Search

Safety and disturbance issues in system engineering have garnered substantial attention. This study focuses on the analysis of the distinct characteristics of emergency dispatch problems in Natural Gas Pipeline Networks (NGPS). Graph theory serves as a tool to transform the NGPS topology and establish an optimization model for NGPS emergency dispatch. The model also integrates user weights, satisfaction, and reduction factors into the user modeling approach. Its objective is to maximize overall system satisfaction while considering factors such as demand-side requirements and operational constraints. To solve this optimization model, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method is employed. An in-depth exploration of four unique disturbance scenarios provides solid evidence of the effectiveness and practicality of the PSO method. Compared to other methods, the PSO method consistently boosts overall user satisfaction and aligns more fluidly with the real-time demands of emergency scheduling, regardless of reduced supply capacity, complete supply interruptions, sudden surges in user demand, or pipeline connection failures. The developed emergency scheduling optimization method presents two key advantages. Firstly, it proficiently mitigates potential losses stemming from decreased supply capacity at local or regional levels. By adeptly adjusting natural gas supply strategies, it minimizes economic and production losses while ensuring a steady supply to critical users. Secondly, the method is superior at swiftly reducing the affected area and managing the increased demand for natural gas, thus maintaining NGPS stability. This research underscores the importance of considering user characteristics and demands during emergencies and demonstrates the effectiveness of employing the PSO method to navigate emergency scheduling challenges. By strengthening the resilience of the pipeline network and ensuring a sustainable natural gas supply, this study constitutes a significant contribution to energy security, economic development, and the promotion of clean energy utilization, ultimately propelling the achievement of sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A natural gas pipeline system (NGPS), as a crucial energy transportation network, exhibits intricate systemic characteristics. Both uncertain disturbances and complex characteristics result in higher requirement of supply safety. The investigation into NGPS resilience addresses the constraints of pipeline integrity and reliability, centering around the vulnerability, robustness, and recovery of an NGPS. Based on a literature review and practical engineering insights, the generalized concept of NGPS resilience is elucidated. The research methodologies of NGPS resilience are classified into three types: indicator construction method, process analysis method, and complex networks method. The practical applications of NGPS resilience research are analyzed, which are based on NGPS operation safety, information safety, and market safety. The ongoing applications and detailed measures are also concluded, which can guide the researchers and engineers from NGPS resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and their associated proteins (Cas) are promising molecular diagnostic tools for rapidly and precisely elucidating the structure and function of genomes due to their high specificity, programmability, and multi-system compatibility in nucleic acid recognition. Multiple parameters limit the ability of a CRISPR/Cas system to detect DNA or RNA. Consequently, it must be used in conjunction with other nucleic acid amplification techniques or signal detection techniques, and the reaction components and reaction conditions should be modified and optimized to maximize the detection performance of the CRISPR/Cas system against various targets. As the field continues to develop, CRISPR/Cas systems have the potential to become an ultra-sensitive, convenient, and accurate biosensing platform for the detection of specific target sequences. The design of a molecular detection platform employing the CRISPR/Cas system is asserted on three primary strategies: (1) Performance optimization of the CRISPR/Cas system; (2) enhancement of the detection signal and its interpretation; and (3) compatibility with multiple reaction systems. This article focuses on the molecular characteristics and application value of the CRISPR/Cas system and reviews recent research progress and development direction from the perspectives of principle, performance, and method development challenges to provide a theoretical foundation for the development and application of the CRISPR/CAS system in molecular detection technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, pathogenic infections have been a growing health threat due to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria, so photothermal therapy (PTT) has gained considerable interest in biological and medical fields, owing to its noninvasive and highly effective properties. However, it is hard to achieve selective bacteria targeting while generating a large amount of heat at infected sites. Cationic electrostatic interaction is considered to be a common antimicrobial strategy. Herein, an organic molecule named RT-MN was synthesized with four positively charged quaternary ammonium salts that can bind to negatively charged bacteria. Under near-infrared 808 nm laser irradiation, RT-MN could be efficiently converted into a large amount of heat to eradicate bacteria. In addition, its good water solubility and biological safety proved that RT-MN has excellent biological application prospects. Overall, four such positively charged photosensitizer RT-MN, as a non-antibiotic treatment for resistant bacteria, could be promising for the exploration of highly effective antibacterial agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an effective tool for genetically modified organism (GMO) quantification in complex matrices, digital PCR (dPCR) has been widely used for the quantification of genetically modified (GM) canola events; however, little is known about the quantification of GM canola events using endogenous reference gene (ERG) characteristics by dPCR. To calculate and quantify the content of GM canola using endogenous reference gene (ERG) characteristics, the suitability of several ERGs of canola, such as cruciferin A (CruA), acetyl-CoA carboxylase (BnAcc), phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEP), cruciferin storage (BnC1), oleoyl hydrolase (Fat(A)), and high-mobility-group protein I/Y (HMG-I/Y), was investigated by droplet dPCR. BnAcc and BnC1 were more specific and stable in copy number in the genome of Brassica napus L. than the other genes. By performing intra-laboratory validation of the suitability of ERG characteristics for the quantification of GM canola events, the ddPCR methods for BnAcc and BnC1 were comprehensively demonstrated in dPCR assays. The methods could provide technical support for GM labeling regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plant dormancy period in the riparian zone affects the activity of microorganisms and their related nitrogen (N) process, which necessitates an investigation of the influence of the dormancy period on the microbial community. This study sampled two groups of soils (ashore and offshore soils) of two typical plants (Acorus calamus, Canna indica) in rhizosphere soils and bulk soils during the dormancy period to study the microbial communities. The results suggested that in ashore soils, especially in Canna indica soils, there was a lower abundance of N-related genes (4.79 × 106 copies/g) due to relatively competitive ecological niche competition because of possible sufficient substrate. Therefore, microbial communities still play a major role in the removal of N-related nutrients during plants' dormancy period. In addition, the results also showed that during the plant dormancy period, the cell necrosis processes accounted for relatively lower proportions (15.75%, 7.54%, 21.46%, and 5.23% in ashore and offshore Canna indica and ashore and offshore Acorus calamus, respectively), suggesting an unexpected fairly strong microbial survival ability in the dormancy period compared to the commonly expected weak microbial state. This high microbial vitality provides us insight into the restoration of riparian soils during the plant dormancy period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: Computer vision, visual scenes understanding, and image retrieval. The abundant visual information contained in multi-view images is widely used in computer vision tasks. Existing visual relationship detection frameworks have extended the feature vector to improve model performance. However, single view information can not fully reveal the visual relationships in complex visual scenes. To solve this problem and explore the multi-view information in a visual relationship detection (VRD) model, a novel multi-view VRD framework based on a monocular RGB image and an estimated depth map is proposed. The contributions of this paper are threefold. First, we construct a novel multi-view framework which fuses information of different views extracted from estimated RGB-D images. Second, a multi-view image generation method is proposed to transfer flat visual space to 3D multi-view space. Third, we redesign the visual relationship balanced classifier which can process multi-view feature vectors simultaneously. Detailed experiments were conducted on two datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness of the multi-view VRD framework. The experimental results showed that the multi-view VRD framework resulted in state-of-the-art zero-shot learning performance in specific depth conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]