Browsing by Author "Wang, Xu"

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    Assessment of Energy-Saving Practices of the Hospitality Industry in Macau
    Wang, Xu; Wu, NaiQi; Qiao, Yan; Song, QingBin (MDPI AG, 2018)
    Macau is building a world tourism and leisure center. In the context of flourishing hospitality development, energy issues have attracted more and more attention in recent years. On the basis of the field survey of 28 hotels, an evaluation index system is built to assess the status of energy-saving and environmental protection practices in the hospitality industry in Macau. This system is built by selecting some credits from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and adding several new indices according to the social and economic characteristics of Macau. The results show that the hotels have made significant efforts to improve the energy efficiency in recent years. A total of 71.4% of the hotels have formulated and implemented the energy-saving and environmental protection programs. However, there is an apparent gap in energy and environmental performance between different star-level hotels. The higher is the star-level of a hotel, the higher enthusiasm on energy-saving a hotel has, e.g., 63.6% of the 5-star hotels carried out the carbon auditing and energy management measures, but there is no 2-star hotel that adopted them. The energy-saving performance can be great improved if more efforts are made in the future, especially for the 2-star hotels. Finally, we put forward some suggestions for how to bridge this gap and present a possible roadmap for the further improvement of energy efficiency of the hotel industry in Macau. The results from this work are useful to help the government and hotel managers to take actions for improving the energy utilization and efficiency of the hospitality industry in Macau.
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    Mitofusin 2 regulates neutrophil adhesive migration and the actin cytoskeleton
    Zhou, Wenqing; Hsu, Alan Y.; Wang, Yueyang; Syahirah, Ramizah; Wang, Tianqi; Jeffries, Jacob; Wang, Xu; Mohammad, Haroon; Seleem, Mohamed N.; Umulis, David; Deng, Qing (2020-09)
    Neutrophils rely on glycolysis for energy production. How mitochondria regulate neutrophil function is not fully understood. Here, we report that mitochondrial outer membrane protein Mitofusin 2 (MFN2) regulates neutrophilhomeostasis andchemotaxis in vivo. Mfn2-deficientneutrophils are released from the hematopoietic tissue, trapped in the vasculature in zebrafish embryos, and not capable of chemotaxis. Consistent with this, human neutrophil-like cells that are deficient for MFN2 fail to arrest on activated endothelium under sheer stress or perform chemotaxis on 2D surfaces. Deletion of MFN2 results in a significant reduction of neutrophil infiltration to the inflamed peritoneal cavity in mice. Mechanistically, MFN2-deficient neutrophil-like cells display disrupted mitochondria-ER interaction, heightened intracellular Ca2+ levels and elevated Rac activation after chemokine stimulation. Restoring a mitochondria-ER tether rescues the abnormal Ca2+ levels, Rac hyperactivation and chemotaxis defect resulting from MFN2 depletion. Finally, inhibition of Rac activation restores chemotaxis in MFN2-deficient neutrophils. Taken together, we have identified that MFN2 regulates neutrophil migration via maintaining the mitochondria-ER interaction to suppress Rac activation, and uncovered a previously unrecognized role of MFN2 in regulating cell migration and the actin cytoskeleton. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first authors of the paper.
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    Urban Advisor
    Luersen, Chris; Paes, Mark; Gurijala, Srija; Barnett, Steven; Wang, Xu (2021-12-08)
    Our capstone project, entitled “Urban Advisor”, is a data-driven web-based decision support system targeted towards individuals who are weighing options to relocate to a new area. The application features an intake process that allows users to input preferences regarding their income, values, and lifestyle choices. From this, Urban Advisor will return an output of how up to three selected metropolitan areas compare against tailored quantitative metrics specific to the user’s input, and displays graphical data visualizations to assist in a user’s analysis of alternative locations.