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Underground cavities have complex spatial structures and geological settings, their arrangement is dense and crisscrossed. The construction system involves multiple work surfaces, levels, and processes. The close integration of construction simulation with actual production conditions is crucial for enhancing the guidance that simulation results provide for practical engineering. Therefore, from the perspective of optimizing construction organization and management, this article comprehensively considers various factors in the construction process, innovatively introduces the principle of production line balance and the concept of rule cycle, and combines technology and management, an underground cavities construction simulation system (UCCSS) is developed. In UCCSS, a hierarchical model is built and calculation are performed on models with different construction methods by modifying the parameters as per the actual engineering characteristics. The simulation results are comprehensively analysed to determine the optimal construction programme. An application case is proposed based on the construction organisation design of the long and parallel diversion tunnels at the CB Hydropower Station. The results show that the system has good practicality and credibility and can provide guidance for the construction organisation design of underground cavities with various features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concrete core wall dams have emerged as a cost-effective alternative to the reconstruction of old dams. However, the flooding mechanism and flood line of these dams differ significantly from traditional earth and rockfill dams due to the concrete core wall functioning as reinforcement. This study presents model tests that simulate the overtopping failure of earth and rockfill dams with concrete core walls of various thicknesses. The hydrologic curve and two-dimensional evolution of the breach are analyzed, and mechanical analysis examines the relationship between core wall thickness and free face during core wall failure. Results indicate that the presence of the concrete core wall shifts the overtopping failure mode to the scour pit failure mode. The scour pit failure mode occurs when upstream water scours the downstream core wall to form scour holes and free faces. Continuous scouring increases the depth of the free face, ultimately causing the moment between the two sides of the core wall to exceed the bending moment of the core wall, resulting in fracture. The study provides a theoretical basis for the design of core walls for this new type of dam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typical rockfall analysis requires detailed discontinuity measurements; however, the use of conventional contact approaches can be challenging on cliffs. In this study, a novel automatic method for rockfall susceptibility is proposed to identify potential rockfall areas by topographic information on steep slopes generated by a terrestrial laser scanner (TLS). The rockfall susceptibility can be determined using the proposed method via the following four steps: first, automatic spatial information of discontinuity extraction based on high-resolution point clouds; second, defining the spatial intersection areas of discontinuities with different statistical properties; third, evaluating the contribution of discontinuity intersections to rockfalls and estimating potential rockfall hazardous blocks based on kinematic analysis; and finally, mapping the rockfall susceptibility through the overall index. Our method can be used to expedite discontinuity measurements from high-resolution point clouds, optimize the processing of discontinuity statistics for the analysis of rockfall source areas, and permit users to visualize and intuitively access potential rockfall areas to facilitate effective measures to control rockfall hazards or implementation. The method was implemented in MATLAB for excavated slopes, and the credibility of our computational results was verified by visual inspection and a comparison to the source locations of rock detachment events. The results showed that the areas in case 1 with a high susceptibility were in line with the geometry of the discontinuities, and the predicted potential failure areas in case 2 were consistent with the rockfall events. This automated process allows rapid acquisition of potential rockfall areas over a broad-scale survey area, which helps to reduce the time of investigation and the uncertainty in further treatment. Highlights: An automatic mapping method based on high-resolution point clouds was utilized for rockfall susceptibility evaluation. An evaluation method was proposed for potential hazardous rockfall blocks based on discontinuity extraction and kinematic analysis. The method was implemented in MATLAB and validated by actual rockfall events on an excavated slope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast and accurate assessment of slope topography and geological information and understanding of slope deformation evolution are of great significance in emergency investigation and monitoring of landslides. In this study, using the geometric information contained in terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds, an automatic discontinuity identification algorithm and a quantitative overall displacement evaluation method were developed. The automatic discontinuity identification algorithm is based on a k-means fuzzy cluster, allowing fast visual identification of any discontinuity from the acquired point cloud data to obtain accurate geometric information including occurrence, spacing, and continuity. It can provide adequate assessment of potentially unstable blocks in landslides during emergency disposal. The quantitative overall displacement evaluation method characterizes the overall displacement trend of local areas based on statistics from the M3C2 algorithm results. It can be used to quantify the deformation/displacement of relatively independent blocks (or local areas of slopes) and provides technical support for multi-temporal monitoring of potentially unstable blocks during emergency landslide disposal. These methods were applied to the Baige landslide during emergency disposal in 2019. Based on a comprehensive geological survey and monitoring results, the overall remnant slope was in a relatively stable state after the Baige landslide. However, the back edge of the slope was somewhat broken, and there were two large blocks with a relatively high risk of instability. The results show that these methods can provide effective technical support for emergency investigation, monitoring, and risk assessment of large-scale landslides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing demand for semiconductor devices simulation poses a big challenge for large-scale electronic structure calculations. Among various methods, the linearly scaling three-dimensional fragment (LS3DF) method exhibits excellent scalability in large-scale simulations. Based on algorithmic and system-level optimizations, we propose a highly scalable and highly efficient implementation of LS3DF on a domestic heterogeneous supercomputer equipped with accelerators. In terms of algorithmic optimizations, the original all-band conjugate gradient algorithm is refined to achieve faster convergence, and mixed precision computing is adopted to increase overall efficiency. In terms of system-level optimizations, the original two-layer parallel structure is replaced by a coarse-grained parallel method. Optimization strategies such as multi-stream, kernel fusion, and redundant computation removal are proposed to increase further utilization of the computational power provided by the heterogeneous machines. As a result, our optimized LS3DF can scale to a 10-million silicon atoms system, attaining a peak performance of 34.8 PFLOPS (21.2% of the peak). All the improvements can be adapted to the next-generation supercomputers for larger simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities' pre-disaster resistance, disaster response, and post-disaster recovery processes are all affected by the level of resilience. This manuscript proposes a framework for the study of factors influencing the resilience of mountain communities, with the aim of clarifying the direction of transmission of the influencing relationships of the factors and identifying the key influencing factors. The study explores the characteristics of resilience influences based on community resilience and complex adaptive systems theory, uses an expert survey method to determine the binary relationships between influencing factors, and uses adversarial interpretive structural modelling and social network analysis methods to analyse influencing factors in a hierarchical and networked manner. Finally, key factors are discussed from four composite theoretical perspectives. We found that (1) infrastructure has the most fundamental impact on the factors, (2) information access is most easily influenced by other factors, (3) residents' place attachment and sense of belonging has a significant impact on other factors in resilience-building practices, and (4) emergency planning and management organisations play a bridging role in the system of influencing factors. The results can help community managers clarify resilience management priorities, allocate management resources more rationally, and provide theoretical guidance for improving community resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landslides induced by rainfall pose a notable threat to post-earthquake reconstruction in mountainous areas. Taking Qingliu landslide as an example, this paper reveals the potential failure mechanism and range of the landslide mass through field investigation and monitoring data, and further uses the improved computational fluid dynamics method to simulate and predict the disaster range after landslide destabilization. The results show that the landslide was initially deformed and cracked under the influence of strong earthquakes and formed seepage channels for water infiltration. The circulation of surface recharge of groundwater in rainy season and long-distance recharge of groundwater from melting ice and snow in winter season leads to the continuous softening and reduction of sliding resistance in the sliding zone. Under the action of this change chain, the cracks along the back edge and boundary of the landslide continue to develop and expand and finally will lead to landslide collapse failure. The equivalent fluid method can better simulate the movement process and accumulation process of landslide, since the Qingliu landslide is a soil landslide with fluid characteristics in the process of landslide movement. The results indicate that the maximum speed of the mass flow could reach 49 m/s, which could destroy the infrastructures along the sliding path, besides, both of the two landslides could bury Xiameng town below and block the Mengtun River to form a landslide-dammed lake. The research results could provide a reference for further comprehensive treatment of landslides and the formulation of emergency plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Newborn screening (NBS) is an important and successful public health program that helps improve the long-term clinical outcomes of newborns by providing early diagnosis and treatment of certain inborn diseases. The development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology provides new opportunities to expand current newborn screening methodologies. Methods: We designed a a newborn genetic screening (NBGS) panel targeting 135 genes associated with 75 inborn disorders by multiplex PCR combined with NGS. With this panel, a large-scale, multicenter, prospective multidisease analysis was conducted on dried blood spot (DBS) profiles from 21,442 neonates nationwide. Results: We presented the positive detection rate and carrier frequency of diseases and related variants in different regions; and 168 (0.78%) positive cases were detected. Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase deficiency (G6PDD) and phenylketonuria (PKU) had higher prevalence rates, which were significantly different in different regions. The positive detection of G6PD variants was quite common in south China, whereas PAH variants were most commonly identified in north China. In addition, NBGS identified 3 cases with DUOX2 variants and one with SLC25A13 variants, which were normal in conventional NBS, but were confirmed later as abnormal in repeated biochemical testing after recall. Eighty percent of high-frequency gene carriers and 60% of high-frequency variant carriers had obvious regional differences. On the premise that there was no significant difference in birth weight and gestational age, the biochemical indicators of SLC22A5 c.1400C > G and ACADSB c.1165A > G carriers were significantly different from those of non-carriers. Conclusions: We demonstrated that NBGS is an effective strategy to identify neonates affected with treatable diseases as a supplement to current NBS methods. Our data also showed that the prevalence of diseases has significant regional characteristics, which provides a theoretical basis for screening diseases in different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous Quaternary deposits are existed in the mountainous areas of Southwest China, especially in the transition zone between the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Sichuan Basin, where strong tectonic movements and frequent climatic changes increase the potential landslides. The possible deformation and failure process of potential landslides and their impacts on the surrounding environment are important research topics. Field investigation and monitoring indicate that the Qingliu landslide in Xiameng town, Li County, Sichuan Province, China has been continuously deforming since August 2020. The deformation zone has a maximum deformation depth of approximately 18.9 m, a total area of 54,628 m2, and a volume of 34.0×104 m3, which seriously threatens infrastructure projects and dwellings. As a result, understanding the Qingliu landslide evolution process, assessing the hazard risk, and planning disaster prevention measures are of great significance for reducing disaster loss. In this study, the mass movement process and hazard risk of the Qingliu landslide are evaluated, and the effects of different prevention measures are compared and discussed. By using the depth-integrated method, the mass movement of the Qingliu landslide is analyzed. The numerical simulation results indicate that the maximum velocity of the Qingliu landslide is approximately 37.5 m/s, and the duration of the landslide is approximately 90s. The simulated landslide can eventually form a deposited mass with a maximum deposit thickness of 19.4 m and an area of approximately 60,168.3 m2, thereby blocking the river and burying dwellings. Furthermore, a risk assessment of the Qingliu landslide under different forms of protection measures is also produced and discussed by considering the hazard level and economic vulnerability level of the affected area. Setting three layers of anti-slide piles on the deformation zone to reduce the hazard risk of the Qingliu landslide is a better choice. Our results may be useful for planning prevention measures and improving disaster emergency response systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the components in the enhanced geothermal system (EGS), fractures have an important influence on thermal extraction efficiency. Based on the Voronoi theory, a Voronoi fracture network is introduced in the multi-well injection enhanced geothermal system (EGS). A fully coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical model is established to simulate the heat extraction performance, and the accuracy of the model is verified through comparative analysis of analytical and numerical solutions. Furthermore, the temperature, heat extraction rate, thermal power, and injection pressure under the spatial–temporal evolution of the research model are investigated. The results show that fracture is the main flow channel of working fluid, and the thermal power of the Voronoi fracture model always maintains a high level. In addition, the thermal extraction performance of the model is compared by changing the relevant parameters of the model, such as well spacing, injection mass flow rate, and rock matrix permeability. For the Voronoi fracture model, the relative distance between injection and production wells and the injection mass flow has a positive effect on production temperature; it shows that when the well spacing is 400 m, the final production temperature is 549.68 K, which is 1.4 times that of 200 m, and the fracture permeability has little effect on the heat extraction performance. And as the injection temperature increases, it has little effect on production temperature and heat extraction ratio, while thermal power and injection pressure decrease with the increase in injection temperature. Overall, this study provides some reasonable suggestions about fracture networks and investigates sensitivity parameters which affect heat extraction efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rockfall is a major geological disaster that frequently occurs on rock slopes in alpine and gorge regions and poses a significant threat to life and property in areas exposed to rockfall hazards. In this study, a methodology is presented for comprehensive rockfall hazard analysis, including data acquisition, source identification, numerical simulation, quantitative assessment and mitigation evaluation. A high-precision and high-resolution digital terrain model (DTM) is generated based on the point cloud data obtained by terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and is utilized for rockfall simulation and automatic identification of structural planes. The model parameters are calibrated by three-dimensional (3D) back analysis, and the rockfall motion is simulated based on a probabilistic model and an energy dissipation model. Rockfall mitigation under passive protection is evaluated according to the rockfall interception ratio (RIR), hazard reduction rate (HRR) and statistics of the rockfall characteristics and hazards within the rockfall threat area. Under the influence of construction excavation, the diversion tunnel inlet slope of Jinchuan Hydropower Station has suffered from a series of rockfall events and potential overall instability, which has become a great threat to the construction personnel, equipment and vehicles below the slope. Thus, the presented methodology is applied to thoroughly study the example case of the rockfall events at the inlet slope of the diversion tunnel of Jinchuan Hydropower Station. The advantages, limitations and notes of each link of the presented methodology are discussed, and the suggestion of strengthening the cracked area with integral active support is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unexpected breaching of landslide dams can produce tremendous floods and debris flows, thus greatly threatening the security and property of people living downstream. Research has revealed that erosion via outflow and spillway evolution are the two main causes of landslide dam breaching. Additionally, the excavation of artificial spillways has currently been recognized as an effective risk mitigation measure. In this study, by simulating the breaching process in a flume, it was elucidated that breaching conforms to a water-soil coupling mechanism. Maintaining an unchanged cross-sectional area of the notch, five notches were set on the left side of the dam to explore the influence of notch geometric dimensions on the breaching process. This study suggests that the breaching process could be chronologically divided into four stages: (1) seepage failure, during which the skeleton of the dam is damaged by seepage; (2) slow erosion, in which water begins to overflow under a low discharge; (3) drastic failure, during which drastic collapse of the dam crest causes a sudden increase in discharge; and (4) equilibrium state, in which the residual dam remains stable. This study further indicated that the notch height-to-width ratio plays a vital role in the process. An increase in height-to-width ratio could ensure more continuous lateral expansion, while vertical evolution could be inhibited. Finally, the discharge data indicated that to minimize the discharge and mitigate the hazards due to breaching, it is important to control the notch geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landslides are serious natural disasters frequently occurring in the mountainous areas along the Sichuan–Tibet railway. Landslides are often induced by rainfall and greatly threaten people's lives and property. Via the use of GIS technology, a probabilistic analysis model was proposed for rainfall-induced shallow landslides along the above route. The process of the proposed probabilistic analysis model could be divided into three parts: (i) an infiltration hydrogeological model, (ii) a slope stability model, and (iii) probabilistic analysis. In this model, soil cohesion and internal friction angle were regarded as random parameters. The Green–Ampt model was used to dynamically describe the soil infiltration process during rainfall. Combined with the infinite slope stability model, the failure probability in the study area was analyzed. The model was applied to simulate the Bayi catchment landslide event of August 18, 2010, to evaluate its reliability. Through comparison of the simulation results to landslide occurrence locations, it was determined that the model achieves a satisfactory prediction performance. In addition, compared to deterministic analysis methods and the r.slope model, the proposed probabilistic analysis model achieved a satisfactory evaluation performance. The presented physics-based probabilistic analysis model could provide important theoretical support for hazard prevention in regard to rainfall-induced shallow landslides in mountainous areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hongshiyan rock avalanche is a remarkable landslide disaster with approximately volume of 12 × 106 m3, triggered by the 2014 Ms. 6.5 Ludian earthquake in Yunnan Province, China. This study conducted a comprehensive analysis by the model based on discrete element (DEM-based) numerical simulation to understand the transport process and mechanism for this rock avalanche. The simulation results showed that the transport process of the rock avalanche depends on the input seismic duration and motion. The average velocity of the rock avalanche sharply increases to peak value of 27 m/s and then gradually decreases to zero, and 64% and 36% of the total energy are dissipated by collision and friction, respectively. In this process, the progressions from simple disintegration along pre-existing discontinuities to fragmentation that creates new fracture surface are documented, and gradual increase of the fragmentation degree over time results in the decrease of fragment size and the formation of well-graded and narrower-interval gradation. This fragmentation evolution creates a conductive condition to the development of internal shear, and is closely associated with the dense flow regime that dominates the main body of the rock avalanche but presents discontinuous distribution along the flow thickness direction. In addition, further analyzing the simulated results indicates that more likely effects of fragmentation on mobility of rock avalanches depend on fragmentation-induced special flow structure, which makes a rock avalanche in a flow state with lower friction and lower energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On June 17, 2020, a sequential disaster event, including debris flows, dammed lakes and the reactivation of ancient landslides, occurred in Danba County, Southwest China. The debris flow, which was triggered by short-term heavy rainfall, caused damage to houses and casualties, eventually leading to the blockage of the main channel of the Xiaojinchuan River as well as the formation of a debris flow–dammed lake. The outburst flood induced by the breakage of the debris flow dam caused devastating damage to dozens of villages, towns, and national highway G350 downstream. Moreover, an ancient landslide located on the left bank was reactivated during the outburst flood and experienced a large degree of deformation for several months. According to this sequential disaster event, we conducted on-site surveys and monitoring using three-dimensional terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The development and dynamic evolution mechanism of the debris flow, dammed lake, and reactivated ancient landslide were illustrated based on the monitoring data. The results show that the erosion of outburst floods is the main cause of the deep and shallow sliding of the ancient landslide, and the presence of landslide deposits or unstable slopes near the debris flow dam sites is the key factor in the amplification and expansion of the disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-landslide high slopes have always been at increased risk for rockfall disasters, posing a considerable threat to the slope toe area and making it very difficult to manage. In this paper, a comprehensive rockfall hazard assessment strategy based on high-resolution terrestrial laser scanning is proposed. A high-resolution digital terrain model was obtained based on terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and data processing. Combined with a three-dimensional (3D) probabilistic model, the movement of rock blocks is simulated, and the mechanical parameters for simulation are corrected by 3D back analysis. Finally, based on hierarchical analysis process (AHP) and raster calculation, a rockfall hazard map can be obtained. The method was applied to analyze rockfall hazards on the post-landslide rock slope in Ganluo County. It was found that the rockfall hazard of the post-landslide slope is a great threat to the personnel and equipment of the emergency rescue at the site, and its long-term rockfall risk is also a big hidden danger to the railway at the foot of the slope. The planned 3 m high and 1500 kJ energy capacity protection net has 87.22% interception efficiency, but it is difficult to stop the falling rocks with high speed or high bouncing height. According to the characteristics of rockfall hazards, recommendations for rockfall hazard mitigation measures are proposed, including two aspects of rockfall source area remediation and rockfall transport path blocking. The case of rockfall hazard assessment in Ganluo County provides new methods and ideas for the management of rockfall hazard on post-landslide rock slopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intrusion of debris avalanches into reservoirs frequently occurs in mountainous regions and is a complex solid-fluid interaction. A coupled discrete element method (DEM) and smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method is developed to forecast the entire process of disaster chains including landslide motion, wave generation, and wave propagation on Kaiding slopes at the Houziyan Reservoir, Sichuan Province, China. The sliding masses are treated as granular assemblies with collisions instead of rigid solid. The simulation results indicate that the maximum velocity of debris avalanches when swarming into the water surface is beyond 30 m/s, and the maximum wave elevation on the watercourse and the maximum run-up wave elevation generated by landslides reach 1867.4 m and 1883.0 m, respectively, and the minimum wave trough is 1822.1 m occurring near opposite bank of landslide. Furthermore, the range of landslide-generated waves is estimated to be approximately a propagation distance of 800.0 m along the axis of the river. The coupled DEM-SPH simulation method provides important inspiration for hazard prevention on reservoir landslides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debris avalanches have complex structures due to the internal discreteness of fragmentation events. From a meso perspective, a debris avalanche is essentially a collection of debris particles of various sizes. Friction and collision events are directly influenced by the gradation of debris particles, restricting the movement process of debris avalanches. Accordingly, a series of numerical simulations have been conducted to research the influence of motion behavior based on experimental tests. The results indicate that the inhomogeneous character of a debris avalanche creates a conducive particle structure for the movement of the debris avalanche, in which the fine particles can play a role in the conversion of sliding to rolling at the bottom, causing the reduction of friction dissipation and the differentiation of particle friction resistance along the vertical direction, which continues until deposition. Sudden decreases in friction resistance occurring on high-speed, fluid-like debris avalanches are primarily correlated to the particular particle structure due to the significant inhomogeneity of particle gradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a highly potential strategy to massively produce green hydrogen fuels. However, the employment of costly Pt-based electrocatalyst in the cathode of electrolyzer greatly hampers the development of hydrogen economy. Ruthenium phosphide catalysts have recently drawn wide attention due to the Pt-like activity but relatively lower cost. Herein, a facile strategy was proposed for the controlled preparation of the ultrasmall RuP2 nanoparticles on N,P-codoped carbon from common precursors of Ru (II) complex and phytic acid. By taking advantage of simple mixing and pyrolysis, the as-synthesized RuP2 nanoparticles were uniformly embedded onto the N,P-codoped carbon nanosheet. The composite catalyst shows better activity than Pt/C for alkaline HER and comparable activity for acidic and neutral HER. The superior activity can be ascribed to the ultrasmall-size and efficient RuP2 together with good mass and charge transfer ability assured by N,P-codoped carbon support. The advantages including low-cost and simple synthesis in this work present an encouraging substitute to replace commercial Pt/C for hydrogen-related practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The runout behavior of rockfall is mostly determined by the terrain and its mechanical parameters. The two factors can be significantly changed in a short period of time due to rockfall deposits in high-frequency rockfall regions. In this paper, a self-evolution process of rockfall from the Hongshiyan post-earthquake rock slope is observed and analyzed. This self-evolution process of the rockfall is the consequence of the re-occurrences of a large number of rockfall events in a short period of time, which lead to an increase in the elevation, slope angle, and hardness of the terrain, and aggravate further the severity of subsequent rockfall disasters. In order to analyze the self-evolution process, numerical simulations based on a probabilistic model were carried out on eight different conditions to analyze the interaction between the rockfall and different ground surface. The corresponding rockfall hazard was then analyzed according to a quantitative assessment method. The statistics of the average class (AC) and mitigation index (MI) of the rockfall were proposed to quantify the rockfall characteristics in different conditions. The effectiveness of structural and non-structural rockfall protection measures in high-frequency rockfall areas was discussed. An interim non-structural measure that addresses the self-evolution of rockfall is proposed to improve the mitigation efficiency, which can also reduce the maintenance cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dense nano-grained Ni0.7Mn2.3O4 negative temperature coefficient (NTC) thermistors were fabricated by a novel two-step sintering approach that combines rapid sintering and principle of conventional two-step sintering technique. Samples were sintered at 1042 °C for 30 s in the first rapid step and then at 850–950 °C for 20 h in the second soaking step. Crystal phase, microstructure and electrical properties of sintered samples were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), resistance temperature relationship and aging performance. Sintered samples show a single-phase cubic spinel structure and indicate a high relative density ranging from 84% to 91% of the theoretical density. Moreover, average grain sizes of sintered samples under SEM are distributed between 254 and 570 nm. Meanwhile, the resistivity and the aging coefficient significantly decrease when soaking sintering temperature rises. In addition, the obtained material constant (B) ranges from 3931 to 3981 K. Ni0.7Mn2.3O4-3 (soaking at 900 °C) and Ni0.7Mn2.3O4-4 (soaking at 950 °C) present little aging behavior, implying great electrical stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earth-rock fill dams are the most widely used dam type all over the world, and flood overtopping is the key reason causing dam burst. However, since an earth-rock fill dam with a concrete core wall is a modified new dam type, overtopping studies on these dams are rather deficient. The overtopping process and structural safety analyses of this new dam type have been studied in this paper by using a CFD-FEM coupled method based on the three-dimensional model of the Fangtianba reservoir expansion project. The scouring characteristics of the earth-rock fill dam, the variation trend of the downstream scouring depth, and the deformation as well as stress of the core wall have been obtained. Overtopping burst failure of the earth-rock fill dam with a concrete core wall is greatly affected by the downstream scouring depth, and tensile stress will occur on the upstream side of the core wall near the scour hole. When the downstream scouring depth is small and its growth is slow but stable, the tensile stress cannot exceed the allowable value in the early period of overtopping, and the concrete core wall may be able to support the dam body for a period of time, which might delay the occurrence of destructive collapse and overall burst. However, a sudden collapse may occur in the later period of overtopping; thus, reinforcement and emergency measures should be taken in time before the overall dam bursts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local topography and structural features of discontinuities have a great effect on the movement characteristics and failure mechanisms of the unstable rock blocks of the rock slope. By taking full advantage of the geometric information contained in the multi-temporal terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds, a technique based on a roto-translation method has been developed to track and monitor the movement behavior of blocks in unstable rock slopes. The technique can be completed in three stages: (a) a preliminary change detection is used to distinguish the unstable area by means of a shortest distance (SD) algorithm; (b) an automatic discontinuity identification algorithm is implemented to visually identify the discontinuity sets and to exactly delineate rock blocks in unstable areas; and (c) finally a roto-translation movement monitoring method is applied to track and monitor the unstable rock blocks. This technique permits the user to visually identify the discontinuity sets and to determine their orientation, and therefore provides detailed information of geometric compounding relationships between the slope and joint systems as well as the forming rock blocks which are the key impacts to stability of the rock slope. It permits the user to exactly and visually delineate the rock blocks in the unstable area, and thus the completely tracking and monitoring of lock block movement in unstable rock slopes can be effectively conducted. It overcomes the limited precision of the single TLS points and provides an actual 3D movement measuring method for the blocks rather than a shortest distance. The technique was first used in the movement behavior monitoring of the unstable rock blocks in a post-earthquake high rock slope. The results show that the rock block movement monitoring technique is well suited for providing high-quality data in the assessment of rock failure hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debris avalanches generally have massive mobility and extensive deposited area, which have strong relation to the granular effect. The granular effect is an outcome from the interaction (based on frictional mechanism) among particles. Discrepancy of grain composition, for instance the difference of particle size and their proportion of particles, is a key factor to influence granular effect. A series of laboratory tests have been conducted to research the granular effects on depositional processes of debris avalanches containing fine- and coarse-grained particles. The velocity of debris front, the morphology characteristics and runout distance of the debris avalanche are considered in detail, and the mass parameter and the size parameter are introduced in analysis for the research of granular effect. The experimental results indicate that the granular effects can decrease the dissipation of momentum and increase the accumulation region, leading to further runout distance and more extensive deposited areas. Further, the velocity, the range of depositions of debris avalanches are larger than that in other conditions when the proportion of fine-grained particles is 30%, especially the materials consist of heterogeneous granular. It means there have a critical mass parameter in experiments which lead to the high efficiency of granular effects, and the granular effect is weakening in homogeneous granular composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hai-bo Li, Yue-ren Xu, Jia-wen Zhou, Xie-kang Wang and Jie Dou contributed equally to this work. Because of these local emergency responses, 11 survivors were successfully rescued from the landslide-affected area shortly after the occurrence of the landslide. The Shuicheng landslide is a typical example of a heavy rainfall-induced long-runout landslide, which was also affected by some human activities. [Extracted from the article]

The formation of the landslide dam is believed to be case-specific and closely related to the dynamics of failure mass movement and river bed topography. This study focuses on two massive landslides, which blocked the Jinsha River twice on October 11 and November 3, 2018, respectively. The unique feature of these two sequential events was that the remnant of the 1st landslide dam body after break had a significant influence on the formation and shape of the 2nd landslide dam. Multiple methods were used to investigate landslides triggering factors and formation mechanism of these two landslide dams, including traditional field investigation, satellite remote sensing, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) 3D image technology. After long-term creeping deformation under gravitational and hydrological effects, the first failure eventually occurred due to the short-term heavy rainfall in early October 2018. With a high speed along the steep slide bed, the failure mass of the 1st landslide rushed towards the opposite (left) bank of the Jinsha River, while the failure mass of 2nd landslide mainly accumulated at the toe of the slope (right bank) as a result of obstruction from the remaining body of the 1st landslide dam after overflowing. Another important observation is the scraping and entrainment effect on the 2nd landslide; consequently, the volume of the failure mass, which was about 2.0 × 106 m3 at source area based on UAV data, increased significantly to more than 6.0 × 106 m3. This substantially enlarged the volume of the new landslide dam with an unexpected height; thus, overflowing was not possible without manual excavation. An additional investigation implies that the Baige remnant slope is likely to fail again with considerable failure mass. These analyses presented in the paper indicate that multiple occurrences of landslides can significantly increase the risks associated with the compound landslide dams, considering also the volume amplification effect. Thus, timely measures should be carried out to reduce the unexpected devastating consequences prior to possible re-occurrence of landslide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a typical abrupt geological hazard, rockfalls are widely distributed and occur frequently. It is often difficult to predict the occurrence, and therefore record and monitor the whole failure process of rockfalls. In this study, with the combined use of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and ground-based radar interferometry (GB-InSAR) technologies, a typical small collapse in the Hongshiyan post-earthquake rock slope was monitored. An accurate TLS three-dimensional (3D) rock slope model of the study area was established with high-resolution geometry and morphology information, the discontinuity sets and their orientations and distributions were visually identified and analyzed by means of an automatic discontinuity identification algorithm. A perspective view of the whole dynamic failure process of the small collapse was achieved; the displacement behavior during critical sliding stage was revealed by integrating the high-accuracy (millimetric) GB-InSAR monitoring results into the TLS 3D model. It can be used for a complete analysis of the failure behavior and stability assessment of the rock slope during a phase of emergency. The unstable rock block on the slope exhibited a rapid growth of displacement. The dynamic failure process of the rock block underwent three obvious accelerating periods. There was a correspondence between the spatial expansion of the moving area and the process of cracking propagation of rock bridges. The stability of the perilous rock above the tafoni was controlled by the connectivity of rock bridges. Thanks to monitoring, early warning and preventive measure were taken, which avoided a possible undesirable event. This typical case study can provide a reference for the monitoring of an unstable rock slope and the understanding of the evolution of rock block kinematics before collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-image nonparametric blind super-resolution is a fundamental image restoration problem yet largely ignored in the past decades among the computational photography and computer vision communities. An interesting phenomenon is observed that learning-based single-image super-resolution (SR) has been experiencing a rapid development since the boom of the sparse representation in 2005s and especially the representation learning in 2010s, wherein the high-res image is generally blurred by a supposed bicubic or Gaussian blur kernel. However, the parametric assumption on the form of blur kernels does not hold in most practical applications because in real low-res imaging a high-res image can undergo complex blur processes, e.g., Gaussian-shaped kernels of varying sizes, ellipse-shaped kernels of varying orientations, curvilinear kernels of varying trajectories. The paper is mainly motivated by one of our previous works: Shao and Elad (in: Zhang (ed) ICIG 2015, Part III, Lecture notes in computer science, Springer, Cham, 2015). Specifically, we take one step further in this paper and present a type of adaptive heavy-tailed image priors, which result in a new regularized formulation for nonparametric blind super-resolution. The new image priors can be expressed and understood as a generalized integration of the normalized sparsity measure and relative total variation. Although it seems that the proposed priors are simple, the core merit of the priors is their practical capability for the challenging task of nonparametric blur kernel estimation for both super-resolution and deblurring. Harnessing the priors, a higher-quality intermediate high-res image becomes possible and therefore more accurate blur kernel estimation can be accomplished. A great many experiments are performed on both synthetic and real-world blurred low-res images, demonstrating the comparative or even superior performance of the proposed algorithm convincingly. Meanwhile, the proposed priors are demonstrated quite applicable to blind image deblurring which is a degenerated problem of nonparametric blind SR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reinforcing a landslide dam and converting a landslide-dammed lake to a hydraulically engineered lake is a sound means to address this natural disaster. The Hongshiyan landslide-dammed lake reconstruction project provides an excellent example. However, the stability of the remnant slope is crucial to the reconstruction of this project. It is essential to analyse the formation failure mechanisms of the Hongshiyan landslide and evaluate the stability of the remnant slope. Combined with field investigations and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) 3D image technologies, the failure mechanisms of the Hongshiyan landslide and the stability of the remnant slope were qualitatively studied and discussed. The dynamic process and failure mechanism of the Hongshiyan landslide are significantly different to conventional landslides. The dynamic process of the Hongshiyan landslide can be divided into three stages: time-dependent deformation stage, earthquake-induced failure stage and an unloading recovery stage. The failure mechanism can be summarised as follows: tension–crush–shattering–sliding. The stability conditions of the remnant slope are worse than those of conventional landslides under the same conditions. Toppling and small collapse are possibly occurring at the back scarp of the remnant slope because of the steep slope gradient, well-developed tension fractures and frequent occurrence of aftershocks and rainstorms. Based on the density, opening degree, porosity and connectivity of the cracks, as well as instability risk probabilities, the rock mass of the back scarp of the remnant slope can be divided into three zones: the seismically damaged zone, the unloading damaged zone and the stable zone. To guarantee the safety of the remnant slope and reduce secondary earthquake or rainstorm disasters, corresponding comprehensive treatment measures must be taken to ensure long-term stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tangba high slope is mainly composed of coarse soils and supplies core wall materials for the construction of the Changheba dam. Since the filling intensity of the Changheba dam is high, the Tangba high slope suffers from a high-intensity excavation process, and reinforcement measures are usually not implemented immediately. Moreover, the distribution of useful materials is uneven and insufficient, and the mixing of different soil materials is necessary; thus, multiple simultaneous excavations and secondary excavation are inevitable. In the construction period from 2012 to 2016, large deformations occurred in this area, and one of the largest monitored horizontal deformations whose direction points to the opposite side of the valley even reached more than 8000 mm. According to field investigation, site monitoring and theoretical analysis, the large deformation in the Tangba high slope can be divided into two phases. In the first phase, the excavation construction breaks the original stress equilibrium state; in the second phase, the precipitation infiltration accelerates the deformation. Thus, the excavation construction and precipitation infiltration are the two major factors promoting the deformation, and the high-intensity and complex excavation process is the fundamental cause. Notably, rate of slope deformation significantly accelerated in rainy seasons due to precipitation infiltration; the rate also accelerated in early 2016 due to the high-intensity, complex excavation process. Comprehensively considering the above factors, timely and effective reinforcement measures are essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ (BSCF) is one of the most active cathode materials and shows significant hydration effect suggesting possible proton conductivity. In this study, the performance of BSCF cathode on a proton-conducting BaZr0.1Ce0.7Y0.2O3−δ (BZCY) electrolyte with silver and gold current collectors was determined. The electrochemical characteristics of the symmetrical and anode-supported cell with diluted silver electrode, silver current collector or gold current collector on BSCF electrode were compared. The significant result is that, although the diluted silver electrode itself shows poor operation stability, the silver current collector has strong electrocatalytic contribution to the BSCF cathode performance on the proton-conducting electrolyte, leading to higher cell performance than that with the gold current collector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiferroic 0.68Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.32PbTiO3/CoFe2O4 (PMN-PT/CFO) composite films have been grown on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrate via sol-gel spin-coating technique. PMN-PT and CFO precursor solutions were mixed before the spin-coating process to optimize the interface interaction. We investigated the influence of the composition ratio and annealing process on the property of the multiferroic PMN-PT/CFO composite films. The films which entirely consist of PMN-PT and CFO phases have a good performance in the ferroelectric, ferromagnetic property and direct magnetoelectric coupling effect when they were annealed at 730 °C and air atmosphere. It was obviously noticed that the composition ratio between PMN-PT and CFO has an effect on the properties of PMN-PT/CFO multiferroic composites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: Based onCasuarina equisetifoliatranscriptome data, the present study developed and validated 15 transferable EST-SSR markers acrossCasuarinaandAllocasuarinaspecies.Abstract: Casuarina species are valued as pioneer trees for coastal shelter forest construction. To accelerate Casuarina breeding for more robust, attractive, and cold-resistant cultivars, it is essential to introduce molecular marker-assisted breeding. Based on Casuarina equisetifolia transcriptome data, 10,291 EST-SSR loci with the types of 2–6 nucleotide repeats were identified from assembled 118,270 unigenes. An average of one EST-SSR was found every 13.54 kb, and the distribution frequency of SSRs was 8.7%. The most common repeat motifs were dinucleotide with AG/CT and trinucleotide with AAG/CTT. A total of 150 SSR markers were randomly selected for validation, among which 15 produced clear, reproducible and polymorphic bands, and thus were employed for genetic relationship analysis among 26 genotypes from four Casuarina and three Allocasuarina species. A total of 42 bands were identified, varying from 2 to 5 bands per locus with an average of 2.8. Polymorphism information content ranged from to 0.2624 to 0.6177 with a mean value of 0.4265, indicating a high level of polymorphism. The UPGMA dendrogram revealed a high genetic variation resided among species within two genera, Allocasuarina and Casuarina. Meanwhile, the 15 highly polymorphic Casuarina SSR markers were also proved to be transferable across Casuarina and Allocasuarina species. These valuable SSR markers can be applied further for population and evolutionary genetic studies in Casuarinaceae, and will be useful in selection and breeding of Casuarina species for improving cold tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underground powerhouse of the Houziyan Hydropower Station is under the conditions of high geo-stress and a low strength/stress ratio, which leads to significant rock deformation and failures, especially for rock pillars due to bidirectional unloading during the excavation process. Damages occurred in thinner rock pillars after excavation due to unloading and stress concentration, which will reduce the surrounding rock integrity and threaten the safety of the underground powerhouse. By using field investigations and multi-source monitoring data, the deformation and failure characteristics of a rock pillar are analyzed from the tempo-spatial distribution features. These results indicate that significant deformation occurred in the rock pillar when the powerhouse was excavated to the fourth layer, and the maximum displacement reached 107.57 mm, which occurred on the main transformer chamber upstream sidewall at an elevation of 1721.20 m. The rock deformation surrounding the rock pillar is closely related to the excavation process and has significant time-related characteristics. To control large deformation of the rock pillar, thru-anchor cables were used to reinforce the rock pillar to ensure the stability of the powerhouse. The rock deformation surrounding the rock pillar decreases gradually and forms a convergent trend after reinforcement measures are installed based on the analysis of the temporal characteristics and the rock pillar deformation rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the safety and clinical efficacy of cryosurgery combined with allogenic NK cell immunotherapy for the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were evaluated. From July 2016 to March 2017, we enrolled 60 patients who met the enrollment criteria and divided them into two groups: (1) the simple cryoablation group ( n = 30) and (2) the cryoablation combined with allogenic NK cell group ( n = 30). The changes in immune function, quality of life, and clinical response were evaluated. We found that allogenic NK cells combined with cryosurgical treatment for advanced NSCLC have a synergistic effect, which not only enhancing the immune function of patients, improving the quality of life, and significantly increasing the response rate (RR) and disease control rate (DCR) compared to cryoablation group. This study is the first clinical trial of allogenic NK cells combined with cryosurgery for the treatment of advanced NSCLC and preliminaily its safety and efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jinping I underground powerhouse is deeply buried and is one of the largest underground powerhouses in China. As a result of high levels of in situ stress, complex geological conditions and the effects of excavation in adjacent caverns, the surrounding rock mass has been severely deformed and broken, and excavation damaged zones (EDZs) have become major obstacles to the design of cavern excavation and support. Field investigations and monitoring data indicated that there are two main modes of failure: high tangential stress induced failure and progressive failure, which have occurred on the mountain side and the river valley side of the Jinping I underground powerhouse. These two main modes of failure were due to strong secondary principal stress forces in the sub-parallel directions and sub-vertical directions, acting on the axes of the main powerhouse on the mountain side and on the river valley side, respectively. Deformations and EDZs on the river valley side were generally larger than those found along the mountain side, and the distribution of deformations was consistent with the distribution of EDZs. The evolution of the EDZ on the river valley side has clearly been time dependent, especially along the downstream arch abutment, and the EDZ was considerably enlarged with further excavation. Additionally, the deformation of the surrounding rock mass was first initiated from the edge of the excavation area and gradually extended to deeper areas away from the opening. However, the EDZ on the mountain side was enlarged only during the first two phases of excavation. The extension of pre-existing cracks and the creation of new fractures has mainly occurred in the oldest EDZ section, and the HDZ has been visibly enlarged, whereas the EDZ has shown little change in other excavation phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Casuarina species are valued as pioneer trees for coastal shelter forest construction. However, low temperature stress limits its cultivation expansion, fast growth, and high yield. To investigate the molecular mechanism by which Casuarina trees cope with cold stress and to provide a comprehensive sequence resource for further molecular genetic research on Casuarina species, we employed RNA-Seq technology to study the genome-wide expression profiles during cold stress in Casuarina equisetifolia L. Four cDNA libraries constructed from mRNAs of control and cold-treated seedlings (at −5 °C for 5 h) were sequenced by using the Illumina sequencing platform. A total of 118,270 unigenes were obtained by de novo assembly, creating an initial reference transcriptome dataset of C. equisetifolia. Among these unigenes, 4639 were identified as early cold response genes including 2331 cold up-regulated and 2308 down-regulated. Furthermore, the expression changes of 18 genes under cold stress from RNA-Seq analysis were further validated by reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Functional network analysis indicate that modifications in the expression of genes involved in signal regulation by transcription factors, metabolic pathways including synthesis of carbohydrate, secondary metabolites, and antioxidant enzymes might play vital roles in responses to cold stress in C. equisetifolia. This study represents the first large-scale transcriptome annotation of C. equisetifolia and may be beneficial to elucidate the cold response mechanisms of Casuarina trees and will be useful in cold-tolerant Casuarina species breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an active contour model for image segmentation based on a nonparametric distribution metric without any intensity a priori of the image. A novel nonparametric distance metric, which is called joint probability classification, is established to drive the active contour avoiding the instability induced by multimodal intensity distribution. Considering an image as a Riemannian manifold with spatial and intensity information, the contour evolution is performed on the image manifold by embedding geometric image feature into the active contour model. The experimental results on medical and texture images demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New vadimezan hydrazones were synthesized as E/ Z isomers and characterized by IR, 1H NMR, MS, and HRMS techniques; the ratio of isomers was analyzed by NOESY spectra. All compounds were evaluated for their cytotoxic activities against endometrial Ishikawa, lung A549 and NCI-460, chorion Bewo, cervical HeLa and Siha, breast MCF-7, leukemia HL-60, liver BEL-7402, and stomach BGC-823 cancer cell lines in vitro by standard MTT assay. The preliminary pharmacological results indicated that compound 5c exhibited most promising cytotoxic activity against NCI-460 cell line with IC value of 7.01 ± 0.53 μM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With complex fractured-vuggy heterogeneous structures, water has to be injected to facilitate oil production. However, the effect of different water injection modes on oil recovery varies. The limitation of existing numerical simulation methods in representing fractured-vuggy carbonate reservoirs makes numerical simulation difficult to characterize the fluid flow in these reservoirs. In this paper, based on a geological example unit in the Tahe Oilfield, a three-dimensional physical model was designed and constructed to simulate fluid flow in a fractured-vuggy reservoir according to similarity criteria. The model was validated by simulating a bottom water drive reservoir, and then subsequent water injection modes were optimized. These were continuous (constant rate), intermittent, and pulsed injection of water. Experimental results reveal that due to the unbalanced formation pressure caused by pulsed water injection, the swept volume was expanded and consequently the highest oil recovery increment was achieved. Similar to continuous water injection, intermittent injection was influenced by factors including the connectivity of the fractured-vuggy reservoir, well depth, and the injection-production relationship, which led to a relative low oil recovery. This study may provide a constructive guide to field production and for the development of the commercial numerical models specialized for fractured-vuggy carbonate reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficiency and mechanism of anion exchange resin Nanda Magnetic Polymer (NDMP) for removal of fluorescent dissolved organic matter in biologically treated textile effluents were studied. The bench-scale experiments showed that as well as activated carbon, anion exchange resin could efficiently remove both aniline-like and humic-like fluorescent components, which can be up to 40 % of dissolved organic matter. The humic-like fluorescent component HS-Em460-Ex3 was more hydrophilic than HS-Em430-Ex2 and contained fewer alkyl chains but more acid groups. As a result, HS-Em460-Ex3 was eliminated more preferentially by NDMP anion exchange. However, compared with adsorption resins, the polarity of fluorescent components had a relatively small effect on the performance of anion exchange resin. The long-term pilot-scale experiments showed that the NDMP anion exchange process could remove approximately 30 % of the chemical oxygen demand and about 90 % of color from the biologically treated textile effluents. Once the issue of waste brine from resin desorption is solved, the NDMP anion exchange process could be a promising alternative for the advanced treatment of textile effluents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nonparametric blur-kernel estimation, using either single image or multi-observation, has been intensively studied since Fergus et al.'s influential work (ACM Trans Graph 25:787-794, ). However, in the current literature there is always a gap between the two highly relevant problems; that is, single- and multi-shot blind deconvolutions are modeled and solved independently, lacking a unified optimization perspective. In this paper, we attempt to bridge the gap between the two problems and propose a rigorous and unified minimization function for single/multi-shot blur-kernel estimation by coupling the maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) and variational Bayesian (VB) principles. The new function is depicted using a directed graphical model, where the sharp image and the inverse noise variance associated with each shot are treated as random variables, while each blur-kernel, in difference from existing VB methods, is just modeled as a deterministic parameter. Utilizing a universal, three-level hierarchical prior on the latent sharp image and a Gamma hyper-prior on each inverse noise variance, single/multi-shot blur-kernel estimation is uniformly formulated as an $${\varvec{\fancyscript{l}}}_{{0.5}}$$ -norm-regularized negative log-marginal-likelihood minimization problem. By borrowing ideas of expectation-maximization, majorization-minimization, and mean field approximation, as well as iteratively reweighted least squares, all the unknowns of interest, including the sharp image, the blur-kernels, the inverse noise variances, as well as other relevant parameters are estimated automatically. Compared with most single/multi-shot blur-kernel estimation methods, the proposed approach is not only more flexible in processing multiple observations under distinct imaging scenarios due to its independence of the commutative property of convolution but also more adaptive in sparse image modeling while in the meanwhile with much less implementational heuristics. Finally, the proposed blur-kernel estimation method is naturally applied to two low-level vision problems, i.e., camera-shake deblurring and nonparametric blind super-resolution. Experiments on benchmark real-world motion blurred images, simulated multiple-blurred images, as well as both synthetic and realistic low-resolution blurred images are conducted, demonstrating the superiority of the proposed approach to state-of-the-art single/multi-shot camera-shake deblurring and nonparametric blind super-resolution methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basidiomycete species accumulate high levels of heavy metals, particularly cadmium (Cd). Heavy metal toxicity has been widely investigated, and different key factors affecting tolerance to heavy metals have been identified in plants and fungi. Nevertheless, molecular insights into different mechanisms of fungi to directly resist reactions with particular heavy metals remain insufficient. As such, early-response genes in basidiomycete fungi must be identified to elucidate the mechanisms that confer resistance to heavy metal stress, particularly for Cd. The basidiomycete fungus Lentinula edodes (Berk.) Pegler, an edible mushroom (shiitake), is the most economically important cultivated mushroom. Suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) combined with mirror orientation selection (MOS) was performed to identify Cd-induced genes in L. edodes treated with 50 μM Cd for 24 h. A total of 72 L. edodes genes were identified from the forward subtractive library. Reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was then employed to confirm the induction of the identified genes upon Cd exposure. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that 53 of the identified genes encode proteins with known functions and may be involved in early response to Cd exposure, whereas 19 genes encode hypothetical proteins with unknown functions. The diversity of the putative functions of the identified genes indicates that Cd stress elicits complex responses in L. edodes, and complex metabolic, transport, and signaling pathways may be involved in Cd resistance. This study presents a group of potential early-response genes to Cd exposure and may be beneficial to elucidate heavy metal resistance in basidiomycete fungi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology for evaluating the safety of slopes threatened by strong earthquakes. Based on the theory of modal analysis, the proposed approach analyzes the seismic landslide spectrum, including the calculation of the landslide intrinsic frequency and the investigation of the resonance effect. The concept and the solution of the resonance index (RI) of the seismic landslide are also proposed. By using the VC++ computer language, corresponding dynamic finite element program, namely Analysis of Seismic Landslide Spectrum (ASLS), is developed. To verify the proposed method, three examples are presented: a fixed-end beam, a specially designed landslide vibration experiment, and the largest landslide triggered by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. The obtained numerical and experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively evaluate the safety of seismic landslides. It is suggested that the resonance phenomenon of landslides should be considered in the landslide treatment and the seismic design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-known that shaken cameras or mobile phones during exposure usually lead to motion blurry photographs. Therefore, camera shake deblurring or motion deblurring is required and requested in many practical scenarios. The contribution of this paper is the proposal of a simple yet effective approach for motion blur kernel estimation, i.e., blind motion deblurring. Though there have been proposed several methods for motion blur kernel estimation in the literature, we impose a type of non-stationary Gaussian prior on the gradient fields of sharp images, in order to automatically detect and purse the salient edges of images as the important clues to blur kernel estimation. On one hand, the prior is able to promote sparsity inherited in the non-stationarity of the precision parameters (inverse of variances). On the other hand, since the prior is in a Gaussian form, there exists a great possibility of deducing a conceptually simple and computationally tractable inference scheme. Specifically, the well-known expectation-maximization algorithm is used to alternatingly estimate the motion blur kernels, the salient edges of images as well as the precision parameters in the image prior. In difference from many existing methods, no hyperpriors are imposed on any parameters in this paper; there are not any pre-processing steps involved in the proposed method, either, such as explicit suppression of random noise or prediction of salient edge structures. With estimated motion blur kernels, the deblurred images are finally generated using an off-the-shelf non-blind deconvolution method proposed by Krishnan and Fergus (Adv Neural Inf Process Syst 22:1033-1041, ). The rationality and effectiveness of our proposed method have been well demonstrated by the experimental results on both synthetic and realistic motion blurry images, showing state-of-the-art blind motion deblurring performance of the proposed approach in the term of quantitative metric as well as visual perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the morphology, size, and distribution evolution of MnS inclusions in non-quenched and tempered steel during heat treatment. The variation of single large-sized MnS inclusions at high temperature was observed in situ using a confocal scanning laser microscope (CSLM). The slender MnS inclusions first changed to pearl-like strings. These small-sized pearls subsequently coalesced and became closer together as the temperature increased. Large-sized MnS inclusions in non-quenched and tempered steel samples with different thermal histories were investigated with respect to the evolution of their morphology, size, and distribution. After 30 min of ovulation at 1573 K, the percentage of MnS inclusions larger than 3 µm decreased from 50.5% to 3.0%. After a 3 h soaking period, Ostwald ripening occurred. Most MnS inclusions moved from the grain boundaries to the interior. The present study demonstrates that heat treatment is an effective method of changing the morphology, size, and distribution of MnS inclusions, especially large-sized ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]