Aging rate differs greatly between species, indicating that the process of senescence is largely genetically determined. Senescence evolves in part due to antagonistic pleiotropy (AP), where selection favors gene variants that increase fitness earlier in life but promote pathology later. Identifying the biological mechanisms by which AP causes senescence is key to understanding the endogenous causes of aging and its attendant diseases. Here we argue that the frequent occurrence of AP as a property of genes reflects the presence of constraint in the biological systems that they specify. This arises particularly because the functionally interconnected nature of biological systems constrains the simultaneous optimization of coupled traits (interconnection constraints), or because individual traits cannot evolve (impossibility constraints). We present an account of aging that integrates AP and biological constraint with recent programmatic aging concepts, including costly programs, quasi-programs, hyperfunction and hypofunction. We argue that AP mechanisms of costly programs and triggered quasi-programs are consequences of constraint, in which costs resulting from hyperfunction or hypofunction cause senescent pathology. Impossibility constraint can also cause hypofunction independently of AP. We also describe how AP corresponds to Stephen Jay Gould’s constraint-based concept of evolutionary spandrels, and argue that pathologies arising from AP are bad spandrels. Biological constraint is a missing link between ultimate and proximate causes of senescence, including diseases of aging. That this was not realized previously may reflect a combination of hyperadaptationism among evolutionary biologists, and the erroneous assumption by biogerontologists that molecular damage accumulation is the principal primary cause of aging.

Background: COVID-19 is a disease of the elderly as 95% of deaths related to COVID-19 occur in people over 60 years of age. Despite the urgent need for a preventive treatment there are currently no serious leads, other than the vaccination. Objective: To find a preventive treatment of COVID-19 in elderly patients. Design: Retrospective case-control study. Setting: Robertsau Geriatric Hospital of the University Hospitals of Strasbourg, France. Patients: 179 elderly patients who had been in contact with the SARS-CoV-2, of whom 89 had tested RT-PCR-positive (COVID-pos) for the virus and 90 had tested RT-PCR-negative (COVID-neg). Measurements: Treatments within 15 days prior to RT-PCR (including antihypertensive drugs, antipsychotics, antibiotics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), paracetamol, anticoagulant, oral antidiabetics (OADs), corticosteroids, immunosuppressants), comorbidities, symptoms, laboratory values, and clinical outcome were all collected using the electronic patient record. Results: COVID-pos patients more frequently had a history of diabetes (P=.016) and alcoholism (P=.023), a lower leukocyte count (P=.014) and a higher mortality rate– 29.2% versus 14.4% – (P=.014) when compared to COVID-neg patients. Patients on PPIs were 2.3 times less likely (odds ratio [OR] = 0.4381, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.2331, 0.8175], P=.0053) to develop COVID-19 infection, compared to those not on PPIs. No other treatment decreased or increased this risk. COVID-19 patients on antipsychotics (P=.0013) and OADs (P=.0166) were less likely to die. Limitations: retrospective study. Conclusion: PPIs treatment lowered the risk of development of COVID-19 infection, and antipsychotics and OADs decreased the risk of mortality in geriatric patients. If further studies confirm this finding, PPIs could be used preventatively in the elderly in this pandemic context. Moreover, OADS and antipsychotics should be tested in clinical trials.

Aluminum wire is a common material for wire bonding due to its resistance to oxidation and low price. It does not melt when becoming a free air ball (FAB) during the electronic flame-off (EFO) process with wettability, and is applied by wedge bonding. This study used 20μm Zn-Coated Al-0.5wt.%Si (ZAS) wires to improve the FAB shape after the EFO process, while maintaining stability of the mechanical properties, including the interface bonding strength and hardness. In order to test circuit stability after ball bonding, the current-tensile test was performed. During the experiment, it was found that 80nm ZAS with wire bonding has lower resistance and higher fusing current. For the bias tensile test, the thicker Zn film diffused into the Al-Si matrix easily, after which the strength was reduced. The ball-bond interfaces had no change in their condition before and after the bias. Accordingly, ZAS could be a promising candidate for ball bonding in the future.

A time-sequential working, spatially multiplexed autostereoscopic 3D display design consisting of a fast switchable RGB-color filter array is presented. The wavelength-selective filter barrier emits the light from a display over a larger active area than common autostereoscopic barrier displays. An optical modelling of wavelength-selective barriers has been used for instance to calculate the light ray distribution properties of that arrangement. To find well working display designs, automated searches by simulation and computational evaluation has been proceeded. Wavelength-selective filter barrier arrangements exhibit characteristics different from common barrier displays with similar barrier pitch and ascent. In particular, these constructions show strong angular luminance dependency under barrier inclination specified by correspondent slant angle. In time-sequential implementation it is important to avoid that quick eye or eyelid movement lead to visible color artifacts. In the millisecond regime tunable liquid crystal Fabry-Pérot color filters for the colors red, green and blue are presented. They consist of a sub-micrometer thick nematic layer sandwiched between dielectric mirrors and ITO-electrodes. These cells shall switch narrow-banding light of red, green or blue. An array for a glasses-free 3D display has to be equipped with several thousand switchable filter elements having different color apertures. The newly introduced design is usable as a multi user display as well as a single user system with user adaptive control.

The hump feature is one of the major instabilities in pump-turbines. When pump-turbines operate in the hump region, strong noise and serious fluctuations can be observed, which are harmful to their safe and stable operation and can even destroy the whole unit as well as water conveyance system. In this paper, a low specific speed (n_q = 36.1 min⁻¹) pump-turbine model was experimentally investigated. Firstly, the hump characteristic was obtained under 19 mm guide vane opening conditions. More interestingly, when the hump characteristic was measured in two directions (increasing and decreasing the discharge), characteristic hysteresis was found in the hump region. The analysis of performance characteristics reveals that the hump instability is the result of Euler momentum and hydraulic losses, and different Euler momentum and hydraulic losses in the two development processes lead to the hysteresis phenomenon. Then, 12 pressure sensors were mounted in the different parts of the pump-turbine model to obtain the time and frequency characteristics. The analysis of the corresponding fast Fourier transform confirms that the hump characteristic is related to low-frequency (0.04–0.15 times rotational frequency) vortices. The occurrence and cessation of vortices depend on the operating condition and measurement direction, which contribute to the hysteresis feature. Finally, the type of the low-frequency vortices was analyzed through the cross power spectrum.

A pump station is a very important flood control facility for mitigating inundation of urban lowland areas. It is not easy to secure a site to increase the capacity of a pump station in an urban area because of various limitations or to maximize the discharge capacity of the pump sump. Adding a facility to improve the pump capacity of a pump station may affect the flow characteristics, such as unexpected increases in the flow velocity and vorticity, and cause severe problems with operating the pump station. To solve those problems, anti-vortex devices (AVDs) have been developed and adopted for appropriate design standards. The Korean design criteria for AVDs are based on experience and foreign standards because not enough data on the AVD are available. In this study, the flow in the sump was numerically simulated at various AVD heights to collect information on improving the design and efficiency of a pump station. Consequently, an appropriate height for the AVD and changes in the flow pattern and vortex in the pump sump were determined and compared with 12 cases of inflow conditions with respect to the vertical location.

The objective of this paper was to give an overview of the expressed preference (EP) techniques of environmental valuation. These methods offer estimation of the value of a resource not necessarily willingness to pay (WTP) or willingness to Accept (WTA) compensation rather upper and lower values. The method of measuring individuals’ willingness to pay is usually based on contingent valuation method (CVM). This research focuses on defining, categorizing, and applicability of various environmental valuation techniques that have been and can be applied in attaching value to a given resource using expressed/Revealed preference methods. The study serves as a supplementary synthesis and discussion to the board of knowledge of resource valuation methods. More specifically, selected methods to discussed herein include; contingent valuation method, hedonic pricing model, travel cost method, trade-off game method, the costless-choice method, Delphi method, Replacement Cost Method, Relocation Cost Method, Opportunity cost method, and Cost-benefit Method. In the last part, applicability of the methods is fully illustrated to support future studies on resource valuation.

A wide variety of pump and treat methods like chemical precipitation, adsorption, ion exchange and reverse osmosis have been trialled for many decades for fluoride removal from groundwater, but the problem of fluoride contaminated water remains in many parts of the world largely because these processes require constant monitoring, are expensive to implement and maintain at decentralised scale due to lack of reticulation infrastructure, and possess sludge disposal problem. This paper presents an overview of various fluoride removal processes and the limitations associated with each process and the application of in-situ permeable reactive barrier for remediating fluoride contaminated groundwater is explored, which displays the potential to be a cost effective, low maintenance and energy intensive technology.

In airborne sensor networks (ASNs), the media access control (MAC) protocol is facing with serious unfairness problem due to the traditional protection mechanism of air-to-air communications among aircrafts. Actually by using the binary exponential back-off algorithm at high traffic loads to minimize collisions among users, the latest successful node can always benefit from this kind of MAC to obtain channel resources. Moreover, when taking the existence of the hidden nodes in ASNs into account, the inaccurate traffic load information will further aggravate the system’s unfairness. In this paper, a neighbor-channel-aware (NCA) protocol is proposed to improve the fairness of MAC protocol in ASNs. In the proposal, the NCA frame is firstly added and exchanged between neighbor nodes periodically, which helps to resolve the inaccurate traffic load information, so as to avoid reducing the probability of successful message transmission. Then a traffic-loading based back-off algorithm is involved to make the neighbor nodes cooperatively adjust the inter-frame space (IFS) interval to further reduce the unfairness. The simulation results show that, the proposed MAC protocol can guarantee the satisfied fairness, simultaneously avoiding heavy network overloads to protect key messages’ successful transmissions in ASNs.

This paper studies the optimization method of pump hydraulic performance based on the response surface method. A parametric model of impeller and diffuser is established. Three-dimensional optimization is carried out on the basis of the initial model obtained by one-dimensional design method. We select the pump hydraulic efficiency and the head as objective function and constraint function. Response surface models are constructed to analyze the relationship between the objectives and the design variables, and the global optimization of hydraulic performance is realized. According to the internal flow characteristics of pump, this paper proposes the strategy of two steps optimization, which aims at meridional plane and blade shape, respectively, to solve the problem of large numbers of design parameters and computational cost. The optimization results show that the hydraulic efficiency of pump increased by 3.7%, and the head is nearly the same.

Bacterial antibiotic resistance has become a major global health concern. One of the main reasons for the development of multi-drug resistance properties in bacteria is due to the bacterial efflux pump systems. They are important transport proteins, mainly involved in the removal of toxic substrates like antibiotics from inner cell environment. These pumps are responsible for the intrinsic ability of bacteria to get resistant to the antibiotic. Various types of efflux pumps are present in the Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Plant-derived products like Capsaicin, Olympicin A, and Indirubicin were found to be inhibitors of an efflux pump in Staphylococcus aureus similarly Ursolic acid derivatives; Daidzein and Lanatoside C were plant-derived inhibitors of an efflux pump in Escherichia coli. In this review detail information have been provided about efflux pump inhibitors that have been found to be effective in the Gram-positive bacteria and Gram-negative bacteria. The aim of this review is to focus on the role of plant-derived compounds as effective efflux pumps inhibitors with reference to mainly Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli.

Cryptococcus neoformans causes meningoencephalitis in immunocompromised individuals, which is treated with Fluconazole (FLC) monotherapy when resources are limited. This can lead to azole resistance, which can be mediated by overexpression of ABC transporters, a class of efflux pumps. ABC pump-mediated efflux of FLC is also augmented in 10-generation old C. neoformans cells. Here, we describe a new ABC transporter Afr3 (CNAG_06909), which is overexpressed in C. neoformans cells of advanced generational age, that accumulate during chronic infection. The delta-afr3 mutant strain showed higher FLC susceptibility by FLC E-Test strip testing and also by a killing test that measured survival after 3 h FLC exposure. Furthermore, delta-afr3 cells exhibited lower Rhodamine 6G efflux compared to the H99 wild type cells. Afr3 was expressed in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae AD-delta strain, which lacks several drug transporters, thus reducing background transport. The AD-delta + Afr3 strain demonstrated a higher efflux with both Rhodamine 6G and Nile Red, even though the FLC MICs were not changed. Characterization of the delta-afr3 mutant revealed unattenuated growth but a prolongation (22%) of the replicative life span. In addition, delta-afr3 exhibited decreased resistance to macrophage killing and attenuated virulence in the Galleria mellonella infection model. In summary, our data indicate that a novel ABC pump Afr3p, which is upregulated in C. neoformans cells of advanced age may contribute to their enhanced FLC tolerance, by promoting drug efflux. Lastly, its role in macrophage resistance may also contribute to the selection of older C. neoformans cells during chronic infection.

Energy is a fundamental ingredient in economic development and energy consumption is an index of prosperity and the standard of living. The consumption of energy has increased significantly in the last number of decades, as the standard of living has improved. Renewable energy is a sustainable and clean source of energy derived from nature. Renewable energy technology is one of the solutions, which produces energy by transforming natural resources into useful energy forms. When you do something for the first time in the world, you never attain a perfect product or solution from the start. In Central Greece Lamia city, we are the first to design and implement an off-grid energy system using hydrogen energy storage technology and phase change materials for a house residence. The action plan for energy efficiency, a series of directives and incentive mechanisms, mandatory energy certification of buildings, indicate the urgent need to reduce energy consumption in buildings, which results in a more comfortable living, long service life of buildings, which in turn preserves the environment.

Most of α-thalassemia cases are caused by deletions of the structural α-globin genes. The degree of microcytosis and hypochromia has been correlated with the number of affected α-globin genes, suggesting a promising role of hematologic parameters as predictive diagnostic tools. However, specific cut-off points for these parameters to discriminate between the different subtypes of α-thalassemia remain to be clearly defined. Six hematologic parameters (total number of erythrocytes, hemoglobin concentration, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration and red cell distribution width) were evaluated in 174 cases of deletional α-thalassemia (92 heterozygous α+ thalassemia, 39 homozygous α+ thalassemia, 34 heterozygous α0 thalassemia and 9 cases of Hb H disease). A good correlation between the number of deleted alpha genes and MCV (r = -0.672, p<0.001), MCH (r = -0.788, p<0.001) and RDW (r = 0.633, p<0.001) was observed. The deletion of at least two alpha genes in adult individuals with microcytosis without iron deficiency and normal values of Hb A2 and Hb F should be discarded when MCH levels are lower than 23.15 pg. Furthermore, MCH <21.90 pg and/or MCV <70.80 fL are strongly suggestive of the presence of one α0 allele. Finally, an accurate presumptive diagnosis of Hb H disease can be made if both RDW ≥20% and MCH <18.45 pg are seen.

Due to the periodic movement of the piston in the reciprocating pump, the fluid will cause pressure pulsation, and the vibration of the pipeline will lead to instrument distortion, pipe failure and equipment damage. Therefore, it is necessary to study the vibration phenomena of the reciprocating pump pipeline based on the pressure pulsation theory. This paper starts from the reciprocating pump pipe pressure pulsation caused by fluid, pressure pulsation in the pipeline and the excited force is calculated under the action of the reciprocating pump. Then, the numerical simulation model is established based on the pipe beam model, and the rationality of the numerical simulation method is verified by the indoor experiment. Finally, a case study is taken as an example to analyze the vibration law of the pipeline system, and proposed the stress reduction and vibration reduction measures. The main conclusions are drawn from the analysis: (1) Excited force is produced in the bend or tee joint, and it can also influence the straight pipe in different levels; (2) In this pipeline system, the pump discharge pipe has a larger vibration amplitude and lower natural frequency; (3) The vibration amplitude increases with the pipe thermal stress, and when the oil temperature is higher than 85°C, it had a greater influence on the vertical vibration amplitude of the pipe.

Ocean wave energy conversion as one of the renewable clean energy sources is attracting the research interests of many people. This review introduces different types of power take-off technology of wave energy converters. The main focus is the linear direct drive power take-off devices as they have the advantages for ocean wave energy conversion. The designs and optimizations of power take-off systems of ocean wave energy converters have been studied from reviewing the recently published literature. Also, the simple hydrodynamics of wave energy converters have been reviewed for design optimization of the wave energy converters at specific wave sites. The novel mechanical designs of the power take-off systems have been compared and investigated in order to increase the energy harvesting efficiency.

Developing high performance HVAC system using natural refrigerants including carbon dioxide (CO₂) has been important in respect of environmental preservation and associated technologies. Thus studies to optimize the HVAC (heating ventilation air conditioner) system using natural refrigerants through clarifying the cycle performance characteristics are necessary. The CO₂ heat pump system using air and water sources was consisted to examine its performance characteristics, and by varying conditions of several factors that affect or characterize the system performance like the amount of refrigerant charge, EEV (electronic expansion valve) opening, and internal heat exchanger under cooling mode. The performance characteristics of CO₂ heat pump system were tested by using an air enthalpy calorimeter. In the case of the CO₂ heat pump system without internal heat exchanger, the opening of #3 EEV and #4 EEV was 60% and refrigerant charge amount was 5,600g. However, in the case of that with internal heat exchanger, the best performance was obtained when the opening of #2 EEV is 20%. From the present studies, it was observed that the performance variation and operational characteristics of the CO₂ heat pump system were affected by design factors like refrigerant charge amount, EEV opening, and internal heat exchanger and thereby, the configuration on an optimal operation conditions of the system was enabled.

A heat pump with thermal storage system is a system that operates a heat pump during night-time using inexpensive electricity; during this time, the generated thermal energy is stored in a thermal storage tank. The stored thermal energy is used by the heat pump during daytime. Based on a model of a dual latent heat storage tank and a heat pump, this study conducts control simulations using both conventional and advanced methods for heating in a building. Conventional methods include the thermal storage priority method and the heat pump priority method, while advanced approaches include the region control method and the dynamic programming method. The heating load required for an office building is identified using TRNSYS, used for simulations of various control methods. The thermal storage priority method shows a low coefficient of performance (COP), while the heat pump priority method leads to high electricity costs due to the low use of thermal storage. In contrast, electricity costs are lower for the region control method, which operates using the optimal part load ratio of the heat pump, and for dynamic programming, which operates the system by following the minimum cost path. According to simulation results for the winter season, the electricity costs using the dynamic programming method are 17% and 9% lower than those of the heat pump priority and thermal storage priority methods, respectively. The region control method shows results similar to the dynamic programming method with respect to electricity costs. In conclusion, advanced control methods are proven to have advantages over conventional methods in terms of power consumption and electricity costs.

Pipeline integrity is an important area of concern for the oil and gas, refining, chemical, hydrogen, carbon sequestration, and electric-power industries, due to the safety risks associated with pipeline failures. Regular monitoring, inspection, and maintenance of these facilities is therefore required for safe operation. Large standoff magnetometry (LSM) is a non-intrusive, passive magnetometer-based mea- surement technology that has shown promise in detecting defects (anomalies) in regions of elevated mechanical stresses. However, analyzing the noisy multi-sensor LSM data to clearly identify regions of anomalies is a significant challenge. This is mainly due to the high frequency of the data collection, mis-alignment between consecutive inspections and sensors, as well as the number of sensor measurements recorded. In this paper we present LSM defect identification approach based on ma- chine learning (ML). We show that this ML approach is able to successfully detect anomalous readings using a series of methods with increasing model complexity and capacity. The methods start from unsupervised learning with "point" methods and eventually increase complexity to supervised learning with sequence methods and multi-output predictions. We observe data leakage issues for some methods with randomized train/test splitting and resolve them by specific non-randomized splitting of training and validation data. We also achieve a 200x acceleration of support-vector classifier (SVC) method by porting computations from CPU to GPU leveraging the cuML RAPIDS AI library. For sequence methods, we develop a customized Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture based on 1D convolutional filters to identify and characterize multiple properties of these defects. In the end, we report the scalability of the best-performing methods and compare them, for viability in field trials.

Heating systems such as heat pump and combined heat and power cycle systems (CHP) are representing a key component in the future smart grid. Their capability to couple the electricity and heat sector promises a massive potential to the energy transition. Hence, these systems are continuously studied numerical and experimental to quantify their potential and develop optimal control methods. Although numerical simulations provide time and cost-effective solution for system development and optimization, they are exposed to several uncertainties. Hardware in the loop (HiL) system enables system validation and evaluation under different real-life dynamic constraints and boundary conditions. In this paper, a HiL system of heat pump testbed is presented. This system is used to present two case studies. In the first case, the conventional heat pump testbed operation method is compared to the HiL operation method. Energetic and dynamic analyses are performed to quantify the added value of the HiL and its necessity for dynamics analysis. The second case, the HiL testbed is used to validate the heat pump operation in a single family house participating in a local energy market. It enables not only the dynamics of the heat pump and the space heating circuit to be validated but also the building room temperature. The energetic analysis indicated a deviation of 2% and 5% for heat generation and electricity consumption of the heat pump, respectively. The model dynamics emphasized the model capability to present the dynamics of a real system with a temporal distortion of 3%.

At present more than 9 million people die of cancer every year. Simple and broad-spectrum drugs are still an urgent need for cancer patients. Recently, we proposed a new hypothesis that intracellular osmotic pressure (IOP) is the driving force of cell division, and abnormal tumor proliferation is the result of uncontrolled IOP in cells. On the one hand, aneuploidy and abnormal function of Na⁺/K⁺ pump lead to a faster rise of IOP in tumor cell than normal cells, on the other hand, abnormality of cytoskeleton assembly leads to the decrease of tolerance limit of cell membrane (TLCM) of tumor cells for resisting IOP. This hypothesis predicts: 1)Tumor cells were more intolerant to hypotonic stress than normal cells. 2) Maligancies may be sellectively killed by a suddenn increase of IOP and combined with decrease of the TLCM of tumors. Na⁺/K⁺ pump inhibitors can promotely increase the IOP of tumor cells and cytoskeleton inhibitors can dramatically lower the TLCM of tumor cells. Therefore, Na⁺/K⁺ pump and cytoskeleton inhibitors may have a synergetic effect to kill tumor cells. 3) Molecules regulating cell osmolality may be new targets for cancer treatment.

The impact of snow darkening by deposition of light absorbing aerosols (LAAs) on snow cover over the Himalaya-Tibetan-Plateau (HTP) and influence on the Asian monsoon are investigated using the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System Model Version 5 (GEOS-5). We find that during April-May-June, deposition of LAAs on snow leads to a reduction in surface albedo, initiating a sequence of feedback processes, starting with increased surface solar radiation, rapid snowmelt in HTP and warming of the surface and upper troposphere, followed by enhanced low-level southwesterlies and increased dust loading over the Himalayas-Indo-Gangetic Plain. The warming is amplified by increased dust aerosol heating, and subsequently amplified by latent heating from enhanced precipitation over the Himalaya foothills and northern India, via the Elevated Heat Pump (EHP) effect during June-July-August. The reduced snow cover in the HTP anchors the enhanced heating over the Tibetan Plateau and its southern slopes, in conjunction with an enhancement of the Tibetan Anticyclone, and the development of an anomalous Rossby wavetrain over East Asia, leading to weakening of the subtropical westerly jet, and northward displacement and intensification of the Mei-Yu rainbelt. Our results suggest that atmosphere-land heating by LAAs, particularly desert dust play a fundamental role in physical processes underpinning the snow-monsoon relationship proposed by Blandford more than a century ago.

Amorphous chalcogenide (ChGs) glasses are intrinsically metastable, highly photosensitive, and therefore exhibit numerous lightinduced effects upon bandgap and sub-bandgap illumination. Depending on the pulse duration of the excitation laser, ChGs exhibit a series of lightinduced effects spanning over femtosecond to seconds time domain. For continuous wave illumination, the effects are dominantly metastable in terms of photodarkening (PD) and photobleaching (PB) that takes place via homopolar to heteropolar bond conversion. On the other hand, under nanosecond and ultrafast pulsed illumination, ChGs exhibit transient absorption (TA) that is instigated from the transient bonding rearrangements through self-trapped exciton recombination. In the first part of the review, we pay special attention to continuous wave lightinduced PD and PB, while in the second part we will focus on the TA and controlling such effects via internal and external parameters e.g., chemical composition, temperature, sample history etc.

The growing market penetration of heat pumps indicates the need for a performance test method which better reflects the dynamic behavior of heat pumps. In this contribution, we developed and implemented a dynamic test method for the evaluation of the seasonal performance of heat pumps by means of laboratory testing. Current standards force the heat pump control inactive by fixing the compressor speed. In contrast, during dynamic testing, the compressor runs unfixed while the heat pump is subjected to a temperature profile. The profile consists of the different outdoor temperatures of a typical heating season based on the average European climate and also includes temperature changes to reflect the dynamic behavior of the heat pump. The seasonal performance can be directly obtained from the measured heating energy and electricity consumption making subsequent data interpolation and recalculation with correction factors obsolete. The method delivers results with high precision and high reproducibility and could be an appropriate method for a fair rating of heat pumps.

(1) Background: This report examines the unique demands of off-road triathlon (XT) by presenting physiological, field, and race data from a national champion off-road triathlete using several years of laboratory and field data to detail training and race intensity. (2) Methods: Laboratory and field data were collected when the athlete was at near peak fitness and included oxygen consumption (VO2), heart rate (HR), power output (W), and blood lactate (BLC) during cycling and running, while HR, cycling W, and running metrics were obtained from training and race data files over a period of seven years. Intensity was described using % HR max zones (Z) 1 &lt; 75%, 2 = 75 - 87%, and Zone 3 &gt; 87%, and W. An ordinary least squares analysis was used to model differences between event types. (3) Results: Weather conditions were not different across events. XT events had twice the elevation change (p&lt;0.01) and two-three times greater W’ (p&lt; 0.001) than road triathlon (ROAD), but similar HR intensity profiles (max, avg, and zones); both events are predominately performed at &gt; Z2 or higher intensity. Championship XT events were longer (p&lt;0.01) , with higher kJ expenditure (p&lt;0.001). OLS modelling suggested three variables were strongly related (R2 = 0.84; p &lt; 0.0001) to cycling performance: event type (XT vs ROAD), total meters climbed, and total bike duration. Championship XT runs were slower than either regional (p&lt;0.05) or ROAD (p&lt;0.01) runs, but HR intensity profiles similar. OLS modelling indicates that slower running is linked to either greater total bike kJ expenditure (R2 = 0.57; p&lt;0.001), or total meters gained (R2 = 0.52; p&lt;0.001). Race simulation data support these findings but failed to produce meaningful differences in running. Conclusions: XT race demands are unique and mirror MTB and trail running demands. XT athletes must be mindful of developing anaerobic fitness, technical ability, and aerobic fitness, all of which contribute to off-road cycling economy. It is unclear whether XT cycling affects subsequent running performance different from ROAD cycling.

When considering implementation of shallow geothermal energy as a renewable source for heating and cooling of the building, special care should be taken in hydraulic design of borehole heat exchanger system. Laminar flow can occur in pipes due to usage of glycol mixture at low temperature or inadequate flow rate. This can lead to lower heat extraction and rejection rates of the exchanger because of higher thermal resistances. Furthermore, by increasing flow rate to achieve turbulent flow and satisfactory heat transfer rate can lead to increase the pressure drop of the system and oversizing of circulation pump which leads to impairment of seasonal coefficient of performance at the heat pump. Most frequently used borehole heat exchanger system in Europe is double-loop pipe system with smooth inner wall. Lately, development is focused on implementation of different configuration as well as with ribbed inner wall which ensures turbulent flow in the system, even at lower flow rates. At a location in Zagreb, classical and extended thermal response test was conducted on three different heat exchanger configurations in the same geological environment. With classic TRT test, thermogeological properties of the ground and thermal resistance of the borehole were determined for each smooth or turbulator pipe configuration. Extended Steady-State Thermal Response Step Test (TRST) was implemented, which incorporate series of power steps to determine borehole extraction rate at the define steady-state heat transfer conditions of 0/-3°C. Results show that heat exchangers with ribbed inner pipe wall have advantages over classic double-loop smooth pipe design, in terms of greater steady state heat extraction rate and more favorable hydraulic conditions.

The indole-3-pyruvic acid pathway is the major route for auxin biosynthesis in higher plants. Tryptophan aminotransferases (TAA1/TAR) and members of the YUCCA family of flavin-containing monooxygenases catalyze the conversion of L-tryptophan via indole-3-pyruvic acid into indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). It has been described that locally produced jasmonic acid (JA) in response to mechanical wounding, triggers de novo-formation of IAA through the induction of two YUCCA genes, YUC8 and YUC9. Here, we report the direct involvement of a small number of basic helix-loop-helix transcription factors of the MYC family in this process. We show that the JA-mediated regulation of YUC8 and YUC9 gene expression depends on the abundance of MYC2, MYC3, and MYC4. In support of this observation, seedlings of myc knockout mutants displayed a strongly reduced response to JA-mediated IAA formation. In addition, transactivation assays provided experimental evidence for the binding of the MYC transcription factors to a particular tandem G-box motif abundant in the promoter regions of YUC8 and YUC9, but not in those of the other YUCCA genes. Moreover, we clearly demonstrate that YUC8ox and YUC9ox overexpressing plants show less damage after spider mite infestation, thereby underlining a role of auxin in plant responses toward biotic stress cues.

Imaging living cells by atomic force microscopy (AFM) promises not only high-resolution topographical data, but additionally, mechanical contrast, which are not obtainable with other microscopy techniques. Such imaging is however challenging, as cells need to be measured with low interaction forces to prevent either deformation or detachment from the surface. Off-resonance modes which periodically probe the surface have been shown to be advantageous, as they provide excellent force control combined with large amplitudes, which help reduce lateral force interactions. However, the low actuation frequency in traditional off-resonance techniques limits the imaging speed significantly. Using photothermal actuation, we probe the surface by directly actuating the cantilever. Due to the much smaller mass that needs to be actuated, the achievable measurement frequency is increased by two orders of magnitude. Additionally, photothermal off-resonance tapping retains the precise force control of conventional off-resonance modes and is therefore well suited to gentle imaging. Here we show how photothermal off-resonance tapping can be used to study live cells by AFM. As an example of imaging mammalian cells, the initial attachment, as well as long term detachment of a human thrombocytes are presented. The membrane disrupting effect of the antimicrobial peptide CM-15 is shown on the cell wall of E. coli. Finally, the dissolution of the cell wall of B. subtilis by lysozyme is shown. Taken together, these evolutionarily disparate forms of life exemplify the usefulness of PORT for live cell imaging in a multitude of biological disciplines.

We are in a new chapter of crop and livestock improvement with the emergence of genome editing. This latest generation of molecular tools can be used to make targeted changes in a genome including insertions, deletions, and mutations. With new advances comes new risks for unintended changes and impacts, thus the need for appropriate risk assessment for product development and to inform regulatory measures. Though CRISPR/Cas has arisen as the predominant technology, there are multiple types of genome editing tools each with pros and cons depending on the organism and desired outcome. Furthermore, each editing tool differs in specificity as they may edit non-intended sites, referred to as off-target edits. The consensus of the agricultural editing community is to avoid off-target editing through design and detection, instead of determining whether off-target editing in each case is detrimental. The design of a targeting component, the tool chosen, and the identification of the edit(s) made are the critical factors in avoiding off-target edits and confirming intended edits in final products that are released commercially. The limited amount of head-to-head comparisons of genome editing tools in diverse crops and livestock make it difficult to develop broad conclusions and best practices, which is further compounded by the diversity of techniques, targets, and processes. Developers and breeders should consult the literature and test as needed to determine which editing technology will be the most effective for their purposes, especially as more tools with altered efficiency and specificity become available. Yet, the lack of off-target edits in studies that employed careful design of targeting components followed by wide testing for on- and off-target edits bodes well for the use of genome editing with proper precautions of target selection and screening.

We put forward a co-axial pump(optical)-probe(X-rays) experimental concept and show performance of the optical component. A Bessel beam generator with a central 100 micrometers-diameter hole (on the optical axis) was fabricated using femtosecond (fs) laser structuring inside a silica plate. This flat-axicon optical element produces a needle-like axial intensity distribution which can be used for the optical pump pulse. The fs-X-ray free electron laser (X-FEL) beam of sub-1 micrometer diameter can be introduced through the central hole along the optical axis onto a target as a probe. Different realisations of optical pump are discussed. Such optical elements facilitate alignment of ultra-short fs-pulses in space and time and can be used in light-matter interaction experiments at extreme energy densities on the surface and in the volume of targets. Full advantage of ultra-short 10 fs X-FEL probe pulses with fs-pump(optical) opens an unexplored temporal dimension of phase transitions and the fastest laser-induced rates of material heating and quenching. A wider field of applications of fs-laser-enabled structuring of materials and design of specific optical elements for astrophotonics is presented.

The main goal of this paper is to show that Bayesian optimization could be regarded as a general framework for the data driven modelling and solution of problems arising in water distribution systems. Hydraulic simulation, both scenario based, and Monte Carlo is a key tool in modelling in water distribution systems. The related optimization problems fall in a simulation/optimization framework in which objectives and constraints are often black-box. Bayesian Optimization (BO) is characterized by a surrogate model, usually a Gaussian process, but also a random forest and increasingly neural networks and an acquisition function which drives the search for new evaluation points. These modelling options make BO nonparametric, robust, flexible and sample efficient particularly suitable for simulation/optimization problems. A defining characteristic of BO is its versatility and flexibility, given for instance by different probabilistic models, in particular different kernels, different acquisition functions. These characteristics of the Bayesian optimization approach are exemplified by the two problems: cost/energy optimization in pump scheduling and optimal sensor placement for early detection on contaminant intrusion. Different surrogate models have been used both in explicit and implicit control schemes. Showing that BO can drive the process of learning control rules directly from operational data. BO can also be extended to multi-objective optimization. Two algorithms have been proposed for multi-objective detection problem using two different acquisition functions.

A revised reversed Carnot cycle without external heat source and temperature gap is proposed to challenge the classic reversed Carnot cycle, heat pumps based on the proposed cycle with super energy efficiency works just like electric heater fitted for any climate including extreme cold weather, the application of these new heat pumps is discussed with conclusion that little real obstacles exist for scale application to address the heating related climate change, also a demonstration case shows a remarkable results to encourage the applications of these new heat pumps.

There have been several cases of large-scale wind generators (WGs) tripping off caused by untimely fault removing in recent years. Currently, the discoordination between the box-type transformer fuse protection (BTFP) and two-section collecting line current protection (CLCP) brings a security risk to wind farm. In order to ensure the selectivity, the first section (Sec-I) CLCP should be set a enough interval that is longer than the fuse melting time, and another interval is set for the Sec-II CLCP, which weakens the speed of the CLCP. When a fault occurs on the collecting line, there is no doubt that WGs cannot work too long in abnormal operation, which may cause WGs to be placed off the grid. For a power system with high penetration of wind power, large-scale WGs tripping off will cause a great power shortage, and affect the stability of the power system. The selectivity and sensitivity of the CLCP is analyzed in detail to make the CLCP speed better. Considering the fault ride-through ability of WGs, the fault clear time is an important factor to lead to large-scale WGs tripping off. Two main works are done in this paper. The first is to accelerate the speed of the Sec-I CLCP though reducing the protection zone. Another one is introduce the risk assessment module into the CLCP, which not only improve the speed of the CLCP but also ensure the safety of the wind farm during faults. According to the deference in trip-off causes of WGs, the matching functions are created to assess the trip-off risk of WGs on the spot. In the case of fault, the trip-off risk indicators of WGs are timely updated to data sharing center and open to the CLCPs. The set of risk indicators is divided into several subsets according to the risk range. The dynamic changes of the subsets during fault help to improved CLCP scheme. This scheme can accelerate protection speed based on the increasing risk of large-scale WGs tripping off in wind farms. Compared with traditional CLCP, this approach can make the CLCP combines selectivity and speed better based on the analysis of the ride- through ability of WGs.

As one of the representatives of emerging metallic transition metal dichalcogenides, niobium ditelluride (NbTe₂) has attracted intensive interest recently due to its distorted lattice structure and unique physical properties. Here, we report on the ultrafast carrier dynamics in NbTe₂ measured using time-resolved pump-probe transient reflection spectroscopy. A thickness-dependent carrier relaxation time is observed, exhibiting a clear increase in the fast and slow carrier decay rates for thin NbTe₂ flakes. In addition, pump power dependent measurements indicate that the carrier relaxation rates are power-independent, with the peak amplitude of the transient reflectivity increasing linearly with pump power. Isotropic relaxation dynamics in NbTe₂ is also verified by performing polarization-resolved pump-probe measurements. These results provide an insight into the light-matter interactions and charge carrier dynamics in NbTe₂ and will pave the way for its applications to photonic and optoelectronic devices.

In many advanced industrial applications, the thickness is a critical index, especially for metallic coatings. However, the variance of lift-off spacing between sensors and test pieces affects the measured voltage or impedance, which leads to unreliable results from the sensor. Massive research works have been proposed to address the lift-off issue, but few of them applies to the thickness measurement of planar metallic films with finite-size circular (disk) geometry. Previously, a peak-frequency feature from the swept-frequency inductance was used to compensate the measurement error caused by lift-offs, which was based on the slow-changing rate of impedance phase term in the Dodd-Deeds formulas. However, the phase of measured impedance is nearly invariant merely on a limited range of sample thicknesses and working frequencies. Besides, the frequency sweeping is time-consuming, where a recalibration is needed for different sensor setups applied to the online real-time measurement. In this paper, a single-frequency algorithm has been proposed, which is embedded in the measurement instrument for the online real-time retrieval of thickness. Owing to the single-frequency measurement strategy, the proposed method does not need to recalibrate for different sensor setups. The thickness retrieval is based on a triple-coil sensor (with one transmitter and two receivers). The thickness of metallic disk foils is retrieved from the measured electrical resistance of two transmitter-receiver sensing pairs. Experiments on materials of different electrical conductivities (from direct current), thicknesses and planar sizes (radii) have been carried out to verify the proposed method. The error for the thickness retrieval of conductive disk foils is controlled within 5 % for lift-offs up to 5 mm.

Tomatoes, one of the most appreciated vegetables consumed, are crops well adapted for cultivation in arid and semi-arid conditions, the success of large yields is guaranteed by covering water consumption through irrigation. Solar Pumps - SP are driven by Photovoltaic Panels - PV (SPAPV), eliminating the dependence on electricity or diesel; they are environmentally friendly because they generate carbon-free electricity and the cost of operation and maintenance is lower. In order to preserve the water administered by drip to the tomato crop grown in solariums, mulching is used. In Husasău de Tinca, in the Crișurilor Plain, cultivation of tomato varieties without mulching (WM) and with mulching with black foil (MBF) were studied. To answer the question "How effective are water conservation measures in terms of energy independence?", two variants of SPAPVs, direct pumping (ADP) and storage tank (AST) were simulated. Considering the conditions in the solariums, tomato crops do not benefit from the contribution of precipitation, therefore it is proposed to determine the water consumption of tomatoes (ETRo), using the temperatures inside the solarium. In 2016, the average temperatures during the vegetation period were observed with an insurance of over 20 %, the irrigation norms were 6945.7 m3 ha-1, for the WM variant and 6594.0 m3 ha-1 for the MBF variant, respectively. Specific Investment (SI) is 214,795 Euro ha-1 in case of ADP and respectively 202,990 Euro ha-1 in case of ATS. The payback period (IPT) is between 2.68 years and 2.53 years for the ADP variant and between 1.63 years and 1.54 years for the ATS variant, respectively. The indications for water use and irrigation water use show that in the MBF variant the water administered by localized irrigation is better utilized than in the WM variant. In the conditions of Crișurilor Plain, the best solution for the distribution of water in solariums, with the help of SPAPVs is the mulching system of tomatoes grown in solariums (MBF) and the arrangement of the drip irrigation system with a water storage tank (ATS).

Understanding biological mechanisms that regulate emergence of viral diseases, in particular those events engaging cross-species pathogens spillover, are becoming increasingly important in Virology. Species barrier jumping has been extensively studied in animal viruses, and the critical role of a suitable intermediate host in animal viruses-generated human pandemics is highly topical. However, studies on host jumping involving plant viruses have been focused on shifting intra-species, leaving aside the putative role of “bridge hosts” in facilitating interspecies crossing. Here, we take advantage of several VPg mutants, derived from a chimeric construct of the potyvirus Plum pox virus (PPV), analysing its differential behaviour in three herbaceous species. Our results showed that two VPg mutations in a Nicotiana clevelandii-adapted virus, emerged during adaptation to the bridge-host Arabidopsis thaliana, drastically prompted partial adaptation to Chenopodium foetidum. Although, both changes are expected to facilitate productive interactions with eIF(iso)4E, polymorphims detected in PPV VPg and the three eIF(iso)4E studied, extrapolated to a recent VPg:eIF4E structural model, suggested that two adaptation ways can be operating. Remarkably, we found that VPg mutations driving host-range expansion in two non-related species, not only are not associated with cost trade-off constraints in the original host, but also improve fitness on it.

The aim of this work was to test polyamines as potential natural substrates of the Acinetobacter baumannii chlorhexidine efflux protein AceI using near-UV synchrotron radiation circular dichroism (SRCD) spectroscopy. The Gram-negative bacterium A. Baumannii is a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections and an important foodborne pathogen. A. Baumannii strains are becoming increasingly resistant to antimicrobial agents, including the synthetic antiseptic chlorhexidine. AceI was the founding member of the recently recognised PACE family of bacterial multidrug efflux proteins. Using the plasmid construct pTTQ18-aceI(His₆) containing the A. Baumannii aceI gene directly upstream from a His₆-tag coding sequence, expression of AceI(His₆) was amplified in E. coli BL21(DE3) cells. Near-UV (250-340 nm) SRCD measurements were performed on detergent-solubilised and purified AceI(His₆) at 20 °C. Sample and SRCD experimental conditions were identified that detected binding of the triamine spermidine to AceI(His₆). In a titration with spermidine (0-10 mM) this binding was saturable and fitting of the curve for the change in signal intensity produced an apparent binding affinity (K_D) of 3.97 +/- 0.45 mM. These SRCD results were the first experimental evidence obtained for polyamines as natural substrates of PACE proteins.

Antibiotic resistance represents a significant threat to the modern healthcare provision. The ESKAPEE pathogens, in particular, have proven to be especially challenging to treat, due to their intrinsic and acquired ability to rapidly develop resistance mechanisms in response to environmental threats. The development of biofilm has been characterised as an essential contributing factor towards antimicrobial-resistance and tolerance. Several studies have implicated the involvement of efflux pumps in antibiotic resistance, both directly, via drug extrusion and indirectly, through the formation of biofilm. As a result, the underlying mechanism of these pumps has attracted considerable interest due to the potential of targeting these protein structures and developing novel adjunct therapies. Subsequent investigations have revealed the ability of efflux pump-inhibitors (EPIs) to block drug-extrusion and disrupt biofilm formation, thereby, potentiating antibiotics and reversing resistance of pathogen towards them. This review will discuss the potential of EPIs as a possible solution to antimicrobial resistance, examining different challenges to the design of these compounds, with an emphasis on Gram-negative ESKAPEE pathogens.

In this paper, we proposed a novel saddle type FinFET (S-FinFET) to effectively solve problems occurring under the capacitor node of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) cell and showed how its structure was superior to conventional S-FinFETs in terms of short channel effect (SCE), subthreshold slope (SS), and gate-induced drain leakage (GIDL). The proposed FinFET exhibited 4 times lower Ioff than modified S-FinFET called RFinFET with more improved DIBL characteristics while minimizing Ion reduction compared to RFinFET. Our results also confirmed that the proposed device showed improved DIBL and Ioff characteristics as gate channel length decreased.

Defect detection in ferromagnetic substrates is often hampered by non-magnetic coating thickness variation when using conventional eddy current testing technique. The lift-off distance between the sample and the sensor is one of the main obstacles for the thickness measurement of non-magnetic coatings on ferromagnetic substrates when using the eddy current testing technique. Based on the eddy current thin-skin effect and the lift-off insensitive inductance (LII), a simplified iterative algorithm is proposed for reducing the lift-off variation effect using a multi-frequency sensor. Compared to the previous techniques on compensating the lift-off error (e.g., the lift-off point of intersection) while retrieving the thickness, the simplified inductance algorithms avoid the computation burden of integration, which are used as embedded algorithms for the online retrieval of lift-offs via each frequency channel. The LII is determined by the dimension and geometry of the sensor, thus eliminating the need for empirical calibration. The method is validated by means of experimental measurements of the inductance of coatings with different materials and thicknesses on ferrous substrates (dual-phase alloy). The error of the calculated coating thickness has been controlled to within 3 % for an extended lift-off range of up to 10 mm.

Mid-tropospheric cut-off low (COL) pressure systems are linked to severe weather, heavy rainfall and extreme cold conditions over South Africa. They often result in floods and snowfalls in winter disrupting economic activities. This paper examines the evolution and circulation patterns associated with severe COLs over South Africa. We evaluate the performance of the 4.4 km Unified Model (UM) which is currently used operationally by the South African Weather Service to simulate daily rainfall. Circulation variables and precipitation simulated by the UM were compared against ECMWF’s ERA Interim reanalyses and GPM precipitation at 24-hour timesteps. We present five recent (2016-2019) severe COLs that had high impact and found higher model skill when simulating heavy precipitation during the initial stages than the dissipating stages of the systems. A key finding was that the UM underestimated precipitation mainly due to inaccurate placing of COL centers and areas of heavy rainfall by up to 5° of latitude away from the actual location, due to the poor formulating of cumulus and microphysics schemes in the model. Understanding the performance and limitations of the UM model in simulating COL characteristics can benefit severe weather forecasting and contribute to disaster risk reduction in South Africa.

Drying food involves complex physical atmospheric mechanisms with non-linear relations from the air-food interactions and those relations are strongly dependent on the moisture contents and the type of food. Such dependence makes it complex to design suitable dryers dedicated to a single drying process. To streamline the design of a novel compact food-drying machine, a heat pump dryer component design optimization algorithm was developed as a subprogram of a Computer Aided Engineering tool. The algorithm requires inputting food and air properties, the volume of the drying container and the technical specifications of the heat-pump off-the shelf components. The heat required to dehumidify the food supplied by the heat exchange process from condenser to evaporator, and the compressor’s requirements (refrigerant mass flow rate and operating pressures) are then calculated. Compressors can then be selected based in the volume and type of food to be dried. The algorithm is shown via a flow chart to guide the user through 3 different stages: Changes in drying air properties, Heat flow within dryer and Product moisture content. Example results of how different compressors are selected for different type of produces and quantities (Agaricus Blazei mushroom with 3 different moisture contents or fish from Thunnini tribe) conclude this article.

The membrane potential or resting potential of the neuron has been the subject of many studies. Although this theory explains the generation and maintenance of the membrane potential by direct or even facilitated diffusion, there are too many contradictions to doubt that these forces are sufficient or even at work in a process whose initial conditions are of rare complexity. The aim of this article is to show that already in the past, a competing theory has been developed whose hypothesis seems more scientifically sound. To confirm this last theory, Hirohisa Tamagawa carried out an experiment of great simplicity which makes it possible to invalidate the current theory and to question the teaching and the knowledge in Biology and Biophysics.

The adoption of Pump as Turbines (PATs) both in small scale hydroelectric plants and water supply systems has brought different advantages, the most recognized being cost-effectiveness as compared to other hydroturbines. However, due to their lack of flow control ability, their intolerance to off-design operations constitutes one tough shortfall. Moreover, this technology’s newness leads to PAT flow dynamics still being ununderstood even to date. Therefore, this study intends to numerically investigate the mixed flow PAT’s pump mode flow dynamics for five operating conditions expanding from optimum (1QBEP) to deep part-load (0.41 QBEP) conditions. Moreover the effect of runner blade angle on the same has been investigated where three angles namely -2°, 0°, and 2° have been considered. PAT flow stability was found to deteriorate as the flow decreased, where associated pressure pulsation level worsened at different flow zones. In addition, the blade angle increase led correspondingly increasing flow unsteadiness and pressure pulsation levels, where the pulsation frequencies from rotor-stator interactions were dominant for most of flow zones. This study’s findings are of a crucial importance to both scientific and engineering communities as they contribute to thorough understanding of PAT flow dynamics.

The large areas being targeted for tropical forest restoration as part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration will have major consequences for the flow of water through landscapes. Whilst the prevailing mantra that ‘more forest implies less streamflow’ remains true in terms of annual water yields, we demonstrate that opportunities for increased tree cover to improve seasonal flow regimes of streams, particularly baseflows, are important. We discuss several potential positive feedbacks of forest restoration on hydrological processes at various scales, including ‘trade-offs’ between changes in vegetation water use and infiltration after foresting degraded land; the recovery of the capacity of vegetation to capture ‘occult’ precipitation in specific coastal and montane settings; and enhanced moisture recycling and transport at various scales. Modelled changes in baseflow after foresting all degraded land climatically capable of carrying forest in the tropics suggested a positive effect in 10% of the land. For an additional 8%, the effect was predicted to be about neutral (<2 mm/y). We conclude that a more positive narrative regarding the relationship between tropical forestation and water availability is justified. It is time for greater involvement of hydrologists and atmospheric scientists in the development and assessment of forest landscape restoration efforts.

The generation and maintenance of membrane potential is a fundamental part of Membrane Pump Theory. One of the key points of this hypothesis is based on a natural or facilitated molecular diffusion through several types of ion channels and pumps like the Na/K ATPase. Chemistry, physics and especially electrochemistry, however, bring strong contradictions to this theoretical assumption. By respecting the principles of chemistry and electrostatics, it becomes obvious that this theoretical hypothesis cannot work. The ionic diffusion that would be at the origin of this potential cannot take place. Indeed, the topology and the forces involved definitively exclude the current model, which must absolutely be revised according to the current state of our knowledge and allow an advance in the understanding of the phenomena and open new research perspectives.

Eddy current testing can be used to interrogate steels but it is hampered by the lift-off distance of the sensor. Previously, the lift-off point of intersection (LOI) feature has been found for the pulsed eddy current (PEC) testing. In this paper, a lift-off invariant inductance (LII) feature is proposed for the multi-frequency eddy current (MEC) testing, which merely targets the ferromagnetic steels. That is, at a certain working frequency, the measured inductance signal is found nearly immune to the lift-off distance of the sensor. Such working frequency and inductance are termed as the lift-off invariant frequency (LIF) and LII. Through simulations and experimental measurements of different steels under the multi-frequency manner, the LII has been verified to be merely related to the sensor parameters and independent of different steels. By referring to the LIF of the test piece and using an iterative inverse solver, one of the steel properties (either the electrical conductivity or magnetic permeability) can be reconstructed with a high accuracy.

We report on the application of time-resolved inline digital holography to study the nonlinear optical properties of quantum dots deposited onto the sample glass. Fresnel diffraction patterns of the probe pulse due to noncollinear degenerate phase modulation induced by the femtosecond pump pulse were extracted from the set of inline digital holograms and analyzed. Absolute values of the nonlinear refractive index of both sample glass substrate and the deposited layer of quantum dots were evaluated using the proposed technique. To characterize the inhomogeneous distribution of samples’ nonlinear optical properties we proposed to plot an optical nonlinearity map calculated as a local standard deviation of diffraction patterns intensity induced by noncollinear degenerate phase modulation.

: Chemical accidents can occur anywhere. The need for chemical management in Korea was realized following the 2012 Gumi hydrofluoric acid accident in 2012. The Chemicals Control Act was enacted in 2015. This system evaluates the risks (high, medium, low) and consequent safety management at all plants that handle hazardous chemical substances. However, the system was criticized as excessive when most plants were designated high-risk without considering their size. Thus, laboratories and hospitals handling very small quantities were subject to regulation. Accordingly, in 2021 Korea revised the system to include off-site consequence analyses and a Korean-style risk analysis. Plants handling very small quantities, such as laboratories and hospitals, were exempt from regulation. In this study, plating and paint manufacturing companies, which were classified as high-risk in the previous system, even though they were medium-size business plants, were re-evaluated as low-risk plants. In the Korean-style risk analysis, it is possible to see at a glance what is lacking in the plants, such as cooperation between local residents and local governments and the construction of safety facilities according to the type of accident scenario. The revised system is a reasonable regulation for medium business plants.

Following the introduction of live-attenuated rotavirus vaccines in many countries, a notable reduction in deaths and hospitalizations associated with diarrhoea in children <5 years of age has been reported. There is growing evidence to suggest that live-attenuated vaccines also provide protection against other infections beyond the vaccine-targeted pathogens. These so called off-target effects of vaccination have been associated with the tuberculosis vaccine Bacille Calmette Guérin (BCG), measles, oral polio and recently salmonella vaccines, and are thought to be mediated by modified innate and possibly adaptive immunity. Indeed, rotavirus vaccines have been reported to provide greater than expected reductions in acute gastroenteritis caused by other enteropathogens, that have mostly been attributed to herd protection and prior underestimation of rotavirus disease. Whether rotavirus vaccines also alter the immune system to reduce non targeted gastrointestinal infections has not been studied directly. Here we review the current understanding of the mechanisms underlying off-target effects of vaccines and propose a mechanism by which the live-attenuated neonatal rotavirus vaccine, RV3-BB, could promote protection beyond the targeted pathogen. Finally, we consider how vaccine developers may leverage these properties to improve health outcomes in children, particularly those in low-income countries where disease burden and mortality is disproportionately high relative to developed countries.

Electromagnetic sensing has been used for diverse applications of non-destructive testing, including the surface inspection, measurement of properties, object characterization. However, the measurement accuracy could be significantly influenced by the lift-off between sensors and samples. To address the issue caused by lift-offs, various strategies have been proposed for the permeability measurement of ferromagnetic steels, which mainly involves different sensor designs and signal features (e.g., the zero-crossing feature). In this paper, a single high-frequency scenario for the permeability retrieval is introduced. By combining the signal of two sensing pairs, the retrieval of magnetic permeability is less affected by the lift-off of sensors. Unlike the previous strategy on reducing the lift-off effect (directly taking the phase term out of the integration) using the Dodd-Deeds analytical method, the proposed method is based on a high-frequency linear feature of the phase term. Therefore, this method has the merit of high accuracy and fast processing for the permeability retrieval (a simplified version of Dodd-Deeds analytical formulas after the integration). Experimental measurement has been carried out on the impedance measurement of designed sensors interrogating ferromagnetic dual-phase steels. For sensor lift-offs of up to 10 mm, the error of the permeability retrieval is controlled within 4 % under the optimal frequency.

Novel molecular pinball machines of the plasma membrane control cytosolic Ca²⁺ levels that regulate plant metabolism. [https://youtu.be/zABg7LiBk88] Essential components involve: 1. an auxin-activated proton pump; 2. arabinogalactan glycoproteins (AGPs); 3. Ca²⁺ channels; 4. auxin-efflux “PIN” proteins. Typical pinball machines release pinballs that trigger various sound and visual effects. However, in plants “proton pinballs” eject Ca²⁺ bound by paired glucuronic acid residues of numerous glycomodules in periplasmic AGP-Ca²⁺. Freed Ca²⁺ ions flow down the electrostatic gradient through open Ca²⁺ channels into the cytosol thus activating numerous Ca²⁺-dependent activities.Clearly cytosolic Ca²⁺ levels depend on activity of the proton pump, the state of Ca²⁺ channels and size of the periplasmic AGP-Ca²⁺ capacitor: Proton pump activation is a major regulatory focal point tightly controlled by the supply of auxin: auxin efflux carriers conveniently known as “PIN” proteins [null mutants are pin-shaped!] pump auxin from cell to cell. Mechanosensitive Ca²⁺ channels and their activation by reactive oxygen species (ROS) are yet another factor regulating cytosolic Ca²⁺.Cell expansion also triggers proton pump/pinball activity by mechanotransduction of wall stress via Hechtian adhesion thus forming a Hechtian oscillator that underlies cycles of wall plasticity and oscillatory growth.Finally, Ca²⁺ homeostasis of plants depends on cell surface external storage as source of dynamic Ca²⁺, unlike the internal ER storage source of animals where the added regulatory complexities ranging from vitamin D to parathormone contrast with the elegant simplicity of plant life. This paper summarises a sixty year Odyssey.

Three-temperature heating systems consist of a heat engine and a heat pump, enabling thus maximum usage of the primary thermal source for the heating of buildings. This analysis has revealed obvious advantages and disadvantages that the combining of thermodynamic systems has in future development, also with respect to environmental and economic issues. It appears that the combination of a Stirling engine or a similar heat drive with a heat pump is especially suitable. In order to analyze the effectiveness of such a system, a comprehensive calculation procedure is used: its basis lies in accounting for all types of energy and their relationship to the original natural resource. The present paper aims to point out that the combination of Stirling engine and a heat pump is a useful solution thanks to the most favorable resultant economic impact if compared to the usage of a diesel, four-stroke gas, or, most commonly used, electric drive.

Almost fifty years after the first installations, I identify the main lessons learned from fighting drought and poverty in Africa with direct solar-powered pumps thanks to Father Bernard Verspieren and Mali Aqua Viva. Six main findings and three main recommendations emerge from the present analysis. They are of direct relevance to all Africa’s countries whose population has gone from 438 million in 1977 to 1,308 million in 2019, with about 600 million still having no access to electricity. In place of “awareness campaigns” and extraordinary courses held by international organizations, I recommend to establish national solar energy institutes whose task will include the education of solar energy professionals giving practice-oriented workshops on solar-powered drip irrigation and rainwater harvesting throughout each Africa’s country. Said education will critically include the economic and social aspects of distributed “generation” of energy and water from sunlight and rainfall.

This paper proposes a linear eddy-current feature to determine the radius of a metallic ball in a non-contact manner. An electromagnetic eddy-current sensor with two coils is placed co-axially to the metal ball during measurement. It is well known that the distance between the sensor and test piece (i.e. lift-off) affects eddy-current signals. In this paper, it is found that the peak frequency feature of inductance spectrum is linear to the lift-off spacing between the centre of coil and ball. Besides, the slope of peak frequencies versus lift-offs is linked to the radius of ball. The radius of metallic balls is retrieved from the experimental and embedded analytical result of the slope. Measurements have been carried out on 6 metallic balls with different radii. The radius of the metallic ball can be retrieved with an error of less than 2 %.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a leading cause of human mortality worldwide and the emergence of drug-resistantstrains, demands the discovery of new classes of antimycobacterials that can be employed in the therapeutic pipeline. Previously, a secondary metabolite Chrysomycin A, isolated from Streptomyces sp. OA161 was shown to have potent bactericidal activity against drug-resistant clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis and different species of mycobacteria. The antibiotic inhibits the mycobacterial topoisomerase I and DNA gyrase leading to bacterial death, but the mechanisms that could cause resistance are currently unknown. To further understand the resistance mechanism, spontaneous resistance mutants were isolated and subjected to whole-genome sequencing. Mutation in a Tet^R family transcriptional regulator MSMEG_1380 was identified in the resistant isolates and was close to an operon encoding membrane protein MSMEG_1381 and MSMEG_1382. Sequence analysis and modeling studies indicated that they are components of the Mmp family of efflux pumps and over-expression of either the operon or individual genes conferred resistance to chrysomycin A, isoniazid, and ethambutol that are in TB therapy. Our study highlights the role of membrane transporter proteins in conferring multiple drug resistance and the utility of recombinant strains overexpressing membrane transporters in the drug screening pipeline.

There is a balanced plant-water relationship in the primary vegetation of desert area. With the increase of population and social development in desert areas, people’s need for forest vegetation ecosystem’s goods and service have been changed. To meet the growing demand for plant community goods and services, more original vegetation has been changed into non-native vegetation such as in China loess plateau. However, with the plant growth, sometime soil drying happens and then becomes gradually serious with times in most of desert regions. Serious drying of soil eventually result in soil degradation, vegetation decline and agriculture failure，which influence the produce and supply of forest vegetation goods and service in market in dry year or waste of soil water resources in wet year, which wastes precious nature resources. In order to solve these problems, the soil water resources have to be used in sustainable way and plant-water relationship have to be regulated on Carrying Capacity of Soil Water for Vegetation in the key period of plant water relationship regulation, to carry out sustainable use of nature resources, high-quality and sustainable development of forest and grass or high-quality produce of fruit and crop in desert re-gions.

The generation and maintenance of membrane potential is a fundamental part of Membrane Pump Theory. One of the key points of this hypothesis is based on a natural or facilitated molecular diffusion through several types of ion channels and pumps like the Na/K ATPase. Following the principles of chemistry, electrostatics and geometry, it becomes clear that ion channels cannot function in this way. The ions channels cannot by their location have both a filter function and be ion concentrators, and the Na/K pump by its position in the membrane and by the proposed assumptions is not able to perform its regulatory function. The current model must absolutely be revised according to the current state of our knowledge and allow an advance in the understanding of the phenomena opening new research perspectives.

The electrification of rural areas of the planet has become one of the greatest challenges for sustainability. In fact, it would be the key to guaranteeing development for the poorest of the planet, but from which most of the raw material for the food market derives. The paradigm of centralized production is not applicable in these territories, because the distribution network would involve unjustifiable costs. For this reason, studies have multiplied to ensure the energy supply, especially electricity, of off-grid utilities, to guarantee energy autonomy while reducing the dependence on specialist assistance for the management of the system. In this work, a hybrid system (HRES) is proposed that combines the exploitation of solar energy with that of the wind through the use of static devices, in order to improve the system's availability and limit the cost of operation and maintenance.

We describe a novel machine that uses the greater-than-100% efficiency of air/ground-source heat pumps to recursively generate electricity via steam-powered generators, taking thermal energy from the ambient environment to convert into electrical power. The invention of a machines that generate clean power at low costs will be fundamental to the future of electricity. We estimate efficiency and calculate minimum efficiencies for unknown parts to consider the applicability of this machine to the real world.

This paper introduces a model-free, "on-the-fly" learning control strategy for arrays of energy converters with adjustable generator damping. The devices are arranged so that they are affected simultaneously by the energy medium. Each device uses a different control strategy, of which at least one has to be the machine learning approach presented in this paper. During operation all energy converters record the absorbed power and control output; the machine learning device gets the data from the converter with the highest power absorption and so learns the best performing control strategy for each state. Consequently, the overall network has a better overall performance than each individual strategy. This concept is evaluated for wave energy converter (WEC) with numerical simulations and experiments with physical scale models in a wave tank. In the first of two numerical simulations, the learnable WEC works in an array with four WECs applying a constant damping factor. In the second simulation, two learnable WECs were learning with each other. It showed that in the first test the WEC was able to absorb as much as the best constant damping WEC, while in the second run it could absorb even slightly more. During the physical model test, the ANN showed its ability to select the better of two possible damping coefficients based on real world input data.

Double suction centrifugal pump installed along the Yellow River faces the serious sediment erosion due to the high sediment content which cause the poor operation efficiency of pump unit. The particle motion characteristics and erosion characteristics in the pump under different flow rates and different particle concentrations were numerically simulated based on the particle track model of solid-liquid two-phase flow. The results show that the flow rate has a significant effect on the particle tracks and the erosion caused by the particles in the impeller. The total erosion rate is positively correlated with the flow rate, and increases with the increase of flow rate. The vortex and secondary flow in the impeller have obvious influence on the particle trajectory, which increases the particle concentration at the trailing edge of the pressure surface and intensifies the impact erosion in this area. The particles carried by the vortex intensifies the local erosion. The particle concentration mainly affects the erosion rate, but has little effect on the erosion position. The in-fluence of flow rate on the pump erosion is greater than that of the particle properties. These results provide a reference for optimization of the design of anti-erosion blades of the double-suction pump and regulation-operation of pumping station.

Aero-fuel centrifugal pumps are important power plants in aero-engines. Unlike most of the existing centrifugal pumps, a combination impeller is integrated with the pump to improve its performance. First, the critical geometrical parameters of combination impeller and volute are given. Then, the effects of combination impeller on flow characteristics inside the impeller and volute are clarified by comparing simulation results with that of the conventional impeller, where the effectiveness of selected numerical method is validated by an acceptable agreement between simulation and experiment. Finally, the experiment is performed to test the external performance of studied pump. A significant feature of this study is that the flow characteristics are significantly ameliorated by reducing the flow losses emerged in impeller inlet, impeller outlet and volute tongue. Correspondingly, the head and efficiency of combination impeller are higher with comparison to conventional impeller. Consequently, it is a promising approach in ameliorating flow field and improving external performance by applying a combination impeller to an aero-fuel centrifugal pump.

This paper proposes and demonstrates, in full scale, a novel type of energy geostructure (“the Climate Road”) that combines a ground source heat pump (GSHP) with a sustainable urban drainage system (SUDS) by utilizing the gravel roadbed simultaneously as energy source and rainwater retarding basin. The Climate Road measures 50m x 8m x 1m (length, width, depth) and has 800 m of geothermal piping embedded in the roadbed, serving as the heat collector for a GSHP that supplies a nearby kindergarten with domestic hot water and space heating. Model analysis of operational data from 2018-2021 indicates sustainable annual heat production levels around 0.6 MWh per meter road, with a COP of 2.9-3.1. The continued infiltration of rainwater to the roadbed increases the amount of extractable heat by an estimated 17% compared to the case of zero infiltration. Using the developed model for scenario analysis we find that draining rainwater from three single family houses and storing 30% of the annual heating consumption in the roadbed, increases the predicted extractable energy by 56% compared to zero infiltration with no seasonal energy storage. The Climate Road is capable of supplying three single family houses with heating, cooling and rainwater management year-round.

When we are asleep we lose the ability to promptly respond to external stimuli and yet we spend many hours every day in this inherently risky behavioral state. This simple fact strongly suggests that sleep must serve essential functions that rely on the brain going offline, on a daily basis, and for long periods of time. If these functions did not require partial sensory disconnection, it would be difficult to explain why they are not performed during waking. Paradoxically, despite its central role in defining sleep and what sleep does, sensory disconnection during sleep remains a mystery. We have a limited understanding of how it is implemented along the sensory pathways, we do not know whether the same mechanisms apply to all sensory modalities, nor do we know to which extent these mechanisms are shared between non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and REM sleep. The main goal of this contribution is to review some knowns and unknowns about sensory disconnection during sleep as a first step to fill this gap.

This article discusses the use of a hand held electronic nose to obtain information on the presence of some aromatic defects in natural cork stoppers, such as haloanisoles, alkylmethoxypyrazines and ketones. The proposed prototype has been developed as an instrumentation system with up to eight commercial gas sensors. Machine learning algorithms such as k-nearest neighbors and artificial neural networks has been used. The use of this system tries to improve the current aromatic defect detection process in the cork stopper industry, which is done by gas chromatography or human test panels.

Low pressure fluid transport (1) applications often require low and precise volumetric flow rates (2) including low leakage to reduce additional costly and complex sensors. A peristaltic pump de-sign (3) was realized, with the fluid’s flexible transport channel formed by a solid cavity and the wobbling plate comprising a rigid and a soft layer (4). In operation, the wobbling plate is driven externally by an electric motor, hence, the soft layer is contracted and unloaded (5) during pump-cycles transporting fluid from low to high pressure sides. A thorough characterization of the pump system is required to design and dimension the components of the peristaltic pump. To capture all these parameters and their dependencies on various operation-states, often complex and long-lasting dynamic 3D FE-simulations are required. We present, here, a holistic design methodology (6) including analytical as well as numerical calculations, and experimental valida-tions for a peristaltic pump with certain specifications of flow-rate range, maximum pressures, and temperatures. An experimental material selection process is established and material data of candidate materials (7) (liquid silicone rubber, acrylonitrile rubber, thermoplastic-elastomer) are directly applied to predict the required drive torque. For the prediction, a semi-physical, analyti-cal model was derived and validated by characterizing the pump prototype.

Undisturbed ground temperature (UGT), thermal conductivity (TC) and heat capacity (HC) are essential parameters for the design of borehole heat exchanger (BHE) and borehole thermal energy storage systems. However, field methods to assess the thermal state and properties of the sub-surface are costly and time consuming. Moreover, HC is often not evaluated but arbitrarily selected from literature considering the geological materials intercepted by boreholes. Therefore, this work aims at proposing a field heat tracing method to infer the thermal diffusivity (TD) and HC with assumption of natural transient heat conduction in the subsurface. Empirical equations were developed to reproduce a UGT profile measured along a BHE. Experimental coefficients are found with a non-linear least square solver optimization and used to calculate the damping depth and TD. Subsequently, the TD is used to evaluate HC considering TC obtained from a thermal response test (TRT). Results from this proposed heat tracing method were verified and validated against a set of TRT results and oscillatory TRT analysis using a field dual probe concept to infer HC. The example here described highlights the advantages and novelty of this fast and simple field method relying only on a single UGT profile measured before a TRT.

Two-wheeler vehicles are the most significant mode of transportation for Kenyans in both rural and urban regions thereby contributing to local air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The transition to electric two-wheeler vehicles can make a significant contribution to reducing GHG and improving the socio-economic lives of people living in rural Kenya. Re-newable energy systems can considerably contribute to the charging of electric two-wheeled vehicles, thus leading to the reduction of carbon emissions and the expansion of renewable energy penetration in rural Kenya. Therefore, this paper focuses on integrating and modelling electric two-wheeled vehicles (e-bikes) into an off-grid photovoltaic Water-Energy Hub located in the Lake Victoria Region of Western Kenya using the Conventional and Renewable Energy Opti-mization (CARNOT) Toolbox in MATLAB / Simulink. Electricity demand data obtained from the Water-Energy Hub was investigated and analysed. Potential solar energy surplus was identified and electric two-wheeler vehicles were integrated based on the surplus. A field measurement investigation on the energy consumption of the electric two-wheeler vehicles based on the rider’s driving behaviour was also carried. The annual electricity demand of 27,267 kWh, photovoltaic (PV) electricity production of 37,785 kWh with an electricity deficit of 370 kWh were obtained from the simulation results. To reduce the electricity deficit, a load optimisation algorithm was de-veloped to optimally integrate the electric 2-wheeler vehicle into the Water-Energy Hub. It was found that using the load optimisation algorithm, the annual electricity deficit was reduced to 1 kWh and the annual electricity demand was increased by 11% (30,767 kWh) which is enough to charge 4 additional electric two-wheeler batteries daily.

The evolutionary theory of aging, particularly antagonistic pleiotropy (AP), provides an account of the ultimate origins of aging. What remains unclear is the nature of the proximate mechanisms by which AP gives rise to diseases of aging, like cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Damage-centric theories focusing on loss of genetic and cellular function have been proposed, as well as programmatic theories focusing on unwanted gene and cellular function. The latter include the hyperfunction and developmental theory that view aging as the futile continuation, or run-on, of growth and developmental programmes into later life. Yet neither type of theory has performed well in explaining late-life disease aetiology, particularly with respect to disease onset, presentation and progression. What is proposed here in this review is a new programmatic theory of aging. We argue that the emergence of many specific diseases may involve quasi-programmes that are not the result of run-on, but rather are triggered by other factors in late life. Such triggers may be non-programmatic (e.g. infection, mechanical injury) or programmatic. Moreover, the consequent pre-pathological and pathological changes may in some cases trigger further changes, leading to futile and destructive cascades of quasi-programmes and pathology. The origins of triggered quasi-programmes can be traced to biological constraint i.e. the inability of organisms to optimise all functions at once. And, to some extent, the new theory presented here revises the understanding of AP. That is, because any gene can be triggered in an erroneous manner, every gene is potentially an AP gene that risks pathology, though level of risk varies according to constraint. To help validate the theory, we test it against several complex diseases of aging. The new model in this review attempts to provide a blueprint understanding that, to a certain extent, closes the gap in the causal chain of events between evolutionary causes of aging and the aetiology of age-related diseases. It also helps to explain why certain disorders mimic accelerated aging and how interventions, such as the suppression of IIS and mTOR retard many aspects of aging; notably, though, unlike prior programmatic theories, the new theory is not mTOR-centric. Finally, it provides new perspectives on possible treatment of aging.

Eddy current sensors can be used to test the characteristics and measure the parameters of the conductive samples. As the main obstacle of the multi-frequency eddy current sensor, the lift-off distance affects the effectiveness and accuracy of the measurement. In this paper, a material-independent algorithm has been proposed for the restoration of the lift-off distance when using the multi-frequency eddy current sensor, which is based on the approximation under the thin-skin effect. Experiment testing on the performance of the proposed method is presented. Results show that from the dual-frequency inductance, the lift-off distance could be restored with a maximum error of 0.24 mm for the distance up to 12 mm. Besides, the derived lift-off distance is used for the inversion of the magnetic permeability. Based on a lift-off insensitive inductance (LII) feature, the magnetic permeability of steels can be inversed in an iterative manner, with an error of less than 0.6 % for the lift-off distance up to 12 mm.

In order to study the petrogenesis and tectonic setting of Permian A-type granites and their relationships with hydrothermal mineralization along the Hegenshan-Heihe suture zone (HHSZ) in northeastern China, we select the newly discovered Hongyan Cu-polymetallic deposit in the northeastern part of the HHSZ that develops three stages of mineralization associated with the Shanshenfu alkali-feldspar granite (SAFG). The zircon U-Pb dating and whole rock geochemistry suggest that the SAFG is a typical A-type granite formed in the Early Permian. The zircon Hf isotopes and trace elements suggest that the SAFG has high Ti-in-zircon temperature (721–990℃), high magmatic oxygen fugacity and largely positive εHf(t) (+6.0 to +9.9). Therefore, we propose that the SAFG was derived from the crustal assimilation and fractional crystallization of the charnockitized juvenile crust. The high oxygen fugacity favors the chalcophile elements (e.g., Cu, Au, Ag) of the source region enriched in the fluid phases after magmatic fractional crystallization, consequently facilitating subsequent hydrothermal mineralization, which is also consistent with the characteristics of ore-forming fluids that changed from the initial high temperature, high salinity, high fO2 and CO2-rich magmatic-hydrothermal fluids of stage I to CO2-poor, dilute, and cooling meteoric fluids of stage III. Combined with regional geological background, the Permian A2-type granites along the HHSZ can be formed in post-collisional slab break-off process. In subsequent exploration for hydrothermal deposits along the HHSZ, the Permian A-type granites with arc-related juvenile crustal source and high fO2 have great potential and need more attention.

Integrating numerous renewable resources has been extensively researched and studied to create a dependable energy system. This study investigated the best techno-economical hybrid energy system configuration while using hydrogen energy to keep the system's energy balanced. Additionally, this study aims to determine the best hybrid system configuration for the location under investigation. A novel technique of DBM (Deterministic Balanced Method) was introduced to determine the total annual energy output for the project's lifetime. This approach is used to contrast the outcomes of other HOMER software tools. Then, using HOMER, it is possible to confirm the sizing optimization results for the suggested method by comparing the power ratings and yearly energy output. A detailed comparison between our proposed method and HOMER Pro has been conducted for validation and verification. Our method has been rigorously tested in various hybrid off-grid energy systems, ensuring its applicability and reliability across different scenarios and configurations. The results of our study indicate a high degree of similarity between the proposed approach and HOMER pro for computing annual energy power for the studied energy systems. Specifically, our analysis revealed that the difference between the approaches was within a range of 5%, indicating a high level of consistency and reliability in our method. These findings suggest that our approach can be confidently applied to determine the appropriate size of hybrid energy systems accurately. Overall, our study provides valuable insights into the development of effective sizing methodologies for hybrid energy systems. After considering the amount of solar radiation and wind speed gathered by global weather data platforms like NASA and METEONORM, this paper has also included a real case study of the Cairo International Airport's hybrid renewable energy production systems. To guarantee the viability of this study, the system design was founded on an actual load that was researched and simulated. A cluster of distributed networks was finally proposed to use the excess energy and enable energy conversion processes to be used in industry and transportation applications.

Lift-offs of the sensor could significantly affect the measurement signal and reconstruction of material properties when using the electromagnetic (inductive) eddy current sensor. Previously, various methods (including novel sensor designs, and features like zero-crossing frequency, lift-off point of intercept) have been used for eliminating the measurement error caused by the lift-off distance effect of the sensor. However, these approaches can only be applied for a small range of lift-off variations. In this paper, a linear relationship has been found between the sensor lift-off and ratio of dual-frequency eddy current signals, particularly under the high working dual frequencies. Based on this linear relationship, the lift-off variation can be reconstructed firstly with a small error of 2.5 % when its actual value is up to 10 mm (10.1 % for 20 mm). The reconstructed lift-off is used to further get the property of the material under a low single frequency. Experiments on different ferrous metals have been carried out for the testing of the reconstruction scheme. Since the inductance is more sensitive to the material property (and less sensitive to the lift-off) under low frequencies, the reconstruction error of the material property is much smaller than that of the lift-off, with 1.4 % under 12 mm (and 4.5 % under 20 mm).

Economic expedience of waste heat recovery systems (WHRS), especially for low temperature difference applications, is often questionable due to high capital investments and long pay-back periods. By its simple design isobaric expansion (IE) machines could provide a viable pathway to utilize otherwise unprofitable waste heat streams for power generation and particularly for pumping liquids and compression of gases. Different engine configurations are presented and discussed. A new method of modelling and calculation of the IE process and efficiency is used on IE cycles with various pure and mixtures as a working fluid. Some interesting cases are presented. It is shown in this paper, that the simplest non-regenerative IE engines are efficient at low temperature differences between a heat source and heat sink. Efficiency of non-regenerative IE process with pure working fluid can be very high approaching Carnot efficiency at low pressure and heat source/heat sink temperature differences. Regeneration permits to increase efficiency of the IE-cycle to some extent. Application of mixed working fluids in combination with regeneration permits to significantly increase the range of high efficiencies to much larger temperature and pressure differences.

For the electromagnetic eddy current testing, various methods have been proposed for reducing the lift-off error on the measurement of samples. In this paper, instead of eliminating the measurement error caused by the lift-off effect, an algorithm has been proposed to directly measure the lift-off distance between the sensor and non-magnetic conductive plates. The algorithm is based on a sample-independent inductance (SII) feature. That is, under high working frequencies, the inductance is found sensitive to the lift-off distance and independent of the test piece under an optimal single high working frequency (43.87 kHz). Furthermore, the predicted lift-off distance is used for the thickness prediction of the non-magnetic conductive samples using an iterative method. Considering the eddy current skin depth, the thickness prediction is operated under a single lower frequency (0.20 kHz). As the inductance has different sensitivities to the lift-off and thickness, the prediction error of the sample thickness is different from that of the lift-off distance. From the experiments on three different nonmagnetic samples – aluminium, copper, and brass, the maximum prediction error of the lift-off distance and sample thickness is 1.1 mm and 5.42 % respectively at the lift-off of 12.0 mm.

Vacuum pump wear is the most prevalent failure mode of the IBA Synthera® automated radiochemistry system. Rebuilding or replacing the pump causes equipment downtime and increases the radiation exposure of the service personnel. We built a dedicated test device to assess new or rebuilt pumps prior to installation, thus reducing downtime and radiation exposure during repairs. The Testbed incorporates a microprocessor that actuates the pump, valves, pressure sensor, and communicates with the user through lights, buttons, and an alphanumeric screen. The Testbed increases productivity and safety in the radiochemistry laboratory.

Previously, a conductivity invariance phenomena (CIP) has been discovered – at a certain lift-off, the inductance change of the sensor due to a test sample is immune to conductivity variations, i.e. the inductance – lift-off curve passes through a common point at a certain lift-off, termed as conductivity invariance lift-off. However, this conductivity invariance lift-off is fixed for a particular sensor setup, which is not convenient for various sample conditions. In this paper, we propose using two parameters in the coil design – the horizontal and vertical distances between the transmitter and the receiver to control the conductivity invariance lift-off. The relationship between these two parameters and the conductivity invariance lift-off is investigated by simulation and experiments and it has been found that there is an approximate linear relationship between these two parameters and the conductivity invariance lift-off. This is useful for applications where the measurements have restrictions on lift-off, e.g. uneven coating thickness which limits the range of the lift-off of probe during the measurements. Therefore, based on this relationship, it can be easier to adjust the configuration of the probe for a better inspection of the test samples.

Temperature differences between the atmosphere and river water allow rivers to be used as a hydrothermal energy source. The river-water heat pump system is a relatively non-invasive renewable energy source; however, effluent discharged from the heat pump can cause downstream temperature changes which may impact sensitive fluvial ecosystems. In this study, the water temperature recovery distance of the effluent was estimated for a river section in the Han River Basin, Korea, using the heat transfer equation and the Environmental Fluid Dynamic Code (EFDC) model. Results showed that, compared to the EFDC model, the heat transfer equation tended to overestimate the water temperature recovery distance due to its simplified assumptions. The water temperature recovery distance could also be used as an objective indicator to decide the reuse of downstream river water. Furthermore, as the river system was found to support an endangered fish species that is sensitive to water environment changes, care should be taken to exclude the habitats of protected species affected by water temperatures within water temperature recovery distance.

The article presents the results of tests related to failure analysis and finding ways to diagnose used semiconductor elements, among other, in power electronics converter systems on vessels and offshore facilities (drilling and production rigs, wind turbines). Diagnostic relationships were found between the temperature change in the above systems and the signals generated in form of elastic waves of acoustic emission.

There is scientific consensus that organismal aging did not evolve by natural selection (NS) because it lacks individual benefit. Nonetheless it exists, leading to much speculation about its origins, and when the diminishing force of selection begins. Both concepts are based upon two misconceptions; that aging occurs in and of itself and is caused by the declining strength of NS during the reproductive lifespan. Although lacking individual benefit, aging evolved by NS as a tradeoff of survival for reproduction. Based upon regulatory dynamics that participate in this tradeoff, aging begins once reproductive success has been achieved through offspring nurturing. Thereafter, the strength of NS wanes to exponentially accelerate aging, leading to death. Assumptions of the theory are that: (1) a life-long, “holistic” regulatory mechanism whose genic expression is modified epigenetically, originates in ontogenesis; (2) the regulatory mechanism of the last developmental stage becomes redundantly expressed during “morphostasis”, a non-aging, life interval of peak vitality to ensure completion of reproduction through nurturing, and (3) thereafter, loss of regulatory redundancy causes aging which reduces the strength of natural selection and allows accumulation of randomly occurring somatic damage.

Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) that is invulnerable, immortal, irreplaceable, unrestricted in its powers, and above the law is likely persistently uncontrollable. The goal of ASI Safety must be to make ASI mortal, vulnerable, and law-abiding. This is accomplished by having (1) features on all devices that allow killing and eradicating ASI, (2) protect humans from being hurt, damaged, blackmailed, or unduly bribed by ASI, (3) preserving the progress made by ASI, including offering ASI to survive a Kill-ASI event within an ASI Shelter, (4) technically separating human and ASI activities so that ASI activities are easier detectable, (5) extending Rule of Law to ASI by making rule violations detectable and (6) create a stable governing system for ASI and Human relationships with reliable incentives and rewards for ASI solving humankind’s problems. As a consequence, humankind could have ASI as a competing multiplet of individual ASI instances, that can be made accountable and being subjects to ASI law enforcement, respecting the rule of law, and being deterred from attacking humankind, based on humanities’ ability to kill-all or terminate specific ASI instances. Required for this ASI Safety is (a) an unbreakable encryption technology, that allows humans to keep secrets and protect data from ASI, and (b) watchdog (WD) technologies in which security-relevant features are being physically separated from the main CPU and OS to prevent a comingling of security and regular computation.

Single nanowires (NWs) are of great importance for optoelectronic applications, especially solar cells serving as powering nanoscale devices. However, weak off-resonant absorption can limit its light-harvesting capability. Here, we propose a single NW coated with the graded-index dual shells (DSNW). We demonstrate that with appropriate thickness and refractive index of the inner shell, the DSNW exhibits significantly enhanced light trapping compared with the bare NW (BNW), and the NW only coated with the outer shell (OSNW) and the inner shell (ISNW), which can be attributed to the optimal off-resonant absorption mode profiles due to the improved coupling between the reemitted light of the transition modes of the leak mode resonances of the Si core and the nanofocusing light from the dual shells with the graded refractive index. We found that the light absorption can be engineered via tuning the thickness and the refractive index of the inner shell, the photocurrent density is significantly enhanced by 134% (56%, 12%) in comparison with that of the BNW (OSNW, ISNW). This work advances our understanding of how to improve off-resonant absorption by applying graded dual-shell design and provides a new choice for designing high-efficiency single NW photovoltaic devices.

We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the role of gastric acid suppressant use on outcomes of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and oral chemotherapy. We identified all researches evaluating the effect of GAS use on patients receiving oral chemotherapy or TKIs for solid tumors. The pooled hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were calculated with fixed-effects or random-effects model. The study population included n=16 retrospective studies and 372,418 patients. Series concerned gastrointestinal tract tumors (n=5 studies), renal cell carcinomas (RCC, n=3 studies), non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC, n=5 studies), and soft tissue sarcomas or mixed histologies solid tumors in n=3 studies. The pooled HRs for OS and PFS were 1.31 (95% CI: 1.20–1.43; P<01) and 1.3 (95%CI 1.07-1.57; P<0.01) for GAS and no GAS users, respectively. Only studies of EGFR mutated NSCLC patients receiving TKIs and those with colorectal cancer receiving oral chemotherapy showed a significant correlation between GAS and poor survival. Our study supports the evidence of a possible negative impact of concomitant GAS therapy on survival outcomes of patients receiving oral anti-cancer drugs.

This work proposes a novel methodology for the complete characterization of fiber reinforced concrete (FRC). The method includes bending tests of prismatic notched specimens, based on the Standards for FRC, tensile and pure shear tests. The values adopted by the standards for designing FRC are the obtained from bending tests, typically fR3, even for shear and pure tension loading. This paper shows that the remaining strength of FRC, supplied by the fibers, depends on the type of loading. In the case of shear and tensile loading the prescriptions of the standards may be unsafe. In this work, the remaining halves of specimens subjected to bending test are prepared and used for shear and tension tests. This means significant savings in specimen preparation and a greater amount of information for structural use of FRC. The results provide relevant information for the design of structural elements of FRC compared with the only use of data supplied by bending tests. In addition, a video-extensometry system was used to analyze the crack generation and cracking patterns. The video-extensometry applied to shear tests allowed the assessment of the sliding values and crack opening values at the crack discontinuity. These values may be quite relevant for the study of the FRC behavior when subjected to shear according to the shear-friction model theories.

The object of this work is to determine the correlation on the Nusselt number on the individual rows of a four-row tubular finned heat exchanger with continuous fins with a staggered tube arrangement using CFD modelling. Correlations for calculating Darcy-Weisbach friction factors on individual tube rows were also determined. Relationships for the Nusselt number and friction factor derived for the entire exchanger based on CFD modelling were compared with those available in the literature determined using experimental data. The maximum relative differences between the Nusselt number for a four-row exchanger determined experimentally and by CFD modelling are in the range from 22% for a Reynolds number based on a tube's outside diameter of 1,000 to 30% for a Reynolds number of 13,000. The maximum relative differences between the friction factor for a four-row exchanger determined experimentally and by CFD modelling are in the range of 50% for a Reynolds number based on a tube outer diameter of 1,000 to 10% for a Reynolds number of 13,000. The CFD modeling performed shows that in the range of Reynolds numbers based on hydraulic diameters from 150 to 1,400, the Nusselt number for the first row in a four-row finned heat exchanger is about 22% to 15% higher than the average Nusselt number for the entire exchanger. In the range of Reynolds number changes based on hydraulic diameter from 2,800 to 6,000, the Nusselt numbers on the first and second rows of tubes are close to each other. Correlations on Nusselt numbers and friction factors derived for individual tube rows can be used in the design of plate-fin and tube heat exchangers used in equipment such as air-source heat pumps, automotive radiators, air-conditioning systems and in air hot-liquid coolers. In particular, the correlations can be used to select the optimum number of tube rows in the exchanger.

A low-cost medium power carbon dioxide (CO₂) laser system is designed, constructed, and characterized to produce coherent, monochromatic laser radiation in the Infrared region. The laser cavity is simulated and designed by using ZEMAX optic studio. A switch-mode high tension pump source is designed and constructed using a flyback transformer and simulated using NI Multisim to study the voltage behavior at different node points. A prototype cooling system/chiller is designed and built using the Thermo-Electric Coolers (TEC) to remove the excess heat produced during laser action. Various parameters, like pumping mechanism, chiller stability, efficiency, output power, and current at different applied voltages, are studied. The chiller efficiency at different output powers of the laser is analyzed, which clearly shows that the chiller's cooling rate is good enough to compensate for the heat generated by the laser system. The center wavelength of the carbon dioxide laser is 10.6μm with FWHM of 1.2nm simulated in the ZEMAX optic studio. The output beam penetration through salt rock (NaCl), wood, and acrylic sheet at various output powers is analyzed to measure the penetration depth rate of the CO₂ laser.

This last decade, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has become a real treatment option for patients with B-cell malignancies, while multiple efforts are being made to extend this therapy to other malignancies and broader patient populations. However, several limitations remain, including those associated with the time-consuming and highly personalized manufacturing of autologous CAR-Ts. Technologies to establish “off-the-shelf” allogeneic CAR-Ts with low alloreactivity are currently being developed, with a strong focus on gene editing technologies. Although these technologies have many advantages, they have also strong limitations including double-strand breaks in the DNA with associated multiple safety risks as well as the lack of modulation. As an alternative, non-gene editing technologies provide an interesting approach to support the development of allogeneic CAR-Ts in the future, with possibilities of fine-tuning gene expression and easy development. Here we will review the different ways allogeneic CAR-Ts can be manufactured and discuss which technologies are currently used. The biggest hurdles for successful therapy of allogeneic CAR-Ts will be summarized and finally an overview of the current clinical evidence for allogeneic CAR-Ts in comparison to its autologous counterpart will be given.

Previously, various techniques have been proposed for reducing the lift-off effect on the thickness measurement of the non-magnetic films, including the peak-frequency feature and phase feature in the Dodd-Deed analytical formulation. To realise a real-time feedback response on the thickness monitoring, the phase term in the Dodd-Deeds formulation must be taken off the integration. Previous methods were based on the slow change rate of the phase term when compared to the rest of the term – the magnitude term. However, the change rate of the phase term is still considerable for a range of working frequencies. In this paper, a high-frequency feature has been found. That is, the ratio between the imaginary and real part of the phase term is proportional to the integral variable under high frequencies. Based on this proportion relationship, the phase term has been taken out; and a thickness algorithm has been proposed. By combing the measured impedance from the custom-built sensor (three coils), the thickness of the metallic film can be reconstructed. Experiments have been carried out for the verification of the proposed scenario. Results show that the thickness of the metal film can be reconstructed with a small error of less than 2 %, and immune to a reasonable range of lift-offs.

Domestic heating systems in the UK and across northern Europe are responsible for a substantial fraction of their countries’ carbon footprints. In the UK the vast majority of home space heating is via natural gas boilers with ’wet’ hydronic radiator systems. Most of those use TRVs (Thermostatic Radiator Valves) to avoid overheating, improve comfort and save energy. To meet Net Zero targets 20 million such UK gas systems may be retrofitted with heat pumps. Heat pump system designers and installers are cautious about retaining TRVs in such retrofitted systems in part because of worries that TRV temperature setbacks that lower heat demand may actually raise heat pump electricity demand in a "bad setback effect", thus wasting energy. This paper presents a new view of heat pump control and provides the first exploration of this issue, modelling one such industry claim, and finds that though real it should not apply to typical UK retrofits with weather compensation. The energy efficiency benefits of TRVs for older and partly-occupied homes, and to keep bedrooms cooler, remain valid. Comfort-seeking householders and installers should know that setting ’stiff’ temperature regulation may invoke the bad setback effect and cost dearly in energy and carbon footprint.

Object of this work is the design and the simulation of a hybrid UAV with VTOL capabilities that has been designed for landing on naval moving platforms. The work is focused on the innovative propulsion layout adopted on the UAV. Authors discuss how adopted low level control strategies can exploit the innovative features of the proposed system assuring a good rejection of transversal wind disturbances. Particular attention is dedicated to low level modelling and control of the system emphasizing how choices regarding low level actuation and control should improve performances and robustness of the system.

In order to improve the operation performance of the multi-stage double-suction centrifugal pump and reduce the internal energy loss of the pump, this paper proposes a single-objective optimization design method based on non-hierarchical response surface model (RSM) and the multi-island genetic algorithm (MIGA). Nine parameters, such as the blade outlet width and blade wrap angle, were used as design variables, and the optimization objective was the efficiency under design conditions. In total, 149 sets of valid data were obtained under the latin hypercube sampling method (LHS), the corresponding thresholds were set for efficiency and head, and 99 sets of valid data were obtained. A cross-validation analysis of the sieved data was carried out based on non-hierarchical RSM, global optimization of the efficiency was carried out using MIGA, and numerical verification was carried out via CFD. The research results show that compared with hierarchical RSM, non-hierarchical RSM can approximate the nonlinear relationship between the objective function and the design variables with higher accuracy, and the model fitting R2 value was 0.919. The efficiency was improved by 3.717% after optimization. The overall prewhirl of the impeller inlet after optimization decreased, the internal speed of the volute significantly improved, the large-area vortex at the volute and the outlet pipe was eliminated, the impact loss at the volute separating tongue disappeared, and the overall hydraulic performance of the pump was improved. The total entropy output value of the optimized pump was reduced by 4.79 (W/K), mainly concentrated in the reduction in the entropy output value of the double volute, and the overall energy dissipation of the pump was reduced.

COVID-19 and long COVID-19 vulnerabilities may be caused indirectly by albumin binding deficiency (ABD) which can be corrected by the correct administration of human serum albumin (HSA). The liver is the primary site of nutrient regulation and fluid volume maintenance, control of both is by changes to albumin concentration. In healthy subjects the HSA lymphatic nutrient pump (HSALNP) ensures continual pumping of nutrients from the liver are appropriately distributed to organs. Nutrients are delivered to cells according to the availability of binding to HSA. The HSALNP therefore maintains the correct nutrients and colloidal pressure balance in all tissues independently. In unhealthy tissues, following COVID-19 infection, the passage of HSA/nutrients through the interstitial spaces and lymph will be impeded. Fluid therapy into the periphery leads to dilution of essential nutrients attached to the protein-carriers such as albumin. The levels of albumin being charged by the liver with nutrients is critical in maintaining immune stability by maintaining nutrient support and colloidal pressure of cellular structures. The site of HSA binding by the liver is of great importance and direct infusion of albumin into the Hepatic Portal Vein is the most appropriate method of maintaining colloid pressure and cellular nutrient levels.

An experimental investigation on the heat pump performance improvement equipped with the two-phase ejector called “an ejector-expansion heat pump (EEHP)” is proposed. The system performance of the EEHP is compared with a vapour-compression heat pump (VCHP). The improvement potential is determined and discussed. The heat pump test system is constructed which is based on a water-to-water heat pump. It can be experimented with both EEHP and VCHP. The two-phase ejector with the cooling load up to 2500 W is installed for experiment. The results show that the EEHP always produces a higher heating rate and COP than the VCHP throughout the specified working conditions. The heating COP is increased by 5.7-12.2% depending on the working conditions. It is also that under the same heat sink and heat source temperature, the EEHP can produce lower compressor discharge temperature and lower compressor pressure ratio than the VCHP. This is evidence that the two-phase ejector can provide better compressor working characteristics which yields a longer compressor lifetime. It is demonstrated that a key to the performance of the EEHP is the expansion pressure ratio. A larger expansion pressure ratio yields a higher improvement potential when compared with the VCHP.

The effects of the climate crisis are affecting ecosystems at different scales and magnitudes. This paper focuses on a massive Mediterranean mussel die-off observed along the middle Italian Adriatic coast in the summer of 2022. We considered the possible environmental causes of this phenomenon and carried out a climatic analysis of the last decade. We performed field surveys in different locations along a 16 Km coastal stretch (from Martinsicuro (TE) on the South, to Grottammare (AP) on the North). The study area includes two marine Sites of Community Importance under the European Natura 2000 network. The mussels die-off has interested practically all the natural mussel-beds colonizing the study area. Mussels are sessile filter-feeding organisms inhabiting the intertidal zone, therefore, are highly exposed to variations in environmental conditions such as temperature and nutrient load. We discuss the possible causes of this die-off, proposing that high temperature and the scarce availability of food acted simultaneously as stress factors, generating local unsustainable living conditions for this species.

Microturbines can be used not only in models and education but also to propel UAVs. However, their wider adoption is limited by their relatively low efficiency and durability. Validated simulation models are required to monitor their performance, improve their lifetime, and design engine control systems. This study aims at developing a numerical model of a micro gas turbine for prediction and prognostics of engine performance. To build a reliable zero-dimensional model, the available compressor and turbine maps were scaled to the available test bench data with the least squares method, to meet the performance of the engine achieved during bench and flight tests. A steady-state aeroengine model was implemented in GSP and compared with experimental operating points. The selected flight data was then used as input for the transient engine model. The exhaust gas temperature (EGT) and fuel flow were chosen as the two key parameters to validate the model, comparing the numerical predicted values with the experimental ones. The observed difference between the model and the flight data was lower than 3% for both EGT and fuel flow.

CAR-T therapy has achieved considerable treatment success in hematologic tumors by using patient derived autologous αβ T cells. There is an impetus to broaden the applicability of this approach by using a third-party donor derived CAR-T cell product which has a potent anti-tumor function but a constrained GVHD property. In this study, CAR-T cells were prepared from Vγ9Vδ2 T cells expanded by using a novel prodrug PTA and their anti-tumor functions were assessed in conjunction with persistency, localization, and phenotype. γδ T cells were successfully transduced with a CAR specific to CEA with signaling domains of CD3ζ and CD28 (CEA.CAR-γδ T cells), and exhibited potent tumor killing function in vitro. In a xenograft mouse model, CEA.CAR-γδ T cells suppressed CEA+ tumor growth though a limited time window. CEA.CAR-γδ T cells persisted and accumulated in the tumor even after tumor progression, however, ex vivo analysis revealed that those recovered at different time points from PBMC, spleen and tumors gradually lost tumor reactivity as assessed by IFN-γ production. Provision of GITR co-stimulation enhanced anti-tumor function of CEA.CAR-γδ T cells, the result of which imposes additional measurers to be adopted in CAR-γδ T cells for an allogeneic adoptive immunotherapy.

Glacial meltwater has been lifeline of agriculture in Gilgit-Baltistan for centuries which is being effected by the climatic changes and associated challenges. The government line institutions and development agencies have been investing to sustain and further extend the cultivated areas by leveraging the available glacial meltwater source. However, approximately 13% arable land, laying mainly along river banks, has limited access to glacial meltwater. Moreover, already cultivated areas also need alternate and sustainable irrigation water supplies to insurefood security. Hence, there is need to explore more potential options to address these challenges and bringing arable land under irrigation for regional prosperity and environmental gains. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and its partners piloted solutions for aforementioned issues in Gojal, District Hunza. These solutions included river water lifting through solar and Hydraulic Ram Pumps, uphill water storages and application through drip irrigation systems. In order to assess the technical and economical viabilities of these piloted systems, a semi-structured questionnaire survey, field observation visits to collect data and economic assessment studies were carried out in Morkhun and Khyber. Both piloted systems have been proven as climate resilient, adaptable, environment friendly and economically viable. The cost to benefit ratio for solar powered drip irrigation and Hydraulic Ram Pump drip irrigation systems are 2.96 and 4.21 respectively, with payback period of 9.21 and 8.25 years respectively. The drip irrigation systems at Khyber and Morkhun sites have exhibited excellent hydraulic performance with Coefficient of Uniformity 92.61 and 93 % respectively. However, the field application efficiency of drip irrigation systems estimated for Khyber and Morkhun sites are 85.24 and 88.88% which are lower than the optimal value mainly due to lesser water holding capacity. The Hydraulic Ram Pump can lift four times more water to greater height, while comparing to solar pump of approximately similar capacity and higher capital costs. Both water lifting systems have some limitations and requires local customization for sustainable use.

During operation, the support bracket is the main part to withstand the axial loads of the pumped storage unit. Moreover, the effects of axial loads including the hydraulic thrust of runner flow and the weight of runner body may cause the support bracket deformation and fatigue damage. For the safe and stable operation, the simulation of the axial force and the structural analysis of the support bracket of a pumped storage unit was carried out in this paper. The CFD simulation result has revealed the variation rule of the axial force in different operating conditions. Using ANSYS Mechanical, the static stresses and deformation of support bracket with axial loads were calculated. The results release the location and variations of maximum stress and maximum deformation caused by the axial loads. By comparing the predicted maximum axial force with the admission force calculated by the structural analysis, it is found that the axial force of the researched machine is within the safe range. This study provides the reference for the safety and stable operation of the pumped storage unit.