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Exercise is an effective intervention for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). However, the effects of exercise on objective sleep architecture in patients with OSA remain unknown. This meta-analysis aimed to collect data from randomized controlled trials of exercise interventions in patients with OSA, with a specific focus on objective sleep parameters derived from polysomnography. Randomized control trials that targeted patients with OSA aged > 18 years, measured sleep using polysomnography after exercise programs, and reported the proportion of sleep stages were included for meta-analysis. Bias was assessed using the revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool and funnel plots. The random effects model was applied. Six studies with a total of 236 patients were included in the meta-analysis. There were no significant differences in the total sleep time (TST), sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, stage N1 sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep between the exercise and control groups. Participation in an exercise program lasting > 12 weeks significantly decreased stage N2 and increased stage N3 sleep as observed in the subgroup analysis. Although this tendency did not reach statistical significance in the total-group analysis, it was significant after excluding the possible confounding effects of heart disease. The exercise program decreased N2 and increased N3 proportions over the TST among patients with OSA, which may correspond to subjective sleep quality. The beneficial effects were significant when the program lasted > 12 weeks and after excluding the confounding effects of heart disease. Exercise program duration should be considered when providing clinical advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Hsien-du-shan rock avalanche at Kaohsiung County, Taiwan, was triggered by heavy rainfall brought by Typhoon Morakot in 2009. Heavy rainfall began on the day of August 6, and continued to the morning of August 9 when the slope failure and landslide occurred. In this post-event investigation, physical, mechanical, and hydraulic properties of the rocks/soils at this large landslide site are evaluated. The in situ hydraulic conductivity of the soils at the source area was found to be too low (k=1.48×10−6 m/s) for rainfall to vertically infiltrate to the deep sliding surface, which was found to have a maximum depth of 85.6m. The post-failure simulations using discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) suggest that the geometry of the sliding surface governs the failure behavior, and two continuous progressing failures likely occurred at the beginning of the Hsien-du-shan rock avalanche. Slope deformation was observed by the local residents before the Hsien-du-shan rock avalanche occurred as a geomorphologic precursor. In addition, water accumulation along the sliding surface governs the behavior of the sliding surface. Therefore, in the future, an early warning system of a rock avalanche can be developed by simultaneously applying high-resolution airborne LiDAR to detect slope deformation and using geo-electric measurements to image the infiltration of surface water to the sliding surface. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Many pathological processes including wound healing, chronic inflammation and cancer require angiogenesis, i.e., the formation of new vasculature in the lesions. Accumulating evidence indicates that angiogenesis is crucial for both chronic inflammation and the growth of malignant tumors with the participation of diverse cytokines, chemokines and growth factors. It is nevertheless believed that differences exist in angiogenesis between cancer and chronic inflammatory diseases. The aim of this review is to outline the characteristics of angiogenesis in chronic inflammation and cancer. A better understanding of the angiogenic processes may facilitate the design of more effective therapies for chronic inflammation and cancer. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Currently, it is still a huge challenge to prepare high performance eco-friendly poly(lactic acid) (PLA) with high thermal stability, good processability, excellent crystallization behavior, good transparency and highly-efficient fire safety. In this paper, a novel bio-based nucleation agent N-(furan-2-ylmethyl)- P , P -diphenylphosphinic amide (FPPA) was prepared and used for the fabrication of fire safety PLA/FPPA composites. The chemical structure of FPPA was measured by FTIR, NMR and MS. Further, the crystallization behavior, thermal stability, fire safety and mechanical properties of PLA/FPPA composites were performed by TGA, DSC, polarization microscope, LOI, UL94, cone calorimeter, DMA and, SEM, Raman, GC–MS, and TGA-FTIR. The results showed that the multifunctional FPPA not only had a high thermal stability and was a good nucleation agent for PLA. Moreover, only loading of 3 wt% FPPA increased the LOI of PLA from 19.0 to 33.8 % with UL-94 V-0 classification. Furthermore, the heat release rate and total heat release values of PLA/3%FPPA composite reduced by 6.3 % and 15.3 % in cone-calorimeter test. Such high fire safety was mainly attributed to specific fire safety radicals due to thermal degradation of FPPA to interrupt composites burning in gas phase. Besides, transparency and mechanical properties were almost not changed because of low loading of FPPA in PLA. This multifunctional bio-based fire-retardant for PLA with good comprehensive performance promises broad application in engineering electronics, automobiles, 3D printing and construction materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Vascular endothelial cells (ECs) that initiate tumor angiogenesis may acquire distinct properties after conditioning in tumor microenvironment as compared to ECs in non-malignant tissues. Thus far, most in vitro studies of angiogenesis used ECs isolated from normal tissues, which may not fully represent the nature of ECs in tumor vasculature. In this study, glioma-derived microvascular ECs (GDMEC) were purified from human glioma tissues by incubating with magnetic beads coated with anti-CD105 antibody and highly pure (98%) preparations of GDMEC were obtained. These cells exhibited typical EC phenotype, and proliferated rapidly in culture. Interestingly, GDMEC expressed higher levels of VEGF receptors, flt-1 and flk-1, as compared to an established human EC cell line ECV304 and primary human umbilical vascular EC (HUVEC). Functionally, GDMEC were capable of forming intercellular junctions and tubule-like structures (TLS) of various sizes. Stimulation by VEGF further promoted TLS formation with diverse tubular walls by GDMEC. In contrast, TLS formed by ECV304 and HUVEC showed significantly different features. We further observed that Nordy, a synthetic lipoxygenase inhibitor, potently inhibited TLS formation by GDMEC. The results suggest that isolation of highly pure ECs derived from tumor tissues is more appropriate for studies of tumor angiogenesis and for test of potential anti-cancer therapeutic targets. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract Four new bipolar host materials (TPA-1 , CBZ-1 , CBZ-2 and CBZ-3) comprising triphenylamine and carbazole as electron donors with hole-transporting properties and [1,2,4]triazolo[4,3- a ]pyridine as an electron acceptor with electron-transporting property have been synthesized, characterized and applied as host materials for green phosphorescent OLEDs. Their thermal, photophysical, electrochemical and carrier-transport properties have also been studied. These bipolar host materials showed good thermal and morphological stabilities. These compounds efficiently suppress the intramolecular charge transfer between donor and acceptor and possess moderate triplet energies (E T = 2.48–2.51 eV). These materials exhibited good performances in green PhOLEDs and showed maximum external quantum efficiency in the range of 9.2–16.7%. A green-phosphorescent device incorporating CBZ-2 as the host doped with Ir(ppy) 3 achieved a maximum external quantum efficiency, current efficiency, and power efficiency of 16.7%, 62.5 cd A−1, and 69.7 lm W−1, respectively. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • Four bipolar hosts comprising triphenylamine, carbazole as donors and triazolopyridine as an acceptor were synthesized. • These bipolar host materials showed good thermal and morphological stabilities. • These bipolar host materials exhibited triplet energies ranging from 2.48-2.51 eV. • They displayed good external quantum efficiencies (9.2–16.7%) for green PhOLEDs with low efficiency roll-off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We performed a quantitative comparison of brittle thrust wedge experiments to evaluate the variability among analogue models and to appraise the reproducibility and limits of model interpretation. Fifteen analogue modeling laboratories participated in this benchmark initiative. Each laboratory received a shipment of the same type of quartz and corundum sand and all laboratories adhered to a stringent model building protocol and used the same type of foil to cover base and sidewalls of the sandbox. Sieve structure, sifting height, filling rate, and details on off-scraping of excess sand followed prescribed procedures. Our analogue benchmark shows that even for simple plane-strain experiments with prescribed stringent model construction techniques, quantitative model results show variability, most notably for surface slope, thrust spacing and number of forward and backthrusts. One of the sources of the variability in model results is related to slight variations in how sand is deposited in the sandbox. Small changes in sifting height, sifting rate, and scraping will result in slightly heterogeneous material bulk densities, which will affect the mechanical properties of the sand, and will result in lateral and vertical differences in peak and boundary friction angles, as well as cohesion values once the model is constructed. Initial variations in basal friction are inferred to play the most important role in causing model variability. Our comparison shows that the human factor plays a decisive role, and even when one modeler repeats the same experiment, quantitative model results still show variability. Our observations highlight the limits of up-scaling quantitative analogue model results to nature or for making comparisons with numerical models. The frictional behavior of sand is highly sensitive to small variations in material state or experimental set-up, and hence, it will remain difficult to scale quantitative results such as number of thrusts, thrust spacing, and pop-up width from model to nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a demand-oriented multi-objective planning method is proposed for electronic product technology development. The proposed method uses the analytical hierarchy process to analyze the relative importance of each customer demand. Subsequently, quality function deployment is used to analyze the relationships between customer demands and product technologies, as well as for evaluating the customer satisfaction level for each electronic product that is being implemented. By using a model to identify the life-cycle stage of the product technology, each electronic product technology is classified in order to determine how to obtain the technology. A multi-objective evaluation model of planning strategies is obtained for electronic product technology development to evaluate the performance of different planning strategies. A multi-objective genetic algorithm is utilized to help companies efficiently establish an optimal planning strategy for electronic product technology development with the maximum customer satisfaction level and minimum product development cost. Finally, a case study of a green smart phone development project is provided to demonstrate and verify the practical contributions of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, a time-area efficient hardware decoder of the (23, 12, 7) quadratic residue code, or Golay code, is presented. The key feature of this proposed algorithm lies in fast determination of error positions through the analysis on the weight of syndromes without large operations in finite fields. Comparing with the algorithm using one syndrome, the proposed algorithm is more suitable for the parallel hardware design by using two syndromes. Based on an Altera Cyclone II field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device (EP2C35F484C6), the area cost and the time delay of the complete system are reduced by up to 86.4% and 22.5%, respectively. Using the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 0.18-μm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) standard cell library, the proposed decoder is 91.8% smaller and 8.3% faster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Enrichment of cancer stem cells for studies of carcinogenesis remains a difficult issue. We hypothesized that the unique features of cancer stem cells (CSCs) may allow formation of their colonies in vitro with distinct morphology. We therefore investigated the possibility to use morphological diversity of colonies to identify and enrich CSCs from cultured malignant human glioma cells. We found that a small proportion of the cells from a human glioma cell line U251 formed tight and round-shaped colonies in culture. Most cells in such colonies were capable of self-renewal, generating tumor spheres and differentiating into lineages with markers for neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. In addition, several neural stem cell-related genes were highly expressed by tumor cells in those tight colonies. Our results thus demonstrate a novel approach to the identification and enrichment of CSCs based on unique morphology of their colonies formed in vitro. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A variety of malignant cancers have been found to contain a subpopulation of stem cell-like tumor cells, or cancer stem cells (CSCs). However, the existence of CSCs in U87, a most commonly used glioma cell line, is still controversial. In this study, we demonstrate that U87 cell line contained a fraction of tumor cells that could form tumor spheres and were enriched by progressively increasing the concentration of serum-free neural stem cell medium with or without low dose vincristine. These cells possessed the ability of self-renewal and multipotency, the defined characteristics of CSCs. Moreover, the tumors formed by the secondary spheres displayed typical histological features of human glioblastoma, including cellular pleomorphism, pseudopalisades surrounding necrosis, hyperchromatic nuclei, high density of microvessels and invasion to the brain parenchyma. These results indicate that gradually increasing the concentration of serum-free neural stem cell culture medium with or without vincristine is a simple and effective method for isolation of CSCs to study the initiation and progression of human glioblastoma. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) is a neurotropic virus. The clinically manifestation of JEV-induced encephalitis is characterized by the brain inflammation and neuronal dysfunction and/or destruction. Currently, the cellular signaling molecules that underlie JEV-induced cerebral inflammation and cellular alterations are not well understood. Protein tyrosine phosphorylation events are key regulators of cellular signaling processes, including inflammation. We investigated whether Src protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) function in JEV-induced cellular changes in neuron/glia cultures. JEV infection modulated tyrosine phosphorylation events. Src PTK was hyperphosphorylated at the early stage of infection. Biochemical studies demonstrated that both inhibitors of the Src family PTK and Ras attenuated JEV-induced extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) activation. Our results further revealed that PTK, Ras, and ERK inhibitors effectively suppressed JEV-induced pro-inflammatory cytokine expression and neurotoxicity. Pharmacological studies suggested that microglia secreted pro-inflammatory cytokine via Src/Ras/ERK pathway in responding to JEV infection. Another interesting observation was that nonstructural protein 3 (NS3) was able to interact with Src and showed tyrosine phosphorylation. However, the biological consequences of their interaction and exact control of NS3 tyrosine phosphorylation required further investigation. Our results suggest that the Src/Ras/ERK signaling cascade is involved in JEV-induced pro-inflammatory cytokine expression and neurotoxicity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper studied the deformation and damage behaviors of aluminum-alloy under different loadings. A series of static and dynamic plate tension tests, notch tension tests and shear tests were carried out and were combined with the finite element model to acquire material parameters. This work demonstrated that damage behavior of aluminum-alloy depends strongly on stress triaxiality and cannot be modeled with simple damage models based on one constant fracture strain. A systematic investigation shows that the micromechanical Gurson damage model and phenomenological Johnson–Cook model can be used to simulate crash behavior of aluminum components. The tests on an aluminum component of extrusion under static loading were performed and simulated to validate the applicability of Gurson damage model. Since damage parameters depend on element size, the component calculation was performed with the calibrated parameters optimized with the element sizes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Hydrogen strorage alloys with formula La1.5Mg0.5Ni7 were prepared by induction melting followed by different annealing treatments (1073, 1123 and 1173K) for 24h. The alloy composition, alloy microstructure and electrochemical properties were investigated, respectively. The results showed that the multi-phase structure of as-cast alloy was converted into a double-phase structure (Gd2Co7-type phase and Ce2Ni7-type phase) through annealing treatments. Mg atoms were mainly located in Laves unit of Gd2Co7-type unit cell and Ce2Ni7-type unit cell. The electrochemical capacity of alloy electrodes after annealing treatment could be up to 390mAh/g. The cyclic stability of alloy electrodes was significantly improved by annealing treatments; After 150charge/discharge cycles, the capacity retention ratio of alloy annealed at 1173K was the highest (81.9%). The high rate dischargeability of alloy electrodes was also improved due to annealing treatment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Redox-active metals are of paramount importance for biological functions. Their impact and cellular activities participate in the physiological and pathophysiological processes of the central nervous system (CNS), including inflammatory responses. Manganese is an essential trace element and it is required for normal biological activities and ubiquitous enzymatic reactions. However, excessive chronic exposure to manganese results in neurobehavioral deficits. Recent evidence suggests that manganese neurotoxicity involves activation of microglia or astrocytes, representative CNS immune cells. In this study, we assessed the molecular basis of the effects of manganese on the modulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines and nitric oxide (NO) production in primary rat cortical glial cells. Cultured glial cells consisted of 85% of astrocytes and 15% of microglia. Within the assayed concentrations, manganese was unable to induce tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) expression, whereas it potentiated iNOS and TNF-α gene expression by lipopolysaccharide/interferon-γ-activated glial cells. The enhancement was accompanied by elevation of free manganese, generation of oxidative stress, activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases, and increased NF-κB and AP-1 binding activities. The potentiated degradation of inhibitory molecule IκB-α was one of underlying mechanisms for the increased activation of NF-κB by manganese. However, manganese decreased iNOS enzymatic activity possibly through the depletion of cofactor since exogenous tetrahydrobiopterin reversed manganese''s action. These data indicate that manganese could modulate glial inflammation through variable strategies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]