Interactions of social, natural, and technological subsystems and synergy between development and adaptation to floods around Poyang Lake

<p>Rural populations in the developing world face great challenges in climate adaptation and human development. Broader development and climate adaptation can potentially enhance each other, and their positive synergies are essential to improve human well-being in less developed rural areas. Such synergies are, however, commonly lacking across developing countries. This paper examines the relationship between climate adaptation and broader development and finds a positive synergy in the Poyang Lake Region (PLR) – an important rice producing area in China that is vulnerable to flood hazards. We further examine household decision-making and link household decisions to rice cropping patterns interpreted from satellite images to explain the micro- to macro- mechanisms that lead to this synergy. The analysis shows that both the broader development context (national economic development and agricultural policy) and specific risk management (levees) are important for creating the positive synergy. Moreover, it is the right interactions of the social, natural, and technological subsystems that enable rural households to make different land-use and livelihood choices in a way that improves rural livelihoods and reduces flood impacts on rural livelihoods. The diverse household choices then collectively lead to preservation of rice production, despite the negative influence from increasing nonfarm work, and decreased flood impacts on agriculture.</p

Interaction Between Y³⁺ and Oleate Ions for the Cubic-to-Hexagonal Phase Transformation of NaYF₄ Nanocrystals

Understanding the phase transformation of NaYF₄ nanocrystals from cubic to hexagonal is of great importance for both scientific interests and applications. Herein, based on the density functional theory, we found that the dominant difference between cubic and hexagonal phase NaYF₄ is the location of Y³⁺, and oleate ions are particularly favorable to bonding with Y³⁺. The results indicated that oleate salts as ligand possibly induce the orderly arrangement of Y³⁺ and lower the energy barrier for the formation of hexagonal phase. The experiments of using different amount of oleate ions as ligand were designed to elucidate their influence on the phase transformation. We found that the approach with relatively high amount of sodium oleate results in dramatic shortening of reaction time (down to 5 min) on cubic-to-hexagonal phase transition for preparing ultrasmall (∼13 nm) hexagonal phase NaYF₄ nanocrystals. To exclude the influence of Na⁺ increasing in using sodium oleate, potassium oleate was also used as ligand in the synthesis, and similar results in phase transformation were observed. Our results suggest that the interaction between oleate ions and Y³⁺ efficiently promotes the phase transformation of NaYF₄ nanocrystals and provide new insight into how the ligand affects the phase transformation of nanocrystals

Constraint and load on implant devices and two different positions of the sleeve.

<p>(A) constraint and load on implant devices in pre-step and normal step:a full constraint at the top of the umbrella, concentrated load on the bottom of the umbrella, distributed pressure on the sleeve, the loads increase with time in the pre-step and decrease with time in the normal step; (B) Position I: sleeve at the bottom; (C) Position II: sleeve in the middle.</p

Implant devices and analysis setting in Lsdyna.

<p>(A) Umbrella-shaped femoral head support device geometric model; (B) Umbrella-shaped femoral head support device FE mesh model; (C) Material model in Lsdyna; (D) User-defined load curve in pre-step and normal step in: Lsdyna.</p

Information of four different scenarios.

<p>Information of four different scenarios.</p

Mesh Information.

<p>Mesh Information.</p

SMA material parameters setting.

<p>SMA material parameters setting.</p

Digitized femur.

<p>(A) Geometric Model; (B) FE mesh model; (C) FE mesh model (local view).</p

Material parameters for 10 different sets of bone elements.

<p>Material parameters for 10 different sets of bone elements.</p

Analysis results.

<p>(A) Final shape of one typical pair of 4 opposite umbrella arm pairs in each scenario; (B) Statistical figure of maximum radius of each scenario; (C) scenario 1, without constraint; (D) scenario 2, initial position 1, Normal bone quality. H = 22.5 mm, W = 20 mm; (E) scenario 3, with osteoporosis, failure location marked with black circle line; (F) scenario 4, initial position 2; (G) Stress field distrubution inside femoral head in secnario 4; (H) Stress field distrubution of umberalle-shape device in secnario 4.</p