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Emergency evacuation paths for tank farm fires based on bi-objective dynamic planning
Quantitative analysis of ultra-close fault dynamic rupture and seismic risks in deep roadway excavation
Friction stir welding of aluminum alloy 6082-T6 using eccentric shoulder tools to eliminate the need for tool tilting
Abstract The present research investigates the impact of eccentric shoulder tools on the microstructure and mechanical properties of friction stir welded (FSWed) aluminum alloy AA6082-T6. Two tools, one with an eccentric shoulder and one with an aligned shoulder, were employed under identical welding parameters: a rotational speed of 600 rpm, travel speed of 250 mm/min, and tilt angles of 0° and 3°. The four FSWed joints produced were characterized using optical microscopy, tensile testing, and hardness testing. The weld nugget zone (WNZ) microstructure showed significant grain size reduction from 5.24 μm for the base material to 1.63 μm, using the eccentric shoulder tool at 0° tilting angle and 2.78 μm at 3° tilting angle. The aligned shoulder tool resulted in an average grain size of 2.79 μm at 0° tilting angle and 2.23 μm of 3° tilting angle. Thus, the eccentric shoulder tool with a tilt angle of 0° exhibited the smallest average grain size. The mechanical properties obtained are consistent with the microstructure, where the joint produced using the eccentric shoulder at a 0° tilting angle showed the highest tensile strength of 216.5 MPa (89.7% joint efficiency) and 7.71% elongation. In contrast, the aligned shoulder tool resulted in coarser grains and a lower mechanical performance. In addition, this joint exhibited the highest hardness recovery in WNZ. The current study implies that the eccentric shoulder tool can eliminate the need for a tilting angle during FSW, which is required in some applications.
Integrating numerical models with deep learning techniques for flood risk assessment
Two-year assessment of radon exposure in the underground tourist route in the Historic Silver Mine in Tarnowskie Góry (Poland)
Early optical coherence tomography biomarkers for tailored frequency of intravitreal aflibercept in neovascular age-related macular degeneration
Controlled induction of type 2 diabetes in mice using high fat diet and osmotic-mini pump infused streptozotocin
A linear matric inequality based multi-loop PI control design for coupled multivariable liquid level system
Abstract This paper presents design and development of an optimal robust PI controller based on linear matrix inequalities for a typical industrial process control system. In this method, the design problem has been transformed into a state feedback controller design problem for an augmented uncertainty MIMO system. In this work, a dynamic decoupler is designed to handle loop interaction. The control problem is then solved for the obtained decoupled subsystem by employing a constraint optimization approach, ensuring compliance with a defined LQ cost objective function. Simulation results verify the efficacy of the proposed controller, presenting its effectiveness in achieving both set-point accuracy and disturbance attenuation. Furthermore, the study employs disk margin analysis to ascertain safe ranges for gain and phase margin.
Community perceptions and mental burden among (former) residents at Europe’s largest lignite mine in Western Germany: a cross-sectional study
Abstract During the many years that coal has been used for energy production, most studies have focused on the global environmental impacts such as climate change or, when addressing health, rather on conditions of open pit coal miners. This study aims to assess the mental health impacts of lignite (brown coal) mining on communities living in proximity to an open pit mine, including resettlers. A questionnaire-based survey was used with items including socioeconomic effects of open pit mining and resettlement, environmental burden, attitudes, as well as scales for depressive and somatic symptoms. Data included n = 100 respondents from resettled villages and n = 235 participants from pit edge villages nearby Europe’s largest open pit mine Hambach in Western Germany. Both groups reported up to twice as high levels of depressive and somatic symptoms compared to the general population. Over 16.0% of all surveyed stated moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms, while 40.0% of respondents from pit edge villages self-reported moderate-to-severe somatic symptom levels (vs. 23.7% in resettled villages). Three out of four respondents from pit edge villages felt often to nearly always affected by dust followed by noise (41.9%). These results suggest that a changing home environment and residential proximity to an open pit mine could affect the mental health, leading to psychological strain. Further studies on the psychosocial impact of environmental change and loss of home are needed.
Acid blue 40 dye decolorization using magnetite nanoparticles with reduced graphene oxide and mesoporous silica as Fenton catalysts
Abstract Synthetic dyes are predominantly emitted into the eco-environment resulting, in harmful effects on the environment and human. This study presents a new perspective on the mesoporous silica (SBA-16) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) obtained from rice husk ash as substrates for Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) to investigate their morphological and Fenton catalytic characteristics towards degradation of synthetic acid blue 40 dye (AB40). The adsorption and Fenton catalytic properties of AB40 dye by the prepared Fe3O4, Fe3O4/SBA-16 and Fe3O4/rGO catalysts were examined. The successful synthesis of such catalysts was affirmed by the results obtained from FE-SEM, EDX, TEM, FTIR, XRD and nitrogen adsorption measurements. The adsorption of AB40 dye followed the Langmuir model, with maximum adsorption capacities of 169.2, 21.1 and 16.6 mg/g for Fe3O4, for Fe3O4/SBA-16 and Fe3O4/rGO, respectively. This result was explained based on their specific surface areas. The decolorization efficiency was estimated through several factors, including initial dye concentration, pH and H2O2 concentration. The results disclosed that a catalyst dose = 1 g/L, initial dye concentration = 50 mg/L, pH = 3 and [H2O2] = 15 mmol/L are the optimum conditions for full decolorization of AB40 within 60 min at 35 °C. The prepared Fe3O4 NPs exhibited a superior Fenton activity at 25 °C and pH 3. However, both composites increased Fenton performance above 25 °C, indicating that SBA-16 and rGO substrates can enhance the stability of Fe2+ to generate a higher amount of hydroxyl radicals. Regeneration results disclosed that the obtained Fenton-like catalysts revealed notably high catalytic efficiency (> 95%) and stability, with minimal decrease in activity observed after running four cycles of AB40 dye degradation at pH 3 and 35 °C. Thus, this study demonstrated that both SBA-16 and rGO substrates obtained from rice husk ash improved the reusability and stability of Fe3O4 catalysts in wastewater treatment using heterogeneous Fenton reactions.
Association between C-reactive protein and hemoglobin in US rheumatoid arthritis patients based on NHANES data analysis
Abstract The poor prognosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and its potential for complications highlight the importance of understanding factors that are associated with incidence and mortality rates. The inclusion criteria of this study were RA-related data from 1999 to 2018 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) dataset. Based on certain screening criteria, a total of 610 subjects were recruited. The Low CRP group (< 3 mg/L) and the High CRP group (> 3 mg/L) were significantly different in gender, poverty-to-income ratio, body mass index, hypertension, hemoglobin (Hb), hematocrit, and mean corpuscular hemoglobin. KM survival result revealed that male RA patients in the Low Hb group had a significantly lower survival rate than those in the High Hb group (P < 0.0001), while female RA patients in the Low Hb group showed no statistically significant difference compared with the High Hb group (P = 0.13). Importantly, there was a nonlinear relationship between Hb and all-cause mortality in RA patients. In this study, we identified Hb as a protective factor against CRP in RA patients and also observed its association with the prognosis of RA. Consequently, regulating Hb levels might be considered to be associated with the progression of RA.
Superior replication, pathogenicity, and immune evasion of a Texas dairy cattle H5N1 virus compared to a historical avian isolate
Publisher Correction: Investigating the modulatory effects of lactoferrin on depressed rats through 16S rDNA gene sequencing and LC–MS metabolomics analysis
Efficacy of Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus probiotic strains in treating chromate induced dermatitis
Preoperative brain volume loss is associated with postoperative delirium in advanced heart failure patients supported by left ventricular assist device
The effect of balcony configurations on ACH and pollutant concentration in symmetrical and asymmetrical street canyons
Structured hashing with deep learning for modality, organ, and disease content sensitive medical image retrieval
Abstract Evidence-based medicine is the preferred procedure among clinicians for treating patients. Content-based medical image retrieval (CBMIR) is widely used to extract evidence from a large archive of medical images. Developing effective CBMIR systems for clinical practice is essential due to the enormous volume of medical images of heterogeneous characteristics, viz. modalities, organs, and diseases. Deep neural hashing (DNH) has achieved outstanding performance and has become popular for fast retrieval on large-scale image datasets. However, DNH still needs to be improved for handling medical images, which often asks for knowledge of the semantic similarity of such characteristics. This work proposes a structure-based hashing technique termed MODHash to address this challenge. MODHash retrieves images with semantic similarity of the above characteristics as per user preference. The network of MODHash is trained by minimizing characteristic-specific classification loss and Cauchy cross-entropy loss across training samples. Experiments are performed on a radiology dataset derived from the publicly available datasets of Kaggle, Mendeley, and Figshare. MODHash achieves 12% higher mean average precision and 2% higher normalized discounted cumulative gain compared to state-of-the-art for top-100 retrieval. The characteristic-specific retrieval performance is evaluated, demonstrating that MODHash is an effective DNH method for evaluating user preferences.
Floodplain inundation in the Murray–Darling Basin under current and future climate conditions
Abstract Predicting floodplain inundation under a changing climate is essential for adaptive management of water resources and ecosystems worldwide. This study presents a framework combining satellite observations and hydrological modeling to explore changes in floodplain inundation. We examine variability, trends, and frequency of inundation across the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB), Australia’s largest river system, over the past 35 years (1988–2022). Our analysis shows that annual maximum 30-day runoff is a primary hydrological factor influencing floodplain inundation. Using this metric as a proxy, we found that floodplain inundation, if driven solely by hydroclimate conditions, would have been more frequent in the recent decades (1988–2022) compared to the century-long baseline (1900–2022), especially in the southern basin. Despite projected declines in water availability under climate change in MDB, floodplain inundation appears to be less affected. The projected changes in floodplain inundation vary by region, influenced by local hydroclimate, human intervention, and the balance between projected more intense extreme rainfall and drier catchment conditions. This framework provides valuable insights into water resource planning and environmental management, with potential applications beyond the MDB.