Chloride Penetration in Surface-Treated Concrete in Natural and Accelerated Environments

This study investigated the chloride penetration of surface-treated concrete in natural and accelerated environments. A part of a real concrete port, including the beams and the columns, was investigated. Concrete specimens cast together with the concrete port were transported to the lab and subjected to wetting and drying cycles for accelerating the ingression of chloride ion. Chloride concentration of the specimens in the lab and the components in situ was tested. The results show that the surface treatments obviously slow down the chloride penetration into the concrete in both lab and in situ. The chloride penetration in situ is more severe than that in specimens under wetting and drying cycles. For the components of the real concrete port, the chloride concentration tested in summer is found higher than that in winter and the chloride concentration in the tensile region of bending beam is higher than that in the column

Corrosion-Induced Concrete Cracking Model Considering Corrosion-Filled Paste

A TCP–TCL model is established to describe the relationship between the thickness of the corrosion-filled paste (CP) and that of the corrosion layer (CL). This model can describe the phenomenon that the corrosion filling in the concrete pores and accumulating at the steel/concrete interface occur synchronously. Based on the TCP–TCL model, a corrosion-induced concrete cracking model, which can quantitatively consider corrosion-filled paste at concrete/steel interface, is proposed. Combined with damage analysis in corrosion-induced cracking process of concrete cover, the model is developed to describe the quantity of steel corrosion required to crack the concrete surface

Numerical Study of Magnetic Island Coalescence Using Magnetohydrodynamics With Adaptively Embedded Particle-In-Cell Model

Collisionless magnetic reconnection typically requires kinetic treatments that are, in general, computationally expensive compared to fluid-based models. In this study, we use the magnetohydrodynamics with adaptively embedded particle-in-cell (MHD-AEPIC) model to study the interaction of two magnetic flux ropes. This innovative model embeds one or more adaptive PIC regions into a global MHD simulation domain such that the kinetic treatment is only applied in regions where kinetic physics is prominent. We compare the simulation results among three cases: 1) MHD with adaptively embedded PIC regions, 2) MHD with statically (or fixed) embedded PIC regions, and 3) a full PIC simulation. The comparison yields good agreement when analyzing their reconnection rates and magnetic island separations, as well as the ion pressure tensor elements and ion agyrotropy. In order to reach a good agreement among the three cases, large adaptive PIC regions are needed within the MHD domain, which indicates that the magnetic island coalescence problem is highly kinetic in nature where the coupling between the macro-scale MHD and micro-scale kinetic physics is important.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

Volumetric Wireframe Parsing from Neural Attraction Fields

The primal sketch is a fundamental representation in Marr's vision theory, which allows for parsimonious image-level processing from 2D to 2.5D perception. This paper takes a further step by computing 3D primal sketch of wireframes from a set of images with known camera poses, in which we take the 2D wireframes in multi-view images as the basis to compute 3D wireframes in a volumetric rendering formulation. In our method, we first propose a NEural Attraction (NEAT) Fields that parameterizes the 3D line segments with coordinate Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs), enabling us to learn the 3D line segments from 2D observation without incurring any explicit feature correspondences across views. We then present a novel Global Junction Perceiving (GJP) module to perceive meaningful 3D junctions from the NEAT Fields of 3D line segments by optimizing a randomly initialized high-dimensional latent array and a lightweight decoding MLP. Benefitting from our explicit modeling of 3D junctions, we finally compute the primal sketch of 3D wireframes by attracting the queried 3D line segments to the 3D junctions, significantly simplifying the computation paradigm of 3D wireframe parsing. In experiments, we evaluate our approach on the DTU and BlendedMVS datasets with promising performance obtained. As far as we know, our method is the first approach to achieve high-fidelity 3D wireframe parsing without requiring explicit matching.Comment: Technical report; Video can be found at https://youtu.be/qtBQYbOpVp

A New Perspective for Dipolarization Front Dynamics: Electromagnetic Effects of Velocity Inhomogeneity

The stability of a quasi‐static near‐Earth dipolarization front (DF) is investigated with a two‐dimensional electromagnetic particle‐in‐cell model. Strongly localized ambipolar electric fields self‐consistently generate a highly sheared dawnward E→×B→ electron drift on the kinetic scale in the DF. Electromagnetic particle‐in‐cell simulations based on the observed DF thickness and gradients of plasma/magnetic field parameters reveal that the DF is susceptible to the kinetic electron‐ion hybrid (EIH) instability driven by the strong velocity inhomogeneity. The excited waves show a broadband spectrum in the lower hybrid (LH) frequency range, which has been often observed at DFs. The wavelength is comparable to the shear scale length, and the growth rate is also in the LH frequency range, which are consistent with the EIH theory. As a result of the LH wave emissions, the velocity shear is relaxed, and the DF is broadened. When the plasma beta increases, the wave mode shifts to longer wavelengths with reduced growth rates and enhanced magnetic fluctuations although the wave power is mostly in the electrostatic regime. This study highlights the role of velocity inhomogeneity in the dynamics of DF which has been long neglected. The EIH instability is suggested to be an important mechanism for the wave emissions and steady‐state structure at the DF.Key PointsMagnetotail DF contains a substantial velocity shear in the tangential electron driftThe sheared flow is susceptible to the EIH instability and can broaden the DF by emitting broadband LH wavesThe EIH emissions become more electromagnetic as plasma beta increasesPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152027/1/jgra55215_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152027/2/jgra55215.pd

First molecular phylogenetic insights into the evolution of Eriocaulon (Eriocaulaceae, Poales)

Eriocaulon is a genus of c. 470 aquatic and wetland species of the monocot plant family Eriocaulaceae. It is widely distributed in Africa, Asia and America, with centres of species richness in the tropics. Most species of Eriocaulon grow in wetlands although some inhabit shallow rivers and streams with an apparent adaptive morphology of elongated submerged stems. In a previous molecular phylogenetic hypothesis, Eriocaulon was recovered as sister of the African endemic genus Mesanthemum. Several regional infrageneric classifications have been proposed for Eriocaulon. This study aims to critically assess the existing infrageneric classifications through phylogenetic reconstruction of infrageneric relationships, based on DNA sequence data of four chloroplast markers and one nuclear marker. There is little congruence between our molecular results and previous morphology-based infrageneric classifications. However, some similarities can be found, including Fyson’s sect. Leucantherae and Zhang’s sect. Apoda. Further phylogenetic studies, particularly focusing on less well sampled regions such as the Neotropics, will help provide a more global overview of the relationships in Eriocaulon and may enable suggesting the first global infrageneric classification

Targeting oncogenic miR-335 inhibits growth and invasion of malignant astrocytoma cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Astrocytomas are the most common and aggressive brain tumors characterized by their highly invasive growth. Gain of chromosome 7 with a hot spot at 7q32 appears to be the most prominent aberration in astrocytoma. Previously reports have shown that microRNA-335 (miR-335) resided on chromosome 7q32 is deregulated in many cancers; however, the biological function of miR-335 in astrocytoma has yet to be elucidated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We report that miR-335 acts as a tumor promoter in conferring tumorigenic features such as growth and invasion on malignant astrocytoma. The miR-335 level is highly elevated in C6 astrocytoma cells and human malignant astrocytomas. Ectopic expression of miR-335 in C6 cells dramatically enhances cell viability, colony-forming ability and invasiveness. Conversely, delivery of antagonist specific for miR-335 (antagomir-335) to C6 cells results in growth arrest, cell apoptosis, invasion repression and marked regression of astrocytoma xenografts. Further investigation reveals that miR-335 targets disheveled-associated activator of morphogenesis 1(Daam1) at posttranscriptional level. Moreover, silencing of endogenous Daam1 (siDaam1) could mimic the oncogenic effects of miR-335 and reverse the growth arrest, proapoptotic and invasion repression effects induced by antagomir-335. Notably, the oncogenic effects of miR-335 and siDAAM1 together with anti-tumor effects of antagomir-335 are also confirmed in human astrocytoma U87-MG cells.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These findings suggest an oncogenic role of miR-335 and shed new lights on the therapy of malignant astrocytomas by targeting miR-335.</p

Detection of magnetospheric ion drift patterns at Mars

Mars lacks a global magnetic field, and instead possesses small-scale crustal magnetic fields, making its magnetic environment fundamentally different from intrinsic magnetospheres like those of Earth or Saturn. Here we report the discovery of magnetospheric ion drift patterns, typical of intrinsic magnetospheres, at Mars usingmeasurements fromMarsAtmosphere and Volatile EvolutioNmission. Specifically, we observewedge-like dispersion structures of hydrogen ions exhibiting butterfly-shaped distributions within the Martian crustal fields, a feature previously observed only in planetary-scale intrinsic magnetospheres. These dispersed structures are the results of driftmotions that fundamentally resemble those observed in intrinsic magnetospheres. Our findings indicate that the Martian magnetosphere embodies an intermediate case where both the unmagnetized and magnetized ion behaviors could be observed because of the wide range of strengths and spatial scales of the crustal magnetic fields around Mars.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Electrical Conductivity of Electrospun Polyaniline and Polyaniline-Blend Fibers and Mats

Submicrometer fibers of polyaniline (PAni) doped with (+)-camphor-10-sulfonic acid (HCSA) and blended with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) or poly(ethylene oxide) were electrospun over a range of compositions. Continuous, pure PAni fibers doped with HCSA were also produced by coaxial electrospinning and subsequent removal of the PMMA shell polymer. The electrical conductivities of both the fibers and the mats were characterized. The electrical conductivities of the fibers were found to increase exponentially with the weight percent of doped PAni in the fibers, with values as high as 50 ± 30 S/cm for as-electrospun fibers of 100% doped PAni and as high as 130 ± 40 S/cm upon further solid state drawing. These high electrical conductivities are attributed to the enhanced molecular orientation arising from extensional deformation in the electrospinning process and afterward during solid state drawing. A model is proposed that permits the calculation of mat conductivity as a function of fiber conductivity, mat porosity, and fiber orientation distribution; the results agree quantitatively with the independently measured mat conductivities.United States. Army Research Office (Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Contract ARO W911NF-07-D- 0004