Search

This study is to investigate morphological changes in the Tamsui River Estuary in Taiwan driven by multiple physical processes, such as river flows, tides, waves, and storm surges, and then to study the impacts of sediment flushing operated at the Shihmen reservoir upstream on the river estuary. An integrated coastal and estuarine processes model (CCHE2D-Coast) (Center for Computational Hydroscience and Engineering Two-Dimensional-Coast) was validated by simulating these physical processes in the estuary driven by three historical typhoons in 2008. The site-specifically validated model was then applied to simulate morphological changes in the estuary in response to reservoir sediment flush scenarios from the upstream. For the impact assessment of sediment flushing, a synthetic hydrological event was designed by including a historical typhoon and a typical monsoon. It was found that during the typhoon, the sediments will be mostly deposited in the estuarine river reach of Tamsui and the Wazihwei sandy beach. During the monsoon period, most of the sediments tend to be deposited in the second fishing port of Tamsui, the northern breakwater, and the estuary, while the Wazihwei sandy beach in the river mouth would be scoured by backflow. Simulations of the complex flow fields and morphological changes will facilitate the best practice of sediment management in the coastal and estuarine regions.

This article reflects upon three seminal articles published in "Higher Education Policy" ("HEP") on academic freedom and university autonomy. The reflections indicate that "HEP" research contributes to a sophisticated and systematic understanding of the complexity of academic freedom, addressing both the original theoretical issues and burning current issues in policy and practice, as well as in legislation. In particular, "HEP" has gone beyond academic circles and reached a broad readership, making a real difference to policy development to safeguard academic freedom. For broader comparative reflection, an epistemological dimension has been added to the "HEP" understanding and analysis of the concept of academic freedom.

The article reports on an empirical study into underachievement of 14-year-old students in four English schools by drawing upon learning power theory and practice. The study examined the characteristic learning power profiles of underachieving and overachieving adolescents, and then used student learning profiles diagnostically to support the learning needs of a selected sample of underachievers. This was followed by an impact study of the interventions on the development of student learning power and their academic achievement. The pre-intervention quantitative findings demonstrated a significant difference between the learning power dimensions of underachieving students and the rest of their cohort. Qualitative and narrative analysis provided greater depths in interpretation. Coaching conversations as a major intervention strategy were found to be successful in strengthening underachieving teenagers' learning power and enhancing their learning experiences rather than just raising their exam performance. The study concludes that in addressing the learning needs of underachieving adolescents, serious attention should be given to their learning subjectivities, enabling them to relate school learning to their personal values, attitudes, aspirations and identities.

Two-dimensional materials present abundant novel properties when used in advanced applications, which develops considerable focus. In this investigation, the first-principles calculations are explored to study the structural characteristic of the monolayered SiP2, which is stable even at 1200 K. The SiP2 monolayer is a semiconductor with an indirect bandgap of 2.277 eV. The decent band alignment and light absorption capacity imply that the application is a suitable photocatalyst for water splitting. Furthermore, the SiP2 monolayer possesses an ultrafast electron mobility at 33,153 cm2·V−1·s−1 in the transport direction. The excellent Gibbs free energy of the SiP2 monolayer is also addressed in an examination of the hydrogen evolution reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste plastics are low-value waste; thus, achieving high-value recycling is the most desirable goal. Scientific methods are required to evaluate the environmental benefits and support the technology optimization and market selection of waste-to-energy technology for plastics. This study selected catalytic cracking and incineration power generation of two typical examples of waste plastics energy technologies as the research objects, established a full life cycle assessment model, and used the mid-point method to analyze and compare the environmental benefits of the two technologies. The results showed that catalytic cracking technology is more environmentally friendly. The sensitivity analysis showed that the treatment units had a high impact on the results; process optimization predicted the efficiency of technology optimization and advocated future technological developments to explore the direction of using clean energy, upgrading equipment, and updating catalysts. The results of this study can provide ideas for the optimization of two kinds of waste plastics energy technology. In addition, the comparative data analysis intuitively demonstrated the advantages and disadvantages of waste-to-energy technologies and provided a practical path for the future development of high-value treatments for waste plastics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we explore the impacts of charge doping on the magnetism of a Cr2Ge2Te6 monolayer using first-principles calculations. Our results reveal that doping with 0.3 electrons per unit cell can enhance the ferromagnetic exchange constant in a Cr2Ge2Te6 monolayer from 6.874 meV to 10.202 meV, which is accompanied by an increase in the Curie temperature from ~85 K to ~123 K. The enhanced ratio of the Curie temperature is up to 44.96%, even higher than that caused by surface functionalization on monolayer Cr2Ge2Te6, manifesting the effectiveness of charge doping by improving the magnetic stability of 2D magnets. This remarkable enhancement in the ferromagnetic exchange constant and Curie temperature can be attributed to the increase in the magnetic moment on the Te atom, enlarged Cr-Te-Cr bond angle, reduced Cr-Te distance, and the significant increase in super-exchange coupling between Cr and Te atoms. These results demonstrate that charge doping is a promising route to improve the magnetic stability of 2D magnets, which is beneficial to overcome the obstacles in the application of 2D magnets in spintronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transonic buffet is a phenomenon of large self-excited shock oscillations caused by shock wave-boundary layer interaction, which is one of the common flow instability problems in aeronautical engineering. This phenomenon involves unsteady flow, which makes optimal design more difficult. In this paper, aerodynamic shape optimization design is combined with reinforcement learning to address the problem of transonic buffet. Using the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, a reinforcement learning-based design framework for airfoil shape optimization was constructed to achieve effective suppression of transonic buffet. The aerodynamic characteristics of the airfoil were calculated by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. After optimization, the buffet onset angles of attack of the airfoils NACA0012 and RAE2822 were improved by 2° and 1.2° respectively, and the lift-drag ratios improved by 83.5% and 30% respectively. Summarizing and verifying the optimization results, three general conclusions can be drawn to improve the buffet performance: (1) narrowing of the leading edge of the airfoil; (2) situating the maximum thickness position at approximately 0.4 times the chord length; (3) increasing the thickness of the trailing edge within a certain range. This paper established a reinforcement learning-based unsteady optimal design method that enables the optimization of unsteady problems, including buffet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In recent years, several studies have demonstrated that stress hyperglycemia is significantly associated with poor prognosis in patients diagnosed with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). In the present study, we aimed to investigate the potential associations between various markers of stress hyperglycemia, such as admission blood glucose (ABG), fasting blood sugar (FBS), and stress hyperglycemia ratio (SHR) with different definitions, and the occurrence of adverse cardiovascular events in patients diagnosed with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) who have undergone percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Methods: Our study enrolled a total of 1099 patients diagnosed with STEMI who underwent PCI from 2016 to 2021. The primary outcomes of this study were in-hospital death and all-cause mortality. Results: Stress hyperglycemia was associated with a higher incidence of in-hospital death (ABG OR: 1.27 95% CI 1.19–1.36; FBS OR: 1.25 95% CI 1.16–1.35; SHR1 OR: 1.61 95% CI 1.21–2.14; SHR2 OR: 1.57, 95%CI 1.22–2.01; SHR3 OR: 1.59, 95%CI 1.24–2.05) and all-cause mortality (ABG HR: 1.10, 95% CI 1.07–1.14; FBS HR: 1.12, 95 CI 1.07–1.17; SHR1 HR: 1.19 95% CI 1.03–1.39; SHR2 HR: 1.28, 95%CI 1.14–1.44; SHR3 HR: 1.29, 95%CI 1.14–1.45) after adjusting for ischemic time, age, gender, BMI, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes mellitus (DM), current smoking history, chronic kidney disease (CKD), previous history of coronary artery disease (CAD), atrial fibrillation (AF), heart failure (HF), stroke, cancer, culprit vessel, multi-vessel disease. These associations exhibited a non-linear, J-shaped pattern, wherein the risk significantly increased when the ABG and FBS levels exceeded 5mmol/L. Moreover, the inflection point for SHR was estimated to be 1.2. Conclusions: Stress hyperglycemia was significantly associated with an increased risk of in-hospital death and all-cause mortality in STEMI patients treated with PCI. Stress hyperglycemia should be considered a high-risk prognostic marker in all STEMI patients, regardless of with or without diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurological symptoms are prevalent in both the acute and post-acute phases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and they are becoming a major concern for the prognosis of COVID-19 patients. Accumulation evidence has suggested that metal ion disorders occur in the central nervous system (CNS) of COVID-19 patients. Metal ions participate in the development, metabolism, redox and neurotransmitter transmission in the CNS and are tightly regulated by metal ion channels. COVID-19 infection causes neurological metal disorders and metal ion channels abnormal switching, subsequently resulting in neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, excitotoxicity, neuronal cell death, and eventually eliciting a series of COVID-19-induced neurological symptoms. Therefore, metal homeostasis-related signaling pathways are emerging as promising therapeutic targets for mitigating COVID-19-induced neurological symptoms. This review provides a summary for the latest advances in research related to the physiological and pathophysiological functions of metal ions and metal ion channels, as well as their role in COVID-19-induced neurological symptoms. In addition, currently available modulators of metal ions and their channels are also discussed. Collectively, the current work offers a few recommendations according to published reports and in-depth reflections to ameliorate COVID-19-induced neurological symptoms. Further studies need to focus on the crosstalk and interactions between different metal ions and their channels. Simultaneous pharmacological intervention of two or more metal signaling pathway disorders may provide clinical advantages in treating COVID-19-induced neurological symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic corruption in China's higher education institutions has become a serious issue in the last decade. This paper provides a critical discussion of the Chinese Ministry of Education's policy developments aimed to strengthen academic ethics and control academic corruption. It suggests that while the reactions of policy-makers to the apparent deterioration of academic ethics have been cautious and relatively slow, they are headed in the right direction. A comparative study of the policy documents demonstrates that significant progress has been made, and that the policy has undergone a change from what Anderson (1979) and Prunty (1984) described as "symbolic" to "material." Meanwhile, findings generated by qualitative interviews provide some insights into real-world academic corruption in China and indicate the complexity of the problem. Finally, some policy interventions are suggested that might be effective in reducing academic corruption.