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High flow (hf)-modified polypropylene (PP) fibers and glass filaments (GFs) were made into webs, which were then laminated orthogonally and needle punched to make GF/PP-hf preforms. These preforms were then hot pressed to produce GF/PP-hf composites. Similarly, GFs and nonmodified PP were made into GF/PP composites with the aforementioned process to serve as the control group. The structure, morphology, and mechanical performances (i.e. tensile, bending, and impact strength) of GF/PP and GF/PP-hf composites were characterized and tested using differential scanning calorimeter and dynamic mechanical analysis. The test results showed that the GF/PP-hf composites are composed of reinforcing filaments at a weight ratio of 43.40% and an average length of 22.9 mm. Consequently, they had advantages of high fiber content, long fiber length, and adjustable fiber orientation. Compared to GF/PP composites, GF/PP-hf composites exhibited good dispersion of GFs in the matrices, good bonding between filaments and the matrix, and a relatively lower porosity factor of 2.92%. Moreover, the glass transition temperature and crystallinity were improved by 15.2°C and 10.42%, respectively. When the temperature was lower than 160°C, GF/PP-hf composites preserved a higher energy storage modulus and a lower loss factor. Furthermore, GF/PP-hf composites exhibited good static mechanical properties, including the tensile strength of 118 MPa, the tensile modulus of 5830 MPa, the bending strength of 180 MPa, the bending modulus of 780 MPa, and the impact strength of 33 KJ m−2, which are 30, 29.6, 78.2, 68.3, and 32%, respectively, higher than those of the control group.

The research of carbon content along the casting direction of 82B cord steel billets is of great significance for improving the quality of cord products from subsequent processing. However, the traditional segregation and billets quality evaluation methods have certain limitations, such as sampling length and analysis area, which affect the accuracy of quality judgment. Thus, the statistics of extreme values (SEV) was introduced to predict the maximum value of carbon element content along the casting direction, which can quantitatively characterize the segregation degree. The size of the selected billet is 150 mm × 150 mm, and the sampling location is the centerline of the billet. The experiment was conducted by considering the effect of cooling intensity and casting speed on the maximum value of carbon element content. Firstly, the calculation results show that the SEV method can predict the maximum value of carbon element content along the casting direction of 82B cord steel, and the SEV method is proved to be effective by analyzing the carbon distribution and fluctuation in billets. To some extent, the SEV method can break the limitations of the sampling length and analysis area by predicting the maximum value of carbon element on a larger range of continuous casting billets with few samples. During the continuous casting process, the increase in cooling intensity makes the surface shrinking rate increase, which can slow down the flow of solute-enriched liquid to the center, and the center segregation can be reduced. On the other hand, the function area of the final electromagnetic stirring can be expanded with the increase in the casting speed, which can reduce the concentration of carbon element in the center of the billets and reduce the maximum value of carbon element content. It can provide a new theoretical reference for the quantitative calculation of carbon content in continuous casting billets and the quality evaluation of continuous casting billets.

Additional file 1: File S1. TMA Construction. File S2. Description of Gland Co-occurrence Morphological Feature Extraction. File S3. Immunohistochemistry. Figure S1. The workflow of patient selection. Figure S2. Kaplan–Meier curves of perineural invasion, vascular invasion on D2. Table S1. Summary of gland morphometric features. Table S2. A comprehensive list of all 797 quantitative features. Table S3. Patient characteristics of TCGA cohort. Table S4. The top 5 representative Feature and descriptions. Table S5. The performance of the classifiers on D2/D3. Table S6. Correlations between ECHBC and other major clinicopathologic features and disease recurrence on D2. Table S7. Comparative analysis of the image classifier and immunohistochemistry&CEA on D2. Table S8. The performances of the image classifier on TCGA cohort. Table S9. Multivariate survival analysis conducted on D4. Table S10. Ki67 and CEA Multivariate survival analysis conducted on D1/D2.

Given the frequent drought pressure caused by the unpredictable and limited precipitation concurrent with global climate change, highly efficient cultivation technologies have been increasingly recognized by various levels of scientific communities. Understanding plant–environment relationships in rainfed dry land may help maximize crop productivity while improving water utilization of farmland. Field experiments were conducted in 2012–2014 at the Dryland Maize Experimental Station of the Northwest A&F University, China to determine the effects of possible drought stress and the environmental factors involved during sowing at different sowing dates on maize vegetative growth and grain yield ( Zea mays L.), as well as water-use efficiency (WUE = grain yield per unit of seasonal evapotranspiration). Six planting date (PD) treatments with sowing performed for 6 days from April 10 to May 10 were designed. Results showed that the maize growth period was shortened with the postponement of planting time. The vegetative growth stage and the overlapping stages of vegetative and reproductive growth varied by 4–19 days among various PD practices. However, the reproductive growth stage duration was relatively stable and varied by 3–5 days only among the different PD practices. Within a certain time range, dry matter production per plant did not obviously change across the different PD treatments. However, the dry matter accumulation in the ear after flowering, the yield, and the WUE in the treatments under appropriate PDs (April 16–April 28) were 2.2%–28.8%, 2.3%–24.7%, and 6.6%–15.2% higher, respectively, than those in the early or delayed PDs. These findings resulted from the changes in soil water content with PD adjustment. Yield was highly correlated to the soil moisture content during PD, the rainfall before silking, the effective accumulated temperature after silking, and the sunshine hours after silking. Moreover, the thousand-grain weight was highly correlated with the sunshine hours after silking. In the early PDs, the main factor that affected maize yield was the low content of soil moisture, which generated low effective ear number per unit area and seedling emergence ratio. In the late PDs, the main factors that influenced maize yield were the low effective accumulated temperature and the short sunshine hours during the reproductive growth stage, which produced less dry matter accumulation after silking and lower thousand-grain weight. Under suitable sowing time, the actual harvest ear number per hectare and dry matter accumulation of female ear after silking increased. Similarly, the maize yield and WUE increased. By considering the ecological factors and study results, we recommend that the most suitable sowing time for maize should be determined on the basis of the soil moisture content before April 28. As such, we can effectively achieve high yield and avoid drought in the study region. Overall, the results can provide effective cultivation techniques to prevent drought stress in spring maize in the present agro-ecosystem of northern China and other similar areas.

Additional file 3: Table S3. Comparative analysis of the image classifier and immunohistochemistry.