Quality Investigations on Ground Improvement in Highway Engineering Practice

The constructions of highway often pass through naturally-deposited liquefiable grounds. Anti-earthquake design is essential for highway engineering practice in east China. Gravel column and dynamic compaction are often adopted for the improvements of such problematical grounds. The stability and settlement of the treated grounds depend much on the construction quality. How to investigate the quality of ground improvement is an important issue in highway engineering practice. In this study, the method of Spectral-Analysis-of-Surface-Waves (SASW) is applied to evaluate the construction quality on ground improvements by vibration gravel piles and dynamic compaction technique. The case studies show that the SASW method is a powerful way for investigating the improvement quality in highway engineering practice. The shear wave velocity measured in SASW has a relative good relationship with the N value measured in standard penetration tests

Sex Differences in Clinical Characteristics and Brain MRI Change in Patients With Wilson’s Disease in a Chinese Population

Background: Wilson’s disease (WD) is an inborn copper metabolism disease. Sex differences in clinical features of WD patients have been reported; however, the effect of sex on brain MRI is still unclear, especially for Chinese WD patients. Therefore, we aimed to examine sex differences in clinical correlates and brain MRI changes in WD patients in a Chinese Han population.Methods: 535 WD patients were enrolled and underwent MRI scanning. These patients were subdivided by the clinical symptoms, Kayser–Fleischer (K–F) rings, laboratory tests and sex. The mean age of onset and diagnosis, disease latency, localization of brain MRI lesions, and the level of copper metabolism were compared between male and female patients.Results: The neuropsychiatric form (452 and 84.5%) was the most common subtype. Compared to female patients, male patients had a higher percentage in three clinical forms: neuropsychiatric form (263 and 58.2%), hepatic form (41 and 59.4%), and presymptomatic form (10 and 71.4%). In the neuropsychiatric form, male patients had the earlier age of onset and definitive diagnosis, and shorter time of disease latency than female patients. Putamen was the most common site for lesions in brain MRI of three groups. In the hepatic form, more male patients showed the ventricular widening than female patients (14/41 vs. 3/28; p < 0.05). The level of serum ceruloplasmin and copper of WD patients with neuropsychiatric form was higher than that of male patients with hepatic or presymptomatic form. In women, however, patients of presymptomatic form have the highest level of the ceruloplasmin, and the level of serum copper in hepatic patients was highest.Conclusion: Our findings suggest sex differences in the percentage of three clinical forms. Meanwhile, the mean age of onset and diagnosis of female was higher than male, also happened in the disease latency. Only in the hepatic form, there was a sex difference in the ventricular widening

Facile One-Pot Synthesis of Self-Assembled Folate-Biotin-Pullulan Nanoparticles for Targeted Intracellular Anticancer Drug Delivery

The self-assembled folate-biotin-pullulan (FBP) nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared by facile one-pot synthesis and their physicochemical properties were characterized. The self-assembled FBP NPs were used as an anticancer drug nanocarrier entrapping doxorubicin (DOX) for targeting folate-receptors-overexpressing cancer cells. The identification of prepared NPs to folate-receptor-expressing cancer cells (KB cells) was affirmed by cell viability measurement, folate competition test, and flow cytometric analysis. Compared with the naked DOX and DOX/BP NPs, the DOX/FBP NPs had lower IC50 value compared to KB cells as a result of the folate-receptor-mediated endocytosis process. The cytotoxicity of DOX/FBP NPs to KB cells could be inhibited competitively by free folate. The cellular intake pattern of naked DOX and drug-loaded NPs was identified by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) observation and the higher cellular uptake of drug for DOX/FBP NPs over naked DOX was observed. The prepared FBP NPs had the potential to be used as a powerful carrier to target anticancer drugs to folate-receptor-expressing tumor cells and reduce cytotoxicity to normal tissues

Theoretical study of methods used to determine ionic diffusion coefficients in concrete using migration tests

In this paper, we numerically simulate migration experiments using the Nernst-Planck (NP) equation coupled with the electroneutrality condition (EN) by means of finite element analyses. Effects of applied voltage difference and chloride source concentrations on chloride diffusion coefficients are presented. Migration due to the non-linear electric potential effectively overwhelms diffusion due to concentration gradients. A comparison between diffusion coefficients obtained from sophisticated analyses (i.e., NP-EN) and a variety of commonly used simplifying methods to estimate chloride diffusion coefficients is made. Based on this comparison we identify appropriate experimental conditions where simplified methods deliver reasonable accurate estimates of chloride diffusion coefficients in concrete

Mechanism of Novel K2SO4/KCl Composite Roasting Additive for Strengthening Vanadium Extraction from Vanadium–Titanium Magnetite Concentrate

In this paper, a novel K2SO4/KCl composite roasting additive was used to extract vanadium from vanadium–titanium magnetite concentrate. Further, the mechanism of K2SO4/KCl for extracting vanadium was studied. The results indicate that the vanadium leaching efficiency reached 82.04%, an increase of 7.43% compared to that of single K2SO4 and 10.05% compared to single KCl under the following conditions: a total dosage of K2SO4/KCl of 7 wt % with a mass ratio of 6/4, a roasting temperature of 950 °C, a roasting time of 1 h, a leaching temperature of 95 °C, a sulfuric acid concentration of 10% (v/v: volume percentage), and a leaching time of 1.5 h with a liquid-to-solid ratio of 3 mL/g. Moreover, crystal chemistry analyses indicated that the essence of the vanadium extraction with roasting was the conversion of cubic crystal systemic vanadium-bearing magnetite (FeO(Fe,V)2O3) to trigonal crystal systemic hematite (α-Fe2O3), and as most Fe(V)–O bonds were broken with the reconstructed conversion, the dissociation of V(III) occurred. Furthermore, the main decomposition products of K2SO4/KCl were K2O, SO2, and Cl2. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and related SEM-EDS analyses indicated that there were mainly three aspects in the mechanism of K2SO4/KCl for extracting vanadium. Firstly, activated K2O could combine with vanadium to generate soluble KVO3 rather insoluble Ca(VO3)2; secondly, SO2 could react with CaO to form CaSO4 to prevent the generation of acid-consuming Ca(VO3)2, which was beneficial to the dissolution of vanadium-bearing sphene (Ca(Ti,V)SiO4O); thirdly, Cl2 could destroy the structure of hematite (Fe2O3) to reduce its wrapping extent to KVO3