitochondrial apoptosis pathway.     

Inequalities and externalities of power sector: A case of Broadlands hydropower project in Sri Lanka

The objective of the paper is to estimate environmental externalities related to a run of river project in Sri Lanka and to investigate inequity in distribution of impacts among different social groups. Diversion of the river resulted in loss of water sports (for high-income groups both local and remote), loss of historical monuments (for remote high-income groups) and recreation losses (for local poor). Removal of forest cover leads to loss of non-timber products (for local poor) and carbon storage (for remote high- and low-income groups). Loss of home garden productivity was borne by local poor groups. Benefit of the project, generation of 145 GWh annually, was a gain for the grid connected groups. The impacts were valued using various valuation methods. The base case of the cost benefit analysis resulted in NPV of US$ 11,335,730. When distributional weights are applied for different income groups, both the sign and magnitude of net benefits change. In order to be viable, the project needs diversion of at least 9% of generated electricity to the poorest households in the country. Implications for energy policy towards reducing externality and inequality impacts are also discussed.     

Investigation of Serine‐Proteinase‐Catalyzed Peptide Splicing in Analogues of Sunflower Trypsin Inhibitor 1 (SFTI‐1)

Serine‐proteinase‐catalyzed peptide splicing was demonstrated in analogues of the trypsin inhibitor SFTI‐1: both single peptides and two‐peptide chains (C‐ and N‐terminal peptide chains linked by a disulfide bridge). In the second series, peptide splicing with catalytic amount of proteinase was observed only when formation of acyl–enzyme intermediate was preceded by hydrolysis of the substrate Lys–Ser peptide bond. Here we demonstrate that with an equimolar amount of the proteinase, splicing occurs in all the two‐peptide‐chain analogues. This conclusion was supported by high resolution crystal structures of selected analogues in complex with trypsin. We showed that the process followed a direct transpeptidation mechanism. Thus, the acyl–enzyme intermediate was formed and was immediately used for a new peptide bond formation; products associated with the hydrolysis of the acyl–enzyme were not observed. The peptide splicing was sequence‐ not structure‐specific.     

Adjusting the TCP Sending Rate and Retransmissions after Retransmission Timeouts Based on One-Way Queuing Delay in Wireless Mesh Network

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is regarded as a viable solution to provide broadband Internet access flexibly and cost efficiently. Improving the performance of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in WMNs is an active research area in the networking community. The existing solutions proposed for improving the TCP performance has concentrated on differentiating the DATA packet drops in the forward direction induced by both network congestion as well as transmission errors. However, the recent studies show that in WMNs packet drops occur not only in the forward direction but also in the reverse direction particularly due to hidden terminal, hidden capture terminal, link asymmetry etc. The loss of ACK packets in the reverse direction cause frequent retransmission timeouts subject to needless retransmissions and unnecessary slowing down the growth of congestion window, which causes the performance degradation of TCP. In this paper, we introduce a sender side TCP algorithm, called detection of packet loss (DPL), which is capable to distinguish the type of packet drops either DATA or ACKs caused by transmission errors as well as network congestion based on one-way queuing delay and react accordingly. To justify our contributions, we implement DPL in Qualnet simulator and compare its performance against existing TCP solutions via extensive simulations. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can accurately distinguish the type of packet drops whether it is a DATA or ACK caused by transmission error or congestion and can significantly improve the performance under a wide range of scenarios in WMNs.     

A fiber composite laminate endodontic post and core

The goals of endodontic post and core procedures are to provide maximum retention of the post and resistance to fracture of the roots. Presented is a recently developed fiber composite laminate (FCL) post and core technique which results in a bonded structure that is conservative, morphologic, retentive, versatile, esthetic, and helps resist root fracture. To ascertain the durability of FCL posts and cores, an in vitro pilot study with stress testing is included. The results of the study are compared to other post and core materials to show how well this technique approaches the ideal characteristics for endodontic post and cores.     

Tuning parallel symbolic execution engine for better performance

Symbolic execution is widely used in many code analysis, testing, and verification tools. As symbolic execution exhaustively explores all feasible paths, it is quite time consuming. To handle the problem, researchers have paralleled existing symbolic execution tools (e.g., KLEE). In particular, Cloud9 is a widely used paralleled symbolic execution tool, and researchers have used the tool to analyze real code. However, researchers criticize that tools such as Cloud9 still cannot analyze large scale code. In this paper, we conduct a field study on Cloud9, in which we use KLEE and Cloud9 to analyze benchmarks in C. Our results confirm the criticism. Based on the results, we identify three bottlenecks that hinder the performance of Cloud9: the communication time gap, the job transfer policy, and the cache management of the solved constraints. To handle these problems, we tune the communication time gap with better parameters, modify the job transfer policy, and implement an approach for cache management of solved constraints. We conduct two evaluations on our benchmarks and a real application to understand our improvements. Our results show that our tuned Cloud9 reduces the execution time significantly, both on our benchmarks and the real application. Furthermore, our evaluation results show that our tuning techniques improve the effectiveness on all the devices, and the improvement can be achieved upto five times, depending upon a tuning value of our approach and the behaviour of program under test.