Research on Advanced Treatment Technology of Fluorine Containing Wastewater from Graphite Production

With the gradual improvement of environmental emission requirements in China, the graphite industry is facing environmental pressure from advanced treatment. This article first conducted a study on the current status of advanced treatment technology for fluorinated wastewater. Subsequently, a single defluorination agent experiment was conducted, and it was found that compared to several agents used in the experiment, such as PAC, PAFS, and CaCl2, PAC had the best defluorination effect. The optimization of PAC conditions showed that its optimal reaction pH was 7, and equilibrium could be achieved after 3 minutes of reaction. The study also conducted orthogonal experiments with mixed salts, and the best conditions for the combination of fluoride removal agents were found to be PAC adding 400 mg/L, CaCl2 adding 400 mg/L, PAFS adding 200 mg/L, which can remove fluoride to 0.92 mg/L, below 1 mg/L, meeting the Class III water standard in the " Environmental quality standards for surface water ".The SEM image of the sludge generated by the reaction between the composite fluoride removal agent and fluoride containing wastewater shows a larger particle size of up to 50 μm which is beneficial for the separation and removal of sludge. The generated sediment sludge is mainly composed of Al, Fe, Ca, O, and Si according to EDS results, and belongs to general industrial solid waste.publishedVersio

Effects of Musical Tempo on Musicians’ and Non-musicians’ Emotional Experience When Listening to Music

Tempo is an important musical element that affects human’s emotional processes when listening to music. However, it remains unclear how tempo and training affect individuals’ emotional experience of music. To explore the neural underpinnings of the effects of tempo on music-evoked emotion, music with fast, medium, and slow tempi were collected to compare differences in emotional responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of neural activity between musicians and non-musicians. Behaviorally, musicians perceived higher valence in fast music than did non-musicians. The main effects of musicians and non-musicians and tempo were significant, and a near significant interaction between group and tempo was found. In the arousal dimension, the mean score of medium-tempo music was the highest among the three kinds; in the valence dimension, the mean scores decreased in order from fast music, medium music, to slow music. Functional analyses revealed that the neural activation of musicians was stronger than those of non-musicians in the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL). A comparison of tempi showed a stronger activation from fast music than slow music in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG), which provided corresponding neural evidence for the highest valence reported by participants for fast music. Medium music showed stronger activation than slow music in the right Heschl’s gyrus (HG), right middle temporal gyrus (MTG), right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), right precuneus, right IPL, and left STG. Importantly, this study confirmed and explained the connection between music tempo and emotional experiences, and their interaction with individuals’ musical training

Attenuation of Vaccinia Tian Tan Strain by Removal of Viral TC7L-TK2L and TA35R Genes

Vaccinia Tian Tan (VTT) was attenuated by deletion of the TC7L-TK2L and TA35R genes to generate MVTT3. The mutant was generated by replacing the open reading frames by a gene encoding enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) flanked by loxP sites. Viruses expressing EGFP were then screened for and purified by serial plaque formation. In a second step the marker EGFP gene was removed by transfecting cells with a plasmid encoding cre recombinase and selecting for viruses that had lost the EGFP phenotype. The MVTT3 mutant was shown to be avirulent and immunogenic. These results support the conclusion that TC7L-TK2L and TA35R deletion mutants can be used as safe viral vectors or as platform for vaccines

Sex differences in dementia risk and risk factors: Individual‐participant data analysis using 21 cohorts across six continents from the COSMIC consortium

Introduction: Sex differences in dementia risk, and risk factor (RF) associations with dementia, remain uncertain across diverse ethno‐regional groups. Methods: A total of 29,850 participants (58% women) from 21 cohorts across six continents were included in an individual participant data meta‐analysis. Sex‐specific hazard ratios (HRs), and women‐to‐men ratio of hazard ratios (RHRs) for associations between RFs and all‐cause dementia were derived from mixed‐effect Cox models. Results: Incident dementia occurred in 2089 (66% women) participants over 4.6 years (median). Women had higher dementia risk (HR, 1.12 [1.02, 1.23]) than men, particularly in low‐ and lower‐middle‐income economies. Associations between longer education and former alcohol use with dementia risk (RHR, 1.01 [1.00, 1.03] per year, and 0.55 [0.38, 0.79], respectively) were stronger for men than women; otherwise, there were no discernible sex differences in other RFs. Discussion: Dementia risk was higher in women than men, with possible variations by country‐level income settings, but most RFs appear to work similarly in women and men

Study of dispersal and diversity of eriophyoid mites (Acari: Eriophyoidea)

Eriophyoid mites represent a major, agriculturally important group of mites. The knowledge of dispersal biology and species diversity of eriophyoids is very limited, because their tiny body size makes observation and study difficult.;The current method of using sticky glass slides or plates to sample airborne eriophyoids is inefficient and inappropriate. A new method using water pan traps and vacuum-filtration proved far superior to the previous method.;A three year investigation using the water pan sampling method resulted in a total of 8,131 airborne eriophyoid specimens, 60.6% of which were collected from the roof of a 40m high building. Airborne eriophyoids were collected in each month of the year. While a significant peak period of aerial dispersal for all eriophyoids occurred in June--July, the yearly aerial dispersal profile varied with species and location. Their airborne activities had an evident diurnal pattern with a peak in mid afternoon. Meteorological factors, except for wind, did not seem to have a significant effect on daily airborne catches of eriophyoids in summer.;The airborne collection contained 598 species of eriophyoids in 66 genera, most new to science. Their taxonomic distribution pattern closely matched that of described species. But only about 30 species made up the vast majority of the total specimen abundance of the collection. The species composition of an airborne collection varied with year and location.;A total of 171 arthropods were collected in 249 kg of snow from 10 major snowfalls. The fauna included 89 eriophyoid specimens and 75 mites in other groups, both in diverse taxa. Presence of mites in snow further indicated their great potential for aerial dispersal, and might imply their potential for long distance dispersal.;Only 24 eriophyoid specimens were recovered from about 35,000 insects from Malaise traps, so phoresy occurs to a very limited extent in eriophyoids.;The total of 620 collected airborne and snowborne species greatly increased the size of known faunas for the investigated region (74 species in West Virginia) and the U.S. (653). Still, the accumulation curves of new species vs. collection size indicate that the total diversity of the Eriophyoidea within the study area is higher than obtained

Wire antennas optimizations on various platforms using radial basis functions and evolutionary algorithms.

High Frequency (HF) and Very High Frequency (VHF) electromagnetic waves have been used as the means of long-distance communication for decades. Nevertheless, in the design of wire antennas for HF and VHF devices, size reduction is one of the critical issues due to wavelengths of in ranges from 1 to 100 meters. It is well known that inductive and capacitive loadings can effectively change the current distribution along an antenna, reducing the self-resonant frequency, and hence the antenna size. Various types of inductive and capacitive loadings can be implemented on the wire antennas using ideal lumped components or realistic winding structures, such as zig-zag and helix shapes. Nevertheless, the physical limits of electrically small antenna can greatly constrain the dimensions, and the design of optimally varying windings will significantly increase the complexity in the modeling and simulation process. Furthermore, size reduction can also introduce significant degradation in both efficiency and bandwidth, and thus, obtaining a design with balanced performance becomes a challenging task, which is addressed in this thesis. The work presented in this thesis contributes to the research by proposing and applying a generic methodology to the optimal design of size-reduced HF and VHF wire antennas. The electromagnetic simulator, NEC-2 (Numerical Electromagnetic Codes), based on the method of moments, is used to provide fast and accurate numerical estimation of the performance for the antennas. To drive the electromagnetic simulator, an evolutionary optimizer is developed using both genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm algorithm (PSA) for multi-objective optimization (MOO). The combination of these tools, i.e. electromagnetic simulator and optimizers, is applied to address the trade-offs of the small antenna design as well as to achieve faster convergence efficiently to the global optimal region. The in-house developed tool is named MATNEC, and couples antenna geometry modeling, electromagnetic simulation, and evolutionary optimization into an automated program. Several strategies have been used to reduce the simulation and optimization complexity with, in particular the application of radial basis function expansions to compactly describe the antenna structure. This effectively converts the optimization process from optimizing the antenna configuration directly to optimizing the parameters of mathematical expansion, thus achieving a significant complexity reduction. In the application of the proposed technique in this thesis, three types of inductive loadings are successively introduced into the design of optimized wire antennas, producing a marked increase in performance in all cases. Firstly, as preliminary study, lumped inductive loadings along a monopole are used to effectively verify the optimization methodology and the antenna shortening theory. Secondly, a non-uniform zig-zag winding structure is considered to effectively verify the roles of optimized distributed inductive loadings formed by the antenna wire itself and also allowing for experimental validation of the findings. Thirdly, non-uniform helical antenna structures are also considered and verified experimentally. The optimal designs were verified both in bandwidth and in efficiency using a ”Wheeler Cap” approach. The optimized results provide useful guidelines for the design of wire antennas for both HF and VHF communications. The thesis also provides an investigation of the robustness of the optimized design in non-ideal environments. Optimized devices are integrated on various platforms or with near-by objects, and the re-optimization is carried out including the non-ideal environment. The weak impact from non-ideal environments and the similar results from re-optimization effectively demonstrate the strong functionality and robustness of the proposed design and optimization strategy for real-world applications. Mutual interaction between multiple antennas is also investigated, and the result illustrates the weak interference of the optimized antennas when used in an array environment.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 201

Performance Assessment and Comparison of Two Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters Developed for Pavement Application: Case Study

To advance the development of piezoelectric energy harvesters, this study designed and manufactured bridge-unit-based and pile-unit-based piezoelectric devices. An indoor material testing system and accelerated pavement test equipment were used to test the electrical performance, mechanical performance, and electromechanical coupling performance of the devices. The results showed that the elastic modulus of the pile structure device was relatively higher than that of the bridge structure device. However, the elastic modulus of the two devices should be improved to avoid attenuation in the service performance and fatigue life caused by the stiffness difference. Furthermore, the electromechanical conversion coefficients of the two devices were smaller than 10% and insensitive to the load magnitude and load frequency. Moreover, the two devices can harvest 3.4 mW and 2.6 mW under the wheel load simulated by the one-third scale model mobile load simulator, thus meeting the supply requirements of low-power sensors. The elastic modulus, electromechanical conversion coefficients, and electric performance of the pile structure device were more reliable than those of the bridge structure device, indicating a better application prospect in road engineering

Glial fibrillary acidic protein and vimentin expression in the frog olfactory system during metamorphosis

In the present study, we investigated glial cell organization in the olfactory system of adult and tadpole Xenopus laevis using glial fibrillary acidic protein and vimentin antibodies. Our results showed for the first time that glial fibrillary acidic protein was strongly expressed at the level of the olfactory nerve from tadpole to adult and was likely to be expressed by ensheathing glia. In the olfactory bulb, the nerve layer was stained, and no staining was observed in glomeruli. By contrast, vimentin decorated radial glia in the bulb but faintly stained the olfactory nerve. Interestingly, glial fibrillary acidic protein and vimentin presented complementary staining patterns, with glial ¢brillary acidic protein being expressed in the peripheral olfactory system and vimentin being expressed in the central part of the olfactory system. © 2005 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc

Random Vibration Analysis of a Coupled Aircraft/Runway Modeled System for Runway Evaluation

Runway roughness is one of the most critical performance factors for runway evaluation, which directly impacts airport operation safety and pavement preservation cost. Properly evaluated runway roughness could optimize the decision-making process for runway preservation and therefore reduce the life cycle cost of the runway pavement asset. In this paper, the excitation effect of runway roughness is analyzed using a coupled aircraft/runway system. The coupled system is composed of a two degrees-of-freedom (2-DOF) aircraft model and a typical asphalt runway structure model established under runway roughness random excitation in this work. The dynamic differential equations for the coupled system are derived based on D’Alembert’s principle. The system’s vibration responses are determined via the pseudo excitation method and three response laws, i.e., the center of gravity acceleration (CGA), the dynamic load coefficient (DLC) of the landing gear, and the runway structural displacement, which are investigated under different modes. The results show that the first-order mode of the runway structure, vertical deformation, is the most significant of the four modes. Moreover, uneven excitation has a significant effect on the distribution of the aircraft’s vibration response. Compared with a single aircraft system, the developed coupled aircraft/runway system has different dynamic responses, and the degree of difference depends on the taxiing speed. The coupled effect on the CGA increases significantly with an increase in speed, with up to a 7.3% percentage difference. The coupled effect on the DLC first increases and then decreases as the aircraft speed increases, reaching a maximum of about 6% percentage difference at 120 km/h