Suchergebnisse

To alleviate project financial pressure and improve performance, the public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement was introduced by the central government of China to facilitate the sustainable development of infrastructure. However, arising government credit crisis from the PPP project may damage both the private's and public's interests, and affect the government performance of PPP projects consequently. In order to understand the influence between government credit and performance, we constructed a government credit evaluation index system by using the Wuli-Shili-Renli system theory, and conducted a questionnaire survey among people related to PPP based on 359 valid questionnaires. The results firstly indicated that government credit and performance of PPP projects are optimistic in China. Secondly, the institutional environment, financial situation, management technology and internal and external communication of government credit all have a positive impact on the government performance of PPP. Thirdly, the government credit and performance of PPP projects can be increased by the improvement of regional economic and social development. These findings enrich the knowledge system of the relationship between government credit and performance of PPP projects and contribute to clarifying the influence of government credit and performance, thus provide the basis for the government to guide PPP practice effectively.

The voltage loss, determined by the difference between the optical gap (E-g) and the open-circuit voltage (V-OC), is one of the most important parameters determining the performance of organic solar cells (OSCs). However, the variety of different methods used to determine E-g makes it hard to fairly compare voltages losses among different material systems. In this paper, the authors discuss and compare various E-g determination methods and show how they affect the detailed calculation of voltage losses, as well as predictions of the maximum achievable power conversion efficiency. The aim of this paper is to make it possible for the OSC community to compare voltage losses in a consistent and reasonable way. It is found that the voltage losses for strongly absorbed photons in state-of-the-art OSCs are not much less than 0.6 V, which still must be decreased to further enhance efficiency. ; Funding Agencies|Swedish Research Council VR [2017-00744]; Swedish Energy Agency Energimyndigheten [2016-010174]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University [2009-00971]; DFG [KI-1571/2-1]; China Scholarship Council

Yong Cui,1,* Jing Lin,1,* Jianling Zuo,2 Lei Zhang,1 Yan Dong,1 Guohan Hu,1 Chun Luo,1 Juxiang Chen,1 Yicheng Lu1 1Department of Neurosurgery, Changzheng Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; 2Department of Neurosurgery, First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, People's Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: The AKT2 kinase (protein kinase Bβ) is overexpressed in high-grade gliomas. Upregulation of the AKT2 gene has been previously observed in glioblastoma patients suffering from chemotherapy failure and tumor progress. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effect of AKT2 on viability and chemoresistance in the human glioblastoma cell line U251. The U251 cell line was stably transfected with short hairpin RNA (shRNA) targeting AKT2. U251 cells underexpressing AKT2 were then examined for viability with temozolomide (TMZ) treatment, and tested for cell apoptosis both in vitro and in tumor-implanted mice. Next, expressions of several chemoresistance-related molecules were measured by quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and western blot analysis. The results showed that the 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) of AKT2 shRNA-transfected cells was significantly lower compared with Lenti-GFP-transfected and nontransfected controls and that the tumor growth of the AKT2-shRNA and TMZ combined-treated mice was obviously suppressed in either mass or volume. Concomitantly, the apoptosis of TMZ-treated tumor cells was significantly enhanced after knockdown of AKT2, as measured by flow cytometry and in situ terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) analysis. Furthermore, AKT2-inhibition in TMZ-treated glioblastoma U251 cells upregulated apoptotic effector caspase-3, whereas it downregulated antiapoptotic protein Bcl-2, DNA repairing protein MGMT, and drug efflux pump protein MRP1. Our study identified AKT2 as an important gene in presenting chemoresistance in glioblastoma, and a potential target to potentiate the clinical effect of chemotherapy in glioma treatment. Keywords: AKT2, glioma, chemoresistance, TMZ, mice

Porosity and surface area analysis play a prominent role in modern materials science. At the heart of this sits the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory, which has been a remarkably successful contribution to the field of materials science. The BET method was developed in the 1930s for open surfaces but is now the most widely used metric for the estimation of surface areas of micro- and mesoporous materials. Despite its widespread use, the calculation of BET surface areas causes a spread in reported areas, resulting in reproducibility problems in both academia and industry. To prove this, for this analysis, 18 already-measured raw adsorption isotherms were provided to sixty-one labs, who were asked to calculate the corresponding BET areas. This round-robin exercise resulted in a wide range of values. Here, the reproducibility of BET area determination from identical isotherms is demonstrated to be a largely ignored issue, raising critical concerns over the reliability of reported BET areas. To solve this major issue, a new computational approach to accurately and systematically determine the BET area of nanoporous materials is developed. The software, called "BET surface identification" (BETSI), expands on the well-known Rouquerol criteria and makes an unambiguous BET area assignment possible. ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (NanoMOFdeli), ERC-2016-COG 726380, Innovate UK (104384) and EPSRC IAA (IAA/RG85685). N.R. acknowledges the support of the Cambridge International Scholarship and the Trinity-Henry Barlow Scholarship (Honorary). O.K.F. and R.Q.S. acknowledge funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-FG02-08ER15967). R.S.F. and D.B. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (SCoTMOF), ERC-2015-StG 677289. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National ...

Funding: European Research Council. Grant Number: ERC-2016-COG 726380 Innovate UK. Grant Number: 104384 EPSRC. Grant Number: IAA/RG85685 U.S. Department of Energy. Grant Number: DE-FG02-08ER15967 European Research Council. Grant Number: ERC-2015-StG 677289 Sandia National Laboratories National Nuclear Security Administration. Grant Number: DE-NA-0003525 U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office SERB. Grant Number: CRG/2019/000906 Active Co. Research European Research Council. Grant Number: ERC-2017-StG 756489 European Commission. Grant Number: 872102 Spanish MICINN AEI/FEDER. Grant Number: RTI2018-099504-B-C21 University of Alicante. Grant Number: UATALENTO17-05 Spanish MINECO. Grant Number: SEV-2017-0706 Fund for Scientific Research Flanders. Grant Numbers: 12T3519N, 11D2220N EPSRC Cambridge. Grant Number: EP/L015978/1 National Research Foundation of Korea. Grant Numbers: NRF-2017M3A7B4042140, NRF-2017M3A7B4042235 Basic Energy Sciences. Grant Number: DE-SC0010596 Indonesian Endowment Fund. Grant Number: 202002220216006 European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program. Grant Number: 639233 ; Porosity and surface area analysis play a prominent role in modern materials science. At the heart of this sits the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) theory, which has been a remarkably successful contribution to the field of materials science. The BET method was developed in the 1930s for open surfaces but is now the most widely used metric for the estimation of surface areas of micro- and mesoporous materials. Despite its widespread use, the calculation of BET surface areas causes a spread in reported areas, resulting in reproducibility problems in both academia and industry. To prove this, for this analysis, 18 already-measured raw adsorption isotherms were provided to sixty-one labs, who were asked to calculate the corresponding BET areas. This round-robin exercise resulted in a wide range of values. Here, the reproducibility of BET area ...

Porosity and surface area analysis play a prominent role in modern materials science. At the heart of this sits the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory, which has been a remarkably successful contribution to the field of materials science. The BET method was developed in the 1930s for open surfaces but is now the most widely used metric for the estimation of surface areas of micro- and mesoporous materials. Despite its widespread use, the calculation of BET surface areas causes a spread in reported areas, resulting in reproducibility problems in both academia and industry. To prove this, for this analysis, 18 already-measured raw adsorption isotherms were provided to sixty-one labs, who were asked to calculate the corresponding BET areas. This round-robin exercise resulted in a wide range of values. Here, the reproducibility of BET area determination from identical isotherms is demonstrated to be a largely ignored issue, raising critical concerns over the reliability of reported BET areas. To solve this major issue, a new computational approach to accurately and systematically determine the BET area of nanoporous materials is developed. The software, called "BET surface identification" (BETSI), expands on the well-known Rouquerol criteria and makes an unambiguous BET area assignment possible. ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (NanoMOFdeli), ERC-2016-COG 726380, Innovate UK (104384) and EPSRC IAA (IAA/RG85685). N.R. acknowledges the support of the Cambridge International Scholarship and the Trinity-Henry Barlow Scholarship (Honorary). O.K.F. and R.Q.S. acknowledge funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-FG02-08ER15967). R.S.F. and D.B. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (SCoTMOF), ERC-2015-StG 677289. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National ...