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This paper presents an analysis of the transient contact solutions of wheel-rail frictional rolling impacts calculated by an explicit finite element model of the wheel-insulated rail joint (IRJ) dynamic interaction. The ability of the model to simulate the dynamic behavior of an IRJ has been validated against a comprehensive field measurement in a recent paper (Yang et al., 2018). In addition to the measured railhead geometry and bi-linear elastoplastic material model used in Yang et al. (2018), this study adopts a nominal railhead geometry and an elastic material model for the simulations to provide an overall understanding of the transient contact behavior of wheel-IRJ impacts. Each simulation calculates the evolution of the contact patch area, stress magnitude and direction, micro-slip distribution, and railhead nodal vibration velocity in the vicinity of the joint during the wheel-IRJ impacts. The simulations apply small computational and output time steps to capture the high-frequency dynamic effects at the wheel-IRJ impact contact. Regular wave patterns that indicate wave generation, propagation and reflection are produced by the simulations; this has rarely been reported in previous research. The simulated waves reflect continuum vibrations excited by wheel-rail frictional rolling and indicate that the simulated impact contact solutions are reliable.

Optimisation of manufacturing process parameters requires resource-intensive search in a high-dimensional parameter space. In some cases, physics-based simulations can replace actual experiments. But they are computationally expensive to evaluate. Surrogate-based optimisation uses a simplified model to guide the search for optimised parameter combinations, where the surrogate model is iteratively improved with new observations. This work applies surrogate-based optimisation to a composite textile draping process. Numerical experiments are conducted with a Finite Element (FE) simulation model. The surrogate model, a deep artificial neural network, is trained to predict the shear angle of more than 24,000 textile elements. Predicting detailed process results instead of a single performance scalar improves the model quality, as more relevant data from every experiment can be used for training. For the textile draping case, the approach is shown to reduce the number of resource-intensive FE simulations required to find optimised parameter configurations. It also improves on the best-known overall solution.

Titanium alloys have become attractive candidates for structural materials in aviation industry, benefited from their reliable mechanical properties. In the present investigation, dual laser beam bilateral synchronous welding experiments of Ti6Al4V alloy under various welding speeds were performed using optic fiber laser. Experimental results indicate that the heat affect zone has become the weakest region of the joints theoretically. Inappropriate welding speed lead to a severe coarsening of the equiaxed grains below the lower fusion zone, which is the main reason why the tensile strength of the construction decreased significantly. Additionally, the ultimate tensile strength of the T-joint under the welding speed of 22 mm/s has reached 808 MPa, exceeding 90% of the strength of the base metal. According to the fractographs, the T-joints adopted higher welding speeds have failed in the form of microporous aggregation fracture. In contrast to the others, it can be concluded that the fracture mode of the T-joint under the lowest welding speed is a mixed fracture composed of cleavage fracture and ductile fracture.

The microstructure and microtexture evolution of Ti–6Al–4V T-joints produced by dual laser beam bilateral synchronous welding (DLBSW) were investigated using the optical microscopy (OM) and electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) and correlated with the mechanical properties of the joint. We demonstrate important differences in temperature field, grain morphology, misorientation angles and texture intensity between the base material (BM), the skin-side heat-affected zone (SK-HAZ), the stringer-side heat-affected zone (ST-HAZ) and the weld seam (WS). Through in-depth crystallographic analysis, we demonstrate that the kernel average misorientation curve of the WS is steeper and the peak misorientation angle is larger, revealing that the WS has a lower geometrically necessary dislocations density and a smaller residual strain. Due to the different orientation of each a-phase colony at the interface of the two phases, it is not conducive to the deformation mode of dislocation slip, so a large number of twins are generated in the WS. Furthermore, the WS has a strong crystal preferential orientation and the maximum polar density of the pole figure is 17.05, which is significantly higher than the polar density of the base material. It is found that the gradient of microstructure variation in the narrow HAZ is higher than that in the WS, which leads to more heterogeneous properties in the HAZ compared to the weld. This research result is consistent with the phenomenon that all the fractures of the resultant T-joints occurred in the HAZ.

Reconstructing paleoelevation allows the temporal evolution of biogeochemical processes and hydroclimate regimes to be understood and quantified. A dual-isotope biomarker of clumped hydrogen and carbon isotopes of leaf wax n-alkanes was recently proposed in humid tropical forests, and it was proven to be superior to a single-isotope proxy that was previously reported. However, it remains unknown whether the dual-isotope biomarker is suitable in arid conditions. The present study investigated leaf wax n-alkane distribution, hydrogen (δ2Hwax) and carbon (δ13Cwax) isotopes in terrestrial plants along an arid mountainous transect. We found that the effects of seasonality on n-alkane distribution, δ2Hwax and δ13Cwax were minimal for all species (p > 0.05), and that species-specific δ2Hwax values remained almost unchanged for most species, in contrast to δ13Cwax values. Significant correlations between altitude and δ2Hwax values (R2 = 0.54, 0.58, and 0.75 for spring, summer, and autumn, respectively), instead of δ13Cwax values (R2 = 0.08, 0.43, and 0.12 with p = 0.24, 0.01, and 0.19 for spring, summer, and autumn, respectively), were observed, suggesting that δ2Hwax values, but not δ13Cwax values, can be reliably used as a proxy for reconstructing paleoelevation in arid conditions. Therefore, it will be necessary to identify other proxies to supplement δ2Hwax values under a dual-isotope approach in future research.

Some studies have demonstrated that leaf wax δDn-alkane values for a single species varied significantly with seasons. However, it is still not clear that the seasonality patterns of leaf wax δDn-alkane values in higher plants. Meanwhile, few efforts have been pursued to assess the effect of the light slopes (sunny vs. cloudy) on leaf wax δDn-alkane values. In this study, we systematically investigated plant wax δDn-alkane values and soil n-alkane δD values along different light slopes in different seasons (spring vs. autumn), as well as the relationship of n-alkane δD values between plant leaves and soil. We found that plant wax δDn-alkane values were D-enriched by ca. 20‰ in spring relative to autumn, and ca. 10‰ in the sunny slope than in the cloudy slope. Moreover, surface soil n-alkane δD values varied consistently with plant wax δDn-alkane values for different seasons and light slopes. More importantly, plant wax δDn-alkane values showed clear seasonal variations, but varied slightly with light slopes. The variations of plant wax δDn-alkane values can be recorded in soil n-alkane δDn-alkane values. In addition, we found that leaf wax δDn-alkane values in a majority of species differed significantly among woods, non-woods and grasses at a site. Therefore, we suggested a good choice to sample at the site dominated by woods when leaf wax δDn-alkane values are utilized as a proxy for the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment.

Using a regulatory change on the IPO lockup for institutional investors and a unique disclosure of institutional investor bidding information in China, we examine the impact of IPO lockup removal on IPO pricing. We document that the IPO lockup removal increases institutional investor bid price. The effect is stronger for sub-samples with less reputable underwriter and IPOs with high value uncertainty. The impact is channeled to a higher IPO offer price and a lower first day return. These results suggest that IPO lockup removal (IPO lockup) increases (decreases) IPO share valuation.

Isotope mass balance models have been widely applied for assessing the water balance of closed and open lake systems in remote regions with sparse monitoring gauges. The role of evaporation in determining the water balance of Qinghai Lake has been unclear in recent decades, when the lake level has continued to rise. In the current study, stable water isotopes (δ 18 O and δ 2 H) from precipitation, river water, and lake water were investigated and used to model the evaporation:inflow (E/I) ratio of Qinghai Lake between 2013 and 2014. The results revealed that the relationship between δ 18 O and δ 2 H in lake water (δ 2 H = 4.58δ 18 O − 1.4, R 2 = 0.836) differed from that in precipitation (δ 2 H = 8.17δ 18 O + 16.2, R 2 = 0.967). The δ 18 O and δ 2 H values in lake water with low mean deuterium excess values (− 7.23‰ ± 0.34‰) were more positive than those in precipitation and river water, implying that lake water had experienced stronger isotopic enrichment. Quantitative analysis using an isotope mass balance model showed that mean E/I ranged from 0.57 to 1.04 in Qinghai Lake during the study period. The interannual variability of E/I was mainly related to the changes in inflow water and isotopic compositions in atmospheric vapor. The changes in E/I indicated that both inflow and runoff have dominated the water balance of Qinghai Lake in recent years, partly explaining the recent increase in water level in the lake and the resulting expansion in its surface area. These results facilitate a better understanding of the current and future status of the water balance of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau and regional hydrological processes based on limited instrumental observations.

A new unsaturated fatty acid (

Five new compounds hostines A-E (1-5), together with eighteen known compounds (6-23), were obtained from the flowers of Hosta plantaginea (Lam.) Aschers, a traditional folk herbal medicine widely used in Mongolian. The structures of the undescribed compounds were determined by using detailed spectroscopic (1D/2D NMR) and HR-ESI-MS data analysis. The biological evaluation revealed that hostine C (3), hostine D (4), hostine E (5), stellarine (16), and phenethyl-O-β-d-glucopuranoside (19) possessed the significant anti-inflammatory activities, these compounds significantly inhibited the NO release of RAW 264.7 cells induced by LPS. The possible mechanism of NO inhibition of new bioactive compounds was also investigated using molecular docking, which revealed the interactions of bioactive compounds with the iNOS protein.

Rationale Linear matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOFMS) is widely used in analytical and biomedical applications. The use of delayed extraction increases the resolution, but the roughness of the matrix crystals and the misalignment of the target plate in the order of a few micrometers cause a substantial spread in the ion TOF values and a decrease in mass accuracy. Methods The method of mass spectra correction based on the correlation of matrix fragment peaks in MALDI mass spectra was used. Experiments were performed using the MALDI-TOF instrument CMI-1600. SIMION 8.1 and MATLAB were used for ion motion simulations. Data analysis was done using the home-built custom-developed software and MATLAB. Results It was shown that the peak position drift in the MALDI-TOF mass spectra depends linearly on the TOF in a wide mass range. While using the linear correction of the TOF scale, an increase in m/z accuracy of more than 10 times was achieved. The mass accuracy was limited by the resolution of the fast Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) used. Conclusions It is expected that the proposed method will significantly increase the dynamic range, since it becomes possible to sum up corrected individual mass spectra without a significant loss of resolution. Timescale adjusting can be used for both linear TOF instruments and reflector systems of various configurations.

A series of revegetation programs have been carried out since 1950s, and a large area of cropland has been converted to forestland and grassland through tree plantation and natural vegetation restoration. However, it is still inadequately addressed how plant revegetation changes the characteristics of soil-plant waters. In this study, we compared δ18O and δ2H values of different waters from precipitation, soil water, root water, and leaf water between different herbaceous plants (understory of the planted forestland and natural recovered grassland) in two neighboring catchments. There was a temporal consistence in δ18O and δ2H among different waters, showing that root water and leaf water could record well the signals of soil water and precipitation, followed by temperature change over month. A series of water line equations between δ18O and δ2H indicate that herbaceous plants have higher soil evaporation for grassland than understory of the forestland, instead of leaf transpiration. Moreover, our study found significant differences in δ18O and δ2H between root water and soil water, probably associated with isotopic fractionation during root water uptake, leaf surface water pools and ecohydrological separation. This study will be helpful to better understand the effect of plant revegetation programmes (planted forestland catchment versus natural grassland catchment) on ecohydrological processes on the Chinese Loess Plateau.

Interactions between the Yangtze River and Poyang Lake are undergoing rapid changes due to intensive human activities and ongoing climate change. This study investigates the spatiotemporal variations of isotopic compositions (δ2H and δ18O) in river and lake water to explore the river–lake interactions in combination with water level and discharge in Poyang Lake watershed. The results showed that river and lake water isotopes (δ2H and δ18O) exhibited highly temporal heterogeneity across seasons but their spatial differences were not remarkable, which is closely related with water sources from local precipitation and groundwater, and lake hydrology. The homogeneous patterns of lake water δ2H and δ18O indicated that Poyang Lake is a well-mixed lake in spatial scales. By contrast, the river (10.7‰) and lake (10.8‰) water d-excess and lc-excess (−0.6‰) were close to precipitation d-excess and lc-excess suggesting that precipitation is the main source for the lake and river. The slope and intercept of the river water line were slightly lower than those of the local meteoric water line and lake water line, which could be attributed to a greater evaporative enrichment in river water impacted by water flow regulation in the watershed. Interactions between Poyang Lake and Yangtze River vary seasonally, as evidently shown by the variations of water discharge and isotope compositions in river and lake water. The δ2H and δ18O of the Yangtze River water become more positive in the downstream zone than those in the upstream zone, indicating that the water from Poyang Lake has a great impact on downstream river water. This result can also be demonstrated by the efflux rate from the Poyang Lake to the Yangtze River, ranging from 17.9% to 67.9% across seasons except for the outlier rate in October resulted from the backflow of water from Yangtze River to the Poyang Lake. The complex lake–river interactions between Poyang Lake and Yangtze River mainly resulted from the regulation of Three Gorges Dam and water discharge from Poyang Lake watershed. These findings of the complex lake–river interactions will help to improve understanding of the hydrological processes and transport of pollutants and solutes around the confluence zone of the Yangtze River and Poyang Lake.

The growing demand on the performance of transparent computing systems requires good cache schemes in order to overcome the prolonged network latency. However, evaluating cache schemes, especially measuring the performance of a transparent computing system with particular cache scheme remains challenging. This is because neither method is available to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the cache schemes in transparent computing, nor the simulator has been developed to measure the system performance under particular cache schemes. In this paper, we propose TranSim, a full-featured, high-performance simulation framework for transparent computing. For the first time, TranSim introduces a methodology to evaluate the performance of multi-level cache hierarchies in transparent computing under different cache configurations and cache replacement policies. TranSim can also demonstrate the behavior and performance of the entire transparent computing system rather than only the cache miss/hit rate. Using TranSim, the system designer can quickly evaluate the effectiveness of cache schemes along with the system performance. We construct several experiments to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of TranSim. Results show that TranSim can accurately output the performance of both the cache hierarchy and the entire transparent computing system.

The coplanar double lap-joint is the weld type mainly used for the connection of skin and stringer. The welding deformation in the component will reduce fabrication accuracy and bearing capacity and the excessive welding deformation can even render the product unusable. In the present work, a thermal-elastic-plastic finite element model is developed to investigate the characteristics of welding deformation in the coplanar double lap-joint. The experiment is carried out to verify the accuracy of simulated results. The results of the simulation shows a good agreement with the experimental measurements. The influence of welding direction on welding deformation is studied by finite element analysis. Moreover the mechanism of deformation mode in the coplanar double lap-joint is discussed. The results show that the change of welding direction has different effects on the distribution of residual deformation. Through the analysis of simulation results, the deformation mode of the joint is similar to a concave-convex mode.

In order to solve the problems of low efficiency and variety of results in preprocessing massive railway catenary geometric inspection data by manual interaction, this paper proposes an automatic preprocessing method for railway catenary geometric inspection data. A mileage jump point identification method is proposed based on the modified threshold variation algorithm; a data outlier removal method is proposed based on the repeatability inspection algorithm; a mileage automatic calibration method is proposed based on the principle of maximizing data similarity; a calibration evaluation method is proposed based on the principle of minimizing relative error. The above mentioned automatic preprocessing methods are used to preprocess the field test data. The results show that the method can not only identify the abnormal jump points in the inspection data, but also achieve efficient mileage calibration and calibration evaluation functions, which improves the efficiency of preprocessing railway catenary geometric inspection data.

Studies focused on field measurements have been conducted to investigate how leaf wax n-alkane δ13C values vary among photosynthetic pathways (C3 vs. C4) or plant types (dicots, monocots, gymnosperms, magnoliids), and how n-alkane δ13C values respond to climate factors (precipitation, temperature). However, a systematic global analysis of plant n-alkane δ13C values with respect to major plant groups is still lacking, and the corresponding mechanism remains unknown. In this study, we compiled globally published n-alkanes δ13C data in modern plants. We find significantly negative correlations between δ13Cwt values and mean annual precipitation (MAP) for C3 plants (R2 = 0.30; p

Soil water plays a critical role in determining plant survival and growth globally, especially in water-limited regions. This study explores water-use characteristics of Robinia pseudoacacia during the transition period between the dry and rainy seasons in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). A stable isotope technique (δ18O and δD) and two complementary approaches (i.e., the direct inference method and the MixSIAR model) were used to distinguish water source changes during this transition period. Based on δ18O and δD distribution patterns, we subdivided a 500 cm soil profile into four potential water sources: shallow (0–40 cm), intermediate-shallow (40–120 cm), intermediate (120–200 cm) and deep (200–500 cm). During the transition period, R. pseudoacacia exhibited different water uptake patterns. In April 26.2% and 48.4% of water uptake derived from the 40 to 120 and 200 to 500 cm soil profile layers; in May, 21.5%, 24.5% and 37.4% of water was absorbed from the 0 to 40, 40 to 120 and 200 to 500 cm soil profile layers. In June and July, 51.6% and 53.6% of the water mainly derived from the 0 to 120 cm soil profile layer, respectively. During the dry season (April), the trend in water uptake shifted to the deep soil layer, potentially a key period for the onset of soil desiccation in this soil layer. As precipitation increased, the proportion of water uptake from the shallow and intermediate-shallow soil layers increased. Because water-use pattern characteristics could provide important information on the development of the dried soil layer (DSL), the stable isotope technique could help reveal the water sources used by trees while also offering insight into water movement mechanisms of local ecosystems. Given its usefulness, the application of the stable isotope technique should be expanded in analyzing practical ecohydrological issues that occur in deep soils in the future.

Based on the principle that the axle-box vertical acceleration can effectively characterize the high-frequency impact feature between the wheel and rail caused by the short-wave track irregularity, we adopt a new criterion named track impact index calculated from filtered measured axle-box vertical acceleration of comprehensive inspection train to evaluate the status of the short-wave track irregularity of high-speed railway insulated joint. The results show that this new method can diagnose short wave track diseases accurately. Furthermore, according to the comparison, the fast algorithm for mobile RMS calculation, designed by mining the recursive relationship between adjacent two mobile RMS, can effectively solve the problem that the computation amount by wavelet method is too 1arge, which meets the requirements for on line engineering application.

A new mileage deviation correction method for track dynamic inspection data of high-speed comprehensive inspection train using data fusion technology was proposed and investigated to improve the accuracy of mileage information and the efficiency of deviation correction method. The mileage deviation of track geometric inspection data was corrected using inspected curvature information combined with actual mileage and curvature information. The mileage deviation of axle box acceleration inspection data was corrected using mileage-corrected track geometric inspection data combined with uncorrected velocity information of axle box acceleration inspection data. A 5-points iteration method was proposed and investigated to improve the computational efficiency of mileage deviation correction. Computational and analytic result of measured data demonstrated that 5-points iteration method not only ensured the accuracy of mileage deviation correction, but also significantly saved the computation time for over 80%. Field verifying of actual wave corrugation case indicated that the corrected mileage information of track dynamic inspection data was very close to the actual information, the error being less than 10 m.

The continuing increase of cancer morbidity and death rate requires efficient therapeutic strategies. The traditional chemotherapy usually fails to treat cancer or prolong survival rate due to its toxicity to normal cells, side effects and lack of targeting capacity. In recent years, nanomaterials have shown great potentials to treat various cancers efficiently. Graphene-based nanomaterials, especially graphene oxide (GO) and reduced GO (rGO), have arisen as promising candidates for cancer therapy. Due to their unique physicochemical and optical properties including the extremely large surface area, modifiable active groups, great biocompatibility and strong photothermal effect, they can act either as tunable carriers or active agents for advanced chemotherapeutics delivery and cancer therapy. Therefore, combing the photothermal therapy, targeted drug delivery and chemotherapy would have great potentials for efficient cancer therapy. Herein, the comprehensive understandings of the physicochemical properties and various anti-cancer applications of GO and rGO as drug delivery systems or photothermal agents are described. Also, the concerns in using GO and rGO, such as the nano-protein interaction, and possible solutions are discussed.

Aiming at No. 18 high-speed turnout, a dynamic model of vehicle/turnout rigid-flexible coupling system has been established to analyze wheel/rail interaction when a train passed through turnout at different speeds. By Wigner-Ville distribution based on the time-frequency analysis, the axle-box acceleration (ABA) was further studied. Bending deformation of the flexible wheelset under axle load makes a small constant amplitude vibration of the wheel/rail force and the ABA. When a train passes through a turnout in the main and diverging routes, the long nose rail width around 0.04m and the curved switch rail width around 0.02m receive impacts from the wheel. It leads to the vertical high frequency ABA at around 300Hz which is close to the natural frequency of the wheelset and it's more likely to cause the wheelset compound vibration of symmetrical umbrella and the third order bending mode.

In order to study the influences of defective rail welding joints on wheel/rail interaction, a transient finite element model of a high-speed train passing over rail welding joints is presented on the basis of field measurements. Focusing on the physical mechanisms differences of wheel/rail rolling contact on welding joints with varying rail straightness at rolling speeds of up to 400 km/h, this model takes vehicle/track system dynamics and wheel/rail elastic–plastic deformations into account. The defective thermite welding joint with short wave irregularity easily leads to rail nucleus flaw with residual stress. When the running speed is over 250km/h,the maximum value of wheel/rail vertical force at welding joint has a basic trend of a bilinear increase with the increase of running speed and the unevenness of the welding joint. There is a phase difference between the maximum contact force and the peak joint irregularity. When the high-speed railway operation management standard is 250~350km/h, the short wave irregularity at rail welding joint with over 0.3mm straightness should be grinded.

Immunotherapy with anti-programmed cell death protein 1 or programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) agents has demonstrated promising efficacy for the treatment of various types of malignancies. However, the role of PD-L1 as a tumor prognostic marker remains poorly understood. In the present study, the prognostic value of PD-L1 expression in esophageal carcinoma (EC) following definitive chemoradiotherapy (CRT) was investigated, and its associations with three systemic inflammation biomarkers, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR) were further explored. A total of 104 patients with non-metastatic EC, who underwent definitive CRT between January 2009 and December 2012, were retrospectively analyzed. The expression of PD-L1 was examined by immunohistochemistry and the impact of PD-L1 expression level on overall survival (OS) was assessed. Furthermore, pretreatment neutrophil, lymphocyte, platelet and monocyte counts were obtained from routine blood tests to calculate the NLR, PLR and LMR. PD-L1 was overexpressed in EC compared with normal esophageal epithelium, with a positive expression rate of 37.5%. Additionally, patients with positive PD-L1 expression had a lower NLR than those with negative PD-L1 expression (P=0.001). On multivariate analysis, the positive staining of PD-L1 was significantly associated with improved OS (HR, 0.6; 95% CI, 0.372-0.965; P=0.035). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed a similar result (P=0.009). Additionally, sex (HR, 0.449; 95% CI, 0.229-0.880; P=0.020), clinical stage III (HR, 2.471; 95% CI, 1.171-5.212; P=0.018), and receipt of concurrent chemoradiation (HR, 0.590; 95% CI, 0.368-0.945; P=0.028) were all independent prognostic factors in EC treated with definitive CRT. The correlation of NLR with PD-L1 expression validated the relevance of immunity and inflammation. In summary, the present study demonstrated that positive PD-L1 expression is associated with improved survival in patients with EC treated with radical CRT, indicating that PD-L1 is a promising prognostic marker.

Many studies have observed that leaf wax δDn-alkanes values differed significantly between woods and grasses in modern plants, with grasses D-depleted by 40 ‰–70 ‰. The reasons for the differences in leaf wax δDn-alkane values between woods and grasses, however, remain unclear. In this study, we measured the δD values of soil water (δDsw), leaf water (δDlw), and leaf wax n-alkane (δDn-alkane) for woods and grasses. We found no significant differences in the δD values of soil water (P = 0.82) and leaf water (P = 0.74) between the two life forms of plants. Therefore, the differences in leaf wax δDn-alkane values between woods and grasses may correlate with inherent properties of different plant life forms, such as leaf structures, biosynthetic processes, and leaf morphologies. Moreover, it is also possible that soil water with different δDsw at different depths utilized by woods and grasses may be responsible for some of the differences in leaf wax δDn-alkane values between the two life forms of plants, if woods mainly use soil water from the >100 cm depth, whereas grasses mainly use soil water from the

This chapter mainly using the industrial and agricultural waste cassava residue, furfural residue, mushroom residue as the fermentation medium for Bacillus megatherium (Ahmed in J Appl Sci Res 4(10), 1199–1204, [1]). By optimizing the ratio of carbon and nitrogen sources, research optimal production process to produce low cost agricultural probiotics and to evaluate the effect of the microbial fertilizer. The results shows that the optimum parameters of solid fermentation was using the cassava residue as substrate, adding 5% glucose, 10% corn syrup as carbon and nitrogen sources, initial pH to 6.5–7.0, the initial moisture content is around 40% (Liu H et al in Cereal Feed Ind, [2]), the fermentation temperature is controlled at about 37 °C. The pepper field experiment shows that the bacterial fertilizer improved pepper yield per plant, fruit weight, flesh thickness, fruit length, fruit width by 14.71, 9.47, 13.22, 3.40, 25.91% respectively and make the pepper fruit become more rounded appearance. Further shows that the bacterial fertilizer has a good application value.

It is well known that adaptive Gaussian chirplet signal decomposition algorithm has the best time frequency resolution in all signal decomposition algorithms. It is widely used in non linear and non stationary signal decomposition, especially for the signal which is superposition of chirplet functions decomposition. But it has a large amount of computation. In this paper, we propose a fast algorithm based on short time Fourier transform (STFT) method and we change parameters’ domain. Using this fast algorithm to decompose a four atoms non-linear signal computes very fast and it can also avoid the cross term’s interferer of the Wigner-Ville distribution.

Sedimentary δDn-alkane values have been widely used as a valuable proxy for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. A number of studies have focused on δDn-alkane values that derived exclusively from leaves, while less attention has been paid to the root-derived n-alkanes and their impact on sedimentary δDn-alkane values. In this study, we sampled modern plant leaf and root materials from different growth contexts (slopes and seasons) on the Chinese Loess Plateau to compare leaf-derived n-alkanes with root-derived n-alkanes. Our results demonstrated that total n-alkane (C27–C33) concentrations varied substantially between leaf and root materials, with average values of 209 and 29.5 μg/g observed in leaves and roots respectively. The results suggest that ca. 12% of the n-alkane concentrations in sediments may be derived from plant roots. Furthermore, leaf-derived δDn-alkane values for Stipa bungeana (grass), Artemisisa vestita (shrub) and Bothriochloa ischaemum (grass) averaged −184‰, −152‰ and −198‰, compared with their root-derived δDn-alkane values of −199‰, −179‰ and −163‰, respectively. These statistically significant differences in concentrations and δD values between leaf-derived and root-derived n-alkanes suggest that the contribution of n-alkanes derived from plant roots is important for evaluating the resultant n-alkane compositions of sediments for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Our findings indicates that the effects of root-derived n-alkanes on total sedimentary δDn-alkane values should be considered carefully in future paleoenvironmental reconstruction efforts.

This study examines the clustering and discounting of offer prices in auction-style seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) in China. More importantly, using a unique dataset of detailed bidding data submitted by participating investors in SEOs using the uniform-price auction mechanism, we document the clustering of bid prices at integers, and find that the clustering and discounting of integer bid prices drive the clustering and discounting of integer offer prices. Further, we find evidence that bid prices tend to cluster at integers for SEOs with higher uncertainty, and the larger bid discounts associated with integer bids can be explained by bid shading.

This paper investigates the streaming potentials&rsquo, behaviors when fluid flows through the micropores in bone. An experimental setup was developed for measuring the streaming potentials between two surfaces of a bone plate specimen. It was found that the streaming potentials measured increased almost linearly with time under a constant fluid pressure gradient, which does not agree with the prediction from the classical theory of streaming potentials. To explain the reasons associated with the results obtained, a theoretical model was proposed in which the electric charge densities on the inner surfaces of the capillary are unevenly distributed. A formula was developed for solving the model, and the solutions demonstrate that nonuniform accumulations of electric charges carried by the fluid on the inner surfaces of the microcanals in bone can induce streaming potentials which linearly increase with time during the driving air pressure holding period. This phenomenon represents the specific characteristics of bone. The solution implies that the streaming potentials in Haversian canals, lacunas and canaliculi are not affected by electro-viscous resistance in the bone fluid.

Some studies have demonstrated that leaf wax δD

Leaf wax δDn-alkane values have shown to differ significantly among plant life forms (e.g., among grasses, shrubs and trees) in higher plants. However, the underlying causes for the differences in leaf wax δDn-alkane values among different plant life forms remain poorly understood. In this study, we observed that leaf wax δDn-alkane values between major high plant lineages (eudicots versus monocots) differed significantly under the same environmental conditions. Such a difference primarily inherited from different hydrogen biosynthetic fractionations (εwax-lw). Based upon a reanalysis of the available leaf wax δDn-alkane dataset from modern plants in the Northern Hemisphere, we discovered that the apparent hydrogen fractionation factor (εwax-p) between leaf wax δDn-alkane values of major angiosperm lineages and precipitation δD values exhibited distinguishable distribution patterns at a global scale, with an average of −140‰ for monocotyledonous species, −107‰ for dicotyledonous species. Additionally, variations of leaf wax δDn-alkane values and the εwax-p values in gymnosperms are similar to those of dicotyledonous species. Therefore, the data let us believe that biological factors inherited from plant taxonomies have a significant effect on controlling leaf wax δDn-alkane values in higher plants.

HHT is widely used to analyze nonlinear and non-stationary signals. But how to extend boundaries of signals in decomposition processes is a key problem of HHT. A new technique based on response surface method (RSM), which establishes the recursive relations between sample points of signals, is presented to deal with this difficult problem. Besides, the boundary extension problem arising from HHT can be described by mathematical least squares problem but traditional gradient algorithms may diverge when the Hessian matrix of the object function of the least squares problem is non-positive. It has been proved that the generalized inverse of the linear equations (derived from the linear least squares problem) by singular value decomposition is the solution of original linear least squares problems. Thereby the divergence problem is also solved. Analysis results with respect to simulation signals and measured signals show that the method with new boundary extension technique performs successfully for HHT.

Solubilities of N2O in and densities and viscosities of aqueous solutions of ammonia, piperazine (PZ), and their aqueous blends were measured at (283.15, 293.15, 303.15, 313.15, and 323.15) K. The experiments cover the mass fraction ranges: (1 to 30) mol % ammonia, (0.1 to 2) mol % PZ, and (1 to 11) mol % ammonia + (0.18 to 2) mol % PZ in the blended solutions. The results are compared with available data in the literature. The experimental density and viscosity data were correlated using two semiempirical correlations as a function of temperature and concentration of ammonia and PZ.

A reaction calorimeter CPA-122 was used to determine the heats of absorption of CO 2 in 5 wt% NH 3 (aq), 0.86 mol PZ and the blended solutions (1.5–3.1 mol) NH 3 /(0.43–0.86 mol) PZ at 40 °C, 60 °C and 80 °C. The heat of absorption of CO 2 in 5 wt% NH 3 (aq) at low CO 2 loadings ( 2 /mol-Am) was measured to be 74.8 kJ/mol CO 2 at 40 °C and 65.9 kJ/mol CO 2 at 80 °C, and found to decrease gradually in the high loading interval (>0.5 mol-CO 2 /mol-Am). The heat of absorption of CO 2 in 0.86 mol PZ solution was measured to be 73 kJ/mol CO 2 in the low CO 2 loading interval ( 2 /mol-Am), and found to decrease gradually in the high loading interval (>0.5 mol-CO 2 /mol-Am) at 40 °C and 60 °C. The heat of absorption of CO 2 in 3.1 mol NH 3 + 0.86 mol PZ solution demonstrated a high degree of consistency with that of CO 2 in 3.1 mol NH 3 (aq), which indicated that blending a small amount of PZ does not have a significant effect on the heat of absorption. The mechanism of the absorption process of CO 2 in the mixtures is also discussed in depth in this paper.

A small wetted wall column (WWC) was used to study the kinetics of CO 2 absorbed in PZ and NH 3 /PZ blended solution. The experiments of CO 2 absorption into 0.1–0.4 M PZ and 0.53–4 M NH 3 /0.1–0.4 M PZ mixed solution at 10–40 °C have been done in wetted wall column under the driving force of 8–25 kPa in this paper. The ‘interface concentration corrected-pseudo first order’ mass transfer model and ‘Ternary-termolecular’ reaction mechanism were proposed to describe the CO 2 absorption into NH 3 /PZ system for the high driving force and low PZ concentration condition. Both of the models in this study used for CO 2 with NH 3 /PZ blended solution were in a good agreement with the experimental results.

Volatility is an important issue for aqueous ammonia used as an absorbent for post-combustion CO2 capture. Vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) of NH3 in aqueous ammonia and aqueous blends of ammonia and piperazine (PZ) were measured at 20 °C, 30 °C and 40 °C. The experimental VLE results for NH3 cover the mole fraction ranges 2.5–15% NH3 (aq) in aqueous ammonia and 2.5–15% NH3 in the 0.4 M PZ blended solutions. Vapor pressures of NH3 for 5%, 10% and 15% NH3 (aq) were compared with available data in the literature. Activity coefficients for NH3 in NH3 (aq) and aqueous blends of NH3 + PZ were calculated and compared for different temperatures to obtain the effect of PZ on the volatility of aqueous ammonia. The eNRTL model was used to model the results and a comparison between model predictions and experimental data shows good agreement.

Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is a powerful tool for analysis of non-stationary and nonlinear signals, and has drawn significant attention in various engineering application areas. This paper presents a finite element-based EMD method for two-dimensional data analysis. Specifically, we represent the local mean surface of the data, a key step in EMD, as a linear combination of a set of two-dimensional linear basis functions smoothed with bi-cubic spline interpolation. The coefficients of the basis functions in the linear combination are obtained from the local extrema of the data using a generalized low-pass filter. By taking advantage of the principle of finite-element analysis, we develop a fast algorithm for implementation of the EMD. The proposed method provides an effective approach to overcome several challenging difficulties in extending the original one-dimensional EMD to the two-dimensional EMD. Numerical experiments using both simulated and practical texture images show that the proposed method works well.

This paper introduces Muclouds, a parallel simulation framework for simulating large-scale cloud computing systems. Muclouds improves the simulation performance for these large systems, such that the simulation time can be minimized. To achieve this goal, in this paper we propose a novel technique named stage and partition (SAP). SAP is based on the following observation: in an event-based simulation framework for cloud computing, the existence of the interaction and/or correlation of the events, which imposes simulation synchronization, is the major factor that prevents efficient parallelization. To achieve improved parallelization performance, SAP divides events into two main categories: non-interacting events and interacting events. Non-interacting events can be simulated simultaneously to achieve high simulation speed, whereas interacting events must be simulated sequentially to preserve accuracy. Using Muclouds, we constructed several scenarios to evaluate parallelization effectiveness and efficiency. We also conduct several experiments for performance comparisons with state-of-the-art schemes. Evaluation results show that Muclouds facilitates considerable performance improvements when compared with existing approaches.

International audience; The mixtures of 2 M 1,4-butanediamine (BDA) and 4 M 2-(diethylamino)-ethanol (DEEA) have been found to be promising biphasic solvents. This work identifies the composition of the lower phase using a DX-120 Ion Chromatograph (IC) and a Metrohm 809 Titrando auto titrator. The cyclic capacities, cyclic loadings and reaction products of the biphasic solvent are compared with those of the aqueous solution with the same amine concentration as the lower phase of the biphasic solvent at the rich loading ((2B4D)L) using a fast screening facility and a JNM ECA-600 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer (NMR). Their absorption rates at different loadings are also investigated using a Wetted Wall Column (WWC). The results show that the cyclic capacity and cyclic loading of (2B4D)L are almost the same as those of 2B4D. The absorption rate of (2B4D)L is higher than 2B4D at all the 3 tested loadings, except for the fresh solutions at CO2 pressure lower than 10 kPa. NMR results show that the reaction products of (2B4D)L had more BDA bicarbamate, less BDA and less BDA carbamate than 2B4D. The CO2 reaction products of (2B4D)L had twice as much carbonate/bicarbonate as with 2B4D and less BDA carbamate.

Effective virtualized resource provisioning is one of the most challenging tasks of the cloud computing system. Especially when visits to an online service are rapidly increasing, state-of-the-art approaches cannot response to the workload changes in time. In this paper we introduce SPRNT, a framework that accelerates the resource provisioning. By using SPRNT, the cloud system can quickly adapt to the explosively increasing workload and ensure that the SLA is not violated. The experimental results show that SPRNT can deal with the tremendously increasing of the workload and can also reduce the over-provisioned resources efficiently and effectively.

We report a new approach to identify swill-cooked oils that are recycled from tainted food and livestock waste from commercial vegetable and animal oils by means of carbon isotope values and relative abundance of fatty acids. We test this method using 40 cooking oil samples of different types with known sources. We found significant differences in both total organic carbon isotope as well as compound-specific isotope values and fatty acid C(14)/C(18) ratios between commercial vegetable oils refined from C(3) plants (from -35.7 to -27.0‰ and from 0 to 0.15) and animal oils (from -28.3 to -14.3‰ and from 0.1 to 0.6). Tested swill-cooked oils, which were generally refined by mixing with animal waste illegally, fall into a narrow δ(13)C/fatty acid ratio distribution: from -25.9 to -24.1‰ and from 0.1 to 0.2. Our data demonstrate that the index of a cross-plotting between fatty acid δ(13)C values and C(14)/C(18) ratios can be used to distinguish clean commercial cooking oils from illegal swill-cooked oils.

To summarize operative procedure and the effectiveness of open reduction with internal fixation or radial head replacement for the treatment of Essex-Lopresti injury.Between November 2002 and October 2010, 10 patients with Essex-Lopresti injury were treated. There were 8 males and 2 females with a mean age of 36 years (range, 20-56 years). Eight cases were fresh closed fracture within 2 days. According to Mason classification, 5 fracture were type II, 3 were type III. The other 2 cases were old fracture within 3 months. Wrist joint X-ray revealed that all the patients had distal radioulnar joint dislocation. Open reduction with internal mini-plate or absorbable screw fixation was performed in 5 cases, and radial head replacement in 5 cases; meanwhile, the distal radioulnar joint was reduced and fixed.All incisions healed by first intention without infection or bone nonunion. The patients were followed up 7 to 24 months with an average of 14.7 months. The X-ray films showed fracture healing at 9-20 weeks (mean, 16.3 weeks); distal radioulnar joint was stable without shortening or shift of proximal radius. According to elbow clinical evaluation system, the results were excellent in 5 cases, good in 3 cases, and fair in 2 cases. According to wrist clinical evaluation, the results were excellent in 7 cases, good in 2 cases, and fair in 1 case. All patients had good elbow stability, and recovered quickly.Early diagnosis, operation, and functional exercises are important to obtain an excellent result in treating Essex-Lopresti injury.

This paper presents an emergency alarm and healthcare management system, which is mainly deployed in an android-based phone that is conveniently used and carried. So our system is suitable for most of the people. With the help of the GPS and GSM network, the system can make sure the location of the users when they are in trouble and trigger the alarm. When the doctor or family receives the alarm message, they can immediately take measures to rescue the user. It can also manage the health record of the user. The user can take online medical to send their physical condition and then get prescription from doctor who will send the prescription on the user's phone . After that the life reminder system can remind the user to take medical on time and so on.

As an emerging portable service platform, OSGi is now taking a more and more important role in Ubiquitous Computing environment. As a module management framework, OSGi provides the functions of dynamic loading and unloading software modules at runtime. But its use is limited because it is centralized and single programming language supported. In this paper we present LIR-OSGi, an extended framework of OSGi, which is designed to add the distribution and programming language independence to OSGi. Meanwhile it is easy to use for developers because of the transparence of service invocation and automation of distribution. Not like OSGi which can be applied only on the Java platform, LIR-OSGi makes programs which may be written in different programming languages be able to call each other transparently so that it can be applied in many different platforms such as DotNet Framework and so on. This brings much convenience to the program development in a distributed and heterogeneous environment.

As an emerging portable service platform, OSGi (Open Service Gateway Initiative) is taking a more and more important role in modern Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). In order to improve the capability of using distributed services in network-based OSGi applications, R-OSGi (Remote OSGi) is invented. However, network-based SOA applications are prone to the big impact on Quality of Service (QoS) caused by network instability problem, which implies that developers have to deal with the potential R-OSGi networking exceptions at application layer. In this paper, we present an improved middleware based on the original OSGi, the Robust R-OSGi (R2-OSGi in abbreviation), which can deal with networking exceptions transparently to developers beneath the application layer. The middleware can automatically detect the various failures which might occur in current network and then select the pre-defined exception-handling strategies to proceed.

Melatonin (MLT) can increase the expression of cartilage-derived growth factor and stimulate the synthesis of cartilage matrix. To investigate the prevention and treatment effects of MLT on damaged cartilage through observing the expressions of bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) and interleukin 1beta (IL-1beta) in articular cartilage of the rats with osteoarthritis (OA).Forty SPF 4-week-old male SD rats (weighing 120-150 g) were randomly divided into 4 groups (n=10): normal control group (group A), OA group (group B), OA/pinealectomy group (group C), and OA/pinealectomy/MLT group (group D). The rats of group A served as a control without treatment. The rats of groups B, C, and D underwent left knee joint injection of 0.2 mL 4% papain solution 1 time every other day for 2 weeks for establishing OA model. Two weeks after papain injection, the rats of groups C and D were exposed to continuous light for 24 hours (intensity of illumination: 500 lx) for creating pinealectomy models. And at the next day after pinealectomy model establishing, the rats of group D were treated with intra-articular injections of 0.2 mL 20 mg/mL MLT solution 4 times a week for 4 weeks. At 1 week after last MLT injection, the venous blood samples were taken in groups A, B, and C to test the level of serum MLT by ELISA, respectively, and then the specimens of left cartilage of femoral condyle were harvested for macroscopic, histological, and immunohistochemical examinations in 4 groups.The OA and pinealectomy models of rats were successfully established, and all rats survived. There were significant differences in the serum MLT level among groups A, B, and C, and among different time points at the same group (P0.05). In group A, articular cartilage surface was smooth and elastic, and chondrocytes arranged regularly. In groups B and C, articular cartilage surface was rough, cartilage defects and subchondral bone exposure were observed in some areas, and chondrocytes arranged irregularly. In group D, cartilage surface was more smooth than that in groups B and C, and the degrees of cartilage defect and subchondral bone exposure decreased with regular arrangement of chondrocytes. There were significant differences in Mankin scores and integral absorbance values among 4 groups (P0.05).Exposure to continuous light can accelerate degeneration process of articular cartilage of OA rats. Injections of 0.2 mL MLT solution (20 mg/mL) by intra-articular for 4 weeks can inhibit the progress of cartilage defects. Upregulation of anabolic factor of BMP-2 as well as down-regulation of catabolic factors of IL-1beta is associated with cartilage repair in the pathological features of OA.