Based on the first resonance frequency measurement of multilayer beams, a simple extraction method has been developed to extract the Young’s modulus of individual layers. To verify this method, the double-layer cantilever, as a typical example, is analyzed to simplify the situation and finite element modeling (FEM) is used in consideration of the buckling and unbuckling situation of cantilevers. The first resonance frequencies, which are obtained by ANSYS (15.0, ANSYS Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA) with a group of thirteen setting values of Young’s modulus in the polysilicon layer are brought into the theoretical formulas to obtain a new group of Young’s modulus in the polysilicon layer. The reliability and feasibility of the theoretical method are confirmed, according to the slight differences between the setting values and the results of the theoretical model. In the experiment, a series of polysilicon-metal double-layer cantilevers were fabricated. Digital holographic microscopy (DHM) (Lyncée Tech, Lausanne, Switzerland) is used to distinguish the buckled from the unbuckled. A scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) (Polytech GmbH, Berlin, Germany) system is used to measure the first resonance frequencies of them. After applying the measurement results into the theoretical modulus, the average values of Young’s modulus in the polysilicon and gold layers are 151.78 GPa and 75.72 GPa, respectively. The extracted parameters are all within the rational ranges, compared with the available results. Full article

The multichannel or wide-angle imaging performance of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can be improved by applying the compressed sensing (CS) theory to each channel or sub-aperture image formation independently. However, this not only neglects the complementary information between signals of each channel or sub-aperture, but also may lead to failure in guaranteeing the consistency of the position of a scatterer in different channel or sub-aperture images which will make the extraction of some scattering information become difficult. By exploiting the joint sparsity of the signal ensemble, this paper proposes a novel CS-based method for joint sparse recovery of all channel or sub-aperture images. Solving the joint sparse recovery problem with a modified orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm, the recovery precision of scatterers is effectively improved and the scattering information is also preserved during the image formation process. Finally, the simulation and real data is used for verifying the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared with single channel or sub-aperture independent CS processing, the proposed method can not only obtain better imaging performance with fewer measurements, but also preserve more valuable scattering information for target recognition. Full article

Since the 20th century, urbanization has been the main characteristic of global land development. If we can reveal and understand the characteristics and underlying mechanisms of urban development, we can then identify a sustainable development pattern for cities. In this paper, we primarily focus on the determinants of two main types of land use in urban development, industrial and commercial, in an empirical study of Beijing. We use a spatial data analysis method to seek and model major determinants of industrial and commercial land growth in the period of 2000–2010 in Beijing. A spatial logistic regression model is used to explore the impact of spatial independent variables on these two types of land use. The study shows that: (1) newly-added industrial land during 2000–2010 received significant contributions from the number of local enterprises engaged in services in 2010, the use of land for agriculture and construction in the neighborhood in 2000 and planning orders; (2) factors contributing to land transferred for commercial use included the number of enterprises, construction land in the neighborhood and accessibility improvement. Full article

This paper presents an intuitive yet effective in-situ thermal diffusivity testing structure and testing method. The structure consists of two doubly clamped beams with the same width and thickness but different lengths. When the electric current is applied through two terminals of one beam, the beam serves as thermal resistor and the resistance R(t) varies as temperature rises. A delicate thermodynamic model considering thermal convection, thermal radiation, and film-to-substrate heat conduction was established for the testing structure. The presented in-situ thermal diffusivity testing structure can be fabricated by various commonly used micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication methods, i.e., it requires no extra customized processes yet provides electrical input and output interfaces for in-situ testing. Meanwhile, the testing environment and equipment had no stringent restriction, measurements were carried out at normal temperatures and pressures, and the results are relatively accurate. Full article

Wadis, ephemeral dry rivers in arid desert regions that contain water in the rainy season, are often manifested as braided linear channels and are of vital importance for local hydrological environments and regional hydrological management. Conventional methods for effectively delineating wadis from heterogeneous backgrounds are limited for the following reasons: (1) the occurrence of numerous morphological irregularities which disqualify methods based on physical shape; (2) inconspicuous spectral contrast with backgrounds, resulting in frequent false alarms; and (3) the extreme complexity of wadi systems, with numerous tiny tributaries characterized by spectral anisotropy, resulting in a conflict between global and local accuracy. To overcome these difficulties, an automated method for extracting wadis (AMEW) from Landsat-8 Operational Land Imagery (OLI) was developed in order to take advantage of the complementarity between Water Indices (WIs), which is a technique of mathematically combining different bands to enhance water bodies and suppress backgrounds, and image processing technologies in the morphological field involving multi-scale Gaussian matched filtering and a local adaptive threshold segmentation. Evaluation of the AMEW was carried out in representative areas deliberately selected from Jordan, SW Arabian Peninsula in order to ensure a rigorous assessment. Experimental results indicate that the AMEW achieved considerably higher accuracy than other effective extraction methods in terms of visual inspection and statistical comparison, with an overall accuracy of up to 95.05% for the entire area. In addition, the AMEW (based on the New Water Index (NWI)) achieved higher accuracy than other methods (the maximum likelihood classifier and the support vector machine classifier) used for bulk wadi extraction. Full article

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is characterized by excessive fat accumulation in the liver. It ranges from simple steatosis to its more aggressive form, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which may develop into hepatic fibrosis, cirrhosis, or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) if it persists for a long time. However, the exact pathogenesis of NAFLD and the related metabolic disorders remain unclear. Epigenetic changes are stable alterations that take place at the transcriptional level without altering the underlying DNA sequence. DNA methylation, histone modifications and microRNA are among the most common forms of epigenetic modification. Epigenetic alterations are involved in the regulation of hepatic lipid metabolism, insulin resistance, mitochondrial damage, oxidative stress response, and the release of inflammatory cytokines, all of which have been implicated in the development and progression of NAFLD. This review summarizes the current advances in the potential epigenetic mechanism of NAFLD. Elucidation of epigenetic factors may facilitate the identification of early diagnositic biomarkers and development of therapeutic strategies for NAFLD. Full article

The aim of the present study was to investigate the radiosensitizing effect of genistein, and the corresponding mechanisms of action on breast cancer cells with different estrogen receptor (ER) status. Human breast cancer cell lines such as MCF-7 (ER-positive, harboring wild-type p53) and MDA-MB-231 (ER-negative, harboring mutant p53) were irradiated with X-rays in the presence or absence of genistein. Cell survival, DNA damage and repair, cell cycle distribution, cell apoptosis, expression of proteins related to G₂/M cell cycle checkpoint and apoptosis were measured with colony formation assays, immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry and western blot analysis, respectively. Genistein showed relatively weak toxicity to both cell lines at concentrations in the range of 5–20 μM. Using the dosage of 10 μM genistein, the sensitizer enhancement ratios after exposure to X-rays at a 10% cell survival (IC₁₀) were 1.43 for MCF-7 and 1.36 for MDA-MB-231 cells, respectively. Significantly increased DNA damages, arrested cells at G₂/M phase, decreased homologous recombination repair protein Rad51 foci formation and enhanced apoptotic rates were observed in both cell lines treated by genistein combined with X-rays compared with the irradiation alone. The combined treatment obviously up-regulated the phosphorylation of ATM, Chk2, Cdc25c and Cdc2, leading to permanent G₂/M phase arrest, and up-regulated Bax and p73, down-regulated Bcl-2, finally induced mitochondria-mediated apoptosis in both cell lines. These results suggest that genistein induces G₂/M arrest by the activation of the ATM/Chk2/Cdc25C/Cdc2 checkpoint pathway and ultimately enhances the radiosensitivity of both ER+ and ER- breast cancer cells through a mitochondria-mediated apoptosis pathway. Full article

The novel compound JRS-15 was obtained through the chemical modification of xylocydine. JRS-15 exhibited much stronger cytotoxic and pro-apoptotic activity than its parent compound in various cancer cell lines, with IC₅₀ values in HeLa, HepG2, SK-HEP-1, PC-3M and A549 cells ranging from 12.42 to 28.25 µM. In addition, it is more potent for killing cancer than non-cancerous cells. Mechanistic studies showed that JRS-15 treatment arrested cell cycle at the G1/S phase, which further triggered the translocation of Bax and Bak to the mitochondria, resulting in mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) depolarization and the subsequent release of cytochrome c and the second mitochondria-derived activator of caspase (Smac). The sequential activation of caspase-9 and caspase-3/7 and the cleavage of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) were observed following these mitochondrial events. Caspase-8, an initiator caspase that is required to activate the membrane receptor-mediated extrinsic apoptosis pathway was not activated in JRS-15-treated cells. Further analysis showed that the levels of the anti-apoptotic proteins Bcl-xL and XIAP were significantly reduced upon JRS-15 treatment. Furthermore, the caspase-9 inhibitor z-LEHD-fmk, the pan-caspase inhibitor z-VAD-fmk, and Bcl-xL or XIAP overexpression all effectively prevented JRS-15-induced apoptosis. Taken together, these results indicate that JRS-15 induces cancer cell apoptosis by regulating multiple apoptosis-related proteins, and this compound may therefore be a good candidate reagent for anticancer therapy. Full article

Driving patterns exert an important influence on the fuel economy of vehicles, especially hybrid electric vehicles. This paper aims to build a method to identify driving patterns with enough accuracy and less sampling time compared than other driving pattern recognition algorithms. Firstly a driving pattern identifier based on a Learning Vector Quantization neural network is established to analyze six selected representative standard driving cycles. Micro-trip extraction and Principal Component Analysis methods are applied to ensure the magnitude and diversity of the training samples. Then via Matlab/Simulink, sample training simulation is conducted to determine the minimum neuron number of the Learning Vector Quantization neural network and, as a result, to help simplify the identifier model structure and reduce the data convergence time. Simulation results have proved the feasibility of this method, which decreases the sampling window length from about 250–300 s to 120 s with an acceptable accuracy. The driving pattern identifier is further used in an optimized co-simulation together with a parallel hybrid vehicle model and improves the fuel economy by about 8%. Full article