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A trend prediction method based on the Pchip-EEMD-GM(1,1) to predict the remaining useful life (RUL) of rolling bearings was proposed in this paper. Firstly, the dimension of the extracted features was reduced by the KPCA dimensionality reduction method, and the WPHM model parameters were estimated via the kernel principal components. Secondly, the hazard rate was calculated at each time, and the Pchip interpolation method was used to obtain the uniformly spaced interpolation data series. Then the main trend of signal was obtained through the EEMD method to fit the GM(1,1) prediction model. Finally, the GM (1,1) method was used to predict the remaining life of the rolling bearing. The full life test of rolling bearing was provided to demonstrate that the method predicting the hazard data directly has the higher accuracy compared with predicting the covariates, and the results verified the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method for predicting the remaining life.

Aiming at the large deformation and the dynamic fracture of roadway during the underground excavation or mining, a physical simulation and strain testing system was established, and the deformation process of surrounding body and its inner strain characteristics of the simulated roadway under loading was carried out. Results showed that the inner strain change of the measurement points can be divided into three types: the strain firstly increases and then decreases, the strain slowly increases and then increases sharply, and strain firstly reduces and then increases. The strain starting time is closely related to the failure path and boundary of tested samples. This paper suggested two criteria for determining the instability of roadways, which are a huge and faster increase of strain at the location of the roof and floor with high absolute value, or a small increase with a peak value or irregular fluctuation. This paper provides a new idea for the simulation of roadway instability and is significant in deeper understanding the deformation and destabilization of underground roadway.

Rotating machinery vibration signals are nonstationary and nonlinear under complicated operating conditions. It is meaningful to extract optimal features from raw signal and provide accurate fault diagnosis results. In order to resolve the nonlinear problem, an enhancement deep feature extraction method based on Gaussian radial basis kernel function and autoencoder (AE) is proposed. Firstly, kernel function is employed to enhance the feature learning capability, and a new AE is designed termed kernel AE (KAE). Subsequently, a deep neural network is constructed with one KAE and multiple AEs to extract inherent features layer by layer. Finally, softmax is adopted as the classifier to accurately identify different bearing faults, and error backpropagation algorithm is used to fine-tune the model parameters. Aircraft engine intershaft bearing vibration data are used to verify the method. The results confirm that the proposed method has a better feature extraction capability, requires fewer iterations, and has a higher accuracy than standard methods using a stacked AE.

The acoustic emission (AE) and ultrasonic (UT) simultaneous monitoring program is designed using concrete samples under step loading. The time-varying response characteristics of AE-UT are studied and the cross-correlation analysis between AE-UT parameters is obtained. Moreover, the joint response of UT-AE spatial distribution field is analyzed, and an AE-UT joint monitoring method to detect early-warning signals of a rockburst disaster in a coal seam is proposed. The results show the following. (1) During the loading process, the AE pulses/energy and UT attenuation coefficient first slowly decrease and then increase steadily and finally rapidly increase, while the UT velocity shows a trend of first gradually increasing and then slowly decreasing and finally a sharp decline. (2) AE pulses and energy are significantly or highly correlated with the UT velocity and attenuation coefficient. The AE energy and UT attenuation coefficient can better characterize the damage evolution of concrete under step loading. (3) The UT field evolves ahead of the rupture on the surface, and the long/narrow strip distribution region of UT parameters is consistent with the future failure zone; meanwhile, the AE events can visually reflect the evolution path of internal damage as well as the dynamic migration mechanism of UT field.

Corn gluten meal (CGM) is a major by-product of corn wet milling. Pretreatments of CGM by Na2CO3, starch removal, and cooking reduced the total starch and fat by 93% and 78%, respectively. Higher antioxidant hydrolysate was prepared by using Alcalase, Protamex and Flavourzyme at a substrate concentration of 13.5% (w/w). The degree of hydrolysis reached 29.49% and 27.11%. The peptides in hydrolysate were in the range of 1200–250 Da. It increased the activities of superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and reduced MDA equivalents of mice at a dose of 300 mg/kg. Therefore, corn gluten can be developed into an antioxidant supplement.

Generating engraftable hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) is an ideal approach for obtaining induced HSCs for cell therapy. However, the path from PSCs to robustly induced HSCs (iHSCs) in vitro remains elusive. We hypothesize that the modification of hematopoietic niche cells by transcription factors facilitates the derivation of induced HSCs from PSCs. The Lhx2 transcription factor is expressed in fetal liver stromal cells but not in fetal blood cells. Knocking out Lhx2 leads to a fetal hematopoietic defect in a cell non-autonomous role. In this study, we demonstrate that the ectopic expression of Lhx2 in OP9 cells (OP9-Lhx2) accelerates the hematopoietic differentiation of PSCs. OP9-Lhx2 significantly increased the yields of hematopoietic progenitor cells via co-culture with PSCs in vitro. Interestingly, the co-injection of OP9-Lhx2 and PSCs into immune deficient mice also increased the proportion of hematopoietic progenitors via the formation of teratomas. The transplantation of phenotypic HSCs from OP9-Lhx2 teratomas but not from the OP9 control supported a transient repopulating capability. The upregulation of Apln gene by Lhx2 is correlated to the hematopoietic commitment property of OP9-Lhx2. Furthermore, the enforced expression of Apln in OP9 cells significantly increased the hematopoietic differentiation of PSCs. These results indicate that OP9-Lhx2 is a good cell line for regeneration of hematopoietic progenitors both in vitro and in vivo.

Ultrasonic technology can be applied to study the changes in the internal defects of coal under quantitative loading, which can provide the theoretical basis for applying the technology to determine the structural stability of coal and predict disasters related to the dynamics of coal or rock. In this paper, to investigate the propagation laws of ultrasonic signals through a coal material under various loading conditions, an ultrasonic test system for the deformation and fracture of coal rock was used and a cyclic loading and unloading pattern is adopted. In addition, changes in ultrasonic parameters such as amplitude, dominant frequency, and velocity were analyzed. At the initial loading stage, the ultrasonic amplitude, amplitude of the dominant frequency, and wave velocity slightly decrease as the loading process progresses, and these three ultrasonic parameters gradually increase to their maxima when the stress level reaches approximately 46%. When it progresses from the linear elastic stage to the elastic plastic stage, the material inside the coal distorts and fractures more drastically, the inner defects are fully developed, and the acoustic parameters decrease significantly. Therefore, the corresponding measures should be adapted to reduce the loading stress before the coal is loaded to its critical stress level.

Natural hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are susceptible and tend to lose stemness, differentiate, or die on culture condition in vitro, which adds technical challenge for maintaining bona fide HSC-like cells, if ever generated, in protocol screening from pluripotent stem cells. It remains largely unknown whether gene-editing of endogenous genes can genetically empower HSC to endure the culture stress and preserve stemness. In this study, we revealed that both NUP98-HOXA10HD fusion and endogenous Nras mutation modifications (NrasG12D) promoted the engraftment competitiveness of HSC. Furthermore, the synergy of these two genetic modifications endowed HSC with super competitiveness in vivo. Strikingly, single NAV-HSC successfully maintained its stemness and showed robust multi-lineage engraftments after undergoing the in vitro culture. Mechanistically, NUP98-HOXA10HD fusion and NrasG12D mutation distinctly altered multiple pathways involving the cell cycle, cell division, and DNA replication, and distinctly regulated stemness-related genes including Hoxa9, Prdm16, Hoxb4, Trim27, and Smarcc1 in the context of HSC. Thus, we develop a super-sensitive transgenic model reporting the existence of HSC at the single cell level on culture condition, which could be beneficial for protocol screening of bona fide HSC regeneration from pluripotent stem cells in vitro.

Rock burst is the result of the development and extension of micro-cracks during the loading process of large-scale rock mass in underground space engineering. Dynamic monitoring results by acoustic emission (AE) can accurately perceive the inner fracture evolution of rock mass and effectively warn about its induced disasters early. By contrastive testing the AE parameters in the whole fracture process of the intact and holey rock samples under graded loading, their spatiotemporal evolution rules were analyzed in this paper, and the damage model of rock samples based on AE localization events was established to analyze the relationship between rock damage and loads. The results show that: (1) Under the condition of grading loading, AE parameter increases with the increase of axial stress and show three states, respectively, which are slow-growth, stabilization and rapid increasing; meanwhile, the damage of the sample has a cumulative effect with time. (2) The AE counts and energy are highly correlated with the fracture of the sample that the more severe the damage of the sample, the faster the crack propagation as well as the higher the acoustic emission counts and the energy amplitude. The damage state of granite sample can be accurately judged by two parameters to character the damage evolution process and fracture mechanism. (3) Compared with the intact rock sample, due to the pressure relief effect of the hole, the rock sample containing the hole takes a long time in the compaction stage and with higher load stress level. Although the AE counts and energy were lower in the damage process, the general law of their response during damage and instability process still exists.

In this paper, WO3·0.33H2O nanorods were prepared through a simple hydrothermal method using p-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) as an auxiliary reagent. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images showed that the products with PABA addition were orthorhombic WO3·0.33H2O, which were mainly composed of nanorods with different crystal planes. The sensing performance of WO3·0.33H2O nanorod bundles prepared by the addition of PABA (100 ppm cyclohexene, Ra/Rg = 50.6) was found to be better than the WO3 synthesized without PABA (100 ppm cyclohexene, Ra/Rg = 1.3) for the detection of cyclohexene. The new synthesis route and sensing characteristics of as-synthesized WO3·0.33H2O nanorods revealed a promising candidate for the preparation of the cost-effective gas sensors.

The crude polysaccharide from the stem of Dendrobium officinale (DOP) was obtained by water extraction and ethanol precipitation. Two fractions of DOP, DOP-1 and DOP-2, were fractioned by DEAE cellulose and Sephacryl S-400 gel filtration column chromatography. Their molecular weights and monosaccharide compositions were studied. The immunomodulatory activity of DOP, DOP-1 and DOP-2 was evaluated with in vitro cell models. The results showed that the 533.7 kDa DOP-1 and 159.5 kDa DOP-2 were mainly composed of mannose and glucose. Both DOP and its purified fractions significantly (P

Vehicle to Grid technology allows the batteries of electric vehicles to operate as energy storage elements for renewable energy power systems. The Z-Source inverter is a new and attractive topology for the power electronics interface. In this paper, the equivalent DC-link voltage ripple of a single-phase Z-Source inverter for Vehicle to Grid applications is analyzed in this paper before deriving a general design approach for the Z-Source network. These theoretical findings, and design rule for a Z-Source network have been confirmed by computer simulations and a laboratory-implemented prototype.

Immunoaffinity columns (IACs) are most popularly used for mycotoxin clean-up in complex matrices prior to chromatographic analysis. But, their high cost has limited their wide application and the regeneration of IACs for multiple instances of reuse is important. This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of regeneration and reuse of IACs for purification of ochratoxin A (OTA) in spiked raw malt and dried ginger samples followed by high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection. After each use, the IACs were filled with phosphate buffer saline (PBS) as the preservation solution and stored at 8 °C overnight for regeneration and reuse until the recovery rate was

Coal dust is one of the most serious issues in coal mines. The miners at an excavation face have a high potential for exposure to high concentrations of coal dust. The main method for removing coal dust is by ventilation. To better control the coal dust at the excavation face, it is important to understand the coal dust movement patterns and distribution characteristics. This paper used the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach to simulate coal dust movement under two different ventilation systems. The Eulerian-Lagrange method was used to study the gas‒solid two-phase fluid behavior. The coal dust concentration distributions under the two ventilation systems are presented and further compared. From the comparison results, it is found that a vortex ventilation system has better coal dust removal performance. This ventilation system is recommended for excavation for better coal dust control and miners’ health protection.

With the development of More Electrical Aircraft (MEA), the electrification of secondary power systems in aircraft is becoming more and more common. As the key power conversion device, the dual active bridge (DAB) converter is the power interface for the energy storage system with the high voltage direct current (HVDC) bus in aircraft electrical power systems. In this paper, a DAB DC-DC converter is designed to meet aviation requirements. The extended dual phase shifted control strategy is adopted, and a multi-objective genetic algorithm is applied to optimize its operating performance. Considering the three indicators of inductance current root mean square root (RMS) value, negative reverse power and direct current (DC) bias component of the current for the high frequency transformer as the optimization objectives, the DAB converter’s optimization model is derived to achieve soft switching as the main constraint condition. Optimized methods of controlling quantity for the DAB based on the evolution and genetic algorithm is used to solve the model, and a number of optimal control parameters are obtained under different load conditions. The results of digital, hard-in-loop simulation and hardware prototype experiments show that the three performance indexes are all suppressed greatly, and the optimization method proposed in this paper is reasonable. The work of this paper provides a theoretical basis and researching method for the multi-objective optimization of the power converter in the aircraft electrical power system.

Coal seam water injection is widely used to prevent rockbursts in coal mines, and the duration of water injection is an important parameter related to the effectiveness of rockburst prevention, making it of practical importance to optimize the effective water injection duration. This paper presents the test results of the mechanical properties and pore structure of samples with different soaking time, obtained from a working face where rockburst occurred. Soaking time changes the mechanical properties of samples, and this time effect differs with the coal size (from centimeter to nanometer size). Results of numerical simulation and on-site tests in the Changgouyu coal mine demonstrated that water injection can effectively soften coal bodies and release or transfer stresses, and the time effect of water injection on rock prevention and control is apparent.

The seepage velocity and temperature externally manifest the changing structure, gas desorption and energy release that occurs in coal containing gas failure under loading. By using the system of coal containing gas failure under loading, this paper studies the law of seepage velocity and temperature under different loading rates and at 1.0 MPa confining pressure and 0.5 MPa gas pressure, and combined the on-site results of gas pressure and temperature. The results show that the stress directly affects the seepage velocity and temperature of coal containing gas, and the pressure and content of gas have the most sensitivity to mining stress. Although the temperature is not sensitive to mining stress, it has great correlation with mining stress. Seepage velocity has the characteristic of critically slowing down under loading. This is demonstrated by the variance increasing before the main failure of the samples. Therefore, the variance of seepage velocity with time and temperature can provide an early warning for coal containing gas failing and gas disasters in a coal mine.

Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) is a structurally endogenous peptide with many biological roles. Maxadilan, a 61-amino acid vasodilatory peptide, specifically activates the PACAP type I receptor (PAC1). Although PAC1 has been identified in embryonic stem cells, little is known about its presence or effects in human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In the present study, we investigated the expression of PAC1 in human iPS cells by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and western blot analysis. To study the physiological effects mediated by PAC1, we evaluated the role of maxadilan in preventing apoptotic cell death induced by ultraviolet C (UVC). After exposure to UVC, the iPS cells showed a marked reduction in cell viability and a parallel increase of apoptotic cells, as demonstrated by WST-8 analysis, annexin V/propidium iodide (PI) analysis and the terminal transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay. The addition of 30 nM of maxadilan dramatically increased iPS cell viability and reduced the percentage of apoptotic cells. The anti-apoptotic effects of maxadilan were correlated to the downregulation of caspase-3 and caspase-9. Concomitantly, immunofluorescence, western blot analysis, real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) analysis and in vitro differentiation results showed that maxadilan did not affect the pluripotent state of iPS cells. Moreover, karyotype analysis showed that maxadilan did not affect the karyotype of iPS cells. In summary, these results demonstrate that PAC1 is present in iPS cells and that maxadilan effectively protects iPS cells against UVC-induced apoptotic cell death while not affecting the pluripotent state or karyotype.