Search

Aeroelastic effects, which affect the dynamic responses of low-rise roof structures to extreme wind conditions, are often neglected or oversimplified in current wind engineering design standards and applications. However, it is crucial to understand the details of those aeroelastic effects for performance-based wind engineering. This paper presents an isogeometric fluid–structure interaction (FSI) tool to investigate the aeroelastic effects of wind pressure distributions on roof structures under different turbulent wind conditions. A representative low-rise roof structure is simulated with an FSI model using an Arbitrary Lagrange-Eulerian-based variational multi-scale formulation coupled with isogeometric Kirchhoff-Love shells. The simulation results are compared to the quasi-steady approach and wind load provisions from ASCE 7-22. It shows that the quasi-steady approach and the design standard underestimate the pressure fluctuations, indicating the necessity of using FSI simulations to capture the aeroelastic effect for the roof of low-rise structures. This paper also studies the impacts of different roof configurations, e.g., the number of roof panels and inflow turbulent intensity, on the distribution of pressure coefficients and roof deflections. For the given mean wind speed, the mean pressure coefficient remains almost the same regardless of the turbulent intensity and roof configuration. However, the pressure fluctuation (standard deviation) varies significantly with the turbulence intensity and roof configuration. The aeroelastic effect also leads to complicated roof deflections at the crucial location having the maximum pressure coefficient. The paper first describes the mathematical details of the FSI model and simulation setup. Then, the pressure coefficients by the FSI simulation and design code are compared. Finally, the roof deflection with different inlet turbulence intensities and roof configurations are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) is heading to its mature development and continuously evolving itself as an essential component of the fifth-generation (5G) internet. IoT infrastructure requires networks for which 5G network is developed. Indeed global interest and the advancement in 5G networks has transformed the vision of smart cities into reality in terms of smart homes, smart consumer items, driverless cars, and similar daily appliances. Congestion in traffic affected the areas around the world and causing different issues like fuel wastage, anxiety, and delayed conveyances problems. To locate the exact location of congestion is one of the significant problem in the intelligent transportation system. It perceives the variation from the norm of traffic with the assistance of various sensors utilized in the progression of traffic. So far the development of intelligent transportation system given the capacity to researchers to investigate new procedures for finding the congested zones. This paper proposes the novel model for the prediction of traffic congestion in internet of vehicle using information fusion with artificial neural network and support vector machine. The proposed model obtained 98.4% accuracy, which is greater than previously mentioned approaches in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nocardiosis is a chronic infectious disease that afflicts multiple fish species and poses a growing threat to the aquaculture. In this study, Nocardia sp . infection was identified in jade perch, Scortum barcoo, from a pond culture in Guangzhou, China. The infected fish were characterized by dark body color, occasional skin ulcerations, and nodular lesions in the kidney, liver, heart, and other organs with typical granuloma structure under light microscopy. Ziehl-Neelsen staining revealed a large quantity of bacterial aggregates within lesions. Histological examination of the kidney, liver, and spleen demonstrated typical granuloma accompanied by histopathological changes. A bacterial strain with consistent morphology was isolated from multiple tissues. Symptoms of nocardiosis were also observed in healthy fish after artificial infection with the isolated strain. Physiological and biochemical experiments suggested that the isolated strain shared the basic characteristics of Nocardia, and the causative pathogen was subsequently confirmed as Nocardia seriolae by sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA and the gyrB gene. To our knowledge, this is the first report of nocardiosis in jade perch; it may pose a serious risk to the aquaculture of jade perch due to prolonged incubation prior to symptom emergence and the low efficacy of current treatments in china. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. The problems related to kinematic redundancy in both task and joint space were investigated for arm prehension movements in this paper. After a detailed analysis of kinematic redundancy of the arm, it is shown that the redundancy problem is ill posed only for the control of hand orientation. An experiment was then designed to investigate the influence of hand orientation on the control of arm movements. Since movements must be made within the limits of the joints, the influence of these limits was also analyzed quantitatively. The results of the experiment confirm that the increase of movement time because of the change of object orientation is due to the lengthening of the deceleration phase disproportionately to the rest of the movement. The variation of hand path due to the change of object orientation was observed as being surprisingly small for some subjects as opposed to the large range of object orientation, implying that hand path and hand orientation could be controlled separately, thus simplifying the computational problem of inverse kinematics. Moreover, the observations from the present experiment strongly suggest that a functional segmentation of the proximal and distal joints exists and that the control of wrist motion is dissociated from the rest of joint motions. The contribution of each joint in the control of arm movements could be determined through the principle of minimum energy and minimum discomfort under the constraints of the joint limits. A simplified inverse kinematics model was tested. It shows that these hypotheses can be easily implemented in a geometric algorithm and be used to predict arm prehension postures reasonably well under the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was designed to evaluate the clinical outcome of using extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) in the treatment of ureteric calculi and to establish a predictive model for the stone-free rate in patients receiving the treatment. A total of 831 patients with ureteric calculi were accepted in this study. Several parameters, including stone site, stone number, stone size, history of urolithiasis, renal colic, hydronephrosis, and double-J ureteric stent, were analyzed using univariate and multivariate analyses. A prediction model was established based on the logistic regression analysis of the significant factors, and the goodness-of-fit of the model was evaluated by employing the Hosmer-Lemeshow test. At a 3-month follow-up after ESWL treatment, the overall stone-free rate was 96.8% (804/831) with no serious complications being found, while the treatment failed in 3.2% (27/831) of the patients. Five factors, including stone number, stone size, history of urolithiasis, renal colic, and double-J ureteric stent contributed significantly to the clinical outcome of the ESWL treatment. The prediction model had a sensitivity and overall accuracy of 99.8 and 96.9%, respectively. The results show that ESWL remains an effective method for treating ureteric calculi. The prediction model established in this study could be used as a method for estimating prognosis in patients following ESWL treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PM2.5 is the main particulate air pollutant whose aerodynamic diameter is less than 2.5 micron. The inflammation of various respiratory diseases are associated with PM2.5 inhalation. Pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1β generated from effected cells usually plays a crucial role in many kinds of lung inflammatory reactions. The exacerbation of Th immune responses are identified in some PM2.5 related diseases. To elucidate the underlying mechanism of PM2.5-induced acute lung inflammation, we exposed Balb/c mice to PM2.5 intratracheally and established a mice model. Acute lung inflammation and increased IL-1β expression was observed after PM2.5 instillation. Regulatory factors of IL-1β (TLR4/MyD88 signaling pathway and NLRP3 inflammasome) participated in this lung inflammatory response as well. Treatment with compound essential oils (CEOs) substantially attenuated PM2.5-induced acute lung inflammation. The decreased IL-1β and Th immune responses after CEOs treatment were significant. PM2.5 may increase the secretion of IL-1β through TLR4/MyD88 and NLRP3 pathway resulting in murine airway inflammation. CEOs could attenuate the lung inflammation by reducing IL-1β and Th immune responses in this model. This study describes a potentially important mechanism of PM2.5-induced acute lung inflammation and that may bring about novel therapies for the inflammatory diseases associated with PM2.5 inhalation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]