Study on flexural properties of coal gangue powder asphalt mixture under freeze-thaw cycles

In order to study the influence of freeze-thaw cycle on the flexural performance of asphalt pavement, semi-circular flexural test (SCB) is carried out. Coal gangue powder (accounting for 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% by weight of ore powder) is used to replace ore powder to improve the freeze-thaw resistance of asphalt.According to the test data, the load-displacement curve is drawn, the ultimate tensile stress( ${\sigma }_{t}$ ) is studied, and the variation law of different coal gangue powder replacement rates under different freeze-thaw cycles (0, 2, 4, and 6 times) is analyzed by ultimate tensile stress. The test results show that the best replacement rate of coal gangue powder is 50%, and ${\sigma }_{t}$ decreases with the increase of freeze-thaw cycles, so adding coal gangue powder can reduce the influence of freeze-thaw cycles on the bending performance of asphalt pavement. By analyzing the load-displacement curve, energy indexes such as W _D (total work from initial failure to complete failure), W _U (energy dissipation from initial failure to complete failure), W _S (work from initial failure to specimen failure) and ${\rm{\eta }}$ are obtained. In the freeze-thaw cycle, with the increase of cycle times, the energy consumption of W _D , W _U and W _S decreases, which aggravates the damage of asphalt mixture and reduces the flexural capacity of specimens. Among them, six freeze-thaw cycles have the lowest flexural capacity of specimens, indicating that freeze-thaw damage directly affects the flexural performance of asphalt mixture

Enhancing Performance of Lossy Compression on Encrypted Gray Images through Heuristic Optimization of Bitplane Allocation

Nowadays, it remains a major challenge to efficiently compress encrypted images. In this paper, we propose a novel encryption-then-compression (ETC) scheme to enhance the performance of lossy compression on encrypted gray images through heuristic optimization of bitplane allocation. Specifically, in compressing an encrypted image, we take a bitplane as a basic compression unit and formulate the lossy compression task as an optimization problem that maximizes the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) subject to a given compression ratio. We then develop a heuristic strategy of bitplane allocation to approximately solve this optimization problem, which leverages the asymmetric characteristics of different bitplanes. In particular, an encrypted image is divided into four sub-images. Among them, one sub-image is reserved, while the most significant bitplanes (MSBs) of the other sub-images are selected successively, and so are the second, third, etc., MSBs until a given compression ratio is met. As there exist clear statistical correlations within a bitplane and between adjacent bitplanes, where bitplane denotes those belonging to the first three MSBs, we further use the low-density parity-check (LDPC) code to compress these bitplanes according to the ETC framework. In reconstructing the original image, we first deploy the joint LDPC decoding, decryption, and Markov random field (MRF) exploitation to recover the chosen bitplanes belonging to the first three MSBs in a lossless way, and then apply content-adaptive interpolation to further obtain missing bitplanes and thus discarded pixels, which is symmetric to the encrypted image compression process. Experimental simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves desirable visual quality of reconstructed images and remarkably outperforms the state-of-the-art ETC methods, which indicates the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme

miR-30a-3p Regulates Autophagy in the Involution of Mice Mammary Glands

The mammary gland undergoes intensive remodeling during the lactation cycle, and the involution process of mammary gland contains extensive epithelial cells involved in the process of autophagy. Our studies of mice mammary glands suggest that miR-30a-3p expression was low during involution compared with its high expression in the mammary glands of lactating mice. Then, we revealed that miR-30a-3p negatively regulated autophagy by autophagy related 12 (Atg12) in mouse mammary gland epithelial cells (MMECs). Restoring ATG12, knocking down autophagy related 5 (Atg5), starvation, and Rapamycin were used to further confirm this conclusion. Overexpression of miR-30a-3p inhibited autophagy and altered mammary structure in the involution of the mammary glands of mice, which was indicative of alteration in mammary remodeling. Taken together, these results elucidated the molecular mechanisms of miR-30a-3p as a key induction mediator of autophagy by targeting Atg12 within the transition period between lactation and involution in mammary glands

Assessing the safety and feasibility of neoadjuvant hormone and radiation therapy followed by robot-assisted radical prostatectomy for treating locally advanced prostate cancer: protocol for an open-label, dose-escalation, single-centre, phase I clinical trial

Introduction Patients with locally advanced prostate cancer are at high risk of recurrence after definitive treatment. There are emerging data that radical prostatectomy can delay the progression of castration resistance and potentially prolong survival. Neoadjuvant radiation therapy improves local control and has shown survival benefit with favourable toxicity profiles in several other malignancies. We have designed this trial to investigate whether this combination, which theoretically maximises local control, is a safe and feasible approach for treating locally advanced prostate cancer.Methods and analysis This study is a phase I, open-label study to investigate the safety and feasibility of neoadjuvant hormone and radiation therapy followed by robot-assisted radical prostatectomy by a traditional 3+3 dose-escalation design with four planned radiation dose levels (39.6 Gy/22F, 45 Gy/25F, 50.4 Gy/28F and 54 Gy/30F). Locally advanced prostate cancer patients with positive pelvic and/or retroperitoneal lymph nodes will be recruited. The primary objective is to determine the adverse events and maximal tolerable dose (MTD) of neoadjuvant radiotherapy. Toxicity will be assessed using the National Cancer Institute Common Toxicity Criteria V.5.0.Ethics and dissemination This protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Shanghai Changhai Hospital (ref. CHEC2019-070 and CHEC2019-082). The study will be performed in compliance with applicable local legislation and in accordance with the ethical principles developed by the World Medical Association in the Declaration of Helsinki 2013. Study results will be disseminated through conferences and peer-reviewed scientific journals.Trial registration numbers ChiCTR1900022716; ChiCTR1900022754

Hydrogel smart windows

Smart windows are a promising way to modulate solar light transmittance, which is crucial for energy saving buildings. Current challenges focus on designing hydrogel materials that have multi-functionality, low cost, a fabrication process suitable for mass production, and durability. Here in this review, we provide an overview of the recent progress in hydrogel-based smart windows in different categories (thermo-, electro- and humidity-stimuli), focusing on the functional hydrogel material selectivity, working mechanisms and device design. The challenges and opportunities of hydrogel smart windows are discussed in the perspective section.Ministry of Education (MOE)National Research Foundation (NRF)Submitted/Accepted versionThis research was supported by the Science Foundation of China University of Petroleum, Beijing (No. 2462019BJRC007, 2462019QNXZ02, 2462018BJC004); the National Nature Science Foundation of China (No. 51875577); the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore, under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme; the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) Academic Research Fund Tier one RG103/19 and the Sino-Singapore International Joint Research Institute