Structural Health Monitoring System for Deepwater Risers with Vortex-Induced Vibration: Nonlinear Modeling, Blind Identification, Fatigue/Damage Estimation and Vibration Control

This study focuses on developing structural health monitoring techniques to detect damage in deepwater risers subjected to vortex-induced vibration (VIV), and studying vibration control strategies to extend the service life of offshore structures. Vibration-based damage detection needs both responses from the undamaged and damaged deepwater risers. Because no experimental data for damaged deepwater risers is available, a model to predict the VIV responses of deepwater risers with given conditions is needed, which is the forward problem. In this study, a new three dimensional (3D) analytical model is proposed considering coupled VIV (in-line and cross-flow) for top-tensioned riser (TTR) with wake oscillators. The model is verified by direct numerical simulations and experimental data. The inverse problem is to detect damage using VIV responses from the analytical models with/without damage, where the change between dynamic properties obtained from riser responses represents damage. The inverse problem is performed in two steps: blind identification and damage detection. For blind identification, a wavelet modified second order blind identification (WMSOBI) method and a complex WMSOBI (CWMSOBI) method are proposed to extract modal properties from output only responses for standing and traveling wave vibration, respectively. Numerical simulations and experiments validate the effectiveness of proposed methods. For damage detection, a novel weighted distribution force change (WDFC) index (for standing wave) and a phase angle change (PAC) index (for traveling wave) are proposed and proven numerically. Experiments confirm that WDFC can accurately locate damage and estimate damage severity. Furthermore, a new fatigue damage estimation method involving WMSOBI, S-N curve and Miner's rule is proposed and proven to be effective using field test data. Vibration control is essential to extend the service life and enhance the safety of offshore structures. Literature review shows that semi-active control devices are potentially a good solution. A novel semi-active control strategy is proposed to tune the damper properties to match the dominant frequency of the structural response in real-time. The effectiveness of proposed strategy in vibration reduction for deepwater risers and offshore floating wind turbines is also validated through numerical studies

Cylindrical nano-indentation on metal film/elastic substrate system with discrete dislocation plasticity analysis: A simple model for nano-indentation size effect

AbstractThe cylindrical nano-indentation on metal film/elastic substrate is computationally studied using two-dimensional discrete dislocation plasticity combined with the commercial software ANSYS®, with a focus on the storage volume for geometrically necessary dislocations (GNDs) inside the films and the nano-indentation size effect (NISE). Our calculations show that almost all GNDs are stored in a rectangular area determined by the film thickness and the actual contact width. The variations of indentation contact width with indentation depth for various film thicknesses and indenter radii are fitted by an exponential relation, and then the GND density underneath the indenter is estimated. Based on the Taylor dislocation model and Tabor formula, a simple model for the dependence of the nano-indentation hardness of the film/substrate system on the indentation depth, the indenter radius and the film thickness is established, showing a good agreement with the present numerical results

Piperidinium bis­(2-oxidobenzoato-κ2 O 1,O 2)borate

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C5H12N+·C14H8BO6 − or [C5H12N][BO4(C7H4O)2], contains two piperidinium cations and two bis­(salicylato)borate anions. The coordination geometries around the B atoms are distorted tetra­hedral. In the two mol­ecules, the aromatic rings are oriented at dihedral angles of 76.27 (3) and 83.86 (3)°. The rings containing B atoms have twist-boat conformations, while the two cations adopt chair conformations. In the crystal, the component species are linked by N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. In the crystal structure, intra- and inter­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link the mol­ecules

Object-based attention mechanism for color calibration of UAV remote sensing images in precision agriculture.

Color calibration is a critical step for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing, especially in precision agriculture, which relies mainly on correlating color changes to specific quality attributes, e.g. plant health, disease, and pest stresses. In UAV remote sensing, the exemplar-based color transfer is popularly used for color calibration, where the automatic search for the semantic correspondences is the key to ensuring the color transfer accuracy. However, the existing attention mechanisms encounter difficulties in building the precise semantic correspondences between the reference image and the target one, in which the normalized cross correlation is often computed for feature reassembling. As a result, the color transfer accuracy is inevitably decreased by the disturbance from the semantically unrelated pixels, leading to semantic mismatch due to the absence of semantic correspondences. In this article, we proposed an unsupervised object-based attention mechanism (OBAM) to suppress the disturbance of the semantically unrelated pixels, along with a further introduced weight-adjusted Adaptive Instance Normalization (AdaIN) (WAA) method to tackle the challenges caused by the absence of semantic correspondences. By embedding the proposed modules into a photorealistic style transfer method with progressive stylization, the color transfer accuracy can be improved while better preserving the structural details. We evaluated our approach on the UAV data of different crop types including rice, beans, and cotton. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms several state-of-the-art methods. As our approach requires no annotated labels, it can be easily embedded into the off-the-shelf color transfer approaches. Relevant codes and configurations will be available at https://github.com/huanghsheng/object-based-attention-mechanis

Detection and localization of citrus fruit based on improved You Only Look Once v5s and binocular vision in the orchard

Intelligent detection and localization of mature citrus fruits is a critical challenge in developing an automatic harvesting robot. Variable illumination conditions and different occlusion states are some of the essential issues that must be addressed for the accurate detection and localization of citrus in the orchard environment. In this paper, a novel method for the detection and localization of mature citrus using improved You Only Look Once (YOLO) v5s with binocular vision is proposed. First, a new loss function (polarity binary cross-entropy with logit loss) for YOLO v5s is designed to calculate the loss value of class probability and objectness score, so that a large penalty for false and missing detection is applied during the training process. Second, to recover the missing depth information caused by randomly overlapping background participants, Cr-Cb chromatic mapping, the Otsu thresholding algorithm, and morphological processing are successively used to extract the complete shape of the citrus, and the kriging method is applied to obtain the best linear unbiased estimator for the missing depth value. Finally, the citrus spatial position and posture information are obtained according to the camera imaging model and the geometric features of the citrus. The experimental results show that the recall rates of citrus detection under non-uniform illumination conditions, weak illumination, and well illumination are 99.55%, 98.47%, and 98.48%, respectively, approximately 2–9% higher than those of the original YOLO v5s network. The average error of the distance between the citrus fruit and the camera is 3.98 mm, and the average errors of the citrus diameters in the 3D direction are less than 2.75 mm. The average detection time per frame is 78.96 ms. The results indicate that our method can detect and localize citrus fruits in the complex environment of orchards with high accuracy and speed. Our dataset and codes are available at https://github.com/AshesBen/citrus-detection-localization

Acupuncture Modulates the Cerebello-Thalamo-Cortical Circuit and Cognitive Brain Regions in Patients of Parkinson's Disease With Tremor

Objective: To investigate the effect of acupuncture on Parkinson's disease (PD) patients with tremor and its potential neuromechanism by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).Methods: Forty-one PD patients with tremor were randomly assigned to true acupuncture group (TAG, n = 14), sham acupuncture group (SAG, n = 14) and waiting group (WG, n = 13). All patients received levodopa for 12 weeks. Patients in TAG were acupunctured on DU20, GB20, and the Chorea-Tremor Controlled Zone, and patients in SAG accepted sham acupuncture, while patients in WG received no acupuncture treatment until 12 weeks after the course was ended. The UPDRS II and III subscales, and fMRI scans of the patients' brains were obtained before and after the treatment course. UPDRS II and III scores were analyzed by SPSS, while the degree centrality (DC), regional homogeneity (ReHo) and amplitude low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) were determined by REST.Results: Acupuncture improved the UPDRS II and III scores in PD patients with tremor without placebo effect, only in tremor score. Acupuncture had specific effects on the cerebrocerebellar pathways as shown by the decreased DC and ReHo and increased ALFF values, and nonspecific effects on the spinocerebellar pathways as shown by the increased ReHo and ALFF values (P < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected). Increased ReHo values were observed within the thalamus and motor cortex of the PD patients (P < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected). In addition, the default mode network (DMN), visual areas and insula were activated by the acupuncture with increased DC, ReHo and/or ALFF, while the prefrontal cortex (PFC) presented a significant decrease in ReHo and ALFF values after acupuncture (P < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected).Conclusions: The cerebellum, thalamus and motor cortex, which are connected to the cerebello-thalamo-cortical (CTC) circuit, were modulated by the acupuncture stimulation to alleviate the PD tremor. The regulation of neural activity within the cognitive brain regions (the DMN, visual areas, insula and PFC) together with CTC circuit may contributes to enhancing movement and improving patients' daily life activities

Climate change : strategies for mitigation and adaptation

The sustainability of life on Earth is under increasing threat due to humaninduced climate change. This perilous change in the Earth's climate is caused by increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, primarily due to emissions associated with burning fossil fuels. Over the next two to three decades, the effects of climate change, such as heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, storms, and floods, are expected to worsen, posing greater risks to human health and global stability. These trends call for the implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies. Pollution and environmental degradation exacerbate existing problems and make people and nature more susceptible to the effects of climate change. In this review, we examine the current state of global climate change from different perspectives. We summarize evidence of climate change in Earth’s spheres, discuss emission pathways and drivers of climate change, and analyze the impact of climate change on environmental and human health. We also explore strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation and highlight key challenges for reversing and adapting to global climate change

MICA/B expression is inhibited by unfolded protein response and associated with poor prognosis in human hepatocellular carcinoma

BackgroundMICA/B are major ligands for NK cell activating receptor NKG2D and previous studies showed that the serum level of soluble MICA (sMICA) is an independent prognostic factor for advanced human hepatocellular carcinoma. However, the correlation between cellular MICA/B expression pattern and human hepatocellular carcinoma progression has not been well explored. The unfolded protein response is one of the main causes of resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy in tumor cells. However, whether the UPR in HCC could regulate the expression levels of MICA/B and affect the sensitivity of HCC cells to NK cell cytolysis has not been established yet.MethodsMICA/B expression pattern was evaluated by immunohistochemistry and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was done to explore the relationship between MICA/B expression level and patient survival. The protein and mRNA expression levels of MICA/B in SMMC7721 and HepG2 cells treated by tunicamycin were evaluated by flow cytometry, Western Blot and RT-PCR. The cytotoxicity analysis was performed with the CytoTox 96 Non-Radioactive LDH Cytotoxicity Assay.ResultsMICA/B was highly expressed in human hepatocellular carcinoma and the expression level was significantly and negatively associated with tumor-node metastasis (TNM) stages. Patients with low level of MICA/B expression showed a trend of shorter survival time. The unfolded protein response (UPR) downregulated the expression of MICA/B. This decreased protein expression occurred via post-transcriptional regulation and was associated with proteasomal degradation. Moreover, decreased expression level of MICA/B led to the attenuated sensitivity of human HCC to NK cell cytotoxicity.ConclusionThese new findings of the connection of MICA/B, UPR and NK cells may represent a new concrete theory of NK cell regulation in HCC, and suggest that targeting this novel NK cell-associated immune evasion pathway may be meaningful in treating patients with HCC.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13046-014-0076-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users