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The exploitation of hot dry rock (HDR) based on supercritical CO2 (SCCO2) is an effective solution to the global energy crisis and climate change. The changes in the thermal properties of SCCO2 and rocks induced by high temperatures (pressures) have significant impacts on the evaluation of the heat extraction rate (HER). In this study, we established the relationship between the rock thermal conductivity and temperature and proposed a local average heat transfer coefficient (HTC), which considered the thermal properties of SCCO2 and the heterogeneity of the rock orthogonal to the flow direction of the SCCO2. Then, we studied the effects of confining pressure, rock sample temperature, SCCO2 injection pressure, and injection temperature on the outlet temperature and the local average HTC through experiments. In addition, we analyzed the influence of these factors on the HER. The results showed that increasing the confining pressure or rock sample temperature would reduce the local average HTC and inhibit the heat extraction of SCCO2. A higher injection pressure or lower injection temperature produced a larger local average HTC, which promoted the heat extraction of SCCO2. The results of this study provide valuable information to increase the HER in HDR reservoir.

Agricultural soils contribute a significant amount of anthropogenic CO

Hydropower plants operation may change river flow, thereby degrading the stability of river ecosystems. The primary purpose of this paper is to compute the comprehensive ecological water demand and establish ecological operation models to quantitatively analyze the interactions between power generation and degree of ecological flow satisfaction under different operation modes. The comprehensive ecological water demand takes the river base flow, ecological flow process and ecological water demands of fish habitat during the spawning period into account. The driest monthly streamflow under a 90% frequency method, range of variability approach and two-dimensional depth-averaged finite element model were adopted to obtain the ecological flow. In addition, to study the impacts of the ecological operation of hydropower plants on power generation, three optimal operation models including a maximum power generation model (Model-I), a minimum ecological change model (Model-II) and a multi-objective optimization operation model (Model-III), are established. In model-II, the average annual power generation of the cascade hydropower plants decreased by 10.61% compared with Model-I, and meanwhile the degree of ecological change reduced by 75.41%, which means, the reduction of power generation by 35.66 × 108 kWh could lead to a reduction of 11.4% on the degree of ecological degradation. Afterwards, the multi-objective problem of economic and ecological benefits in model-III was solved by the application of NSGA-II. Among them, scheme 3 is recommended for Model III, and its power generation and degree of ecological change are 311.69 × 108 kWh and 6.64%, respectively. In general, mutual restrictions and conflicts between power generation and ecological demand are inevitable, but they can be optimized through multi-objective ecological operation models to fetch the coordinated development of economy and ecology.

It is of great practical significance to ensure ecological water requirements (EWRs) for the maintenance of river health and the sustainable development of human socioeconomics. How to scientifically determine the comprehensive EWRs and estimate the uncertainty of hydro-ecological tools performed in the process of conducting remains one of the most important yet most complicated issues. In this study, the ecological water requirements framework (EWRsF) of the Lower Yellow River (LYR), which considers instream ecological base flow, survival and reproduction of indicator fish species, equilibrium of erosion and siltation and ecological function of the estuary, was constructed by integrating hydrological, hydraulic and ecological habitat methods. The framework contains three crucial components - determination of instream EWRs and estuarine EWRs, uncertainty analysis of hydro-ecological tools. For instream ecological base flow, we proposed an improved Tennant method, which took into account both seasonality and sediment transport characteristics of the LYR, and could better reflect the actual hydrological regime. For the hydrological ecological response relationship of indicator fish species, we estimated the uncertainty of the model output of River2D to improve its credibility of the simulation results. The results demonstrated that: 1) Two-grade intra-annual monthly EWRs process of suitable and minimum for four instream sections and estuary area were obtained. The flood season (June-October) is the period with the largest proportion of intra-annual instream EWRs, whereas in estuary area, is the spawning period (April-July) of dominant species. 2) The uncertainty of HSI curves directly leads to the uncertainty of model output. Although the shape and position of the WUA curve can be uncertain, it does not affect the judgment of EWRs threshold. 3) The research results can provide scientific basis for water resource management decision-making in the LYR. Additionally, the ideas also have reference significance for similar basins.

Runoff is an important basis for the operation of hydropower. However, due to inflow uncertainty, the ideal practical operation process usually doesn't match with the plan, which exacerbates the power generation and ecological risks. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between hydropower generation, ecology and their risks under the uncertainty of inflow. Gibbs sampling based on the copula function is presented to simulate the runoff. The scenario tree method is employed to describe the inflow uncertainty. The power generation risk operation model is developed based on the Mean-variance method. In addition, the expected minimum ecological risk model and its comparison model are proposed to analyze the relationship between power generation and ecological risk. The proposed methods are applied to a case study of the Lancang River cascade hydropower station. The results show that (1) The power generation risk of risk operation model decreased by 86.41% at the 90% scenario reduction level, compared with deterministic model. (2) There is an obvious competitive relationship between ecology and power generation, in the case of a 1% loss of expected power generation, the expected ecological risk can be reduced by 6.14%.

Kv4 pore‐forming subunits co‐assemble with β‐subunits including KChIP2 and DPP6 and the resultant complexes conduct cardiac transient outward K+ current (I to). Compound NS5806 has been shown to potentate I to in canine cardiomyocytes; however, its effects on I to in other species yet to be determined. We found that NS5806 inhibited native I to in a concentration‐dependent manner (0.1~30 μM) in both mouse ventricular cardiomyocytes and human‐induced pluripotent stem cell‐derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC‐CMs), but potentiated I to in the canine cardiomyocytes. In HEK293 cells co‐transfected with cloned Kv4.3 (or Kv4.2) and β‐subunit KChIP2, NS5806 significantly increased the peak current amplitude and slowed the inactivation. In contrast, NS5806 suppressed the current and accelerated inactivation of the channels when cells were co‐transfected with Kv4.3 (or Kv4.2), KChIP2 and another β‐subunit, DPP6‐L (long isoform). Western blot analysis showed that DPP6‐L was dominantly expressed in both mouse ventricular myocardium and hiPSC‐CMs, while it was almost undetectable in canine ventricular myocardium. In addition, low level of DPP6‐S expression was found in canine heart, whereas levels of KChIP2 expression were comparable among all three species. siRNA knockdown of DPP6 antagonized the I to inhibition by NS5806 in hiPSC‐CMs. Molecular docking simulation suggested that DPP6‐L may associate with KChIP2 subunits. Mutations of putative KChIP2‐interacting residues of DPP6‐L reversed the inhibitory effect of NS5806 into potentiation of the current. We conclude that a pharmacological modulator can elicit opposite regulatory effects on Kv4 channel complex among different species, depending on the presence of distinct β‐subunits. These findings provide novel insight into the molecular design and regulation of cardiac I to. Since I to is a potential therapeutic target for treatment of multiple cardiovascular diseases, our data will facilitate the development of new therapeutic I to modulators.

Climate change and its uncertainty may cause hydrological cycle and hydropower plant inflow to be changed, which destroy the consistency of hydrological data time series and change the constraint relationships among operation objects of the hydropower plants. So the conventional operation rules cannot be applied to the current hydrological data time series. Therefore, the main goals of this study are to develop adaptive operation chart for the hydropower plant to mitigate climate change impacts, and to propose an optimal adaptive operation chart for cascade hydropower system to increase power generation under the climate change environment. A methodology that combines simulation and optimization models is presented to formulate the optimal adaptive operation rules that consider the joint operation of cascade reservoirs. And the performance of the optimal adaptive operation rules is verified by comparing it with the conventional rules when both been applied to a case study of Hanjiang River hydropower plant reservoirs system. With the optimal adaptive operation chart, the cascade power generation assurance rate increased to 87%, the average annual power generation increased by 16.1%, and the power generation in typical wet, normal and dry years increased by 4.4%, 9% and 7.3%, respectively, compared with the conventional operation chart.

The watershed hydrological model is regarded as a powerful tool for simulating streamflow, but it is subject to many uncertainties. TOPMODEL (TOPography-based hydrological MODEL) is used as hydrological modeling in this paper; general likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) and multi-criteria GLUE (M-GLUE) methods are applied to evaluate the uncertain effect of model parameters on streamflow simulation, and three climate models are used to investigate the uncertain effect of meteorological input data. A new parameter calibration method (cuckoo search algorithm) is proposed in this study. Taking Beiluo River basin as a study case, analysis of the simulation results reveals that the cuckoo search algorithm is applicable and effective in optimizing the model parameters. The Morris and GLUE methods are employed to analyze the sensitivity of the parameters, and the two methods consistently demonstrated that there are three sensitive parameters in TOPMODEL. Additionally, the results of M-GLUE method are superior to the GLUE method, and both methods can effectively analyze the uncertainty of parameters. The precipitation and potential evaporation predicted by the three climate models exhibit an increasing trend, and the simulated average annual streamflow of the climate system model of the Beijing Climate Center (BCC-CSM1.1) is optimal and followed by Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques Earth system model (CNRM-CM5) and Canadian Earth System Molde (CanESM2). However, results obtained by all the three methods are greater than the baseline period value, indicating that the diverse input data of the hydrological model lead to uncertainty in the streamflow simulation.

Graphene becomes a promising electrode material for supercapacitor because of their high theoretical specific surface area and good conductivity. Nevertheless, the main disadvantage of graphene is the irreversible agglomeration because of the strong interlayer van der Waals force, which is significantly decreases the surface area, thus resulting in poor electrochemical performance. Herein, we report a new and facile strategy to synthesize rich oxygen-containing porous graphene (OPG) using KMnO4 as activator precursor. The optimized OPG-600 samples possess crumpled porous framework with a suitable surface area and massive oxygen-containing functional groups. Benefiting from their synergistic influence, the OPG-600 electrode displays a high gravimetric and volumetric capacitance of 363.3 F g−1 and 342.5 F cm−3 at 0.5 A g−1 and good rate performance (240 F g−1 and 226.3 F cm−3 at 30 A g−1). More interestingly, the OPG-600 symmetric supercapacitor displays a high volumetric energy density of 19.2 Wh L−1 and superior electrochemical stability.

Biochar amendment in soils has been proposed as an important strategy to improve soil C retention. However, while the exact roles of different biochar types on soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics are not clear, the effect of their interactions with chemical fertilization on SOC, the dynamics of C-cycling enzyme activities and key C-cycling-related bacteria in rhizosphere soil remain unexplored. Therefore, biochars derived from rice straw, bamboo, cow, and pig manure were applied with/without chemical fertilizer to study soil C dynamics, the activities, diversity, and abundance of different C-cycling-related bacteria in the plant-soil system. Biochar + fertilizer (BF), irrespective of biochar source, induced an initial increase in dissolved organic and inorganic C (DOC and DIC) that were subsequently reduced compared to biochar over 15-weeks. Higher intensities of C-containing functional groups rather than the total C content of biochar induced the mineralization of SOC. Also, higher nutrient uptake, biomass, and CO2 concentration in plants under BF had an insignificant influence on SOC. Similarly, the reduction in mineral-associated organic C, DOC, DIC, and invertase activity in BF soils was associated with a decrease in the relative abundance of some key C-cycling related bacterial orders: Gemmmatimonadales, Myxococcales, Nitrosomonadales, and Acidimicrobiales, while the hydrocarbon-degrading taxa (Sphingmonadales and Xanthomonadales), and N-cycling bacteria were stimulated. Hence, BF amendment could exert varied influences on C-cycling-related bacteria and on global C-cycling. The use of BF limited C-cycling and its loss by providing more N-substrates for N-cycling organisms, which also competed with most C-cycling-related bacteria for organic C to regulate C mineralization and its associated loss.

It is necessary to analyze the future runoff changes using a more realistic climate classification scheme. This paper investigates the climate changes and runoff variation by runoff simulation from global climate models participating in the CMIP5. This study also focuses on the uncertain effect of meteorological input data and hydrological model parameters on the runoff. TOPMODEL is used to simulate runoff, and the sensibility of runoff to precipitation and temperature variabilities is analyzed under the scenario of 25 hypothesis. Considering the uncertainty of input data of hydrological model, the predicted future precipitation and temperature data under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 are input into the TOPMODEL model to simulate the future runoff under different scenarios, and the M-GLUE method is used to analyze the uncertainty of model parameters. Jinghe River basin is selected as the study area in this paper. The analytical results reveal decreasing trends for runoff and precipitation, and the influence of precipitation change on runoff is more sensitive than the change of temperature. Integrating the results of the two climate models, the annual average runoff will decrease by from 13.3 to 27.7% under RCP4.5 scenario and under RCP8.5 scenario the decrease interval is from 17.1 to 25.2%. The RV, SRmax and Szm are the most sensitive parameters for the TOPMODEL. M-GLUE method can effectively analyze the uncertainty of hydrological simulation, and the interval width and coverage rate of the 90% confidence interval are 19 and 74%, respectively.

As the rapid development of economy, hydropower, as a kind of cleaner energy, is bringing in huge economic benefits, leading to the appearance of a great many of hydropower plants. Decades after the hydropower plants operation, series of quite serious ecological problems were brought in due to the changes in the natural flow. To restore the river ecosystem, this paper is making efforts on seeking series of operation schemes to balance the socio-economic and ecology benefits. Therefore, a simulation (Model-I) and an optimization (Model-II) operation model are established to provide a feasibility and a reasonable scheme for the multi-objective long-term and mid-term hydropower plant operation. To resolve the complex model, large-system coordinated decomposition method and an idea that efficiently narrows down the search space are used. The Irtysh River basin in China is selected as the study area to apply the model and make a trade-off to balance the water supply for socio-economics and ecology. The results show that the average annual power generation of hydropower plant group in Model-I is 2.5% more than that in Model-Ⅱ, both more than that of practical operation. In Model-I the water supply in dry year is far less than the minimum need (50%), but the Model-II provided a reasonable solution that the water supply in dry year is close to the median need (80%). Besides, the water supply for ecology in Model-II is obviously increased compared with Model-I, and the ratio increases from 56% to 86%, at the same time, the ratios to socio-economics are from 92% to 98%. Specially, the ratio of agricultural irrigation increases from 84% to 94%. In a word, the scheme meets the water requirements for socio-economics and ecology under considering the hydropower plants benefits, providing a scientific theoretical basis for water resource management.

Core-shell structure composite using carbon nanotubes as conductive core and nitrogen-doped microporous carbon as energy storage shell was synthesized by carbonization of polyaniline coated carbon nanotubes and followed by KOH activation. The optimized samples (CNTs@NC-4) possess unique core-shell structure with high specific surface area and rich heteroatoms. Consequently, the CNTs@NC-4 electrode displays a specific capacitance of 310 F g−1 at 0.5 A g−1, superior rate capability and good cycling durability. More interestingly, the assembled CNTs@NC-4//CNTs@NC-4 symmetric supercapacitor shows a high energy density of 18.6 Wh kg−1, excellent rate capability and good cycling durability in 1 M Na2SO4 aqueous electrolyte.

Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is an important indicator for measuring vegetation coverage, which is of great significance for evaluating vegetation dynamics and vegetation restoration. It can clearly analyze the suitable growth condition of vegetation by studying the relationship between meteorological factors, soil moisture and NDVI. Based on MODIS/NDVI data, the spatio-temporal characteristics of vegetation coverage in the Weihe River Basin (WRB) were analyzed by the trend analysis method. The relationship of NDVI with meteorological factors and NDVI with soil moisture simulated by the soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) model was analyzed in this paper. The results show that NDVI values gradually change with an increase from north to south in the WRB. The maximum of the average monthly NDVI is 0.702 (August) and the minimum is 0.288 in February from 2000 to 2015. The results of the seven grades of NDVI trend line slope indicate that the improvement area of vegetation coverage accounts for 30.93% of the total basin, and the degradation area and basically unchanged area account for 23% and 42.9%, respectively. The annual mean soil moisture is 19.37% in the WRB. There was a strong correlation between NDVI and precipitation, temperature, evaporation and soil moisture, and the correlation coefficients were 0.78, 0.89, 0.71 and 0.65, respectively. The ranges of the most suitable growth conditions for vegetation are 80–145 mm (precipitation), 13–23 °C (temperature), 94–144 mm (evaporation) and 25–33% (soil moisture), respectively.

ZnO nano-rod arrays with different morphologies were vertically grown on indium-tin oxide (ITO) glass substrates using the electrochemical deposition (ECD) method processing in a two-electrode cell. The bath temperature plays a key role in the growth process. The effect of growth bath temperature was studied with respect to the morphological, structural, and photoluminescence properties of the ZnO nano-rod arrays. The ZnO nano-rod arrays fabricated at 85 °C bath temperature had the best morphology, structural and optical qualities. The clear lattice fringes in the image of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) showed that a single-crystal structure of ZnO nano-rods with the growth direction along the [002] direction. The top-sectional field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images results revealed that the bath temperature played a key role in the morphology evolvement of the ZnO nano-rods. A sharp peak in the UV region and a weak broad peak in the visible region between 400 and 500 nm were shown in the room temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the samples, suggesting that the ZnO nano-rod arrays with high-quality crystals were obtained. This synthesis method provided a low cost and easy route for the preparation of 1D ZnO nanostructures.

Background and Purpose There is emerging evidence that the mineralocorticoid hormone aldosterone is associated with arrhythmias in cardiovascular disease. However, the effect of aldosterone on the slowly activated delayed rectifier potassium current (IKs) remains poorly understood. The present study was designed to investigate the modulation of IKs by aldosterone. Experimental Approach Adult guinea pigs were treated with aldosterone for 28 days via osmotic pumps. Standard glass microelectrode recordings and whole-cell patch-clamp techniques were used to record action potentials in papillary muscles and IKs in ventricular cardiomyocytes. Key Results The aldosterone-treated animals exhibited a prolongation of the QT interval and action potential duration with a higher incidence of early afterdepolarizations. Patch-clamp recordings showed a significant down-regulation of IKs density in the ventricular myocytes of these treated animals. These aldosterone-induced electrophysiological changes were fully prevented by a combined treatment with spironolactone, a mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) antagonist. In addition, in in vitro cultured ventricular cardiomyocytes, treatment with aldosterone (sustained exposure for 24 h) decreased the IKs density in a concentration-dependent manner. Furthermore, a significant corresponding reduction in the mRNA/protein expression of IKs channel pore and auxiliary subunits, KCNQ1 and KCNE1 was detected in ventricular tissue from the aldosterone-treated animals. Conclusions and Implications Aldosterone down-regulates IKs by inhibiting the expression of KCNQ1 and KCNE1, thus delaying the ventricular repolarization. These results provide new insights into the mechanism underlying K+ channel remodelling in heart disease and may explain the highly beneficial effects of MR antagonists in HF. Linked Articles This article is part of a themed section on Chinese Innovation in Cardiovascular Drug Discovery. To view the other articles in this section visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bph.2015.172.issue-23

The aim of the present study was to compare the diagnostic values of ultrasound micro-flow imaging (SMI) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) for neovascularization in carotid plaques, and to investigate their capacities for predicting the risks of cerebral stroke. A total of 39 patients (64 carotid plaques) with severe carotid artery stenosis undergoing carotid endarterectomy were selected between February 2015 and February 2016, and SMI and CEUS were used to detect neovascularization in plaques. According to the CEUS dynamic graph of plaques, the enhanced intensity visual scales and contrast parameters were obtained. Carotid atherosclerotic plaques were divided into 4 groups. The differences in the enhanced intensity visual scales, contrast parameters, and gray-scale median (GSM) values among the 4 groups were analyzed. Carotid plaque tissue samples from patients were stained for CD34, and the consistency of the methods for the diagnosis of neovascularization in plaques was analyzed. The differences in GSM values, enhanced intensities, and enhanced densities among the 4 groups of plaques were statistically significant (F=29.365, χ2=29.025, χ2=30.871, P0), there were statistically significant differences in new vessel densities with different SMI gradings (P0). In conclusion, SMI and CEUS have good consistency for evaluating neovascularization in carotid plaques, and have good clinical value for evaluating neovascularization in carotid plaques.

In this paper, we use the Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) to simulate two flood events to investigate the effect of watershed subdivision in terms of performance, the calibrated parameter values, the description of hydrologic processes, and the subsequent interpretation of water balance components. We use Stage IV hourly NEXRAD precipitation as the meteorological input for ten model configurations with variable sub-basin sizes. Model parameters are automatically optimized to fit the observed data. The strategy is implemented in Clear Creek Watershed (CCW), which is located in the upper Mississippi River basin. Results show that most of the calibrated parameter values are sensitive to the basin partition scheme and that the relative relevance of physical processes, described by the model, change depending on watershed subdivision. In particular, our results show that parameters derived from different model implementations attribute losses in the system to completely different physical phenomena without a notable effect on the model's performance. Our work adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that automatically calibrated parameters in hydrological models can lead to an incorrect prescription of the internal dynamics of runoff production and transport. Furthermore, it demonstrates that model implementation adds a new dimension to the problem of non-uniqueness in hydrological models.

Polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films were prepared by the ultraviolet-light-induced polymerization of photopolymerizable monomers in nematic liquid crystal/monomer/chiral dopant composites, and the effect of the chiral dopant on the electro-optical properties of the PDLC films was studied. It was demonstrated that the addition of a small amount of the chiral dopant increased the driving voltage somewhat but decreased the turn-off time significantly. Furthermore, the transmittance of ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light of the off state of PDLC films showing light scattering increased with increasing content of the chiral dopant, and the optimum electro-optical properties of the PDLC films were obtained when the content of the chiral dopant was not more than 2 wt %. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2007

In this study, a novel side-impact test method is developed for shearing-off miniature electromechanical devices from the printed wiring boards (PWBs) of portable products. The test method is implemented by modifying a commercial IZOD pendulum impact test setup. The key modification is the replacement of the instrumented pendulum impactor with an instrumented “striker-bar” design. The pendulum instrumented with the “striker-bar” allows high impact velocity up to 3.54E+3 mm/s, and is specially designed for testing components with very low profile. In this study, this setup is used to test a miniaturized electromechanical devices, such as a micro-switch, whose low profile presents a significant challenge to repeatable side-impact testing. Both overstress impact tests and repetitive impact fatigue tests are conducted, to evaluate the interaction of the different parts of the entire electromechanical assembly, including the solder joints, pins, through-holes and housing of the package. Failure modes are documented and failure envelopes are developed by relating the measured durability to the impact parameters like impact velocity, fracture energy and force impulse.

Background: The mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) blockade in the heart is an attractive therapeutic option for the treatment of heart failure. However, the use of MR antagonist is limited by an increased incidence of hyperkalemia owing to MR blockade in the kidney. This study was designed to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of a low, non-pressure-lowering dose of spironolactone (Sp) with that of a conventional blood pressure-lowering dose combined with irbesartan on pathological cardiac remodeling as well as serum potassium level in pressure-overload rats. Methods: The pressure-overloaded myocardial remodelling was produced by partial abdominal aortic constriction (PAAC) in rats. Four weeks after PAAC, animals were respectively treated with vehicle, irbesartan (15 mg/kg) alone, low-dose Sp (1 mg/kg) or conventional-dose of Sp (20 mg/kg) in combination with irbesartan for consecutive four weeks. Results: The result demonstrated that compared to irbesartan monotherapy, the combination of irbesartan and spironolactone both in low- and conventional-dose exhibited additional cardioprotection against PAAC-induced cardiac remodelling. Low-dose spironolactone was as effective in inhibiting cardiac hypertrophy, fibrosis and in improving diastolic function as high dose. Low-dose spironolactone did not lead to a rise in potassium serum levels, but high dose did. Conclusions: This study suggests that combined low dose of spironolactone and irbesartan may be an effective and safety therapeutic strategy for cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure.

To investigate the protective effect of sesamin against cadmium chloride (CdCl2)-induced cardiotoxicity in rats.Fifty male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to five groups: control group, CdCl2 group, and low-, middle-, and high-dose sesamin groups. The control group was given normal saline. The CdCl2 group and sesamin groups were intraperitoneally injected with CdCl2 (5 mg/kg×2 d), and the low-, middle-, and high-dose sesamin groups were given 20, 40, and 80 mg/kg sesamin, respectively. All treatments lasted for four weeks. ECG was measured by a physiological recorder, and serum myocardial enzyme levels were determined by biochemical assay. The heart was weighed, and heart tissues were used in histopathological examination and determination of malondialdehyde (MDA) level.Compared with the control group, the CdCl2 group showed significantly higher levels of serum CK and CK-MB, an increased heart coefficient, significant ST-segment elevation, and higher level of MDA in myocardial tissue (P0.05). Histopathological analysis showed edema of myocardial tissues and cells, myocardial fibers disorder, karyopyknosis, and uneven or deep staining of nuclear chromatin. Different doses of sesamin relieved the myocardial pathological changes induced by CdCl2, and high-dose sesamin was the most effective. The middle- and high-dose sesamin groups showed significantly reduced serum CK and CK-MB levels compared with the CdCl2 group (P0.05). The heart coefficient of the high-dose sesamin group (0.19±0.01%) was significantly lower than that of the CdCl2 group (0.21±0.01%) (P0.05). Myocardial MDA levels of the three sesamin groups (42.32±4.65, 36.71±5.34, and 33.12±4.62 nmol/mg pro, respectively) were all significantly lower than that of the CdCl2 group (55.87±3.65 nmol/mg pro) (P0.05).Sesamin can relieve myocardial injury induced by CdCl2, and one possible mechanism is the enhancement of antioxidant capacity of myocardial tissue.

The structural and mechanical properties of bone in the femoral neck and various other sites were investigated in intact (INT), sham-operated (Sham), and ovariectomized (OVX) rats. Six weeks after operation, the maximal load and energy absorption of the femoral neck were significantly lower in the OVX than in the INT or Sham groups, being 73.2 ± 1.4 (SE) N, 86.3 ± 4.1 N, and 87.1 ± 3.2 N, respectively (p < 0.01) for load. The total cross-sectional area of the femoral neck did not change after OVX, but the marrow cavity area was enlarged, leading to a reduced bone area (including both cortical and trabecular bone) (p < 0.01). Histomorphometric analysis showed that new bone formation could not be detected at the periosteum of the femoral neck below the femoral head, but at the endocortical surfaces the double tetracycline labeling revealed an increased mineral apposition rate (MAR) and bone formation rate (BFR) in OVX animals (p < 0.001). In contrast, MAR and BFR were significantly increased in both periosteal and endocortical surfaces of the tibia, humerus, and femoral shaft, thus preventing a decrease in cortical bone area. The maximal bending loads of the tibia and humerus were not different in the various groups of animals. The correlation coefficient between maximal load and bone area revealed positive relationships in the femoral neck (r = 0.54, p < 0.01), tibia (r = 0.46, p < 0.01), and humerus (r = 0.51, p < 0.01). Ovariectomy resulted in a decreased trabecular bone volume of lumbar vertebra VI (L6) decreased compressive loads of lumbar vertebrae I, III, and IV. These lumbar bone loads were positively related to their L6 bone area (L4/L6: r = 0.66, p < 0.001). Element analyses (energy dispersion spectrometer) from trabecular and cortical areas of bone showed some changes related to aging but not to OVX. These results indicate that ovariectomy influences the biomechanical properties of rat bone by changing structural properties rather than material ones.

The structural characteristics of Lead-zirconate-titanate solid solution around the Morphotropic Phase Boundary was investigated using X-ray diffractometry and Raman spectroscopy. The rhombohedral-tetragonal transformation was induced by firing the screen-printed PZT thick films between 960°C and 1200°C or annealing the laser-ablated PZT thin films between 500°C and 900°C. During the processing, lead was gradually evaporated, causing the composition of films moved from the original rhombohedral region to the tetragonal region. The XRD measurements showed the transformation starting at about 1000°C for the thick films and about 900°C for the thin films. But the Raman measurements show different results. This discrency indicates certain particular aspects of this transformation which are interpreted in a non-equilibrium displacement model

Our country is at a new stage from being a sports giant to being a sports power. Whereas rural sports development, as an important part of mass sports, does lag behind. Such a situation focuses on the following problems: regional imbalance in sports development, relatively less capital input, shortage of sports playgrounds and facilities, relatively less peasant sports population, outdated sports concepts, lack of professional sports instructors, and so on. Based on the analysis of the causes and uniting the aims of sports power, this paper analyses and elaborates the above problems systematically, and also proposes the corresponding suggestions and solutions.