Simulation of evacuation behaviors in fire using spacial grid

A two-dimensional Cellular Automata (CA) model to demonstrate the special phenomena of occupants evacuating from fire room is presented. A set of simple but effective models is proposed to investigate the effect of fire smoke on route choice. The concept of danger grade is introduced, and occupants select the target cell according to the value of danger grade at each time step. Some technique is introduced to substitute the human intelligence, such as premeditation. The simulation results show that human evacuation is influenced greatly by both human visual field and building exit.     

一种基于改进的弹性安全换道间距规则的元胞自动机模型

基于对STCA模型与F STCA模型的分析研究,结合车辆换道的实际状况,重新定义了换道风险度的概念,提出了一种更符合实际情况的改进的弹性安全换道间距规则,并进一步提出了基于该规则的双车道元胞自动机交通流模型.实验结果表明,该模型有益于提高道路资源利用率,同时在安全方面能够降低事故发生的可能性.     

Transition Metal-Promoted Reactions in Aqueous Media and Biological Settings

During the last decade, there has been a tremendous interest for developing non-natural biocompatible transformations in biologically relevant media. Among the different encountered strategies, the use of transition metal complexes offers unique possibilities due to their high transformative power. However, translating the potential of metal catalysts to biological settings, including living cells or small-animal models such as mice or zebrafish, poses numerous challenges associated to their biocompatibility, and their stability and reactivity in crowded aqueous environments. Herein, we describe the most relevant advances in this direction, with a particular emphasis on the systems’ structure, their mode of action and the mechanistic bases of each transformation. Thus, the key challenges from an organometallic perspective might be more easily identified.     

Stability analysis of fractional order fuzzy cellular neural networks with leakage delay and time varying delays

In this paper we investigated the stability of fractional order fuzzy cellular neural networks with leakage delay and time varying delays. Based on Lyapunov theory and applying bounded techniques of fractional calculation, sufficient criterion are established to guarantee the stability. Hybrid feedback control is applied to derive the proposed results. Finally, numerical examples with simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Gadolinium‐Decorated Silica Microspheres as Redox‐Responsive MRI Probes for Applications in Cell Therapy Follow‐Up

The redox microenvironment within a cell graft can be considered as an indicator to assess whether the graft is metabolically active or hypoxic. We present a redox‐responsive MRI probe based on porous silica microparticles whose surface has been decorated with a Gd‐chelate through a disulphide bridge. Such microparticles are designed to be interspersed with therapeutic cells within a biocompatible hydrogel. The onset of reducing conditions within the hydrogel is paralleled by an increased clearance of Gd, that can be detected by MRI.     

An improved cellular automaton model with the consideration of a multi-point tollbooth

Based on the classical Nagel–Schreckenberg model, we in this paper propose an improved cellular automaton (CA) model to study the influences of a multi-point tollbooth on traffic flow. The numerical results show that the multi-point tollbooth can be looked at as a bottleneck and that it can improve the road capacity compared with other tolling stations, which shows that the proposed model is more effective than other traffic flow models. In addition, the results can help readers to better understand the effects of a multi-point tollbooth on traffic flow and help traffic engineers to reasonably design the tolling station.     

Quantitative study of cellular heterogeneity in doxorubicin uptake and its pharmacological effect on cancer cells

Cellular heterogeneity in doxorubicin (DOX) uptake and its relationship with pharmacological effect on cancer cells were quantitatively investigated for the first time. An in vitro experimental model was established by treating human leukemia K562 and breast cancer MCF‐7 cells with different schedules of DOX with or without surface P‐glycoprotein (P‐gp) inhibitor verapamil (VER). The cellular heterogeneity in DOX uptake was quantitatively examined by single‐cell analysis using capillary electrophoresis coupled with laser‐induced fluorescence detection. The corresponding cytotoxic effect was tested by cellular morphology, 3‐(4,5‐dimethylthiazol‐2‐yl)‐2,5‐diphenyl‐tetrazolium and flow cytometry assays. The expression of cellular membrane surface P‐gp was determined by flow cytometry. Results showed that the cellular heterogeneity exists in DOX uptake. The single‐high DOX schedule leads to lower uptake heterogeneity and higher mean drug uptake. The cellular heterogeneity in DOX uptake was found to be negatively correlated with drug cytotoxicity and surface P‐gp expression, with r = ?0.7680 to ~ ?0.9587. VER reduces the cellular variation in DOX uptake, suggesting that surface P‐gp may be one of the causes of the cellular heterogeneity in DOX uptake. This research demonstrates the importance of quantitative study of cellular heterogeneity in drug uptake and its potential application in drug schedule design, response prediction and therapy modulation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motzkin numbers out of Random Domino Automaton

Motzkin numbers are derived from a special case of Random Domino Automaton – recently proposed a slowly driven system being a stochastic toy model of earthquakes. It is also a generalisation of 1D Drossel–Schwabl forest-fire model. A solution of the set of equations describing stationary state of Random Domino Automaton in inverse-power case is presented. A link with Motzkin numbers allows to present explicit form of asymptotic behaviour of the automaton.     

Modeling fatigue of ascending stair evacuation with modified fine discrete floor field cellular automata

Fatigue even increases the complexity of the pedestrian dynamics which is regarded as a kind of nonlinear system, and might have a significant negative impact on the crowd evacuation. However, it has never been investigated completely and properly. Thus, the fine discrete floor field cellular automata model is modified by integrating the fatigue function to explore the influence of fatigue on the crowd ascending evacuation. The simulation fits well with the empirical data and the observations quantitatively and qualitatively, indicating the model captures the main features of evacuation considering fatigue impact. As a prediction, without merging streams, compared with the case of walking in constant speed, when fatigue is considered, it takes 71.4% longer for all persons to enter the stairs and 87.2% longer to evacuate. With merging streams, fatigue has little impact on the inflow, while it makes the total evacuation time 84.2% longer.     

Piezoelectric property improvement of polyethylene ferroelectrets using postprocessing thermal‐pressure treatment

In this work, biaxially stretched polymer foams with well‐defined cellular structures were prepared from polyethylene via blown‐film extrusion and subjected to corona charging to produce a piezoelectric response. The charging parameters were first optimized in terms of charging voltage and needle distance, as well as the gas type and pressure to investigate their effect on the piezoelectric coefficient (d₃₃). The results show that samples charged under nitrogen (N₂) at 100 kPa had better d₃₃ coefficient than those charged under ambient air or N₂ at 20 kPa. Moreover, 2 different thermal pressure treatments were imposed to obtain an optimized eye‐like cellular structure with different cell aspect ratios (AR). The results showed that when the cells were elongated in both the longitudinal and transverse directions (higher AR), higher d₃₃ coefficients were achieved. From all the samples produced, the best results were obtained for a longitudinal aspect ratio (AR‐L) of 7.1, a transversal aspect ratio (AR‐T) of 4.6, and a relative foam density of 0.52 leading to a d₃₃ coefficient of 935 pC/N. This coefficient was further increased using reverse charging and multilayered films, reaching a maximum of 2550 pC/N. This value is much higher than typical ones reported so far for any polyethylene and polypropylene ferroelectrets. These results could increase the use of polyethylene in piezoelectric applications as these materials are very attractive for the large‐scale production of electret‐based sensors and transducers due to their low cost and easy processing.