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The role of serum and glucocorticoid-induced kinase 1 (SGK1) pathway in the connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) expression was investigated in cultured human mesangial cells (HMCs) under high glucose. By using RT-PCR and Western blot, the effect of SGK1 on the CTGF expression in HMCs under high glucose was examined. Overexpression of active SGK1 in HMCs transfected with pIRES2-EGFP-S422D hSGK1 (SD) could increase the expression of phosphorylated SGK1 and CTGF as compared with HMCs groups transfected with pIRES2-EGFP (FP) under high glucose or normal glucose. Overexpression of inactive SGK1 in HMCs transfected with pIRES2-EGFP-K127N hSGK1 (KN) could decrease phosphorylated SGK1 and CTGF expression as compared with HMCs groups transfected with FP under high glucose. In conclusion, these results suggest that high glucose-induced CTGF expression is mediated through the active SGK1 in HMCs.

Separation control in compressor cascade is very significant for modern high efficiency compressor. This paper introduces a separation control approach using self-supplied jet in a highly loaded cascade. A novel arc slot is created into the cascade at the full span range, which connects the flow fields between the pressure and suction side. Because of the pressure difference, the slot enables to induce the jet flow into the suction side separation. Experiments are conducted to evaluate the separation control effects and preliminarily study the mechanism. The results show that the slot cascade acquires more ordered outflow by reducing the suction side separation and suppressing the complex vortices. Due to the great reduction of the separation, the total loss significantly decreases by 21.9% and the flow turning angle increases by 2.1 in average. According to the improvements of the cascade performance, the stable operating margin of the highly loaded cascade is greatly improved at least 3 in terms of the incidence angle.

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