Engineering Performance of Polyurethane Bonded Aggregates

In this paper the engineering performance of polyurethane (PUR) bonded aggregate were studied. The engineering performance, including compressive and flexural mechanical properties, void ratio, and coefficient of permeability were determined through laboratory tests. Moreover, the effects of two different curing conditions on the compressive strength properties of a PUR bonded aggregate were also evaluated. The compressive strengths of PUR bonded aggregates were found to be lower than that of conventional porous concrete, which is a commonly used cushion material. However, experimental results indicated a higher void ratio and coefficient of permeability, lower elasticity modulus, better toughness, and stronger adaptability to flexural deformation compared to porous concrete. Consequently, PUR bonded aggregate is a better solution than porous concrete when used as the cushion material of a geomembrane surface barrier for a high rock-fill dam

Continuous low-dose cyclophosphamide plus prednisone in the treatment of relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma with severe complications

Background/objectiveWe retrospectively analyzed the effective and safety of continuous low-dose cyclophosphamide combined with prednisone (CP) in relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma (RRMM) patients with severe complications.MethodsA total of 130 RRMM patients with severe complications were enrolled in this study, among which 41 patients were further given bortezomib, lenalidomide, thalidomide or ixazomib on the basis of CP regimen (CP+X group). The response to therapy, adverse events (AEs), overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were recorded.ResultsAmong the 130 patients, 128 patients received therapeutic response assessment, with a complete remission rate (CRR) and objective response rate (ORR) of 4.7% and 58.6%, respectively. The median OS and PFS time were (38.0 ± 3.6) and (22.9±5.2) months, respectively. The most common AEs were hyperglycemia (7.7%), pneumonia (6.2%) and Cushing’s syndrome (5.4%). In addition, we found the pro-BNP/BNP level was obviously decreased while the LVEF (left ventricular ejection fraction) was increased in RRMM patients following CP treatment as compared with those before treatment. Furthermore, CP+X regimen further improved the CRR compared with that before receiving the CP+X regimen (24.4% vs. 2.4%, P=0.007). Also, both the OS and PFS rates were significantly elevated in patients received CP+X regimen following CP regimen as compared with the patients received CP regimen only.ConclusionThis study demonstrates the metronomic chemotherapy regimen of CP is effective to RRMM patients with severe complications

What can Africa Learn from China's Experience in Agricultural Development?

Submitted version of Bulletin articleThere has been a growing interest in China’s rapid economic growth, particularly agriculture-led growth and poverty reduction. In fact, China and Africa have developed their agriculture under different historical conditions. China’s agriculture-led growth and poverty reduction and small holder based agricultural development policy can provide a useful model for African countries to develop their own agricultural development strategies to reduce poverty.DFID, ESR

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Implementacija in verifikacija konstitutivnega modela vmesne ploskve geosintetik-zemljina v elementu Geogrid programa FLAC3D^{3D}

Due to the complexity of geosynthetic-soil interactions, the simple interface constitutive models embedded in the geosynthetic elements of general computing software cannot satisfy the requirements for a numerical simulation of different geosynthetic-soil interface behaviours. Based on the direct shear test results of a composite geomembrane (CGM) and polyurethane (PUR) mixed crushed stones interface, a nonlinear elastic, perfectly plastic model was used to describe the interface behaviours. The method of incorporating an interface constitutive model into the Geogrid element of a fast Lagrange analysis of continua in three dimensions (FLAC3D) procedure was presented in detail through a user-defined program in the FISH environment. Then the incorporated model of the Geogrid element was used to simulate the direct tests of the CGM-PUR mixed crushed stones interface. The results of the numerical tests confirmed the validity and reliability of the incorporated model. The method and program flowchart for implementing the nonlinear elastic, perfectly plastic interface constitutive model into the Geogrid element can provide a reference for users who want to simulate other geosynthetic-soil interface behaviours with FLAC3D.Zaradi zapletenosti interakcije med geosintetikom in zemljino, enostavni konstitutivni modeli za vmesne ploskve, ki so vgrajeni v geosintetične elemente splošnih računalniških programov, ne zadovoljujejo zahtev za numerično simulacijo različnih odzivov na vmesni ploskvi med geosintetikom in zemljino. Na osnovi rezultatov direktnega strižnega preizkusa kompozitne vmesne ploskve iz geomembrane (CGM) in poliuretana (PUR) zmešanega z drobljenim kamenjem, je bil za opis obnašanja vmesne ploskve uporabljen nelinearno elastičen idealno plastičen model. S pomočjo uporabniško definiranega programa v okolju FISH je detajlno predstavljena metoda vključitve konstitutivnega modela vmesne ploskve v element Geogrid postopka hitre Lagrangeeve tridimenzionalne analize kontinua. Nato je bil konstitutivni model elementa Geogrid uporabljen za simulacijo direktnega strižnega preizkusa vmesne ploskve CGM-PUR zmešanima z drobljenim kamenjem. Rezultati numeričnih preizkusov so potrdili veljavnost in zanesljivost vključenega modela. Predstavljena metoda in diagram poteka za implementacijo nelinearno elastičnega idealno plastičnega konstitutivnega modela vmesne ploskve v element Geogrid podajata napotek uporabnikom, ki želijo simulirati drugačna obnašanja vmesne ploskve med geosintetikom in zemljine s pomočjo FLAC3D

Stress and Deformation Property of Geomembrane Surface Barrier for High Rock-fill Dam

Based on the direct shear test results of interface between a composite geomembrane and cushion material, nonlinear elastic, perfectly plastic model was used to describe the interface behaviors. The interface model was incorporated into the Geogrid element of a fast Lagrange analysis of continua in three dimensions (FLAC3D) procedure through a user-defined program in the FISH. Then a geomembrane surfaced rock-fill dam on thick pervious foundation was numerically analyzed using the incorporated model. The numerical results showed that only small tension deformation can be found in the most area of geomembrane on the dam surface. However, large tension deformation of geomembrane appeared close to the anchorage in the peripheral zone of the barrier. The anchorage structure of geomembrane in this area should be carefully designed to avoid tension failure of geomembrane

Synthesis of Branch Fluorinated Cationic Surfactant and Surface Properties

A novel fluorinated quaternary ammonium salt cationic surfactant N,N,N-trimethyl-2-[[4-[[3,4,4,4-tetrafluoro-2-[1,2,2,2-tetrafluoro-1-(trifluoromethyl)ethyl]-1,3-bis(tri-fluoromethyl)-1-buten-1-yl]oxy]-benzoyl]amino]-iodide (FQAS) was synthesized successfully, and its structure was characterized by FTIR, 1H-NMR, 19F-NMR, and MS. The surface activities of FQAS and the effect of temperature, electrolyte, and combination with hydrocarbon surfactant were investigated. The results showed that FQAS exhibited excellent surface activity and combination with hydrocarbon surfactant

Model Test on Mechanical and Deformation Property of a Geomembrane Surface Barrier for a High Rockfill Dam

The cushion of a geomembrane surface barrier of a high rockfill dam built on deep overburden is prone to crack and fail because of excessive flexural deformation. This study proposes a geomembrane surface barrier for a high rockfill dam on deep overburden. The proposed geomembrane surface barrier uses polyurethane bonded aggregates as the cushion material. The loading and deformation performance of the barrier system under uniform water pressure was investigated using a self-developed structure model test device. The mechanical and deformation property of each layer of the barrier, and the interaction mode between adjacent layers, were obtained through external videos and internal sensor monitoring. The results demonstrated that the polyurethane bonded aggregate cushion exhibited good adaptability to flexural deformation during the entire loading process and maintained good contact and coordinate deformation with the upper protective and the lower transition layers. The geomembrane surface barrier created using polyurethane bonded aggregates as the cushion material can adapt to the flexural deformation of a high rockfill dam surface on deep overburden