Microstructure and bonding behavior of fiber-mortar interface in fiber-reinforced concrete

The interfacial properties between fiber and matrix play a critical role in the overall mechanical responses of composite materials. In this paper, the glass fiber-mortar interfacial microstructure in fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) is visualized and characterized using X-ray microscopy. Additionally, three types of fiber-mortar interface (glass fiber, high modulus polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber, and basalt fiber) are analyzed by scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The results revealed a lot of microcracks along with the glass fiber-mortar interface; moreover, the hydration product of the glass/PVA/basalt fiber-mortar interface was much lower than that of the mortar matrix. Because microcracks or lower hydration product have such a negative effect on the interfacial bonding between fiber and mortar, the objective of this paper was to provide an analysis of this problem through extensive testing of their bonding properties. Specimens made of three types of fiber were tested along with three different mortar types under tensile stress and a combined stress state to investigate the interfacial bond properties between fiber and mortar. Results show that both of the tensile and shear bond strength of the interface were not only improved by stronger mortar matrix, but also significantly affected by fiber type. Furthermore, when the interface failed by slipping along the interfacial area, the interface showed an increasing shear bond strength with the increase of compressive stress. This was not the case when failure was due to the crushing of mortar. Finally, the FRC splitting tensile strength was tested to demonstrate the bonding mechanism effects on the FRC mechanical properties

Soft Gluon Resummation in tt-channel single top quark production at the LHC

We present a detailed phenomenological study of the multiple soft gluon radiation for the $t$-channel single top and anti-top quark production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). By applying the transverse momentum dependent factorization formalism, large logarithms introduced by small total transverse momentum $q_\perp$ of the single-top (anti-top) plus one-jet final state system are resummed to all orders in the expansion of the strong interaction coupling at the accuracy of Next-to-Leading Logarithm. We discuss various kinematical distributions which are sensitive to this effect and find that soft gluon radiation become more important when the final state jet is required to be in the forward region. We show that the main difference from PYTHIA prediction lies on the inclusion of the exact color coherence effect between the initial and final states in our resummation calculation. We further propose to apply the experimental observable $\phi^*$ to test the effect of multiple gluon radiation in the single-top and anti-top events. The bottom quark mass effect and jet rapidity distribution are also discussed.Comment: 22 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1801.09656, arXiv:1811.0142

HMIAN: a Hierarchical Mapping and Interactive Attention Data Fusion Network for Traffic Forecasting

© 2022 IEEE. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2022.3196461With the development of intelligent transportation system (ITS), the vital technology of ITS, short-term traffic forecasting, gains increasing attention. However, the existing prediction models ignore the impact of urban functional zones on traffic data, resulting in inaccurate extractions of dynamic spatial relationships from network. Furthermore, how to calculate the influence of external factors such as weather and holidays on traffic is an unsolved problem. This paper proposes a spatio-temporal hierarchical mapping and interactive attention network (HMIAN), which extracts the spatial features from traffic network by constructing functional zones, and designs an effective external factors fusion method. HMIAN uses the hierarchical mapping structure to aggregate the roads into functional zones, calculate the interaction between functional zones and feed this information back to the spatial features. And the interactive attention mechanism is utilized to fuse the traffic data with external factors effectively, and extracts temporal features. In addition, some experiments were carried out on three real traffic data sets. First, experiment results show that the proposed model better prediction performance compared with other existing approaches in more complex traffic network. Second, the longitudinal comparison experiment verifies that the hierarchical mapping structure is effective in extracting spatial features in complex road network. Finally, the influence of different external factors and fusion methods on traffic prediction are compared, which provides a consult for subsequent research on the influence of external factors.Peer reviewe

Security of a new two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocol

The original two-way continuous-variable quantum-key-distribution (CV QKD) protocols [S. Pirandola, S. Mancini, S. Lloyd, and S. L. Braunstein, Nature Physics 4, 726 (2008)] give the security against the collective attack on the condition of the tomography of the quantum channels. We propose a family of new two-way CV QKD protocols and prove their security against collective entangling cloner attacks without the tomography of the quantum channels. The simulation result indicates that the new protocols maintain the same advantage as the original two-way protocols whose tolerable excess noise surpasses that of the one-way CV-QKD protocol. We also show that all sub-protocols within the family have higher secret key rate and much longer transmission distance than the one-way CV-QKD protocol for the noisy channel.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in International Journal of Quantum Informatio

Improvement of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution using optical amplifiers

The imperfections of a receiver's detector affect the performance of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocols and are difficult to adjust in practical situations. We propose a method to improve the performance of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution by adding a parameter-adjustable optical amplifier at the receiver. A security analysis is derived against a two-mode collective entangling cloner attack. Our simulations show that the proposed method can improve the performance of protocols as long as the inherent noise of the amplifier is lower than a critical value, defined as the tolerable amplifier noise. Furthermore, the optimal performance can approach the scenario where a perfect detector is used.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Three-Dimensional Visualization of Gammaherpesvirus Life Cycle in Host Cells by Electron Tomography

SummaryGammaherpesviruses are etiologically associated with human tumors. A three-dimensional (3D) examination of their life cycle in the host is lacking, significantly limiting our understanding of the structural and molecular basis of virus-host interactions. Here, we report the first 3D visualization of key stages of the murine gammaherpesvirus 68 life cycle in NIH 3T3 cells, including viral attachment, entry, assembly, and egress, by dual-axis electron tomography. In particular, we revealed the transient processes of incoming capsids injecting viral DNA through nuclear pore complexes and nascent DNA being packaged into progeny capsids in vivo as a spool coaxial with the putative portal vertex. We discovered that intranuclear invagination of both nuclear membranes is involved in nuclear egress of herpesvirus capsids. Taken together, our results provide the structural basis for a detailed mechanistic description of gammaherpesvirus life cycle and also demonstrate the advantage of electron tomography in dissecting complex cellular processes of viral infection

Angiotensin II diminishes the effect of SGK1 on the WNK4-mediated inhibition of ROMK1 channels

ROMK1 channels are located in the apical membrane of the connecting tubule and cortical collecting duct and mediate the potassium secretion during normal dietary intake. We used a perforated whole-cell patch clamp to explore the effect of angiotensin II on these channels in HEK293 cells transfected with green fluorescent protein (GFP)-ROMK1. Angiotensin II inhibited ROMK1 channels in a dose-dependent manner, an effect abolished by losartan or by inhibition of protein kinase C. Furthermore, angiotensin II stimulated a protein kinase C-sensitive phosphorylation of tyrosine 416 within c-Src. Inhibition of protein tyrosine kinase attenuated the effect of angiotensin II. Western blot studies suggested that angiotensin II inhibited ROMK1 channels by enhancing its tyrosine phosphorylation, a notion supported by angiotensin II's failure to inhibit potassium channels in cells transfected with the ROMK1 tyrosine mutant (R1Y337A). However, angiotensin II restored the with-no-lysine kinase-4 (WNK4)-induced inhibition of R1Y337A in the presence of serum–glucocorticoids-induced kinase 1 (SGK1), which reversed the inhibitory effect of WNK4 on ROMK1. Moreover, protein tyrosine kinase inhibition abolished the angiotensin II-induced restoration of WNK4-mediated inhibition of ROMK1. Angiotensin II inhibited ROMK channels in the cortical collecting duct of rats on a low sodium diet, an effect blocked by protein tyrosine kinase inhibition. Thus, angiotensin II inhibits ROMK channels by two mechanisms: increasing tyrosine phosphorylation of the channel and synergizing the WNK4-induced inhibition. Hence, angiotensin II may have an important role in suppressing potassium secretion during volume depletion

Suppression of ILC2 differentiation from committed T cell precursors by E protein transcription factors

Current models propose that group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) are generated in the bone marrow. Here, we demonstrate that subsets of these cells can differentiate from multipotent progenitors and committed T cell precursors in the thymus, both in vivo and in vitro. These thymic ILC2s exit the thymus, circulate in the blood, and home to peripheral tissues. Ablation of E protein transcription factors greatly promotes the ILC fate while impairing B and T cell development. Consistently, a transcriptional network centered on the ZBTB16 transcription factor and IL-4 signaling pathway is highly up-regulated due to E protein deficiency. Our results show that ILC2 can still arise from what are normally considered to be committed T cell precursors, and that this alternative cell fate is restrained by high levels of E protein activity in these cells. Thymus-derived lung ILC2s of E protein-deficient mice show different transcriptomes, proliferative properties, and cytokine responses from wild-type counterparts, suggesting potentially distinct functions