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Dialogue systems and large language models (LLMs) have gained considerable attention. However, the direct utilization of LLMs as task-oriented dialogue (TOD) models has been found to underperform compared to smaller task-specific models. Nonetheless, it is crucial to acknowledge the significant potential of LLMs and explore improved approaches for leveraging their impressive abilities. Motivated by the goal of leveraging LLMs, we propose an alternative approach called User-Guided Response Optimization (UGRO) to combine it with a smaller TOD model. This approach uses LLM as annotation-free user simulator to assess dialogue responses, combining them with smaller fine-tuned end-to-end TOD models. By utilizing the satisfaction feedback generated by LLMs, UGRO further optimizes the supervised fine-tuned TOD model. Specifically, the TOD model takes the dialogue history as input and, with the assistance of the user simulator's feedback, generates high-satisfaction responses that meet the user's requirements. Through empirical experiments on two TOD benchmarks, we validate the effectiveness of our method. The results demonstrate that our approach outperforms previous state-of-the-art (SOTA) results., 5 Pages

Poetry generation is a typical and popular task in natural language generation. While prior works have shown success in controlling either semantic or metrical aspects of poetry generation, there are still challenges in addressing both perspectives simultaneously. In this paper, we employ the Diffusion model to generate poetry in Sonnet and SongCi in Chinese for the first time to tackle such challenges. Different from autoregressive generation, our PoetryDiffusion model, based on Diffusion model, generates the complete sentence or poetry by taking into account the whole sentence information, resulting in improved semantic expression. Additionally, we incorporate a novel metrical controller to manipulate and evaluate metrics (format and rhythm). The denoising process in PoetryDiffusion allows for gradual enhancement of semantics and flexible integration of the metrical controller. Experimental results on two datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms existing models in terms of semantic, metrical and overall performance., 7 Pages

Continual learning (CL) has attracted increasing attention in the recent past. It aims to mimic the human ability to learn new concepts without catastrophic forgetting. While existing CL methods accomplish this to some extent, they are still prone to semantic drift of the learned feature space. Foundation models, which are endowed with a robust feature representation, learned from very large datasets, provide an interesting substrate for the solution of the CL problem. Recent work has also shown that they can be adapted to specific tasks by prompt tuning techniques that leave the generality of the representation mostly unscathed. An open question is, however, how to learn both prompts that are task specific and prompts that are global, i.e. capture cross-task information. In this work, we propose the Prompt Of Prompts (POP) model, which addresses this goal by progressively learning a group of task-specified prompts and a group of global prompts, denoted as POP, to integrate information from the former. We show that a foundation model equipped with POP learning is able to outperform classic CL methods by a significant margin. Moreover, as prompt tuning only requires a small set of training samples, POP is able to perform CL in the few-shot setting, while still outperforming competing methods trained on the entire dataset.

BackgroundGlucosamine 6-phosphate N-acetyltransferase (GNPNAT1) is a crucial enzyme involving hexosamine biosynthesis pathway and is upregulated in breast cancer (BRCA). However, its biological function and mechanism on patients in BRCA have not been investigated.MethodsIn this study, the differential expression of GNPNAT1 was analyzed between BRCA tissues and normal breast tissues using the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, which was validated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, Western blot and immunohistochemistry. Then, the potential clinical value of GNPNAT1 in BRCA was investigated based on TCGA database. Functional enrichment analyses, including Gene Ontology, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, Gene Set Variation Analysis, were performed to explore the potential signaling pathways and biological functions involved in GNPNAT1 in BRCA. Tumor immune infiltration was analyzed using ESTIMATE, CIBERSORT and TISIDB database; and immune therapy response scores were assessed using TIDE. Finally, Western blot, Cell counting kit-8 and Transwell assay were used to determine the proliferation and invasion abilities of breast cancer cells with GNPNAT1 knockdown.ResultsGNPNAT1 was up-regulated in BRCA tissues compared with normal tissues which was subsequently verified in different cell lines and clinical tissue samples. Based on TCGA and GEO, the overexpression of GNPNAT1 in BRCA contributed to a significant decline in overall survive and disease specific survive. Functional enrichment analyses indicated that the enriched pathways in high GNPNAT1 expression group included citrate cycle, N-glycan biosynthesis, DNA repair, and basal transcription factors. Moreover, the overexpression of GNPNAT1 was negatively correlated with immunotherapy response and the levels of immune cell infiltration of CD8+ T cells, B cells, natural killer cells, dendritic cells and macrophages. Knockdown of GNPNAT1 impairs the proliferation and invasion abilities of breast cancer cells.ConclusionGNPNAT1 is a potential diagnostic, prognostic biomarker and novel target for intervention in BRCA.

Discrimination of semantic textual similarity refers to comparing the similarity between two or more entities (including words, short texts and documents) through certain strategies to obtain a specific quantitative similarity value. Traditional research put more experience into the similarity calculation of the original text content, using the matching degree or distance of characters or words as the yardstick to judge whether the text pairs are similar. However, there are still some problems to be solved in the following aspects: the key points of sentence meaning and word semantics, which play important role in the semantic expression of natural language, are not well integrated into the similarity discrimination, and the interactive features between texts are not fully utilized. To solve the above problems, this paper proposes a novel discrimination structure based on the Siamese Network model and the idea of text matching. In this structure, we introduce sentence meaning key information and word semantic information to realize the extraction of word interaction feature information, and then we realize the text vector representation by using Siamese BiLSTM. The experimental results showed that the accuracy of the proposed model is higher than that of the basic models. &nbsp

The problem of continual learning has attracted rising attention in recent years. However, few works have questioned the commonly used learning setup, based on a task curriculum of random class. This differs significantly from human continual learning, which is guided by taxonomic curricula. In this work, we propose the Taxonomic Class Incremental Learning (TCIL) problem. In TCIL, the task sequence is organized based on a taxonomic class tree. We unify existing approaches to CIL and taxonomic learning as parameter inheritance schemes and introduce a new such scheme for the TCIL learning. This enables the incremental transfer of knowledge from ancestor to descendant class of a class taxonomy through parameter inheritance. Experiments on CIFAR-100 and ImageNet-100 show the effectiveness of the proposed TCIL method, which outperforms existing SOTA methods by 2% in terms of final accuracy on CIFAR-100 and 3% on ImageNet-100.

The problem of class incremental learning (CIL) is considered. State-of-the-art approaches use a dynamic architecture based on network expansion (NE), in which a task expert is added per task. While effective from a computational standpoint, these methods lead to models that grow quickly with the number of tasks. A new NE method, dense network expansion (DNE), is proposed to achieve a better trade-off between accuracy and model complexity. This is accomplished by the introduction of dense connections between the intermediate layers of the task expert networks, that enable the transfer of knowledge from old to new tasks via feature sharing and reusing. This sharing is implemented with a cross-task attention mechanism, based on a new task attention block (TAB), that fuses information across tasks. Unlike traditional attention mechanisms, TAB operates at the level of the feature mixing and is decoupled with spatial attentions. This is shown more effective than a joint spatial-and-task attention for CIL. The proposed DNE approach can strictly maintain the feature space of old classes while growing the network and feature scale at a much slower rate than previous methods. In result, it outperforms the previous SOTA methods by a margin of 4\% in terms of accuracy, with similar or even smaller model scale., Accepted by CVPR2023

Active rotor control of helicopters is the future development direction, and active flap control (AFC) is one of the most promising technologies. However, the numerical simulation of an AFC rotor is challenging. It is necessary to consider the fidelity of the local flow details while dealing with complex shapes and motions. Therefore, few simulations of the flow field and analyses of the influencing parameters have been conducted. In particular, there is a lack of aerodynamic design criteria and recommendations for the AFC rotor. Thus, a new overset assembly algorithm, an arbitrary multilevel moving grid transformation algorithm, and a solver for the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations (URANS) are proposed to establish a suitable numerical method for AFC rotor simulation. The aerodynamic characteristics of the rotor and key influencing factors are systematically analyzed under different flow conditions and design and control parameters, and suggestions for the design of the AFC rotor are provided. The results show that the AFC significantly changes the load distribution of the rotor. The thrust loss of the rotor is approximately 1%, but the offset angle compensates for the loss. The control parameters show relatively consistent trends under different working conditions. The phase is the key control parameter, and the effect on the load is more pronounced when the control frequency is an integral multiple of the rotor’s natural load frequency. Increasing the chord length, span length, and deflection amplitude can also enhance the active control performance.

Dialogue systems have received increasing attention while automatically evaluating their performance remains challenging. User satisfaction estimation (USE) has been proposed as an alternative. It assumes that the performance of a dialogue system can be measured by user satisfaction and uses an estimator to simulate users. The effectiveness of USE depends heavily on the estimator. Existing estimators independently predict user satisfaction at each turn and ignore satisfaction dynamics across turns within a dialogue. In order to fully simulate users, it is crucial to take satisfaction dynamics into account. To fill this gap, we propose a new estimator ASAP (sAtisfaction eStimation via HAwkes Process) that treats user satisfaction across turns as an event sequence and employs a Hawkes process to effectively model the dynamics in this sequence. Experimental results on four benchmark dialogue datasets demonstrate that ASAP can substantially outperform state-of-the-art baseline estimators., Comment: To appear at ACL 2023

The task of empowering large language models (LLMs) to accurately express their confidence, referred to as confidence elicitation, is essential in ensuring reliable and trustworthy decision-making processes. Previous methods, which primarily rely on model logits, have become less suitable for LLMs and even infeasible with the rise of closed-source LLMs (e.g., commercialized LLM APIs). This leads to a growing need to explore the untapped area of \emph{non-logit-based} approaches to estimate the uncertainty of LLMs. Hence, in this study, we investigate approaches for confidence elicitation that do not require model fine-tuning or access to proprietary information. We introduce three categories of methods: verbalize-based, consistency-based, and their hybrid methods for benchmarking, and evaluate their performance across five types of datasets and four widely-used LLMs. Our analysis of these methods uncovers several key insights: 1) LLMs often exhibit a high degree of overconfidence when verbalizing their confidence; 2) Prompting strategies such as CoT, Top-K and Multi-step confidences improve calibration of verbalized confidence; 3) Consistency-based methods outperform the verbalized confidences in most cases, with particularly notable improvements on the arithmetic reasoning task; 4) Hybrid methods consistently deliver the best performance over their baselines, thereby emerging as a promising state-of-the-art approach; 5) Despite these advancements, all investigated methods continue to struggle with challenging tasks, such as those requiring professional knowledge, leaving significant scope for improvement of confidence elicitation., Comment: 11 Pages

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems are important technical means of mitigating NOx emissions for diesel engines. The major challenge of this technique is to improve the low-temperature act...

Until now, only the complete mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) of Pelecanus occidentalis and Pelecanus crispus have been sequenced. In order to explore the characteristics of mtDNA of the two Pelecanidae species and analyze their phylogenetic relationship, the two mtDNA were compared with Ciconia ciconia as reference. The mtDNA of the P. occidentalis and P. crispus were determined with the size of 17, 286 bp and 16, 131 bp, respectively. Both sequences contain 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, and two rRNA genes. Gene of P. occidentalis and P. crispus are in the same arrangement and show positive AT skew and negative GC skew. There are some differences in intervals and overlap regions between the two species. The phylogenetic analysis show that the P. occidentalis and P. crispus grouped one branch and the relationship of Pelecanidae birds, Ciconiiformes birds and Spheniscifomes birds is relative. The study provid more genetic information for P. occidentalis and P. crispus, which is beneficial to the protection of them.

Invasive alien plants not only decrease riparian vegetation diversity but also alter wetland ecosystem carbon processes, especially when they displace the original vegetation. Invasive Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis L.) has colonized large areas of disturbed and undisturbed land in southeastern China, yet little is known regarding how it affects soil carbon cycling. To explore the response patterns of soil respiration following S. canadensis invasion and their driving mechanisms, an observational field study and a greenhouse experiment simulating invasion were performed. In the field study, soil respiration was measured weekly from 21th July 2018 to 15th December 2018. In the greenhouse experiment, soil, autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration were measured every 1st and 15th of the month from 15th July 2019 to 15th December 2019. Soil, autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration were measured using a closed-chamber system with the deep gauze collar root exclusion method. Solidago canadensis invasion appeared to decrease the total soil CO2 emissions in both the field study and the greenhouse experiment. The suppressive effects on soil respiration may be attributed to S. canadensis invasion-induced alterations in the quality and quantity of available soil substrate, suggesting that S. canadensis invasion may impact soil carbon cycling via plant-released substrates and by competing for the soil available substrate with native plant and/or soil microbes. These results have substantial implications for estimations of the effects of invasive plants on belowground carbon dynamics and their contribution to the warming world.

Non-road machinery is very important, but non-road machinery has problems such as working under complex operating conditions. Agricultural machinery is an important type of non-road machinery, whic...

An insufficient amount of NH3 (ammonia) will reduce the conversion efficiency of NOx, which may lead to excess NOx emissions, resulting in NH3-SCR failure. In this article, SCR failure caused by a low NH3- NOx ratio is studied systematically by experiments. The main reasons for a low NH3-NOx ratio in SCR include insufficient urea injection, hydrothermal aging of catalysts and urea crystallization. It was found from an insufficient urea injection experiment that with the increase of NH3- NOx ratio, the NOx conversion efficiency of the SCR system increased, but the ammonia leakage also increased. The main influencing factors of NOx conversion efficiency are different under different NH3- NOx ratios. A flow reactor system was used in the catalyst hydrothermal aging experiment to investigate the effect of hydrothermal aging on catalyst activity. After a 24 h hydrothermal aging experiment at 800 °C, the NOx conversion efficiency of the copper-based zeolite catalysts decreased significantly at the boundary of medium and low temperature regions. And the NO2- NOx ratio in the mixture had a significant effect on the catalytic performance. Thermogravimetry coupled to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (TG-FTIR) was used to analyze the composition of urea deposits in a urea deposits analysis experiment. It was found that the main components of urea deposits were urea and isocyanic acid (HNCO). Preventing HNCO polymerization, especially the formation of CYA, can decrease the formation of urea deposits.

Rotors with active flap control have considerable potential in reducing vibration and noise and improving aerodynamic performance. However, due to the movement of the flap, there are unavoidable gaps between the components that will lead to significant changes in the aerodynamic characteristics. Moreover, considering the difficulties in motion modeling and the accuracy of the simulation of the flow field in such a narrow gap, carrying out related research is challenging; thus, there has been inadequate targeted research, and that which does exist requires supplementation. To carry out this challenging flow field simulation, the overset assembly algorithm proposed by the author in previous research is adopted in the present study. It is used to successfully assemble the narrow gap, and the accuracy of the simulation is fully verified by comparing the results with the actual experimental results and a grid study. Furthermore, to compensate for the lack of research and experiments on the gap effect, cases considering a complete range of gap widths from an absence of a gap to a width of 10% of the chord length are set up and carried out under the following three case groups: steady cases with a fixed trailing-edge deflection angle, unsteady cases in which only the trailing-edge flap is flapping, and full-motion cases characterized by the periodic flap of the main airfoil and the trailing-edge flap. The results show that the gap increases the drag of the trailing-edge flap and decreases aerodynamic efficiency, especially at low speeds and high angles of attack. Nevertheless, when the gap is unavoidable, there is a range of the gap width that makes unapparent the decrease of aerodynamic efficiency. Moreover, the decrease of aerodynamic efficiency can be reduced as much as possible by a well-designed gap region geometry to ensure that the airfoil and the trailing-edge flap fit together when moving.

Used cooking oil (UCO) biodiesel may be one of the most potential alternative fuels in China to lower the dependency on crude oil for transportation. An experimental study has been conducted to assess the interactions between biodiesel produced from UCO in Shanghai and elastomer materials on high-speed marine diesel engines by immersing elastomer materials into conventional fossil diesel, 5, 10, and 20%, of a volumetric blending ratio of UCO biodiesel and pure UCO biodiesel. The test duration is 168 h at different temperatures of 25, 50, and 70 °C. Meanwhile, the effects of the mixing ratio of UCO biodiesel and the immersion temperature on the compatibility of elastomer materials with UCO biodiesel were analyzed. The results revealed that elastomer materials such as nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR), ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM), fluororubber (FKM), and silicone rubber (SR) exposed to biodiesel blends would reveal worse but acceptable changes than those exposed to petroleum diesel, including the slight increase of mass and volume and decline of tensile strength and hardness. FKM, NBR, and SR represented better compatibility with pure UCO biodiesel than diesel, and EPDM showed worse compatibility with UCO biodiesel as the blend ratio rises. In general, the recommended volumetric mixing ratio of UCO biodiesel should be no larger than 20%. The present study could be helpful for the investigation of UCO biodiesel blends as a potential fuel to satisfy the energy demand.

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is one of the main methods used to reduce NOx emissions from diesel engines. Vanadium-based catalysts are widely used in SCR because of their good sulfur resistances and low costs. In this paper, for improving the catalytic performance of aged SCR, experimental and simulation methods were used to study the effects of the aged SCR state, space velocity, and ammonia-to-nitrogen ratio on the NOx conversion efficiency. The experimental results showed that the catalytic performances of the aged SCR state in the low- and medium-temperature regions were not significantly different from that of the fresh SCR, and the degradation in the high-temperature region was significant. In the low- and high-temperature regions, space velocity was an important factor affecting the aged SCR. Increasing the ammonia-to-nitrogen ratio could compensate for the effect of the SCR aging in the low- and medium-temperature regions to some extent.

Catalyzed diesel particulate filters (CDPFs) have been widespread used as a technically and economically feasible mean for meeting increasingly stringent emissions limits. An important issue affecting the performance of a CDPF is its aging with using time. In this paper, the effects of noble metal loadings, regions and using mileage on the aging performance of a CDPF were investigated by methods of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and catalytic activity evaluation. Results showed that aging of the CDPF shifted the XRD characteristic diffraction peaks towards larger angles and increased the crystallinity, showing a slowing downward trend with the increase of the noble metal loadings. In addition, the increase of the noble metal loading would slow down the decline of Pt and Pt4+ concentration caused by aging. The characteristic temperatures of CO, C3H8 conversion and NO2 production increased after aging, and the more the noble metal loadings, the higher the range of the increase. But noticeably, excessive amounts of noble metals would not present the corresponding anti-aging properties. Specifically, the degree of aging in the inlet region was the deepest, the following is the outlet region, and the middle region was the smallest, which were also reflected in the increase range of crystallinity, characteristic temperatures of CO, C3H8 conversion and NO2 production, as well as the decrease range of Pt and Pt4+ concentrations. The increase of aging mileage reduced the size of the aggregates of the soot and ash in CDPFs, however, improved the degree of tightness between particles. Meanwhile Carbon (C) concentration in the soot and ash increased with the aging mileage.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pid-10.1177_09544070221121868 for Effect of idle-start-go on the economy and emissions of gasoline vehicles by Zhiyuan Hu, Zhuo Wang, Zhangying Lu, Jiaming Fu and Yifeng Quan in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D: Journal of Automobile Engineering

Blade-vortex interaction (BVI) noise is a significant source of rotor noise. In recent years, active flap control (AFC) has been used successfully to control BVI by adding a trailing edge f...

A unified power quality controller based on a magnetic flux control tunable reactor is proposed. The magnetic flux control tunable reactor is composed of a voltage source inverter (VSI) and a transformer with an air gap. The power quality controller is divided into two parts: the harmonic open circuit part is connected in series in the system, and the harmonic short circuit part is connected in parallel in the system. Among them, the series part detects the fundamental wave component of the primary side current of the transformer, generates a reference signal, and controls the VSI to generate a fundamental wave controllable current, after the filter is applied to the secondary side of the transformer, the primary side of the transformer will show variable impedance and open circuit to the fundamental wave and harmonic current respectively; The parallel part detects the fundamental wave component of the primary side current, generates a reference signal, and controls the VSI to generate a fundamental controllable voltage, After the filter is applied to the secondary side of the transformer, the primary side of the transformer presents controllable impedance and short circuit to the fundamental wave and harmonic current respectively.By building a MATLAB simulation model, the effectiveness of the proposed unified power quality controller is verified.

With the emergence of digital grid concept, the current metering system using PTP (Precise Time Protocol) clock synchronization technology cannot provide a unified device clock system across entire network, which affects two-way real-time control of new energy. And it is difficult to meet the clock for new business transactions synchronization accuracy requirements. Under the original metering clock system, a multi-source clock weighted fusion technology was proposed that used 5G communication modules as reference clocks, and used Kalman filtering to complete step-by-step clock correction at all levels of network nodes to achieve coordinated correction of different external reference clocks. The highest clock synchronization accuracy ensure the consistency of real-time data collection clock. Based on field test data collected by the Shenzhen Power Supply Bureau, the results showed that the electricity bill settlement after clock synchronization optimization processing is closer to field settlement.

Nanomedicine is a medical application of biochemistry incorporated with materials chemistry at the scale of nanometer for the purpose of diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. New models and approaches are typically associated with nanomedicine for precise multifunctional diagnostic systems at molecular level. Hence, employing nanoparticles (NPs) has unveiled new opportunities for efficient therapies and remedy of difficult-to-cure diseases. Among all types of inorganic NPs, lanthanide-doped up-conversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) have shown excellent potential for biomedical applications, especially for multimodal bioimaging including fluorescence and electron microscopy. Association of these visualization techniques plus the capability for transporting biomaterials and drugs make them superior agents in the field of nanomedicine. Accordingly, in this review, we firstly presented a fundamental understanding of physical and optical properties of UCNPs and secondly, we illustrated some of the prominent associations with bioimaging, theranostics, cancer therapy, and optogenetics.

A comparative experiment was conducted based on a non-road diesel engine to investigate the effects of two after-treatment devices on the engine's emission characteristics as well as their power and fuel consumption performances. The first after-treatment device is a combination of a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and a catalytic diesel particulate filter (CDPF). The second device is a single CDPF-coated improved noble metal catalyst. Results showed that the two after-treatment devices had almost no effect on the power and fuel consumption performance. The gaseous and particulate emissions of the engine depended on the operation conditions including the speed and load. However, the dual DOC+CDPF system and the single CDPF reduced more than 81% of the carbon monoxide (CO) and 73% of the hydrocarbon (HC) emissions. Notably, the reduction efficiency by the single CDPF was higher than that of the DOC+CDPF system. In terms of the particulate emissions, both after-treatment devices achieved more than 96% reduction of the particle number (PN) and up to 88% reduction of the particulate mass (PM). Similarly, the single CDPF outperformed the dual DOC+CDPF system in reducing particle emissions. Although no changes occurred in the bimodal particle size distribution of the engine after the installation of the two after-treatment devices, they performed differently in reducing particles with different sizes. The particles reduction efficiency of the DOC+CDPF system was higher than that of the single CDPF for the particles smaller than 14.3 nm, and this trend converted for particles larger than 14.3 nm. Improving the noble metal catalyst load in the CDPF ensured a performance that rivaled the DOC+CDPF system. Apart from the NOx emissions, the installation of a single CDPF with an improved noble metal catalyst load can make the non-road diesel engine meet the limits of the China IV emission regulations.

The durability of V2O5-WO3/TiO2 selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalysts for heavy-duty diesel engines was evaluated based on 500 h SCR durability tests conducted using B20 fuel (20% v/v biodiesel + 80% v/v petroleum diesel). The fresh and deteriorated SCR catalysts were characterized by X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area measurements to investigate the deterioration mechanism of the catalysts. The results show that the SCR de-NOx performance is degraded after SCR durability testing, particularly at high engine speeds. The NOx conversion efficiency of the deteriorated SCR catalysts decreases at temperatures above 400 °C but remains high at temperatures between 250 and 400 °C. The catalyst characterization results reveal that the deterioration in the de-NOx performance is not owing to anatase-to-rutile transformation of TiO2, but because of a decrease in the specific surface area and the loss of the catalyst components, which are greater in the front cross section of the SCR than in the rear cross section. For a given catalyst cross section, the decrease in the specific surface area exhibits a positive correlation with the flow rate of the exhaust gas.

Particle number is a key index for evaluating particulate emissions, and diesel oxidation catalysts (DOCs) are one of the most important technologies for controlling the particulate emissions of a diesel engine. In this paper, a novel phenomenological one-dimensional model was established to predict particle number and size distributions at a DOC outlet with the aim of investigating the effects of DOC on particle number emissions. The phenomenological model consisted of two submodels: submodel-1, a global kinetic model for calculating particle size in particle number and size distributions after particles had passed through the DOC, and submodel-2, an original global parametric model for calculating the particle number at the DOC outlet. The effects of the sampling process, fuel properties, and the engine operating condition were considered in submodel-2. An 8.8 L, direct-injection, heavy-duty diesel engine was tested. The particle number and size distributions at the DOC inlet and outlet were determined using an engine exhaust particle sizer. The test data, coupled with literature results, were used to calibrate and validate the phenomenological model. This model was then applied to investigate the influence of various factors on particle number and size distributions at the DOC outlet. It was found that dilution temperature, fuel sulfur content, exhaust gas temperature, and gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) played a key role in the particle number after DOC oxidation. The particle number concentration at the DOC outlet increased as fuel sulfur content and exhaust gas temperature increased and decreased as GHSV and dilution temperature increased. In general, results proved that this phenomenological model was accurate enough to predict particle number and size distributions at a DOC outlet under most operating conditions. It may serve as a useful tool for research and development focusing on PM reduction of diesel engines and air pollution control.

The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate effects of waste-cooking-oil biodiesel on the particle number (PN), size distribution and particulate-phase compositions including organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), N-alkanes, fatty acids and inorganic ions from a diesel bus. Experiments were conducted based on chassis dynamometer with three biodiesel blends at 5%, 10% and 20% by volume, i.e., B5, B10 and B20; and a petroleum diesel D100 was used as a baseline. Results showed that the biodiesel resulted in a reduction in the PN emission, and this reduction increased linearly with the biodiesel ratio. For B20, the reduction in PN emission reached 42.2% in comparison with D100. The particle size distribution indicated that the utilization of the biodiesel increased the proportion of nucleation mode particles, and correspondingly diminished the proportion of accumulation mode particles. Compared with D100, 14.8%, 21.2% and 27.6% reduction in the OC emission was observed for B5, B10 and B20, whereas the EC emission increased slightly, consequently, the ratio OC/EC presented a declining trend. The PAHs, dominated by 3- and 4- rings ones, as well as their toxic equivalent were also reduced with the biodiesel. Additionally, using biodiesel led to lower N-alkanes and fatty acids emissions in the particles, and the reduction of emissions showed a decreased and increased trend with the biodiesel ratio, respectively. In terms of the inorganic ions in the particles, the Cl−, NO2−, NO3−, SO42−, as well as the Na+, NH4+, K+ and Ca2+ emissions were increased with the biodiesel. To sum up, the refining of biodiesel from waste cooking oil is a cleaner production, and as an alternative fuel to petroleum diesel, the biodiesel is also environment-friendly.

Herein, through the active-peptide-functionalization, we developed a nanoscale micelles system (named HEKM) which consists of tumor microenvironment-regulated shape-changing with specific recognition abilities for enhanced cellular targeting, internalization and therapy of heterogeneic tumors. As a result, HEKMs could recognize and bind the tumor heterogeneity marker EGFR-HER2 complex, which led to an enhanced tumor targeting effect. In particular, HEKMs could self-assemble into nanorods under normal physiological conditions while transform into nanospheres in the tumor extracellular microenvironment by a sensitive response to matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2). The nanorods could prolong the blood circulation time while the nanospheres could accelerate tissue penetration in tumors. In vivo dual-modal targeted imaging was realized by FRET-fluorophore conjugation and gadolinium loading in HEKMs. Tumor cell apoptosis was achieved by proapoptotic element integration. The in vitro and in vivo studies both demonstrated that these rationally designed, shape-changing and targeting micelles could achieve maximized drug efficacy and minimum side effects.

Anthropogenic forcing reduced the probability of rainfall amount in the extended rainy winter of 2018/19 over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, China, by ~19%, but exerted no influence on the excessive rainy days, based on HadGEM3-GA6-N216 ensembles. Instead the natural variability played a large and important role in this event.

Anthropogenic forcing reduced the probability of rainfall amount in the extended rainy winter of 2018/19 over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, China, by ~19%, but exerted no influence on the excessive rainy days, based on HadGEM3-GA6-N216 ensembles. Instead the natural variability played a large and important role in this event.

Additional file 2. Review history.

Additional file 1: Fig. S1-S7 and Table S1.

In this paper, the visualization experiments of spray, ignition, and combustion of diesel under variable injection pressure (from 90 to 130 MPa) were studied by using a constant volume vessel and impinging combustion plate system. With the development of the down-sizing of diesel engines, the wall impinging combustion without liquid spray collision will be the research focus in the diesel engine combustion process. The flame natural luminosity in the experiment represents the soot formation of diesel combustion. Besides, the detailed information of diesel spray mixing combustion was obtained by using the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation of alternative fuels in CONVERGE&trade, The specific conclusions are as follows. The high velocity of the spray under the higher injection pressure could reduce the low-mixing area near the impinging wall by entraining more air. Under higher injection pressure in simulation, the gas diffused more extensively, and more heat was released after combustion. Therefore, a large amount of soot formed in the early stage of combustion and then oxidized in high-temperature regions, which agreed with the conclusions in the experiments. Under the influence of the superposition of image pixels of the flame, the change of soot generation with injection pressure is smaller than the actual value, so the visualization experiment can be used as the basis of combustion prediction.

The elementary research of spray and combustion is of great significance to the development of compactness of modern diesel engines. In this paper, three injectors with different nozzle orifice diameters (0.23 mm, 0.27 mm and 0.31 mm) were used to study the diesel spray, ignition and flame-wall impingement visualization experiment. This paper studied the influence of different nozzle sizes on the trends of spray, ignition and flame diffusion under the flame-wall impinging combustion and used the flame luminosity to characterize the soot generation in combustion. By analyzing the quantitative data, such as spray penetration, ignition delay, flame area and flame luminosity systematically, it was shown that the smaller nozzle benefitted diesel combustion to some extent. The 0.23 mm nozzle injector in these experiments had the best fuel-air mixing effect under 800 K. The length of the spray liquid under the 0.23 mm nozzle condition was 19% and 23% shorter than that of 0.27 and 0.31 mm, respectively. Smaller orifice size of the nozzle can help to reach the gas ignition conditions more effectively. Without liquid fuel impingement, the simple flame-wall impingement will not change the trend of the nozzle influence on combustion. The total amount of accumulated soot according to the approximate luminosity spatial integral calculation in the combustion process was reduced by 37% and 43% under 0.27 mm and 0.23 mm nozzles, respectively, which is favorable for the clean combustion of diesel engines.

Diurnal variation of surface PM2.5 concentration (diurnal PM2.5) could dramatically affect aerosol radiative and health impacts and can also well reflect the physical and chemical mechanisms of air pollution formation and evolution. So far, diurnal PM2.5 and its modeling capability over East China have not been investigated and therefore are examined in this study. Based on the observations, the normalized diurnal amplitude of surface PM2.5 concentrations averaged over East China is weakest (∼1.2) in winter and reaches ∼1.5 in other seasons. The diurnal PM2.5 shows the peak concentration during the night in spring and fall and during the daytime in summer. The simulated diurnal PM2.5 with WRF-Chem and its contributions from multiple physical and chemical processes are examined in the four seasons. The simulated diurnal PM2.5 with WRF-Chem is primarily controlled by planetary boundary layer (PBL) mixing and emission variations and is significantly overestimated against the observation during the night. This modeling bias is likely primarily due to the inefficient PBL mixing of primary PM2.5 during the night. The simulated diurnal PM2.5 is sensitive to the PBL schemes and vertical-layer configurations with WRF-Chem. Besides the PBL height, the PBL mixing coefficient is also found to be the critical factor determining the PBL mixing of pollutants in WRF-Chem. With reasonable PBL height, the increase in the lower limit of the PBL mixing coefficient during the night can significantly reduce the modeling biases in diurnal PM2.5 and also the mean concentrations, particularly in the major cities of East China. It can also reduce the modeling sensitivity to the PBL vertical-layer configurations. The diurnal variation and injection height of anthropogenic emissions also play roles in simulating diurnal PM2.5, but the impact is relatively smaller than that from the PBL mixing. This study underscores that more efforts are needed to improve the boundary mixing process of pollutants in models with observations of PBL structure and mixing fluxes in addition to PBL height, in order to simulate reasonably the diurnal PM2.5 over East China. The diurnal variation and injection height of anthropogenic emissions must also be included to simulate the diurnal PM2.5 over East China.

This study aims to investigate the effect of durability on the regulated and unregulated emissions, as well as the power and fuel economy performance of a biodiesel-powered engine equipped with a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system based on a 500-h durability test. Furthermore, a BET (Brunauer-Emmett-Teller) test was employed to analyze the specific surface area changes of the DOC and SCR. Results show that after the durability, the power performance improved and the brake-specific fuel consumption (BSFC) reduced due to the running-in effect. Although the deterioration of the DOC and SCR after the durability resulted in an increase in the carbon monoxide (CO), total hydrocarbon (THC) and nitrogen oxide (NOX) emission factors of the biodiesel-powered engine based on European steady state cycle (ESC) by 41.3%, 36.1% and 39.2%, respectively, these emissions were still below China-Ⅴ limits. For unregulated emissions, the reduced BSFC caused by the durability led to a decrease in the carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, but the durability resulted in higher aldehyde emission. The BET specific surface areas of the DOC and SCR decreased by 40.2% and 35.0%, respectively after the durability, which accounted for their catalytic performance deterioration.

Particulate emissions from an urban bus fueled with B20 (20% biodiesel from waste cooking oil and 80% diesel by volume) were investigated using portable emissions measurement system (PEMS), then the effect of a catalyzed continuously regeneration trap (CCRT) on the particulate emissions of the B20-fueled bus were ascertained. Results show that compared with a D100 (pure diesel), B20 reduced particulate number (PN) and particulate mass (PM) emission rates of the bus by 13.9% and 24.3% under cruise control. Under transient condition, B20 reduced the PN and PM emission rates by 18.4% and 16.3%. B20 decreased the total PN concentration by 6.6% whereas increased the proportion of nucleation particles from 89.0% to 92.0%. Correspondingly causing a decrease in the GMD (geometric mean diameter) from 43.02 nm to 41.25 nm under cruise condition, and from 41.26 nm to 39.57 nm under transient condition. Using a CCRT exhibited an excellent filtration effect on both PN and PM from the B20-fueled bus. Both under cruise and transient conditions, CCRT could reduce more than 93% of the PN and PM. In addition, CCRT had a better filtration effect on accumulation particles. The use of CCRT also changed the particle size bimodal distribution of the B20 by removing the accumulation mode peak.

Altitude has a significant effect on the combustion of diesel engines during cold start, especially during speed-up. In this study, combustion characteristics of speed-up period were investigated using an experimental test on a heavy-duty diesel engine with an intake and exhaust pressure controlled by the plateau simulation test system to simulate altitude conditions including 0 m, 3000 m and 4500 m. Further effects of altitude on ignition characteristics of diesel engine were accomplished through a zero-dimensional thermodynamic model coupled with a detailed kinetic model. Results indicated that as the altitude rose from 0 m to 3000 m, the pressure in the cylinder was reduced, the number of diesel engine speed-up cycles increased, and the rising speed ratio decreased during speed-up. There was a misfire after the fifth cycle at an altitude of 4500 m, and the rising speed ratio was significantly reduced. Through analysis of fuel injection, air intake and ignition phase, we confirmed that the misfire at the high 4500 m altitude was caused by the ignition delay, which was mainly controlled by chemical reaction during cold start. In the detailed kinetic study, the hot-flame and blue-flame reactions slowed down in the chemical reaction of the mixture as the altitude rose. The higher altitude enhanced the H-atom abstraction, but weakened the second O2 addition and the peroxyalkylhydroperoxide isomerization. The decomposition reaction was enhanced. As a result, the overall reaction rate and the heat release fraction deteriorated, extending significantly the negative temperature coefficient (NTC) duration of the ignition.

The increasingly stringent emission regulations will mandate the retrofit of after-treatment devices for in-use diesel vehicles, in order to reduce their substantial particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (NOX) emissions. In this paper, a combination of DOC (diesel oxidation catalyst), CDPF (catalytic diesel particulate filter) and SCR (selective catalytic reduction) retrofit for a heavy-duty diesel engine was employed to perform experiment on the engine test bench to evaluate the effects on the particulate matter emissions including particle number (PN), particle mass (PM), particle size distributions and nitrogenous compounds emissions including NOX, nitrogen dioxide (NO2)/NOX, nitrous oxide (N2O) and ammonia (NH3) slip. In addition, the urea injection was also of our concern. The results showed that the DOC+CDPF+SCR retrofit almost had no adverse effect on the engine power and fuel consumption. Under the test loads, the upstream DOC and CDPF reduced the PN and PM by an average of 91.6% and 90.9%, respectively. While the downstream SCR brought about an average decrease of 85% NOX. Both PM and NOX emission factors based on this retrofit were lower than China-Ⅳ limits (ESC), and even lower than China-Ⅴ limits (ESC) at medium and high loads. The DOC and CDPF changed the particle size distributions, leading to the increase in the proportion of accumulation mode particles and the decrease in the percentage of nuclear mode particles. This indicates that the effect of DOC and CDPF on nuclear mode particles was better than that of accumulation mode ones. The upstream DOC could increase the NO2/NOX ratio to 40%, higher NO2/NOX ratio improved the efficiency of CDPF and SCR. Besides, the N2O emission increased by an average of 2.58 times after the retrofit and NH3 slip occurred with the average of 26.7 ppm. The rate of urea injection was roughly equal to 8% of the fuel consumption rate. The DOC+CDPF+SCR retrofit was proved a feasible and effective measurement in terms of reducing particulate emissions and NOX simultaneously for in-use engine. However, it also resulted in higher N2O emission, NH3 slip as well as urea injecting strategy problem which should be of further concern.

The real-world gaseous and particulate emission characteristics of an agricultural tractor retrofitted with a catalysed diesel particulate filter (CDPF) with different catalyst loadings were investigated. The tests were carried out using a portable emission measurement system (PEMS) under idling, running and working conditions. The results showed that the emissions of the tractor strongly depended on the operating conditions. From idling to running then to working condition, the emission rates increased but emission factors based on fuel consumption decreased, and the proportion of nucleation particles and geometric mean diameter presented a slight downward trend. The reduction effect of CDPF on the CO and total hydrocarbon (THC) improved from idling to running then to working condition, and it was enhanced by increasing catalyst loading. The particle number (PN) and particle mass (PM) reduction performance of CDPF was less affected by operating condition but enhanced with the increase of the catalyst loading. After the tractor was equipped with the CDPF, the particle size distribution maintained a bimodal shape, but the decrease of nucleation particles was significantly higher than that of accumulation particles, causing a decrease in the nucleation particles proportion and a shift of the peak towards smaller particle size. With the increase of the CDPF catalyst loading, the proportion of the accumulation particles increased, and the geometric mean particle size also increased. The findings of this paper can provide scientific references to design and optimize CDPF for non-road mobile machinery to achieve clean emissions.

Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) inputs lead to the increase of phosphorus (P) demand for plants and plant species competition in a N enriched environment may hinge on its ability to utilize soil P sources. In soils, P mostly exists as insoluble phosphate compounds with three mineral elements: iron (Fe), aluminum (Al) or calcium (Ca), and it remains largely unknown whether invasive plant species are able to access such insoluble P sources and its interaction with N enrichment to gain competitive advantage. We determined the morphological traits, growth and nutrient status of an invasive plant Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis L.) cultured in soluble phosphate KH2PO4 (Ortho-P), and insoluble inorganic phosphate AlPO4 (Al–P), FePO4 (Fe–P), Ca5(OH)(PO4)3 (Ca–P) at three N supply levels. Results showed that S. canadensis was able to selectively utilize P from Al–P but not from Fe–P or Ca–P by increasing root number and length under N additions. The increasing growth in S. canadensis was closely correlated with the increasing foliar P. Ability to utilize insoluble P sources under enriched N environment serves as a competitive advantage for S. canadensis in Al rich soils. Effective control of S. canadensis invasion may need to consider soil P management in the context of atmospheric N deposition as well.

Exhaust particle emissions from a heavy duty diesel engine using B20 biodiesel (20% biodiesel blend with 80% diesel by volume) were investigated, and the engine was equipped with three kinds of exhaust aftertreatment devices: DOC (diesel oxidation catalyst), DOC + DPF (diesel particle filter), and DOC + CDPF (catalyzed diesel particle filter). Particle mass, particle number and size distribution, and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and inorganic ions in the particle emissions from the engine were studied. Compared with the engine without exhaust aftertreatments, DOC decreased nucleation mode particle number by 19.83%, while accumulation mode particles exhibited slight changes. The DOC + DPF reduced the total particle number by 82.54%, while the DOC + CDPF reduced it by 91.71%. Compared with the engine without exhaust aftertreatments, the three aftertreatments were shown to reduce total PAH emissions. DOC + DPF and DOC + CDPF can decrease total TEQ (toxicity equivalent quantity) effectively with a sharp decrease in PAH mass. The DOC increased the TEQ of particles by 46.9%. The catalyst in the DOC increased some high molecular weight PAHs such as BaA, BbF + BkF, and BaP, which led to the increase in TEQ. The DOC increased the total inorganic ions by 2%, while the DOC + DPF and DOC + CDPF decreased inorganic ions by 89.5% and 82.9%, respectively. Catalysts in DOC and CDPF promotes the formation of SO 4 2− and NO 3 − , which leads to higher inorganic ion emissions with DOC than no aftertreatments and higher inorganic ion emissions with a DOC + CDPF than with a DOC + DPF.

Clonal integration facilitates the growth and reproduction of clonal plants by providing the ability to share resources among ramets in heterogeneous environments. The benefits of clonal integration for plant growth may depend on a contrast in resource availability and may encounter costs, especially when a young part of the clone is growing across a border between richer and poorer conditions than the old part. We studied a clonal amphibian plant growing across a border between an aquatic and a terrestrial ecosystem, which typically differ in the availability of resources. We asked whether the young part of the clone is supporting the old part with phosphorus and whether this support has costs. We performed an experiment with Alternanthera philoxeroides where plants grow from water to a terrestrial habitat. The terrestrial habitat had either a low or high phosphorus supply, and the connection between the old and young parts of the clone was either left intact or split. We determined that the young part of the clone growing in a terrestrial habitat supported the old part with phosphorus when growing on a substrate rich in phosphorus. We have found no cost of this resource translocation; on the contrary, whole clones increased not only their accumulation of phosphorus, but also of nitrogen. Our study shows how an amphibian plant may profit from heterogeneous habitats by resource sharing in a clonal network.

Modern Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) vehicles offered higher power output, improved fuel economy and reduced CO2 emissions compared with port fuel injection (PFI) vehicles. However, the particle number emission of GDI is larger than that of PFI and also higher than diesel vehicles equipped with diesel particle filter (DPF). This research sampled particle matter (PM) emitted from a China VI vehicle over the Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC). The results of particle size distribution showed that ultra-fine particles in diameter below 23 nm take up majority of particle emissions. While with the oxidation temperature rising, the peak diameter of emitted particles migrated to larger section. The effect of oxidation temperature including interlayer spacing, fractal dimension, fringe length and tortuosity have been analyzed by TEM. The value of nano structural parameters increases slightly with the temperature increasing. Besides, the impact of volatile components was considered into the micromorphology and microstructure parameters of primary particles. After eliminating volatile materials, there is no presence of hollow carbon particles and all the three parameters including interlayer spacing, fringe length and fringe tortuosity showed an overall decrease. Better understanding nano structural parameters of PM under different oxidation temperatures can provide information to explain the potential impacts of particle emissions on human health and environment and the regeneration process of gasoline particle filter (GPF).