Geometrical error due to twist springback is one of major defects found in the near net or net shape part. It becomes more critical for complex part such as an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) propeller blade. In this study, twist springback was quantified by comparing the blade and the die profiles obtained from commercial optical technique namely Alicona system. The results show a differen...

Motivated by diverse phenomena in cellular biophysics, including bacterial flagellar motion and DNA transcription and replication, we study the overdamped nonlinear dynamics of a rotationally forced filament with twist and bend elasticity. Competition between twist injection, twist diffusion, and writhing instabilities is described by a novel pair of coupled PDEs for twist and bend evolution. A...

TWIST, a helix-loop-helix transcription factor, is highly expressed in many types of human cancer. We have previously found that TWIST confers prostate cancer cells with an enhanced metastatic potential through promoting epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and a high TWIST expression in human prostate cancer is associated with an increased metastatic potential. The predilection of prostate ...

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is associated with the metastasis and poor prognosis of cervical cancer. However, the underlying mechanisms are poorly defined. In the present study, we investigated whether Twist plays a direct role in human cervical cancer using immunohistochemical and western blot analyses. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that Twist is highly expressed in cervica...

Metastasis, the cardinal feature of malignant tumors, is an important clinical variable in patient prognosis. To understand the basis for metastasis, we systematically selected for highly invasive cells from breast cancer cell lines, MCF7 and MDA-MB-453, with moderate to low invasive ability using Boyden chamber invasion assay. The four-cycle selected invasive lines, named MCF7-I4 and MDA-MB-45...

Twist, a master regulator of embryonic morphogenesis, induces functions that are also required for tumor invasion and metastasis. Because thrombin contributes to the malignant phenotype by up-regulating tumor metastasis, we examined its effect on Twist in five different tumor cell lines and two different endothelial cell lines. Thrombin up-regulated Twist mRNA and protein in all seven cell line...

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), an EBV-associated malignancy, is highly metastatic compared with other head and neck tumors, perhaps because of its viral link. Here, we show that the principal EBV oncoprotein, latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1), induces epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) via Twist, a master transcriptional regulator in embryogenesis and newly implicated in metastasis, which,...

The antiapoptotic protein Bcl-2 plays important roles in Ca(2+) signaling by influencing inositol triphosphate receptors and regulating Ca(2+)-induced Ca(2+) release. Here we investigated whether Bcl-2 affects Ca(2+) extrusion in pancreatic acinar cells. We specifically blocked the Ca(2+) pumps in the endoplasmic reticulum and assessed the rate at which the cells reduced an elevated cytosolic C...

Spine Ca 2 triggers the induction of synaptic plasticity and other adaptive neuronal responses. The amplitude and time course of Ca 2 signals specify the activation of the signaling pathways that trigger different forms of plasticity such as long-term potentiation and depression. The shapes of Ca 2 signals are determined by the dynamics of Ca 2 sources, Ca 2 buffers, and Ca 2 extrusion mechanis...

In-situ TiB whisker-reinforced Ti-6Al-4V (TC4) titanium matrix composites (TiBw/TC4) with quasi-continuous networks were successfully fabricated by vacuum hot-pressing sintering. The effects of the hot-hydrostatic canned extrusion on stock utilization, microstructure and mechanical properties of the TiBw/TC4 composites were investigated. It was satisfactory that the utilization of composites co...