• Title/Summary/Keyword: Key Factor

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Knockdown of microtubule actin crosslinking factor 1 inhibits cell proliferation in MC3T3-E1 osteoblastic cells

  • Hu, Lifang;Su, Peihong;Li, Runzhi;Yan, Kun;Chen, Zhihao;Shang, Peng;Qian, Airong
    • BMB Reports
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    • v.48 no.10
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    • pp.583-588
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    • 2015
  • Microtubule actin crosslinking factor 1 (MACF1), a widely expressed cytoskeletal linker, plays important roles in various cells by regulating cytoskeleton dynamics. However, its role in osteoblastic cells is not well understood. Based on our previous findings that the association of MACF1 with F-actin and microtubules in osteoblast-like cells was altered under magnetic force conditions, here, by adopting a stable MACF1-knockdown MC3T3-E1 osteoblastic cell line, we found that MACF1 knockdown induced large cells with a binuclear/multinuclear structure. Further, immunofluorescence staining showed disorganization of F-actin and microtubules in MACF1-knockdown cells. Cell counting revealed significant decrease of cell proliferation and cell cycle analysis showed an S phase cell cycle arrest in MACF1-knockdown cells. Moreover and interestingly, MACF1 knockdown showed a potential effect on cellular MTT reduction activity and mitochondrial content, suggesting an impact on cellular metabolic activity. These results together indicate an important role of MACF1 in regulating osteoblastic cell morphology and function.

Dynamic Magneto-mechanical Behavior of an Iron-nickel-based Ferromagnetic Alloy with Constant Elasticity

  • Bian, Leixiang;Wen, Yumei;Li, Ping;Gao, Qiuling;Liu, Xianxue
    • Journal of Magnetics
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.66-70
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    • 2009
  • The dynamic magneto-mechanical behaviors in a type of iron-nickel-based ferromagnetic alloy with constant elasticity were investigated as a function of both the DC bias magnetic field ($H_{dc}$) and the frequency. The rectangular plate-like samples were excited to vibrate at a half-wavelength, longitudinal resonance by an AC magnetic field superimposed with various $H_{dc}$. The experimental results found that the strain coefficient at resonance reached 819.34 nm/A and the effective mechanical quality factor ($Q_m$) was greater than 2000. The ratio of the maximum variation of the Young's modulus over $H_{dc}$ to the value of the Young's modulus at a zero bias field was only ${\sim}0.83%o$ because of the so-called constant elasticity. The resonant strain coefficients and $Q_m$ are strongly dependent on $H_{dc}$, which indicates a promising potential for use in DC and quasistatic magnetic field sensing.

A High-sensitivity Passive Magnetic Transducer Based on PZT Plates and a Fe-Ni Fork Substrate

  • Li, Ping;Wen, Yumei;Jia, Chaobo;Li, Xinshen
    • Journal of Magnetics
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.271-275
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    • 2011
  • This paper proposes a magnetoelectric (ME) composite transducer structure consisting of a magnetostrictive H-type Fe-Ni fork substrate and piezoelectric PZT plates. The fork composite structure has a higher ME voltage coefficient compared to other ME composite structures due to the higher quality (Q) factor. The ME sensitivity of the fork structure reaches 12 V/Oe (i.e., 150 V/cm Oe). The fork composite with two PZT plates electrically connected in series exhibits over 5 times higher ME voltage coefficient than the output of the rectangle structure in the same size. The experiment shows the composite of a Fe-Ni fork substrate and PZT plates has a significantly enhanced ME voltage coefficient and a higher ME sensitivity relative to the prior sandwiched composite laminates. By the use of a lock-in amplifier with 10 nV resolution, this transducer can detect a weak magnetic field of less than $10^{-12}$ T. This transducer can also be designed for a magnetoelectric energy harvester due to its passive high-efficiency ME energy conversion.

Sorting Cuckoo: Enhancing Lookup Performance of Cuckoo Hashing Using Insertion Sort (Sorting Cuckoo: 삽입 정렬을 이용한 Cuckoo Hashing의 입력 연산의 성능 향상)

  • Min, Dae-hong;Jang, Rhong-ho;Nyang, Dae-hun;Lee, Kyung-hee
    • The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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    • v.42 no.3
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    • pp.566-576
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    • 2017
  • Key-value stores proved its superiority by being applied to various NoSQL databases such as Redis, Memcached. Lookup performance is important because key-value store applications performs more lookup than insert operations in most environments. However, in traditional applications, lookup may be slow because hash tables are constructed out of linked-list. Therefore, cuckoo hashing has been getting attention from the academia for constant lookup time, and bucketized cuckoo hashing (BCH) has been proposed since it can achieve high load factor. In this paper, we introduce Sorting Cuckoo which inserts data using insertion sort in BCH structure. Sorting Cuckoo determines the existence of a key with a relatively small memory access because data are sorted in each buckets. In particular, the higher memory load factor, the better lookup performance than BCH's. Experimental results show that Sorting Cuckoo has smaller memory access than BCH's as many as about 19 million (25%) in 10 million negative lookup operations (key is not in the table), about 4 million times (10%) in 10 million positive lookup operations (where it is) with load factor 95%.

Factors Potentially Associated with Chemotherapy-induced Anemia in Patients with Solid Cancers

  • Cheng, Ke;Zhao, Feng;Gao, Feng;Dong, Hang;Men, Hai-Tao;Chen, Ye;Li, Long-Hao;Ge, Jun;Tang, Jie;Ding, Jing;Chen, Xin;Du, Yang;Luo, Wu-Xia;Liu, Ji-Yan
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.13 no.10
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    • pp.5057-5061
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    • 2012
  • Purpose: Chemotherapy-induced anemia (CIA) is one of the most important causes of anemia in cancer patients. This study was conducted to describe the prevalence and characteristics of CIA in solid cancer patients in the Chinese population, and to explore the relationship of white blood cell (WBC) or platelet decrease with CIA. Methods: Data on age, gender, tumor diagnosis, anti-cancer treatment and blood cell analyses were available from 220 untreated non-anemic cancer patients who received at least 2 cycles of chemotherapy, and the data were analyzed to assess their relationship with CIA or its severity. Results: 139 patients (63.2%) presented anemia, most being Grade 1 or 2. Esophageal and lung cancers were associated with a high prevalence. G3/4 leucopenia and decrease of platelets were identified as independent risk factors for the occurrence of CIA. Moreover, G3/4 leucopenia, decrease of platelet and G3/4 thrombocytopenia were found to be also associated with the severity of CIA. Cisplatin-containing regimens were a main potential factor in causing CIA, although significant association was only found on univariate analysis. Conclusion: Anemia or decrease in hematoglobin are common in Chinese cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. Cisplatin-containing regimens might be an important factor influencing the occurrence of CIA. Our analysis firstly described some risk factors, such as decrease of platelets or WBCs, severity of leucopenia or thrombocytopenia, associated with the occurrence and severity of CIA.

A Study on the Identification of Key Role Players in Enhancing Port Competitiveness - Focused on Busan Port -

  • Kim, Gil-Soo
    • Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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    • v.31 no.9
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    • pp.801-806
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    • 2007
  • The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) enables decision makers to represent the interaction of multiple factors in complex and unstructured situations. The process requires the decision maker to develop a hierarchical structure of the factors in the given problem and to provide judgments about the relative importance of each of these factors and ultimately to specify a preference for each decision alternative with respect to each factor. The research presented in this paper applies the AHP to identify key players in promoting port competitiveness. The literature survey revealed four major criteria and 15 sub-criteria. The four factors are cost, service quality, facility/capacity and economic-social variable. 150 questionnaires suitable for AHP analysis were made and 77 were returned. It is found that in terms of cost, the first key player is terminal operator and the second key player is shipping companies calling Busan port; in terms of service quality, the first key player is terminal operator, and the second key player is shipping companies calling Busan port; in terms of facility/capacity, the first key player is port authority and the second key player is terminal operator; in terms of economic-social variable, the first key player is terminal operator, and the second key player is shipping companies calling Busan port.

Corrosion fatigue crack growth behavior of 316LN stainless steel in high-temperature pressurized water

  • Zhang, Ziyu;Tan, Jibo;Wu, Xinqiang;Han, En-Hou;Ke, Wei
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.53 no.9
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    • pp.2977-2981
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    • 2021
  • Corrosion fatigue crack growth (FCG) behavior of 316LN stainless steel was investigated in high-temperature pressurized water at different temperatures, load ratios (R = Kmax/Kmin) and rise times (tR). The environmental assisted effect on FCG rate was observed when both the R and tR exceeded their critical values. The FCG rate showed a linear relation with stress intensity factor range (ΔK) in double logarithmic coordinate. The environmental assisted effect on FCG rate depended on the ΔK and quantitative relations were proposed. Possible mechanisms of environmental assisted FCG rate under different testing conditions are also discussed.

Estimation of response reduction factor of RC frame staging in elevated water tanks using nonlinear static procedure

  • Lakhade, Suraj O.;Kumar, Ratnesh;Jaiswal, Omprakash R.
    • Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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    • v.62 no.2
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    • pp.209-224
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    • 2017
  • Elevated water tanks are considered as important structures due to its post-earthquake requirements. Elevated water tank on reinforced concrete frame staging is widely used in India. Different response reduction factors depending on ductility of frame members are used in seismic design of frame staging. The study on appropriateness of response reduction factor for reinforced concrete tank staging is sparse in literature. In the present paper a systematic study on estimation of key components of response reduction factors is presented. By considering the various combinations of tank capacity, height of staging, seismic design level and design response reduction factors, forty-eight analytical models are developed and designed using relevant Indian codes. The minimum specified design cross section of column as per Indian code is found to be sufficient to accommodate the design steel. The strength factor and ductility factor are estimated using results of nonlinear static pushover analysis. It was observed that for seismic design category 'high' the strength factor has lesser contribution than ductility factor, whereas, opposite trend is observed for seismic design category 'low'. Further, the effects of staging height and tank capacity on strength and ductility factors for two different seismic design categories are studied. For both seismic design categories, the response reduction factors obtained from the nonlinear static analysis is higher than the code specified response reduction factors. The minimum dimension restriction of column is observed as key parameter in achieving the desired performance of the elevated water tank on frame staging.

A High-efficiency Trim Method for CFD Numerical Calculation of Helicopter Rotors

  • Ye, Zhou;Xu, Guo-hua;Shi, Yong-jie;Xia, Run-ze
    • International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.186-196
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    • 2017
  • In order to resolve the trimming difficulty in rotor CFD calculations, a high-efficiency and improved "delta trim method" is established to compute the blade control settings that are necessary to identify the blade motion. In this method, a simplified model which combines the blade element theory and different inflow models is employed to calculate the control settings according to the target aerodynamic forces, then it is coupled into a CFD solver with unsteady Navier-Stokes equations by the delta methodology, which makes the control settings and aerodynamics calculated and updated in the meantime at every trim cycle. Different from the previous work, the current research combines the inflow model based on prescribed wake theory. Using the method established, the control settings and aerodynamic characteristics of Helishape 7A, AH-1G and Caradonna-Tung rotors are calculated. The influence of different inflow models on trimming calculations is analyzed and the computational efficiency of the current "delta trim method" is compared with that of the "CFD-based trim method". Furthermore, for the sake of improving the calculation efficiency, a novel acceleration factor method is introduced to accelerate the trimming process. From the numerical cases, it is demonstrated that the current "delta trim method" has higher computational efficiency than "CFD-based trim method" in both hover and forward flight, and up to 70% of the amount of calculation can be saved by current "delta trim method" which turns out to be satisfactory for engineering applications. In addition, the proposed acceleration factor shows a good ability to accelerate the trim procedure, and the prescribed wake inflow model is always of better stability than other simple inflow models whether the acceleration factor is utilized in trimming calculations.

Multiple Sexual Partners as a Potential Independent Risk Factor for Cervical Cancer: a Meta-analysis of Epidemiological Studies

  • Liu, Zhi-Chang;Liu, Wei-Dong;Liu, Yan-Hui;Ye, Xiao-Hua;Chen, Si-Dong
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.16 no.9
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    • pp.3893-3900
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    • 2015
  • It's known that having multiple sexual partners is one of the risk factors of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection which is a major cause of cervical cancer. However, it is not clear whether the number of sexual partners is an independent risk factor for cervical cancer. We identified relevant studies by searching the databases of MEDLINE, PubMed and ScienceDirect published in English from January 1980 to January 2014. We analyzed those studies by combining the study-specific odds ratios (ORs) using random-effects models. Forty-one studies were included in this meta-analysis. We observed that the number of sexual partners was associated with the occurrence of non-malignant cervical disease (OR=1.82, 95%CI 1.63-2.00) and invasive cervical carcinoma (OR=1.77, 95%CI 1.50-2.05). Subgroup analyses revealed that the association remained significant after controlling for HPV infection (OR=1.52, 95%CI 1.21-1.83 for non-malignant disease; OR=1.53, 95%CI 1.30-1.76 for invasive cervical carcinoma). We found that there was a non-linear relation of the number of sexual partners with both non-malignant cervical disease and invasive cervical carcinoma. The risk of both malignant and non-malignant disease is relatively stable in women with more than 4-7 sexual partners. Furthermore, the frequency-risk of disease remained significant after controlling for HPV infection.The study suggested that h aving multiple sexual partners, with or without HPV infection, is a potential risk factor of cervical cancer.