Search

Fire incidents in energy storage stations are frequent, posing significant firefighting safety risks. To simulate the fire characteristics and inhibition performances by fine water mist for lithium-ion battery packs in an energy-storage cabin, the PyroSim software is used to build a 1:1 experimental geometry model of a containerized lithium-ion energy storage cabin. The simulation reveals five stages and their characteristic parameter variations during a fire incident: initial temperature rise, flame generation, flame spread, stable combustion, and flame extinguishment. By adjusting various parameters of the fine water mist, the design of the fine water mist firefighting system for containerized energy storage units is optimized. The simulation results indicate that the optimal inhibition effect for the energy storage cabin's fine water mist firefighting system is achieved when the spray intensity is ≥24 l/min, the fog cone angle is 76°, nozzle velocity is 10 m/s, and the optimal particle size of the fine water mist is 50 μm. The research findings not only provide a rational method and theoretical guidance for the numerical simulation of thermal runaway in lithium batteries but also offer theoretical data support for the safety design and protection of future energy storage cabins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AI-driven mineral prospectivity mapping (MPM) is a valid and increasingly accepted tool for delineating the targets of mineral exploration, but it suffers from noisy and unrepresentative input features. In this study, a set of fractal and multifractal methods, including box-counting calculation, concentration–area fractal modeling, and multifractal analyses, were employed to excavate the underlying nonlinear mineralization-related information from geological features. Based on these methods, multiple feature selection criteria, namely prediction–area plot, K-means clustering, information gain, chi-square, and the Pearson correlation coefficient, were jointly applied to rank the relative importance of ore-related features and their fractal representations, so as to choose the optimal input feature dataset readily used for training predictive AI models. The results indicate that fault density, the multifractal spectrum width (∆α) of the Yanshanian intrusions, information dimension (D1) of magnetic anomalies, correlation dimension (D2) of iron-oxide alteration, and the D2 of argillic alteration serve as the most effective predictor features representative of the corresponding ore-controlling elements. The comparative results of the model assessment suggest that all the AI models trained by the fractal datasets outperform their counterparts trained by raw datasets, demonstrating a significant improvement in the predictive capability of fractal-trained AI models in terms of both classification accuracy and predictive efficiency. A Shapley additive explanation was employed to trace the contributions of these features and to explain the modeling results, which imply that fractal representations provide more discriminative and definitive feature values that enhance the cognitive capability of AI models trained by these data, thereby improving their predictive performance, especially for those indirect predictor features that show subtle correlations with mineralization in the raw dataset. In addition, fractal-trained models can benefit practical mineral exploration by outputting low-risk exploration targets that achieve higher capturing efficiency and by providing new mineralization clues extracted from remote sensing data. This study demonstrates that the fractal representations of geological features filtered by multi-criteria feature selection can provide a feasible and promising means of improving the predictive capability of AI-driven MPM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-strength steel reinforcement offers promising application prospects in buildings with large spans and loads, as it can reduce steel congestion and simplify construction process. To investigate the mechanical behavior of flexural members reinforced with high-strength steel and measures to control crack width, in this study, static loading tests were conducted on 17 full-scale reinforced concrete (RC) beams with HRB635 high-strength steel reinforcement, six of which were reinforced with steel fiber. The failure mode, flexural strength, ductility, crack width, and deflection of the specimens were investigated, and the effects of different key parameters, including the reinforcement ratio and diameter, concrete strength, and steel fiber volume fraction were also analyzed. Test results indicated that the tensile strength of HRB635 reinforcement could be fully utilized, while the ductility ratios of high-strength steel reinforced concrete (HSS-RC) beams were less than those of beams with normal strength reinforcement. The maximum crack widths of most specimens without steel fibers exceeded the threshold defined in GB 50010-2010, indicating that the design of HSS-RC beams may be controlled by the requirements of serviceability limit state. Furthermore, the crack widths predicting methods defined in GB 50010-2010 and EN 1992-1-1 are more accurate for HSS-RC beams, while the deflection predicting methods defined in GB 50010-2010 and ACI 318-19 both underestimated the deflection of HSS-RC beams. This study could provide a theoretical basis for the engineering application of HRB635 high-strength steel reinforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of mineral prospectivity mapping (MPM), which aims to outline and prioritize mineral exploration targets, has been spurred by advances in data-driven machine learning algorithms. Supervised data-driven MPM is a typical few-shot task, suffering from a scarcity of labeled data, the over-fitting of models and an uncertainty of predictions. The main objective of this contribution is to propose a robust framework of few-shot learning (FSL), combining data augmentation and transfer learning to enable the generation of prospectivity models with excellent predictive efficiency and low uncertainty. The mineral systems approach was used to transfer a conceptual mineral system into mappable exploration criteria. Synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE) was employed to augment and balance the labeled dataset, allowing for model pre-training with the large synthetic training dataset of a source domain. The knowledge derived from pre-trained models was then transferred to the target domain by fine-tuning, and the prospectivity model was generated in light of over-fitting and uncertainty assessments. The proposed FSL framework was applied to tungsten prospectivity mapping in southern Jiangxi Province. The results indicated that the SMOTE-ed balanced dataset boosted the classification accuracy in the training process. The FSL models yielded an arch-shaped prediction point pattern which was favorable for focusing potential targets with high probability and low uncertainty. The FSL models achieved a high predictive performance (test AUC = 0.9172) and the lowest quantitative over-fitting value compared to the models derived from the benchmark algorithms of random forest and support vector machine. Four levels of potential targeting zones, considering both predictive efficiency and uncertainty, were extracted from the resulting FSL prospectivity map. The final high-potential and low-risk exploration targets only cover 4.27% of the area, but capture 41.53% of known tungsten deposits, thus achieving a superior predictive performance. This study highlights the capability of FSL framework to control over-fitting and generate high-confidence exploration targets with low levels of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Survival and reconstruction in osteosarcoma is quite challenging. The study aimed to investigate the prognosis in patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and determine the clinical outcomes of expandable endoprosthesis reconstruction in children. Methods: From January 2009 to December 2014, we retrospectively analyzed 29 skeletally immature children (mean age, 10.5 years; range, 6–15 years) with osteosarcoma around the knee. Of the 29 patients who underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy and limb salvage surgery, an expandable prosthesis was implanted for reconstruction. No patients were missed during follow‐up. The evaluation index involved follow‐up time, complication, functional results, and lengthening procedures. The survivorship and recurrence were assessed by GraphPad Software, and the function was evaluated by the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS) scoring system. Results: A mean follow‐up time was 8.9 years (range, 6–12 years), and the overall 5‐year survival was 89.1% based on Kaplan–Meier analysis. Three patients suffered a relapse and one underwent amputation. Lung metastasis developed in one patient. At 6 months after the operation, patients had a mean MSTS score of 27 points (range, 24–29). Two patients underwent revision surgery, one for implant infection and one for aseptic loosening. Prognosis is correlated with alkaline phosphatase change after treatment. Conclusions: Chemotherapy scheme and limb salvage can achieve high survival rates. This expandable prosthesis was associated with good function and low complication rates. The character of expandability could be a method to overcome discrepancies in the growth period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hybrid structure constructed by replacing external steel beams and columns in the steel frame (SF) to precast concrete shear walls with insulation (PCSWs) and precast concrete cladding panels (PCCPs, SFPCSW) is proposed in this paper to avoid the problem of columns protruding from walls and PCCPs directly connected with SF. Numerical models of the SF and SFPCSW structures are established in ETABS software based on an 18‐story assembled steel residential building to investigate the seismic performance and collapse resistance capacity of SFPCSW. Time history analysis results show that the SFPCSW exhibits bending‐shearing lateral deformation and has more uniform interstory drift ratios than the SF. Under major earthquakes (i.e., probability of exceedance of 2% in 50 years), the damage of SF is concentrated in stories 1–6; for SFPCSW, the plastic hinges mainly appear in the concrete beams between PCSWs at each story, and the damage in PCSWs and the internal frame is small. Using pinned connections between the steel beam and PCSW reduces the structural lateral stiffness and increases the earthquake load carried by the internal frame. The incremental dynamic analysis results show that the SF and SFPCSW have similar collapse resistance capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthracyclines, such as doxorubicin, represent one group of chemotherapy drugs with the most cardiotoxicity. Despite that anthracyclines are capable of treating assorted solid tumors and hematological malignancies, the side effect of inducing cardiac dysfunction has hampered their clinical use. Currently, the mechanism underlying anthracycline cardiotoxicity remains obscure. Increasing evidence points to mitochondria, the energy factory of cardiomyocytes, as a major target of anthracyclines. In this review, we will summarize recent findings about mitochondrial mechanism during anthracycline cardiotoxicity. In particular, we will focus on the following aspects: 1) the traditional view about anthracycline-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS), which is produced by mitochondria, but in turn causes mitochondrial injury. 2) Mitochondrial iron-overload and ferroptosis during anthracycline cardiotoxicity. 3) Autophagy, mitophagy and mitochondrial dynamics during anthracycline cardiotoxicity. 4) Anthracycline-induced disruption of cardiac metabolism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a worldwide leading cause of morbidity and mortality, is the most frequent primary liver tumor. Most HCC patients are diagnosed with advanced liver cancer, resulting in a very low 5-year survival rate. Thus, there is an urgent need for the development of targeted therapies. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect and mechanism of the miR-20a/EZH1 axis on the proliferation and metastasis of HCC and the inhibitory effect of the EZH1/EZH2 inhibitor UNC1999 on HCC. Materials and Methods: The expression of miR-20a in human HCC tissues and cell lines was detected using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). The expressions of proteins were analyzed with immunohistochemistry and Western blotting. Luciferase assay was used to verify whether miR-20a targets EZH1 or EZH2. The effect of miR-20a on HCC progression was studied in vivo and in vitro. The tumor inhibitory effect of UNC1999 was confirmed in vivo. CCK8 assay, wound healing assay, cell migration and invasion assay were used to evaluate the synergistic effect of UNC1999 with sorafenib. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was performed to screen the differentially expressed genes in the Huh7 and SMMC7721 cell lines after UNC1999, sorafenib, and combination treatments. Results: In this study, miR-20a showed a lower expression in both HCC tissues and cell lines. MiR-20a inhibited the proliferation and migration of SMMC7721 and Huh7 cells. The results of the luciferase assay and Western blot analysis revealed that miR-20a directly targeted EZH1, a histone methyltransferase. We demonstrated that miR-20a negatively regulated the expression of EZH1 and inhibited the proliferation and metastasis of HCC by reducing H3K27 methylation. We found UNC1999 inhibited tumor cells proliferation and enhanced the inhibitory effect of sorafenib. Conclusion: We demonstrated that miR-20a suppresses the tumor proliferation and metastasis in HCC by directly targeting EZH1. UNC1999 can inhibit tumor proliferation in vivo and increase the sensitivity of hepatoma cell lines to sorafenib. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting pavement cracks from images is a complex computer vision task due to their varying shapes, backgrounds, and sizes. We propose CrackF-Net, an end-to-end convolutional neural network for automatic crack detection in road images. We construct the CrackF-Net network using an encoder–decoder architecture to extract image features in convolutional blocks with residuals and fuse the multiscale convolutional features produced by the decoder. Convolutional blocks with residuals are used to capture the strong semantic features of cracks, and an adaptive filter fusion module is proposed to assist the network make a selection of filter fusion features on the channels. CrackF-Net fuses the multiscale features in decoder to improve crack detection performance. The proposed CrackF-Net is compared to other advanced crack detection methods using three public datasets. The experimental results show that CrackF-Net achieves state-of-the-art performance, which obtains F-measures of 0.866, 0.737, and 0.852 on the three datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Back diffusion of contaminants from secondary sources may hamper site remediation if it is not properly addressed in the remedial design. A review of all reported technologies and strategies that have been or could be applied to address plume persistence due to back diffusion as published in the peer‐reviewed literature is provided. We classify these into four major categories. The first category consists of those approaches that do not include active measures to specifically address contamination in the low permeable zones (LPZs) and can therefore be considered passive LPZ management approaches. A disadvantage of these approaches is the long duration that may be required to meet acceptable endpoints; however, this allows degradation to potentially play a significant part even at modest rates. The remaining three categories all use approaches to specifically address contaminants in the LPZ. The second category consists of strategies that promote contaminant destruction through the forward diffusion of amendments into the LPZ. A variety of laboratory tests indicate concentration or flux reductions range from no improvement, to reductions as high as four orders‐of‐magnitude depending on the evaluation metric. The third category consists of strategies that alter physical characteristics of the secondary source, and includes viscosity modification, fracturing, and soil mixing. Each of these offer unique advantages and are often used to deliver one or more amendments for contaminant treatment. The final category consists of thermal and electrokinetic remediation, both less susceptible to permeability contrast limitations. However, they are not routinely used for secondary‐source treatment. Article impact statement: Back diffusion of contaminants from secondary sources may hamper site remediation if it is not properly addressed in the remedial design. A review of all reported technologies and strategies that have been or could be applied to address plume persistence due to back diffusion as published in the peer‐reviewed literature was conducted and is intended to provide a state‐of‐the‐science resource to assist in evaluating treatment options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 3D mathematical model that describes transport of volatile organic compounds in a coupled vadose-saturated zone system is proposed. The subsurface processes incorporated in the model include advection, dispersion, interphase mass transfer, and diffusive mass exchange between two horizontal porous media formations, as well as the time-dependent mass loading from a source zone. The analytical solutions are derived subject to the specific initial and boundary conditions. The solutions are evaluated by numerical Laplace inverse transform. The model solutions can be used to study the fate and transport in subsurface formations composed of a vadose zone and a water table aquifer, where the volatile organic compound is released from entrapped nonaqueous phase liquid in the vadose zone, or the dissolved volatile organic compound transports with groundwater accompanied by diffusive mass transfer into the overlying soil formations. Mass transfer between two layers is demonstrated to have back-diffusion characteristics, which results in secondary contamination and retains low levels of contaminant concentrations over a prolonged period of time. The model solutions are specifically useful in assessing the vapor intrusion process in a contaminated site where a vadose zone is underlain by a water table aquifer contaminated with volatile organic compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposed a new lateral joint to connect precast concrete hollow‐core slabs (PCHSs) and increase their structural assembly efficiency. The main sensitive parameters are the longitudinal ribs and the number of proposed joints. Out‐of‐plane bending performance tests were conducted on four PCHSs with lateral joints (PCHS‐LJs) to study the effects of the main sensitive parameters on the mechanical properties and failure modes of the PCHS‐LJs. The test results showed that there is no obvious relative slip in the joints between the precast bottom slab and the upper post‐pouring concrete before PCHS‐LJs reaching the ultimate load. The transverse directions of PCHS‐LJs are the main force bearing directions and the cracks are mainly occurred in the longitudinal direction of the specimens, which is similar to the stress characteristics of one‐way slabs. Moreover, the vertical bearing capacities of PCHS‐LJs are increased when decreasing the number of proposed joints or when adding the longitudinal ribs. For the specimens without the longitudinal ribs, a wide transverse crack appears near the first transverse ribs, whereas the specimens with the longitudinal ribs do not exhibit this phenomenon. Thus, longitudinal ribs should be added to optimize the PCHS‐LJ failure modes. Finally, solid finite element (FE) models of the test specimens were established in MSC. MARC. The analysis results are basically consistent with the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An approach combining U-shaped dampers (USDs) and rocking walls is proposed in this paper to improve the seismic performance of traditional precast reinforced concrete (RC) frames with cladding panels (PRCFCPs): (1) the steel bar and USD connection methods are adopted at the top and bottom of the cladding panels to use the relative deformation between the cladding panels and the main structure and then dissipate the seismic energy and (2) rocking walls are added to the structure to control the structural deformation profiles. The USD numerical model is calibrated using the test data, and a series of nonlinear pushover analyses, dynamic time-history analyses, and incremental dynamic analyses are successively performed to compare the seismic performance and collapse capacity of the PRCFCP, PRCFCP with USDs (PRCFCP-USD), and PRCFCP with USDs and rocking walls (PRCFCP-USD-RW).The results show that the USDs in the PRCFCP-USD-RW undergo more uniform deformation along the structural height and higher energy dissipation efficiency and the PRCFCP-USD-RW exhibits enhanced seismic performance and collapse capacity, which verify the superiority of the proposed combined approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small molecular PD‐1 inhibitors are lacking in current immuno‐oncology clinic. PD‐1/PD‐L1 antibody inhibitors currently approved for clinical usage block interaction between PD‐L1 and PD‐1 to enhance cytotoxicity of CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL). Whether other steps along the PD‐1 signaling pathway can be targeted remains to be determined. Here, we report that methylene blue (MB), an FDA‐approved chemical for treating methemoglobinemia, potently inhibits PD‐1 signaling. MB enhances the cytotoxicity, activation, cell proliferation, and cytokine‐secreting activity of CTL inhibited by PD‐1. Mechanistically, MB blocks interaction between Y248‐phosphorylated immunoreceptor tyrosine‐based switch motif (ITSM) of human PD‐1 and SHP2. MB enables activated CTL to shrink PD‐L1 expressing tumor allografts and autochthonous lung cancers in a transgenic mouse model. MB also effectively counteracts the PD‐1 signaling on human T cells isolated from peripheral blood of healthy donors. Thus, we identify an FDA‐approved chemical capable of potently inhibiting the function of PD‐1. Equally important, our work sheds light on a novel strategy to develop inhibitors targeting PD‐1 signaling axis. Synopsis: PD‐1 inhibitors that are currently used in the clinic exhibit toxicity and limited patient response rate. This study identifies methylene blue (MB), an FDA‐approved chemical for treating methemoglobinemia, as a new potent PD‐1 inhibitor. MB activates T‐cell functions through inhibiting the recruitment of SHP2 to PD‐1.MB treatment effectively shrinks tumors in both an allograft mouse model and an autochthonous mouse model for lung cancer.MB activates human CD8+ T cells that are otherwise suppressed by PD‐1 signaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]