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Design for remanufacturing process (DFRP) plays a key role in implementing remanufacturing because it directly affects the performance recovery of the End-of-Life (EoL) products. Since the used parts of EoL products have various failure forms and defects, which make it hard to rapidly generate remanufacturing process scheme to satisfy the performance demand of the remanufactured products. Moreover, remanufacturing process parameters are prone to conflicts during remanufacturing processes, often leading to unsatisfactory remanufacturing processes. To accurately generate remanufacturing process scheme and solve the conflicts, an integrated design method for remanufacturing processes based on performance demand is proposed, which reuses the historical remanufacturing process data to generate the remanufacturing process scheme. Firstly, the Kansei Engineering (KE) and Quality Functional Development (QFD) are applied to analyze the performance demand data and map the demands to the engineering features. Then, Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) is applied to inversely generate the remanufacturing process scheme rapidly to satisfy the performance demands by reusing the historical remanufacturing process data. Meanwhile, Theory of Constraint (TOC) and TRIZ are used to identify and solve the conflicts of the remanufacturing process for the remanufacturing process scheme optimization. Finally, the DFRP of an EoL guide rail is taken as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the result of which shows the design method can quickly and efficiently generate the remanufacturing process scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been identified as important regulators in cancer progression. Nevertheless, little is known about the biological function of circ_0000376 in the progression of osteosarcoma (OS). Cell viability, colony formation ability, apoptosis, and motility were analyzed by Cell Counting Kit-8 assay, colony formation assay, flow cytometry, and transwell assays. Cellular glycolytic metabolism was analyzed using commercial kits. RT-qPCR and Western blot assay were performed to analyze RNA and protein expression in OS tissues and cells. Starbase software was used to establish circRNA–microRNA (miRNA)–messenger RNA linkage, and intermolecular interaction was verified by dual-luciferase reporter assay. Xenograft tumor assay was conducted to analyze the effects of Tanshinone I (Tan I) and circ_0000376 on xenograft tumor growth in vivo. Tan I treatment suppressed the viability, migration, invasion, and glycolysis and triggered the apoptosis of OS cells. Tan I treatment markedly down-regulated circ_0000376 expression in OS cells. The addition of circ_0000376 plasmid largely rescued the malignant behaviors of OS cells upon Tan I exposure. Circ_0000376 interacted with miR-432-5p in OS cells. Circ_0000376 overexpression-mediated protective effects in Tan I-induced OS cells were partly attenuated by the accumulation of miR-432-5p. miR-432-5p bound to the 3ʹ untranslated region (3ʹUTR) of B-cell leukemia/lymphoma 2 (BCL2) in OS cells. miR-432-5p interference-induced effects in Tan I-treated OS cells were partly overturned by the silence of BCL2. Circ_0000376 can act as miR-432-5p sponge to up-regulate BCL2 expression in OS cells. Circ_0000376 silencing contributed to the anti-tumor effect of Tan I on the growth of xenograft tumors in vivo. Tan I exerted an anti-tumor role in OS progression by targeting circ_0000376/miR-432-5p/BCL2 axis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of a non-trivial band topology usually relies on directly probing the protected surface/edge states. But, it is difficult to achieve electronically in narrow-gap topological materials due to the small (meV) energy scales. Here, we demonstrate that band inversion, a crucial ingredient of the non-trivial band topology, can serve as an alternative, experimentally accessible indicator. We show that an inverted band can lead to a four-fold splitting of the non-zero Landau levels, contrasting the two-fold splitting (spin splitting only) in the normal band. We confirm our predictions in magneto-transport experiments on a narrow-gap strong topological insulator, zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe5), with the observation of additional splittings in the quantum oscillations and also an anomalous peak in the extreme quantum limit. Our work establishes an effective strategy for identifying the band inversion as well as the associated topological phases for future topological materials research. It remains difficult to identify non-trivial band topology through electronic transport in narrow-gap topological materials. Here, the authors demonstrate that an inverted band leads to a four-fold splitting of non-zero Landau levels and an anomalous zero Landau level peak in the density of states of ZrTe5, hence can serve as an indicator to explore non-trivial topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remanufacturing plays a vital role in promoting the development of circular economy for its great advantages in energy saving, material saving and emission reduction. Remanufacturing process planning (RPP), which affects the performance of remanufacturing greatly, becomes increasingly important to the remanufacturing enterprises. In general, RPP is knowledge dependent. Some remanufacturing enterprises, especially small and middle-sized remanufacturing enterprises (SMREs) may have inadequate remanufacturing knowledge, which makes it difficult to implement a proper RPP. Therefore, how to share and make full use of the knowledge in different remanufacturing enterprises for RPP has become a bottleneck. To this end, a hybrid method integrating blockchain (BC) and case-based reasoning (CBR) for RPP, which can take full advantage of the remanufacturing knowledge by cross enterprises knowledge sharing, is presented in this paper. In this proposed method, a BC network was utilized to record the remanufacturing knowledge and its associated transactions to guarantee the security and reliability of knowledge sharing, and CBR was employed to retrieve and reuse the most suitable solution by analyzing the similarity between previous remanufacturing cases and new case with the nearest neighbor algorithm. Finally, a used lathe guideway was set as a case study to verify the feasibility and superiority of the proposed approach. The hybrid method has been applied in a prototype system written in HTML and JavaScript. The results indicated that the proposed approach can effectively help SMREs to obtain optimum solutions for RPP with comprehensive economic, environmental and social benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]