Search

The aim of this study was to investigate the combined effect of n-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA, at an EPA:DHA ratio of 150:500) and phytosterol esters (PS) on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients. We conducted a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Ninety-six NAFLD subjects were randomly assigned to the following groups: the PS group (receiving 3·3 g/d PS); the FO group (receiving 450 mg EPA + 1500 mg DHA/d); the PS + FO combination group (receiving 3·3 g/d PS and 450 mg EPA + 1500 mg DHA/d) and the PO group (a placebo group). The baseline clinical characteristics of the four groups were similar. The primary outcome was liver:spleen attenuation ratio (L:S ratio). The percentage increase in liver–spleen attenuation (≤1) in the PS + FO group was 36 % (P = 0·083), higher than those in the other three groups (PS group, 11 %, P = 0·519; FO group, 18 %, P = 0·071; PO group, 15 %, P = 0·436). Compared with baseline, transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) was significantly decreased in the three study groups at the end of the trial (PS, P = 0·000; FO, P = 0·002; PS + FO, P = 0·001) and TNF-α was significantly decreased in the FO group (P = 0·036), PS + FO group (P = 0·005) and PO group (P = 0·032) at the end of the intervention. Notably, TGF-β was reduced significantly more in the PS + FO group than in the PO group (P = 0·032). The TAG and total cholesterol levels of the PS + FO group were reduced by 11·57 and 9·55 %, respectively. In conclusion, co-supplementation of PS and EPA + DHA could increase the effectiveness of treatment for hepatic steatosis.

Stretchable and flexible sensing arrays can facilitate human-computer interaction and biofeedback, such as robots, medical devices, and human-computer interface devices. To meet the demand on perceiving the temperature distributions on varied surface areas with low cost, in this paper, we designed a stretchable and flexible thermal sensing cushion (SFTSC) based on the two-dimensional thermistor array with multi-arch structure. The $8 \times 8$ negative temperature coefficient resistors each with two pins were used as the thermistors. For good stretchability, every conductive textile electrode (CTE) in the SFTSC was fabricated by folding a conductive textile strip with multi-arch structure in an insulated elastic textile substrate. For decreasing the number of the test wires, all thermistors in the SFTSC were arrayed in the shared row-column fashion by inserting two pins of every thermistor into its row CTE and its column CTE, respectively. The performances of the SFTSC were evaluated by temperature sensing experiments of a cup, human hand and sitting posture, and the experimental results showed that the SFTSC with good flexibility and good stretchability could perceive its surface temperature well even its surface area was stretched larger 2.25 times.

The aim of this study was to investigate the combined effect of n-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA, at an EPA:DHA ratio of 150:500) and phytosterol esters (PS) on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients. We conducted a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Ninety-six NAFLD subjects were randomly assigned to the following groups: the PS group (receiving 3·3 g/d PS); the FO group (receiving 450 mg EPA + 1500 mg DHA/d); the PS + FO combination group (receiving 3·3 g/d PS and 450 mg EPA + 1500 mg DHA/d) and the PO group (a placebo group). The baseline clinical characteristics of the four groups were similar. The primary outcome was liver:spleen attenuation ratio (L:S ratio). The percentage increase in liver-spleen attenuation (≤1) in the PS + FO group was 36 % (P = 0·083), higher than those in the other three groups (PS group, 11 %, P = 0·519; FO group, 18 %, P = 0·071; PO group, 15 %, P = 0·436). Compared with baseline, transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) was significantly decreased in the three study groups at the end of the trial (PS, P = 0·000; FO, P = 0·002; PS + FO, P = 0·001) and TNF-α was significantly decreased in the FO group (P = 0·036), PS + FO group (P = 0·005) and PO group (P = 0·032) at the end of the intervention. Notably, TGF-β was reduced significantly more in the PS + FO group than in the PO group (P = 0·032). The TAG and total cholesterol levels of the PS + FO group were reduced by 11·57 and 9·55 %, respectively. In conclusion, co-supplementation of PS and EPA + DHA could increase the effectiveness of treatment for hepatic steatosis.

Storage energy is an effective means and key technology for overcoming the intermittency and instability of photovoltaic (PV) power. In the early stages of the PV and energy storage (ES) industries, economic efficiency is highly dependent on industrial policies. This study analyzes the key points of policies on technical support, management drive, and financial support. Focusing on the efficiency of PV power and the power load of users, including households and enterprises, in Shanghai City over 24 h in 2016, this study analyzes the costs, benefits, internal rates of return, and investment recovery periods of distributed PV (DPV) and ES systems in the current policy context. This study also discusses the influences of various policy variables, including the ES battery capacity, the peak-valley price ratio, feed-in tariffs for DPV, and the ratio of grid-connected surplus PV power, on economic efficiency. The results show that in China's current policy context, both household and enterprise users of PV power would gain some economic benefits if PV systems were fitted with aqueous sodium-ion batteries of an appropriate capacity. Finally, this study offers some additional government policy suggestions.

In the readout circuits of the two-dimensional (2-D) resistive sensor arrays, various auxiliary electrical components were used to reduce their crosstalk errors but resulted in increased circuit complexity. Readout circuits with low-complexity structures were necessary for wearable electronic applications. With only several resistors and a microcontroller, readout circuit based on resistance matrix approach (RMA) achieved low complexity but suffered from small resistance range and large measurement error caused by the output ports’ internal resistances of the microcontroller. For suppressing those negative effects, we firstly proposed an improved resistance matrix approach (IRMA) by additionally sampling the voltages on all driving row electrodes in the RMA. Then the effects of the output ports’ internal resistances and the analog-to-digital converter’s accuracy for the RMA and the IRMA were simulated respectively with NI Multisim 12. Moreover, a prototype readout circuit based on the IRMA was designed and tested in actual experiments. The experimental results demonstrated that the IRMA, though it required more sampling channels and more computations, could be used in those applications needing low complexity, small measurement error and wide resistance range.

In 2014, China proposed medium and long-term low carbon development goals in China-U.S. Joint Statement on Climate Change that the emission of carbon dioxide would reach its peak and the proportion of non-fossil energy accounted for the primary energy consumption would increase to 20% in 2030. In order to achieve these goals, the unified carbon emission trading system should be put into effect by 2017, the implementation of the unified carbon emission trading system depends on the effectiveness of the current carbon trading market in China. On the basis of the effective market theory and fair game model, the unit root test and the run test are developed to analyze the carbon emission market of four representative cities in China. The results show that (1) the carbon trading market in China has only achieved weak efficiency, while the semi strong efficiency and the strong efficiency have not been reached; (2) with the expansion of the market scale, the increase of trading volume, the carbon trading market would converge from the state of inefficiency to weak form efficiency gradually, and the carbon trading market in China shows signs of restoring market efficiency.

Based on an analysis of 9 solar cell enterprises from 2008 to 2014, this paper examined the Chinese solar cell industry's market structure and performance. The empirical results reveal that China's photovoltaic (PV) cell market supports the X-efficiency structure hypothesis and that enterprises with higher levels of production technology and management earn higher profits. However, market concentration, market share, and scale efficiency are not significantly related to corporate performance. In addition, reasonable and effective control of the debt-to-assets ratio of such enterprises is conducive to revenue improvement. Based on these conclusions, this paper offers suggestions on how to improve the performance of the PV cell industry from the perspectives of enterprise and government. The research results have substantial significance for the promotion of enterprise reform and the optimization of industrial resource allocation.

Most of the existing biomass power plant location models and supply chain designs are developed only for the minimization of logistics cost, having neglected the pollutant emissions during biomass feedstock transportation. How to achieve a win-win situation between the two for optimal power plant locations has become a main research direction. This paper, integrating the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, develops a bi-objective 0–1 integer programming model for optimal locations and corresponding feedstock supply chain designs of biomass power plants. Having made improvements to the existing location models, this model is developed basing on the relevant research data of Chinese biomass power generation. A numerical example analysis is done in order to validate the model and to highlight the practicality and effectiveness. It is expected that this model may provide scientific guidance for biomass power plant siting and improve their environmental performance while still remaining economically competitive.

Emissions trading scheme (ETS) is one of the effective measures to realize energy conservation and emission reduction. In order to set up a nationwide carbon emissions trading mechanism, seven ETS pilots have been launched in China. Firstly, based on empirical investigation and research of seven pilots, this paper analyzed the market efficiency of ETS pilots from four aspects: carbon price, trading volume, market liquidity, and information transparency. The result showed that the market efficiency of ETS pilots is not satisfactory in spite of the fact that system designs of ETS have achieved preliminary result. Then, the reason for low market efficiency of ETS pilots was discussed from some factors such as institutional arrangements, market participants, the supply and demand, etc. Finally, this paper puts forward some policy suggestions to improve the market efficiency of China׳s carbon trading market.

In this work, a nonlinear adaptive control strategy based on deadzone compensation is proposed for Hammerstein nonlinear systems containing input deadzone. The proposed controller is consisted of a recursive estimator and a deadzone compensating control law. By modeling the input deadzone as a combination of a symmetric deadzone and a disturbance term, the parameterization model is introduced. Then the recursive estimator is presented to update the model parameters. Based on the modified certainty equivalence principle, the deadzone compensating control law is derived. The simulation results in a wind tunnel simulation platform are presented. All the signals are bounded in the closed-loop system, and the comparison has verified the merits of the proposed controller.

In recent years, Chinese Government paid more attention to the exploitation of offshore wind power, and it became an important trend in the development of wind power industry. However, the development of offshore wind power in China was still in the initial stage. Compared with land-based wind power, the development of off-shore wind power had not only weaknesses and uncertainties, but also strengths and opportunities. In order to research the development of offshore wind power, this paper summarized the aspects on policy, market, technology and development planning of offshore wind power in China, and then adopted SWOT method to analyze the influencing factors, which impact on the development of China's offshore wind power. At last, this article analyzed the internal and external factors that affect the golden period of offshore wind power development, and drew a conclusion that the golden period of offshore wind power in China will come in the future, and most likely around 2020.

The recent rapid development of distributed PV (photovoltaic) industry in China closely ties to the relevant policies support. This paper reviews some main points of relevant policies including financial support, technology innovation and management improvement. Scenario analysis both in residential sectors and industrial and commercial sectors are taken into account. We calculate IRR (internal rate of return) and static payback period of a specific distributed PV system in China's five cities located in different resource areas. In order to provide a realistic reference for investors, the historical data from real projects are used to calculate the generating capacity. The impacts of relevant policy variables such as subsidies, benchmark price, electricity price and tax on economic performance of distributed PV system are discussed. The results show that distributed PV system with high generation efficiency has produced good economic benefit in both two scenarios under China's current policies. The current policy instruments on distributed PV industry are efficient. At the end of the paper, policy recommendations are offered as references for the government.

China׳s wind power industry experienced rapid growth before 2009. However, the growing rate slowed down and the problem of wind curtailment was serious recent years. This paper focuses on the analysis of the turning point of China׳s wind power industry combing with life circle theory. With a panoramic view of status quo, based on the resource endowment, capacity development and future trends, we draw the following conclusions: (1) China׳s potential wind power reserves are still rich and the development of wind power industry will sustain growth for some period in the future. (2) As for market structure aspect, oligopolistic characteristic of China׳s wind power market is still obvious. The market share of China׳s wind power generation is not very high enough in the total generation market. (3) Turning point of China׳s wind power industry has not come yet and the slowing down of development speed at present is mainly caused by inappropriate government intervention. It is estimated the turning point of wind power industry will come around 2020.

Influenced by the international environment, price of photovoltaic (PV) products has continued to drop in recent years. The production enthusiasm of manufacturers was affected, and the market was in depression at once. To realize the expansion of domestic market, China has implemented many incentives since early 2009. This paper reviews the present status and development trend of the Chinese PV industry. It focuses on the turning point problem and draws the conclusions: First, there are still some obstacles to overcome, the key ones are the too low PV product price, industry overcapacity, unbalanced industrial demand and supply, cutbacks in foreign PV market and uncompetitive technologies. Second, the turning point of PV industry in China will come in the future if the problems in PV industry can be solved and the large-scale of the industry can be achieved. Third, the Chinese government is gradually clearing up the obstacles of the development of PV industry, and the turning point is on the way, maybe not later than 2020. At the end of the paper, suggestions are offered as references for the government.

With the increasing scarcity of fossil fuel resources, the demand for greenhouse gas reduction and environmental protection all over the world, developing bioenergy becomes one of the most important energy strategies. This paper introduces the current development situation of biomass power industry, discusses the dilemmas of this industry’s development in a perspective of industry chain and gives recommendations. Then it proposes the development strategy including development objectives, technology roadmap, and the related policy guarantee measures for the biomass power industry. Finally, we get the conclusion that in the future, with scientific and technological progress, China’s biomass power industry will be rapidly developed with a bright prospect, and the cost will be further reduced.

At present, countries around the world set off a round of upsurge of exploitation and utilization of geothermal energy. As one of renewable energy resources, geothermal energy has the advantages of great resource potential, low carbon emissions, widespread distribution, easy development and so on. China׳s geothermal resources are enormous and have huge potential for exploitation. However, due to the lack of reasonable industry planning and policies support, and lag of technologies, the industrial development speed and scale are far behind the wind, solar and biomass energy. The 12th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People׳s Republic of China explicitly issues that in future China will vigorously develop the geothermal energy and provide more policy support for geothermal industry development from medium to longer term. This paper describes China׳s geothermal resource potential and status quo of geothermal industry, and analyzes the obstacles of the industry development. Then, it accordingly puts forward the development pattern of China׳s geothermal industry and gives out related countermeasures. At last, it outlines the prospects in this field.

This paper focuses on the relationship between bioenergy industry and energy security. The situation of fuel ethanol, biodiesel, biogas and biomass power industry of China in recent years has been introduced comprehensively. With a quick look at the existing bioenergy industrial development policies, combined with China's energy security situation, we drew the following conclusions: (1) the bioenergy industry is an effective way to achieve China's energy security; (2) as for energy substitution from cost aspect, China has already had the ability to make bioenergy substitute for fossil fuels; (3) from technical aspect, however, China's bioenergy technologies are not mature, this means that in a very long period of time, biomass and fossil energy will jointly develop in a mutually beneficial way.

In recent years, many sensors made of hard materials have been designed to detect human body movements in physical exercises. However, hard materials usually cause extra dyskinesia for body movements. To detect human limb motion with less dyskinesia in physical exercise, a novel flexible capacitive angle sensor (NFCAS) based on a conductive textile was designed in this paper. The NFCAS has two non-parallel plates, namely, an exciting plate and a sensing plate, which can be fixed onto the inner forearm and the inner upper arm. Thus, the angle between the two plates of the NFCAS can be used to represent the angle of medial elbow, and its variation can lead to changes in the sensor&rsquo, s capacitance at the same time. A push-ups experiment and pull-ups experiment were conducted to evaluate the designed NFCAS&rsquo, s performance. Experimental results showed that the NFCAS could detect the main processes of push-ups and pull-ups. Besides high measurement precision, the NFCAS is also soft, thin, lightweight, and easily made. Therefore, it can be widely applied for detecting human limb motion with less dyskinesia in physical exercises.

Pituitary carcinomas are rare malignant neoplasms with diagnostic and management challenges. Patients with pituitary carcinomas have extremely poor outcomes. In this report, the authors describe two cases of pituitary carcinomas with intraspinal metastasis (Case 1: 42-year-old man with a history of pituitary adenoma 16 years ago developed an intraspinal lesion at C4-C5; Case 2: 26-year-old women with a history of growth hormone-producing pituitary adenoma 9 years ago developed intraspinal lesion in the sacral canal). Both patients underwent spine surgery. The intraspinal lesions were confirmed as metastatic pituitary carcinomas based on the histomorphology and immunohistochemical stains. The authors reviewed the literature for the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of intraspinal metastasis from pituitary carcinomas.

With the rapid development of wind power, the conventional power auxiliary services have not met the requirements of wind power grid-connected power generation in full. In order to relieve the grid-connected and integration issues of wind power, wind power was put forward to participate in ancillary ser-vices on the basis of related research. Aiming at the feasibility problem of wind power auxiliary service, the paper builded the evaluation index system for wind power aux- iliary services firstly. Secondly, the article constructed the evaluation model of wind power auxiliary services based on structural equation model (SEM), and researched the identification and applica- tion of the SEM of wind power auxiliary services. Finally, the conclusion was presented.

Keyword: Energy Internet; Renewable energy; Energy power system. Abstract. In order to promote the large-scale use of distributed renewable energy and improve en- ergy efficiency, many countries started to pay close attention to the development of energy Internet. Europe, the United States, Japan and other developed countries has made some breakthrough in the field of energy Internet construction. The paper mainly analyzed and summarized the development of energy Internet. Some successful projects of energy Internet in the developed countries are intro- duced. And then the paper summarized the status quo and development plan of China's energy In- ternet. Finally, gave some conclusions for the paper. We held that China draw experience from the development of energy Internet in developed countries and find the development road for the con- struction of energy Internet according to practice of the nation

In recent years, the growth rate of wind power in China installed capacity has tended to be sta-ble, and the competition among wind power equipment manufacturers has become increasingly fierce. In order to analyze the industrial performance of wind power in China, the paper summarized the status quo of China’s wind power, and then used the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to analyze the industrial performance of China’s wind power from 2010 to 2014. We found that: during the analysis period, the industrial performance of wind power equipment manufacturing was best in 2010. Due to fierce competition between wind turbines manufacturers, the industrial performance was in the declining trend in the next three years. By 2014, the performance increased again, but did not reach the best state. Besides, the technical efficiency has been better than scale efficiency. 1 INSTRUCTION With the adjustment of energy structure, the renewable energy, especially the wind power, was facing a historic opportunity for development in China. In recent years, wind power industry itself has been also in the state of constant adjustment. The scale of projects approval, equipment tendering and projects construction of the wind power all has bigger growth. Besides, the grid-connected and integration issues of China’s wind power were also alleviated, due to the construction of UHV grid and the implementation of interconnection policy and subsidies policy. Therefore, the installed capacity of wind power in China maintained a rapid growth. At present, the market concentration degree of wind power manufacturing industry in China has been in a downward trend, but it is still higher [Yuanxin Liu, 2015]. According to the new installed capacity situation, the domestic market shares of the top 20 wind turbine manufacturers were about 90%. Although the market demand of domestic wind power grew steadily, the competition between wind power manufacturers was still fierce, and the overcapacity problem of wind power industry was stall serious. Both fierce competition and overcapacity have important influence on the industrial efficiency, so it is significant to research on the industrial performance of China’s wind power. In recent years, large numbers of scholars researched the China’s wind power industry from different aspects, such as wind power price and policy [Ping Lu, 2013] [Ting-Ting Mi, 2012], development bottleneck [Zhao Dong, 2009] [Hua BAI, 2012], sustainable development [Zheng-ming WANG, 2008] [Weidong Shi, 2011]and wind power industry innovation [Yuanying CHI, 2008] [Jorrit Gosens, 2013]. The research literatures of China’s wind Power industry have been comprehensive. Based on the exiting research literatures, the paper adopted the DEA model to analyze the industrial performance of China’s wind power.

These This paper selects 455 manufacturing firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2007 to 2011 as study object, establishes a modified Cobb-Douglas production function, and empirically tests the cumulative effect of RD however, the promotion effect is not significant in 2011.

n/a

n/a

This paper deals with the problem of robust tracking control with adaptation mechanism to improve transient performance in time-response. A linear time-invariant system with time-varying ellipsoidal uncertainty is considered. The proposed controller affinely depends on the estimations of parameters, which are adjusted on-line according to the error between the state trajectory of the plant and that of target model. The application of this approach to the yaw control of a small-scale helicopter mounted on an experiment platform shows the effectiveness.

To evaluate the efficacy of third generation spinal instrumentation such as TSRH, CD and ISOLA for the treatment of adult scoliosis.Thirty-five adult scoliosis patients including adult idiopathic and degenerative scoliosis were all surgically treated with third generation instrumentation such as TSRH, CD and ISOLA from July 1999 to January 2003. Preoperative mean cobb angles of major curves of the frontal plane was 58.1 degrees (42 degrees -95 degrees ). The patients received anterior combined with posterior correction or single posterior procedure. Mean follow-up was 20 months (10 - 48 months). Preoperative and postoperative Cobb angles of the frontal plane and sagittal plane and distance between C(7) and CVSL were measured. We assessed the subjective efficacy by questionnaire.Clinical appearance of all patients improved significantly. Mean correction of major curves of the coronal plane was 53.2%. Mean lost of correction of the coronal plane in the last follow-up was 4.3 degrees , distance between the midline of C(7) and CVSL was corrected from 2.6 cm to 0.24 cm. Questionnaire in the follow-up showed that 89.3% patients were satisfied with operation results. Two cases occurred pneumatothorax and haematothorax. Three cases still complained about low back pain in 1 year after operation, among which 2 were adjacent degeneration and 1 was pseudarthrosis.Imageology assessment and patients self-evaluation shows that the third generation instrumentation could gain good correction and trunk balance in the treatment for adult scoliosis. And patients are more satisfied and have less complications.