Abstract. Significant experimental advances have been made on HL-2A tokamak along with substantial improvement and development of hardware. The three dimensional spectral structures of the low frequency zonal flow, the geodesic acoustic mode (GAM), and quasi-mode-like low frequency fluctuations have been observed simultaneously for the first time. In addition, the spectral structure of the density fluctuation at GAM frequency is also identified. A spontaneous particle transport barrier has been observed in Ohmic discharges without any external momentum input. The barrier is evidenced by particle perturbation study using modulated SMBI and microwave reflectometry. The non-local transport effect with new features induced by SMBI has been investigated. The e-fishbone instability excited by energetic electrons of non-Maxwellian distribution has been investigated via 10-channel CdTe hard x-ray detector. It is found that the e-fishbone is correlated with the existence of energetic electrons of 30-70 keV. The experiment shows that the suppression of m/n = 2/1 tearing modes can be sustained by ECRH with low modulation frequency of about 10 Hz. Extended confinement improvement is obtained after the mode suppression.

Bone is one of the most frequent targets of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) metastasis and is closely associated with a poor prognosis, but the specific cellular gene alterations responsible for SCLC with bone metastasis are unclear. Zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1 (ZEB1) as an E-box transcriptional repressor has been suggested that an important inducer of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and a promoter of tumor metastasis in colon, breast and lung cancers. However, the relationship between ZEB1 and SCLC with bone metastasis is unclear. In this study, ZEB1 was found to be highly expressed in bone-metastatic SCLC tissues and cell lines as compared with those that were non-metastatic (P < 0.05). Using a lentivirus RNA interference technique to knockdown ZEB1 expression in bone-metastatic SCLC cells (SBC-5 cell line), we found that ZEB1 siRNA could inhibit the invasive and migratory ability and decrease parathyroid hormone-related protein expression, as determined by invasion assays and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Besides, ZEB1 siRNA significantly inhibited the bone metastasis of SBC-5 cells in vivo. Furthermore, overexpression of ZEB1 in SBC-3 cells, which demonstrate promoted bone-metastatic potential, dramatically promoted their invasive and migratory ability and parathyroid hormone-related proteinexpression as well as increased the number and sites of bone metastases in vivo compare to the control group. We also found that SBC-3 cells underwent EMT, as indicated by decreased epithelial markers and increased mesenchymal marker expression. Taken together, these results indicate that ZEB1 promoted the invasive ability and bone metastasis of SCLC cells, and that this was partially mediated via the EMT pathway. (Cancer Sci 2012; 103: 1420-1428 S mall cell lung cancer (SCLC) is the lung neoplasia with the poorest prognosis, due to its high ability of metastasis. SCLC in the advanced stage frequently metastasizes to multiple organs, including the liver, lungs, lymph nodes and bone.( 1) Bone is one of the most frequent targets of SCLC metastasis (as well as the brain and liver) and the bone metastasis is associated with high morbidity and poor prognosis (2,3) due to the consequences of skeletal-related events, including bone pain, pathologic and radiologic fractures and hypercalcemia. (4)(5)(6) However, the mechanisms underlying this rapid metastatic capacity of SCLC are unknown.Previous study shows that SBC-3 and SBC-5 are derived a similar genetic background from human SCLC, which have the same metastatic ablility of visceral organs except for bone. SBC-5 has a higher capability of bone metastasis than SBC-3.(7) We previously explored the preliminary mechanism of bone metastasis using SBC-5 and SBC-3. (8)(9)(10) Zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1 (ZEB1) is an E-box transcriptional inducer that has emerged as a key player in cancer progression. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays an important role in tumor invasion and is closely related with development and progression of tumors....

Electrical stimulation may improve the proliferation of animal cells. In the present study, osteoblasts were cultured on electroactive aniline pentamer (AP)/poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) copolymer composites, on which electric pulse was imposed. The combination of polymer and electric pulse enhanced the osteogenic differentiation of the osteoblasts, characterized by the upregulated expression of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-2, collagen I and osteonectin and the phosphorylation of Samd4, in contrast to polymer or electrical pulse alone. This action occurred in a polymer content-dependent manner. Therefore, the action of the electric pulse, assisted by the electroactive polymer implant, may be promising in the expedition of injured bone repair.

Localized current drive by electron cyclotron (EC) waves is of significant importance in the outer half region of tokamak plasmas. Using the coupled GENRAY/CQL3D suite codes, a systematic comparative study between Ohkawa current drive (OKCD) and electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) is performed. The results show that OKCD has more advantages than ECCD for far off-axis localized current drive in tokamaks with large inverse aspect ratios, while ECCD is more efficient than OKCD in tokamaks with low inverse aspect ratios. The results of local current driving on the q = 2 rational surface show that both OKCD and ECCD are effective for control of the m = 2/n = 1 tearing mode or neoclassical tearing mode (NTM). It seems that efficient Ohkawa current can be driven in a specific far off-axis radial position as long as the local inverse aspect ratio is large enough. The effect of collisionality imposes a significant impact on OKCD and results in reduction of the net current driven by unit EC power. The dimensionless current drive efficiency of OKCD increases with increasing electron beta βe in a medium range. The results further confirm that OKCD can be a valuable alternative localized current drive method to replace ECCD in large inverse aspect ratio tokamaks or in the radial position where the local inverse aspect ratio is large enough.