Previous studies suggest that the thrombospondin-1/transforming growth factor-β1 (TSP-1/TGF-β1) pathway may be critical in synaptogenesis during development, and that the purinergic P2 receptor family could regulate synaptogenesis by modulating TSP-1 signaling. However, it is unclear whether this pathway plays a role in synaptogenesis during epileptic progression. This study was designed to investigate this question by analyzing the dynamic changes and effects of TSP-1 levels on the density of synaptic markers related to epileptic seizure activity. In addition, we evaluated whether P2-type receptors could regulate these effects. We generated a rat seizure model via amygdala kindling, and inhibited TSP-1 activity using siRNA interference and pharmacological inhibition. We treated the rats with antagonists of P2 or P2Y receptors, PPADS or Reactive Blue 2. Following this, we quantified TSP-1 and TGF-β1 immunoreactivity, the density of synaptic markers, and seizure activity. There were significantly more synapses/excitatory synapses in several brain regions, such as the hippocampus, which were associated with progressing epileptic discharges after kindling. These were associated with increased TSP-1 and TGF-β1 immunoreactivity. Genetic or pharmacologic inhibition of TSP-1 significantly reduced the density of synaptic/excitatory synaptic markers and inhibited the generalization of focal epilepsy. The administration of PPADS or Reactive Blue 2 attenuated the increase in TSP-1 immunoreactivity and the density of synaptic markers following kindling, and abolished most epileptic seizure activity. Taken together, our results indicate that the TSP-1/TGF-β1 pathway and its regulation by P2, particularly P2Y-type receptors, may be a critical promoter of synaptogenesis during the progression of epilepsy. Therefore, components of this pathway may be targets for novel anti-epileptic drug development.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) involves many temporal issues. It is necessary to make a clear distinction between long-term impacts and short-term impacts, especially for those structures with long service life, such as buildings. With their long service life of 50 years, a great deal of maintenance and repairs could be conducted, causing a respective environmental impact. In this paper we explored a monetization method to convert the life cycle environmental impact into a life cycle environmental cost to address the temporal issues involved in LCA by discounting. This method can facilitate decision-making when tradeoffs between current and future environmental impacts exist. Moreover, this method can be used as an effective supplement to life cycle cost and provide decision support for making trade-off between cost and environmental impact. Finally, a building located in Xiamen City, China was selected as a case study and analyzed by the proposal LCA method. The results indicated that carbon cost in the operational stage is the maximum, building material production and transportation stages are ranked second, and the amount in the demolition stage is negligible, compared with the other three stages. Additionally, with the increase of the discount rate, the carbon cost in different life cycle stages will decrease, the percentage of the carbon cost in the operational stage will gradually decrease, but the percentage of the carbon cost in building material production and transportation stages will gradually increase.

Corrosion of reinforcing steel due to chloride attack is the main cause of deterioration of reinforced-concrete (RC) structures in a chloride environment. Chloride diffusion in concrete is time-varying and affected by many factors. It is necessary for service life prediction of RC structures to make clear how chloride diffusion coefficients change with time. In addition, the test environment has an obvious effect on the concrete's diffusivity, especially on the chloride diffusion coefficient and the age factor. Therefore, it is advisable to conduct similarity analysis of chloride ingress into concrete between an artificial simulated environment and a field marine environment. Based on the existing field exposure test, an accelerated simulated test with the same concrete mixture proportions as the exposure test under a tidal environment were designed in this paper. The free chloride concentrations in concrete with different exposure times and diffusion coefficients of concrete were obtained, and the relationship between the age factor and water/cement ratio was analysed. Finally, the similarity of the time-dependent characteristic of chloride ions in concrete between the accelerated simulation and field exposure test was investigated.

A long-term exposure test of reinforced concrete (RC) beams with different flexural loads in a tidal environment has been conducted by taking the influence of time-dependent chloride diffusivity into consideration. According to the calculated apparent chloride diffusion coefficients, a chloride transport model under the coupling stresses at different depths and chloride action was established. Results indicated that the influence of flexural loads on free chloride concentrations and apparent chloride diffusion coefficients was obvious in tensile concrete zones. However, it was not a simple inhibition in compressive concrete zones. When the flexural load is less than 30% of the ultimate bearing capacity ($F_{\max }$ ), its effect on apparent chloride diffusion coefficients in concrete is slight. However, when 45%–60% $F_{\max }$ is exerted, a critical compressive stress can be detected. After exceeding the critical compressive stress, the chloride transport in concrete will be accelerated. Moreover, when the flexural load reaches 60% $F_{\max }$ , the critical compressive stress of accelerating chloride transport, which is 5.848 MPa, that is, 20% of the cubic compressive strength ($f_{\mathrm{cu}}$ ), appears.