Search

Acephate is an organophosphorus pesticide (OP) that is widely used to control insects in agricultural fields such as in vegetables and fruits. Toxic OPs can enter human and animal bodies and eventually lead to chronic or acute poisoning. However, traditional enzyme inhibition and colorimetric methods for OPs detection usually require complicated detection procedures and prolonged time and have low detection sensitivity. High-sensitivity monitoring of trace levels of acephate residues is of great significance to food safety and human health. Here, we developed a simple method for ultrasensitive quantitative detection of acephate based on the carbon quantum dot (CQD)-mediated fluorescence inner filter effect (IFE). In this method, the fluorescence from CQDs at 460 nm is quenched by 2,3-diaminophenazine (DAP) and the resulting fluorescence from DAP at 558 nm is through an IFE mechanism between CQDs and DAP, producing ratiometric responses. The ratiometric signal

Significant problems in numerical weather prediction modeling systems appear when the horizontal grid-spacing is between 20 km and 1 km and when deep convection is important. These scales are usually termed “Gray Scales”. Techniques have been developed so that the behavior of the convective parameterization changes with the horizontal grid spacing of the model; such parameterizations are said to become “scale-aware”. Commonly used techniques involve applying a scaling approach to smoothly transition from parameterized to resolved convection. These are similar to an elegantly simple mathematical method originally developed by Arakawa et al. (2011), which scales the convective tendencies in dependence on the convective area fraction. Here we show that the scaling approaches are flawed, since they fail to consider the fact that the impacts of deep convection on those scales are not limited to one grid box, and usually – because of the scaling -- leads to light precipitation covering too much area, as we have previously shown in HRRR simulations. Any scaling approach is especially flawed in areas of light forcing (such as daytime heating) and in the tropics, when the explicit microphysics parameterization is not yet producing precipitation. We will show examples of these problems and discuss possible solutions as applied to NOAA’s new RRFS storm-scale modeling system.

A new double-moment parameterization with in-cloud microphysical processes is developed for use in weather forecasting and climate studies. A main ingredient of the scheme utilizes a concept to represent the partial cloudiness effect on the microphysical processes, following the study of Kim and Hong (2018). The underlying assumption is that all the microphysical processes occur in a cloudy part of the grid box. Based on the long-term evaluation of the WRF Single-Moment (WSM) and WRF Double-Moment (WDM) schemes by WRF community, several revisions are made in microphysics terms, along with a newly introduced aerosol effect in ice processes. An aerosol-aware feature with prognostic aerosol emissions of sea salt, dust, anthropogenic and wildfire organic carbon for CCN is also designed. A mass-conserving Semi-Lagrangian sedimentation is re-configured for double-moment physics, which is superior to the conventional Eulerian algorithm in the context of the computational accuracy and numerical accuracy. The new scheme reproduces the storm structure in an idealized 2D testbed, accompanying better organized front-to-rear jets, cold pools, and convective updrafts, as compared to the results in the case of conventional microphysics. The wall-clock time is about a half in the US NOAA/GFS model, as compared to that of Thompson scheme.

Background Goose astrovirus (GoAstV) is an important pathogen that causes joint and visceral gout in goslings. It has been circulating in many provinces of China since 2017. Goose astrovirus genotypes 2 (GoAstV-2) is the main epidemic strain, and its high morbidity and mortality have caused huge economic losses to the goose industry. An accurate point-of-care detection for GoAstV-2 is of great significance. In this study, we developed a real-time reverse transcription recombinase polymerase amplification (RT-RPA) method for the on-site detection of GoAstV-2 infection. Results The real-time RT-RPA reaction was carried out at a constant temperature of 39°C, and the entire detection time from nucleic acid preparation to the end of amplification was only 25 min using the portable device. The results of a specificity analysis showed that no cross-reaction was observed with other related pathogens. The detection limit of the assay was 100 RNA copies/µL. The low coefficient of variation value indicated excellent repeatability. We used 270 clinical samples to evaluate the performance of our established method, the positive concordance rates with RT-qPCR were 99.6%, and the linear regression analysis revealed a strong correlation. Conclusions The established real-time RT-RPA assay showed high rapidity, specificity and sensitivity, which can be widely applied in the laboratory, field and especially in the resource-limited settings for GoAstV-2 point-of-care diagnosis.

Black rice was fermented with Neurospora crassa, after which the dietary fiber (DF) was characterized and evaluated for its cholesterol-lowering effect in mice. The findings demonstrated that fermentation increased the...

Herein, a smartphone-based portable reader with integrated optics for standard microtiter plates (96 wells) has been designed and demonstrated for high-throughput quantitation of validated biomarkers in serum. The customized optical attachment was simply constructed with a convex lens and a light source, by which the transmitted light through a 96-well microtiter plate was converged for imaging with a smartphone, so that accurate and wide-range reading of the plate can be achieved. More importantly, relying on the digitized colorimetric analysis of the obtained images, concentrations of various biomarkers can be determined directly using the customized mobile app. A set of validated biomarkers for inflammation and infection, C-reactive protein (CRP), serum amyloid A (SAA), and procalcitonin (PCT) have been quantitated with this new system; both the response ranges and limits of detection meet the requirement of clinical tests. The consistency with the results obtained using a commercial microplate reader proves its reliability and precision, augments its potential as a point-of-care diagnostic device for on-site testing or resource-limited settings.

Chromatography combined with mass spectrometry is the most commonly used detection technology, and it offers the advantages of high sensitivity and high selectivity. The quick, easy, inexpensive, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) method is low-cost, effective, and time efficient. The application of the QuEChERS has now been extended to the analysis of contaminants in food samples. The aim of the study was to identify different concentration levels of multiple harmful drug residues in bean sprouts. In this study, QuEChERS coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) was established for the simultaneous determination of 40 plant growth regulators, fungicides, insecticides, and antibiotics in bean sprouts. In the HPLC-MS/MS experiment, gibberellic acid, 4-fluorophenoxyacetic acid, chloramphenicol

A bistable nonlinear energy sink (BNES) conceived for the passive vibration control of beam and plate structures under harmonic excitation is investigated. By applying an Incremental Harmonic Balance (IHB) method together with an adjusted arc-length continuation technique, the frequency and amplitude responses are obtained, and their respective trends are discussed in detail from three aspects. The simplest single-mode dynamics is first considered with a special focus on the coupled effect of the cubic nonlinear stiffness and the negative linear stiffness, where an analytical treatment using complex-averaging method is also applied to obtain the slow invariant manifold for understanding the underlying dynamics. Then the multi-mode dynamics of the beam are discussed in variation of each parameter. As a result, a simple step-by-step design rule for the BNES is summarized. Finally, the obtained results and design criteria of the BNES in the beam case are extended to a 2D plate, realizing a broadband control for multi-mode plate vibration. It is found that compared to a traditional cubic one, a BNES can have a better performance both on the frequency and amplitude point of view.

NOAA has been transitioning its numerical weather predictions (NWP) models to the new models, which are based on Unified Forecasting System [https://ufscommunity.org/]. NOAA Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in collaboration with other teams has been developing a new storm-scale NWP model – Rapid Refresh Forecasting System (RRFS) based on UFS. Currently the RRFS model is running in real time to provide experimental weather forecasting products [https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/RRFS/]. In the future the RRFS model will replace NOAA’s current operational High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) NWP system.Following on the successful HRRR-Smoke implementation in 2020, we started transitioning the smoke emission, plume rise, dry and wet removal simulation capabilities into the RRFS based using the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) framework. The CCPP framework also ensures consistency between the physics and smoke/aerosol parameterizations. There are a number of new capabilities implemented in RRFS-Smoke. The high spatial resolution VIIRS I-band and high-frequency GOES-16/17 fire radiative power (FRP) data are ingested into the model to estimate both biomass burning (BB) emissions and fire heat fluxes every hour. Inline turbulent mixing of smoke within the boundary layer scheme, hourly wildfire potential to predict the evolution of the BB emissions, smoke interactions with the double-moment microphysics scheme and other new capabilities are implemented into the new RRFS-Smoke model.The RRFS-Smoke model is simulated for August 2019 over the US by focusing on the FIREX-AQ field campaign [https://csl.noaa.gov/projects/firex-aq/]. The wide range of in-situ and remote sensing observations obtained onboard the DC-8 aircraft during FIREX-AQ provide valuable datasets to evaluate and improve the capabilities of the RRFS-Smoke model to accurately simulate BB emissions, smoke transport and mixing, and fire plume rise. Here, we present the simulations and evaluations of the RRFS-Smoke model for fire weather and smoke for some of the FIREX-AQ cases.

A semi-Lagrangian algorithm (SLA) is implemented in NOAA's Global Forecast System (GFS) forsimulating raindrop sedimentation in a double-moment microphysics schemes. This SLA includesa significant improvement to its predecessor for single-moment raindrop sedimentation. It isnumerically stable and mass-conserving when used to sediment raindrops in double-momentmicrophysics schemes. Numerical results from an idealized single-column model show that theSLA overcomes an issue of mass accumulation at the cloud bottom in the case of the Eulerianalgorithm for raindrop sedimentation, which is due to the assumption of constant terminalvelocity within a time step of sedimentation. The results from the single-column model also showthat the time step in the SLA can be 10 times greater than that in the Eulerian algorithm forsedimentation. Further numerical experiments using NOAA's GFS show that using the SLAmitigates the numerical instability problem associated with a newly-implemented double-momentmicrophysics scheme in the GFS.

International audience; A unimorph piezoelectric cantilever equipped with an Acoustic Black Hole (ABH) termination is designed for broadband energy harvesting. The ABH termination, with its tapered region, induces a focusing of the flexural vibrations which can be used to increase the efficiency of an energy harvesting device. A modal-based analytical model is presented, providing an explicit form of the electro-mechanical coupling for each beam eigenmode. Closed-form expressions for the coupled mechanical response and electrical outputs are obtained, allowing one to draw out a complete parametric study to optimize the device. The optimization procedure is conducted following two steps: first, optimal location and dimensions of a single piezoelectric patch are achieved by maximizing the modal electro-mechanical coupling factor (MEMCF) for each structural mode. Thanks to the proposed analytical approach, it is clearly shown that by putting the piezoelectric patch at the maximum of the strain field in the tapered termination, and by adjusting its length in accordance with the focalization created by the ABH effect, the ABH cantilever produces much higher MEMCFs over a wide frequency range and thus outperforms those of a uniform beam. Second, optimization of the shunted circuit is comprehensively performed for a circuit with only resistance, or both resistance and inductance, in series or in parallel. Analytical results show that the key design rule resides in matching the time scale of the circuit with that of the forcing frequency. Addition of the inductance allows enhancing the performance, but on a narrow frequency band. Finally, broadband advantages can be further obtained by considering multiple piezoelectric patches, in which the optimum is obtained when the shunted circuit in each patch is tuned targeting an eigenmode of the ABH beam.

NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is on its way to deploy various operational prediction applications using the Unified Forecast System (https://ufscommunity.org/), a community-based coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system. An aerosol model component developed in a collaboration between the Global Systems Laboratory, Chemical Science Laboratory, the Air Resources Laboratory, and Environmental Modeling Center (GSL, CSL, ARL, EMC) was coupled online with the FV3 Global Forecast System (FV3GFS) using the National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC)-based NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) software framework. This aerosol prediction system replaced the NEMS GFS Aerosol Component (NGAC) system in the National Center for Environment Prediction (NCEP) production suite in September 2020 as one of the ensemble members of the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS), dubbed GEFS-Aerosols v1. The aerosol component of atmospheric composition in GEFS is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF-Chem) that was previously included into FIM-Chem (Zhang et al, 2021). GEFS-Aerosols includes bulk modules from the Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport model (GOCART). Additionally, the biomass burning plume rise module from High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR)-Smoke was implemented; the GOCART dust scheme was replaced by the FENGSHA dust scheme (developed by ARL); the Blended Global Biomass Burning Emissions Product (GBBEPx V3) provides biomass burning emission and Fire Radiative Power (FRP) data; and the global anthropogenic emission inventories are derived from the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). All sub-grid scale transport and deposition is handled inside the atmospheric physics routines, which required consistent implementation of positive definite tracer transport and wet scavenging in the physics parameterizations used by NCEP’s operational Global Forecast System based on FV3 (FV3GFS). This paper describes the details of GEFS-Aerosols model development and evaluation of real-time and retrospective runs using different observations from in situ measurement, satellite and aircraft data. GEFS-Aerosols predictions demonstrate substantial improvements for both composition and variability of aerosol distributions over those from the former operational NGAC system.

Recent developments and options in the GF (Grell and Freitas, 2014; Freitas et al., 2018) convection parameterization are presented. The parameterization has been expanded to a trimodal spectral size to simulate three convection modes: shallow, congestus, and deep. In contrast to usual entrainment and detrainment assumptions, we assume that beta functions (BFs), commonly applied to represent probability density functions (PDFs), can be used to characterize the vertical mass flux profiles for the three modes and use the BFs to derive entrainment and detrainment rates. We also added a new closure for nonequilibrium convection that improved the simulation of the diurnal cycle of convection, with a better representation of the transition from shallow to deep convection regimes over land. The transport of chemical constituents (including wet deposition) can be treated inside the GF scheme. The tracer transport is handled in flux form and is mass-conserving. Finally, the cloud microphysics have been extended to include the ice phase to simulate the conversion from liquid water to ice in updrafts with resulting additional heat release and the melting from snow to rain.

Background Emerging evidence has demonstrated that inflammation is involved in the occurrence and development of diabetic neuropathic pain (DNP). The anti-inflammatory property of interleukin (IL)-35 makes it a promising candidate to block the pain perception. The present study was undertaken to investigate whether IL-35 could attenuate DNP in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced rat model and its potential mechanism. Methods The rat model of DNP was established by a single STZ injection followed by measurements of fasting blood glucose and insulin. Fourteen days after STZ injection, DNP rats were intrathecally injected with IL-35, c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) inhibitor or activator or dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) as vehicle control, respectively. The mechanical allodynia was assayed to evaluate the therapeutic effect of IL-35. In mechanism study, the serum and protein levels of inflammatory cytokines using ELISA and western blotting and the activation of JNK signaling were further evaluated by quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR). Histopathologic changes were evaluated by Nissl staining. Apoptosis was examined using TUNEL staining. Results DNP rats exhibited increased fasting blood glucose and insulin levels and reduced insulin sensitivity index (ISI). Intrathecal injection of IL-35 reduced accumulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the spinal cord of DNP rats. Furthermore, IL-35 displayed anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects via inhibition of JNK pathway. Conclusion IL-35 treatment mitigated DNP via downregulating JNK signaling pathway.

In this paper, a two-mode (de)multiplexer utilizing the coupling between tapered waveguides and a wide multimode waveguide is designed and experimentally demonstrated. The tapered waveguides are composed of a reverse-tapered waveguide and a narrow tapered waveguide. The proposed mode (de)multiplexer is fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer in a commercial 0.18-μm CMOS-compatible process. The qualitative functionality of the device is mainly determined by the width of the large end of the reverse-tapered waveguide. Experimental results show that the demultiplexing crosstalk of a pair of tapered-coupler-based two-mode (de)multiplexers is lower than −13.5 dB within a bandwidth from 1528 nm to 1570 nm and less than −16.6 dB from 1540 nm to 1560 nm.

International audience; An experimental demonstration of the broadband passive damping capacity of a vibro-impact acoustic black hole (VI-ABH) is reported. A VI-ABH is an adaptation of the classical ABH design consisting of a beam with a tapered edge of decreasing thickness creating an acoustic black hole (ABH), complemented by contact points on which the beam impacts during its vibration. The contact nonlinearity creates a rapid and efficient transfer of vibrational energy from the low-frequency range, where the ABH is known to be ineffective, to the high-frequency range, thus improving the global passive vibration mitigation characteristics. The optimal design of a VI-ABH follows the rule of locating the contact points at local maxima of the low-frequency modes. Experiments clearly demonstrate the gain in performance, both in forced and free vibrations.

The Grell-Freitas (GF) cumulus parameterization is an aerosol-aware, scale-aware convective parameterization. This presentation will focus one of the several developmental activities ongoing in GF: the continued development of its aerosol-aware capabilities and the impact in global forecast models.Previous versions of GF initialized aerosols based on an assumed value of aerosol-optical depth (AOD) that was applied uniformly across the entire globe. Observations of AOD indicate that AOD varies substantially across the globe. Recently, the constant AOD value assumed in GF has been replaced by global AOD data from NASA’s MERRA2 reanalysis. Thus, the distribution of aerosols at initialization more physically reasonable and geographically appropriate. This is important since the treatment of aerosols in GF should be most sensitive in regions with either very high or very low AOD. This method is extremely efficient, but can be adapted so that other aerosol and AOD products can be used in GF. Other products that could be used for initialization include the aerosol climatology used by the Thompson Aerosol-Aware Microphysical Parameterization or predicted aerosols using NOAA’s aerosol prediction model, which is currently one ensemble in the Global Ensemble Forecast System – Aerosols (GEFS-Aerosols). GF includes three aerosol related cloud processes: aerosol-influenced evaporation, aerosol-influenced auto-conversion of cloud water to rain water, and aerosol wet scavenging based on memory. As in Wang (2013) the treatment of wet scavenging has been modified so that the aerosol wet scavenging efficiency is proportional to precipitation efficiency. Additionally, aerosols in GF are now allowed to slowly return to their original concentrations during precipitation-free periods. These changes are important since they allow the aerosols in GF to evolve over time in a physically realistic manner.The impact of these changes to GF will be shown in a version of NOAA’s operational global prediction model.

Online atmosphere-chemistry coupled models have been rapidly developed in recent years. In online models, the atmospheric model can impact air quality and atmospheric composition, while the aerosol feedbacks also impact the atmosphere through direct, semi-direct and indirect effects. At NOAA GSL, in collaboration with scientists from the Chemical Science Laboratory (CSL) and Air Resource Laboratory (ARL), we developed an atmospheric composition suite (based on WRF-Chem) and coupled it online with FV3GFS through the National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC)-based NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) software. This modeling system has been operational since September 24th, 2020 as an ensemble member of the Global Ensemble Forecast System (named as GEFS-aerosols) for global aerosol predictions. When using the NUOPC coupler, there are two independent components for atmosphere and chemistry that communicate via the NUOPC coupler every time-step. Because of the interactive and strongly couple nature of chemistry and physics, it is natural to allow for some of the atmospheric composition modules to be called directly from inside the physics suite. This can be accomplished through the use of the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP). CCPP, designed to facilitate a host-model agnostic implementation of physics parameterizations, is a community development and will be used by many different organizations. All the physics parameterizations in the NOAA Unified Forecast System (UFS) Weather Model are CCPP-compliant. Here we broke up the chemistry suite used in GEFS-aerosols, and all the chemical modules were embedded into UFS Weather Model using CCPP as subroutines of physics. This newly developed model with CCPP has been running in real-time starting in the middle of November, 2020. Because of this development we were able to include the CCPP-compliant modules of sea salt, dust, and wild-fire emissions into the NWP model to provide input for the double moment Thompson microphysics parameterization. The inclusion of smoke and aerosol emission modules into the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) with CCPP is also ongoing. We will show results from real-time experiments for medium range weather forecasting and compare results with runs that do not include aerosol impacts.

The principal processes that dynamically couple the atmosphere and the underneath surface are those involving turbulent exchanges of energy and mass. In this chapter, major uncertainties in the parameterizations of these processes are briefly reviewed and discussed.

We detail recent developments in the GF (Grell and Freitas, 2014, Freitas et al., 2018) convection parameterization and applications. The parameterization has been extended to a trimodal spectral size to simulate the interaction and transition from shallow, congestus and deep convection regimes. Another main new feature is the inclusion of a closure for non-equilibrium convection that resulted in a substantial gain of realism in the simulation of the diurnal cycle of convection, mainly associated with boundary layer forcing over the land. Additional changes include the transport of momentum, the use of three Probability Density Functions (PDF's) to describe the normalized vertical mass flux profiles from deep, congestus, and shallow plumes (respectively) in the grid box, and the option of using temporal and spatial correlations to stochastically perturb PDF's, momentum transport and the closures. Cloud water detrainment is proportional to mass detrainment and in-cloud hydrometeor mixing ratio, and transport of chemical constituents (including wet deposition) can be treated inside the GF scheme. Transport is handled in flux form and is mass conserving. Finally, the cloud microphysics has been extended to include the ice phase to simulate the conversion from liquid water to ice in updrafts with resulting additional heating release, and the melting from snow to rain within a user-specified melting vertical layer.

We will present some recent improvements to the GF parameterization. These include two features that were added to the Grell-Freitas (GF) Cumulus Parameterization to improve the representation of the particle size distribution and to allow parameterized deep convection to propagate. These also include the treatment of tracer transport, wet scavenging, and aqueous phase chemistry, and improvements on interactions with aerosols. A more complete implementation for transport and treatment of atmospheric composition variables was necessary to complement recent new developments at NOAA/ESRL coupling chemical modules within the NWP model.Estimates of cloud water and ice crystal number concentrations are added to GF base on the water-friendly aerosol content, temperature, and the cloud water and ice crystal mixing ratios. This modification is designed to diminish the artificial modification of the particle size distribution that occurs when the single moment cumulus schemes are used with the double-moment microphysics schemes. Simulations demonstrate that the addition of GF ice number concentrations substantially increases ice content aloft in the tropics, which shifts the outgoing longwave radiation distribution towards colder brightness temperatures.The key modification used to enable the propagation of parameterized deep convective is the addition of an advected scalar that represents the cloud base mass flux associated with GF downdrafts. Our implementation of this advected scalar allows the impact of downdrafts from previous time steps to foster propagation. Evaluation and tuning of the new downdraft mass advection term is ongoing.

Switching microglial polarization from the pro-inflammatory M1 phenotype to the anti-inflammatory M2 phenotype represents a novel therapeutic strategy for diabetic neuropathic pain (DNP). This study aims to determine the role and mechanism of interleukin (IL)-35 in regulating microglial M1/M2 polarization in DNP. A rat model of DNP was induced by a single streptozocin injection and recombinant IL-35 (rIL-35) was then intrathecally administered to the rats for 14 days. The mechanical withdrawal threshold (MWT) and thermal withdrawal latency (TWL) were measured to assess the therapeutic effect of IL-35. Highly aggressive proliferating immortalized (HAPI), a rat microglia cell line, was treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for M1 polarization or IL-4 for M2 polarization. The M1 markers (CD68, iNOS, TNF-α, IL-6) and M2 markers (CD206, Arg-1, IL-10) were examined. rIL-35 administration in DNP model rats elevated MWT and TWL, induced microglial polarization toward the M2 phenotype, suppressed JNK signaling and activated JAK2/STAT6 signaling. In vitro assay confirmed that rIL-35 induced microglial M2 polarization in HAPI cells through inhibiting JNK signaling and activating JAK2/STAT6 signaling. Collectively, the mechanism underlying therapeutic effect of IL-35 on DNP may relate to its promotion of microglial M2 polarization by regulating JNK signaling and JAK2/STAT6 signaling.

A broadband two-mode multi/demultiplexer using asymmetric Y-junctions is designed and experimentally demonstrated on a silicon-on-insulator platform for on-chip mode-division multiplexing applications. Within a bandwidth from 1513 to 1619 nm, the fabricated device, which consists of a two-mode multiplexer, a multimode straight waveguide, and a two-mode demultiplexer, exhibits demultiplexing crosstalk of less than −9.1 dB. The demultiplexing crosstalk as low as −42.1 dB, lower than −12.8 dB over the C band can be obtained. The measured insertion loss varies from 0.40 to 0.56 dB at a wavelength of 1550 nm. A transmission experiment of 10 Gbit/s electrical signals carried on TE0 and TE1 modes is successfully achieved with open and clear eye diagrams.

The effect of gravity and sliding friction on the dynamics around targeted energy transfer of an inclined vibro-impact nonlinear energy sink (VINES) is addressed. The non-smooth dynamics is first formulated in Signorini’s contact law and treated using a Moreau-Jean scheme adapted with an energy-conserving integration method. Exhaustive discussions are then carried out regarding the vibration damping performance of the VINES, as well as their dependence on the underlying vibro-impact induced response regimes, under both transient and steady-state responses. It is demonstrated that gravity is responsible for reducing the energy barrier required for achieving targeted energy transfer in the transient response, or enlarge the existing bandwidth of the effective strongly modulated response (SMR) regimes, which is an equivalent representation of TET in the steady-state response, to improve considerably the overall damping efficiency. Some adverse effects brought by gravity and friction are also reported, and it is found that, when the incline angle or friction coefficient grows large, the bandwidth of SMR reduces again and leads to a deterioration of efficiency. The results open a door for appropriately taking advantage of the gravity into the VINES design to improve its damping performance.