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Serpentinite-derived soils are characterized by low Ca/Mg ratio and abnormally high Cr and Ni concentrations due to the geogenic sources. The breakdown of parent materials during pedogenesis may lead to the changes in both Ca/Mg ratios and fractions of Cr and Ni. This study hypothesized that total Ca/Mg (Cat/Mgt) and exchangeable Ca/Mg (Cae/Mge) ratios increase with soil development, associated with the increases in potentially mobile fractions (PMFs) of Cr and Ni. Thirty-five soil horizon samples of eight pedons from Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Vietnam were collected, and the exchangeable concentrations of Ca and Mg were measured. |
Functionally graded materials (FGMs) are increasingly used in sandwich construction to improve mechanical performance of structures. The effective material properties used in modelling FGM structures, however, are dependent on a chosen homogenization scheme. For the first time, the influence of different homogenization schemes on large deflections of dual-phase FGM sandwich beams is studied in this paper by using a nonlinear finite element procedure. |
The objective of this review is to evaluate the anti-dementia activities of saffron and its combination with Kampo medicine. The Kampo formula Kamiuntanto composed of 13 crude drugs is well known for its anti-dementia activity. A significant increase in choline acetyltransferase activity and mRNA levels were observed. Polygala radix was identified as the most essential component drug in Kamiuntanto, probably due to the saponins, tenuifolin, and sinapinic acid. Ginseng was also identified as an essential Kamiuntanto component in terms of its synergistic functions with Polygala radix. Saffron, which was recommended in the Bencao Gangmu for memory and dementia, and is used as an anti-spasmodic, anti-catarrhal, and sedative herbal drug. Saffron and its major constituent, crocin were sho... |
In this paper, we numerically investigate the dynamics of a compound droplet driven by surface tension variation induced by a thermal gradient in a sinusoidal constriction tube. Initially, the compound droplet with a concentric inner core is spherical and placed in the constriction's upstream region at a low temperature. As time progresses, it migrates downstream with a high temperature. Due to the constriction, the droplet is slowed down in the upstream region and accelerated again right after passing the constriction. This acceleration maximizes the eccentricity. However, the constriction results in an increase in the maximum eccentricity when increasing its depth to a value corresponding to the size of the tube neck, which is greater than or equal to the droplet size. Effects of ... |
The turbine shaft is an important part of the turbocharger structure. This part requires quite high hardness, especially when operating it needs high strength to ensure the working conditions with very high speed, pressure and temperature. This paper presents the research results of the effects of temperature and heat retention time at high tempering on the hardness and tensile strength of the turbine shaft in the HX40W model turbocharger structure made of 42CrMo steel. |
Plant-leaf diseases have become a significant threat to food security due to reducing the quantity and quality of agricultural products. Plant disease detection methods are commonly based on experience through manual observations of leaves. Developing fast, accurate, and automated techniques for identifying of crop diseases using computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) can help overcome human shortcomings. In the current study, the EfficientNet architectures with pre-trained Noisy-Student weights were implemented using the transfer learning approach to classify leaf image-based healthy and diseased plant groups. The deep learning models were performed on the extended and enhanced PlantVillage datasets, consisting of leaf images of 14 different plant species, with background... |
Intramuscular delivery of human adenovirus (HAdV)-based vaccines leads to rapid recruitment of neutrophils, which then release antimicrobial peptides/proteins (AMPs). How these AMPs influence vaccine efficacy over the subsequent 24 h is poorly understood. In this study, we asked if human neutrophil protein 1 (HNP-1), an α-defensin that influences direct and indirect innate immune responses to a range of pathogens, impacts the response of human phagocytes to three HAdV species/types (HAdV-C5, -D26, -B35). We show that HNP-1 binds to the capsids and redirects HAdV-C5, -D26, and -B35 to Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), which leads to internalization, an NLRP3-mediated inflammasome response, and interleukin 1 beta (IL-1β) release. Surprisingly, IL-1β release was not associated with notable ... |
In this paper, we consider a distributed joint sensing and communication (DJSC) system in which each radar sensor as a JSC node is equipped with a sensing function and a communication function. Deploying multiple JSC nodes may require a large amount of bandwidth. Therefore, we investigate the bandwidth allocation problem for the DJSC system. In particular, we aim to optimize the bandwidth allocation to the sensing function and the communication function of the JSC nodes. To improve the allocation efficiency while benefiting the spatial diversity advantage of the DJSC systems, the objective is to maximize the sum of sensing performances, i.e., estimation rates, communication performances, i.e., communication data rates, and fairness of all the users. The optimization problem is non-c... |
The threats of drug resistance and new emerging pathogens have led to an urgent need to develop alternative treatment therapies. Recently, considerable research efforts have focused on membrane-active peptides (MAPs), a category of peptides in drug discovery with antimicrobial, anticancer, and cell penetration activities that have demonstrated their potential to be multifunctional agents. Nonetheless, natural MAPs have encountered various disadvantages, which mainly include poor bioavailability, the lack of a secondary structure in short peptides, and high production costs for long peptide sequences. Hence, an “all-hydrocarbon stapling system” has been applied to these peptides and proven to effectively stabilize the helical conformations, improving proteolytic resistance and increa... |
This work develops a Neural Network (NN) model for the prediction of the tensile modulus of carbon nanotube (CN)/polymer nanocomposites, based on experimental database. A data set composed of 282 configurations is collected from available resources. Considered input variables of the dataset are such as mechanical properties of separated phases, density of polymer matrix, processing method, geometry of CN, modification method at the CN surface, etc. while the problem output is the tensile modulus of nanocomposite. Parametric studies have been performed in finding optimum architecture of the proposed NN model. |
