Three-year performance of in-situ mass stabilised contaminated site soils using MgO-bearing binders

This paper provides physical and chemical performances of mass stabilised organic and inorganic contaminated site soils using a new group of MgO-bearing binders over 3 years and evaluated the time-dependent performance during the 3 years. This study took place at a contaminated site in Castleford, UK in 2011, where MgO, ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS) and Portland cement (PC) were mixed with the contaminated soils in a dry form using the ALLU mass mixing equipment. Soil cores were retrieved 40-day, 1-year and 3-year after the treatment. The core quality, strength, and the leaching properties were determined via physical observation, unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and batch leaching tests. After 3-year treatment, the UCS values of ALLU mixes were in the range of 50–250 kPa; the leachate concentrations of Cd, Pb, Cu and Zn (except Ni) in all mixes were lower than their drinking water standards; and the leachability of total organics was in the range of 10–105 mg/L. No apparent degradation of the mass stabilised materials after 3 years’ exposure to the field conditions was found. MgO-GGBS blends were found able to provide higher strength and less leachability of contaminants compared to PC and MgO-only mixes in mass stabilised soils

Fog Network Task Scheduling for IoT Applications

In the Internet of Things (IoT) networks, the data traffic would be very bursty and unpredictable. It is therefore very difficult to analyze and guarantee the delay performance for delay-sensitive IoT applications in fog networks, such as emergency monitoring, intelligent manufacturing, and autonomous driving. To address this challenging problem, a Bursty Elastic Task Scheduling (BETS) algorithm is developed to best accommodate bursty task arrivals and various requirements in IoT networks, thus optimizing service experience for delay-sensitive applications with only limited communication resources in time-varying and competing environments. To better describe the stability and consistence of Quality of Service (QoS) in realistic scenarios, a new performance metric "Bursty Service Experience Index (BSEI)" is defined and quantified as delay jitter normalized by the average delay. Finally, the numeral results shows that the performance of BETS is fully evaluated, which can achieve 5-10 times lower BSEI than traditional task scheduling algorithms, e.g. Proportional Fair (PF) and the Max Carrier-to-Interference ratio (MCI), under bursty traffic conditions. These results demonstrate that BETS can effectively smooth down the bursty characteristics in IoT networks, and provide much predictable and acceptable QoS for delay-sensitive applications

Effects of E2 on ApoE Secretion and Neurite Outgrowth in Cultured Adult Mouse Cortical Neurons

Estrogen replacement therapy appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD). The mechanism whereby estrogen prevents the pathogenesis of AD is unknown. In the present study, I examined the effects of 17-β-estradiol (E2) on neurite outgrowth from adult mice cortical neurons (AMC) in culture. I found that E2 increases apoE secretion and neurite outgrowth in AMC neurons from wild type mice in a dose dependent fashion. The neurite outgrowth promoting effect of E2 was not observed in AMC neurons derived from age-, sex-, and stain-matched apoE deficient/apoE gene knockout (apoE KO) mice. Furthermore, E2 has isoform specific effects on neurite outgrowth in the presence of purified recombinant human apoE. The presence of human apoE2 or apoE3 greatly augmented E2 effects on promoting neurite outgrowth, whereas the presence of apoE4 had no significant effect. Consistent with these findings, E2 had differential effects on neurite outgrowth from AMC neurons derived from transgenic mice expressing human apoE isoforms. Incubation of AMC neurons from apoE3 transgenic mice with E2 significantly increased neurite outgrowth, whereas incubation of AMC neurons from apoE4 transgenic mice with E2 had no significant effect. In summary, my data suggest that apoE isoforms play a critical role in mediating the neurite outgrowth promoting effect of E2