Corrosion Damage Analysis and Material Characterization of Sherman and Centaur - The Historic Military Tanks

A study of corrosion damage and material characterization of two historic military tanks, the Sherman and Centaur is reported. Experiments were conducted to analyse surface corrosion and corrosion propagation from surface to sub-surface. Significant surface corrosion was found, this phenomenon was further facilitated by delamination failure mechanisms. Corrosion depth for the Sherman was approximately 110 µm, where sulphide inclusions were detected in the sub-surface analysis. The Centaur’s analysis showed corrosion pits at 100 µm depth. These pits possess random geometrical configurations with evidence of sulfur, sodium and calcium

Pseudogap, Superconducting Gap, and Fermi Arc in High-Tc Cuprates Revealed by Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy

We present an overview of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) studies of high-temperature cuprate superconductors aiming at elucidating the relationship between the superconductivity, the pseudogap, and the Fermi arc. ARPES studies of underdoped samples show a momentum dependence of the energy gap below Tc which deviates from a simple d-wave form, suggesting the coexistence of multiple energy scales in the superconducting state. Hence, two distinct energy scales have been introduced, namely, the gap near the node (characterized by Delta_0) and in the anti-nodal region (characterized by Delta^*). Dichotomy between them has been demonstrated from the material, doping, and temperature dependence of the energy gap. While Delta^* at the same doping level is approximately material independent, Delta_0 shows a strong material dependence tracking the magnitude of Tc,max. The anti-nodal gap does not close at Tc in contrast to the gap near the node which follows something closer to a BCS-like temperature dependence. An effective superconducting gap Delta_sc defined at the end point of the Fermi arc is found to be proportional to Tc's in various materials.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, (SPECIAL TOPICS: Recent Developments in Superconductivity, in Journal of the Physical Society of Japan

Human cytomegalovirus immediate-early 1 protein rewires upstream STAT3 to downstream STAT1 signaling switching an IL6-type to an IFNγ-like response

MN and CP were supported by the Wellcome Trust (www.wellcome.ac.uk) Institutional Strategic Support Fund and CP was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (PA 815/2-1; www.dfg.de).The human cytomegalovirus (hCMV) major immediate-early 1 protein (IE1) is best known for activating transcription to facilitate viral replication. Here we present transcriptome data indicating that IE1 is as significant a repressor as it is an activator of host gene expression. Human cells induced to express IE1 exhibit global repression of IL6- and oncostatin M-responsive STAT3 target genes. This repression is followed by STAT1 phosphorylation and activation of STAT1 target genes normally induced by IFNγ. The observed repression and subsequent activation are both mediated through the same region (amino acids 410 to 445) in the C-terminal domain of IE1, and this region serves as a binding site for STAT3. Depletion of STAT3 phenocopies the STAT1-dependent IFNγ-like response to IE1. In contrast, depletion of the IL6 receptor (IL6ST) or the STAT kinase JAK1 prevents this response. Accordingly, treatment with IL6 leads to prolonged STAT1 instead of STAT3 activation in wild-type IE1 expressing cells, but not in cells expressing a mutant protein (IE1dl410-420) deficient for STAT3 binding. A very similar STAT1-directed response to IL6 is also present in cells infected with a wild-type or revertant hCMV, but not an IE1dl410-420 mutant virus, and this response results in restricted viral replication. We conclude that IE1 is sufficient and necessary to rewire upstream IL6-type to downstream IFNγ-like signaling, two pathways linked to opposing actions, resulting in repressed STAT3- and activated STAT1-responsive genes. These findings relate transcriptional repressor and activator functions of IE1 and suggest unexpected outcomes relevant to viral pathogenesis in response to cytokines or growth factors that signal through the IL6ST-JAK1-STAT3 axis in hCMV-infected cells. Our results also reveal that IE1, a protein considered to be a key activator of the hCMV productive cycle, has an unanticipated role in tempering viral replication.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Immunomodulatory effects of betulinic acid from the bark of white birch on mice

The objective of this study was to explore the immunomodulatory effects of betulinic acid (BA) extracted from the bark of white birch on mice. Female mice were orally administered BA for 14 days in doses of 0, 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mg/kg body weight. We found that BA significantly enhanced the thymus and spleen indices, and stimulated lymphocyte proliferation induced by Concanavalin A and lipopolysaccharide as shown by MTT assay. Flow cytometry revealed that BA increased the percentage of CD4+ cells in thymus as well as the percentage of CD19+ and the ratios of CD4+/CD8+ in spleen. BA increased the number of plaque-forming cell and macrophage phagocytic activity as indicated by a neutral red dye uptake assay, and the peritoneal macrophages levels of TNF-α were also increased. In contrast, serum levels of IgG and IgM and serum concentrations of IL-2 and IL-6 were significantly decreased in BA-treated mice compared to the control as assayed by haemagglutination tests and ELISA, respectively. Taken together, these results suggest that BA enhances mouse cellular immunity, humoral immunity, and activity of macrophages. Thus, BA is a potential immune stimulator and may strengthen the immune response of its host

A Novel Method of Characterizing Genetic Sequences: Genome Space with Biological Distance and Applications

Most existing methods for phylogenetic analysis involve developing an evolutionary model and then using some type of computational algorithm to perform multiple sequence alignment. There are two problems with this approach: (1) different evolutionary models can lead to different results, and (2) the computation time required for multiple alignments makes it impossible to analyse the phylogeny of a whole genome. This motivates us to create a new approach to characterize genetic sequences.To each DNA sequence, we associate a natural vector based on the distributions of nucleotides. This produces a one-to-one correspondence between the DNA sequence and its natural vector. We define the distance between two DNA sequences to be the distance between their associated natural vectors. This creates a genome space with a biological distance which makes global comparison of genomes with same topology possible. We use our proposed method to analyze the genomes of the new influenza A (H1N1) virus, human rhinoviruses (HRV) and mammalian mitochondrial. The result shows that a triple-reassortant swine virus circulating in North America and the Eurasian swine virus belong to the lineage of the influenza A (H1N1) virus. For the HRV and mammalian mitochondrial genomes, the results coincide with biologists' analyses.Our approach provides a powerful new tool for analyzing and annotating genomes and their phylogenetic relationships. Whole or partial genomes can be handled more easily and more quickly than using multiple alignment methods. Once a genome space has been constructed, it can be stored in a database. There is no need to reconstruct the genome space for subsequent applications, whereas in multiple alignment methods, realignment is needed to add new sequences. Furthermore, one can make a global comparison of all genomes simultaneously, which no other existing method can achieve

Increased Expression of Bcl11b Leads to Chemoresistance Accompanied by G1 Accumulation

BACKGROUND: The expression of BCL11B was reported in T-cells, neurons and keratinocytes. Aberrations of BCL11B locus leading to abnormal gene transcription were identified in human hematological disorders and corresponding animal models. Recently, the elevated levels of Bcl11b protein have been described in a subset of squameous cell carcinoma cases. Despite the rapidly accumulating knowledge concerning Bcl11b biology, the contribution of this protein to normal or transformed cell homeostasis remains open. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, by employing an overexpression strategy we revealed formerly unidentified features of Bcl11b. Two different T-cell lines were forced to express BCL11B at levels similar to those observed in primary T-cell leukemias. This resulted in markedly increased resistance to radiomimetic drugs while no influence on death-receptor apoptotic pathway was observed. Apoptosis resistance triggered by BCL11B overexpression was accompanied by a cell cycle delay caused by accumulation of cells at G1. This cell cycle restriction was associated with upregulation of CDKN1C (p57) and CDKN2C (p18) cyclin dependent kinase inhibitors. Moreover, p27 and p130 proteins accumulated and the SKP2 gene encoding a protein of the ubiquitin-binding complex responsible for their degradation was repressed. Furthermore, the expression of the MYCN oncogene was silenced which resulted in significant depletion of the protein in cells expressing high BCL11B levels. Both cell cycle restriction and resistance to DNA-damage-induced apoptosis coincided and required the histone deacetylase binding N-terminal domain of Bcl11b. The sensitivity to genotoxic stress could be restored by the histone deacetylase inhibitor trichostatine A. CONCLUSIONS: The data presented here suggest a potential role of BCL11B in tumor survival and encourage developing Bcl11b-inhibitory approaches as a potential tool to specifically target chemoresistant tumor cells

Enhancement of PLA-PVA surface adhesion in bilayer assemblies by PLA aminolisation

Data Availability: The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time due to legal or ethical reasons.Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) present complementary barrier properties, and their combination in multilayer assemblies (laminates) could provide materials with more effective barrier capacity for food packaging purposes. However, their low chemical affinity compromises adequate polymer adhesion. Surface free energy modification of thermo-processed PLA films through treatment with 1,6-hexanediamine was used to enhance adhesion with polar PVA aqueous solutions. Treatments of 1 and 3 min increased the polar component of the solid surface tension, while treatments above 10 min provoked a corrosive effect in the films structure. Extensibility analyses of PVA solutions loaded with carvacrol (15 wt.%) and different Tween 85 ratios on PLA-activated surfaces allowed the selection of the 1-min aminolysed surface for obtaining PLA-PVA bilayers, by casting PVA solutions on the PLA films. This study revealed that despite aminolisation enhancing the PLA surface affinity for aqueous PVA solutions, casting-obtained bilayers presented limited oxygen barrier effectiveness due to heterogeneous thickness of PVA layer in the laminates.The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) of Spain (project AGL2016-76699-R). The author A. Tampau thanks MINECO for the pre-doctoral research grant #BES-2014-068100.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio