NiTi-Cu Bimetallic Structure Fabrication through Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing

This study endeavors to comprehensively explore and elucidate the seamless integration of NiTi shape memory alloys (SMAs) into multifaceted applications through the utilization of novel joining techniques. The primary focus lies in the utilization of wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) to deposit Nitinol (NiTi) onto Copper (Cu), thereby introducing a transformative approach for their integration into electro-mechanical systems and beyond. Through a detailed examination of the NiTi/Cu bimetallic junction, using advanced analytical techniques including SEM, XRD, and DSC analyses, this research aims to unravel the intricate complexities inherent within the interface. The SEM images and X-ray patterns obtained reveal a complex and nuanced interface characterized by a broad mixed zone comprising various constituents, including Ti(Ni,Cu)2, pure Cu, Ti2(Ni,Cu)3 precipitates, and Ni-rich NiTi precipitates. The DSC results, showcasing low-intensity broad peaks during thermal cycling, underscore the inherent challenges in demonstrating functional properties within the NiTi/Cu system. Recognizing the critical importance of an enhanced martensitic transformation, this study delves into the effects of heat treatment. Calorimetric curves post-annealing at 500 °C exhibit distinct transformation peaks, shedding light on the intricate influence of NiTi layer distribution within the junction. The optimal heat treatment parameters for NiTi/Cu junction restoration are meticulously explored and determined at 500 °C for a duration of 12 h. Furthermore, the study offers valuable insights into optimizing NiTi-Cu joints, with micro-hardness values reaching 485 HV and compressive strength scaling up to 650 MPa. These significant findings not only hold promise for diverse applications across various industries but also pave the way for further research directions and explorations into the realm of SMA integration and advanced joining methodologies.

Mechanical Properties, Microstructure, and Actuation Behavior of Wire Arc Additive Manufactured Nitinol: Titanium Bimetallic Structures

Nitinol (NiTi) is well known for its corrosion resistance, shape memory effect, superelasticity, and biocompatibility, whereas Titanium (Ti) is well known for its high specific strength, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility. The bimetallic joint of NiTi and Ti is required for applications that require tailored properties at different locations within the same component, as well as to increase design flexibility while reducing material costs. However, because of the formation of brittle intermetallic phases, connecting NiTi and Ti is difficult. In the present study, a systematic experimental investigation is carried out to develop NiTi-Ti bimetallic joint using wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) for the first time and to evaluate its microstructure, mechanical properties, martensitic transformation, and actuation behavior in the as-built condition. The defect-free joint is obtained through WAAM and microstructural studies indicate the formation of intermetallics at the NiTi-Ti interface leading to higher microhardness values (600 HV). Shape recovery behavior and phase transformation temperature were also enhanced in comparison to NiTi. An improved actuation and bending angle recovery is observed in comparison with NiTi. The present study lays the way for the use of WAAM in the construction of NiTi and Ti bimetallic structures for engineering and medicinal applications.

The smashHitCore Ontology for GDPR-Compliant Sensor Data Sharing in Smart Cities

The adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has resulted in a significant shift in how the data of European Union citizens is handled. A variety of data sharing challenges in scenarios such as smart cities have arisen, especially when attempting to semantically represent GDPR legal bases, such as consent, contracts and the data types and specific sources related to them. Most of the existing ontologies that model GDPR focus mainly on consent. In order to represent other GDPR bases, such as contracts, multiple ontologies need to be simultaneously reused and combined, which can result in inconsistent and conflicting knowledge representation. To address this challenge, we present the smashHitCore ontology. smashHitCore provides a unified and coherent model for both consent and contracts, as well as the sensor data and data processing associated with them. The ontology was developed in response to real-world sensor data sharing use cases in the insurance and smart city domains. The ontology has been successfully utilised to enable GDPR-complaint data sharing in a connected car for insurance use cases and in a city feedback system as part of a smart city use case.

Effect of Methyl Jasmonate on the Growth and Biosynthesis of C13- and C14-Hydroxylated Taxoids in the Cell Culture of Yew (Taxus wallichiana Zucc.) of Different Ages

The effects of methyl jasmonate (MeJ) on growth and taxoid formation in the cell culture of Taxus wallichiana were investigated to elucidate the specifics of phytohormone action in dedifferentiated plant cells in vitro. The characteristics of the same suspension cell culture were compared in 2017 (the «young» culture) and in 2022 (the «old» culture)-1.5 or 6 years after culture induction, respectively. MeJ (100 µM) is added to the cell suspension at the end of the exponential growth phase. Cell culture demonstrated good growth (dry weight accumulation 10-18 g/L, specific growth rate µ = 0.15-0.35 day^-1) regardless of its «age», cultivation system, and MeJ addition. UPLC-ESI-MS analysis revealed the presence of C14-hydroxylated taxoids (yunnanxane, taxuyunnanine C, sinenxane C, and sinenxane B) in the cell biomass. The content of C14-OH taxoids increased from 0.2-1.6 mg/gDW in «young» culture to 0.6-10.1 mg/gDW in «old» culture. Yunnanxane was the main compound in «young» culture, while sinenxane C predominated in «old» culture. Without elicitation, small amounts of C13-OH taxoids (<0.05 mg/gDW) were found only in «young» cultures. MeJ addition to «young» culture had no effect on the content of C14-OH taxoids but caused a 10-fold increase in C13-OH taxoid production (up to 0.12-0.19 mg/gDW, comparable to the bark of yew trees). By contrast, MeJ added to «old» culture was not beneficial for the production of C13-OH taxoids but notably increased the content of C14-OH taxoids (1.5-2.0 times in flasks and 5-8 times in bioreactors). These findings suggest that hormonal signaling in dedifferentiated yew cells grown in vitro is different from that in plants and can be affected by the culture's age. This might be a result of the high level of culture heterogeneity and constant auto-selection for intensive proliferation, which leads to the predominant formation of C14-OH taxoids versus C13-OH taxoids and a modified cell response to exogenous MeJ treatment.

Tumor mutation burden in colorectal cancers with POLE exonuclease and non-exonuclease domain variants

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Background: Driver mutations in the exonuclease domain (ExoD) of DNA polymerase epsilon ( POLE) have been associated with high tumor mutation burden (TMB). High TMB is an important marker for immunotherapy, and thus understanding the mechanisms that lead to high TMB is an area of active investigation. Many tumors with POLE ExoD driver mutations have additional POLE variants of uncertain significance (VUS). Some of these VUS lie within the ExoD, while most lie outside the ExoD. This study investigates the role of such POLE VUS on TMB and POLE functionality of ExoD-mutated tumors. Methods: Retrospective colorectal cancer (CRC) genomic profiles from Caris Life Sciences (n=1,870) were separated into groups based on the presence of POLE ExoD mutations and the TMB status. Groups were defined as: ‘TMB-high (TMB-H) POLE ExoD driver without additional POLE VUS’, ‘TMB-H POLE ExoD driver plus POLE VUS’, and ‘TMB-low (TMB-L) POLE variant(s) without ExoD driver’. An additional group with ‘TMB-H POLE variant(s) without ExoD driver’ was identified as potentially novel drivers for future study. The microsatellite instability status (MSI or MSS) was also considered. The level of TMB, the presence of polymerase proofreading-associated mutational signatures and POLE stability/functionality analyzed using AlphaFold2 models and Rosetta Molecular Modeling Suite, were evaluated. Results: POLE variants were identified in 4.9% of the CRCs studied (92/1870). In all, 52.2% (48/92) of those tumors were TMB-H, and 38.0% (35/92) of them contained POLE ExoD drivers. The highest median TMB (mTMB) was found in the ‘TMB-H POLE ExoD driver plus POLE VUS’ group, and this was significantly different from the ‘TMB-H POLE ExoD driver without additional POLE VUS’ and the ‘TMB-L POLE variant without ExoD driver’ group, even when MSI tumors were excluded (p<0.001, Mann-Whitney). These results were validated in TCGA CRC tumors and in other tumor types. Within the ‘TMB-H POLE ExoD driver plus POLE VUS’ group, the mTMB increased with the number of accumulated POLE VUS (p<0.001, Mann Whitney). The nucleotide sequence context of 77.8% of the POLE VUS matched mutational spectra associated with POLE ExoD defects, suggesting that most of the POLE VUS are secondary to the ExoD driver mutation. Finally, the majority of POLE VUS within ‘TMB-H POLE ExoD driver plus POLE VUS’ group have a predicted effect on POLE stability and/or function. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the presence of secondary POLE non-driver variants increase TMB in POLE ExoD-mutated tumors. Although still preliminary, these data could impact prognosis and response to immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients. [Table: see text]

LaSER: Language-specific event recommendation

While societal events often impact people worldwide, a significant fraction of events has a local focus that primarily affects specific language communities. Examples include national elections, the development of the Coronavirus pandemic in different countries, and local film festivals such as the César Awards in France and the Moscow International Film Festival in Russia. However, existing entity recommendation approaches do not sufficiently address the language context of recommendation. This article introduces the novel task of language-specific event recommendation, which aims to recommend events relevant to the user query in the language-specific context. This task can support essential information retrieval activities, including web navigation and exploratory search, considering the language context of user information needs. We propose LaSER, a novel approach toward language-specific event recommendation. LaSER blends the language-specific latent representations (embeddings) of entities and events and spatio-temporal event features in a learning to rank model. This model is trained on publicly available Wikipedia Clickstream data. The results of our user study demonstrate that LaSER outperforms state-of-the-art recommendation baselines by up to 33 percentage points in MAP@5 concerning the language-specific relevance of recommended events.

Editorial

This editorial summarizes the content of the Special Issue on Quality Assessment of Knowledge Graphs of the Journal of Data and Information Quality (JDIQ). We dedicate this special issue to the memory of our colleague and friend Amrapali Zaveri.

Correlation of peripheral blood markers of DNA damage and immune response with chemoradiation response in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer

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Background: Approximately 60% of newly diagnosed rectal cancers are locally advanced. The standard of care for these malignancies is neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy (nCRT) followed by surgery. Unfortunately, only approximately 20% of patients experience a complete response, but all are at risk for toxicity. There are no biomarkers to predict who will derive the greatest benefit from CRT. We hypothesized that inherent DNA damage recognition and repair (DNA-DRR) capacity contributes to CRT response in rectal cancer. Methods: We used primary peripheral blood lymphocytes (pPBLs) from rectal cancer patients to study differences in DNA-DRR capacity. The blood samples used were either drawn prior to nCRT or post a standard course of ~5.5 weeks of nCRT. We used immunofluorescence and Luminex-based multianalyte approaches to study DNA-DRR capacity in pPBLs. To determine if the tested biomarkers correlated with CRT response, we segregated patients by neoadjuvant rectal (NAR) score, a validated surrogate endpoint in rectal cancer. Results: Using pPBLs, we found that a subset of patients had elevated phosphorylated histone H2AX (γ-H2AX) foci, a well-described marker of DNA double strand breaks. We found that poor responders (PoR; NAR score > 14; n = 21) had lower γ-H2AX foci then complete responders (CR; NAR score < 1; n = 21) (P < 0.0001, Kruskal-Wallis test). We also did not observe any significant differences in γ-H2AX foci from pPBLs drawn prior to CRT versus post nCRT (p = 0.519, n = 11, Wilcoxon rank sum test). Next, by multianalyte testing, we found that a combined score derived from six DNA-DRR markers (ATR, MDM2, phosphorylated forms of H2AX (γ), p53, Chk1, Chk2) strongly correlated with CR (p < 0.001). Finally, by multianalyte testing, we also detected a serum signature of inflammatory markers that significantly correlated with CRT response (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Our data suggest that rectal cancer patients who differ in their response to CRT differ in global, inherent DNA-DRR capacity, suggesting that DNA-DRR capacity in pre-treatment pPBLs can form the basis of a predictive biomarker. This predictive capacity may reflect underlying epigenetic or genetic differences, or inflammatory state. Validation and further development of this novel assay is warranted, as it has the capacity to substantially improve patient selection in an era with growing treatment options for these patients.

[CONE BEAM COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY IN DIAGNOSTICS OF ODONTOGENIC MAXILLARY SINUSITIS (CASE REPORTS)]

Diagnostic studies performed by cone beam computed tomography Morita 3D made possible to obtain high resolution images of hard tissues of upper jawbone and maxillary sinus, to detect bony tissue defects, such as odontogenic cysts, cystogranulomas and granulomas. High-resolution and three dimensional tomographic image reconstructions allowed for optimal and prompt determination of the scope of surgical treatment and planning of effective conservative treatment regimen. Interactive diagnostics helped to estimate cosmetic and functional results of surgical treatment, to prevent the occurrence of surgical complications, and to evaluate the efficacy of conservative treatment. The obtained data contributed to determination of particular applications of cone beam computed tomography in the diagnosis of odontogenic maxillary sinusitis, detection of specific defects with cone beam tomography as the most informative method of diagnosis; as well as to determination of weak and strong sides, and helped to offer mechanisms of x-ray diagnostics to dental surgeons and ENT specialists.