Influence of Initial Moisture Content on Heat and Moisture Transfer in Firefighters’ Protective Clothing

This paper presents a model for heat and moisture transfer through firefighters’ protective clothing (FPC) during radiation exposure. The model, which accounts for air gaps in the FPC as well as heat transfer through human skin, investigates the effect of different initial moisture contents on the thermal insulation performance of FPC. Temperature, water vapor density, and the volume fraction of liquid water profiles were monitored during the simulation, and the heat quantity absorbed by water evaporation was calculated. Then the maximum durations of heat before the wearer acquires first- and second-degree burns were calculated based on the bioheat transfer equation and the Henriques equation. The results show that both the moisture weight in each layer and the total moisture weight increase linearly within a given environmental humidity level. The initial moisture content in FPC samples significantly influenced the maximum water vapor density. The first- and second-degree burn injury time increase 16 sec and 18 sec when the RH increases from 0% to 90%. The total quantity of heat accounted for by water evaporation was about 10% when the relative humidity (RH) is 80%. Finally, a linear relationship was identified between initial moisture content and the human skin burn injury time before suffering first- and second-degree burn injuries

Adipocyte Liver Kinase b1 Suppresses Beige Adipocyte Renaissance Through Class IIa Histone Deacetylase 4.

Uncoupling protein 1+ beige adipocytes are dynamically regulated by environment in rodents and humans; cold induces formation of beige adipocytes, whereas warm temperature and nutrient excess lead to their disappearance. Beige adipocytes can form through de novo adipogenesis; however, how "beiging" characteristics are maintained afterward is largely unknown. In this study, we show that beige adipocytes formed postnatally in subcutaneous inguinal white adipose tissue lost thermogenic gene expression and multilocular morphology at the adult stage, but cold restored their beiging characteristics, a phenomenon termed beige adipocyte renaissance. Ablation of these postnatal beige adipocytes inhibited cold-induced beige adipocyte formation in adult mice. Furthermore, we demonstrated that beige adipocyte renaissance was governed by liver kinase b1 and histone deacetylase 4 in white adipocytes. Although neither presence nor thermogenic function of uncoupling protein 1+ beige adipocytes contributed to metabolic fitness in adipocyte liver kinase b1-deficient mice, our results reveal an unexpected role of white adipocytes in maintaining properties of preexisting beige adipocytes

3,4-Bis(4-meth­oxy­phen­yl)-2,5-dihydro-1H-pyrrole-2,5-dione

In the title compound, C18H15NO4, the benzene rings form quite different dihedral angles [16.07 (1) and 59.50 (1)°] with the central pyrrole ring, indicating a twisted mol­ecule. Conjugation is indicated between the five- and six-membered rings by the lengths of the C—C bonds which link them [1.462 (3) and 1.477 (3) Å]. The most prominent feature of the crystal packing is the formation of inversion dimers via eight-membered {⋯HNCO}2 synthons

A Novel Hybrid Evaluation Method for Transfer Efficiency Assessment between Rail Transit and Public Bicycles

This paper proposes a new hybrid evaluation method including Improved Analytic Hierarchy Process (IAHP), Entropy Method (EM), and Grey Comprehensive Evaluation Method (GCEM) to assess the transfer efficiency between rail transit and public bicycles. In particular, the IAHP method that replaces the nine-scale approach with three-scale approach to naturally meet the consistency requirements is applied to qualitatively calculate the weights of evaluation indices, the EM method is utilized to calculate the weights of evaluation indices with relatively high degrees of quantification, and the GCEM method is used to calculate the transfer efficiency between rail transit and public bicycles. In addition, a three-level evaluation-index system including target level, criteria level and index level is established. A numerical example is also provided to verify the feasibility of the proposed hybrid evaluation method and explore the reasons for low transfer efficiency between rail transit and public bicycles.</p

Determination of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in shellfish by HPLC-VWD/FLD

A method has been developed for the analysis of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(pahs) in shellfish sample. The sample was ultrasonically extracted, separated through Florisil and MIP-pahs column, enriched with vacuum steaming-nitrogen blowing, and determined by HPLC- VWD/FLD. The pre-treatment method was optimized. At the spiked level of 0.5, 1.5 and 2μg/kg, the average recoveries of 16 PAHs were 58.1%-89.6%, 60.6%-88.1% and 72.3%-98.0%; and the relative standard deviations(rsds) were 0.23%-11%, 1.3%-13%, and 1.5%-14%, respectively, in Mytilus coruscus. The detection limits of the method for 16 PAHs were 0.5μg/kg. This method was used for the analysis of 16 PAHs in Ostrea gigas Thunberg, Meretrix meretrix and Sinonovacula constricta

Insecticidal Activity of the Soil in the Rhizosphere of Viburnum odoratissimum against Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Methyl salicylate produced by Viburnum odoratissimum is known to exert lethal or sublethal effects on insects. Replacing conventional pesticides with insecticidal plants is necessary for environmental protection. We evaluated the behavioral and toxicological responses of the red imported fire ant (RIFA Solenopsis invicta)( Hymenopter: Buren Formicidae) at different soil depths in the rhizosphere of V. odoratissimum. Results of insecticidal activity bioassays indicated that the mortality for minor and major ants in soil at depths of 0-10 cm at days 11 and 12 both ranged from 68.75% to 100.00%, with repellent rates of 83.54%–100.00% and 85.31%–100.00%, respectively. In behavioral ability tests, 85.45%–100.00% of minor ants and 86.74%–94.85% of major ants lost their ability to grasp after nine days, with crawl rates at only 0.00%–29.25% and 0.00%–55.77%, respectively. Therefore, we conclude from the result that the soil under V. odoratissimum at depths of 0-10 cm exhibited excellent insecticidal effect in controlling RIFA.Methyl salicylate produced by Viburnum odoratissimum is known to exert lethal or sublethal effects on insects. Replacing conventional pesticides with insecticidal plants is necessary for environmental protection. We evaluated the behavioral and toxicological responses of the red imported fire ant (RIFA Solenopsis invicta, Buren) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) at different soil depths in the rhizosphere of V. odoratissimum. Results of insecticidal activity bioassays indicated that the mortality for minor and major ants in soil at depths of 0-10 cm at days 11 and 12 both ranged from 68.75% to 100.00%, with repellency rates of 83.54%-100.00% and 85.31%-100.00%, respectively. In behavioral ability tests, 85.45%-100.00% of minor ants and 86.74%-94.85% of major ants lost their ability to grasp after nine days, with crawling rates at only 0.00%-29.25% and 0.00%-55.77%, respectively. Therefore, we conclude from the result that the soil under V. odoratissimum at depths of 0-10 cm exhibited excellent insecticidal effect in controlling RIFA

Beam Retrieval: General End-to-End Retrieval for Multi-Hop Question Answering

Multi-hop QA involves finding multiple relevant passages and step-by-step reasoning to answer complex questions. While previous approaches have developed retrieval modules for selecting relevant passages, they face challenges in scenarios beyond two hops, owing to the limited performance of one-step methods and the failure of two-step methods when selecting irrelevant passages in earlier stages. In this work, we introduce Beam Retrieval, a general end-to-end retrieval framework for multi-hop QA. This approach maintains multiple partial hypotheses of relevant passages at each step, expanding the search space and reducing the risk of missing relevant passages. Moreover, Beam Retrieval jointly optimizes an encoder and two classification heads by minimizing the combined loss across all hops. To establish a complete QA system, we incorporate a supervised reader or a zero-shot GPT-3.5. Experimental results demonstrate that Beam Retrieval achieves a nearly 50% improvement compared with baselines on challenging MuSiQue-Ans, and it also surpasses all previous retrievers on HotpotQA and 2WikiMultiHopQA. Providing high-quality context, Beam Retrieval helps our supervised reader achieve new state-of-the-art performance and substantially improves (up to 28.8 points) the QA performance of zero-shot GPT-3.5.Comment: Code is available at https://github.com/canghongjian/beam_retrieve