Applied Mechanics and Materials Vol. 421

Abstract: Many mitotic proteins are assembled into protein super complexes in three regions - midbody, centrosome and kinetochore (MCK) - with distinctive roles in modulating the mitosis process. However, more than 16% of the mitotic proteins are in multiple regions. Advance identification of mitotic proteins will be helpful to realize the molecular regulatory mechanisms of this organelle. Few ensemble-classifier methods can solve this problem but these methods often fuse various complementary features. In which, Gene ontology (GO) terms play an important role but the GO-term search space is massive and sparse. This motives this work to present an easily implemented method, namely mMck-GO, by identifying a small number of GO terms with support vector machine (SVM) and k-nearest neighbor (KNN) in predicting single-and multiple-region MCK proteins. The mMck-GO method using a simple grouping scheme based on a SVM classifier assembles the GO terms into several groups according to their numbers of annotated proteins in the training dataset, and then measures which top-grouped GO terms performs the best. A new MCK protein dataset containing 701 (611 single-and 90 multiple-region) is established in this work. None of the MCK proteins has a 25% pair-wise sequence identity with any other proteins in the same region. When performing on this dataset, we find that the GO term with the maximum annotation number annotates 49.2% of the training protein sequences; contrarily, 56.5% of the GO terms annotate single one protein sequence. This shows the sparse character of GO terms and the effectiveness of top-grouped GO terms in distinguishing MCK proteins. Accordingly, a small group of top 134 GO terms is identified and mMck-GO fuses the GO terms with amino acid composition (AAC) as input features to yield and independent-testing accuracies of 71.66% and 69.18%, respectively. Top 30 GO terms contain eight, eight, and 14 GO terms belonging to molecular function, biological process and cellular component branches, respectively. The 14 GO terms in cellular-component ontology in addition to centrosome and kinetochore are reverent to subcellular compartments, microtubule, membrane, and spindle, where GO:0005737 (cytoplasm) is ranked first. The eight GO terms enabling molecular functions comprise GO:0005515 (protein binding), GO:0000166 (nucleotide binding), and GO:0005524 (ATP binding). Most of the eight GO terms in biological-process ontology are reverent to cell cycle, cell division and mitosis but two GO terms, GO:0045449 and GO:0045449, are reverent to regulation of transcription and transport processes, which helps us to clarify the molecular regulatory mechanisms of this organelle. The top-grouped GO terms can be as an indispensable feature set when concerning other feature types to solve multiple-class problems in the investigation of biological functions.

Abstract: According to the features of low porosity and low permeability fracture as well as small scale of channel development, frequent sedimentary facies changes of planar sandstone, poor connectivity, large variation of sequence thickness and great development difficulties for oil layer in Fuyang Oilfield. In this paper, on the basis of fully considered of fracture features, built a more accurate 3-D geological model. And on the basis of the history matching, determined the formation pressure maintenance level under different injection-production ratio and rational water-flooding timing by the simulation of the different programs in the process advanced water injection development. The results show that: the reasonable injection-production ratio of Fuyang oil layer is 1.4, and the rational water-flooding timing is three months after advanced water injection. This provides theoretical guidance for the large-scale development of Fuyang oil layer, and also provides the technical basis for the developing of the other low permeability fractured oil field by advanced water injection.

Abstract: This research investigated the tensile and water absorption properties of kenaf fibre mat/polyester composites. Treatment using acetylation method has been introduced to improve the properties of product manufactured. The effects of acetylation treatment with three variations of time that were 1, 4 and 24 hours on the kenaf fibre mats were investigated. The MOE of the tensile of treated fibre mat/polyester composite for 1 hour was the highest with value 4589.61 MPa. The tensile strength of treated fibre mat/polyester composite for 4 hours was the highest with value 0.6213 MPa. For water absorption test, the results showed that fibre mat/polyester composite with treatment duration for 1 hour had the lowest water absorption that was 1.23% compared with treatment duration for 4 hours and 24 hours. For overall it can be concluded that the treatment duration of 1 hour was recommended for acetylation method when compared with 4 hours and 24 hours duration treatments. Using acetylation treatment on the kenaf fibre mat/polyester composites was showed improvement on composite and was recommended in short duration of treatment.

Abstract: The mechanical properties of natural fibre polyester composite was influenced by bonding efficiency between matrix and polyester matrix. This efficiency was related with the natural fibre and matrix characteristics. The natural fibre has a hydrophilic properties where else the polyester has a hydrophobic properties. The existent of organic and inorganic substances on the surface of natural fibre also contribute to the bonding strength. The modification using chemical treatment such as acetylation can overcome this problem. The chemical reaction participates in a long period cannot be completed in a short duration. The addition of some catalyst as an agent to speed up the reaction make the chemical reaction totally completed in short duration. In this study kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus) polyester composite were manufactured and treated with acetic anhydride solution in 3 different percentages of catalyst that were 0.013%, 0.026% and 0.039% . In order to speed up the process modification in acetic anhydride solution catalyst (FeCl₃) was added. Catalyst acts as a medium to complete reaction in limited time.It was found that,mechanical properties of polyester composite with addition of catalyst showed an increased trend and the highest was polyester composite with addition 0.036% of catalyst.

Abstract: To investigate the occurrence and species diversity of mycobacteria in different animals, lymphonodi mandibulares and lymphonodi mesenterici samples were collected from slaughter house of swine and cattle. Mycobacteria in each lymphonodi sample were isolated by decontamination using cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) and cultivation on Lowenstein-Jensen medium and Middlebrook 7H9 agar, and then identified by nacterial smear, sequencing of 16SrDNA and the 65-kDa heat-shock protein gene (hsp65 gene). The most frequently isolated species was Mycobacterium fortuitum. The result demonstrated that animals are an important environmental source of mycobacteria and the combined application of 16SrDNA and hsp65 sequencing was more reliable to accurately identify mycobacteria present in animals.

Abstract: Adding a low content of soft metals (such as Ag, Au, Cu, etc) in TiN-based films can decrease the friction coefficient of the nitride films. To improve the mechanical properties of the TiAlSiN film, 4.5 at.% Ag was added in the TiAlSiN film. TiAlSiN and TiAlSiN/Ag films were deposited on AISI304 steel by magnetron sputtering using a Ti₅₀Al₄₀Si₁₀ target and a Ti₅₀Al₄₀Si₁₀ plus an Ag strip, respectively. The microstructure and mechanical properties of the films were investigated by SEM/EDS, XRD, a tribological machine and a microhardness tester. The results show that, with 4.5 at.% Ag addition, the surface morphology of the TiAlSiN film became rougher and its microhardness decreased from 1520±35 HV_0.01 to 1307±42 HV_0.01. The preferred orientation of (111) of the TiAlSiN film changed to randomly and the diffraction peaks became broader due to the Ag addition. The friction coefficient of the TiAlSiN-Ag film decreased compared with the TiAlSiN film, but it showed inferior wear resistance due to its lower microhardness. The effects of Ag addition on the microstructure and mechanical properties of TiAlSiN films were discussed.

Abstract: Based on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), ag85a and mpb70 Fusion gene of Mycobacterium bovis were ligated and cloned into pMD18-T, then recombinant plasmid pMD-85a-70 was constructed. pMD-85a-70 and pVAX1-BMS were digested by double enzymes HindIII and EcoRI, the purified ag85a-mpb70 was subcloned into pVAX1-BMS, then recombinant plasmid pVAX1-BMS-85a-70 was constructed and transient expressed in Marc145 cell. These results laid solid foundations for further studies on ag85a-mpb70.

Abstract: Lipid-binding proteinsjoin many important biological processes. Lipid-binding proteins are highly related to diseases, such as metabolic diseases, cancer and autoimmune diseases. The existed studies of predictinglipid-binding functions or predictinglipid-binding sites, but notidentify the lipid-binding proteins ornot lipid-binding proteins.This study purpose a systematic approach to identify a small set of physicochemical and biochemical properties in AAindex database to design support vector machine (SVM) based classifier for predicting and analyzing lipid-binding proteins. The merits of this study are three-fold: First, we establish a data set of lipid-binding proteins collected from SwissProt utilizing the gene ontology (GO) annotation terms. Secondly, utilize an efficient genetic algorithm based optimization method IBCGA to select an informative set of feature vectors of representing sequences from the viewpoint of machine learning. Thirdly, analyze the selected feature vectors to identify the related physicochemical properties which may affect the binding mechanism oflipid-binding proteins. In this study, to overcome the unbalanced dataset problem caused from the number of putative negative dataset (537,346) being almost 530 times to that of positive dataset (1,053), a dataset determining technique is proposed.Then the dataset is applied to make a high performance classifier. The prediction accuracy of independent test is 77.75% using 18 properties. The selected 18 properties may divide into 6 groupings:alpha and turn propensities, beta propensity, Composition, Hydrophobicity, Physicochemical properties and other properties.Hydrophobicity and alpha-helix are most relative to lipid-binding protein.

Abstract: Carbon nanotube (CNT) is one of the most attractive nanomaterials which may be used in many potential applications of nanotechnology due to its excellent mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. We demonstrated the fabrication of carbon nanotube at the surface of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membrane by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Acetylene was used as a hydrocarbon source and Fe as catalyst. CNT was synthesized at different temperature. The iron catalyst was confined in the holes of the AAO membrane. A variety of carbon structures such as nanotubes, helices, spiral, and hook-like curved shapes in the range of micrometer were synthesized. High graphitic multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) was found at 700-750°C temperature.

Abstract: well-aligned ZnO nanorod arrays (ZNRAs) grown on the ZnO seed layers coated p-silicon (p-Si) substrates in various times from 1.5 to 5 hr have been fabricated from aqueous solutions at low temperature. Morphologies, crystalline structure and optical transmission were investigated by a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. The results showed that ZNRAs grew vertically from the substrates, having uniform thickness and length distribution, the average diameters and length of ZnO nanorods increased with increasing growth time below 3 hr. The XRD results showed that ZnO nanorods were wurtzite-structured (hexagonal) ZnO.