Investigation on unfrozen water content models of freezing soils

Unfrozen water content is a significant hydro-thermal property in numerical modeling in cold regions. Although numerous models have been developed to mimic the variation of unfrozen water content with subzero temperature, comprehensive evaluation of unfrozen water content models is scarce. This study collected a total of 29 models and divided them into four categories, namely, theoretical models, soil water characteristic curve (SWCC)-based models, empirical models, and estimation models. These models were evaluated with 1278 experimental points from 16 studies covering multiple soil types, including 24 clays, 18 silty clays, 7 silts, 19 sands, and 10 sandstones. Root mean square error and average deviations were applied to judge the performance of these models. Most unfrozen water content models can well simulate the relationship between unfrozen water content and subzero temperature. Among the aforementioned four categories of unfrozen water content models, Lizhm et al. model, Fredlund and Xing (C=1)-Wen model, Kozlowski empirical model, and Kozlowski estimation model performed best in their respective categories. Compared to the rest three categories, estimation models can be applied to predict the variation of unfrozen water content with subzero temperature by some easy-to-obtain soil physical parameters and provide guidance for the development of unfrozen water content models

Isolation and extraction of glansreginin A from walnut meal and its effect on the proliferation of 3T3-L1 cells

Abstract Glansreginin A is an indicative component in walnut and is abundant in walnut meal. The aim of this study was to isolate and purify glansreginin A from the walnut meal, and to investigate the weight loss and lipid-lowering potential of glansreginin A by studying the effect of glansregin A on the proliferation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes. Firstly, the response surface methodology was used to effectively improve the extraction yield of glansreginin A. The maximum extraction rate of glansreginin A was 0.363%, and the optimal extraction process conditions were determined. In addition, the lipid-lowering activity of glansreginin A was investigated by cell experiments. The results showed that glansreginin A could inhibit the proliferation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes in a dose-dependent manner. And cell cycle of different groups of cells treated with glansreginin A was also measured using flow cytometry. The results showed most of the cells were blocked in G0/G1 phase and significantly decreased in S phase. These results suggest that glansreginin A could inhibit the proliferation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes by causing cell cycle arrest. These findings provided a theoretical basis for the future research of glansreginin A and the development of slimming and fat-reducing foods

Metagenomic Analysis of Bacteria, Fungi, Bacteriophages, and Helminths in the Gut of Giant Pandas

To obtain full details of gut microbiota, including bacteria, fungi, bacteriophages, and helminths, in giant pandas (GPs), we created a comprehensive microbial genome database and used metagenomic sequences to align against the database. We delineated a detailed and different gut microbiota structures of GPs. A total of 680 species of bacteria, 198 fungi, 185 bacteriophages, and 45 helminths were found. Compared with 16S rRNA sequencing, the dominant bacterium phyla not only included Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria but also Cyanobacteria and other eight phyla. Aside from Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, and Glomeromycota, Mucoromycota, and Microsporidia were the dominant fungi phyla. The bacteriophages were predominantly dsDNA Myoviridae, Siphoviridae, Podoviridae, ssDNA Inoviridae, and Microviridae. For helminths, phylum Nematoda was the dominant. In addition to previously described parasites, another 44 species of helminths were found in GPs. Also, differences in abundance of microbiota were found between the captive, semiwild, and wild GPs. A total of 1,739 genes encoding cellulase, β-glucosidase, and cellulose β-1,4-cellobiosidase were responsible for the metabolism of cellulose, and 128,707 putative glycoside hydrolase genes were found in bacteria/fungi. Taken together, the results indicated not only bacteria but also fungi, bacteriophages, and helminths were diverse in gut of giant pandas, which provided basis for the further identification of role of gut microbiota. Besides, metagenomics revealed that the bacteria/fungi in gut of GPs harbor the ability of cellulose and hemicellulose degradation

Occludin S408 phosphorylation regulates tight junction protein interactions and barrier function

Occludin S408 phosphorylation regulates interactions between occludin, ZO-1, and select claudins to define tight junction molecular structure and barrier function

Dynamic Time Warping Distance Method for Similarity Test of Multipoint Ground Motion Field

The reasonability of artificial multi-point ground motions and the identification of abnormal records in seismic array observations, are two important issues in application and analysis of multi-point ground motion fields. Based on the dynamic time warping (DTW) distance method, this paper discusses the application of similarity measurement in the similarity analysis of simulated multi-point ground motions and the actual seismic array records. Analysis results show that the DTW distance method not only can quantitatively reflect the similarity of simulated ground motion field, but also offers advantages in clustering analysis and singularity recognition of actual multi-point ground motion field

A Grid-Based Method to Represent the Covariance Structure for Earthquake Ground Motion

Spatial variation of earthquake ground motion is an important phenomenon that cannot be ignored in the design and safety of strategic structures. However, almost all the procedures for the evaluation of variation assumed that the random field is homogeneous in space. It is obvious that reality does not fully conform to the assumption. How to investigate the inhomogeneous feature of ground motion in space is a challenge for researcher. A body-fitted grid-coordinates-based method is proposed to estimate and describe the local spatial variations for the earthquake ground motion; it need not to make the assumption that the random field of earthquake is homogeneous in space. An analysis of spatial variability of seismic motion in smart-1 array monitored in Lotung, Taiwan demonstrates this methodology

An Online Hand-Drawn Electric Circuit Diagram Recognition System Using Hidden Markov Models

International audienceIn this paper we experiment the capabilities of Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to model the time-variant signal produced by the movement of a pen when drawing a sketch such as an electrical circuit diagram. We consider that the sketches have been generated by a two-level stochastic process. The underlying process governs the stroke production from a neuro-motor control point of view: go straight, change direction, produce a curve. A second stochastic process delivers the observed signal, which is a sequence of sampled points. Three different architectures of HMM are proposed and compared. On a dataset of 100 hand-drawn sketches, the proposed method allows to classify correctly more than 83% of the points with respect to the connector and symbol classes