Can hydrogen be the sustainable fuel for mobility in India in the global context?

This article provides a critical assessment of H₂ from the standpoint of more widespread use as a sustainable fuel for Indian mobility applications in the global context. The potential techno-economic advantages of utilizing H₂ for automobiles rather than battery electric vehicles or conventional internal combustion engine vehicles are emphasized. The present assessment demonstrates that H₂ production, storage, and distribution costs are the primary challenges, and a significant improvement is still necessary for H₂ to compete either against the internal combustion engine vehicle or the battery electric vehicle to win the race, arguably. The secondary challenges have also been demonstrated, which include the cost of the fuel cell stack and the modifications associated with internal combustion engine vehicles, as well as regulatory and safety concerns, which impede the widespread usage of H₂. It is critical that policy-making for sustainable mobility in India is possible with the aid of a National H₂ Energy Road-Map. This in turn can achieve a cost target of $0.5/kg for H₂.     

Effects of the Anti-Tumorigenic Agent AT101 on Human Glioblastoma Cells in the Microenvironmental Glioma Stem Cell Niche

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a barely treatable disease due to its profound chemoresistance. A distinct inter- and intratumoral heterogeneity reflected by specialized microenvironmental niches and different tumor cell subpopulations allows GBMs to evade therapy regimens. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop alternative treatment strategies. A promising candidate for the treatment of GBMs is AT101, the R(-) enantiomer of gossypol. The present study evaluates the effects of AT101, alone or in combination with temozolomide (TMZ), in a microenvironmental glioma stem cell niche model of two GBM cell lines (U251MG and U87MG). AT101 was found to induce strong cytotoxic effects on U251MG and U87MG stem-like cells in comparison to the respective native cells. Moreover, a higher sensitivity against treatment with AT101 was observed upon incubation of native cells with a stem-like cell-conditioned medium. This higher sensitivity was reflected by a specific inhibitory influence on the p-p42/44 signaling pathway. Further, the expression of CXCR7 and the interleukin-6 receptor was significantly regulated upon these stimulatory conditions. Since tumor stem-like cells are known to mediate the development of tumor recurrences and were observed to strongly respond to the AT101 treatment, this might represent a promising approach to prevent the development of GBM recurrences.     

Charge source and the charging mechanism of the contact electrification of polymer powder

The charge sources, as well as the charging mechanism of the contact electrification (CE) of polymers, are still debatable. Since CE is accompanied by destruction, it is considered that “hard contacting” via ball milling can induce covalent bond scission and produce naked-activated-charge sources. Regarding “soft contacting” via nano-scale sliding, which does not induce covalent bond scission, a frontier-electron, “f-electron,” of the naked-activated-charge source is crucial to electron transfer among the naked-activated-charge sources. Here, we configure naked-activated-charge-source models, naked-activated-mechano-anion, and naked-activated-mechano-cation, which are produced by mechanical energy induced heterogeneous covalent bond scission, as well as naked-activated-mechano-radicals that are produced by homogeneous covalent bond scission. Regarding “soft contacting” among naked-activated-charge sources in a vacuum, f-electron can be transferred from a donor to an acceptor if the energy level of the donor is higher than that of the acceptor. The net amount of the normalized transferred-f-electrons is obtained by adopting settings in which the average energy level of the naked-activated-charge sources (as the donors) is higher than that of the sources employed as acceptors. Thus, the surfaces comprising the donors and acceptors will exhibit positive and negative net surface charges, respectively. We conclude that net surface charges depend on the average energy level of naked-activated-charge sources. Further, we observe that the alignment of polyethylene (PE)-polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) to the average energy level is identical to that of the triboelectric series.     

Adaptation to Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Enhances Resistance of Oral Cancer Cells to Cisplatin by Up-Regulating Polymerase η and Increasing DNA Repair Efficiency

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response is an adaptive program to cope with cellular stress that disturbs the function and homeostasis of ER, which commonly occurs during cancer progression to late stage. Late-stage cancers, mostly requiring chemotherapy, often develop treatment resistance. Chemoresistance has been linked to ER stress response; however, most of the evidence has come from studies that correlate the expression of stress markers with poor prognosis or demonstrate proapoptosis by the knockdown of stress-responsive genes. Since ER stress in cancers usually persists and is essentially not induced by genetic manipulations, we used low doses of ER stress inducers at levels that allowed cell adaptation to occur in order to investigate the effect of stress response on chemoresistance. We found that prolonged tolerable ER stress promotes mesenchymal–epithelial transition, slows cell-cycle progression, and delays the S-phase exit. Consequently, cisplatin-induced apoptosis was significantly decreased in stress-adapted cells, implying their acquisition of cisplatin resistance. Molecularly, we found that proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) ubiquitination and the expression of polymerase η, the main polymerase responsible for translesion synthesis across cisplatin-DNA damage, were up-regulated in ER stress-adaptive cells, and their enhanced cisplatin resistance was abrogated by the knockout of polymerase η. We also found that a fraction of p53 in stress-adapted cells was translocated to the nucleus, and that these cells exhibited a significant decline in the level of cisplatin-DNA damage. Consistently, we showed that the nuclear p53 coincided with strong positivity of glucose-related protein 78 (GRP78) on immunostaining of clinical biopsies, and the cisplatin-based chemotherapy was less effective for patients with high levels of ER stress. Taken together, this study uncovers that adaptation to ER stress enhances DNA repair and damage tolerance, with which stressed cells gain resistance to chemotherapeutics.     

基于声源定位的高校在线巡课系统设计与研究

随着网络建设以及信息化教学方法在高校教学过程中的应用普及,越来越多的高校使用在线巡课系统对教师的教学过程进行跟踪和管理,以便发现课堂教学中的亮点、问题和不足。文章提出的在线巡课系统,基于声源定位的技术,对传统的在线巡课系统做出了改进,解决了已有巡课系统中“只闻其声,不见其人”的问题,能够更直观地跟踪到教师的教学过程,包括教学行为以及师生互动过程,有效提升教务人员巡课效果和体验感受。     

Inverse identification of constitutive parameters from heat source fields: A local approach applied to hyperelasticity

In this paper, a new inverse identification method of constitutive parameters is developed from full kinematic and thermal field measurements. It consists in reconstructing the heat source field from two different approaches by using the heat diffusion equation. The first one requires the temperature field measurement and the value of the thermophysical parameters. The second one is based on the kinematic field measurement and the choice of a thermo-hyperelastic model that contains the parameters to be identified. The identification is carried out at the local scale, ie, at any point of the heat source field, without using the boundary conditions. In the present work, the method is applied to the challenging case of hyperelasticity from a heterogeneous test. Due to large deformations undergone by the rubber specimen tested, a motion compensation technique is developed to plot the kinematic and the thermal fields at the same points before reconstructing the heterogeneous heat source field. In the present case, the constitutive parameter of the Neo-Hookean model has been identified, and its distribution has been characterized with respect to the strain state at the surface of a cross-shaped specimen.     

综放高瓦斯矿井煤层瓦斯涌出量综合预测

为了成功预测竹林山煤矿综放高瓦斯矿井大采高工作面煤层瓦斯涌出量,以主采3号煤层为主要研究对象,针对3号煤层以往开采情况,通过布设测点测量其煤层瓦斯含量和了解相邻矿井瓦斯含量,采用分源预测法、回归法及统计法等预测方法得到了3号煤层瓦斯含量的分布规律,并绘制了3号煤层的瓦斯含量等值线图。对矿井不同生产时期的瓦斯含量进行预测,得到了生产前期、中期及后期采区的最大绝对瓦斯涌出量和最大相对瓦斯涌出量,说明了竹林山煤矿各个时期均属于高瓦斯矿井。     

Study of planar structure applying reciprocity technique combined with MGEC and analysis of discontinuity

The 3D structure electromagnetic computation presents several difficulties related to the volume mesh. In fact, the entire volume space must be taken into account even the smallest details. In this article, we propose a formulation based on the reciprocity theorem combined with the generalized equivalent circuit method to model a planar 3D structure with both coaxial and planar excitation. The major advantage of this formulation is the fact to reduce the computational volume into 2D ones in the discontinuity plane. In addition, we focused on the calculation of the discontinuity between the excitation source and the planar structure to determine the exact behavior of the electric coaxial excitation model. The obtained current density, electric field distributions, and the input impedance are presented and discussed in the following sections. An approximately good agreement of input impedance with those obtained by the simulator and measurement is shown.     

Dihydrotanshinone,a Natural Diterpenoid,Preserves Blood-Retinal Barrier Integrity via P2X7 Receptor

Activation of P2X7 signaling, due to high glucose levels, leads to blood retinal barrier (BRB) breakdown, which is a hallmark of diabetic retinopathy (DR). Furthermore, several studies report that high glucose (HG) conditions and the related activation of the P2X7 receptor (P2X7R) lead to the over-expression of pro-inflammatory markers. In order to identify novel P2X7R antagonists, we carried out virtual screening on a focused compound dataset, including indole derivatives and natural compounds such as caffeic acid phenethyl ester derivatives, flavonoids, and diterpenoids. Molecular Mechanics/Generalized Born Surface Area (MM/GBSA) rescoring and structural fingerprint clustering of docking poses from virtual screening highlighted that the diterpenoid dihydrotanshinone (DHTS) clustered with the well-known P2X7R antagonist JNJ47965567. A human-based in vitro BRB model made of retinal pericytes, astrocytes, and endothelial cells was used to assess the potential protective effect of DHTS against HG and 2′(3′)-O-(4-Benzoylbenzoyl)adenosine-5′-triphosphate (BzATP), a P2X7R agonist, insult. We found that HG/BzATP exposure generated BRB breakdown by enhancing barrier permeability (trans-endothelial electrical resistance (TEER)) and reducing the levels of ZO-1 and VE-cadherin junction proteins as well as of the Cx-43 mRNA expression levels. Furthermore, HG levels and P2X7R agonist treatment led to increased expression of pro-inflammatory mediators (TLR-4, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and IL-8) and other molecular markers (P2X7R, VEGF-A, and ICAM-1), along with enhanced production of reactive oxygen species. Treatment with DHTS preserved the BRB integrity from HG/BzATP damage. The protective effects of DHTS were also compared to the validated P2X7R antagonist, JNJ47965567. In conclusion, we provided new findings pointing out the therapeutic potential of DHTS, which is an inhibitor of P2X7R, in terms of preventing and/or counteracting the BRB dysfunctions elicited by HG conditions.     

Application of differential evolution for cascaded multilevel VSI with harmonics elimination PWM switching

Harmonic elimination pulse width modulation (HEPWM) method has been widely applied to multilevel voltage source inverter (MVSI) to remove low frequency harmonics from its output voltage. However, the computation of the HEPWM switching angles for MVSI is very challenging due to several constraints, namely angle sequencing, very tight angular spacing and the numerous possibilities of angles distribution ratio. Realizing the potential of Differential Evolution (DE) to handle complex problems, this work proposes its application to solve the HEPWM problem for cascaded MVSI. Its emphasis is on improving the availability of HEPWM for higher output voltage by extending the maximum range of modulation index (M). It also removes the discontinuities in the switching angles and reduces the number of distribution ratio required to obtain the required solution. Compared to the most advanced (similar) work, i.e., 7-level MVSI with seventeen switching angles, DE covers a wider range of M; the maximum achievable M is 2.80. Furthermore, it exhibits very low second order distortion factor (DF₂): for the worst case, the value of DF₂ is 0.0014%. To verify the viability of the proposed algorithm, simulation is carried out and hardware prototype is constructed. Both results show very good agreement with the theoretical prediction.