The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information

I NTERNATIONAL J OURNAL OF E NERGY AND E NVIRONMENT Volume 1, Issue 1, 2010 pp.69-96 Journal homepage: www.IJEE.IEEFoundation.org ISSN 2076-2895 (Print), ISSN 2076-2909 (Online) ©2010 International Energy & Environment Foundation. All rights reserved. The phenomenon of evaporative cooling from a humid surface as an alternative method for air-conditioning E. Velasco Gómez, F.C. Rey Martínez, A. Tejero González Thermal Engineering Group, Department of Energy Engineering and Fluid mechanics, School of Engineering, University of Valladolid, Paseo del Cauce nº 59, 47011 Valladolid, Spain. Abstract The phenomenon of evaporative cooling is a common process in nature, whose applications for cooling air are being used since the ancient years. In fact, it meets this objective with a low energy consumption, being compared to the primary energy consumption of other alternatives for cooling, as it is simply based in the phenomenon of reducing the air temperature by evaporating water on it. This process can be an interesting alternative to conventional systems in these applications where no very low temperatures are needed, like the case of air-conditioning during the summer. However, the risk of contamination by legionnaire’s disease, commonly related to evaporative cooling systems, has led in recent years to the substitution of these devices in the industry by less-efficient systems, like the case of cooling towers or evaporative condensers substituted by air-condensing refrigerating processes. Therefore, these systems based in the evaporative cooling are rarely used for cooling buildings. To reduce this risk, evaporative cooling is produced from humid surfaces, in such a way that water evaporates due to the difference of vapor pressure between the surface and the air, and thus minimizing the generation of aerosols, responsible for the spread of legionnaire disease. Aerosols are nevertheless produced in conventional systems where water is sprayed or directly in contact with the stream of air; and the problem worsens if the water, which is recirculated, has been still in any moment or its temperature is adequate for the bacteria proliferation. This paper aims to introduce the thermodynamic basis in which the process is based, as well as the commercial evaporative systems and the problem associated to legionnaire’s disease in this kind of systems. Furthermore, three different experimental devices based in evaporative cooling are described, which have been designed and manufactured in the Thermal Engineering Research Group of the University of Valladolid., describing their characteristics of operation and providing the experimental results obtained during their characterization, for outside air conditions typical of hot and dry summers. Copyright © 2010 International Energy and Environment Foundation - All rights reserved. Keywords: Direct evaporative cooling, Air-conditioning, Energy efficiency, Legionnaire’s disease. 1. Introduction The environmental impact associated to the use of energy from conventional fossil origin, the energetic and economic dependency on non-renewable sources, lead to the necessity of reducing the energy consumption, maintaining the current targets and necessities The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information By: OpenStaxCollege Prices exist in markets for goods and services, for labor, and for financial capital In all of these markets, prices serve as a remarkable social mechanism for collecting, combining, and transmitting information that is relevant to the market—namely, the relationship between demand and supply—and then serving as messengers to convey that information to buyers and sellers In a market-oriented economy, no government agency or guiding intelligence oversees the set of responses and interconnections that result from a change in price Instead, each consumer reacts according to that person’s preferences and budget set, and each profit-seeking producer reacts to the impact on its expected profits The following Clear It Up feature examines the demand and supply models Why are demand and supply curves important? The demand and supply model is the second fundamental diagram for this course (The opportunity set model introduced in the Choice in a World of Scarcity chapter was the first.) Just as it would be foolish to try to learn the arithmetic of long division by memorizing every possible combination of numbers that can be divided by each other, it would be foolish to try to memorize every specific example of demand and supply in this chapter, this textbook, or this course Demand and supply is not primarily a list of examples; it is a model to analyze prices and quantities Even though demand and supply diagrams have many labels, they are fundamentally the same in their logic Your goal should be to understand the underlying model so you can use it to analyze any market [link] displays a generic demand and supply curve The horizontal axis shows the different measures of quantity: a quantity of a good or service, or a quantity of labor for a given job, or a quantity of financial capital The vertical axis shows a measure of price: the price of a good or service, the wage in the labor market, or the rate of return (like the interest rate) in the financial market 1/11 The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information The demand and supply model can explain the existing levels of prices, wages, and rates of return To carry out such an analysis, think about the quantity that will be demanded at each price and the quantity that will be supplied at each price—that is, think about the shape of the demand and supply curves—and how these forces will combine to produce equilibrium Demand and supply can also be used to explain how economic events will cause changes in prices, wages, and rates of return There are only four possibilities: the change in any single event may cause the demand curve to shift right or to shift left; or it may cause the supply curve to shift right or to shift left The key to analyzing the effect of an economic event on equilibrium prices and quantities is to determine which of these four possibilities occurred The way to this correctly is to think back to the list of factors that shift the demand and supply curves Note that if more than one variable is changing at the same time, the overall impact will depend on the degree of the shifts; when there are multiple variables, economists isolate each change and analyze it independently Demand and Supply Curves The figure displays a generic demand and supply curve The horizontal axis shows the different measures of quantity: a quantity of a good or service, a quantity of labor for a given job, or a quantity of financial capital The vertical axis shows a measure of price: the price of a good or service, the wage in the labor market, or the rate of return (like the interest rate) in the financial market The demand and supply curves can be used to explain how economic events will cause changes in prices, wages, and rates of return An increase in the price of some product signals consumers that there is a shortage and the product should perhaps be economized on For example, if you are thinking about taking a plane trip to Hawaii, but the ticket turns out to be expensive during the week you intend to go, you might consider other weeks when the ticket might be cheaper The 2/11 The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information price could be high because you were planning to travel during a holiday when demand for traveling is high Or, maybe the cost of an input like jet fuel increased or the airline has raised the price temporarily to see how many people are willing to pay it Perhaps all of these factors are present at the same time You not need to analyze the market and break down the price change into its underlying factors You just have to look at the price of a ticket and decide whether and when to fly In the same way, price changes provide useful information to producers Imagine the situation of a farmer who grows oats and learns that the price of oats has risen The higher price could be due to an increase ...Proceedings of EACL '99 The Treegram Index An Efficient Technique for Retrieval in Linguistic Treebanks Hans Argenton and Anke Feldhaus Infineon Technologies, DAT CIF, Postbox 801709, D-81617 Miinchen hans.argenton@infineon.com University of Tiibingen, SfS, Kleine Wilhelmstr.113, D-72074 Tiibingen feldhaus@sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de Multiway trees (MT, henceforth) are a common and well-understood data struc- ture for describing hierarchical linguistic information. With the availability of large treebanks, retrieval techniques for highly structured data now become essential. In this contribution, we investigate the effi- cient retrieval of MT structures at the cost of a complex index the Treegram Index. We illustrate our approach with the VENONA retrieval system, which han- dles the BH t (Biblia Hebraica transeripta) treebank comprising 508,650 phrase struc- ture trees with maximum degree eight and maximum height 17, containing altogether 3.3 million Old-Hebrew words. 1 Multiway-tree retrieval based on treegrams The base entities of the tree-retrieval problem for positional MTs are (labeled) rooted MTs where children are distin- guished by their position. Let s and t be two MTs; t contains s (written as s ~ t) if there exists an in- jective embedding such that (1) nodes are mapped to nodes with identical labels and (2) a root of a child with position i is mapped to a root of a child with the same position. Retrieval problem: Let DB be a set of' labeled positional MTs and let q be a query tree having the same label alphabet. The problem is to find efficiently all trees t C DB that contain q. To cope with this tree-retrieval problem, we generalize the well-known n-gram in- dexing technique for text databases: In place of substrings with fixed length, we use subtrees with fixed maximal height treegrams. Let TG(t,h) denote the set of all tree- grams of height h contained in the MT t, and let T(DB, g) denote the set of all database trees that contain the treegram g. Assume that g has the height h and that T(DB, g) can be efficiently computed using the index relation I~B := {(g, t)lt E DB A g C TG(t, h)}, which lists for each treegram g of height h every database tree that contains g. We compute the desired result set R = {t C DBIq ___ t} for a given query tree q such that q's height is greater than or equal h as follows: Retrieval method: (1) Compute the set TG(q,h): All tree- grams of height h contained in the query. (2) Compute the candidate set of" (t Candh(q) := Ng~Ta(q,h ) T(DB, g). The set of all database trees that con- tain every query treegram. (3) Compute the result set R = {t E Cand~(q)l q ! t}. The costly operation in this approach is the last containment test q _ t. The build- ing of index Ihs is justified if in general tile 267 Proceedings of EACL '99 number of candidateswill be much smaller than the number of trees in DB. 2 Efficient query evaluation The treegram-index retrieval method given above encounters the following interesting problems: (A) A single treegram may be very com- plex because of its unlimited degree and label strings; this leads to costly look-up operations. (B) There are many treegrams rooting at a given node in a database tree: To accomodate queries with subtree vari- ables, the index has to contain all matching treegrams for that subtree. (c) It is quite expensive to intersect the tree sets T(DB, g) for all treegrams g contained in the query q. VENONA addresses these problems by the following approach: Problem A: Processing of a single tree- gram: (1) Node labels hash to an integer of a few An enzymatic mechanism for generating the precursor of endogenous 13-cis retinoic acid in the brain Yusuke Takahashi 1 , Gennadiy Moiseyev 2 , Ying Chen 2 , Krysten Farjo 2 , Olga Nikolaeva 2 and Jian-Xing Ma 2 1 Department of Medicine Endocrinology, Harold Hamm Oklahoma Diabetes Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, OK, USA 2 Department of Physiology, Harold Hamm Oklahoma Diabetes Center, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, OK, USA Introduction Retinoic acids (RA) comprise a biologically active form of retinoids (vitamin A and its derivatives). The spatiotemporal gradient of RA is essential for the reg- ulation of cell proliferation, differentiation and organ development [1,2]. Generally, it is considered that endogenous retinoids are stored as all-trans retinyl esters (atRE; Fig. 1, structure 1) in the liver and other tissues [1–3]. As required, atRE is hydrolyzed to all- trans retinol (atROL; Fig. 1, structure 2), which is subsequently released into the circulation, bound by Keywords brain; isomerohydrolase; retinoic acid; vitamin A; zebrafish Correspondence J X. Ma, 941 Stanton L. Young Boulevard, BSEB 328B, Oklahoma City, OK 73104, USA Fax: +1 405 271 3973 Tel: +1 405 271 4372 E-mail: jian-xing-ma@ouhsc.edu (Received 18 August 2010, revised 26 December 2010, accepted 11 January 2011) doi:10.1111/j.1742-4658.2011.08019.x 13-cis Retinoic acid (13cRA), a stereoisomeric form of retinoic acid, is nat- urally generated in the body and is also used clinically to treat acute prom- yelocytic leukemia, some skin diseases and cancer. Furthermore, it has been suggested that 13cRA modulates brain neurochemical systems because increased 13cRA levels are correlated with depression and increased sui- cidal tendencies. However, the mechanism for the generation of endoge- nous 13cRA is not well understood. The present study identified and characterized a novel enzyme in zebrafish brain, 13-cis isomerohydrolase (13cIMH) (EC 5.2.1.7), which exclusively generated 13-cis retinol and can be oxidized to 13cRA. 13cIMH shares 74% amino acid sequence identity with human retinal pigment epithelium specific 65 kDa protein (RPE65), an 11-cis isomerohydrolase in the visual cycle, and retains the key residues essential for the isomerohydrolase activity of RPE65. Similar to RPE65, 13cIMH is a membrane-associated protein, requires all-trans retinyl ester as its intrinsic substrate, and its enzymatic activity is dependent on iron. The purified 13cIMH converted all-trans retinyl ester exclusively to 13-cis retinol with K m = 2.6 lM and k cat = 4.4 · 10 )4 Æs )1 . RT-PCR, western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry detected 13cIMH expression in the brain. These results suggest that 13cIMH may play a key role in the gener- ation of 13cRA, as well as in the modulation of neuronal functions in the brain. Abbreviations atRA, all-trans retinoic acid; atRAL, all-trans retinal; atRE, all-trans retinyl ester; atROL, all-trans retinol; 13cIMH, 13-cis isomerohydrolase; 9cRA, 9-cis retinoic acid; 13cRA, 13-cis retinoic acid; 13cRAL, 13-cis retinal; 11cROL, 11-cis retinol; 13cROL, 13-cis retinol; DAPI, 4¢-6-diamino-2-phenylindole; LRAT, lecithin retinol acyltransferase; Ni-NTA, nickel-nitrilotriacetic acid; OT, optic tectum; PGZ, periventricular grey zone; RA, retinoic acid; RALDH, retinaldehyde dehydrogenase; RAR, retinoic acid receptor; RDH, retinol dehydrogenase; RFP, red fluorescent protein; RPE, retinal pigment epithelium; RPE65, retinal pigment epithelium specific 65 kDa protein; NANO EXPRESS Open Access Novel Strategy to Fabricate PLA/Au Nanocomposites as an Efficient Drug Carrier for Human Leukemia Cells in Vitro Jingyuan Li 1 , Chen Chen 1 , Xuemei Wang 1* , Zhongze Gu 1 , Baoan Chen 2 Abstract Poly (lactic acid) (PLA) polymer has the promising applications in the biomedical field because of its biodegradability and safe elimination. In this study, we have explored the bio-application of new nanocomposites composed with PLA nanofibers and Au nanoparticles as the potential drug carrier for an efficient drug delivery in target cancer cells. The results demonstrated that the anticancer drug daunorubicin could be efficiently self-assembled on the surface of PLA/Au nanocomposites and the synergistic enhancement of PLA/Au nanocomposites conjugated with daunorubicin into drug-sensitive K562 and drug-resistant leukemia K562/AO2 cells could be obviously observed by MTT assay and confocal fluorescence microscopy studies. These observations suggest that the new nanocomposites could readily induce daunorubicin to accumulate and uptake in target leukemia cells and increase the drug’s cytotoxicity. Especially, the PLA/Au nanocomposites could significantly facilitate the cellular drug absorbtion of daunorubicin into drug-resistant K562/AO2 cells and efficiently inhibit the cancer cell proliferation. This raised the possibility to utilize the PLA/Au nanocomposites as a new effective additive agent to inhibit the drug resistance and thus as a novel strategy to sensitively track the respective cancer cells. Introduction As one of the difficult treated diseases, cancer threats the life of many patients. To reduce the morbidity and mortality of cancer, early diagnosis and cance r systemic therapies are of paramount importance. The cure effi- ciency of cancer chemotherapy depends not only on the anticancer drug itself but also on how the drug reagent is efficiently delivered to its targets [1]. Although there is much effort to solve the relevant problems, it is still a big challenge to develop a new strategy to mark and track the target cancer cells for the early diagnosis and cure of cancers. Besides, the eme rgence of drug resis- tanceisaworldwidepuzzleintherelateddiseases’ therapies, while the occurrence of the multidrug resis- tance (MDR) phenomenon is one of the major obst acles to the success of the tumors’ chemotherapy [2,3]. It is noted that the mechanisms involved in drug resistance of cancer cells are pertaining to multifactor processes. And the cellular uptake of some drugs may be poor by the mutated tumor cells. The proteins related with drug resistance may pump out the drug molec ules from the mutated tumor cells, which will decrease the drug con- centration inside the tumor cells [4]. Thus, the efficient targe ting of drug delivery for relevant cancer cells could afford a new strategy for the effective treatment of tar- geted cancers [5,6]. Recently, some reports have demonstrated that antic- ancer drugs could be readily modified on the biocompa- tible nanomaterials covalently or non-covalently, which could afford the sustained drug delivery for the target cancer cell lines and reduce the relevant toxicity toward normal cells and tissues [7-9]. For instance, some semi- conductor nanoparticles such as TiO 2 nanoparticles can penetrate across barriers into cancer cells to allow effi- cient drug BioMed Central Page 1 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Retrovirology Open Access Research A formylpeptide receptor, FPRL1, acts as an efficient coreceptor for primary isolates of human immunodeficiency virus Nobuaki Shimizu* 1 , Atsushi Tanaka 1 , Takahisa Mori 1,2 , Takahiro Ohtsuki 1,2 , Aliful Hoque 1 , Atsushi Jinno-Oue 1 , Chatchawann Apichartpiyakul 3 , Shigeru Kusagawa 4 , Yutaka Takebe 4 and Hiroo Hoshino 1,2 Address: 1 Department of Virology and Preventive Medicine, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, Showa-machi, Maebashi, Gunma 371-8511, Japan, 2 21st Century COE Program, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, Showa-machi, Maebashi, Gunma 371-8511, Japan, 3 Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand and 4 Laboratory of Molecular Virology and Epidemiology, AIDS Research Center, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Toyama, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8640, Japan Email: Nobuaki Shimizu* - gardy@med.gunma-u.ac.jp; Atsushi Tanaka - atsushit@med.gunma-u.ac.jp; Takahisa Mori - morit@med.gunma- u.ac.jp; Takahiro Ohtsuki - totuki@med.gunma-u.ac.jp; Aliful Hoque - aliful@med.gunma-u.acjp; Atsushi Jinno-Oue - ouea@med.gunma- u.ac.jp; Chatchawann Apichartpiyakul - capichar@mail.med.cmu.ac.th; Shigeru Kusagawa - kusagawa@nig.go.jp; Yutaka Takebe - takebe@nih.go.jp; Hiroo Hoshino - hoshino@med.gunma-u.ac.jp * Corresponding author Abstract Background: More than 10 members of seven-transmembrane G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) have been shown to work as coreceptors for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV- 1), HIV type 2 (HIV-2), and simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs). As a common feature of HIV/ SIV coreceptors, tyrosine residues are present with asparagines, aspartic acids or glutamic acids in the amino-terminal extracellular regions (NTRs). We noticed that a receptor for N-formylpeptides, FPRL1, also contains two tyrosine residues accompanied by glutamic acids in its NTR. It was reported that monocytes expressing CCR5 and FPRL1 in addition to CD4 are activated by treatment with ligands or agonists of FPRL1. Activated monocytes down-modulate CCR5 and become resistant to infection by HIV-1 strains. Thus, FPRL1 plays important roles in protection of monocyptes against HIV-1 infection. However, its own coreceptor activity has not been elucidated yet. In this study, we examined coreceptor activities of FPRL1 for HIV/SIV strains including primary HIV-1 isolates. Results: A CD4-transduced human glioma cell line, NP-2/CD4, is strictly resistant to HIV/SIV infection. We have reported that when NP-2/CD4 cells are transduced with a GPCR having coreceptor activity, the cells become susceptible to HIV/SIV strains. When NP-2/CD4 cells were transduced with FPRL1, the resultant NP-2/CD4/FPRL1 cells became markedly susceptible to some laboratory-adapted HIV/SIV strains. We found that FPRL1 is also efficiently used as a coreceptor by primary HIV-1 isolates as well as CCR5 or CXCR4. Amino acid sequences linked to the FPRL1 use could not be detected in the V3 loop of the HIV-1 Env protein. Coreceptor activities of FPRL1 were partially blocked by the forymyl-Met-Leu-Phe (fMLF) peptide. Published: 25 June 2008 Retrovirology 2008, 5:52 doi:10.1186/1742-4690-5-52 Received: 5 March 2008 Accepted: 25 June 2008 This article is available from: http://www.retrovirology.com/content/5/1/52 © 2008 Shimizu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Retrovirology 2008, 5:52 http://www.retrovirology.com/content/5/1/52 Page 2 of 14 (page number not for citation purposes) Conclusion: We conclude that FPRL1 is a novel and efficient coreceptor for HIV/SIV strains. FPRL1 works as a bifunctional ... 3/11 The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information The theory of supply and demand can explain what happens in the labor markets and suggests that the demand for nurses will increase.. .The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information The demand and supply model can explain the existing levels of prices, wages, and rates of return To carry out such an analysis,... impact in the quantity of nurses is uncertain, as it depends on the relative shifts of supply and demand 4/11 The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information Impact of Decreasing Supply