Explore the vast range of titles available.

In the field of ultrasonic-assisted micro-forming, in addition to acoustic softening, impact effects also play a significant role, especially in terms of influencing the deformation behavior of surfaces, such as by generating more deformation on surface asperity. In this study, to understand the mechanisms involved in the effect of an impact, ultrasonic-assisted micro-forging tests were conducted on commercially pure copper, pure aluminum, and pure titanium. A method that can measure the increment in the temperature during ultrasonic vibration was developed. As a result, changes in the surface temperature of the material under the impact effect and acoustic softening were measured. It is indicated that, during ultrasonic vibration, the heat generated through acoustic softening is very limited and the main heat increase occurs after the impact effect. Once the impact effect occurs, the surface temperature increases with increasing amplitude. Nevertheless, for materials with different crystal structures, the influences of the impact effect are also different. The surfaces of copper and aluminum soften, creating more surface deformation, but the exact opposite effect is seen on a titanium surface. Observing the evolution of the microstructure on the material surface with EBSD demonstrates that the impact effect on FCC materials can reach deeper below the surface in terms of temperature diffusion compared to titanium. Meanwhile, the impact effect in the case of titanium causes the regeneration of twinning, which is reduced under the influence of the acoustic softening effect, consequently resulting in strain hardening.

Chlamydia trachomatis , one species of Chlamydia spp., has the greatest impact on human health and is the main cause of bacterial sexually transmitted diseases and preventable blindness among all Chamydia spp. species. The obligate intracellular parasitism and unique biphasic developmental cycle of C. trachomatis are the main barriers for the development of tools of genetic manipulation. The past decade has witnessed significant gains in genetic manipulation of C. trachomatis , including chemical mutagenesis, group II intron-based targeted gene knockout, fluorescence-reported allelic exchange mutagenesis (FRAEM), CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) and the recently developed transposon mutagenesis. In this review, we discuss the current status of genetic manipulations of C. trachomatis and highlights new challenges in the nascent field of Chlamydia genetics.

Coxiella burnetii is an obligate intracellular bacterium that causes Q fever, a zoonotic disease typically manifests as a severe flu-illness. After invading into the host cells, C. burnetii delivers effectors to regulate the vesicle trafficking and fusion events to form a large and mature Coxiella -containing vacuole (CCV), providing sufficient space and nutrition for its intracellular growth and proliferation. Lysosomal trafficking regulator (LYST) is a member of the Beige and Chediak-Higashi syndrome (BEACH) family, which regulates the transport of vesicles to lysosomes and regulates TLR signaling pathway, but the effect of LYST on C. burnetii infection is unclear. In this study, a series of experiments has been conducted to investigate the influence of LYST on intracellular growth of C. burnetii . Our results showed that lyst transcription was up-regulated in the host cells after C. burnetii infection, but there is no significant change in lyst expression level after infection with the Dot/Icm type IV secretion system (T4SS) mutant strain, while CCVs expansion and significantly increasing load of C. burnetii appeared in the host cells with a silenced lyst gene, suggesting LYST inhibits the intracellular proliferation of C. burnetii by reducing CCVs size. Then, the size of CCVs and the load of C. burnetii in the HeLa cells pretreated with E-64d were significantly decreased. In addition, the level of iNOS was decreased significantly in LYST knockout THP-1 cells, which was conducive to the intracellular replication of C. burnetii . This data is consistent with the phenotype of L-NMMA-treated THP-1 cells infected with C. burnetii . Our results revealed that the upregulation of lyst transcription after infection is due to effector secretion of C. burnetii and LYST inhibit the intracellular replication of C. burnetii by reducing the size of CCVs and inducing nos2 expression.

Ultrasonic-assisted plastic micro-forming is a research hotspot in metal-forming process. The friction characteristic is a key factor affecting the micro-forming properties of metal in ultrasonic-assisted micro-forming process. However, the existed researches were mostly focused on the friction characteristics of free surfaces, while few were studied on the friction characteristics between sample and mold cavity. In this paper, the micro double cup extrusion experiments of copper T2 were conducted to investigate the friction characteristics between sample and mold cavity with multiple ultrasonic vibration modes. Furthermore, the numerical model was developed to quantify the friction stress reduction caused by multiple ultrasonic vibration modes and estimate its contribution to decreasing the forming stress, which was usually considered mainly affected by acoustic softening, stress superposition, and friction reduction. The results show that the forming stress and the surface roughness of extruded samples are decreased sequentially with the multiple ultrasonic vibration modes of tool vibration (TV), workpiece vibration (WV), and compound vibration (CV). The cup height ratios of double cup extrusion are also increased sequentially with the ultrasonic vibration modes. But the increase of cup height ratio does not indicate the increase of friction coefficient. The friction stress reduction between sample and mold cavity is increased sequentially with TV, CV, and WV modes, and its contribution to decreasing the forming stress is 48%, 15%, and 49%, respectively.

Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramic material has become the most promising third-generation semiconductor material for its excellent mechanical properties at room temperature and high temperature. However, SiC ceramic machining has serious tool wear, low machining efficiency, poor machining quality and other disadvantages due to its high hardness and high wear resistance, which limits the promotion and application of such materials. In this paper, comparison experiments of longitudinal torsional ultrasonic vibration grinding (LTUVG) and common grinding (CG) of SiC ceramics were conducted, and the longitudinal torsional ultrasonic vibration grinding SiC ceramics cutting force model was developed. In addition, the effects of ultrasonic machining parameters on cutting forces, machining quality and subsurface cracking were investigated, and the main factors and optimal parameters affecting the cutting force improvement rate were obtained by orthogonal tests. The results showed that the maximum improvement of cutting force, surface roughness and subsurface crack fracture depth by longitudinal torsional ultrasonic vibrations were 82.59%, 22.78% and 30.75%, respectively. A longitudinal torsional ultrasonic vibrations cutting force prediction model containing the parameters of tool, material properties and ultrasound was established by the removal characteristics of SiC ceramic material, ultrasonic grinding principle and brittle fracture theory. And the predicted results were in good agreement with the experimental results, and the maximum error was less than 15%. The optimum process parameters for cutting force reduction were a spindle speed of 22,000 rpm, a feed rate of 600 mm/min and a depth of cut of 0.011 mm.

Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is of great importance to study several major phenomena due to ocean interactions with other earth systems. Previous studies on SST based on statistical inference methods were less accurate for longer prediction lengths. A considerable number of studies in recent years involve machine learning for SST modeling. These models were able to mitigate this problem to some length by modeling SST patterns and trends. Sequence analysis by decomposition is used for SST forecasting in several studies. Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) has been proven in previous studies as a useful method for this. The application of EEMD in spatiotemporal modeling has been introduced as Multidimensional EEMD (MEEMD). The aim of this study is to employ fast MEEMD methods to decompose the SST spatiotemporal dataset and apply a Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory (ConvLSTM)-based model to model and forecast SST. The results show that the fast MEEMD method is capable of enhancing spatiotemporal SST modeling compared to the Linear Inverse Model (LIM) and ConvLSTM model without decomposition. The model was further validated by making predictions from April to May 2023 and comparing them to original SST values. There was a high consistency between predicted and real SST values.

The effective disposal of redundant tea waste is crucial to environmental protection and comprehensive utilization of trash resources. In this work, the removal of methyl orange （MO） from aqueous solution using spent tea leaves as the sorbent was investigated in a batch experiment. First, the effects of various parameters such as temperature, adsorption time, dose of spent tea leaves, and initial concentration of MO were investigated. Then, the response surface methodology （RSM）, based on Box- Behnken design, was employed to obtain the optimum adsorption conditions. The optimal conditions could be obtained at an initial concentration of MO of 9.75 mg·L-1, temperature of 35.3℃, contact time of 63.8 min, and an adsorbent dosage 3.90 g· L-1. Under the optimized condi- tions, the maximal removal of MO was 58.2%. The results indicate that spent tea leaves could be used as an effective and economical adsorbent in the removal of MO from aqueous solution.

The ability to identify and isolate lineage-specific stem cells from adult tissues could facilitate cell replacement therapy. Leydig cells （LCs） are the primary source of androgen in the mammalian testis, and the prospective iden- tification of stem Leydig cells （SLCs） may offer new opportunities for treating testosterone deficiency. Here, in a transgenic mouse model expressing GFP driven by the Nestin （Nes） promoter, we observed Nes-GFP~ cells located in the testicular interstitial compartment where SLCs normally reside. We showed that these Nes-GFP~ cells expressed LIFR and PDGFR-e, but not LC lineage markers. We further observed that these cells were capable of clonogenic self-renewal and extensive proliferation in vitro and could differentiate into neural or mesenchymal cell lineages, as well as LCs, with the ability to produce testosterone, under defined conditions. Moreover, when transplanted into the testes of LC-disrupted or aging models, the Nes-GFP＋ cells colonized the interstitium and partially increased testosterone production, and then accelerated meiotic and post-meiotic germ cell recovery. In addition, we further demonstrated that CD51 might be a putative cell surface marker for SLCs, similar with Nestin. Taken together, these results suggest that Nes-GFP~ cells from the testis have the characteristics of SLCs, and our study would shed new light on developing stem cell replacement therapy for testosterone deficiency.

Existing system dealing with online complaint provides a final decision without explanations. We propose to analyse the complaint text of internet fraud in a fine-grained manner. Considering the complaint text includes multiple clauses with various functions, we propose to identify the role of each clause and classify them into different types of fraud element. We construct a large labeled dataset originated from a real finance service platform. We build an element identification model on top of BERT and propose additional two modules to utilize the context of complaint text for better element label classification, namely, global context encoder and label refiner. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our model.

Insufficient intracellular fat oxidation is an important contributor to aging-related insulin resistance, while the precise mechanism underlying is unclear. AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) is an important regulator of intracellular fat oxidation and was evidenced to play a key role in high-glucose and high-fat induced glucose intolerance. In the present study, we investigated whether altered AMPK expression or activity was also involved in aging-related insulin resistance. Insulin sensitivity of rats’ skeletal muscles was evaluated using in-vitro glucose uptake assay. Activity of α subunit of AMPK (AMPKα ) was evaluated by measuring the phosphorylation of both AMPKα (P- AMPKα ) and acetyl-CoA carboxylase (P-ACC), while expression of AMPKα was assessed by determining the mRNA levels of AMPKα 1 and AMPKα 2, and protein contents of AMPKα . Compared with 4-month old rats, 24-month old rats exhibited obviously impaired insulin sensitivity. At the same time, AMPKα activity significantly decreased, while AMPKα expression did not alter during aging. Glucose transporter 4 expression also decreased in old rats. Compared with 24-month old rats, administration of the specific activator of AMPK, 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide riboside (AICAR), significantly elevated AMPKα activity and GluT4 expression. Also, aging-related insulin resistance was significantly ameliorated by AICAR treatment. In conclusion, aging-related insulin resistance is associated with impaired AMPKα activity and could be ameliorated by AICAR, thus indicating a possible role of AMPK in aging-induced insulin resistance. KCI Citation Count: 75