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The design and application of sustainable structures are promising approaches to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction in construction and buildings. Cork stoppers have high recycling value and can be particularly used as the core of eco-friendly sandwich structures. The object of this paper is to assess the eco-mechanical performance of a more sustainable sandwich structure made of eco-friendly cores (natural or agglomerated cork stopper), aluminum alloy skins and resin adhesive. A set of sandwich panels with different packing arrangements are fabricated. Experimental tests are conducted to address the effects of packing topology and cork stoppers’ materials on bending characteristics and failure modes. The life cycle assessment method is adopted to quantify the environmental impacts, and the eco-mechanical performances are further evaluated. The results show that this sandwich structure concept with cork stopper cores has good structural and resource-environment efficiency and could be a promising alternative in construction and buildings.

A general method was developed for promoting peptide assembly and protein polymerization to form nanoscale patterns on various surfaces with an atomic force microscope (AFM) operated in a liquid. By scanning solid surfaces with an AFM tip, we showed that peptide monomers assemble at a higher rate in the tip-scanned area compared to other regions. The promotion is attributed to the mechanical force applied by the scanning tip. This kind of mechanical-force-promoted assembly was also observed with different peptides on various substrates. The force promoting peptide assembly provides a simple and practical solution for preparing and building peptide and protein architectures for future nanodevices.

The oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis(Hendel), is a devastating pest of citrus fruits. After successful mating, adult females insert their eggs into the ripened fruit, resulting in moldy and rotten fruit and causing great economic losses for the citrus industry. In the field, flies initiate copulatory behaviors as twilight approaches, and decreasing light intensity in this period is the normal stimulus for copulation. In this study, ten light intensities ranging from 0-30,000 lux were set to identify the typical intensity that strongly regulates the copulation behavior of B. dorsalis. Three light intensities found to regulate the copulation behavior were then selected to verify their effects on adult male wing fanning and female chemotaxis towards 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (TMP). At last, strong light and complete darkness were artificially combined in the lab to verify whether they could prevent copulation to inform behavioral manipulation of oriental flies in the future. The results indicated that adult flies generally initiated copulatory behaviors at low light intensity (<1,000 lux). Stronger light significantly prevented copulation in proportion to intensity, with nearly no copulation events initiated when light intensity was above 20,000 lux. Both male wing fanning and female chemotaxis towards TMP were attenuated as light intensity became stronger. However, at 10,000 lux, males still fanned their wings to a certain extent while TMP completely lost its attractiveness to females. In the darkness, adults did not initiate any sexual behaviors, e.g., copulation, wing fanning, or chemotaxis to TMP. One hour of strong light (10,000 lux) combined with continuous darkness completely prevented mating. These results show that light condition is an essential factor for copulatory behaviors in the oriental fruit fly. Researchers could thus manipulate light conditions artificially or disrupt the molecular target in flies' light transduction pathway to develop environmentally-friendly techniques to control this pest.

The enterprise information construction is mainly for enterprise standardization, to improve the overall management and the work efficiency of entire enterprise. In order to make enterprise do better information construction and enhance core ability of competition by appropriately using the knowledge of engineering economics, truly putting the modern sciences and technology knowledge into the construction practice, improving the knowledge economic benefits and accelerating the economic development of enterprises, and adapting to the rapidly growing global information age, this paper discusses the problems in the enterprise information construction and puts forward the corresponding solutions from the viewpoint of information economics.

The traffic safety in fog area along highway is a worldwide issue. Not only the cost of the injuries and deaths but also the cost of crash involvement by fog is quite large. The rationality and effectiveness of contingency plan for hydro-meteorological hazards is important on reducing the damage to traffic systems. Microscopic simulation models are now widely accepted as the most appropriate analytical tool for understanding traffic capacity problems and for assessing the effectiveness of ameliorative measures. Therefore, the authors have undertaken a simulation study to pre-evaluate the effectiveness of contingency plan in Henan highway network to ensure the effectiveness of traffic organization scheme under hydro-meteorological hazards in Henan highway network. This study illustrated how to assess the effectiveness of ameliorative measures using the microscopic simulation model. The results showed that real-time monitoring and dynamic traffic guidance can better enhance the efficiency of contingency plan.

With the rapid development of the society, the transportation system has become more complicated and vulnerable. For simulating the real-time traffic condition of the whole city, a wide range of OD matrix data are needed which are hard to collect in whole based on the present conventional methods. The paper raises a feasible design of the traffic simulation platform based on the real-time mobile phone data. The popularity and development of mobile phones make the vast amounts of real-time traffic data can be collected and usable. With the help of the GIS module, dynamic OD traffic generation module and other related modules, the real-time mobile phone data will be converted to the valuable traffic data and applied to the traffic simulation platform.