This paper reports measurements of the effective thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of various nanofluids using the transient short-hot-wire technique. To remove the influences of the static charge and electrical conductance of the nanoparticles on measurement accuracy, the short-hot-wire probes are carefully coated with a pure Al 2 O 3 thin film. Using distilled water and toluene as standard liquids of known thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity, the length and radius of the hot wire and the thickness of the Al 2 O 3 film are calibrated before and after application of the coating. The electrical leakage of the short-hot-wire probes is frequently checked, and only those probes that are coated well are used for measurements. In the present study, the effective thermal conductivities and thermal diffusivities of Al 2 O 3 /water, ZrO 2 /water, TiO 2 /water, and CuO/water nanofluids are measured and the effects of the volume fractions and thermal conductivities of nanoparticles and temperature are clarified. The average diameters of Al 2 O 3 , ZrO 2 , TiO 2 , and CuO particles are 20, 20, 40, and 33 nm, respectively. The uncertainty of the present measurements is estimated to be within 1% for the thermal conductivity and 5% for the thermal diffusivity. The measured results demonstrate that the effective thermal conductivities of the nanofluids show no anomalous enhancement and can be predicted accurately by the model equation of Hamilton and Crosser, when the spherical nanoparticles are dispersed into fluids.

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Opioids are the most widely used analgesics in the treatment of severe acute and chronic pain. However, opioids have many adverse side effects, including the development of antinociceptive tolerance after long-term use. The antinociceptive tolerance of opioids has limited their clinical use. A recent study has reported that autophagy is responsible for morphine-induced neuronal injury. However, little is known about the role of autophagy in morphine antinociceptive tolerance. In the present study, chronic morphine administration was found to induce the expression of autophagy-related proteins, including Beclin1 and microtubule-associated protein light chain 3 (LC3)-II, in GABAergic interneurons in the superficial layer (lamina I-II) of the spinal cord. A single intrathecal administration of autophagy inhibitors, 3-methyladenine (3MA) or wortmannin, inhibited the development of antinociceptive tolerance in a dose-dependent manner. Autophagy in the lamina I-II neurons was associated with increased level of cathepsin B (CatB), a lysosomal cysteine protease. The pharmacological blockade or gene deletion of CatB markedly prevented the development of morphine antinociceptive tolerance. Furthermore, the intrathecal administration of 3MA suppressed the upregulation of CatB 5 days after morphine administration. Finally, CatB deficiency inhibited the increased release probability of glutamate in the lamina I neurons after chronic morphine treatment. These observations suggest that the dysfunction of the spinal GABAergic system induced by CatB-dependent excessive autophagy is partly responsible for morphine antinociceptive tolerance following chronic treatment.

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This paper reports on measurements of in-plane thermal conductivities, electrical conductivities, and Lorentz number of two microfabricated, suspended, nanosized thin films with a thickness of 28 nm. The effect of the film thickness on the in-plane thermal conductivity is examined by measuring other nanofilm samples with a thickness of 40 nm. The experimental results show that the electrical conductivity, resistance-temperature coefficient, and in-plane thermal conductivity of the nanofilms are much smaller than the corresponding bulk values from 77 to 330 K. However, the Lorentz number of the nanofilms is about two times that of the bulk value at room temperature, and even up to three times that of the bulk value at 77 K. These results indicate that the relation between the thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity of the nanofilms does not follow the Wiedemann-Franz law for bulk metallic materials.

In this paper, numerical simulations and measurements of the thermal contact conductance (TCC) at the interface between the plane ends of two cylinders in contact are carried out. The random model of surface roughness is developed, and the non-dimensional basic equations are solved based on a grid system with equi-peripheral intervals in the azimuthal direction that can express reasonably the real contact spot distribution. The effects of the contact pressure, the thermal conductivity of the interstitial medium, and the mean absolute slope of the rough surface on the TCC were clarified by using a network method. In the experiments, four pairs of brass cylinders, each of which has similar surface topology, are used for the TCC measurements. The hysteretic nature of TCC versus contact pressure was observed in the first loading cycle. The present numerical results show that the TCC increases linearly with the mean absolute slope of the surfaces even at the same mean roughness. Such a tendency agrees well with the measurements.