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Photocatalytic selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol into benzaldehyde at normal temperature and pressure is one of the important topics in the catalysis field.

Understanding the stability of trees under lateral loads arising from natural hazards (e.g. extreme weather and debris flows) is important, as fallen trees can become a potential threat to life and infrastructure. Two 1 : 20 scale three-dimensional printed analogue root system models, with architectures from field-surveyed root architecture data, were used to simulate the push-over behaviour of trees in silty sand under different conditions in the centrifuge. The peak overturning moments obtained were verified against data from field winching tests. Horizontal roots orientated in the loading direction and the central taproot complex contributed most to the overturning resistance. Increasing soil matric suction due to a lowering of the water table, increasing the loading rate and considering the presence of the fine root fraction all resulted in higher moment capacity and rotational stiffness of the root systems. The overturning behaviour was ductile in fully saturated soil and more brittle in partially saturated cases, with more root breakages in the windward horizontal roots and the taproot complex in the latter. These results suggest that it is important to measure the groundwater conditions when conducting winching tests and demonstrate a connection between soil effective stress, total root breakage area and peak moment resistance.

The mechanical contribution of plant roots to soil strength has typically been studied at the ultimate limit state only. Since many geotechnical problems are related to serviceability, such as deformation of infrastructure, a new constitutive modelling framework is introduced. The rooted soil is treated as a composite material with separate constitutive relationships for soil and roots, and a comprehensive stress-strain relationship for the root constituent is presented.The model is compared to direct shear experiments on field soil reinforced with gorse, grass and willow roots, as well as an existing root reinforcement model based on Winkler-spring supported beam theory.The results show that both the newly developed model and the beam-type model yield good predictions for the evolution of root-reinforced shear strength as a function of increasing shear displacements. Both successfully capture the large deformations required to reach peak reinforcement, the reduction in reinforcement due to root breakage and the presence of significant reinforcement even after very large deformations, associated with root slippage.Since both fibre and beam models only require physically meaningful input parameters, they can be useful tools to study the mobilisation of rooted soil strength and simulate the response of rooted soil in continuum-based numerical simulations.

One unique architectural benefit of Named Data Networking (NDN) is adaptive forwarding, i.e., the forwarding plane is able to observe past data retrieval performance and use it to adjust forwarding decisions for future Interests. To be effective, adaptive forwarding assumes that Interest Routing Locality is related to Interests' common name prefix, meaning that Interests sharing the same prefix are likely to follow a similar forwarding path within a short period of time. Since Interests can have multiple common prefixes with different lengths, the real challenge is determining which prefix length should be used in adaptive forwarding to record path performance measurements - we refer to this as the Prefix Granularity Problem. The longer the common prefix is, the better the Interest Routing Locality, and the larger the forwarding table. Given the limited FIB size, route names are designed to be considerably shorter than Interest names. Existing adaptive forwarding designs use route names to record path performance measurements, which looses forwarding adaptability as it promises in the event of partial network failures. In this work, we propose to dynamically aggregate and de-aggregate name prefixes in the forwarding table in order to use the prefixes that are the most appropriate given current network situation. In addition, to reduce the overhead of adaptive forwarding, we propose mechanisms to minimize the use of the longest prefix matching in Data packet processing. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed techniques can result in better forwarding decisions in the event of partial network failures with significantly reduced overhead.

Mud construction waste lightweight soil (MCWLS) is made by dredged mud, lightweight construction waste (LCW), cement. Consolidated-drained (CD) shear tests were conducted to investigate the shear c...

Engineered light, oxygen, and voltage (LOV)-based proteins are able to fluoresce without oxygen requirement due to the autocatalytic incorporation of exogenous flavin as a chromophore thus allowing for live cell imaging under hypoxic and anaerobic conditions. They were also discovered to have high sensitivity to transition metal ions and physiological flavin derivatives. These properties make flavin-binding fluorescent proteins (FPs) a perspective platform for biosensor development. However, brightness of currently available flavin-binding FPs is limited compared to GFP-like FPs creating a need for their further enhancement and optimization. In this study, we applied a directed molecular evolution approach to develop a pair of flavin-binding FPs, named miniGFP1 and miniGFP2. The miniGFP proteins are characterized by cyan-green fluorescence with excitation/emission maxima at 450/499 nm and a molecular size of ∼13 kDa. We carried out systematic benchmarking of miniGFPs in Escherichia coli and cultured mammalian cells against spectrally similar FPs including GFP-like FP, bilirubin-binding FP, and bright flavin-binding FPs. The miniGFPs proteins exhibited improved photochemical properties compared to other flavin-binding FPs enabling long-term live cell imaging. We demonstrated the utility of miniGFPs for live cell imaging in bacterial culture under anaerobic conditions and in CHO cells under hypoxia. The miniGFPs’ fluorescence was highly sensitive to Cu(II) ions in solution with Kd values of 67 and 68 nM for miniGFP1 and miniGFP2, respectively. We also observed fluorescence quenching of miniGFPs by the reduced form of Cu(I) suggesting its potential application as an optical indicator for Cu(I) and Cu(II). In addition, miniGFPs showed the ability to selectively bind exogenous flavin mononucleotide demonstrating a potential for utilization as a selective fluorescent flavin indicator. Altogether, miniGFPs can serve as a multisensing platform for fluorescence biosensor development for in vitro and in-cell applications.

As SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC) reduce the effectiveness of existing anti-COVID therapeutics, it is increasingly critical to identify highly potent neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) that bind to conserved regions across multiple variants, especially beta, delta, and omicron variants. Using single-cell sequencing with biochemical methods and pseudo-typed virus neutralization experiments, here we report the characterization of a potent nAb BD-218, identified from an early screen of patients recovering from the original virus. We have determined the cryo-EM structure of the BD-218/spike protein complex to define its epitope in detail, which revealed that BD-218 interacts with a novel epitope on the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein. We concluded that BD-218 is a highly effective and broadly active nAb against SARS-CoV-2 variants with promising potential for therapeutic development.

An efficient modes analyses technique for isotropic or anisotropic material filled 2D metallic waveguides with an arbitrary contour using the multifilament current method (MFCM) is presented. The ideal PEC boundary of a 2D waveguide is replaced by a shell with a high conductivity and electrical small thickness. The thin lossy shell not only can well approximate the boundary condition of PEC waveguide wall therefore without altering the initial waveguide modes, but also can let the external excitation penetrate through to excite the inside modes, resulting in a high internal field intensity at the frequency of each mode. In this case, the modes are revealed by the peaks of field intensity responses, and the spurious modes which existed in traditional source‐free modes determination techniques can be completely avoided. Based on this idea, a generalized impedance boundary condition (GIBC) is formulated to represent the lossy waveguide wall and further utilized in the MFCM for simulating the internal field intensity over frequency. Three different configurations of a 2D waveguide are considered. The computed modes are compared with that obtained from commercial software, and an excellent agreement is achieved, yet an competitive advantage on simulation performances is observed by using the proposed technique.

This paper investigates the seismic performance of rooted granular slopes using dynamic finite-element analysis, validated against recently published centrifuge test data. The importance of selecting suitable strength parameters to represent soil response within a strain-hardening constitutive model was demonstrated and the simulations suggested that any boundary effects introduced through the use of the equivalent shear beam container in the centrifuge are negligible and can be represented by a semi-infinite lateral boundary condition. Using the validated model, a parametric study investigated the effects of different rooted soil properties on the performance of slopes of different heights. Vegetation was effective in reducing deformations at the crest of slopes of modest height, although the benefit reduced as slope height or soil apparent cohesion increased. The effectiveness was significantly affected by the extent of the root system, but only moderately sensitive to root cohesion, and insensitive to stiffness or damping of the rooted soil. Plant species possessing deep and extensive root systems are therefore recommended for seismic stabilisation rather than those with the strongest roots. For modelling purposes, it is sufficient to be able to quantify only the strength of the rooted soil and its area of influence. The magnitude of improvement from vegetation in terms of decreasing seismic permanent slip was also found to be insensitive to the construction method used (i.e. compacted/uncompacted embankment or cutting) for drained granular slopes.

The present study aimed to identify novel diagnostic differentially expressed microRNAs (miRNAs/miRs) in order to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying hepatocellular carcinoma. The expression data of miRNA and mRNA were downloaded for differential expression analysis. Optimal diagnostic differentially expressed miRNA biomarkers were identified via a random forest algorithm. Classification models were established to distinguish patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and normal individuals. A regulatory network between optimal diagnostic differentially expressed miRNA and differentially expressed mRNAs was then constructed. The {"type":"entrez-geo","attrs":{"text":"GSE63046","term_id":"63046"}}GSE63046 dataset and in vitro experiments were used to validate the expression of the optimal diagnostic differentially expressed miRNAs identified. In addition, diagnostic and prognostic analyses of optimal diagnostic differentially expressed miRNAs were performed. In total, 14 differentially expressed miRNAs (all upregulated) and 2,982 differentially expressed mRNAs (1,989 upregulated and 993 downregulated) were identified. hsa-miR-10b-5p, hsa-miR-10b-3p, hsa-miR-224-5p, hsa-miR-183-5p and hsa-miR-182-5p were considered as the optimal diagnostic biomarkers for hepatocellular carcinoma. The mRNAs targeted by these five miRNAs included secreted frizzled related protein 1 (SFRP1), endothelin receptor type B (EDNRB), nuclear receptor subfamily 4 group A member 3 (NR4A3), four and a half LIM domains 2 (FHL2), NK3 homeobox 1 (NKX3-1), interleukin 6 signal transducer (IL6ST) and forkhead box O1 (FOXO1). ‘Bile acid biosynthesis and cholesterol’ was the most enriched signaling pathways of these target mRNAs. The expression validation of the five miRNAs was consistent with the present bioinformatics analysis. Notably, hsa-miR-10b-5p and hsa-miR-10b-3p had a significant prognosis value for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. In conclusion, the five differentially expressed miRNAs may be considered as diagnostic biomarkers for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. In addition, the differential expression levels of the targets of these five mRNAs, including SFRP1, EDNRB, NR4A3, FHL2, NKX3−1, IL6ST and FOXO1, may be involved in hepatocellular carcinoma tumorigenesis.

Plant roots can help to stabilise riverbanks and slopes by providing additional mechanical reinforcement through tensioning of root material. This problem has typically been studied at the ultimate limit state, focussing on quantifying the peak root-reinforced soil strength. Existing models however rarely account for the gradual mobilisation of root-reinforcement associated with increasing soil displacements. Understanding these deformations is important when deformation tolerances are low, for example when constructing infrastructure embankments, or when deformations may serve as an early warning signal for slope failure.Several new models to quantify mechanical reinforcement were developed, with varying levels of complexity. At the most basic level, fibre bundle model theory was combined with early pioneering work by Wu and Waldron to form a new fibre bundle approach that remains simple to use yet respects the physics of soil and root deformation. A second and more comprehensive analytical model was developed that can calculate reinforcements as a function of increasing soil shear displacement. This model includes key parameters such as the elasto-plastic biomechanical root behaviour, three-dimensional root orientations, root slippage and changes in the geometry of the localised shear zone in the soil. A third model comprises a full set of constitutive stress-strain relationships for rooted soil that can be used in numerical finite-element simulations. In this framework, the rooted soil is treated as a single, composite material in which the soil and root phase can each be assigned their own unique material behaviour. The composite approach simplifies model parameterisation by using independently measurable root and soil parameters, and is also powerful enough to investigate the complicated interaction between stresses and deformations in the soil skeleton and in the roots.These models all provided good predictions of experimentally measured root reinforcements in direct shear tests. They will be useful tools both for the engineering industry, in terms of rapid quantification of root reinforcement, as well as for directing future research into the drivers of mechanical root-reinforcement.

Background: The unprecedented disruption brought about by the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had produced tremendous influence on the practice of pharmacy. Sufficient knowledge of pharmacists was needed to deal with the epidemic situation; however, outbreak also aggravated psychological distress among health-care professionals. Therefore, this study aimed to determine knowledge about the pandemic and related factors, prevalence and factors associated with psychological distress among hospital pharmacists of Xinjiang Province, China. Methods: An anonymous online questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was conducted by means of WeChat, a popular social media platform in China, February 23-27, 2020, during the COVID-19 outbreak. The survey questionnaire consisted of 4 parts, including informed consent section, demographic section, knowledge about COVID-19, and assessment of overall mental health through World Health Organization’s Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20). A score of 8 or above on SRQ-20 was used as cutoff to classify the participant as in psychological distress. SRQ-20 score and related knowledge score were used as dependent variables, demographic characteristics (such as gender, age, monthly income, etc.) were used as independent variables, and univariate binary logistic regression was used to screen out the variables with P < 0.05. Then, the filtered variables were used as independent variables, and multivariate logistic regression models were used to analyze associations with sufficient knowledge of COVID-19 and psychological distress. Results: A total of 365 pharmacists participated in the survey, fewer than half (35.1%; n = 128) of pharmacists attained a score of 6 or greater (out of 10) in overall disease knowledge, and most were able to select effective disinfectants and isolation or discharge criteria. In the multivariable model, age ages 31-40 (odds ratio [OR] = 3.25; P < 0.05), ages 41-50 (OR = 2.96; P < 0.05) versus >50 (referent); primary place of practice in hospitals: drug supply (OR = 4.00; P < 0.01), inpatient pharmacy (OR = 2.06, P < 0.01), clinical pharmacy (OR = 2.17, P < 0.05) versus outpatient pharmacy (referent); monthly income Renminbi (RMB, China’s legal currency) 5000-10,000 (OR = 1.77; P < 0.05) versus < 5000 (referent); contact with COVID-19 patients or suspected cases (OR = 2.27; P < 0.01); access to COVID-19 knowledge remote work+ on-site work (OR = 6.07; P < 0.05), single on-site work (OR = 6.90; P < 0.01) versus remote work (referent) were related to better knowledge of COVID-19. Research found that 18.4% of pharmacists surveyed met the SRQ-20 threshold for distress. Self-reported history of mental illness (OR = 3.56; P < 0.05) and working and living in hospital versus delay in work resumption (OR = 2.87; P < 0.01) were found to be risk factors of psychological distress. Conclusions: Further training of COVID-19 knowledge was required for pharmacists. As specific pharmacist groups were prone to psychological distress, it was important for individual hospitals and government to consider and identify pharmacists’ needs and take steps to meet their needs with regard to pandemic and other work-related distress.

Large low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations provide low-latency and high-bandwidth Internet connectivity at the global scale. One major challenge is to handle frequent satellite handovers. Named Data Networking (NDN) adopts a pull-based communication model, which allows users to retrieve data that fail to come back because of satellite handovers by retransmitting the corresponding requests, hence simplifying mobility management when retrieving data. However, we find that relying on such retransmissions alone can be highly inefficient in typical LEO satellite constellations. Specifically, typical inter-satellite topologies and satellite handover strategies may produce bad cases for retransmissions, generating a significant amount of additional traffic. Motivated by this observation, this paper attempts to consolidate NDN's advantage in mobility management with the Data Recovery Link Service (DRLS), a shim layer service operating between the network and link layer in the NDN protocol stack. DRLS hides recurring satellite handovers from forwarding by recovering data from the previously connected satellite via alternative paths, thus ensuring the bidirectional request-response exchange of NDN without retransmitting requests. A prototype of DRLS is implemented in the reference NDN software forwarder and evaluated through simulations. Results prove the efficacy of the proposed mechanism at reducing the overall traffic volume.

Large low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are intended to provide global low-latency high-bandwidth Internet connectivity. Due to their large scale and high mobility nature, networking is a big challenge. In this paper, we investigate applying Named Data Networking (NDN) to this scenario. Specifically, we discuss that NDN's architectural benefits, such as adaptive forwarding, in-network caching, off-the-grid communication, data mule service, in-network/edge computing, mobility support, and data-centric security, make it a promising candidate. Moreover, we focus on studying NDN's consumer mobility support. Specifically, NDN's in-network Interest retransmission can quickly react to satellite handovers. However, we make an observation that Interest routing paths before and after satellite handover may not overlap, hence underusing NDN's in-network caching. Therefore, we direct retransmitted Interests due to handovers to the previous connected satellite via forwarding hint. Simulation results show that the studied approaches can decently improve the consumers' performance and reduce the network traffic, achieving better consumer mobility support.

This paper presents a comparative study of three different classes of model for estimating the reinforcing effect of plant roots in soil, namely (i) fibre pull-out model, (ii) fibre break models (including Wu and Waldron’s Model (WWM) and the Fibre Bundle Model (FBM)) and (iii) beam bending or p-y models (specifically Beam on a Non-linear Winkler-Foundation (BNWF) models). Firstly, the prediction model of root reinforcement based on pull-out being the dominant mechanism for different potential slip plane depths was proposed. The resulting root reinforcement calculated were then compared with those derived from the other two types of models. The estimated rooted soil strength distributions were then incorporated within a fully dynamic, plane-strain continuum finite element model to assess the consequences of the selection of rooted soil strength model on the global seismic stability of a vegetated slope (assessed via accumulated slip during earthquake shaking). For the particular case considered in this paper (no roots were observed to have broken after shearing), root cohesion predicted by the pull-out model is much closer to that the BNWF model, but is largely over-predicted by the family of fibre break models. In terms of the effects on the stability of vegetated slopes, there exists a threshold value beyond which the position of the critical slip plane would bypass the rooted zones, rather than passing through them. Further increase of root cohesion beyond this value has minimal effect on the global slope behaviour. This implies that significantly over-predicted root cohesion from fibre break models when used to model roots with non-negligible bending stiffness may still provide a reasonable prediction of overall behaviour, so long as the critical failure mechanism is already bypassing the root-reinforced zones.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has had a major impact on global human health. During the spread of SARS-CoV-2, weakened host immunity and the use of vaccines with low efficacy may result in the development of more-virulent strains or strains with resistance to existing vaccines and antibodies. The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 mutant strains differs between regions, and this variation may have an impact on the effectiveness of vaccines. In this study, an epidemiological investigation of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was performed, and the VSV-ΔG-G* pseudovirus system was used to construct 12 spike protein epidemic mutants, D614G, A222V+D614G, B.1.1.7, S477N+D614G, P1162R+D614G+A222V, D839Y+D614G, L176F+D614G, B.1.1.7+L216F, B.1.1.7+M740V, B.1.258, B.1.258+L1063F, and B.1.258+N751Y. The mutant pseudoviruses were used to infect four susceptible cell lines (Huh7, hACE2-293T-293T, Vero, and LLC-MK2) and 14 cell lines overexpressing ACE2 from different species. Mutant strains did not show increased infectivity or cross-species transmission. Neutralization activity against these pseudoviruses was evaluated using mouse serum and 11 monoclonal antibodies. The neutralizing activity of immunized mouse serum was not significantly reduced with the mutant strains, but the mutant strains from Portugal could evade nine of the 11 monoclonal antibodies tested. Neutralization resistance was mainly caused by the mutations S477N, N439K, and N501Y in the spike-receptor binding domain. These findings emphasize the importance of SARS-CoV-2 mutation tracking in different regions for epidemic prevention and control. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00705-021-05327-0.

One unique architectural benefit of Named Data Networking (NDN) is adaptive forwarding, i.e., the forwarding plane is able to observe data retrieval performance of past Interests and use it to adjust forwarding decisions for future Interests. To be effective, adaptive forwarding assumes Interest Routing Locality, meaning that Interests sharing the same prefix are likely to follow a similar forwarding path within a short period of time. Therefore, past observations can provide insight into how forwarding will likely perform for the same prefix in the near future. Since Interests can have multiple common prefixes with different lengths, the real challenge is determining which prefix length should be used in adaptive forwarding to record path measurements - we refer to this as the Prefix Granularity Problem. The longer the common prefix is, the better Interest Routing Locality. However, finer grained-prefixes cover fewer Interests each and require a larger forwarding table. Existing adaptive forwarding designs use a static prefix length, which is known to encounter issues in the event of partial network failures. In this work, we propose to dynamically aggregate and de-aggregate name prefixes in the forwarding table in order to use the prefixes that are the most appropriate given current network situation. In addition, to reduce the overhead of adaptive forwarding, we propose mechanisms to minimize the use of longest prefix matching during the processing of Data packets. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed techniques can result in better forwarding decisions in the event of partial network failures with significantly reduced overhead.

Named Data Networking (NDN) changes the network communication paradigm from address-centric in TCP/IP to data-centric. This architectural change extends capabilities of the network's forwarding plane, enabling more efficient and adaptive data retrieval. However, it is unclear how to utilize forwarding behaviors, and reduce the deployment complexity of NDN at edge networks. In fact, to run NDN applications between just two nodes involves decent knowledge of the software forwarder (NFD) and non-trivial network configuration. This paper designs self-configured adaptive forwarding plane for NDN at edge networks, to improve data retrieval efficiency and minimize deployment complexity. The designed functionalities are implemented in NFD and tested on real devices. Results show that NFD is able to run out-of-the-box with different applications. More specifically, the new forwarding strategy is able to learn and utilize multiple faces and routes, and to better handle NACK and link failure, achieving good performance.

This paper presents an investigation into the influence of slope height on the role of vegetation to improve seismic slope stability. Dynamic centrifuge modelling was used to test six slope models with identical soil properties and model slope geometry within different centrifugal acceleration fields (10g and 30g, respectively) representing 1:10 and 1:30 scale slopes, that is, slopes of different height at prototype scale. A three-dimensional (3D) root cluster analogue representing a tap-root system, with root area ratio, root distribution and root length representative of a 1:10 and 1:30 scale tree root cluster (of rooting depth 1·5 m at prototype scale) was modelled using 3D printing techniques. A sequence of earthquake ground motions was applied to each model. The influences of filtering out low-frequency components of the earthquake motion, such as was necessitated at the lowest scaling factor owing to the practical limitations of the earthquake simulator, on dynamic amplification of motions within the slopes and the seismically induced slip, were first revealed. Subsequently, the effects of slope height on acceleration and deformation response of vegetated slopes were illustrated. It was found that the beneficial effects of roots on improving the seismic performance varied with the height of the slope. As an individual engineering technique for slope stabilisation, root reinforcement will not be such an effective solution for taller slopes, and complementary hard engineering methods (e.g. piles, retaining walls) will be necessary. For slopes of smaller heights (e.g. low-height embankments along transport infrastructure), however, vegetation appears to represent a highly effective method of reducing seismic slip.

This paper presents a simplified procedure for predicting the seismic slip of a vegetated slope. This is important for more precise estimation of the hazard associated with seismic landslip of naturally vegetated slopes, and also as a design tool for determining performance improvement when planting is to be used as a protective measure. The analysis procedure consists of two main components. Firstly, Discontinuity Layout Optimisation (DLO) analysis is used to determine the critical seismic slope failure mechanism and estimate the corresponding yield acceleration of a given slope. In DLO analysis, a modified rigid perfectly plastic (Mohr–Coulomb) model is employed to approximate small permanent deformations which may accrue in non-associative materials when subjected to ground motions with relatively low peak ground acceleration. The contribution of the vegetation to enhancing the yield acceleration is obtained via subtraction of the fallow slope yield acceleration. The second stage of the analysis incorporates the vegetation contribution to the slope's yield acceleration from DLO into modified limit equilibrium equations to further account for the geometric hardening of the slope under increasing soil movement. Thereby, the method can predict the permanent settlement at the crest of the slope via a slip-dependent Newmark sliding block approach. This procedure is validated against a series of centrifuge tests to be highly effective for both fallow and vegetated slopes and is subsequently used to provide further insights into the stabilising mechanisms controlling the seismic behaviour of vegetated slopes.

Aim (1) To understand the tree root-soil interaction under lateral and moment loading using a physical modelling technique; (2) To detect the possible factors (e.g. root architecture, water condition, and stress level) influencing a tree’s push-over behaviour; (3) To identify suitable scaling laws to use in physical modelling. Methods Two 1:20 scaled root models with different architectures (namely, deep and narrow, and shallow and wide) were reconstructed and 3D printed based on the field-surveyed root architecture data. Push-over tests were performed both in elevated-gravity (centrifuge 20-g) and normal-gravity (1-g) conditions. Results The shallow and wide model showed higher anchorage strength than the deep and narrow model. Regardless of the root architecture, the root anchorage strength measured from dry soil was higher than that from saturated soil. However, once the effective stress was the same, regardless of water conditions, the root anchorage strength would be the same. Conclusions The presence of water decreasing the soil effective stress and key lateral roots extending along the wind direction play a significant role on a tree’s push-over resistance. Centrifuge tests showed comparable results to the field pull-over measurements while 1-g model tests overestimated the root-soil interaction, which could be corrected for soil strength by using modified scaling laws.

A major challenge to potential ICN/NDN deployment is the requirement of application support, namely, applications need to be rewritten or modified in order to run on NDN networks and receive the full benefits. Using a proxy to translate between an application-level protocol and NDN offers a viable solution that balances between development cost and architectural benefits. In this paper, we study on the questions of how to facilitate and incentivize the development and deployment of such protocol translation proxies. We propose to enable existing applications to communicate "off the grid", i.e., using only local network connectivity without the global Internet, by translating between conventional clientserver protocols and NDN. This provides deployment incentives by enabling a useful feature with no or minimal changes to existing applications. By giving the experience of a few protocols, we hope to abstract out some common design patterns that can be reused in developing other application-level proxies. This paper reports our work on IMAP/NDN translation for local email access and XMPP/NDN translation for local group chat. Based on this work, we identify and discuss a number of common design issues including application-level framing, namespace design, application protocol semantics, multiparty synchronization, security and privacy, and real-world deployment challenges.

Geotechnical centrifuge modelling of vegetated slopes requires appropriately scaled plant roots. Recent studies have independently suggested that juvenile live plants or 3D printing to fabricate root analogues could potentially produce representative prototype model root systems. This paper presents a critical comparison of juvenile versus 3D printed approaches in terms of their representation of root mechanical properties, root morphology and distribution of the additional shear strength generated by the roots with depth. For the 3D printing technique, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) plastic material was used, while for live plants, three species (Willow, Gorse and Festulolium grass), corresponding to distinct plant group functional types (tree, shrub and grass), were considered. The tensile strength and Young’s modulus of the ‘roots’ were collected from uniaxial tension tests and shear strength data of rooted soil samples was collected in direct shear. The prototype root characteristics as modelled were then compared with published results for field grown species and the benefits and challenges of using these two modelling approaches is discussed. Finally, some recommendations on realistically modelling plant root systems in centrifuge tests are given.

Most of today's applications require an Internet connection to reach cloud servers essential for their functioning. However, in many scenarios, such connectivity is unavailable, such as when a user is in a remote location with no cellular coverage or during a natural disaster. In these situations, nearby devices can still connect to each other, and the applications running on each device can have data useful to each other; however, the applications are unable to exchange data directly between themselves. In this paper, we describe mechanisms to enable off-the- grid communication for existing applications, allowing them to directly exchange data between themselves. To achieve this goal, an application should be capable of discovering, fetching, and verifying data without the help of a server. We believe that Named Data Networking (NDN) can provide an application with these abilities. We utilize email access as a study case and propose mailSync, a framework to the goal of app-to-app communication for this application via NDN. Meanwhile, we identify the various differences between TCP/IP and NDN applications, and we generalize several steps to "NDNize" an existing application, including protocol translation, application layer framing, naming, data discovery and security management. We implemented a prototype of mailSync in Java on laptop and Android as a proof of concept.

Many natural and man-made slopes are planted with vegetation, and it is known that this can increase the stability of slopes under static conditions. There is anecdotal evidence that vegetated slopes also perform better than fallow slopes during earthquakes. However, the study of the dynamic behaviour of slopes planted with species having dichotomous (‘woody’) roots is relatively rare owing to the extreme expense and difficulty involved in conducting full-scale dynamic testing on shrubs and trees. In this paper, dynamic centrifuge testing and supporting numerical modelling have been conducted to study this problem. In the centrifuge modelling, ABS plastic rods are used to simulate repeatably the mechanical properties of real roots. The numerical modelling work consisted of two parts. First, a computationally-efficient beam-on-non-linear-Winkler-foundation (BNWF) model using existing p–y formulations from piling engineering was employed to produce a macro-element describing the individual root and soil interaction both pre- and post-failure. By adding contributions from the different root analogues of different diameters, smeared continuum properties were derived that could be included in a fully dynamic, plane-strain continuum, finite-element model in a straightforward way. The BNWF approach was validated against large direct shear tests having stress conditions simulating those in the centrifuge at different potential slip plane depths. The conversion to smeared properties for global time-history analysis of the slope was validated by comparing the continuum finite-element results with the centrifuge test data in terms of both the dynamic response and permanent deformations at the crest, and these demonstrated good agreement. Owing to the simplicity of the BNWF approach and its ability to consider variable root geometries and properties, along with variation of soil properties with depth, it is suggested that the validated approach described will be useful in linking individual root–soil interaction characteristics (root strength and stiffness, diameter variation, root spacing and so on) to global slope behaviour.

Homoploid hybrid speciation, the origin of a hybrid species without change in chromosome number, is currently considered to be a rare form of speciation. In the present study, we examined the phylogenetic origin of Hippophae gyantsensis, a diploid species occurring in the western Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Some of its morphological and molecular traits suggest a close relationship to H.rhamnoides ssp. yunnanensis while others indicate H.neurocarpa. We conducted phylogenetic analyses of sequence data of two maternally inherited chloroplast (cp) DNA fragments and the bi-parentally inherited nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) from 17 populations of H.gyantsensis, 15 populations of H.rhamnoides ssp. yunnanensis and 27 populations of H.neurocarpa across their distributional ranges, and modelled the niche differentiation of the three taxa. Multiple lines of evidence suggested that H.gyantsensis is a morphologically stable, genetically independent and ecologically distinct species. The inconsistent phylogenetic placements of the H.gyantsensis clade that comprised the dominant cpDNA haplotypes and ITS ribotypes suggested a probable diploid hybrid origin from multiple crosses between H.rhamnoides ssp. yunnanensis and H.neurocarpa. This tentative hypothesis is more parsimonious than alternative explanations according to the data available, although more evidence based on further testing is needed.

This paper studies the group consensus problem of second-order multi-agent systems (MASs) with time delays. First, by state transformation method, the group consensus problem of multi-agent systems can be equivalently transformed into the asymptotical stability of a time-delay system. Then, by Lyapunov first method and Hopf bifurcation theory, respectively, we aim to find the upper bound of time delay τ ⁎ such that the multi-agent systems can achieve group consensus for τ ∈ [ 0 , τ ⁎ ) . Finally, simulation examples are given to show the effectiveness of our theoretical analysis.

This paper reviews the study of wind induced vibration of transmission power tower-line system. Each fields of research of transmission power tower-line system —analysis model, dynamic characteristic, wind response and vibration control —are systematically introduced. the problem that exist in this stage and the development trend are summarized in the conclusions.

The impacts of wind disturbance on voltage regulation and frequency regulation of power system were studied. The opinion that the regulation of power flow on the tie lines between the grids constrains the integrated capacity of wind power was put forward. Based on the real condition of Inner Mongolia power grid, an engineering practical method was put forward to calculate the integrated capacity of wind power under this constraint. The relationship between wind power and spinning reserve and the impacts of other related factors on the capacity of wind power were studied as well. The impact of wind disturbance on voltage stability where the wind farms are located was studied.

With the advent of the era of knowledge economy, Chinese power enterprises realize that intellectual property is becoming an important intangible asset. How to optimize the management organizational structure of intellectual property right has received increasing attention. This article analyzes the present situation of Chinese power enterprises, sums up the characteristics of advanced enterprises’ management organization structure, and provides an idea of optimization.

In order to meet the need of production and promote the smelting efficiency of converter, Pangang Vanadium-extracting&Steel Making Plant optimized oxygen lance nozzle according to the situation of primary 120t converter semi-steel making and have inspected new oxygen lances smelting effect in industrial test. The test shows that the average oxygen blowing intensity raised 0.19m3/t·min with optimized nozzle, shortened oxygen blowing time by 56s,total iron in final slag reduced 0.7%, dephosphorizing rate rose to 82.10% from 79.06%, which developed a good result.

In Named Data Networking (NDN) content consumers request data by names instead of sending requests to specific destination addresses. This fits shared media particularly well for benefits such as native multicast, mobility support, and fault tolerance. However, since current network interface cards only filter packets based on destination addresses, all NDN packets have to be delivered to software for name-based filtering, resulting in significant CPU overhead. We propose NDN-NIC, a network interface card that filters packets based on their content names, to minimize the CPU overhead while running NDN over shared media. This paper tackles NDN-NIC's main research challenge: using the limited amount of on-chip memory (in tens of kilobytes) to support packet filtering based on a large number of rulesets (in hundreds of thousands). We use Bloom filters to store various name tables on NDN-NIC, and design a number of mechanisms to further adjust the name prefixes that go into the Bloom filters, minimizing false positives under given memory limit. Using traffic traces collected from a department network, simulations show that NDN-NIC with 16KB of memory can filter out 96.30% of all received packets and reduce the main CPU usage by 95.92%.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a vision for interconnecting all of the world's "things" -- from vehicles to diet scales, smart homes and electrical grids -- through a common set of networking technologies. Realizing this vision using a host-to-host communication paradigm, such as that of the Internet Protocol (IP), is challenging in the context of highly heterogeneous, constrained devices that connect intermittently to one or more networks, often using multiple interfaces, communicate within various security regimes, and require both local and global communication capability. Using IP and similar protocols as the narrow waist of interoperability for IoT requires managing data exchange and security in terms that are largely orthogonal to application semantics, while simultaneously needing to minimize resource usage. This paper explores how Named Data Networking (NDN), a proposed future Internet architecture, addresses the root causes of these challenges and can help achieve the IoT vision in a more secure, straightforward, and innovation-friendly manner. NDN's data-centric communication model aligns network and application semantics, enabling developers to work with "things" and their data directly, and for IoT networks to be deployed and configured easily. To substantiate the high-level discussion, we give examples of ongoing design and implementation work in IoT over NDN and compare the architecture to well-known existing protocols and frameworks. Finally, we discuss short-and long-term scenarios for employing NDN to enable the Internet of Things.

The paper introduced the process of slag-forming by using corundum slag in converter. The results showed that Al2O3 in corundum can reduce converter slag melting point, in advance of slag melting. Using this material, slagging process can be ahead of schedule for 30~40 seconds and the whole process of slag melting is good, without splashing, getting drying and lance-sticking. The consumption of metallic material and lime is reduced, and it shortens the melting period.

In order to promote the fusion of lime in semi-steelmaking, fluorite was used in converter steelmaking to improve the melting slag ratio, while fluorite is very harmful. In order to make best use of the metallurgical slag and improve the scorification problems in semi-steelmaking, PANGGANG Research Institute developed a new type high alumina composite slag, and accomplished industrial application which also achieved good results. They found that this new type slag can improve the melting slag ratio greatly and decrease the times of “re-drying” and “slopping” throughout the converter steelmaking, the slag sate can be good controlled, at the same time the content radio of TFe decreased significantly.

Steelmaking Plant of PZH Steel improves the hitting ratio of independent converter model, by optimizing the terminal controlling model of molten steel, stabilizing the charging load in BOF, accelerating the turnover rapid of ladle, improving the quality of semi-steel into the furnace and optimizing the management of production organization. So the ratio of the direct-tapping is improved and increases to more than 50% now from 25% on average in 2011.

This paper firstly analyzed the desulfurization mechanism of magnesium compound desulfurizer and compound desulfurizer. It is thought that the compound desulfurizer which contains a certain amount of magnesium is better used than the one does not contain. There is also the statistical analysis about these two type desulfurizers in practical Producing. The practical application of contrast verifies the theoretical analysis.The magnesium compound desulfurizer has better performance used in the effect of desulfurization, the consumption of desulfurizer, iron loss, process-time, the loss of hot metal temperature and the lance life than compound desulfurizer.