Experimental Researches on Long-Term Strength of Granite Gneiss

It is important to confirm the long-term strength of rock materials for the purpose of evaluating the long-term stability of rock engineering. In this study, a series of triaxial creep tests were conducted on granite gneiss under different pore pressures. Based on the test data, we proposed two new quantitative methods, tangent method and intersection method, to confirm the long-term strength of rock. Meanwhile, the isochronous stress-strain curve method was adopted to make sure of the accuracy and operability of the two new methods. It is concluded that the new methods are suitable for the study of the long-term strength of rock. The effect of pore pressure on the long-term strength of rock in triaxial creep tests is also discussed

Understanding Attitudes towards Proenvironmental Travel: An Empirical Study from Tangshan City in China

Understanding people’s attitudes towards proenvironmental travel will help to encourage people to adopt proenvironmental travel behavior. Revealed preference theory assumes that the consumption preference of consumers can be revealed by their consumption behavior. In order to investigate the influences on citizens’ travel decision and analyze the difficulties of promoting proenvironmental travel behavior in medium-sized cities in China, based on revealed preference theory, this paper uses the RP survey method and disaggregate model to analyze how individual characteristics, situational factors, and trip features influence the travel mode choice. The field investigation was conducted in Tangshan City to obtain the RP data. An MNL model was built to deal with the travel mode choice. SPSS software was used to calibrate the model parameters. The goodness-of-fit tests and the predicted outcome demonstrate the validation of the parameter setting. The results show that gender, occupation, trip purpose, and distance have an obvious influence on the travel mode choice. In particular, the male gender, high income, and business travel show a high correlation with carbon-intensive travel, while the female gender and a medium income scored higher in terms of proenvironmental travel modes, such as walking, cycling, and public transport

Stability and Failure Mechanism Analyses of the Zhenggang Landslide in Southwestern China

The Zhenggang landslide is an ancient complex landslide located at southeastern Tibetan Plateau, China. Due to intensive rainfalls in 2008 and heavy snowfalls in 2009, the Zhenggang landslide exhibited a high probability of reactivation once again. In this study, geological structure, matter features, and macrodeformations of the Zhenggang landslide (including Zone I and Zone II) were investigated for uncovering its formation mechanism and evolution tendency first, and then the stability and failure mechanism analyses of the Zhenggang landslide were conducted in detail by a combined limit equilibrium and finite element analysis method. Results of geological investigations indicate that the Zhenggang landslide has undergone sliding several times and is in a metastable state now. The distribution of the activity of the landslide is a retrogressive landslide in Zone I but an advancing landslide in Zone II. Such conclusions are further proved by the numerical stability and failure analyses

Estimation of Elasticity of Porous Rock Based on Mineral Composition and Microstructure

Estimation of elastic parameters of porous rock like the compressibility of sandstone is scientifically important and yet an open issue. This study illustrates the estimation of the elastic compressibility of sandstone (ECS) based on the assumption that the ECS is determined closely by the mineral composition and microstructures. In this study, 37 samples are collected to evaluate the estimations of the ECS obtained by different methods. The regression analysis is first implemented using the 37 samples. The results show that ECS exhibits linear relations with the rock minerals, pores, and applied compressive stress. Then the support vector machine (SVM) optimized by the particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) is examined to generate estimations of the ECS based on the mineral composition and microstructures. The SVM is trained with 30 samples to search for optimal parameters using the PSO, and thus the estimation model is established. Afterwards, this model is validated to give predictions of the left 7 samples. By comparison with the regression methods, the proposed strategy, that is, the PSO optimized SVM, performs much better on the training samples and shows a good capability in generating estimations of the ECS of the 7 testing samples based on the mineral composition and microstructures

The DNA Methylation Status of Wnt and Tgfβ Signals Is a Key Factor on Functional Regulation of Skeletal Muscle Satellite Cell Development

DNA methylation is an important form of epigenetic regulation that can regulate the expression of genes and the development of tissues. Muscle satellite cells play an important role in skeletal muscle development and regeneration. Therefore, the DNA methylation status of genes in satellite cells is important in the regulation of the development of skeletal muscle. This study systematically investigated the changes of genome-wide DNA methylation in satellite cells during skeletal muscle development. According to the MeDIP-Seq data, 52,809–123,317 peaks were obtained for each sample, covering 0.70–1.79% of the genome. The number of reads and peaks was highest in the intron regions followed by the CDS regions. A total of 96,609 DMRs were identified between any two time points. Among them 6198 DMRs were annotated into the gene promoter regions, corresponding to 4726 DMGs. By combining the MeDIP-Seq and RNA-Seq data, a total of 202 overlap genes were obtained between DMGs and DEGs. GO and Pathway analysis revealed that the overlap genes were mainly involved in 128 biological processes and 23 pathways. Among the biological processes, terms related to regulation of cell proliferation and Wnt signaling pathway were significantly different. Gene–gene interaction analysis showed that Wnt5a, Wnt9a, and Tgfβ1 were the key nodes in the network. Furthermore, the expression level of Wnt5a, Wnt9a, and Tgfβ1 genes could be influenced by the methylation status of promoter region during skeletal muscle development. These results indicated that the Wnt and Tgfβ signaling pathways may play an important role in functional regulation of satellite cells, and the DNA methylation status of Wnt and Tgfβ signals is a key regulatory factor during skeletal muscle development. This study provided new insights into the effects of genome-wide methylation on the function of satellite cells

Evolution and Association Analysis of Ghd7 in Rice

Plant height, heading date, and yield are the main targets for rice genetic improvement. Ghd7 is a pleiotropic gene that controls the aforementioned traits simultaneously. In this study, a rice germplasm collection of 104 accessions (Oryza sativa) and 3 wild rice varieties (O.rufipogon) was used to analyze the evolution and association of Ghd7 with plant height, heading date, and yield. Among the 104 accessions, 76 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and six insertions and deletions were found within a 3932-bp DNA fragment of Ghd7. A higher pairwise π and θ in the promoter indicated a highly diversified promoter of Ghd7. Sixteen haplotypes and 8 types of Ghd7 protein were detected. SNP changes between haplotypes indicated that Ghd7 evolved from two distinct ancestral gene pools, and independent domestication processes were detected in indica and japonica varietals respectively. In addition to the previously reported premature stop mutation in the first exon of Ghd7, which caused phenotypic changes of multiple traits, we found another functional C/T mutation (SNP S_555) by structure-based association analysis. SNP S_555 is located in the promoter and was related to plant height probably by altering gene expression. Moreover, another seven SNP mutations in complete linkage were found to be associated with the number of spikelets per panicle, regardless of the photoperiod. These associations provide the potential for flexibility of Ghd7 application in rice breeding programs

Influence of fine recycled concrete aggregates on the properties of mortars

Fine recycled concrete aggregates (FRCA) also called recycled sand, having particle sizes smaller than 5 mm, are essentially composed of mortar and hardened cement paste. Therefore they induce a large water demand which makes them hard to recycle into mortar and concrete. In this paper, the properties of mortars containing FRCA have been studied, including fresh properties, mechanical properties and interfacial transition zone (ITZ) microstructure. The influence of saturation state of FRCA (dried or saturated) on the properties of mortars of identical compositions has first been studied. The results showed that the slump of mortars containing dried FRCA is always larger than that of mortars containing saturated FRCA. Indeed, in the case of dried FRCA, the theoretical amount of absorbed water is added at the beginning of mixing leading to a temporary increase of the initial efficient W/C ratio and volume of paste, leading to a better workability before its absorption into FRCA. On the contrary, the absorbed water in saturated FRCA is not readily available and thus cannot contribute to increase the initial efficient W/C ratio. Moreover, the compressive strength of mortars containing dried FRCA is always larger than that of mortars made with saturated FRCA, which is attributed to a thinner interfacial transition zone improving its mechanical properties. The influence of the fraction of recycled sand and of the granular class of recycled sand on the mechanical properties of mortars has then been studied with saturated FRCA. The compressive strength of mortars decreases quasi linearly as the replacement percentage of recycled sand increases. Moreover, it is shown that the finer fraction of recycled sand (0/0.63 mm) has the worse effect on the mechanical properties of mortars

Influence of hardened cement paste content on the water absorption of fine recycled concrete aggregates

peer reviewedA linear relationship was found between the mean size of four granular classes (0/0.63, 0.63/1.25, 1.25/2.5, 2.5/5 mm) of different laboratory-made fine recycled concrete aggregates (FRCA) and their hardened cement paste content (CPC). A method based on salicylic acid dissolution was specifically developed for the measurement of CPC. Results showed that bound water and density of FRCA were strongly correlated with their CPC. Identically, the water absorption coefficient also followed a linear trend as a function of the CPC but only for the three coarser granular classes. Indeed, the water absorption coefficient of the finer fraction of FRCA (0/0.63 mm) cannot be correctly measured using European standard method EN 1097-6 or method no. 78 of IFSTTAR; but it can be obtained by extrapolation from the previous linear trend. As a consequence, the accurate total water absorption of FRCA (fraction 0/5 mm) can be estimated

Positive Solutions for Some Beam Equation Boundary Value Problems

<p/> <p>A new fixed point theorem in a cone is applied to obtain the existence of positive solutions of some fourth-order beam equation boundary value problems with dependence on the first-order derivative <inline-formula> <graphic file="1687-2770-2009-393259-i1.gif"/></inline-formula><inline-formula> <graphic file="1687-2770-2009-393259-i2.gif"/></inline-formula><inline-formula> <graphic file="1687-2770-2009-393259-i3.gif"/></inline-formula> where <inline-formula> <graphic file="1687-2770-2009-393259-i4.gif"/></inline-formula> is continuous.</p