Keyword: boron nitride nanotubesBoron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) are desired for their exceptional mechanical, electronic, thermal, structural, textural, optical, and quantum properties. Golberg [1] gives an excellent review of possible applications. To date, BNNTs have been grown by a number of techniques which can be divided roughly into two categories based on the class of material produced.One is the high temperature category in which energy is concentrated into a B or BN target at a level which can vaporize elemental boron. BNNTs form in the deposits of the liberated vapors. The energy is input by laser [2][3][4][5][6] or by arc discharge [7][8][9] . Only small quantities (mg's) of material have been produced by this method, but the tubes are high quality. They have one or just a few walls, and most importantly, the tube walls are low in defects and parallel to the axis of the nanotube. The second category is low temperature synthesis, between about 600 C and 1700 C, well below the vaporization temperature of pure boron (~4000 C). These low temperature synthesis methods can be further divided into two catagories. In the first category, ball-milled precursor powders of boron and catalyst are annealed in a nitrogen or ammonia gas atmosphere, sprouting nanostructures on their
BackgroundGenomic selection is a recently developed technology that is beginning to revolutionize animal breeding. The objective of this study was to estimate marker effects to derive prediction equations for direct genomic values for 16 routinely recorded traits of American Angus beef cattle and quantify corresponding accuracies of prediction.MethodsDeregressed estimated breeding values were used as observations in a weighted analysis to derive direct genomic values for 3570 sires genotyped using the Illumina BovineSNP50 BeadChip. These bulls were clustered into five groups using K-means clustering on pedigree estimates of additive genetic relationships between animals, with the aim of increasing within-group and decreasing between-group relationships. All five combinations of four groups were used for model training, with cross-validation performed in the group not used in training. Bivariate animal models were used for each trait to estimate the genetic correlation between deregressed estimated breeding values and direct genomic values.ResultsAccuracies of direct genomic values ranged from 0.22 to 0.69 for the studied traits, with an average of 0.44. Predictions were more accurate when animals within the validation group were more closely related to animals in the training set. When training and validation sets were formed by random allocation, the accuracies of direct genomic values ranged from 0.38 to 0.85, with an average of 0.65, reflecting the greater relationship between animals in training and validation. The accuracies of direct genomic values obtained from training on older animals and validating in younger animals were intermediate to the accuracies obtained from K-means clustering and random clustering for most traits. The genetic correlation between deregressed estimated breeding values and direct genomic values ranged from 0.15 to 0.80 for the traits studied.ConclusionsThese results suggest that genomic estimates of genetic merit can be produced in beef cattle at a young age but the recurrent inclusion of genotyped sires in retraining analyses will be necessary to routinely produce for the industry the direct genomic values with the highest accuracy.
Recently, hepatic peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)γ has been implicated in hepatic lipid accumulation. We found that the C3H mouse strain does not express PPARγ in the liver and, when subject to a high-fat diet, is resistant to hepatic steatosis, compared with C57BL/6 (B6) mice. Adenoviral PPARγ2 injection into B6 and C3H mice caused hepatic steatosis, and microarray analysis demonstrated that hepatic PPARγ2 expression is associated with genes involved in fatty acid transport and the triglyceride synthesis pathway. In particular, hepatic PPARγ2 expression significantly increased the expression of monoacylglycerol O-acyltransferase 1 (MGAT1). Promoter analysis by luciferase assay and electrophoretic mobility shift assay as well as chromatin immunoprecipitation assay revealed that PPARγ2 directly regulates the MGAT1 promoter activity. The MGAT1 overexpression in cultured hepatocytes enhanced triglyceride synthesis without an increase of PPARγ expression. Importantly, knockdown of MGAT1 in the liver significantly reduced hepatic steatosis in 12-wk-old high-fat-fed mice as well as ob/ob mice, accompanied by weight loss and improved glucose tolerance. These results suggest that the MGAT1 pathway induced by hepatic PPARγ is critically important in the development of hepatic steatosis during dietinduced obesity.nonalcoholic fatty liver disease | adenoviral expression | SREBP1c | ChREBP | TLR4
We present results from the largest contiguous narrow-band survey in the near-infrared. We have used WIRCam/CFHT and the lowOH2 filter (1.187 ± 0.005 µm) to survey ≈10 deg 2 of contiguous extragalactic sky in the SA22 field. A total of ∼ 6000 candidate emission-line galaxies are found. We use deep ugrizJK data to obtain robust photometric redshifts. We combine our data with the High-redshift Emission Line Survey (HiZELS), explore spectroscopic surveys (VVDS, VIPERS) and obtain our own spectroscopic follow-up with KMOS, FMOS and MOSFIRE to derive large samples of high-redshift emission-line selected galaxies: 3471 Hα emitters at z = 0.8, 1343 [OIII]+Hβ emitters at z = 1.4 and 572 [OII] emitters at z = 2.2. We probe co-moving volumes of > 10 6 Mpc 3 and find significant over-densities, including an 8.5 σ (spectroscopically confirmed) over-density of Hα emitters at z = 0.81. We derive Hα, [OIII]+Hβ and [OII] luminosity functions at z = 0.8, 1.4, 2.2, respectively, and present implications for future surveys such as Euclid. Our uniquely large volumes/areas allow us to sub-divide the samples in thousands of randomised combinations of areas and provide a robust empirical measurement of sample/cosmic variance. We show that surveys for star-forming/emission-line galaxies at a depth similar to ours can only overcome cosmicvariance (errors < 10%) if they are based on volumes > 5 × 10 5 Mpc 3 ; errors on L * and φ * due to sample (cosmic) variance on surveys probing ∼ 10 4 Mpc 3 and ∼ 10 5 Mpc 3 are typically very high: ∼ 300% and ∼ 40 − 60%, respectively.
Topology is critical for properties and function of 2D nanomaterials. Membranes and films from 2D nanomaterials usually suffer from large tortuosity as a result from dense restacking of the nanosheets and thus have limited utility in applications such as electrodes for supercapacitor and batteries, which require ion transport through the nanosheet thickness. In comparison with conventional porous 2D nanomaterials, introducing holes through the nanosheets to create holey 2D nanomaterials with retention of the 2D‐related properties is a more viable approach to improve molecular transport. Here, graphene is used as a model to study the fundamental structure‐property relationship as a result from defect‐enabled hole creation. Specifically, the correlation of electrochemical capacitive properties with structure and composition for holey graphene materials is prepared using a highly scalable controlled air oxidation process. The presence of holes on graphene sheets is not sufficient to account for the observed capacitance improvement. Rather, the improvement is achieved through the combination of an enhanced mesopore fraction with simultaneous oxygen doping while retaining the graphitic carbon network with minimal damage. The detailed understanding might be further applied to other 2D materials toward a broader range of both energy‐related and other applications.
Lipin1 expression was induced at a late stage of differentiation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes and maintained at high levels in mature adipocytes. Knockdown of expression of lipin1 by small interfering RNA in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes almost completely inhibited differentiation into adipocytes, whereas overexpression of lipin1 accelerated adipocyte differentiation, demonstrating that lipin1 is required for adipocyte differentiation. In mature adipocytes, transfection of lipin1-small interfering RNA decreased the expression of adipocyte functional genes, indicating the involvement of lipin1 in the maintenance of adipocyte function. Lipin1 increases the transcription-activating function of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor ␥ 2 (PPAR␥ 2 ) via direct physical interaction, whereas lipin1 did not affect the function of other adipocyte-related transcription factors such as C/EBP␣, liver X-activated receptor ␣, or sterol regulatory element binding protein 1c. In mature adipocytes, lipin1 was specifically recruited to the PPAR␥-response elements of the phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase gene, an adipocyte-specific gene. C/EBP␣ up-regulates lipin1 transcription by directly binding to the lipin1 promoter. Based on the existence of a positive feedback loop between C/EBP␣ and PPAR␥ 2 , we propose that lipin1 functions as an amplifier of the network between these factors, resulting in the maintenance of high levels of the specific gene expression that are required for adipogenesis and mature adipocyte functions.Adipose tissue plays an essential role in maintaining metabolic homeostasis (1). White adipose tissue takes up fatty acids derived from the diet or the liver as well as increases the uptake of glucose in response to insulin by recruiting glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) 2 to the plasma membrane. Then white adipose tissue stores the glucose or fatty acids as a form of triacylglyceride and releases free fatty acids during states of starvation. Recent studies have shown that adipose tissue secretes various humoral factors called adipocytokines which play numerous functions associated with food intake, insulin sensitivity, energy homeostasis, inflammatory responses, and atherogenesis (2). In obese subjects adipocytes cannot function adequately, thereby causing various metabolic syndromes including insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and coronary-vascular disease (3-6). Lipodystrophy leads to the same condition as obesity due to lack of adipocyte function (7-9). Thus, studying the molecular mechanisms that control adipose tissue development and function is important for understanding the pathophysiology of metabolic syndromes.Adipogenesis is a process in which premature cells acquire adipocyte-specific functions. A complex network of transcription factors is developed during this process in response to extracellular adipogenic stimuli. In 3T3-L1 preadipocyte cells the CCAAT/enhancer-binding proteins  and ␦ (C/EBP and C/EBP␦) are induced immediately upon adipogenic hormonal stimuli, and they are expressed for approximately 2 days ...
Lithium-oxygen (Li-O) batteries have the highest theoretical energy density of all the Li-based energy storage systems, but many challenges prevent them from practical use. A major obstacle is the sluggish performance of the air cathode, where both oxygen reduction (discharge) and oxygen evolution (charge) reactions occur. Recently, there have been significant advances in the development of graphene-based air cathode materials with a large surface area and catalytically active for both oxygen reduction and evolution reactions, especially with additional catalysts or dopants. However, most studies reported so far have examined air cathodes with a limited areal mass loading rarely exceeding 1 mg/cm. Despite the high gravimetric capacity values achieved, the actual (areal) capacities of those batteries were far from sufficient for practical applications. Here, we present the fabrication, performance, and mechanistic investigations of high-mass-loading (up to 10 mg/cm) graphene-based air electrodes for high-performance Li-O batteries. Such air electrodes could be easily prepared within minutes under solvent-free and binder-free conditions by compression-molding holey graphene materials because of their unique dry compressibility associated with in-plane holes on the graphene sheet. Li-O batteries with high air cathode mass loadings thus prepared exhibited excellent gravimetric capacity as well as ultrahigh areal capacity (as high as ∼40 mAh/cm). The batteries were also cycled at a high curtailing areal capacity (2 mAh/cm) and showed a better cycling stability for ultrathick cathodes than their thinner counterparts. Detailed post-mortem analyses of the electrodes clearly revealed the battery failure mechanisms under both primary and secondary modes, arising from the oxygen diffusion blockage and the catalytic site deactivation, respectively. These results strongly suggest that the dry-pressed holey graphene electrodes are a highly viable architectural platform for high-capacity, high-performance air cathodes in Li-O batteries of practical significance.
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