Risk assessment of the Xigou debris flow in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area

On June 18, 2018, under the influence of heavy rainfall, a debris flow disaster broke out in Xigou village of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area in Chongqing, causing some residential houses to be buried along with great economic losses. The on-site investigation found many loose solid material sources in the debris flow gully. Under the conditions of heavy rainfall, debris flows are prone to occur again, which would seriously threaten the lives and property of nearby residents. In this paper, taking the Xigou debris flow as a research case, numerical simulation by rapid mass movements simulation (RAMMS) is used to invert the movement process of the 2018 debris flow event; the dynamic calculation parameters of the Xigou debris flow event are obtained; a quantitative hazard prediction of debris flows with different recurrence intervals (30, 50, and 100 years) is carried out in the study area; and risk assessment is conducted based on the vulnerability characteristics of the disaster-bearing bodies in the study area. The results show that the maximum accumulation thickness of debris flow in the 30-year, 50-year, and 100-year recurrence intervals is 6.54 m, 10.18 m, and 10.00 m, respectively, and the debris flow in the 100-year recurrence interval has the widest influence range and greatest hazard. The low-, medium-, and high-risk areas account for 75%, 23%, and 2%, respectively. The high-risk area mainly includes some buildings near the #1 and #2 gullies. This study provides support for the prevention and control of potential debris flow disasters in Xigou village and a scientific basis for disaster prevention and mitigation in the Three Gorges Reservoir area

The mediating effect of resilience and COVID-19 anxiety on the relationship between social support and insomnia among healthcare workers: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundInsomnia in healthcare workers has become a topic of concern in the health system. The high infectivity and longevity of the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in great pressure and a high incidence of insomnia among healthcare workers. Insomnia among healthcare workers has a negative impact on high-quality healthcare services in addition to their health. Thus, it's necessary to explore insomnia's underlying mechanisms.ObjectThe present research's aims were threefold: explored the association between social support, resilience, COVID-19 anxiety, and insomnia among healthcare workers during the pandemic, elucidated the underlying mechanism of insomnia, and offered recommendations for improving the health of these workers.Materials and methodsA cross-sectional design was adopted. From May 20 to 30, 2022, 1038 healthcare workers were selected to fill out the Oslo 3-item Social Support Scale, the eight-item Athens Insomnia Scale, the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale, and the Brief Resilience Scale. Descriptive statistics and correlations were analyzed by SPSS 25.0. Mediation analysis was conducted by Mplus 8.3 using 5000 bootstrap samples.ResultsOf the participating 1038 healthcare workers, the prevalence of insomnia was 41.62% (432/1038). Significant associations were found involving insomnia, resilience, COVID-19 anxiety, and social support. Insomnia was directly affected by social support. Moreover, three indirect pathways explain how social support affected insomnia: resilience's mediating role, COVID-19 anxiety's mediating role, and the chain-mediation role of resilience and COVID-19 anxiety.ConclusionThe results validated our hypotheses and supported the opinion of Spielman et al. ‘s three-factor model of insomnia. Social support of healthcare workers has an indirect impact on insomnia in addition to its direct one via independent and chain-mediation effects of resilience and COVID-19 anxiety

Atomistic dynamics of sulfur-deficient high-symmetry grain boundaries in molybdenum disulfide

As a common type of structural defect, grain boundaries (GBs) play an important role in tailoring the physical and chemical properties of bulk crystals and their two-dimensional (2D) counterparts such as graphene and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). In this study, we explore the atomic structures and dynamics of three kinds of high-symmetry GBs (α, β and γ) in monolayer MoS2. Atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is used to characterize their formation and evolutionary dynamics, and atomistic simulation based analysis explains the size distribution of α-type GBs observed under TEM and the inter-GB interaction, revealing the stabilization mechanism of GBs by pre-existing sulfur vacancies. The results elucidate the correlation between the observed GB dynamics and the migration of sulfur atoms across GBs via a vacancy-mediated mechanism, offering a new perspective for GB engineering in monolayer MoS2, which may be generalized to other transition metal dichalcogenides

Identification and Evolution of the Noncoordination Coupling Relationship between Tourism Poverty Alleviation and Ecological Environments in Poor Mountainous Areas

Tourism poverty alleviation and ecological environments are closely associated with each other’s dissipation structure, which contains various coordinated and noncoordinated coupling states. Based on the perspective of reverse thinking and problem diagnosis, this paper constructs a bridge from uncoordinated pathology to coordinated development. From the perspective of incongruity, the framework model and evaluation index system of tourism poverty alleviation and ecological environments incongruity coupling coordination driving mechanism are constructed. Also, the variation coefficient method is used to calculate the weight of each evaluation index and the coupling relationship and evolution of tourism poverty alleviation and ecological environments in Liupanshui city are analyzed by the noncoordination coupling function. The results suggest the following: (1) During the study period, the poverty alleviation level of tourism in Liupanshui city presents a continuous growth curve. Meanwhile, ecological environment development level depicts rapid growth initially and then slows down and improves further. In this way, it shows different stage characteristics from the tourism poverty alleviation level. (2) The discordant coupling between tourism poverty alleviation and ecological environments in Liupanshui city shows a decreasing curve. So, the noncoordinated development relationship between tourism poverty alleviation and ecological environments is significant

A Transformer-Based Cross-Window Aggregated Attentional Image Inpainting Model

To overcome the fault of convolutional networks, which can be over-smooth, blurred, or discontinuous, a novel transformer network with cross-window aggregated attention is proposed. Our network as a whole is constructed as a generative adversarial network model, and by embedding the Window Aggregation Transformer (WAT) module, we improve the information aggregation between windows without increasing the computational complexity and effectively obtain the image long-range dependencies to solve the problem that convolutional operations are limited by local feature extraction. First, the encoder extracts the multi-scale features of the image with convolution kernels of different scales; second, the feature maps of different scales are input into a WAT module to realize the aggregation between feature information and finally, these features are reconstructed by the decoder, and then, the generated image is input into the global discriminator, in which the discrimination between real and fake images is completed. It is experimentally verified that our designed Transformer window attention network is able to make the structured texture of the restored images richer and more natural when performing the restoration task of large broken or structurally complex images

Proteins and Signaling Pathways Response to Dry Needling Combined with Static Stretching Treatment for Chronic Myofascial Pain in a RAT Model: An Explorative Proteomic Study

A quantitative proteomic analysis of the response to dry needling combined with static stretching treatment was performed in a rat model of active myofascial trigger points (MTrPs). 36 rats were divided into a model group (MG), a stretching group (SG) and a dry needling combined with stretching group (SDG). We performed three biological replicates to compare large-scale differential protein expression between groups by tandem mass tag (TMT) labeling technology based on nanoscale liquid chromatography mass spectrometry analysis (LC⁻MS/MS). Hierarchical clustering, Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment and protein-protein interaction network analyses were performed for the general characterization of overall enriched proteins. For validation of the results of TMT, the candidate proteins were verified by parallel reaction monitoring (PRM) analysis. 285 differentially expressed proteins between groups were identified and quantified. Tight junction pathway played a dominant role in dry needling combined with static stretching treatment for the rat model of active MTrPs. Three candidate proteins, namely actinin alpha 3, calsequestrin-1 and parvalbumin alpha, were further validated, consistent with the results of LC⁻MS/MS. This is the first proteomics-based study to report the therapeutic mechanism underlying dry needling and static stretching treatment for MTrPs. Further functional verification of the potential signaling pathways and the enriched proteins is warranted

Highly efficient microfluidic sorting device for synchronizing developmental stages of C. elegans based on deflecting electrotaxis

C. elegans as a powerful model organism has been widely used in fundamental biological studies. Many of these studies frequently need a large number of different stage-synchronized worms due to the stage-specific features of C. elegans among 4 distinct larval stages and the adult stage. In this work, we present an interesting and cost-effective microfluidic approach to realize simultaneous sorting of C. elegans of different developmental stages by deflecting electrotaxis. The microfluidic device was fabricated using PDMS consisting of symmetric sorting channels with specific angles, which was further hybridized to an agarose plate. While applying an electric field, different stages of C. elegans would crawl to the negative pore with different angles due to their deflecting electrotaxis. Thus, the worms were separated and synchronized by stages. lon-2 mutant was further used to study this electrotactic response and the results indicated that the body size plays a key role in determining the deflecting angle in matured adult worms. In addition to discriminating wild-type hermaphrodites, it could also be employed to sort mutants with abnormal development sizes and males. Therefore, our device provided a versatile and highly efficient platform for sorting C. elegans to meet the requirement of large numbers of different stage-synchronized worms. It can also be further used to investigate the neuronal basis of deflecting electrotaxis in worms

Tunable Microwave Pulse Generation Based on an Actively Mode-Locked Optoelectronic Oscillator

A tunable microwave-pulse-generation scheme is proposed and demonstrated by employing an actively mode-locked optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) based on a microwave photonic filter (MPF). The MPF mainly consists of a phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating (PS-FBG) and a phase modulator. The microwave pulse trains with variable repetition rates are achieved by injecting an external signal, of which the frequencies are equal to an integer multiple of the free spectrum range (FSR) of the OEO. The multi-mode oscillation mechanism is discussed in detail theoretically and experimentally. A microwave pulse train with a central frequency of 9.25 GHz and repetition rate of 1.68 MHz is demonstrated by setting the injecting signal frequency to be the same with the FSR of the OEO. A tunable center frequency of the microwave pulses from 5.47 GHz to 18.91 GHz can be easily generated by tuning the laser frequency benefit from adopting the MPF. Furthermore, the microwave pulses with different pulse periods of 297.62 ns, 198.69 ns, and 148.81 ns are also realized by harmonic mode-locking. The proposed tunable microwave-pulse-generation method has potential applications in the pulse Doppler radar and communications

Broadband Microwave Photonic Frequency Measurement Based on Optical Spectrum Manipulation and Stimulated Brillouin Scattering

In this article, a broadband frequency measurement system based on optical spectrum manipulation and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, which can implement wide-range and high-resolution frequency measurement, and generate corresponding broadband interference signals in some frequency bands, that is, it has versatility. Since the frequency range of the pump light to excite SBS is expanded based on the optical spectrum manipulation and high resolution is ensured by the narrow scattering spectrum of SBS, high-resolution spectrum measurement covering a wide frequency band is finally implemented. In addition, the double sideband pump light can be used as the source of electronic interference signal. In the experiments, the frequency measurement range of the proposed system is tested to be 0.03–44 GHz, and the resolution is up to 3 MHz. Furthermore, the frequency measurement and electronic interference sharing the same work band can be carried out in the ranges of 6.3367–7.8367 GHz and 20.36–22.16 GHz