Search

Slashing attack is one of the most common ways of committing a homicide. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the biomechanical characteristics of slashing different body parts of a dummy by young males and females using a Chinese kitchen knife and thus provide scientific evidence for criminal investigations and court trials.A total of 12 male and 12 female college students participated in this study. Biomechanical parameters, including joint velocity, slashing velocity, slashing force, energy, and impulse, were evaluated when slashing the chest and the neck of a dummy using a Chinese kitchen knife.When slashing the neck or the chest of a dummy, male participants showed higher elbow and wrist velocities (21.2% and 28.5%, respectively) as well as higher knife velocity (33.6%), slashing velocity (25.3%), slashing force (23.3%), and energy (57.6%) compared to female participants (all p 0.05). When slashing the chest, participants showed higher shoulder, elbow, and wrist velocities (31.9%, 12.7%, and 12.6%) as well as knife velocity (3.8%), slashing velocity (7.3%), and energy (23.2%) compared to slashing the neck (all p 0.05), regardless of gender.Both gender and slashing position have great impact on biomechanical characteristics of the slashing movement. Our data indicate that when slashing using a Chinese kitchen knife, males may induce severer wounds than females, and slashing different body parts may generate different slashing velocity or energy. Compared to slashing position, gender may have greater influence on the biomechanical characteristics. Findings from this study may expand our knowledge about knife slashing attacks by Chinese kitchen knives as well as other knives with comparative heavy blades.

Previous paleoclimatic studies by Asian cave records have shown that variability in the Asian summer monsoons is well correlated with local summer insolation, North Atlantic climate, and the Greenland stadial-interstadial cycles on millennial to orbital time-scales. However, it remains unclear whether a similar agreement exists on short timescales. With 230Th dates in precision as good as ±62 years, we present a decadal-resolved δ18O record covering 30.0–22.7 thousand years ago (ka) from a stalagmite of Son La Province, northwestern Vietnam as a proxy record of the Asian summer monsoon (ASM). On millennial timescales, our data show strong coherence with Chinese and North Indian speleothem δ18O records, suggesting that the ASM has synchronously responded over a broad region to Dansgaard–Oeschger (D-O) events in the North Atlantic. We observe that the onset timing and structure of D-O 4 varied spatially. The event commenced earlier and less abrupt at sites located with a connection to the modern Intertropical convergence Zone (ITCZ) than sites off the influence from ITCZ. It implies that the tropics may play a critical role in the global climate system. In addition, our decadal-resolution record clearly demonstrated a few centennial events with a duration of ~200 years, which probably correlates with the Suess cycle of solar activity. Published version

Moisture transport pathway effect offsets glacial forcings, likely explaining a lack of G-IG variability in Chinese cave records., While Asian monsoon (AM) changes have been clearly captured in Chinese speleothem oxygen isotope (δ18O) records, the lack of glacial-interglacial variability in the records remains puzzling. Here, we report speleothem δ18O records from three locations along the trajectory of the Indian summer monsoon (ISM), a major branch of the AM, and characterize AM rainfall over the past 180,000 years. We have found that the records close to the monsoon moisture source show large glacial-interglacial variability, which then decreases landward. These changes likely reflect a stronger oxygen isotope fractionation associated with progressive rainout of AM moisture during glacial periods, possibly due to a larger temperature gradient and suppressed plant transpiration. We term this effect, which counteracts the forcing of glacial boundary conditions, the moisture transport pathway effect.

Benzyl alcohol (BnOH) is a natural colorless liquid organic compound that plays an important role in bacteriostatic and anesthetic processes. It is also used to relieve the nerve and ganglionic pain. In this study, we assessed the effect of topical application of BnOH on the Achilles tendon healing process. Sprague Dawley rats were subjected to an experimentally induced wound in the tendon area and then randomized into four groups. Normal saline (0.5 mL) was applied to rats in control group, and BnOH at the concentrations of 0.5 mL 0.075%, 0.15%, 0.3% were applied to the BnOH treatment groups, respectively. Wound treatment with BnOH led to significantly faster functional recovery than with saline. Moreover, treatment of wounds with 0.3% BnOH accelerated the healing process faster than with 0.075% and 0.15% BnOH. Histological analysis of healed wounds that had been treated with BnOH showed more collagen and blood capillaries and fewer inflammatory cells compared to the control. To study the mechanism of the process, the expression of mRNA of TGF-β1, Smad2/3 and Smad7 and protein of TGF-β1, p-Smad2/3 and Smad7 were quantified by real-time PCR and Western blotting, respectively. Results of this study showed that wounds treated with BnOH significantly enhanced the expression of TGF-β1 and Smad2/3 and reduced the expression of Smad7. In general, the current study demonstrated that BnOH improved the recovery process of tendon healing through the promotion of collagen with angiogenesis and showed that TGF-β plays a role in BnOH treatment of tendon healing.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (BMSC) transplantation in the treatment of acute hepatic failure (AHF) in rats. BMSCs were isolated from rat bone marrow, cultured and analyzed by flow cytometry. Following BMSC transplantation into rats with AHF, the levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), albumin (ALB), direct bilirubin (DBIL) and indirect bilirubin (IBIL) in the serum were measured using an automatic biochemical analyzer. Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining and a terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay were performed to analyze the pathological changes and apoptosis rate. Levels of cluster of differentiation (CD)163 and interleukin (IL)-10 in the serum and liver tissue were detected by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) assay and western blot analysis. Compared with the levels in the control group, the serum levels of ALT, AST, DBIL, IBIL, CD163 and IL-10 in the BMSC transplantation groups were significantly lower at 120 and 168 h, while the serum levels of ALB were significantly higher at 168 h after BMSC transplantation. The pathological features of liver failure were alleviated by BMSC transplantation. The expression levels of CD163 and IL-10 in the liver tissue were also significantly decreased following transplantation. The results indicate that BMSCs have a therapeutic effect on AHF in rats, and CD163 and IL-10 may be used as sensitive serum prognosis indicators in the early assessment of patients following liver transplantation.

In this paper, a prediction method about central heating parameters based on method of least square is proposed. First, according to the theory of heating operation adjustment, the advised heat is determined; then, the method of least square is used to seek the mapping relationship among the outdoor temperature, system flow, supplying and returning water temperature, etc. The method achieved higher prediction accuracy, and energy-saving effect is remarkable.

Objective.This study is to investigate the effects of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (BMSC) transplantation on acute liver failure (ALF).Methods.BMSCs were separated from rat bone marrow, cultured, and identified by flow cytometry. Rat model with ALF was established by injecting D-galactosamine and lipopolysaccharide. Rats were randomly divided into the control group and BMSC transplantation group. The serum levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were measured at 24 h, 120 h, and 168 h after BMSC transplantation. Apoptosis was detected by TUNEL assay. The expression of VEGF and AFP proteins was detected by immunofluorescence. Caspase-1 and IL-18 proteins and mRNA were detected by immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR.Results.Compared with the control group, levels of ALT, AST, caspase-1 and IL-18 proteins, and mRNA in the transplantation group were significantly lower at 120 h and 168 h after BMSCs transplantation. Apoptosis was inhibited by BMSCs transplantation. The VEGF protein levels were increased with the improvement of liver function, and the AFP protein levels were increased with the deterioration of the liver function after BMSCs transplantation.Conclusions.BMSCs transplantation can improve liver function and inhibit hepatocyte apoptosis as well as promote hepatocyte proliferation in rat model with ALF.

In this paper, we investigate the somewhat untraditional approach of contention resolution in WDM optical packet switches. The most striking characteristics of the developed switch architecture are that (1) contention resolution is achieved by a combined sharing of fiber delay-lines (FDLs) and tunable optical wavelength converters (TOWCs); (2) FDLs used for contention resolution is in non-degenerate form, i.e., buffers are achieved by non-uniform distribution of the delay lines; (3) TOWCs just can achieve wavelength conversion in partial continuous wavelength channels, i.e., sparse wavelength conversion. We describe and analyze the concrete configuration of FDLs and TOWCs under non-bursty and bursty traffic scenarios. Simulation results demonstrate that for a prefixed packet loss probability constraint, e.g., 10 -6 , the developed architecture provides a different point of view in the optical packet switching (OPS) design. That is, combined sharing of FDLs and TOWCs can, effectively, obtain a good tradeoff between the switch size and the cost, and TOWCs which are achieved in sparse form can also decrease the implementing complexity.