Stroke is the third leading cause of death in industrialized countries and the most important cause of acquired adult disability. Many evidences suggest that inflammation accounts for the progression of cerebral ischemic injury. Arctigenin, a phenylpropanoid dibenzylbutyrolactone lignin isolated from certain plants, has shown anti-inflammatory activity against diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. In this study, we tested whether arctigenin can protect middle cerebral artery occluded (MCAO) rats. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were pretreated with arctigenin or vehicle for 7 d before being subjected to transient occlusion of middle cerebral artery and reperfusion. Rats were evaluated at 24 h after MCAO for neurological deficit scoring. Furthermore, the mechanism of the anti-inflammatory effect of arctigenin was investigated with a focus on inflammatory cells, proinflammatory cytokines, and transcriptional factors. Arctigenin significantly reduced cerebral infarction and improved neurological outcome. Arctigenin suppressed the activation of microglia and decreased the expression of interleukin (IL)-1β and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α. These results revealed that arctigenin has a promising therapeutic effect in ischemic stroke treatment through an antiinflammatory mechanism.

In this research, the application of heat pipes in the air handler dedicated to decoupling dehumidification from cooling to reduce energy consumption was simulated and investigated by simulations and experimental studies. The cooling load profiles and heat pipes with effectiveness of 0.45 and 0.6, respectively, were evaluated in achieving the desired space conditions and calculated hour by hour. The results demonstrated that for all examined cases, a heat pipe heat exchanger (HPHX) can be used to save over 80% of the energy during the hours of operation of air conditioning. The overall energy reduction rate was from 3.2% to 4.5% under air conditioning system conditions. It was found that the energy saving potential of a laboratory was higher than for other kinds of buildings. Therefore, the dedicated ventilation system combined with heat recovery technology can be efficiently applied to buildings, especially for laboratories in subtropical areas.

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Artificial lung also called as oxygenator which performs a function of exchanging O2 and removing CO2 from blood. Due to its good performance at the exchange area, oxygenation, etc, hollow fiber membranes have become the main research direction of artificial lung. Polypropylene (pp) hollow fiber membranes made by the melt-spinning and cold-stretching methods (MSCS) in this study. Through the research on the membrane manufacture process and technology optimization to prepare suitable membrane for artificially lung. The performance of membrane was affected by the melt-draw ratio and spinning temperature, annealing temperature, and the proportional relations of cold stretch with hot stretch. The results of the study show that improve melt-draw ratio, select the appropriate annealing conditions and the reasonable ratio of hot stretch with cold stretch can effectively increase the air flux of pp hollow fiber membrane.

A novel method was proposed for the moving load identi¯cation of bridges based on the in°uence line theory and distributed optical¯ber sensing technique. The method of load and vehicle speed identi¯cation was¯rstly theoretically studied, and then numerical simulation was also performed to study its accuracy and robustness. The numerical results showed that this method was characterized by high accuracy and excellent resistance to noise. Finally, the load identi¯cation of an actual continuous pre-stressed concrete beam bridge was carried out with the proposed method. The bridge consists of four pre-stressed box beams. At the same time, a weigh-in-motion system was also installed about 200 m in front of the bridge to measure the speed and moving loads with a purpose of comparing the load identi¯cation of the proposed method. Long gaugē ber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors with a gauge length of 1.0 m were adhered to the bottom of the beams. The individual loaded vehicles and the corresponding structure response were mainly monitored as standard samples, and the speed and weight of the sample vehicles were monitored and identi¯ed with the proposed method. The results revealed that the distributed long gauge FBG sensors were capable of sensing the structure response precisely and identifying the tra±c load. On the basis of the design information and ambient vibration testing results, a re¯ned model was established and the response under unit moving load was acquired for load identi¯cation. It was also shown that the sensors in di®erent positions can achieve accurate vehicle speed and weight, the relative error of which are within 10% and 15%, respectively.