New simplified design methods for engineering barriers around contaminated sites with Cauchy boundaries.

Since the 1980s, low-permeability slurry trench cutoff walls have been widely constructed as barriers to retard the migration of contaminants. The thickness of the cutoff walls is a key determinant of the wall service life. Through a series of theoretical derivations, simplified methods for determining the flux limit and concentration limit were proposed to determine the thickness of cutoff walls for contaminated sites with constant pollutant flux. The relative errors of both the flux-based and concentration-based methods increase as the breakthrough criterion of the ratio between the specified limit concentration of the contaminant to the source concentration (C*) and the ratio of the limited value of contaminant flux to the constant source flux (F*) increases, with a given Peclet number PL. The maximum relative error reaches 4% and 6% when C* and F* are both 0.1, which covers most practical situations in cutoff wall design. Good agreements of wall thickness were obtained between the proposed simplified methods and analytical solutions via a clear example. The proposed method can efficiently simplify the design process of cutoff walls with high accuracy, providing a basis for containing contaminated sites.

Effects of quinoa flour (Chenopodium Quinoa Willd) substitution on wheat flour characteristics.

Quinoa is a pseudo-cereal with great nutritional and functional qualities, serving as an excellent substitution to develop quinoa-containing foods. This study aimed to explore the influence of quinoa flour substitution on quality characteristics of wheat flour (WF). WF was substituted with different level of quinoa core flour, ground quinoa whole flour and recombined quinoa whole flour. Increasing levels of quinoa flour in WF declined dough swelling index, while increased falling number of composite flours. Besides, quinoa flour substitution considerably decreased the chemical forces of gluten in composite flours. The proportions α-helix and ß-sheets reduced, while the random coil proportion increased in gluten secondary structure. SEM images revealed that the gluten network structure was severely damaged. Our findings indicated that substitution of WF with quinoa flours was promising to be developed as an ingredient for food products.

BCAA insufficiency leads to premature ovarian insufficiency via ceramide-induced elevation of ROS.

Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a disease featured by early menopause before 40 years of age, accompanied by an elevation of follicle-stimulating hormone. Though POI affects many aspects of women's health, its major causes remain unknown. Many clinical studies have shown that POI patients are generally underweight, indicating a potential correlation between POI and metabolic disorders. To understand the pathogenesis of POI, we performed metabolomics analysis on serum and identified branch-chain amino acid (BCAA) insufficiency-related metabolic disorders in two independent cohorts from two clinics. A low BCAA diet phenotypically reproduced the metabolic, endocrine, ovarian, and reproductive changes of POI in young C57BL/6J mice. A mechanism study revealed that the BCAA insufficiency-induced POI is associated with abnormal activation of the ceramide-reactive oxygen species (ROS) axis and consequent impairment of ovarian granulosa cell function. Significantly, the dietary supplement of BCAA prevented the development of ROS-induced POI in female mice. The results of this pathogenic study will lead to the development of specific therapies for POI.

Dual-terminal decentralized event-triggered control for switched systems with cyber attacks and quantization.

This article concerns dual-terminal event-triggered communication and decentralized control of switched systems that are the target of cyber attacks. Due to different properties of physical system, this system uses decentralized communication channels to transmit feedback data. In order to make efficient use of communication resources in each channel, the information sent by the sub-system needs to meet the given event-triggering conditions before it can be released. Moreover, the quantization is employed in both sides of the controller to further improve the data transmission efficiency. Then, considering that the triggered and quantified data are affected by dual-terminal cyber attacks, the event-triggered closed-loop switched (CLS) systems under attacks are derived. Furthermore, by utilizing average dwell time (ADT) technique and piecewise Lyapunov function (LF) method, sufficient conditions are given to ensure that the event-triggered CLS systems subject to dual-terminal cyber attacks are globally exponentially stable (GES). Accordingly, the design conditions for the gains of event-triggered dynamic output feedback (DOF) controllers and the parameters of decentralized event-triggering mechanisms (DETMs) are presented. Finally, simulations for verifying the system stability with and without cyber attacks are given.

Slow Development Restores the Fertility of Photoperiod-Sensitive Male-Sterile Plant Lines.

Photoperiod- and thermosensitive genic male sterility (P/TGMS) lines are widely used in crop breeding. The fertility conversion of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) TGMS lines including cals5-2, which is defective in callose wall formation, relies on slow development under low temperatures. In this study, we discovered that cals5-2 also exhibits PGMS. Fertility of cals5-2 was restored when pollen development was slowed under short-day photoperiods or low light intensity, suggesting that slow development restores the fertility of cals5-2 under these conditions. We found that several other TGMS lines with defects in pollen wall formation also exhibited PGMS characteristics. This similarity indicates that slow development is a general mechanism of PGMS fertility restoration. Notably, slow development also underlies the fertility recovery of TGMS lines. Further analysis revealed the pollen wall features during the formation of functional pollens of these P/TGMS lines under permissive conditions. We conclude that slow development is a general mechanism for fertility restoration of P/TGMS lines and allows these plants to take different strategies to overcome pollen formation defects.