Activity

Specifically, the case suggests additional contextual features that might promote social fit, including sufficient time and resources, clear communication and shared understanding, and socially astute and strategically savvy governance actors holding key governance positions. The article demonstrates that social fit can increase or decrease over time, and that different actors may perceive its presence and extent differently. These findings suggest avenues for additional research into how the enabling conditions of polycentric governance systems and the contextual features that enliven those systems in practice may interact and affect functionality and other outcomes.Geothermal energy is a promising renewable energy source that has been developed by many countries in recent years. It can be utilised to meet various energy demand. This paper studies the performance of integrating geothermal energy in the Locally Integrated Energy Sector (LIES). The heating and cooling demand of various processes should be satisfied, and heat among processes should be recovered. This is done by using Grand Composite Curves and Total Site Profiles to visually illustrate how much load is required for utility systems. The geothermal utility system and steam utility system are compared. VS-4718 chemical structure The integration plan for geothermal energy under different temperatures are studied. An illustrative case shows that by using this type of renewable energy under a specific and favourable condition, above 70% of steam utility load can be saved. The working cycle of using a geothermal utility system is studied by using the Time Slice model. The heat recovery plan for normal operation, mineral scaling, and cleaning periods are optimised. The minimum temperature for heat storage can also be identified.Nitrate is a prominent pollutant in surface and groundwater bodies worldwide. Isotopes in nitrate provide a powerful approach for tracing nitrate sources and transformations in waters. Given that analytical techniques for determining isotopic compositions are generally time-consuming, laborious and expensive, alternative methods are warranted to supplement and enhance existing approaches. Hence, we developed a support vector regression (SVR) model and explored its feasibility to predict nitrogen isotopic composition of nitrate (δ15N-NO3-) in a rural-urban river system in Southeastern China. A total of 16 easily obtained hydro-chemical variables were measured in the wet season (September 2019) and dry season (January 2020) and used to develop the SVR prediction model. The grading method utilized ~75% (35) of the samples for model building while the remaining 11 samples assessed model performance. Principal component analysis (PCA) extracted 7 principal components for SVR model inputs as PCA reduces superfluous variables. We optimized tuning parameters in the SVR model using a grid search technique coupled with V-fold cross-validation. The optimized SVR model provided accurate δ15N-NO3- predictions with a determination coefficient (R2) of 0.88, Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) of 0.87, and mean square error (MSE) of 0.53‰ in the testing step, and performed much better than the corresponding multivariate linear regression model (R2 = 0.60, NS = 0.58 and MSE = 1.76‰) and general regression neural network model (R2 = 0.66, NS = 0.65 and MSE = 1.45‰). Overall, the SVR model provides a potential indirect method to predict environmental isotope values for water quality management that will complement and enhance the interpretation of direct measurements of δ15N-NO3-.Noonan Syndrome (NS) is an inherited autosome dominant disorder syndrome, which can be caused by the mutations of serine/threonine kinase rapidly accelerated fibrosarcoma 1 (RAF1) gene. Here, an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line named WMUi022-A derived from urine cells (UCs) of a 9-year-old male NS patient with the heterozygote RAF1 gene mutation p.S257L (c.770C > T) was established through the commercial Sendai virus reprogramming kit. The pluripotent markers like OCT4 and SOX2 can be expressed positively in WMUi022-A, which can be induced into three germ layers in vitro as well as maintain a normal karyotype (46, XY).Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line was derived from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of a Kearns-Sayre syndrome (KSS) patient with mtDNA deletion of 4.8 kilobase fragment. KSS is an ultrarare multi-organ disorder and is characterized with (1.1 to 10 kilobase) deletion of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) with a frequency of ~1 in 100,000 individuals. Heteroplasmy in PBMCs allowed us to generate an iPSC line with normal mitochondrial DNA that can be used to study therapeutic prospective of iPSC and their derivatives and design future cell replacement therapies.Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) is an X-linked genetic disorder, characterized by demyelination in the central nervous system and adrenal insufficiency. Human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) lines derived from two Japanese male patients with ALD were generated from skin fibroblasts using retroviral vectors. The generated hiPSC lines showed self-renewal and pluripotency, and carried either a missense or a nonsense mutation in ABCD1 gene. Since the molecular pathogenesis caused by ABCD1 dysfunction remains unclear, these cell resources provide useful tools to establish disease models and to develop new therapies for X-ALD.The integration-free iPSC lines TISSUi006-A and TISSUi007-A were generated by reprogramming blood cells with episomal vectors. The male human donors belong to a Caucasian family in which four additional family members donated and iPSC lines were generated. All iPSC lines within this family are approved for commercial use by donor consent. Those iPSC lines offer the opportunity to study the influence of affiliation within one family. In future, more iPSCs lines of many more family members can be created to understand the effects of relatives with different ages on the reprogramming into iPSCs and differentiation into specific cell types.Self-organization of pluripotent stem cells during tissue formation is directed by the adhesion microenvironment, which defines the resulting tissue topography. Although the influence of tissue topography on pluripotency state has been inferred, this aspect of self-organization remains largely unexplored. In this study, to determine the effect of self-organized tissue topography on pluripotency loss, we designed novel island mesh substrates to confine the self-organization process of mouse embryonic stem cells, enabling us to generate isolated cell layers with an island-like topography and overhanging edges. Using immunofluorescence microscopy, we determined that cells at the tissue edge exhibited deformed nuclei associated with low OCT3/4, in contrast with cells nested in the tissue interior which had round-shaped nuclei and exhibited sustained OCT3/4 expression. Interestingly, F-actin and phospho-myosin light chain were visibly enriched at the tissue edge where ERK activation and elevated AP-2γ expression were also found to be localized, as determined using both immunofluorescence microscopy and RT-qPCR analysis.