The energy and exergy analysis on the performance of counter-flow heat and mass exchanger for M-Cycle indirect evaporative cooling

© 2018 Serbian Society of Heat Transfer Engineers. The dew point Indirect Evaporative Cooling (IEC) achieved through Maisotsenko cycle (M-Cycle) is a complicated thermodynamic process. For further understanding of the heat and mass transfer occurred in a dew point indirect evaporative air cooler with M-Cycle counter-flow configuration, the paper presents a novel mathematical model that combined the law of energy conservation and the principle of the thermodynamic theory. The model was used to carry out the parametric study of the dew point air cooler under various inlet air temperature and relative humidity. Through the combined analysis of energy and exergy of the target IEC system, it is found that both the inlet air temperature and relative humidity have an important effect on the thermal performance and thermodynamic performance of the heat and mass exchanger. The high temperature environment helps to get better thermal performance and thermodynamic performance. It has been showed in this paper that the best thermal performance does not correspond to the best thermodynamic performance. Thus, the energy and exergy analysis should be implemented simultaneously for the optimization of the process to get the best thermal performance at permissible level of thermodynamic cost

Strigolactone regulation of shoot branching in chrysanthemum (Dendranthema grandiflorum).

Previous studies of highly branched mutants in pea (rms1-rms5), Arabidopsis thaliana (max1-max4), petunia (dad1-dad3), and rice (d3, d10, htd1/d17, d14, d27) identified strigolactones or their derivates (SLs), as shoot branching inhibitors. This recent discovery offers the possibility of using SLs to regulate branching commercially, for example, in chrysanthemum, an important cut flower crop. To investigate this option, SL physiology and molecular biology were studied in chrysanthemum (Dendranthema grandiflorum), focusing on the CCD8/MAX4/DAD1/RMS1/D10 gene. Our results suggest that, as has been proposed for Arabidopsis, the ability of SLs to inhibit bud activity depends on the presence of a competing auxin source. The chrysanthemum SL biosynthesis gene, CCD8 was cloned, and found to be regulated in a similar, but not identical way to known CCD8s. Expression analyses revealed that DgCCD8 is predominantly expressed in roots and stems, and is up-regulated by exogenous auxin. Exogenous SL can down-regulate DgCCD8 expression, but this effect can be overridden by apical auxin application. This study provides evidence that SLs are promising candidates to alter the shoot branching habit of chrysanthemum

The energy and exergy analysis of counter-flow regenerative evaporative cooler

© 2018 Serbian Society of Heat Transfer Engineers. Recently the regenerative evaporative cooler (REC) has drawn great attention from researchers because it can cool the intake air below the wet-bulb temperature and approaching its dew point temperature. For further understanding of the heat and mass transfer occurred in a counter-flow REC, a novel mathematical model is developed based on the law of energy conservation and the principle of the thermodynamic theory. The proposed mathematical model is validated against experimental data from literature. The parametric study is performed to investigate the performance of the REC under different operating and geometrical conditions. It is found that the exergy destruction and exergy efficiency ratio of the REC are strongly influenced by the intake air velocity, the working to intake air ratio and channel gap, followed by the channel length. The working to intake air ratio choosing from 0.3 to 0.4 is appropriate in order to achieve better thermal performance with permissible level of thermodynamic cost. Moreover, the results obtained in this paper reveal that the best thermal performance does not correspond to the best thermodynamic performance. Thus, both the first and second law of thermodynamics should be considered for a comprehensive analysis

A New Double Color Image Watermarking Algorithm Based on the SVD and Arnold Scrambling

We propose a new image watermarking scheme based on the real SVD and Arnold scrambling to embed a color watermarking image into a color host image. Before embedding watermark, the color watermark image W with size of M×M is scrambled by Arnold transformation to obtain a meaningless image W~. Then, the color host image A with size of N×N is divided into nonoverlapping N/M×N/M pixel blocks. In each (i,j) pixel block Ai,j, we form a real matrix Ci,j with the red, green, and blue components of Ai,j and perform the SVD of Ci,j. We then replace the three smallest singular values of Ci,j by the red, green, and blue values of W~ij with scaling factor, to form a new watermarked host image A~ij. With the reserve procedure, we can extract the watermark from the watermarked host image. In the process of the algorithm, we only need to perform real number algebra operations, which have very low computational complexity and are more effective than the one using the quaternion SVD of color image

绿色汉江 河流保护运动的城市动员 = The city mobilization of ‘Green Han River’for river protection movement

自1978年改革以来，中国以牺牲环境为代价步入了高速的工业化。汉江及其支流受到许多低成本运营的中小企业严重污染。随着27%的汉江水将被南水北调到北京，这意味着下游人民也会面临同样的问题。面对所有这些问题，公众通常是责备政府而非行动起来解决问题。直到2002年，运建立发起了湖北省第一个民间环保组织“绿色汉江”。而绿色汉江的核心团队是由几位退休老人组成的。 作为一位老年女性，运建立站在调研、监督、倡导、教育行动和地方村级水项目的最前线。她给3000多人做过600多次演讲。大家都叫她“赤脚环保主义者”或者“环保奶奶”。在整个团队志愿工作的基础上，她用热情和坚持感动了很多人。包括政府、市民、企业、学校、幼儿园，不管是年老的或年轻的、教育家还是村庄社区等社会各阶层，都参与了进来。绿色汉江现有团体会员66个，个体会员160个，3000多名志愿者。经过他们的努力，整治汉江及其支流的污染已经取得到了突破性的转变。越来越多的襄阳人知道了环境问题就在身边，“关爱母亲河，保护水资源”已逐渐变成广大民众的自觉行动。作为一个以社区为本的组织，绿色汉江不是依靠外界的资助，而是依靠志愿者们的热情和责任承担。 运建立和她的志愿者们证明了普通人如何能用行动带来社会和生态环境的改变。越来越多城市和乡村的人们出于基本的生计关切投入到绿色运动当中，而不只是中产阶级的共识。随着数以万计的人们真正的民主志愿参与，这才成为一项可持续的运动。 Since the reform of 1978, China’s high speed industrialization was carried out at the expense of the environment. The Han River and its tributaries were seriously polluted by a lot of small and medium factories operating at low cost. In addition, the diverting of 27% of the river water from Han River to Beijing in the north also means added problems to the people living downstream. Faced with all the problems, the public might blame the government but would not take up action to address the problems. Until 2002, YUN Jianli initiated ‘Green Han River’, the first non-governmental organization for environmental protection in Hubei Province. And the core team of the organization is made up of several retired. As an elderly lady, YUN Jianli is at the forefront of the investigations, monitoring, advocacy, educational campaigns and local water projects in villages. She has delivered over 600 talks to 300,000 audiences. People always call her ‘Barefoot Environmentalist’, or ‘Granny Eco’. With the entire team working on a voluntary basis, she has moved many people with her passion and her persistence. They engage with all sectors of society including the government, urban citizens, enterprises, schools, kindergartens, old and young volunteers, educationists, as well as at the village and community level. Green Han River currently has a membership of 66 organizations, 160 individuals, and more than 30,000 volunteers. Through their efforts, a remarkable change has taken place in rectifying the serious pollution of the Han River and its tributaries. More and more people in Xiangyang are becoming aware of the environmental problem. ‘Protecting the water resource, protecting our mother river’ has become the common consciousness of Xiangyang people. As a community-based organization, it has depended not on external funding but on the enthusiasm and commitment of the volunteers. YUN Jianli and her volunteers demonstrate how ordinary people can take action for social and eco-environment change. More and more people participate in the green movement which is not simply a concern of the middle class, but a concern of the majority of rural and urban population for basic livelihood. This is becoming a sustained movement with the voluntary, genuine and democratic participation of tens of thousands of people

MAGEA1 inhibits the expression of BORIS via increased promoter methylation

Melanoma-associated antigen A1 (MAGEA1) and BORIS (also known as CTCFL) are members of the cancer testis antigen (CTA) family. Their functions and expression-regulation mechanisms are not fully understood. In this study, we reveal new functions and regulatory mechanisms of MAGEA1 and BORIS in breast cancer cells, which we investigated in parental and genetically manipulated breast cancer cells via gene overexpression or siRNA-mediated downregulation. We identified the interaction between MAGEA1 and CTCF, which is required for the binding of MAGEA1 to the BORIS promoter and is critical for the recruitment of DNMT3a. A protein complex containing MAGEA1, CTCF and DNMT3a was formed before or after conjunction with the BORIS promoter. The binding of this complex to the BORIS promoter accounts for the hypermethylation and repression of BORIS expression, which results in cell death in the breast cancer cell lines tested. Multiple approaches were employed, including co-immunoprecipitation, glutathione S-transferase pull-down assay, co-localization and cell death analyses using annexin V-FITC/propidium iodide double-staining and caspase 3 activation assays, chromatin immunoprecipitation and bisulfite sequencing PCR assays for methylation. Our results have implications for the development of strategies in CTA-based immune therapeutics

H2TF for Hyperspectral Image Denoising: Where Hierarchical Nonlinear Transform Meets Hierarchical Matrix Factorization

Recently, tensor singular value decomposition (t-SVD) has emerged as a promising tool for hyperspectral image (HSI) processing. In the t-SVD, there are two key building blocks: (i) the low-rank enhanced transform and (ii) the accompanying low-rank characterization of transformed frontal slices. Previous t-SVD methods mainly focus on the developments of (i), while neglecting the other important aspect, i.e., the exact characterization of transformed frontal slices. In this letter, we exploit the potentiality in both building blocks by leveraging the \underline{\bf H}ierarchical nonlinear transform and the \underline{\bf H}ierarchical matrix factorization to establish a new \underline{\bf T}ensor \underline{\bf F}actorization (termed as H2TF). Compared to shallow counter partners, e.g., low-rank matrix factorization or its convex surrogates, H2TF can better capture complex structures of transformed frontal slices due to its hierarchical modeling abilities. We then suggest the H2TF-based HSI denoising model and develop an alternating direction method of multipliers-based algorithm to address the resultant model. Extensive experiments validate the superiority of our method over state-of-the-art HSI denoising methods

Multiobjective nonfragile fuzzy control for nonlinear stochastic financial systems with mixed time delays

In this study, a multiobjective nonfragile control is proposed for a class of stochastic Takagi and Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy systems with mixed time delays to guarantee the optimal H2 and H∞ performance simultaneously. Firstly, based on the T–S fuzzy model, two form of nonfragile state feedback controllers are designed to stabilize the T–S fuzzy system, that is to say, nonfragile state feedback controllers minimize the H2 and H∞ performance simultaneously. Then, by applying T–S fuzzy approach, the multiobjective H2/H∞ nonfragile fuzzy control problem is transformed into linear matrix inequality (LMI)-constrained multiobjective problem (MOP). In addition, we efficiently solve Pareto optimal solutions for the MOP by employing LMI-based multiobjective evolution algorithm (MOEA). Finally, the validity of this approach is illustrated by a realistic design example

Chibby functions in Xenopus ciliary assembly, embryonic development, and the regulation of gene expression

AbstractWnt signaling and ciliogenesis are core features of embryonic development in a range of metazoans. Chibby (Cby), a basal-body associated protein, regulates β-catenin-mediated Wnt signaling in the mouse but not Drosophila. Here we present an analysis of Cby׳s embryonic expression and morphant phenotypes in Xenopus laevis. Cby RNA is supplied maternally, negatively regulated by Snail2 but not Twist1, preferentially expressed in the neuroectoderm, and regulates β-catenin-mediated gene expression. Reducing Cby levels reduced the density of multiciliated cells, the number of basal bodies per multiciliated cell, and the numbers of neural tube primary cilia; it also led to abnormal development of the neural crest, central nervous system, and pronephros, all defects that were rescued by a Cby-GFP chimera. Reduction of Cby led to an increase in Wnt8a and decreases in Gli2, Gli3, and Shh RNA levels. Many, but not all, morphant phenotypes were significantly reversed by the Wnt inhibitor SFRP2. These observations extend our understanding of Cby׳s role in mediating the network of interactions between ciliogenesis, signaling systems and tissue patterning