Decomposed Research Articles

Plastics with embedded particles decompose in days instead of years

“Biodegradable” plastics exist, but they’re not so great at biodegrading. These polymers often take months or years to decompose, and even then can form potentially harmful microplastics. Scientist...

Plastics with embedded particles decompose in days instead of years

Plastics with embedded particles decompose in days instead of years

Research progress of electromagnetic properties of tunable chiral metasurfaces

Chiral metasurfaces are ultra-thin metamaterials composed of planar chiral cell structures with specific electromagnetic responses. They have attracted great attention due to their singular ability to control electromagnetic waves at will. With tunable materials incorporated into the metasurfaces design, one can realize tunable/reconfigurable metadevices with functionalities controlled by external stimuli, opening a new platform to dynamically manipulate electromagnetic waves. In this paper, we introduce some theoretical foundations of the electromagnetic properties of tunable/reconfigurable chiral metasurfaces. When a linearly polarized light enters a tunable chiral metasurface, it can be decomposed into left-handed circularly polarized (LCP) wave and right-handed circularly polarized (RCP) wave. By changing the dielectric constant and magnetic permeability of the medium through the external environment, the metadevices can dynamically control the response characteristics to various polarized lights, especially circularly polarized lights such as refractive index, dichroism, optical rotation, asymmetric transmission, etc. According to the properties of negative refractive index, circular dichroism, optical rotation, and asymmetric transmission controlled by the tunable chiral metasurfaces, we review the latest research progress. Finally, we put forward our own opinions on the possible future development directions and existing challenges of the rapidly developing field of the tunable chiral metasurface.

The temporal dynamics of bacteria in the coelomic fluid of sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus after evisceration

Sea cucumbers have been emerged as important models to study organ regeneration and development owing to the capacity to regenerate its organs quickly after evisceration. Evisceration is a special defense mechanism for sea cucumber to eject all of internal organs when they encounter predators or adverse environmental conditions. However, little was known about the dynamics of bacterial community in coelomic fluid after evisceration. In the present study, evisceration was induced by intracelomic injection of 0.35 M KCl, and the significantly alternation of bacterial community in coelomic fluid of sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus was observed with lower diversity and total bacterial load at 7 dpe (days post evisceration) and 14 dpe. The bacterial community was tended to restore at 28 dpe. In particular, relative abundances of Bacteroidetes and Rubritaleaceae, which involved in degradation of polysaccharides and lipid, increased significantly at 7 dpe (p < 0.05), and returned to the original level at 28 dpe. In addition, the predicted functions of bacterial community indicated that the bacteria associated with metabolism pathways of amino acid, lipid and carbohydrate also increased significantly at 7 dpe. These results suggested that the bacterial community in coelomic fluid of A. japonicus was highly dynamic and could rebuild a stable community structure after evisceration. It was suggested that the enriched metabolic related beneficial bacteria at early stage played a role after evisceration in terms of decomposing polysaccharides and lipid to provide energy.

A Note on a Three-Dimensional Bäcklund Transformation

The Backlund transformation (BT) for a three-dimensional nonlinear wave equation and its nonlinear superposition formula are studied in this note. We prove that the three dimensional Backlund transformation obtained by Leibbrandt, et al. can be decomposed into three two-dimensional BTs. Some results on the N-dimensional Liouville equation are also discussed in the article.

Modelling the hydraulic/mechanical behaviour of an unsaturated completely decomposed granite under various conditions

Because the hydraulic/mechanical behaviour of unsaturated soil is more complicated than that of saturated soil, one of the most important issues in modelling unsaturated soil is to properly couple its stress-strain relationship with its water retention characteristics. Based on the results of a series of tests, the stress-strain relationship and the changes in suction and saturation of unsaturated completely decomposed granite (CDG, also called Masado) vary substantially under different loading/hydraulic conditions. To precisely model the hydraulic/mechanical behaviour of unsaturated Masado, in this study, the superloading concept was firstly introduced into an existing saturated/unsaturated constitutive model to consider the structural influences. Then a water retention curve (WRC) model considering the volumetric change in the soil, in which the skeleton and scanning curves of the water retention characteristics were assumed to shift in parallel in accordance with the change in the void ratio, was proposed. The proposed WRC model was incorporated into the constitutive model, and the validity of the newly proposed model was verified using the results of tests conducted on unsaturated Masado, including water retention, oedometer and triaxial tests. The accuracy of the proposed model in describing the stress-strain relationship and the variations in suction and saturation of unsaturated Masado is satisfactory.

Substratos alternativos para produção de mudas de Ruellia simplex por estaquia

To produce quality seedlings using the vegetative propagation method, in addition to determining the ideal conditions for plant development, it is necessary to choose a substrate that has a good relationship between water storage and aeration. In this context, the objective was to evaluate the effect of different proportions of carbonized rice husk (CAC) and babassu decomposed stem (CDB) on the composition of substrates for Ruellia simplex vegetative propagation. The experiment was conducted at the Center for Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CCAA) at the Federal University of Maranhao (UFMA). A completely randomized design with seven treatments was used, of which T1 - 100% Solo; T2 - 20% CAC + 80% Solo; T3 - 60% CAC + 40% Solo; T4 - 100% CAC; T5 - 20% CDB + 80% Solo; T6 - 60% CDB + 40% Solo; T7 - 100% CDB, with each experimental unit repeated 3 times and composed of three plants. There was no significant effect on the number of shoots and leaves, root length, root volume, fresh mass of the aerial part and root system. However, for the average length of aerial part, dry mass of aerial part and root system, a significant difference between the proportions of the substrates. We recommend the substrate containing 20% ​​babassu decomposed stem plus 80% soil and 20% carbonized rice husk plus 80% soil for vegetative propagation of Ruellia simplex.

A CONCATENATED UP AND DOWN TAPERED FIBER FOR SIMULTANEOUS MEASUREMENT OF STRAIN AND TEMPERATURE

A novel fiber optical sensor based on in-line fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer for simultaneous measurement of strain and temperature is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The interferometer is simple, extremely robust and highly sensitive and consists of two concatenated parts; one is a down-tapered fiber (DTF) and the other is an up-tapered fiber (UTF). UTF and DTF sections of the sensor are fabricated by using a commercial fiber splicer and a non-commercial setup based on heating and stretching a portion of a standard single-mode fiber, respectively. While UTF section behaves as a beam splitter to decompose the injected light into core and cladding modes, DTF section provides evanescent field to access the surrounding environment. Experimental results indicate that the resolutions of 0.83 °C and 45.80 micro-epsilon were achieved in temperature and strain, respectively, for simultaneous measurement with a 10 pm of wavelength resolution.

REVIEW | Decomposed

REVIEW | Decomposed

The metabolic suppressor 3-iodothyronamine enhances lipolysis in 3T3-L1 adipocytes via activation of the adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase/forkhead box O1 signaling pathway.

Obesity is a major health concern in modern societies as it is linked to diverse chronic diseases, such as diabetes, cancer, stroke, and skeletomuscular disorders. This study aimed to investigate the lipolytic potency of the metabolic suppressor 3-iodothyronamine (T1AM) and its molecular mechanism in differentiated 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Cells stained with Oil Red O showed a remarkable accumulation of lipid droplets by 20-d post-differentiation and a plateau at 26 - 30 day. Treatment with 100 μM T1AM for 6 h increased the liberation of free fatty acids (FFAs) and glycerol (P < 0.05) detected in the culture media. However, this stimulatory effect was significantly suppressed by ATGListatin, an inhibitor of adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL), suggesting that ATGL plays a rate-limiting role in triglyceride (TG) turnover. To understand the lipolytic mechanism, immunoblotting and confocal image analyses of the T1AM-treated and control groups were conducted. The elevated lipolysis was accompanied by increases in the phosphorylation of adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (p-AMPK), nuclear localization of forkhead box O1 (FoxO1), and expression of monoacylglycerol lipase (MGL) protein (P < 0.05). Finally, the treated cells exhibited downregulated expression of acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) relative to p-ACC and increased protein expression of carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 (CPT1) (P < 0.05). Taken together, T1AM showed lipolytic potency via activation of the AMPK/FoxO1/ATGL/MGL axis for decomposing TGs to FFAs and glycerol and of the AMPK/ACC/CPT1 pathway in facilitating the mobilization of FFAs into the mitochondria, highlighting its therapeutic potential for the treatment of obesity.

TİCARİ ÇEKİM MODELİNDE ÇOKLU DİRENÇ FAKTÖRÜ VE TÜRKİYE’NİN DIŞ TİCARET EĞİLİMİNİN DEĞERLENDİRMESİ

İlk defa Anderson ve van Wincoop (AvW, 2003) tarafından ortaya atılan Çoklu Direnç Faktörünün (Multilateral Resistance Term), çekim modeli ile yapılan tahminlemelerde değişkenlerin sapmasız ölçülebilmesi için modelde kontrol edilmesi önemlidir. Temelde, ihracat ve ithalatçıların ülke pazarlarına erişimlerinde karşılaştıkları ticaret maliyetlerini yansıtan teorik bir fiyat endeksi olarak yorumlayabileceğimiz “çoklu direnç”, dünya ülkelerinin toplam ihracat ve ithalat hacimlerinin eşit olması zorunluluğunun (pazarın temizlenme şartı) basit bir sonucudur ve en açık şekliyle, rekabetin küresel olduğunu ifade eder. Bu çalışma kapsamında gerçekleştirilen literatür taraması ve metaveri analizi sonucunda Türkiye için yapılan çekim modeli uygulamalarında, çoklu direnç faktörünün çoğunlukla yer almadığı tespit edilmiştir. Buradan hareketle çalışmada, çoklu direnç faktörünün çekim modelindeki yeri ve önemi uluslararası literatürdeki tartışmalar çerçevesinde vurgulanacak ve 1980-2018 yılları için 97 ülkenin çift yönlü ihracat hacimlerinin kullanıldığı bir ampirik çalışma yardımıyla yapısal modelin doğru tahminlenmesinde Havuzlanmış EKK, Sabit ve Rassal Panel Etkiler arasından en uygun yöntem araştırılacaktır. Ayrıca, çekim modeli yardımıyla elde edilen sabit katsayı tahminleri ile ülkelerin çoklu direnç faktörünü de içeren ihracat ve ithalat eğilimleri hesaplanacak ve aralarında bir karşılaştırma yapılacaktır. Bu karşılaştırma ile Türkiye’nin ticari yapısının temel belirleyenleri; ekonomik büyüklük, ikili ilişkiler, rekabetçi pozisyon ve çoklu direnç, ekseninde analiz edilerek hangi noktalarda güçlü veya zayıf kaldığı tanımlanacaktır.

Adsorption behavior of water molecules on the surface of lithium hydride

The theoretical analysis method is used to calculate the adsorption behavior of water molecules on the surface of lithium hydride, and analyze the influence of surface modification of lithium hydride on its hydrophobic performance. The results show that after constructing groove structure and columnar structure on LiH-111 surface and LiH-100 surface, the adsorption force to water molecules of the modified surface is stronger than that of the complete surface, indicating that the introduction of surface microstructure does change the potential energy distribution. There is a superposition of potential energy at the intersection of the walls, which strengthens the ability to adsorb water molecules, but does not cause changes in the hydrophilic properties of the surface. Water molecules can be stably adsorbed on the perfect LiH (001) surface, and its dissociation energy barrier is only 0.386 eV. This dissociation reaction can be carried out at room temperature. Water molecules are easily dissociated on the LiH surface with structural defects, which is the fundamental reason why LiH decomposes easily in a certain humidity air and water environment.

Error Modeling in Distribution Network State Estimation Using RBF-Based Artificial Neural Network

State estimation is essential to access observable network models for online monitoring and analyzing of power systems. Due to the integration of distributed energy resources and new technologies, state estimation in distribution systems would be necessary. However, accurate input data are essential for an accurate estimation along with knowledge on the possible correlation between the real and pseudo measurements data. This study presents a new approach to model errors for the distribution system state estimation purpose. In this paper, pseudo measurements are generated using a couple of real measurements data by means of the artificial neural network method. In the proposed method, the radial basis function network with the Gaussian kernel is also implemented to decompose pseudo measurements into several components. The robustness of the proposed error modeling method is assessed on IEEE 123-bus distribution test system where the problem is optimized by the imperialist competitive algorithm. The results evidence that the proposed method causes to increase in detachment accuracy of error components which results in presenting higher quality output in the distribution state estimation.

Produção de mudas de dracena vermelha (Cordyline terminalis) em substrato de caule decomposto e babaçu

Ao longo da história, a produção de plantas ornamentais tem se transformado em uma forma altamente especializada e intensiva de agricultura. Objetivou-se com este trabalho avaliação o uso do caule decomposto de babaçu (CDB) na produção de mudas de dracena vermelha ( Cordyline terminalis ) por propagação vegetativa. O experimento foi conduzido em casa de vegetação com controle de luminosidade de 70% de outubro a dezembro de 2018, no Centro de Ciências Agrárias e Ambientais da Universidade Federal do Maranhão.). Seis formulações de substratos: S0: 100% solo; S20: 20% de CDB + 80% de solo; S40: 40% de CDB + 60% de solo; S60: 60% de CDB + 40% de solo; S80: 80% de CDB + 20% de solo;S100: 100% de CDB, foram distribuidas em um delineamento inteiramente casualizado com 4 repetições, totalizando 24 unidades experimentais. Histórias-se a das estacas (PS,%); o número de brotos (NB) e folhas (NF); área foliar (AF, cm²); diâmetro do maior broto (DMB, cm); comprimento radicular (CR, cm); volume de raiz (VR, cm³); massa seca de parte aérea (MSPA, g) e da raiz (MSR, g) pela ANOVA em comparação com as médias pelo teste Tukey a 5% de significância. Teve efeito significativo para PS, MSR e AF. O caule decomposto de babaçu pode ser usado como substrato na propagação vegetativa de dracena vermelha, sendo recomendada uma proporção 60/40 CDB / solo.

Designing Cost-Effective Telemedicine Camps for Underprivileged Individuals in Less Developed Countries: A Decomposed Affordance-Effectivity Framework

Designing Cost-Effective Telemedicine Camps for Underprivileged Individuals in Less Developed Countries: A Decomposed Affordance-Effectivity Framework

Determination of Marked Components - aloin and aloe-emodin - in Aloe vera before and after hydrolysis

This article proposed an optimal hydrolysis condition and a chromatographic method for the analysis of polyphenol glycosides in aloe extract and its hydrolysates, The aglycones assayed were aloin and aloe-emodin, The linearity (r ＞ 0.9997) and validation (＜ 10%) of the calibration curves were excellent. The amounts of aloin were 76.1 ± 5.9 and 77.7 ± 2.8 μmol/g in decoction and hydrolysate, respectively, while those of aloe-emodin were 8.3 ± 0.5 and 8.1 ± 0.3 μmol/g, The contents of aloin and aloe-emodin in aloe showed no significant difference before and after hydrolysis, This may be due to that aloe sold in Chinese medicine retailer was processed and the glycosides have already been transferred to aglycones. In addition, the components may be decomposed during processing. The method developed here can be applied to determine aglycones and their glycosides in aloe for the quality control.

Long-term Projection of Hourly Electricity Demand with Sectoral Decomposition for Developing Economies: Bangladesh Case Study

Electricity is one of the cleanest forms of final energy With the growth of economy and industrialization, many of the developing countries face increased demand of energy and electricity In order to meet the growing demand in an economically efficient way, proper prediction of hourly load and appropriate planning is important Bangladesh being one of the developing countries, experienced steady economic growth and increasing electricity demand over the last decade Electricity generation has increased more than twice and share of people having access to electricity reached from 47% in 2009 to 94% in 2019 So far, the household sector is the main contributor in electricity consumption However, as the access to electricity reaches saturation, industry and service sectors would play significant role in coming decades in terms of both electricity consumption amount and pattern In this study, we analyze the projected electricity demand from the year 2020 to 2050 at an interval of 5 years and decompose the total demand into sectoral contribution from household, industry, service and other sectors In addition, the hourly load demand pattern of each sector has been synthesized so that the overall changes in the daily electricity demand pattern for different seasons could be identified

Las palabras necesarias de Luis Piedrahita. Creación humorística de un vocabulario científico técnico

Over the last decades, Spain has seen an increase in TV and Radio programmes and in scientific research and educational studies dealing with the correct use of the Spanish language. In parallel, a new tendency has begun to develop, that is to say the creation of a new language through semantic neologisms. This is achieved by decomposing and recomposing existing words and by assigning them a new meaning (LANG, 2009). Over the last few years, this playful tendency has been expressed at its best in the works of Luis Piedrahita. The aim of the present study is to focus on the descriptive-qualitative analysis of the method used by Piedrahita to create his own ‘vocabulary’, through which he describes reality basing on observation, abstraction and logic. The data used for analysis are constituted of a series of words used in the TV shows El Hormiguero and La Ventana and selected on the basis of their distinctive linguistic and cultural features. Our study will also show how Piedrahita, respecting the mechanisms laying behind the process of Spanish word formation, is able to create new words which share a number of common features with technical terms: unambiguity, direct reference to the object or phenomenon, negation of subjectivity, precision and clarity.

A vision-based system for long-distance remote monitoring of dynamic displacement: experimental verification on a supertall structure

Dynamic displacement response of civil structures is an important index for in-construction and in-service structural condition assessment. However, accurately measuring the displacement of large-scale civil structures such as high-rise buildings still remains as a challenging task. In order to cope with this problem, a vision-based system with the use of industrial digital camera and image processing has been developed for long-distance, remote, and real-time monitoring of dynamic displacement of supertall structures. Instead of acquiring image signals, the proposed system traces only the coordinates of the target points, therefore enabling real-time monitoring and display of displacement responses in a relatively high sampling rate. This study addresses the in-situ experimental verification of the developed vision-based system on the Canton Tower of 600 m high. To facilitate the verification, a GPS system is used to calibrate/verify the structural displacement responses measured by the vision-based system. Meanwhile, an accelerometer deployed in the vicinity of the target point also provides frequency-domain information for comparison. Special attention has been given on understanding the influence of the surrounding light on the monitoring results. For this purpose, the experimental tests are conducted in daytime and nighttime through placing the vision-based system outside the tower (in a brilliant environment) and inside the tower (in a dark environment), respectively. The results indicate that the displacement response time histories monitored by the vision-based system not only match well with those acquired by the GPS receiver, but also have higher fidelity and are less noise-corrupted. In addition, the low-order modal frequencies of the building identified with use of the data obtained from the vision-based system are all in good agreement with those obtained from the accelerometer, the GPS receiver and an elaborate finite element model. Especially, the vision-based system placed at the bottom of the enclosed elevator shaft offers better monitoring data compared with the system placed outside the tower. Based on a wavelet filtering technique, the displacement response time histories obtained by the vision-based system are easily decomposed into two parts: a quasi-static ingredient primarily resulting from temperature variation and a dynamic component mainly caused by fluctuating wind load.

Assisting authors to convert raw products into polished prose

Being a notoriously complex problem, writing is generally decomposed into a series of subtasks: idea generation, expression, revision, etc. Given some goal, the author generates a set of ideas (brainstorming), which he integrates into some skeleton (outline, text plan, outline). This leads to a first draft which is submitted then for revision possibly yielding changes at various levels (content, structure, form). Having made a draft, authors usually revise, edit, and proofread their documents. We confine ourselves here only to academic writing, focusing on sentence production. While there has been quite some work on this topic, most writing assistance has mainly dealt with grammatical errors, editing and proofreading, the goal being the correction of surface-level problems such as typography, spelling, or grammatical errors. We broaden the scope by also including cases where the entire sentence needs to be rewritten in order to express properly all of the information planned. Hence, Sentence-level Revision (SentRev) becomes part of our writing assistance task. Obviously, systems performing well in this task can be of considerable help for inexperienced authors by producing fluent, well-formed sentences based on the user’s drafts. In order to evaluate our SentRev model, we have built a new, freely available crowdsourced evaluation dataset which consists of a set of incomplete sentences produced by nonnative writers paired with final version sentences extracted from published academic papers. We also used this dataset to establish baseline performance on SentRev.