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Background: Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) are progressive conditions. Family caregivers of patients, especially those caring for patients with ADRD exhibiting behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), undergo significant physical and mental changes during long-term care. While most researchers have focused on the specific needs of family caregivers, the comprehensive understanding of these needs is limited. In this study, Alderfer's existence, relatedness, and growth theory was used to develop an interview framework to systematically and comprehensively understand the needs of family caregivers of individuals with ADRD. Objective: The objective of this study was to understand family caregivers' needs in coping with BPSD in individuals with ADRD, aiming to alleviate caregivers' stress and promote their overall well-being. Methods: This study used a hermeneutic–phenomenological interview research design. Data were collected via remote conferences involving interviews with 17 participants selected via maximum variation sampling. The Colaizzi seven-step method was utilized, and the interview contents were analyzed using NVivo 12.0 software. Results: The needs of family caregivers in coping with the BPSD of individuals with ADRD could be summarized into three themes, namely existence needs, relatedness needs, and growth needs, and 10 sub-themes. Conclusions: The study findings provide new insights into the needs of family caregivers in coping with patients exhibiting BPSD. Family caregivers experience significant negative emotions, poor caregiving experiences, heavy caregiving burdens, and a desire for professional assistance and policy support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to research the influence of bearing arrangement on the seismic response of urban viaduct, the 4 × 30 m standard span and C ramp bridge of the main line are taken as the engineering background. The SeismoStruct software is used to establish and analyse the seismic responses. For the standard span of the main line, under the same ground motion input, the internal force of the pier for the seismic isolation system is reduced by about 1 to 4 times compared with the ductile seismic system, but the displacement of the piers or the bearings are relatively large, and the overall cost of the structure is high. For the C ramp bridge, the shear force, axial force and pier displacement with all lead-core rubber bearings are lower than those with fixed bearings. From the perspectives of structure seismic response, post-earthquake repair and engineering economy, it is suggested that the viaduct of the standard span should adopt the plate type rubber bearing, and the C ramp bridge should adopt the fixed bearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of holographic unsteady water load offers important information for evaluating the hydrodynamic performance of seaplanes. However, traditional tank test is limited by the number of sensors that can be deployed on the bottom of hull, thus only providing sparse data for estimating load distribution and leading to inaccurate evaluation of seaplane performance. To achieve accurate and rapid reconstruction of holographic load distribution, a machine learning load-reconstruction model based on Attention Neural Processes is proposed. This model performs spatiotemporal modeling of seaplane water load utilizing sparse sensor data. It directly learns the load patterns across multiple time steps and employs Attention modules to capture the spatial distribution of load. Comparisons with alternative methods demonstrate the model's superior ability to simultaneously capture spatial and temporal dependencies of the unsteady load data. In addition, the model's robust generalization capability is also validated by reducing the number of sensors in the training data. The results indicate that the proposed model exhibits high prediction efficiency, accuracy, and generalization for the reconstruction of unsteady water load distribution, which is of great significance for comprehensively evaluating the hydrodynamic performance of seaplanes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plastic greenhouses play an important role in vegetable cultivation in China. While evaluations have attributed perfluoroalkyl acid contamination in greenhouse vegetables primarily to irrigation water, the potential contribution from greenhouse plastic films has consistently been overlooked, despite PFAAs' long-standing use as anti-fogging agents. In this study, a comprehensive assessment of PFAA contamination was conducted in greenhouses at the Shouguang vegetable base in China, based on extensive environmental and crop sample collection, followed by analysis using LC-MS/MS. PFAAs are still used in greenhouse plastic film, and their migration to the surface water mist and the air inside the greenhouse was also observed. Elevated levels of PFAA pollution were found near the corner areas of greenhouses with longer service times, leading to further pollution of the soil and nearby vegetables. This is considered as the primary source which may have been caused by PFAAs migrating with condensation from the plastic film and accumulating for decades. However, polluted irrigation water still remains the dominate source of PFAAs in other areas inside the greenhouse. Based on our analysis, we conclude that PFAAs present in plastic films could be the primary contaminant source for vegetables in specific zones. This underscores the urgent need for heightened vigilance towards environmental pollution within agricultural facilities, which currently represent the most prevalent mode of intensive vegetable cultivation in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic characteristics and liquid sloshing of a circular tank are analysed using ADINA software through seismic response analyses. The maximum sloshing wave height for the circular tank under unidirectional horizontal seismic action is developed. The calculation method involves three parameters such as tank radius, seismic coefficient and dynamic coefficient. The dynamic coefficient of liquid sloshing is determined corresponding to the long-period seismic design β spectrum with a 5% damping ratio using basic sloshing period. The established method can guide the seismic design of liquid-containing structures. The established method of calculating sloshing wave height is compared with those in the American code.

The escalating energy demands in buildings, particularly for heating and cooling demands met by heat pumps, have placed a growing stress on energy resources. The bi-functional thermal diode tank (BTDT) is proposed as thermal energy storage to improve the heating and cooling performances of heat pumps in both summer and winter. The BTDT is an insulated water tank with a gravity heat pipe (GHP), which can harvest and store heat passively from sun radiation and the external environment during the daytime. In summer, it harvests and stores cold energy from the air and night sky during the daytime. The performance of the BTDT-assisted heat pump (BTDT-HP) system in Adelaide, Australia, during the 2021–2022 summer and winter seasons was evaluated by conducting a TRNSYS simulation. This study revealed that the BTDT-HP system outperformed the reference ASHP system, where up to 8% energy in heating and 39.75% energy in cooling could be saved. An overall reduction in the energy consumption of 18.89% was achieved. Increasing the BTDT volume and GHP panel area enabled the tank to store more thermal and cold energy across the winter and summer seasons, thereby improving the system's performance. The maximum ESPs were found to be 31.6% and 41.2% for heating and cooling for the study case under optimal conditions. When the GHP panel area was fixed at 15 m2, the BTDT volume should be at least 28 m3 for the BTDT-HP system, boasting cooling and heating capacities of 40 kW and 43.2 kW, to achieve positive energy savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automated classification of rock images is of paramount importance in geological analysis, as it serves as the foundational criterion for the categorization of rock lithology. Despite recent advancements in leveraging deep learning technologies to enhance the efficiency and precision of image classification, a crucial aspect has been overlooked: these methods face a performance bottleneck when attempting to apply it directly to rock classification methods. To address this limitation, we propose a multiple granularity Spatial disorder Hierarchical residual Network (SHN). This approach involves learning from objects annotated at different levels, thereby facilitating the transfer of hierarchical knowledge across levels. By enabling lower-level classes to inherit pertinent attributes from higher-level superclasses, our method aims to capture the intricate hierarchical relationships among different rock types. Especially, we introduce a multi-granularity spatial disorder module to aid neural networks in discerning discriminative details across various scales. This module enables processed images to exhibit region independence, compelling the network to adeptly identify discriminative local regions at diverse granularity levels and extract pertinent features. Furthermore, in light of the absence of a comprehensive rock dataset, this study amassed 4,227 rock images of diverse compositions from various places, culminating in the creation of a robust rock dataset for classification. Rigorous experimentation on this dataset yielded highly promising results, demonstrating the effectiveness of our proposed method in addressing the challenges of rock image classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The water-impacting behavior of a wedge is often studied in the slamming phenomenon of ships and aircraft. Many scholars have proposed theoretical models for studying the water-impacting problem of a wedge, but these models still have some shortcomings. This study combines Von Karman's method, the Generalized Wagner Model (GWM), and Modified Logvinovich Model (MLM) to establish a converged theoretical Von Karman-GWM-MLM (VGM) model. The VGM model utilizes added mass to replace the fluid influence, which is derived from the velocity potential and boundary conditions. Considering the influence of impulse, the velocity is determined by the momentum theorem. Subsequently, the pressure, resultant force, and acceleration of the wedge can be calculated. By comparing with the published test data of other scholars, it is found that the velocity, acceleration, pressure, and force of the wedge obtained by the VGM model reached a consensus with experiments. The validity and accuracy of the VGM model are also verified. The efficiency and accuracy of problem-solving are both balanced when using the VGM model. The establishment of the VGM model is significant for solving water-impacting problems related to wedges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diphenyl sulfide is connected with one or two thioanisoles, in a system initially prepared to learn about the electronic charge transport through it. Unexpectedly, we observed a remarkably high conductance, which is proved to arise from the S atom of the diphenyl sulfide (featuring superior chemical stability) involved in the formed molecular junction. This work provides a new anchor to fabricate reliable and reproducible molecular junctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]