Investigations on the second-order transient gap resonance induced by focused wave groups

Two or more marine structures deployed side by side may encounter strong water-body resonances within narrow gaps between them. It may cause significant wave loads on structures and the green water phenomenon on the deck. In this article, the transient fluid motion within a narrow gap formed by two fixed boxes suffered from incident focused wave groups is investigated using a two-dimensional viscous flow numerical wave flume. The focused wave groups adopted have the spectral peak frequency equal to half the fluid resonant frequency inside the gap. The wave fields both inside the gap and around the two-box system, the response/damping time of the transient wave surfaces inside the gap, the maximum wave forces and the ratios of the 2nd-order to the corresponding 1st-order wave surfaces/forces are investigated. It is revealed that the most dangerous place to green water is always the front edge of the two-box system. The damping time of the 2nd-order wave surface is significantly larger than that of the 1st-order one. As the incident wave amplitude rises, the ratios of the 2nd-order to the first-order wave surfaces/forces becomes increases gradually and can even exceed 100% for the wave surface, the horizontal wave force and the moment.</p

Investigation on the effects of Bragg reflection on harbor oscillations

Periodic undulating topographies (such as sandwaves and sandbars) are very common in coastal and estuarine areas. Normally incident water surface waves propagating from open sea to coastal areas may interact strongly with such topographies. The wave reflection by the periodic undulating topography can be significantly amplified when the surface wavelength is approximately twice the wavelength of the bottom undulations, which is often called as Bragg resonant reflection. Although the investigations on the hydrodynamic characteristics related to Bragg reflection of a region of undulating topography have been widely implemented, the effects of Bragg reflection on harbors have not yet been studied. Bragg resonant reflection can effectively reduce the incident waves. Meanwhile, however, it can also significantly hinder the wave radiation from the harbor entrance to the open sea. Whether Bragg reflection can be utilized as a potential measure to alleviate harbor oscillations is unknown. In the present study, Bragg reflection and their interactions with the harbor are simulated using a fully nonlinear Boussinesq model, FUNWAVE 2.0. For the purpose, an elongated harbor with constant depth is considered, and a series of sinusoidal bars with various amplitudes and numbers are deployed outside the harbor. The incident waves considered in this paper include regular long waves and bichromatic short wave groups. It is revealed for the first time that for both kinds of incident waves, Bragg resonant reflection can significantly alleviate harbor resonance. The influences of the number and the amplitude of sinusoidal bars on the mitigation effect of harbor resonance and on the optimal wavelength of sinusoidal bars that can achieve the best mitigation effect are comprehensively investigated, and it is found that the former two factors have remarkable influences on the latter two parameters. The present research provides a new option for the mitigation of harbor oscillations via changing the bottom profile, which is feasible as long as the navigating depth is guaranteed.</p

Effects of free heave motion on wave resonance inside a narrow gap between two boxes under wave actions

Fluid resonance inside a narrow gap between two side-by-side boxes is investigated based on an open-source CFD package, OpenFOAM. An upstream box heaves freely under wave actions and a downstream box remains fixed. The focus of this work is to study the influence of the motion of the upstream box on the hydrodynamic behavior of the resonant fluid inside the gap. The hydrodynamic behavior considered in this study includes the wave height inside the gap, heave displacement and their harmonic components, and reflection, transmission and energy loss coefficients. For comparison, the configuration in which the two boxes are fixed is considered. It was found that the heave motion of the upstream box increases the fluid resonant frequency and significantly reduces the resonant wave height in the gap. The frequencies at which the maximum and minimum heave displacements of the upstream box are observed to obviously deviate from the fluid resonant frequency. For the wave height in the gap and heave displacement, the effects of the incident wave height on their harmonic components are different. The heave motion of the upstream box results in a larger reflection coefficient and smaller energy loss coefficient

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Tourniquet-induced ischemia-reperfusion Injury

Ischemia-reperfusion (IR) is a pathological condition characterized by an initial restriction of blood supply to an organ followed by subsequent restoration of reperfusion associated with exacerbation of tissue damage. For pre-hospital emergency situations and surgical procedures, tourniquet or femoral artery ligation are widely used to stop extremity hemorrhage or create a bloodless operating field. To fully evaluate the underlying mechanisms in IR pathophysiology and potential therapeutic options, we compared tourniquet- and femoral artery ligation-induced IR injuries in the hindlimb of mice. We found that tourniquet/IR-induced acute hindlimb injuries are more severe than those induced by femoral artery ligation/IR, including alteration of skeletal muscle function and morphology, motor nerve endings, proinflammatory cytokines, and edema. Tourniquet-induced IR also results in significant IR injuries to the nerves, leading to neurological deficits. In this study, we investigated the therapeutic effects of an anti-neuroinflammatory drug, masitinib (Mas), on the mechanoreception of sensory neurons in a mouse model of tourniquet/IR. The results showed that treatment with Mas significantly ameliorated paw numbness and allodynia by decreasing reactive oxygen species (ROS) and pro-inflammatory cytokines. Other than inflammation, depletion of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), ROS production, and other substances will also lead to tourniquet/IR. Hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy is a method to increase the oxygen supply in cells to ameliorate IR in the skeletal muscle. In this study, we investigated the effects of HBO pretreatment in tourniquet/IR. These data suggest that one hour of HBO pretreatment with 100% oxygen at 2.5 atmospheres absolute (ATA) increases the antioxidant response to lower ROS accumulation but does not increase ATP levels in IR muscles and improve tourniquet/IR-injured muscle morphology and contractile function. Tourniquet/IR can also induce permanent injuries (neurological deficits and limb paralysis). We found that nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) was fragmented, and the amplitude of endplate potential (EPP), and sciatic nerve-stimulated gastrocnemius muscle contraction did not restore to the normal level after 6-wk tourniquet/IR. Rapsyn (a cytoplasmic nAChR-associated protein) is located on the skeletal muscle membrane and can thus help form and stabilize nAChR clusters by crosslinking with nAChRs and tethering them to the cytoskeleton. In this study, we investigated the role of Rapsyn in gastrocnemius muscle function after 6-wk of tourniquet/IR. We found up-regulation of Rapsyn in the gastrocnemius muscle significantly improved the NMJ and skeletal muscle function after 6-wk of tourniquet/IR

Au(I)/Au(III)-catalyzed Sonogashira-type reactions of functionalized terminal alkynes with arylboronic acids under mild conditions

A straightforward, efficient, and reliable redox catalyst system for the Au(I)/Au(III)-catalyzed Sonogashira cross-coupling reaction of functionalized terminal alkynes with arylboronic acids under mild conditions has been developed

Organocatalytic Enantioselective Synthesis of 2,3-Allenoates by Intermolecular Addition of Nitroalkanes to Activated Enynes

The first efficient intermolecular addition of nitroalkanes to activated enynes for asymmetric synthesis of 2,3-allenoates is described. It is a new addition to the limited available strategies for catalytic asymmetric synthesis of allenoates. Enabled by a new bifunctional catalyst, a range of trisubstituted allenoates can be obtained in excellent chemical and optical purity. These allenoate products with a pendant 2-nitroethyl alpha-substituent are useful chiral building blocks

A PLC communication characteristics‐based fault location method in medium voltage meshed distribution networks

Abstract A power line carrier (PLC) communication characteristics‐based method is proposed for single‐phase‐to‐ground fault location in neutral isolated medium voltage meshed distribution networks in this paper. The carrier signals with a time‐varying frequency and constant amplitude are processed by a set of PLC transmitters and receivers, whose placement is optimized by regarding the power network as an undirected graph. Two signal encoding and decoding algorithms for the PLC terminals are proposed to avoid using expensive timing systems between the terminals. The fault location technique is implemented by comparing the cosine similarity of amplitude attenuation and phase offset between the fault and a feature library. The node corresponding to the maximum cosine similarity of the characteristics between the present fault and the library is selected as the location of the current fault. Only one set of low‐cost PLC communication terminals and the widely available power lines are needed in the fault location system, making this approach highly practical. Numerical simulations using MATLAB/Simulink have been performed to verify the technique's feasibility. The results show that the method can accurately locate faults in neutral isolated medium voltage meshed distribution networks. Besides, the presented approach achieves a high level of accuracy in estimating transition resistance values

Network Analyses of Integrated Differentially Expressed Genes in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma to Identify Characteristic Genes

Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common type of thyroid cancer. Identifying characteristic genes of PTC are of great importance to reveal its potential genetic mechanisms. In this paper, we proposed a framework, as well as a measure named Normalized Centrality Measure (NCM), to identify characteristic genes of PTC. The framework consisted of four steps. First, both up-regulated genes and down-regulated genes, collectively called differentially expressed genes (DEGs), were screened and integrated together from four datasets, that is, GSE3467, GSE3678, GSE33630, and GSE58545; second, an interaction network of DEGs was constructed, where each node represented a gene and each edge represented an interaction between linking nodes; third, both traditional measures and the NCM measure were used to analyze the topological properties of each node in the network. Compared with traditional measures, more genes related to PTC were identified by the NCM measure; fourth, by mining the high-density subgraphs of this network and performing Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis, several meaningful results were captured, most of which were demonstrated to be associated with PTC. The experimental results proved that this network framework and the NCM measure are useful for identifying more characteristic genes of PTC

Organocatalytic Enantioselective Synthesis of 2,3-Allenoates by Intermolecular Addition of Nitroalkanes to Activated Enynes

The first efficient intermolecular addition of nitroalkanes to activated enynes for asymmetric synthesis of 2,3-allenoates is described. It is a new addition to the limited available strategies for catalytic asymmetric synthesis of allenoates. Enabled by a new bifunctional catalyst, a range of trisubstituted allenoates can be obtained in excellent chemical and optical purity. These allenoate products with a pendant 2-nitroethyl α-substituent are useful chiral building blocks