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The primary objective of this study was to assess the challenges and opportunities associated with the provision of appropriate infrastructure to support electric vehicle (EV) operations and electrification across Indiana. A secondary objective of this study was to develop a strategic plan for INDOT that outlines new business opportunities for developing EV charging stations. To achieve these objectives, the project team assessed current and emerging trends in EV operations, particularly EV charging infrastructure and EV demand forecasting. They also examined opportunities for the strategic deployment of EV charging stations by identifying EV infrastructure deficit areas; investigated the impact of EV adoption on highway revenue and the feasibility of new revenue structures; and evaluated strategic partnerships and business models. The agent-based simulation model developed for future long distance EV trip scenarios enables INDOT to identify EV energy deficient areas for current and future energy charging demand scenarios, and it can support Indiana’s strategic plans for EV charging infrastructure development. The results of the revenue impact analysis can inform INDOT’s revenue model. The estimations of the recovery EV fee, the VMT fee, and pay-as-you-charge fee that break-even the fuel tax revenue loss can be used by INDOT in pilot programs to capture users’ perspectives and estimate appropriate fee rates and structures. The insights obtained from the stakeholder interviews can be used to enhance preparedness for increasing EV adoption rates across vehicle classes and to strengthen the engagement of different entities in the provision of charging infrastructure.

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Characterization of primary skeletal muscle fibroblasts. Fibroblasts isolated from mouse leg skeletal muscle were staining with antibodies against α-SMA (Fibroblast marker) and MyoD (myoblast marker) and analyzed with flow cytometry.

Vanadium is a strategic transition metal that has been extensively utilized in steelmaking, green chemistry, energy storage, and aviation industries, and the sustainable development of vanadium production industries is therefore of significant importance. In this review, the production of vanadium using primary resources including vanadium titano-magnetite, vanadium slag, vanadium bearing stone coal, and carnotite has been reviewed, with the elaboration of typical industrial processes. The processes with respect to the cleaner production of vanadium have been discussed in detail to provide information for peer researchers to understand the challenges of this industry and future research directions. In addition, the resource, market, and major organizations of vanadium production have also been discussed in this review, presenting a general overview of this important industry.

Additional file 1.

(B4C/C)-β-PbO2 electrodes were prepared by high-pressure molding technique and characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, polarization curves, cyclic voltammetry curves, and corrosion resistance test. In this paper, the effects of initial concentration, current density, electrolyte concentration, pH, and electrode spacing on tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH) degradation were investigated. Results indicated that modified electrode had high electrochemical activities, high oxygen evolution potential, and excellent corrosion resistance. The maximum removal rate of TCH could reach 90.87% at initial concentration of 300 mg/L after 120 min electrolysis with Na2SO4 concentration of 0.2 mol/L, electrode spacing of 1 cm, current density of 30 mA/cm2, and pH 3. Pseudo-first-order kinetics equation was followed during electrocatalytic degradation of TCH with 20%(B4C/C)-β-PbO2 electrode.

This study aimed to modify chitosan microspheres to have large specific surface area as cathode catalysts in microbial fuel cell. Nitrogen-rich chitosan microspheres were first prepared and were used as precursors to prepare the activated carbon materials. The activation effects of KOH and activation temperature on the graphitization degree, specific surface area and electrochemical performance were investigated. The materials were characterised through various microscopic analyses and the electrochemical properties of the materials as cathode catalyst were also investigated. Before and after the activation, the materials remained in microspheric morphology, shown by SEM measurement, while the specific surface area of the activated material increased significantly and reached 1562 m2g−1 measured by BET. The graphitization degree of the material showed synchronized increase with calcination temperature, which was detected by Raman spectroscopy. The materials activated were rich in nitrogen, revealed by XPS for elemental analysis. When activated at the temperature of 850 °C, the material demonstrated lower internal resistance (0.6 Ω cm−2), higher alternating current density (24.27 × 10–4 A·cm−2) and the highest power density (1531 ± 51 mW·m−2) which was 1.4 times that of the original carbon felt. It was illustrated by the electrochemical tests that the material prepared from the precursor chitosan microspheres as cathode catalyst has the high activity of oxygen reduction reaction in MFCs.

The effect of the acetylacetonate content, a complexing ligand during the one-step sol–gel preparation of TiO2–C hybrid aerogels on their photocatalytic performance for degradation of methylene blue (MB), was investigated. N2 adsorption, XRD, SEM, TEM, Raman and UV–vis spectroscopy were used to characterize the physics-chemical properties of the TiO2–C hybrid aerogels. Results show that complexing ligand can inhibit growth of TiO2 nanoparticles in sol–gel process. Thereby, the porous properties, adsorption equilibrium and kinetics for MB, crystalline size and band gap of the TiO2 in the hybrid aerogels are changed accordingly. The photocatalytic activity of the hybrid aerogels is dominantly determined by adsorption equilibrium and kinetics. Band-gap narrowing, reduced e−–h+ recombination rate and light availability are also responsible for the high photocatalytic activity.

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The vanadium-bearing steel slag as solid waste is also one of valuable vanadium-containing resource. Recovering vanadium from the refractory steel slag is a great challenge in the world. A leaching process study using high concentration sodium hydroxide solution was proposed in this laboratory work. The effects of sodium hydroxide concentration, particle size, leaching temperature and the ratio of alkali to slag on the rate of vanadium leaching were determined and the leaching kinetics was presented. It indicates that the leaching rate is highly sensitive to the sodium hydroxide concentration and leaching temperature and increases with increasing temperature and sodium hydroxide concentration. By studying the reaction mechanisms, it was found that the dicalcium silicate, tricalcium silicate and calcium ferrited which co-exist with calcium vanadate in the vanadium-bearing steel slag were gradually exposed and reacted with NaOH media to form Na3VO4. The leaching kinetics was analyzed which indicated that the leaching rate is controlled by the chemical reaction with the apparent activation energy of 51.34 kJ/mol. On the basis of this process, the vanadium can be effectively extracted with a leaching rate of more than 80%. The leaching medium can be recycled. It is an effective and cleaner process for leaching vanadium.

With the advanced development of computer-based enabling technologies, many engineering, medical, biology, chemistry, physics and food science etc have developed to the unprecedented levels, which lead to many research and development interests in various multi-discipline areas. Among them, biomimetics is one of the most promising and attractive branches of study. Biomimetics is a branch of study that uses biological systems as a model to develop synthetic systems. To learn from nature, one of the fundamental issues is to understand the natural systems such animals, insects, plants and human beings etc. The geometrical characterisation and representation of natural systems is an important fundamental work for biomimetics research. 3D modeling plays a key role in the geometrical characterisation and representation, especially in computer graphical visualization. This chapter firstly presents the typical procedure of 3D modelling methods and then reviews the previous work of 3D geometrical modelling techniques and systems developed for industrial, medical and animation applications. Especially the chapter discusses the problems associated with the existing techniques and systems when they are applied to 3D modelling of biological systems. In addition, the chapter also presents two case studies of authors' own work. Based upon the discussions, the chapter proposes some areas of research interests in 3D modelling of biological systems and for Biomimetics.

A new method using NaOH-NaNO3 binary melts to treat vanadium slag is proposed. Vanadium and chromium can be simultaneously extracted in the leaching processes. Under the optimum reaction conditions, the recovery of vanadium and chromium can reach 93.7% and 88.2% in 6 h, respectively. The kinetics investigation indicates that the decomposition of vanadium slag is controlled by mass transfer in product layer. During the reaction, NaOH is believed to provide basic media and facilitate the dissolution of acidic oxides. NaNO3 decomposes to produce a large amount of active oxygen species, such as O, O-2(2-),and O2-. NaOH intensifies the decomposition of NaNO3 to NaNO2, but inhibits further decomposition of NaNO2. NaNO3 can be regenerated by oxidation of NaNO2 using oxygen at high temperature. The apparent activation energy of NaNO2 oxidation in the temperature ranging from 350 to 450 degrees C is 105.5 kJ/mol. (C) 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 541-552, 2013

Objectives/Hypothesis: To evaluate the effects of long-term denervation on satellite cells (SCs) as myogenic stem cells in human posterior cricoarytenoid (PCA) muscle. Study Design: Histological investigation of SCs and quantitative assessment of myoD and myogenin, which are two key myogenic regulatory factors. Methods: According to the course of denervation, denervated PCA muscles of 58 patients who suffered from traumatic unilateral vocal cord paralysis were divided into four groups: group A (6–12 months, 15 cases), group B (13–24 months, 17 cases), group C (25–36 months, 14 cases), and group D (more than 36 months, 12 cases). Normal PCA muscles (12 cases) were used as a control group. Immunofluorescence labeling was used to visualize the SCs. Transcription and protein expression levels of myoD and myogenin were assessed using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blots, respectively. Results: MyoD- and myogenin-positive cells and embryonic myosin heavy chain-positive myofibers were detected in group A and most of the samples of group B. Transcription levels of myoD and myogenin were highly upregulated in groups A and B, whereas groups C and D showed no significant difference as compared to control. Protein expression levels of myoD and myogenin peaked in group A, which was significantly different than group B. In contrast, no expression was observed in the other groups. Conclusions: Activated SCs contribute to regenerative myogenesis in denervated laryngeal muscles through compensatory mechanisms. Laryngeal muscles exhibit persistent regenerative potential from the viewpoint of muscle SCs after less than 2 years of denervation. Laryngoscope, 2010

In this study, the effects of the content and the average diameter of potassium titanate whiskers (PTW) on the mechanical strength, thermal properties, tribological performance and chemical stability of PTW/PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) composites were investigated. For the small size PTW at 5 wt%, the tensile strength, elongation at break, notched impact strength, thermal deformation temperature and wear resistance were simultaneously increased by 35.6, 46, 3, 11.1 and 1000% over pure PTFE, respectively. When filler size was increased, the tensile strength, elongation and hardness were decreased, while the wear resistance and thermal deformation temperature were improved. The range of PTW in PTFE for optimal integrative properties is 5–10 wt%, which is similar to the behavior of nanoparticles. SEM analysis shows that, comparing to glass fiber/PTFE composites, the internal structure of PTW/PTFE composites is more uniform and dense.

In many applications, it makes sense to solve the least square problems with nonnegative constraints. In this article, we present a new multiplicative iteration that monotonically decreases the value of the nonnegative quadratic programming (NNQP) objective function. This new algorithm has a simple closed form and is easily implemented on a parallel machine. We prove the global convergence of the new algorithm and apply it to solving image super-resolution and color image labelling problems. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and broad applicability of the new algorithm., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

An optimized multi-class classification algorithm based on SVM decision tree (SVMDT) is proposed. But by SVMDT, the generalization ability depends on the tree structure. In this paper, the relativity separability measure between classes is defined based on the distribution of the training samples to improve the generalization ability of SVMDT. SVM is extended to non-linear SVM by using kernel functions and the classification experiments prove the algorithm is more effective and feasible for classification accuracy.

this paper has put forward a new method to improve the performance of text categorization. The new method combines HMM (Hidden Markov Model) and SVM (Support Vector Machines). HMMs are used to as a feature extractor and then a new feature vector is normalized as the input of SVMs, so the trained SVMs can classify unknown texts successfully. The experimental results prove that the method is more effective and high classification accuracy.

To evaluate the effects of long-term denervation on satellite cells (SCs) as myogenic stem cells in human posterior cricoarytenoid (PCA) muscle.Histological investigation of SCs and quantitative assessment of myoD and myogenin, which are two key myogenic regulatory factors.According to the course of denervation, denervated PCA muscles of 58 patients who suffered from traumatic unilateral vocal cord paralysis were divided into four groups: group A (6-12 months, 15 cases), group B (13-24 months, 17 cases), group C (25-36 months, 14 cases), and group D (more than 36 months, 12 cases). Normal PCA muscles (12 cases) were used as a control group. Immunofluorescence labeling was used to visualize the SCs. Transcription and protein expression levels of myoD and myogenin were assessed using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blots, respectively.MyoD- and myogenin-positive cells and embryonic myosin heavy chain-positive myofibers were detected in group A and most of the samples of group B. Transcription levels of myoD and myogenin were highly upregulated in groups A and B, whereas groups C and D showed no significant difference as compared to control. Protein expression levels of myoD and myogenin peaked in group A, which was significantly different than group B. In contrast, no expression was observed in the other groups.Activated SCs contribute to regenerative myogenesis in denervated laryngeal muscles through compensatory mechanisms. Laryngeal muscles exhibit persistent regenerative potential from the viewpoint of muscle SCs after less than 2 years of denervation.

The serious consequence of ship collisions necessitates the development of regulations and requirements for the subdivision and structural design of ships to reduce damage and environmental pollution from collision, and improve safety. The on-going revision of IMO regulations on oil outflow performance and damage stability in grounding and collision is focused on a transition to probabilistic performance-based standards. This thesis addresses one aspect of this problem, a simplified collision model sufficient to predict collision damage, and fast enough to be used in probabilistic analysis requiring thousands of collision simulations. The simplified collision model (SIMCOL) developed and evaluated in this thesis is based on a time domain simultaneous solution of external dynamics and internal deformation mechanics. The external sub-model uses a three-degree of freedom system for ship dynamics. The internal sub-model determines reacting forces from side and bulkhead structures using mechanisms adapted from Rosenblatt and McDermott, and absorbed energy by decks, bottoms and stringers calculated using the Minorsky correlation as modified by Reardon and Sprung. SIMCOL is applied to a series of collision scenarios. Results are compared with MIT's DAMAGE, a Danish Technical University (DTU) model and ALPS/SCOL. SIMCOL provides a fast, consistent and reasonable result for ship collision analysis. An actual collision case is used in an initial attempt to validate the model. This research is sponsored by the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) and the Ship Structure Committee (SSC). Master of Science

8 páginas, 5 figuras., Abnormal proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) contributes to intimal hyperplasia during atherosclerosis and restenosis, but the endogenous cell cycle regulatory factors underlying VSMC growth in response to arterial injury are not well understood. In the present study, we report that downregulation of cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (cdk2) activity in serum-deprived VSMCs was associated with the formation of complexes between cdk2 and its inhibitory protein p27(KIP1) (p27). Ectopic overexpression of p27 in serum-stimulated VSMCs resulted in the inhibition of cdk2 activity and repression of cyclin A promoter activity. Collectively, these findings indicate that p27 may contribute to VSMC growth arrest in vitro. Using the rat carotid model of balloon angioplasty, a marked upregulation of p27 was observed in injured arteries. High levels of p27 expression in the media and neointima correlated with downregulation of cdk2 activity at 2 wk after angioplasty, and adenovirus-mediated overexpression of p27 in balloon-injured arteries attenuated neointimal lesion formation. Thus, the inhibition of cdk2 function and repression of cyclin A gene transcription through the induction of the endogenous p27 protein provides a mechanism for the inhibition of VSMC growth at late time points after angioplasty.