Characteristics of intense winds in mountain area based on field measurement: Focusing on thunderstorm winds

Abstract With the development of mountain areas, more wind-sensitive infrastructures are constructed. In the design of these infrastructures, the wind loading cannot be accurately obtained from the code based on the flat area. Hence, it is of great importance to study the mountain wind characteristics. In this study, the wind field measurement was initiated in a mountain area of western China. After the examination of the measured data, two typical wind events including the thunderstorm wind and thermally developed wind are highlighted. To extract and separate these wind events, an automatic classification method is proposed. The thunderstorm wind is analyzed in order to capture the rapid variation of its maximum wind speed, mean temperature and mean humidity through the boxplot method while the analysis of thermally developed winds relies on the correlation between the mean wind speed and mean temperature. Since the thunderstorm wind is relatively more important for wind engineering, its wind characteristic is focused hereafter and analyzed in detail based on the ultrasonic anemometer data. The characteristics of the thermally developed wind and other wind will be the matter of further studies and investigations. Results show that the characteristics of the thunderstorm wind measured in the mountainous area have no significant difference in comparison with those in the flat area. Due to the limited data, the above results deserve further investigations when more measurements become available

Investigating causal associations among gut microbiota, metabolites, and liver diseases: a Mendelian randomization study

ObjectiveThere is some evidence for an association between gut microbiota and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), alcoholic liver disease (ALD), and viral hepatitis, but no studies have explored their causal relationship.MethodsInstrumental variables of the gut microbiota (N = 13266) and gut microbiota-derived metabolites (N = 7824) were acquired, and a Mendelian randomization study was performed to explore their influence on NAFLD (1483 European cases and 17,781 European controls), ALD (2513 European cases and 332,951 European controls), and viral hepatitis risk (1971 European cases and 340,528 European controls). The main method for examining causality is inverse variance weighting (IVW).ResultsIVW results confirmed that Anaerotruncus (p = 0.0249), Intestinimonas (p = 0.0237), Lachnoclostridium (p = 0.0245), Lachnospiraceae NC2004 group (p = 0.0083), Olsenella (p = 0.0163), and Peptococcus (p = 0.0472) were protective factors for NAFLD, and Ruminococcus 1 (p = 0.0120) was detrimental for NAFLD. The higher abundance of three genera, Lachnospira (p = 0.0388), Desulfovibrio (p = 0.0252), and Ruminococcus torques group (p = 0.0364), was correlated with a lower risk of ALD, while Ruminococcaceae UCG 002 level was associated with a higher risk of ALD (p = 0.0371). The Alistipes (p = 0.0069) and Ruminococcaceae NK4A214 group (p = 0.0195) were related to a higher risk of viral hepatitis. Besides, alanine (p = 0.0076) and phenyllactate (p = 0.0100) were found to be negatively correlated with NAFLD, while stachydrine (Op = 0.0244) was found to be positively associated with NAFLD. The phenylacetate (p = 0.0353) and ursodeoxycholate (p = 0.0144) had a protective effect on ALD, while the threonate (p = 0.0370) exerted a detrimental influence on ALD. The IVW estimates of alanine (p = 0.0408) and cholate (p = 0.0293) showed their suggestive harmful effects against viral hepatitis, while threonate (p = 0.0401) displayed its suggestive protective effect against viral hepatitis.ConclusionIn conclusion, our research supported causal links between the gut microbiome and its metabolites and NAFLD, ALD, and viral hepatitis

Formation and migration of helium pair in bcc Fe from first principle calculations

We investigated the energetics and configurations of two interstitial He atoms in bcc Fe crystal using first-principle method. Two interstitial He atoms will bind together as helium pair if the initial He-He distance is less than 2.82 A. From a formation energy decomposing analysis we found that, pairing of two He atoms would reduce the interface between He and Fe matrix which mitigates the perturbation of He-1s and Fe-3d orbitals. As a dominant part of the fomation energy, the electron variation energy caused by two close He atoms is less than that of two far He atoms, which accounts for the reason of binding between two close He atoms. Besides, the migration of helium pair along direction [1 0 0] was investigated by a He-He formation energy hypersurface. Through the comparison with Nudged Elastic Band calculation, it's found that this special energy hypersurface was effective in revealing the migration of helium pair in metals

Simulation of Nonseparable Nonstationary Spatially Varying Ground Motions with an Enhanced Interpolation Approximation Approach

An enhanced interpolation approach is developed for simulating nonseparable nonstationary ground motions on the basis of the spectral representation method, which mainly contains two steps of interpolations and an optimization. Firstly, the interpolation technique is utilized to reduce the Cholesky decomposition time of the lagged coherence matrix. The square root of the evolutionary power spectral density is then decoupled into several time and frequency discrete functions using the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) interpolation technique, which results in the availability of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) technique in the simulation. Compared with existing decoupling schemes, the POD interpolation achieves a significant efficiency improvement with a slight accuracy reduction. Finally, the simulation formula is further optimized to reduce the number of FFT operations. The accuracy and efficiency of this method are verified with the numerical examples of nonstationary ground motions simulation. Results show that the error introduced by two-step interpolations is fairly small and the simulation agrees with the targets very well. Furthermore, the efficiency generating sample function is significantly enhanced

Influence of Phases of Coherence Functions on the Wind Field Simulation Using Spectral Representation Method

The wave passage effect is a measure of the wave passage delay due to the apparent velocity of waves, which is one of spatially varying properties of multivariate random processes. The phase of coherence function reflects the wave passage effect of wind fields. In the wind field, simulation by the spectral representation method, the classical phase formula, is not rigorous. This may affect the accuracy of simulation results and even cause incorrect simulations. In this study, the influences of the phase on stationary and nonstationary wind field simulations are researched and discussed in detail. Two schemes containing the classical phase formula and the separated phase scheme are compared in four types of wind field simulation. The qualitative analysis based on theoretical correlation function formula is first made to study the influence of the phase. Then, four numerical examples are utilized to quantitatively study the magnitude of the influence on the sample time history and correlation function of the simulated wind field. Results show that the classical phase formula will result in considerable simulation error for all four types of wind fields because it cannot completely represent the phase angle of a complex number

Simulation of Nonseparable Nonstationary Spatially Varying Ground Motions with an Enhanced Interpolation Approximation Approach

An enhanced interpolation approach is developed for simulating nonseparable nonstationary ground motions on the basis of the spectral representation method, which mainly contains two steps of interpolations and an optimization. Firstly, the interpolation technique is utilized to reduce the Cholesky decomposition time of the lagged coherence matrix. The square root of the evolutionary power spectral density is then decoupled into several time and frequency discrete functions using the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) interpolation technique, which results in the availability of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) technique in the simulation. Compared with existing decoupling schemes, the POD interpolation achieves a significant efficiency improvement with a slight accuracy reduction. Finally, the simulation formula is further optimized to reduce the number of FFT operations. The accuracy and efficiency of this method are verified with the numerical examples of nonstationary ground motions simulation. Results show that the error introduced by two-step interpolations is fairly small and the simulation agrees with the targets very well. Furthermore, the efficiency generating sample function is significantly enhanced

Toxic Effects of Cadmium on Fish

Large amounts of enriched cadmium (Cd) in the environment seriously threatens the healthy and sustainable development of the aquaculture industry and greatly restricts the development of the food processing industry. Studying the distribution and toxic effects of Cd in fish, as well as the possible toxic effects of Cd on the human body, is very significant. A large number of studies have shown that the accumulation and distribution of Cd in fish are biologically specific, cause tissue differences, and seriously damage the integrity of tissue structure and function, the antioxidant defense system, the reproductive regulation system, and the immune system. The physiological, biochemical, enzyme, molecular, and gene expression levels change with different concentrations and times of Cd exposure, and these changes are closely related to the target sites of Cd action and tissues in fish. Therefore, the toxic effects of Cd on fish occur with multiple tissues, systems, and levels

Hexafluoroquinoxaline Based Polymer for Nonfullerene Solar Cells Reaching 9.4% Efficiency

Through introducing six fluorine atoms onto quinoxaline (Qx), a new electron acceptor unit-hexafluoroquinoxaline (HFQx) is first synthesized. On the basis of this unit, we synthesize a new donor–acceptor (D–A) copolymer (HFQx-T), which is composed of a benzodithiophene (BDT) derivative donor block and an HFQx accepting block. The strong electron-withdrawing properties of fluorine atoms increase significantly the open-circuit voltage (<i>V</i>_oc) by tuning the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy level. In addition, fluorine atoms enhance the absorption coefficient of the conjugated copolymer and change the film morphology, which implies an increase of the short-circuit current density (<i>J</i>_sc) and fill factor (FF). Indeed, the HFQx-T:ITIC blended film achieves an impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.4% with large short-current density (<i>J</i>_sc) of 15.60 mA/cm², high <i>V</i>_oc of 0.92 V, and FF of 65% via two step annealing (thermal annealing (TA) and solvent vapor annealing (SVA) treatments). The excellent results obtained show that the new copolymer HFQx-T synthesized could be a promising candidate for organic photovoltaics