Experimental Variant Slope Soil Tank for Measurements of Runoff and Soil Erosion

Rainfall-runoff processes and the related soil erosion are pivotal research regions in hydrology, soil science, and environment science. Thus, physics model experiments in laboratory scale on the aspect of measuring runoff and soil are one of the best tools in this field. This chapter aims to specify the experimental variant slope soil tank at home and in the USA. The developing of experimental soil tank of variant slopes with artificial simulating rainfall system will assist to understand soil water motivation, runoff yield, and nonpoint source pollution

Investigation of radial force and hydraulic performance in a centrifugal pump with different guide vane outlet angle

In order to investigate the effect of the guide vane outlet angle on the performance of centrifugal pumps, a centrifugal pump with guide vanes was used as the research model and its specific speed is 165. Keep all the other geometry parameters of the pump as constants, the guide vane outlet angle was designed to be 28°, 20°, 15°,10°, 5° and 3° respectively. The whole flow field in the pump under different guide vane outlet angles was simulated by commercial code CFX and the simulation was unsteady. The simulation results were validated by experiment results. According to the simulations, the hydraulic performance, internal flow and radial force of the pump under different guide vane outlet angles were compared and analyzed in detail. The research results indicate that the head and efficiency of the pump are the best when the guide vane outlet angle is 10°. With the decrease of the blade outlet angle of guide vane, the length of flow channels in the guide vane become bigger and its width gets smaller, the uniformity of inner flow in the centrifugal pump gets better, and therefore the radial force on the impeller reduces. With the decrease of the guide vane blade outlet angle, the pulsation frequency of radial force does not change, but the pulsation amplitude of the radial force reduces obviously. The vector distribution of the unsteady radial force is symmetric around the origin and mainly lies in 5 regions, which is same as the blade number of impeller

Synthesis, properties, and optical applications of noble metal nanoparticle-biomolecule conjugates

Noble metal nanoparticles, such as gold or silver nanoparticles and nanorods, exhibit unique photonic, electronic and catalytic properties. Functionalization of noble metal nanoparticles with biomolecules (e. g., protein and DNA) produces systems that possess numerous applications in catalysis, delivery, therapy, imaging, sensing, constructing nanostructures and controlling the structure of biomolecules. In this paper, the recent development of noble metal nanoparticle-biomolecule conjugates is reviewed from the following three aspects: (1) synthesis of noble metal nanoparticle-biomolecule systems by electrostatic adsorption, direct chemisorption of thiol derivatives, covalent binding through bifunctional linkers and specific affinity interactions; (2) the photonic properties and bioactivation of noble metal nanoparticle-biomolecule conjugates; and (3) the optical applications of such systems in biosensors, and medical imaging, diagnosis, and therapy. The conjugation of Au and Ag nanoparticles with biomolecules and the most recent optical applications of the resulting systems have been focused on

Prediction value study of breast cancer tumor infiltrating lymphocyte levels based on ultrasound imaging radiomics

ObjectiveConstruct models based on grayscale ultrasound and radiomics and compare the efficacy of different models in preoperatively predicting the level of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in breast cancer.Materials and methodsThis study retrospectively collected clinical data and preoperative ultrasound images from 185 breast cancer patients confirmed by surgical pathology. Patients were randomly divided into a training set (n=111) and a testing set (n=74) using a 6:4 ratio. Based on a 10% threshold for tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) levels, patients were classified into low-level and high-level groups. Radiomic features were extracted and selected using the training set. The evaluation included assessing the relationship between TIL levels and both radiomic features and grayscale ultrasound features. Subsequently, grayscale ultrasound models, radiomic models, and nomograms combining radiomics score (Rad-score) and grayscale ultrasound features were established. The predictive performance of different models was evaluated through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Calibration curves assessed the fit of the nomograms, and decision curve analysis (DCA) evaluated the clinical effectiveness of the models.ResultsUnivariate analyses and multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that indistinct margin (P<0.001, Odds Ratio [OR]=0.214, 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 0.103-1.026), posterior acoustic enhancement (P=0.027, OR=2.585, 95% CI: 1.116-5.987), and ipsilateral axillary lymph node enlargement (P=0.001, OR=4.214, 95% CI: 1.798-9.875) were independent predictive factors for high levels of TIL in breast cancer. In comparison to grayscale ultrasound model (Training set: Area under curve [AUC] 0.795; Testing set: AUC 0.720) and radiomics model (Training set: AUC 0.803; Testing set: AUC 0.759), the nomogram demonstrated superior discriminative ability on both the training (AUC 0.884) and testing (AUC 0.820) datasets. Calibration curves indicated high consistency between the nomogram model’s predicted probability of breast cancer TIL levels and the actual occurrence probability. DCA revealed that the radiomics model and the nomogram model achieved higher clinical net benefits compared to the grayscale ultrasound model.ConclusionThe nomogram based on preoperative ultrasound radiomics features exhibits robust predictive capacity for the non-invasive evaluation of breast cancer TIL levels, potentially providing a significant basis for individualized treatment decisions in breast cancer

Real-time bas-relief generation from depth-and-normal maps on GPU

To design a bas-relief from a 3D scene is an inherently interactive task in many scenarios. The user normally needs to get instant feedback to select a proper viewpoint. However, current methods are too slow to facilitate this interaction. This paper proposes a two-scale bas-relief modeling method, which is computationally efficient and easy to produce different styles of bas-reliefs. The input 3D scene is first rendered into two textures, one recording the depth information and the other recording the normal information. The depth map is then compressed to produce a base surface with level-of-depth, and the normal map is used to extract local details with two different schemes. One scheme provides certain freedom to design bas-reliefs with different visual appearances, and the other provides a control over the level of detail. Finally, the local feature details are added into the base surface to produce the final result. Our approach allows for real-time computation due to its implementation on graphics hardware. Experiments with a wide range of 3D models and scenes show that our approach can effectively generate digital bas-reliefs in real time