Enhancing Grassland Productivity through Disease Management of Grass and Forage Species

The total area of grassland in China is about 400 million hectares, accounting for 41.7% of the country’s land area, which plays important role in ecological construction and food security assurance of the national. However, diseases of grass and forage limited the development of the pastoral agriculture. There are more than1500 new diseases were reported in the past 16 years with more and more new diseases were discovered. The damage to grassland is becoming more severe with the known diseases prevalent areas expanding

Performance Evaluation of Heat Transfer Enhancement in Plate-fin Heat Exchangers with Offset Strip Fins

AbstractGenerally, the Offset Strip Fin (OSF) in a plate-fin heat exchanger provides a greater heat transfer coefficient than plain plate-fin, but it also leads to an increase in flow friction. A new parameter, called relative entropy generation distribution factor, Ψ*, is proposed to evaluate the thermodynamic advantages of OSFs. This parameter presents a ratio of relative changes of entropy generation. The relative effects of the geometrical parameters α, γ and δ are discussed. The results show that there exist the optimum values of α and γ at a certain flow condition, which obviously maximize the degree of the heat transfer enhancement of OSFs

Comprehensive Utilization of Iron-Bearing Converter Wastes

Basic oxygen furnace (BOF) sludge is composed of not only valuable iron but also impurities like Zn, Pb, and some alkaline oxides. It is collected from wet cleaning system in steelmaking plants. How to deal with these double identity wastes? Will the traditional landfill treatments result in environmental pollution? What technologies have been developed recently, and is it actually useful? In this chapter, physical-chemical properties and mineralogical phases of converter sludge were characterized, and different recycling technologies were introduced. The proven metalized pellet-producing process would be highlighted that green pellets made from iron-bearing sludge are dried and preheated in a traveling grate firstly, and then reduced at high temperature in a rotary kiln or a rotary hearth furnace (RHF) to get direct reduced iron (DRI), served as a good iron source for blast furnace

High-Capacity, Dendrite-Free, and Ultrahigh-Rate Lithium-Metal Anodes Based on Monodisperse N-Doped Hollow Carbon Nanospheres

To unlock the great potential of lithium metal anodes for high-performance batteries, a number of critical challenges must be addressed. The uncontrolled dendrite growth and volume changes during cycling (especially, at high rates) will lead to short lifespan, low Coulombic efficiency (CE), and security risks of the batteries. Here it is reported that Li metal anodes, employing the monodisperse, lithiophilic, robust, and large-cavity N-doped hollow carbon nanospheres (NHCNSs) as the host, show remarkable performances—high areal capacity (10 mAh cm−2), high CE (up to 99.25% over 500 cycles), complete suppression of dendrite growth, dense packing of Li anode, and an extremely smooth electrode surface during repeated Li plating/stripping. In symmetric cells, a highly stable voltage hysteresis over a long cycling life >1200 h is achieved, and a low and stable voltage hysteresis can be realized even at an ultrahigh current density of 64 mA cm−2. Furthermore, the NHCNSs-based anodes, when paired with a LiFePO4 (LFP) cathode in full cells, give rise to highly improved rate capability (104 mAh g−1 at 10 C) and cycling stability (91.4% capacity retention for 200 cycles), enabling a promising candidate for the next-generation high energy/power density batteries

The influence of alloying on the stacking fault energy of gold from density functional theory calculations

The generalized stacking fault (SFE) energy curves of pure gold (Au) and its binary alloys with transition metals are determined from density functional theory (DFT). Alloy elements Ag, Al, Cu, Ni, Ti, Zr, Zn, In, Ga, Sn, Mn, Cd, Sn, Ta and Cr are substituted into Au at concentrations up to 4%. A comparison of various proposed methodologies to calculate SFEs is given. The intrinsic SFE decreases for all alloying elements from its value for pure Au, but SFE energies (both stable and unstable) vary strongly with the distance of the alloying element from the stacking fault region, and with alloy concentration. The compositional dependence of the SFE on the volume change associated with alloying element is determined. This work demonstrates that the SFE is strongly influenced by misfit strain caused by the alloying elements. Moreover, the computed generalized SFE curves provide information valuable to developing an understanding of the deformation behavior of Au and Au-alloys

Micro RNA expression profile and functional analysis reveal that mi R ‐382 is a critical novel gene of alcohol addiction

Alcohol addiction is a major social and health concern. Here, we determined the expression profile of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) of rats treated with alcohol. The results suggest that multiple miRNAs were aberrantly expressed in rat NAc after alcohol injection. Among them, miR‐382 was down‐regulated in alcohol‐treated rats. In both cultured neuronal cells in vitro and in the NAc in vivo , we identified that the dopamine receptor D1 ( Drd1 ) is a direct target gene of miR‐382. Via this target gene, miR‐382 strongly modulated the expression of DeltaFosB. Moreover, overexpression of miR‐382 significantly attenuated alcohol‐induced up‐regulation of DRD1 and DeltaFosB, decreased voluntary intake of and preference for alcohol and inhibited the DRD1‐induced action potential responses. The results indicated that miRNAs are involved in and may represent novel therapeutic targets for alcoholism. The underlying molecular causes of alcohol addiction remain unclear. Many miRNAs are found modulated in the nucleus accumbens of rats chronically treated with alcohol. Specifically, miR‐382 is shown to regulate alcohol intake via DRD1 and DeltaFosB.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99635/1/emmm201201900-sm-0001-Review_Process_File.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99635/2/emmm201201900.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99635/3/emmm201202100-sm-0006-SourceData-S5.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99635/4/emmm201201900-sm-0002-SuppData-S1.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99635/5/emmm201202100-sm-0005-SourceData-S4.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99635/6/emmm201202100-sm-0004-SourceData-S3.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99635/7/emmm201202100-sm-0003-SourceData-S2.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99635/8/emmm201202100-sm-0007-SourceData-S6.pd

Complex Network Properties of Chinese Natural Science Basic Research

In this paper, we studied the research areas of Chinese natural science basic research from a point view of complex network. Two research areas are considered to be connected if they appear in one fund proposal. The explicit network of such connections using data from 1999 to 2004 is constructed. The analysis of the real data shows that the degree distribution of the {\bf research areas network} (RAN) may be better fitted by the exponential distribution. It displays small world effect in which randomly chosen pairs of research areas are typically separated by only a short path of intermediate research areas. The average distance of RAN decreases with time, while the average clustering coefficient increases with time, which indicates that the scientific study would like to be integrated together in terms of the studied areas. The relationship between the clustering coefficient $C(k)$ and the degree $k$ indicates that there is no hierarchical organization in RAN.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, accepted by Physica

Investigation into the meshing friction heat generation and transient thermal characteristics of spiral bevel gears

Friction loss and scuffing failure are two primary research subjects in improving the performance of spiral bevel gears. Aimed at improving the thermal characteristics with machine-setting parameter adjustment, a coupled thermo-elastic 3D finite element model has been developed to analyse the frictional heat generation and transient thermal behaviour of spiral bevel gears. The heat fluxes due to friction effects are applied to the gear tooth to investigate thermal characteristics and prediction of transient temperature fields. The resulting thermal characteristics agree with earlier work, thus verifying the model and numerical approach. This study permits an in-depth understanding of the temperature fields, together with the frictional heat generation process. Furthermore, by investigating the transient thermal behaviour among different pinion machine-setting parameters, the tilted and extended tooth contact pattern achieved by adjusting the machine-setting parameters can result in an optimal tooth contact pattern that produces a uniform temperature field of much lower value, thereby achieving higher efficiency of transmission along with stronger anti-scuffing performance