Unsteady separated and reattaching turbulent flow over a two-dimensional square rib

The spatio-temporal characteristics of the separated and reattaching turbulent flow over a two-dimensional square rib were studied experimentally. Synchronized measurements of wall-pressure fluctuations and velocity fluctuations were made using a microphone array and a split-fiber film, respectively. Profiles of time-averaged streamwise velocity and wall-pressure fluctuations showed that the shear layer separated from the leading edge of the rib sweeps past the rib and directly reattaches on the bottom wall (x/H=9.75) downstream of the rib. A thin region of reverse flow was formed above the rib. The shedding large-scale vortical structures (fH/U₀=0.03) and the flapping separation bubble (fH/U₀=0.0075) could be discerned in the wall-pressure spectra. A multi-resolution analysis based on the maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) was performed to extract the intermittent events associated with the shedding large-scale vortical structures and the flapping separation bubble. The convective dynamics of the large-scale vortical structures were analyzed in terms of the autocorrelation of the continuous wavelet-transformed wall pressure, cross-correlation of the wall-pressure fluctuations, and the cross-correlation between the wall pressure at the time-averaged reattachment point and the streamwise velocity field. The convection speeds of the large-scale vortical structures before and after the reattachment point were U_c=0.35U₀ and 0.45U₀, respectively. The flapping motion of the separation bubble was analyzed in terms of the conditionally averaged reverse-flow intermittency near the wall region. The instantaneous reattachment point in response to the flapping motion was obtained; these findings established that the reattachment zone was a 1.2H-long region centered at x/H=9.75. The reverse-flow intermittency in one period of the flapping motion demonstrated that the thin reverse flow above the rib is influenced by the flapping motion of the separation bubble behind the rib.     

Existence and Uniqueness Theorems for the Two-Dimensional Ericksen–Leslie System

In this paper we study the two dimensional Ericksen–Leslie equations for the nematodynamics of liquid crystals if the moment of inertia of the molecules does not vanish. We prove short time existence and uniqueness of strong solutions for the initial value problem in two situations: the space-periodic problem and the case of a bounded domain with spatial Dirichlet boundary conditions on the Eulerian velocity and the cross product of the director field with its time derivative. We also show that the speed of propagation of the director field is finite and give an upper bound for it.     

Global dynamics of a competition model with non-local dispersal I: The shadow system

Equations with non-local dispersal have been widely used as models in biology. In this paper we focus on logistic models with non-local dispersal, for both single and two competing species. We show the global convergence of the unique positive steady state for the single equation and derive various properties of the positive steady state associated with the dispersal rate. We investigate the effects of dispersal rates and inter-specific competition coefficients in a shadow system for a two-species competition model and completely determine the global dynamics of the system. Our results illustrate that the effect of dispersal in spatially heterogeneous environments can be quite different from that in homogeneous environments.     

Expression and Purification of Bioactive High-Purity Recombinant Mouse CXCL14 in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Escherichia coli</Emphasis>

Mouse CXCL14/BRAK is a monocyte-selective chemokine which is expressed in almost all normal tissues. A flood of reports on its new functions of tumor suppression and fat metabolism modulation has left CXCL14 a potential therapeutic candidate for these diseases. Therefore, a simple accessible method is on demand for large-scale production of recombinant mouse CXCL14 protein for in vivo animal studies. Here, we introduce an efficient method for large-scale production of recombinant mouse CXCL14, by which an 18-mg protein is produced from 2-L Escherichia coli culture with good bioactivity and low level of endotoxin.     

Varying the Unruh temperature in integrable quantum field theories

A computational scheme is developed to determine the response of a quantum field theory (QFT) with a factorized scattering operator under a variation of the Unruh temperature. To this end a new family of integrable systems is introduced, obtained by deforming such QFTs in a way that preserves the bootstrap S-matrix. The deformation parameter β plays the role of an inverse temperature for the thermal equilibrium states associated with the Rindler wedge, β = 2π being the QFT value. The form factor approach provides an explicit computational scheme for the β ≠ 2π systems, enforcing in particular a modification of the underlying kinematical arena. As examples deformed counterparts of the Ising model and the sinh-Gordon model are considered.     

Therapeutic efficacy of a case of pyruvate dehydrogenase complex deficiency monitored by localized proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy

We experienced a case of pyruvate dehydrogenase deficiency observed by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy(¹H MRS). This case was diagnosed as West syndrome by characteristic convulsion and the periodic hypsarrhythmia pattern of EEG. At the age of 11 months, the first examination of ¹H MRS revealed a high peak of lactate, and the high concentration of lactate and pyruvate was confirmed in sampled cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Deficiency of pyruvate dehydrogenase complex was finally diagnosed by genetic examination. Dichloroacetate was administered to the patient as therapy. Decrease of lactate in the brain was found by ¹H MRS. Lactate and pyruvate in the CSF was also decreased. In accordance with the suspension of dichloroacetate, increase of lactate in the brain was detected and the convulsions reappeared. After readministration of dichloroacetate, the patient was almost symptom free and lactate in the brain and CSF had decreased to the normal extent. We considered that ¹H MRS provides useful information for screening metabolic disorders of infants and assessing the efficacy of therapy.     

Redox-Active Azulene-based 2D Conjugated Covalent Organic Framework for Organic Memristors

As a conjugated and unsymmetric building block composed of an electron-poor seven-membered sp² carbon ring and an electron-rich five-membered carbon ring, azulene and its derivatives have been recognized as one of the most promising building blocks for novel electronic devices due to its intrinsic redox activity. By using 1,3,5-tris(4-aminophenyl)-benzene and azulene-1,3-dicarbaldehyde as the starting materials, an azulene(Azu)-based 2D conjugated covalent organic framework, COF-Azu, is prepared through liquid-liquid interface polymerization strategy for the first time. The as-fabricated Al/COF-Azu/indium tin oxide (ITO) memristor shows typical non-volatile resistive switching performance due to the electric filed induced intramolecular charge transfer effect. Associated with the unique memristive performance, a simple convolutional neural network is built for image recognition. After 8 epochs of training, image recognition accuracy of 80 % for a neutral network trained on a larger data set is achieved.     

COVID-19 Epidemic Prediction Based on Deep Learning

In this paper, a multi-layer gated recurrent unit neural network (multi-head GRU) model is proposed to predict the confirmed cases of the new crown epidemic (COVID-19). We extract the time series relationship in the data, and the rolling prediction method is adopted to ensure the simple structure of the model and achieve higher precision and interpretability. The prediction results of this model are compared with the LSTM model, the Transformer model and the infectious disease model (SIR). The results show that the proposed model has higher prediction accuracy. The mean absolute error (MAE) of epidemic prediction in most countries (the United States, Brazil, India, the United Kingdom and Russia) is respectively 197.52, 68.02, 200.67, 24.78 and 123.50, which is much smaller than the prediction error of the SIR model, LSTM model and Transformer model. For the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, traditional infectious disease models and machine learning models cannot achieve more accurate predictions. In this paper, we use a GRU model to predict the real-time spread of COVID-19, which has fewer parameters and reduces the risk of overfitting to train faster. Meanwhile, it can make up for the shortcoming of the transformer model to capture local features.     

Interactions of potassium vapor with reactor tubes made of different materials and their impacts on particulate matter emission during pulverized biomass combustion

During the combustion of biomass in drop-tube furnace (DTF) systems, the released alkali metal (e.g., potassium, K) inevitably reacts with reactor tube at high temperatures, affecting the experimental results on the emission of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters of <10 μm (PM₁₀). This study reports the interactions between K vapor and tube reactors made of silicon carbide, corundum, and mullite and their impacts on PM₁₀ emission. Demineralized wood samples loaded with potassium chloride (KCl) or ion-exchanged K respectively were combusted in a DTF at 1300 °C under air or oxy-fuel atmosphere. Another series of experiments was conducted to collect and analyze the PM₁₀ from the combustion of KCl-loaded wood, K-exchanged wood, and two typical biomass samples (cotton stalk and wheat straw) in the three reactor tubes under air atmosphere. Experimental results show that 4.1‒72.5% of K is retained in the three tubes when burning the KCl-loaded wood in air, and the combustion in oxy-fuel atmosphere slightly increases the K retention. For K-exchanged wood combustion in air, only 3.7‒23.6% of K is released from the reactor tubes. In all conditions, the reactivity of the reactor tubes with K vapor follows a sequence of mullite > corundum > silicon carbide. The retained K is unstable, 49.0‒64.8% of which can be re-released during polyvinyl chloride combustion. In addition, the results demonstrate that, compared with silicon carbide tube, the use of corundum and mullite tubes leads to a 16.2‒54.3% decrease in PM₁ yields and a significant drop in fine mode peaks in PM₁₀ during the combustion of biomass samples in air, while the PM_1–10 yields and the coarse mode peaks remain largely unchanged. These are attributed to the enhanced retentions of alkali metals in corundum and mullite tubes, which reduce the yields of Na, K, and Cl in PM₁₀, but has negligible effect on those of refractory elements such as Mg and Ca.