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M-CSF is a critical growth factor for myeloid lineage cells, including monocytes, macrophages, and osteoclasts. Tissue-resident macrophages in most organs rely on local M-CSF. However, it is unclear what specific cells in the bone marrow produce M-CSF to maintain myeloid homeostasis. Here, we found that Adipoq-lineage progenitors but not mature adipocytes in bone marrow or in peripheral adipose tissue, are a major cellular source of M-CSF, with these Adipoq-lineage progenitors producing M-CSF at levels much higher than those produced by osteoblast lineage cells. The Adipoq-lineage progenitors with high CSF1 expression also exist in human bone marrow. Deficiency of M-CSF in bone marrow Adipoq-lineage progenitors drastically reduces the generation of bone marrow macrophages and osteoclasts, leading to severe osteopetrosis in mice. Furthermore, the osteoporosis in ovariectomized mice can be significantly alleviated by the absence of M-CSF in bone marrow Adipoq-lineage progenitors. Our findings identify bone marrow Adipoq-lineage progenitors as a major cellular source of M-CSF in bone marrow and reveal their crucial contribution to bone marrow macrophage development, osteoclastogenesis, bone homeostasis, and pathological bone loss.

M-CSF is a critical growth factor for myeloid lineage cells, including monocytes, macrophages and osteoclasts. Tissue resident macrophages in most organs rely on local M-CSF. However, it is unclear what specific cells in bone marrow produce M-CSF to maintain myeloid homeostasis. Here, we identify bone marrow AdipoQ-lineage progenitors, but not bone marrow mature adipocytes or peripheral adipose tissue, as a major cellular source of M-CSF, with these AdipoQ-lineage progenitors producing M-CSF at levels much higher than those produced by osteoblast lineage cells. Deficiency of M-CSF in bone marrow AdipoQ-lineage progenitors drastically reduces the generation of bone marrow macrophages and osteoclasts, leading to severe osteopetrosis in mice. Furthermore, the postmenopausal osteoporosis in a mouse model can be significantly alleviated by the lack of M-CSF in bone marrow AdipoQ-lineage progenitors. Our findings identify bone marrow AdipoQ-lineage progenitors as a major cellular source of M-CSF in bone marrow and reveal their crucial contribution to bone marrow macrophage development, osteoclastogenesis, bone homeostasis and pathological bone loss.

The online ride-hailing platform has revolutionized urban transport. However, there is much room for improvement. We consider meeting the demand for an online ride-hailing at transport hubs late at night, when the public transport system stops its operations. Passengers arriving late at night face a long wait before service. We launch the ride-hailing model in the theoretic framework of queueing and introduce the arrival and the service processes. To improve the efficiency of the ride-hailing platform, as well as to maintain fairness between different types of passengers, we study three variations of carpool service policies. We then provide practical guidelines on the trade-off between efficiency and fairness to assist the online platform designers. Specifically, we derive the analytical trade-off bounds with the passenger parameters. Furthermore, we suggest that these bounds can be good performance estimators for the empirical trade-off when only limited passenger information is available. This analysis motivates us to design the optimal service rate for the entire platform. Finally, we conduct numerical studies based on field data retrieved from Didi Chuxing, highlighting the remarkable performance of our proposed method in terms of improving the quality of online ride-hailing service.

In obesity, macrophages drive a low-grade systemic inflammation (LSI) and insulin resistance (IR). The ribosome biosynthesis protein NOC4 (NOC4) mediates 40 S ribosomal subunits synthesis in yeast. Hereby, we reported an unexpected location and function of NOC4L, which was preferentially expressed in human and mouse macrophages. NOC4L was decreased in both obese human and mice. The macrophage-specific deletion of Noc4l in mice displayed IR and LSI. Conversely, Noc4l overexpression by lentivirus treatment and transgenic mouse model improved glucose metabolism in mice. Importantly, we found that Noc4l can interact with TLR4 to inhibit its endocytosis and block the TRIF pathway, thereafter ameliorated LSI and IR in mice., Macrophage inflammation promotes insulin resistance during diet-induced obesity. Here the authors show that macrophage NOC4L is decreased in humans and mice with obesity, that macrophage NOC4L deficiency aggravated high-fat diet induced inflammation and insulin resistance, and that NOC4L interacts with toll-like receptor 4, to inhibit endocytosis, and thus blocks TLF4/TRIF inflammatory signaling.

This study constructed an up-flow anaerobic column reactor fed with synthetic sulfate-rich cadmium (Cd(II))-bearing wastewater, for investigating its Cd(II) removal performance and mechanism. Long-term experiment results manifest that introducing Cd(II) into influent led to an enhanced sulfate removal but did not increase the effluent sulfide concentration, implying the CdS formation. When influent Cd(II) concentration was shifted from 50 to 100 mg/L, the median Cd(II) removal rate was increased from 13.6 to 32.2 mg/(L·d). Batch tests indicate that the uptake and sequestration function of anaerobes merely led to a small portion of Cd(II) removal. A majority of aqueous Cd(II) (86.3%) was eliminated by precipitation reactions. The generated precipitates were found to be dominantly presented in carbonate, Fe-Mn oxide, sulfide bound and residue forms, which account for 92.6-93.9% of total Cd content of sludge obtained at diverse operation phases. The crystallographic CdS (i.e., residue fraction) particles have nano-scale sizes, and the relatively high atomic ratio of S to Cd was likely due to the adsorption/deposition of other sulfides. The dominant sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) were recognized as Desulfurella, Desulforhabdus and Desulfovibrio, and the primary competitor with them for substrate utilization were identified to be methanogens.

We investigated the sulfidogenesis and methanogenesis processes in a five-compartment anaerobic baffled reactor fed with sucrose at an organic loading rate of 4 g COD L d−1. We decreased the influent COD/SO42− ratio from 12.5 to 2.0 stepwise; the variation in the spatial pattern of sulfidogenesis and methanogenesis was observed by then the variation in concentrations of sulfide and volatile fatty acids (VFAs) in the supernatant liquors. Biogas production was stable at a COD/SO42− ratio ≥6.9, and a peak biogas value of 7.18 L d−1 was obtained, which decreased to 0.75 L d−1 at a COD/SO42− ratio of 2.0. High-throughput sequencing analysis identified sulfate-reducing bacteria and acetoclastic methanogens as dominant bacteria in the compartments (#1 and #2) and compartments (#3 and #4) at a COD/SO42− ratio of 6.9, respectively. However, the above dominant bacteria were shifted to later compartments at a COD/SO42− ratio of 2.0. The VFA composition indicated an acetic-acid-type microbial metabolism pathway was present in the early compartments at high COD/SO42− ratios. Formation of this acetic-acid-type microbial metabolism pathway in sulfidogenesis produced acetate as a substrate for methanogenesis. The COD/SO42− ratio is the key factor in the control of bio-chain cooperation between sulfidogenesis and methanogenesis, which determines the efficiency and stability of the sulfate wastewater treatment system.

The paper proposes the novel Variable Angle Tow (VAT) placement technique to create local reinforcement on fiber reinforced composites with holes which enables to optimize the design for variable stiffness laminates by placing continuous fiber to follow the pre-calculated principle stress trajectories automatically. The potential factors influencing the strengthening effect are investigated, including reinforcement types, lay-up configurations and dimensions. The results from tensile test discusses the failure modes and reveals that with VAT reinforcement, especially the elliptical reinforcement, the ultimate strength of the open-hole specimen can be significantly improved compared with the plain cloth reinforcement. It is also found that the double-sided reinforcement configuration is superior to single-sided or interlayer configurations, and both the circular and elliptical VAT reinforcements possess their optimal dimensions when considering the weight. Subsequent Finite Element Analysis indicates the reinforcing mechanism that the stress concentration in the reinforced region is alleviated by redistributing the stress to the outer unreinforced region.

An anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) with five compartments for treating sulfate-laden wastewater was started up and the multi-phase separation, i.e., acidogenesis, sulfidogenesis, sulfur-production and methanogenesis, was achieved in 130 days of this study. The present study assessed the variations in COD/SO 4 2− ratios as an important factor to evaluate the competition between sulfate-reducing bacteria and the other anaerobic bacteria in the phase-separation system for reactor performance stability. The experiment was divided into Phase I, II and III. In Phase I, the influent COD/SO 4 2− ratio decreased from 13.3 (4 g COD/0.3 g SO 4 2− ) to 2.0 (4 g COD/2 g SO 4 2− ) by increasing the sulfate concentration, the above phases shifted to subsequent compartments, the predominant sulfide oxidizing bacteria (SOB) and methane-producing archaea (MPA) shifted to subsequent compartments, the SOB and Methanothrix -like bacteria were coated with S particles and precipitated at a COD/SO 4 2− ratio of 2.0, resulting in an inefficient removal/yield of COD and SO 4 2− /methane, and showed the system to deteriorate. In Phase II, although the COD/SO 4 2− ratio increased to 3.0 (6 g COD/2 g SO 4 2− ) with an increase in COD concentration, the phase - separation shift to subsequent compartments did not reverse and sulfidogenesis proceeded throughout all compartments, S particles and precipitates coating on SOB and Methanothrix -like bacteria more, sulfide oxidation was inhibited and the effluent quality further deteriorated. In period III, the COD/SO 4 2− ratio further increased to 6.0 (6 g COD/1 g SO 4 2− ) with a decrease in sulfate concentration, sulfidogenesis and methanogenesis returned to the front compartments and the inhibition of sulfide oxidation was relieved, resulting in an increase in removal/yield of COD and SO 4 2− /methane and the improvement of performance. These results indicate that the influent COD/SO 4 2− ratio and substrate concentration affect the metabolic phase-separation and treatment system stability.

Liquid composite moulding (LCM) has been successfully used to manufacture natural fiber reinforced composites. Effects of liquid absorption and swelling on the permeability of natural fiber fabrics in LCM were investigated. It shows that the saturated permeability measured in the corn syrup is 23.1–69.5% smaller than that in the motor oil because of reduced porosity and flow paths caused by liquid absorption and swelling. Based on traditional models by considering the effects of liquid absorption and swelling of jute fibers, a mathematic model was developed to predict the variable permeability during the mold filling. Experimental results demonstrate excellent agreement with the prediction. The effects of flow rate and fiber volume fraction on permeability were also analyzed. It is found that liquid absorption and swelling may dominate the permeation when the flow rate is low while the flow rate may contribute more when it is large. Furthermore, fiber volume fraction is more sensitive to permeability in the syrup than is the case in the motor oil because of the absorption and swelling of natural fibers. POLYM. COMPOS., 2015. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers

Aiming at the resolution contradiction between time and frequency in frequency-hopping (FH) signal parameter estimation, a new FH signal parameter estimation method based on STFT is proposed by analyzing the influence of window function of STFT on the time-frequency spectrum. The parameter of FH signal can be extracted from the parameter of sliding window directly, avoiding the influence of time-frequency spectrum on the accuracy of estimation. The key point of this method is to seek the time-frequency spectrum which has the best time-frequency concentration and get the parameter of target sliding window by changing the beginning time and the width of the sliding window. Simulation results show the method is efficient to estimate the parameter of FH signal.

We prove the existence and the uniqueness of the solutions of a new type of general forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs), where the forward equations are Ito stochastic delayed ones and the backward equations are anticipated back stochastic differential equations, under some certain “monotonicity” conditions. By using the solutions of the FBSDEs we discuss the anticipated backward linear quadratic optimal stochastic control problems.