Research on seismic internal forces of geogrids in reinforced soil retaining wall structures under earthquake actions

For geogrid reinforced soil retaining walls, there are no reasonable analysis theories and design methods. Its seismic reinforcement mechanism has not been clear. A nonlinear finite difference method is applied to analyze reinforced internal forces of geogrid reinforced soil retaining walls under different design parameters. An elastic-plastic model is used to simulated soils. The coupled elastic parameters are used to describe the interaction between soils and geogrids. The analysis parameters include reinforcement lengths, reinforcement spacing, distribution forms of geogrid layers, the stiffness of geogrids, earthquake intensities, stiffness of backfill soils, unit weights and panel thicknesses. Finally, the shaking table test model of a geogrid reinforced soil retaining wall is introduced. Seismic strains of geogrids are tested and are compared with numerical simulation results. Some conclusions are achieved such as distribution characters of seismic residual deformations of reinforced walls, coupled shear stresses between geogrids and soils, some sensitive impact parameters on reinforced internal forces of geogrids. The geogrids located in the middle layer of the reinforced zone play an important role. Calculation results will offer references for seismic designs of geogrid reinforced soil retaining walls

Interaction between Nobiliside-a and lipid bilayers

Nobiliside A (Nob) is a new triterpenoid saponin first discovered and isolated from the Holothuria nobilis with chemical molecular structure of C54H87O26 SNa. Extracorporeal antitumor test showed that Nob may be a new category of effective anticancer medicine which had excellent cytotoxicity as well as inhibited vascular endothelial cell (VEC) proliferation and migration in vitro and chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) angiogenesis in vivo at a lower dose. Unfortunately, the clinical application of Nob was severely limited by the low bioavailability of Nob after oral administration, and highly toxic especially heart toxicity and the ability causing hemolysis of blood cells after intravenous injection. To reduce the hemolysis and toxicity of Nob after intravenous injection, liposomes were used as its carriers and good effect was acquired in our previous study. During the preparation and study of Nob liposomes, we found that Nob liposomes had high encapsulation efficiency (EE), which nearly 100 % and good stability. It was proposed that there would be strong interaction between Nob and lipid bilayers, which would affect the EE, the stability, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and even the toxicity of the drug. Thus, fourier transformer infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), fluoroscense spectroscopy were used to study the interaction between Nob and lipid bilayers. The results showed that there was a strong interaction between Nob and both phospholipids (PL) and cholesterol (CH) in lipid bilayers, and the interaction between Nob and CH was stronger than that between Nob and PL. There was also interaction between PL and CH, which would be decreased when Nob existed. Thus, the reason of Nob liposomes having high EE and good stability could be infered from the study. In fluoroscense spectroscopy study it was found that Nob could destroy calcein liposomes and lead release of the content, while Nob encapsuled in liposomes could not cause the destruction of calcein liposomes. These phenomena were different with Nob liposomes leading to the content release from red blood cells, so the mechanism of Nob liposomes decreasing the toxicity to mice and hemolysis in vitro should be further studied.Colegio de Farmacéuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aire

Identification of academic peer effects in college: Does data aggregation matter?

This study exploited random roommate assignments in a small Chinese college to estimate the causal effects of roommates’ scores on the national College Entrance Test (CET) on first-year students’ Grade Point Average (GPA). Analyzing data on an entire cohort of enrolled students, we found that the level of aggregation, for both the peer-ability measure and one’s own academic-outcome measure, matters for the identification of academic peer effects. Specifically, while roommates’ average CET score has a barely significant impact, the highest-scoring roommate’s CET score has a strong positive impact. Peer effects are also larger for one’s GPA for required courses than that of elective courses. Finally, peer effects in both types of courses decline over time while the effects of one’s own CET score increase over time, suggesting that students in this college tend to substitute their own ability for peer ability as they become more academically independent

Pseudo-static calculation method of the seismic residual deformation of a geogrid reinforced soil retaining wall with a liquefied backfill

The geogrid reinforced soil retaining wall is a flexible retaining wall. It will produce large deformations during earthquakes, especially on liquefied backfill soils. An index of liquefaction extent is applied to express the effect of excess pore water pressure in reinforced backfill sand during earthquakes. A geogrid reinforced soil retaining wall is represented by an isotropic vertical elastic beam. The calculation method of the seismic residual deformation of the geogrid reinforced soil retaining wall is based on the Rayleigh-Ritz method and the the Mononobe-Okabe pseudo-static method. The effect of liquefaction extent in the backfill sand is studied for seismic active earth pressures acting on a reinforced wall back and seismic residual deformations of a reinforced wall. Some influence parameters on seismic residual deformations of geogrid reinforced soil retaining walls are investigated in detail, such as the internal friction angles in the backfill sand, friction angles of the wall, horizontal seismic intensities, reinforcement length of the geogrid and soil properties. Finally, the calculated results are compared with test results of a model on large-scale shaking table. The conclusions about the parameters will be helpful for seismic designs of geo-grid reinforced soil retaining walls on liquefied foundations. The proposed pseudo-static calculation method can be used to predict safe seismic deformations of geogrid reinforced soil retaining walls

Interaction between Nobiliside-a and lipid bilayers

Nobiliside A (Nob) is a new triterpenoid saponin first discovered and isolated from the Holothuria nobilis with chemical molecular structure of C54H87O26 SNa. Extracorporeal antitumor test showed that Nob may be a new category of effective anticancer medicine which had excellent cytotoxicity as well as inhibited vascular endothelial cell (VEC) proliferation and migration in vitro and chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) angiogenesis in vivo at a lower dose. Unfortunately, the clinical application of Nob was severely limited by the low bioavailability of Nob after oral administration, and highly toxic especially heart toxicity and the ability causing hemolysis of blood cells after intravenous injection. To reduce the hemolysis and toxicity of Nob after intravenous injection, liposomes were used as its carriers and good effect was acquired in our previous study. During the preparation and study of Nob liposomes, we found that Nob liposomes had high encapsulation efficiency (EE), which nearly 100 % and good stability. It was proposed that there would be strong interaction between Nob and lipid bilayers, which would affect the EE, the stability, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and even the toxicity of the drug. Thus, fourier transformer infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), fluoroscense spectroscopy were used to study the interaction between Nob and lipid bilayers. The results showed that there was a strong interaction between Nob and both phospholipids (PL) and cholesterol (CH) in lipid bilayers, and the interaction between Nob and CH was stronger than that between Nob and PL. There was also interaction between PL and CH, which would be decreased when Nob existed. Thus, the reason of Nob liposomes having high EE and good stability could be infered from the study. In fluoroscense spectroscopy study it was found that Nob could destroy calcein liposomes and lead release of the content, while Nob encapsuled in liposomes could not cause the destruction of calcein liposomes. These phenomena were different with Nob liposomes leading to the content release from red blood cells, so the mechanism of Nob liposomes decreasing the toxicity to mice and hemolysis in vitro should be further studied.Colegio de Farmacéuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aire

SCALABLE UNIVERSAL SPACE VECTOR PULSE WIDTH MODULATION SCHEME FOR MULTILEVEL INVERTERS

A scalable universal space vector pulse-width modulation (SVPWM) scheme for multilevel inverters is disclosed. In the disclosed SVPWM scheme, the modulation triable is quickly identified based on a coordinate transformation from an α-β coordinate system to a 120o oblique coordinate system. Then, the duty cycles and switching states of the three vertices of the modulation triangle are determined by simple algebraic computations. In a switching period, any vertex of the modulation triangle can be flexibly selected as the start point to optimize the switching sequence with flexibly adjustable duty cycle(s) for the redundant switching state(s) according to specific applications

METABONOMICS IN THE STUDY OF EYE DISEASES

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH