Assessment of in situ immobilization of Lead (Pb) and Arsenic (As) in contaminated soils with phosphate and iron: solubility and bioaccessibility

The effect of in situ immobilization of lead (Pb) and arsenic (As) in soil with respectively phosphate and iron is well recognized. However, studies on combined Pb and As-contaminated soil are fewer, and assessment of the effectiveness of the immobilization on mobility and bioaccessibility is also necessary. In this study, a Pb and As-contaminated soil was collected from an abandoned lead/zinc mine in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province of China, which has been treated with three phosphates, i.e., calcium magnesium phosphate (CMP), phosphate rock, and single super-phosphate (SSP) for 6 months in a field study. The ferrous sulfate (FeSO4) at 20 g kg-1 was then amended to the soil samples and incubated for 8 weeks in a greenhouse. The solubility and bioaccessibility tests were used to assess the effectiveness of the in situ immobilization. The result showed that phosphates addition decreased the concentrations of CaCl2-extractable Pb; however, the concentrations of water-soluble As increased upon CMP and SSP addition. With the iron addition, the water-soluble As concentrations decreased significantly, but CaCl2-extractable Pb concentrations increased. The bioaccessibility of As and Pb measured in artificial gastric and small intestinal solutions decreased with phosphate and iron application except for the bioaccessibility of As in the gastric phase with SSP addition. Combined application of phosphates and iron can be an effective approach to lower bioaccessibility of As and Pb, but has opposing effects on mobility of As and Pb in contaminated soil

Critical behaviors near the (tri-)critical end point of QCD within the NJL model

We investigate the dynamical chiral symmetry breaking and its restoration at finite density and temperature within the two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, and mainly focus on the critical behaviors near the critical end point (CEP) and tricritical point (TCP) of quantum chromodynamics. The multi-solution region of the Nambu and Wigner ones is determined in the phase diagram for the massive and massless current quark, respectively. We use the various susceptibilities to locate the CEP/TCP and then extract the critical exponents near them. Our calculations reveal that the various susceptibilities share the same critical behaviors for the physical current quark mass, while they show different features in the chiral limit

Neutron-Capture Elements in the Double-Enhanced Star HE 1305-0007: a New s- and r-Process Paradigm

The star HE 1305-0007 is a metal-poor double-enhanced star with metallicity [Fe/H] $=-2.0$, which is just at the upper limit of the metallicity for the observed double-enhanced stars. Using a parametric model, we find that almost all s-elements were made in a single neutron exposure. This star should be a member of a post-common-envelope binary. After the s-process material has experienced only one neutron exposure in the nucleosynthesis region and is dredged-up to its envelope, the AGB evolution is terminated by the onset of common-envelope evolution. Based on the high radial-velocity of HE 1305-0007, we speculate that the star could be a runaway star from a binary system, in which the AIC event has occurred and produced the r-process elements.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, paper accepted for publication in Chinese Physics letter

Carrier Sense Random Packet CDMA Protocol in Dual-Channel Networks

Code resource wastage is caused by the reason that many hopping frequency (FH) sequences are unused, which occurs under the condition that the number of the actual subnets needed for the tactical network is far smaller than the networking capacity of code division net¬working. Dual-channel network (DCN), consisting of one single control channel and multiple data channels, can solve the code resource wastage effectively. To improve the anti-jamming capability of the control channel of DCN, code division multiple access (CDMA) technology was introduced, and a carrier sense random packet (CSRP) CDMA protocol based on random packet CDMA (RP-CDMA) was proposed. In CSRP-CDMA, we provide a carrier sensing random packet mechanism and a packet-segment acknowledgement policy. Furthermore, an analytical model was developed to evaluate the performance of CSRP-CDMA networks. In this model, the impacts of multi-access interference from both inter-clusters and intra-clusters were analyzed, and the mathematical expressions of packet transmission success probability, normalized network throughput and signal interference to noise ratio, were also derived. Analytical and simulation results demonstrate that the normalized network throughput of CSRP-CDMA outperforms traditional RP-CDMA by 10%, which can guarantee the resource utilization efficiency of the control channel in DCNs

Opaque Service Virtualisation: A Practical Tool for Emulating Endpoint Systems

Large enterprise software systems make many complex interactions with other services in their environment. Developing and testing for production-like conditions is therefore a very challenging task. Current approaches include emulation of dependent services using either explicit modelling or record-and-replay approaches. Models require deep knowledge of the target services while record-and-replay is limited in accuracy. Both face developmental and scaling issues. We present a new technique that improves the accuracy of record-and-replay approaches, without requiring prior knowledge of the service protocols. The approach uses Multiple Sequence Alignment to derive message prototypes from recorded system interactions and a scheme to match incoming request messages against prototypes to generate response messages. We use a modified Needleman-Wunsch algorithm for distance calculation during message matching. Our approach has shown greater than 99% accuracy for four evaluated enterprise system messaging protocols. The approach has been successfully integrated into the CA Service Virtualization commercial product to complement its existing techniques.Comment: In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (pp. 202-211). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1510.0142

Why People Are Willing to Share More Knowledge than Required

Knowledge sharing is critical for modern organizations. Besides in-role knowledge sharing, there exists knowledge sharing beyond one’s role, which is called extra-role knowledge sharing. This study investigates the antecedents of the extra-role knowledge sharing from the perspective of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Previous studies on OCB and works on knowledge sharing were reviewed to develop a model explaining the factors behind extra- role knowledge sharing. Willingness to help that is hypothesized to be influenced by procedural justice, job satisfaction, and employee personality (extraversion and agreeableness) is believed to influence extra- role knowledge sharing. Empirical data confirmed most of the hypotheses of this study