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ICP22 is a multifunctional herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) immediate early protein that functions as a general repressor of a subset of cellular and viral promoters in transient expression systems. Although the exact mechanism of repression remains unclear, this protein induces a decrease in RNA polymerase II Serine 2 (RNAPII Ser-2) phosphorylation, which is critical for transcription elongation. To characterize the mechanism of transcriptional repression by ICP22, we established an in vivo transient expression reporter system. We found that ICP22 inhibits transcription of the HSV-1 α, β and γ gene promoters. The viral tegument protein VP16, which plays vital roles in initiation of viral gene expression and viral proliferation, can overcome the inhibitory effect of ICP22 on α-gene transcription. Further immunoprecipitation studies indicated that both ICP22 and VP16 bind to positive transcription elongation factor b (P-TEFb) and form a complex with it in vivo. We extended this to show that P-TEFb regulates transcription of the viral α-gene promoters and affects transcriptional regulation of ICP22 and VP16 on the α-genes. Additionally, ChIP assays demonstrated that ICP22 blocks the recruitment of P-TEFb to the viral promoters, while VP16 reverses this blocking effect by recruiting P-TEFb to the viral α-gene promoters through recognition of the TAATGARAT motif. Taken together, our results suggest that ICP22 interacts with and blocks the recruitment of P-TEFb to viral promoter regions, which inhibits transcription of the viral gene promoters. The transactivator VP16 binds to and induces the recruitment of P-TEFb to viral α-gene promoters, which counteracts the transcriptional repression of ICP22 on α-genes by recruiting p-TEFb to the promoter region.

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A suction probe was developed to directly measure matric suction greater than 100 kPa. The suction probe contains a small volume of water, a nonthreaded, high-range pressure transducer, and a 15 bar (1 bar = 100 kPa) ceramic disk. Cyclic prepressurization up to 12 000 kPa was used to dissolve potential cavitation nuclei in the water in the suction probe to increase the sustainable tension of the water. Using a pressure-plate cell, the suction probe has been verified to be accurate and has a rapid response for pore-water pressures as low as -500 kPa. Measurements performed on various types of soils indicate that the suction probe is able to measure matric suction up to 1250 kPa with satisfactory accuracy. The filter-paper method and the thermal conductivity sensor generally gave lower values of matric suction than the suction probe, whereas the null-pressure plate gave higher values of matric suction than the suction probe. The suction probe appeared to be best suited for measuring suction in wet clayey-type soils. Some difficulties were encountered in measuring suction in soils with a low degree of saturation.Résumé : Une sonde de succion a été développée pour mesurer directement des succions matricielles supérieures à 100 kPa. Cet appareil contient un petit volume d'eau, un capteur de pression non fileté à haute capacité et un disque en céramique 15 bar (1 bar = 100 kPa). Une pression cyclique préalable supérieure à 12 000 kPa a été utilisée pour dissoudre les germes de cavitation potentiels dans l'eau de la sonde, de façon à accroître la tension que l'eau peut supporter. Grâce à une cellule de type plaque de pression, on a pu vérifier la précision de la sonde, qui possède également une réponse rapide pour des pressions interstitielles aussi basses que -500 kPa. Les mesures faites sur différents types de sols indiquent que notre sonde peut mesurer des succions matricielles allant jusqu'à 1250 kPa sans perte de précision. La méthode du papier filtre et le capteur de conductivité thermique ont généralement donné des valeurs de succion matricielle inférieures à celles fournies par la sonde, alors que la plaque dite à pression nulle a donné des valeurs supérieures. Notre appareillage parait être meilleur pour la mesure des succions dans des sols de type argileux humides. On a rencontré quelques dificultés lors de la mesure de la succion dans des sols ayant un degré de saturation peu élevé.Mots clés : mesure directe de la succion, résistance de l'eau en tension, sols non saturés, succion matricielle, cavitation, sonde de succion.[Traduit par la rédaction]

Dynamic interaction between tumor cells and the microenvironment is critical for tumorigenesis, and cancer immunosurveillance plays an important role in the tumor evolution. In some tumors (such as esophageal cancer, pancreatic cancer and colorectal cancer), studies have shown that the number of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) has a significant relationship with the prognosis, but there is little research on the prognosis of TILs and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has been performed. Therefore, it is necessary to discover the relationship between the TILs and cytokines with NSCLC prognosis and metastasis in patients. Tumor samples were carefully examined for tissue preservation and complete follow-up. A total of 107 tumor samples from NSCLC patients with radical surgical resection were enrolled for the analysis. All samples were subjected to immunohistochemistry for detection of CD3, CD4, CD8, CD28, forkhead box protein P3 (Foxp3), cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein-4, cyclooxygenase2 (COX-2), transforming growth factor β 1, interleukin-2 (IL-2), interleukin-6, interleukin-10, interleukin-12 receptor and hypoxia inducible factor 1a (HIF-1a). The number, function and location of the targets were analyzed to determine their correlation with disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). Immunhistochemical results from 107 samples indicated that the FoxP3+ regulatory TIL (HR=1.336, P=0.031), IL-2 (HR=0.595, P=0.007) and HIF-1a (HR=1.510, P=0.002) levels in tumor cells closely correlated with DFS in a COX analysis model. FoxP3+ regulatory TILs (HR=1.566, P=0.002) significantly correlated with OS and tumor node metastasis staging. The patients were divided into two groups due to the coexpression pattern of the IL-2, FoxP3+ and HIF-1a. The high-risk group had an overall worse survival than those at low risk. We confirmed that Foxp3 expression in lymphocyte and IL-2 expression in tumor cells were associated with recurrence or transfer. Furthermore, we also observed that HIF-1a expression significantly correlated with DFS and OS.

In recent years, methods for detecting motor bearing faults have attracted increasing attention. However, it is very difficult to detect the faults from weak motor bearing signals under the strong noise. Stochastic resonance (SR) is a popular signal processing method, which can process weak signals with the noise, but the traditional SR is burdensome in determining its parameters. Therefore, in this paper, a new advancing coupled multi-stable stochastic resonance method, with two first-order multi-stable stochastic resonance systems, namely CMSR, is proposed to detect motor bearing faults. Firstly, the effects of the output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for system parameters and coupling coefficients are analyzed in-depth by numerical simulation technology. Then, the SNR is considered as the fitness function for the seeker optimization algorithm (SOA), which can adaptively optimize and determine the system parameters of the SR by using the subsampling technique. An advancing coupled multi-stable stochastic resonance method is realized, and the pre-processed signal is input into the CMSR to detect the faults of motor bearings by using Fourier transform. The faults of motor bearings are determined according to the output signal. Finally, the actual vibration data of induction motor bearings are used to prove the effectiveness of the proposed CMSR. The comparison results with the MSR show that the CMSR can obtain a higher output SNR, which is more beneficial to extract weak signal features and realize fault detection. At the same time, this method also has practical application value for engineering rotating machinery.

In order to improve the diagnosis accuracy and solve the weak fault signal of rolling element of rolling bearings due to long transmission path, a novel fault diagnosis method based on variational mode decomposition (VMD) and maximum correlation kurtosis deconvolution (MCKD), namely VMD-MCKD-FD is proposed for rolling elements of rolling bearings in this paper. In the proposed VMD-MCKD-FD, the vibration signal of rolling element of rolling bearings is decomposed into a series of Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) by using VMD method. Then the number of modes with outstanding fault information is determined by Kurtosis criterion in order to calculate the deconvolution period T. The periodic fault component of reconstructed signal is enhanced by using sensitivity MCKD method. Finally, the power spectrum of the reconstructed signal is analyzed in detail in order to obtain the fault frequency and diagnose the rolling element fault of rolling bearings. The simulation signal and actual vibration signal are selected to verify the effectiveness of the VMD-MCKD-FD method. The experimental results show that the VMD-MCKD-FD method can effectively diagnose the rolling element fault of rolling bearings and obtain better fault accuracy.

Abstract-Based on the improvements of both Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization, a novel IGA-edsPSO(Improved Genetic Algorithm-extremum disturbed simple Particle Swarm Optimization) Hybrid algorithm is proposed in this paper. An improved performance of GA is achieved by reducing the array space. By discarding the particle velocity vector in the PSO evolutionary equation, the sPSO (simple PSO) can avoid the problem of slow later convergence velocity and low precision caused by determining the maximal velocity vector factitiously. And the edsPSO can overstep local extremum point more effectively with the help of the extremum disturbed factor. The proposed IGA-edsPSO Hybrid algorithm is used in the design of the sparse arrays with minimum element spacing constraint. Given the array aperture and the number of the array elements, the suppression of the peak sidelobe level (PSLL) with a certain half power beamwidth (HPBW) restriction is implemented with a high efficiency by optimizing the HPBW and PSLL synchronously. The simulation results show that faster convergence velocity (which means less computation time) and lower sidelobe level are obtained using IGA-edsPSO compared to IGA, standard PSO, GA-PSO and GA-sPSO.