TDA/rGO@WS with Joule heat and photothermal synergistic effect: A promising adsorption material for all-weather recovery of viscous oil spills at sea.

Oil spills are a global environmental protection challenge, and traditional adsorption materials have poor effect on low temperature and high viscosity marine oil spills. This article reports composite adsorption materials TDA/rGO@WS for viscous oil spills: loaded with rGO/TDA coating on a commercial biomass wood pulp sponge (WS), achieving Joule heating, photothermal effect and hydrophobic modification. The results showed that the TDA/rGO@WS has good photothermal conversion ability and Joule heating ability, and the temperature increased to 83.7 °C and 148 °C, respectively, under simulated solar irradiation and additional voltage at room temperature. The efficiency of adsorption at a low temperature of 5 °C increased by 22.41% at 1 sun and by 51.53% at 10 V. Temperature effectively reduced the viscosity of the offshore oil spill and ensures the efficient adsorption of oil spills at low temperatures promoted. The TDA/rGO@WS also showed good hydrophobicity (WCA=129°), excellent efficiency of water-oil separation (99.53%) and good adsorption capacity (9.4-13.68 g/g) for marine fuel oils. TDA/rGO@WS effectively solves the problem of cleaning up high-viscosity oil spills from ships in winter and polar waters, and proposes a new strategy for all-weather efficient treatment of oil spills at sea.

Influence of starch silylation on the structures and properties of starch/epoxidized soybean oil-based bioplastics.

The present work systematically investigated the influence of starch silylation on the structures and properties of starch/epoxidized soybean oil-based bioplastics. Silylated starch was synthesized using starch particles (SP-ST) or gelatinized starch (SG-ST) under different silane hydrolysis pHs. Due to the appearance of -NH2 groups and lower OH wavenumbers, SP-ST obtained at pH 5 showed higher silylation degree and stronger hydrogen bond interaction with epoxidized soybean oils (ESO) than that at pH 11. The morphology analysis revealed better interfacial compatibility of ESO and SP-ST. The tensile strength of the samples containing SP-ST increased by 51.91 % than the control, emphasizing the enhanced interaction within the bioplastics. However, tensile strength of the bioplastics with SG-ST decreased by 59.56 % due to their high moisture contents from unreacted silanes. Additionally, the bioplastics with SG-ST exhibited an obvious reduction of thermal stability and an increase in water solubility because of the presence of unreacted APMS. The bioplastic degradation was not prevented by starch silylation except high pH. The bioplastics showed the most desirable tensile properties, thermal stability, and water solubility when starch was surface-modified with silanes hydrolyzed at pH 5. These outcomes made the fabricated bioplastics strong candidates for petroleum-based plastics for packaging applications.

An Energy-Efficient Bayesian Neural Network Implementation Using Stochastic Computing Method.

The robustness of Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) to real-world uncertainties and incompleteness has led to their application in some safety-critical fields. However, evaluating uncertainty during BNN inference requires repeated sampling and feed-forward computing, making them challenging to deploy in low-power or embedded devices. This article proposes the use of stochastic computing (SC) to optimize the hardware performance of BNN inference in terms of energy consumption and hardware utilization. The proposed approach adopts bitstream to represent Gaussian random number and applies it in the inference phase. This allows for the omission of complex transformation computations in the central limit theorem-based Gaussian random number generating (CLT-based GRNG) method and the simplification of multipliers as and operations. Furthermore, an asynchronous parallel pipeline calculation technique is proposed in computing block to enhance operation speed. Compared with conventional binary radix-based BNN, SC-based BNN (StocBNN) realized by FPGA with 128-bit bitstream consumes much less energy consumption and hardware resources with less than 0.1% accuracy decrease when dealing with MNIST/Fashion-MNIST datasets.

Preparation and characterization of bioplastics from silylated cassava starch and epoxidized soybean oils.

In this work, a systematic coupling study of silane coupling agent between starch and epoxidized soybean oils (ESO) was carried out. Starch was modified by 3-aminopropyl trimethoxy silane (APMS) with various contents of NaOH. The APMS-modified starch was incorporated with ESO to synthesize the bioplastics by solution casting. As demonstrated by the FTIR spectra, the hydrogen bond interactions among starch molecules were inhibited by the modification. This outcome provided higher interaction and compatibility of starch with ESO, as confirmed by FESEM. TGA showed that the thermal stability of starch decreased considerably after the silylation. In contrast, the produced bioplastics with silylated starch exhibited higher thermal stability than the control sample. Regarding the bioplastics, an obvious increase of tensile strength from 5.78 MPa to 9.29 MPa was obtained. This work suggested a simple and effective modification technique by APMS to improve compatibility of starch/ESO-based bioplastics with superior mechanical and thermal properties.

Comparative metabolomics analysis of pericarp from four varieties of Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim.

A qualitative and quantitative analysis of metabolites was performed by metabolomics comparation on the pericarps of four varieties of Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim. The Zanthoxylum bunganum as scion combined with three rootstock varieties of Zanthoxylum piasezkii Maxim (YJ), July Zanthoxylum bunganum Maxim (QJ), and August Zanthoxylum bunganum Maxim (BJ), at the same time Zanthoxylum bungeanum seedlings breeding were compared as control (MJ). A total of 1429 metabolites were identified in Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim pericarps based on chromatography and mass spectrometry dual detection platform. While the metabolites between four varieties of Z. bungeanum varied, there was identified 31, 15, 7, 79, 42, 19 down-regulated and 55, 50, 13, 75, 43, 27 up-regulated differential metabolites between MJ and BJ, MJ and QJ, MJ and YJ, QJ and BJ, YJ and BJ, YJ and QJ. Meanwhile, the differential metabolites composition was distinct among various varieties of Z. bungeanum and dominant by phenolic compounds flavonoid and phenolic acids, especially highest in varieties July Zanthoxylum bunganum Maxim. Highlight A comparative metabolomics analyzed in four varieties of Zanthoxylum bungeanum pericarp.Total 1429 metabolites were identified and mainly in flavonoid and phenolic acid.July and August Zanthoxylum bunganum Maxim has highest antioxidant capacity.The rootstock July Zanthoxylum bunganum Maxim was recommended in Loess Plateau.

Distribution and health risks of organic micropollutants from home dusts in Malaysia.

Indoor dust is an important medium to evaluate human exposure to emerging organic contaminants. The principal aim of this study was to determine overall status of organic micropollutants (OMPs) of indoor dust in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and assess their corresponding health risks. One hundred thirty-three OMPs, ascribed to 13 chemical groups, were screened by Automated Identification and Quantification System with a GC-MS database. The concentrations of OMPs ranged between 460 and 4000 µg/g, with the median concentration of 719 µg/g. The dominant chemical groups were ascribed to n-alkanes (median: 274 µg/g), plasticizers (151 µg/g), sterols (120 µg/g), and pesticides (42.6 µg/g). Cholestrol was the most abundant compound (median: 115 µg/g). Different sources and usage patterns of OMPs in various houses were expected. Toxicity values of OMPs were obtained from existing databases or predicted by quantitative structure-activity relationship models. Cumulative hazard quotients for OMPs through ingestion route were lower than one for all the dust samples, demonstrating that there was no remarkable non-cancer risk. The cancer risks of these OMPs were greater than 10-4, with cholestrol dominating 99.1% of the carcinogenic risks, which suggested that there was a significant cancer risk. This study might offer a benchmark to ensure the safety of chemical usages in future in Malaysia.

The Microstructural Evolution and Grain Growth Kinetics of Fine-Grained Extruded Mg-Nd-Zn-Zr Alloy.

The microstructure evolution and grain growth kinetics of the fine-grained extruded Mg-Nd-Zn-Zr alloy were investigated by holding the extruded plate for a wide range of time in the temperature range of 470 °C to 530 °C. By observing the optical micrographs, it was found that the material showed abnormal grain growth at the experimental condition of 470 °C × 24 h, and the time point of abnormal grain growth appeared significantly earlier with the increase in the experimental temperature. The evaluation of the second phase content within the alloy indicates that the presence of the second phase contributes to the microstructural stability of the Mg-Nd-Zn-Zr alloy. However, the slow coarsening/dissolution of the second phase is an important cause of abnormal grain growth. Based on the experimental data, the isothermal grain growth kinetic models of the fine-grained extruded Mg-Nd-Zn-Zr alloy were developed based on the Sellars model. The grain growth exponent was in the range of 5.5-8 and decreased gradually with the increase in the experimental temperature. The grain growth activation energy is approximately 150.00 kJ/mol, which is close to the bulk diffusion activation energy of magnesium, indicating that the grain growth is controlled by lattice diffusion. By energy spectrometry (EDS), the compositional changes of the second phase within this alloy at 500 °C were investigated.

Hot Deformation Behavior, Processing Maps and Microstructural Evolution of the Mg-2.5Nd-0.5Zn-0.5Zr Alloy.

Isothermal hot compression experiments were conducted on Mg-2.5Nd-0.5Zn-0.5Zr alloy to investigate hot deformation behavior at the temperature range of 573-773 K and the strain rate range of 0.001 s-1-10 s-1 using a Gleeble-3500D thermomechanical simulator. The results showed that the rheological curve showed a typical work hardening stage, and there were three different stages: work hardening, transition and steady state. A strain compensation constitutive model was established to predict the flow stress of the Mg-2.5Nd-0.5Zn-0.5Zr alloy, and the results proved that it had high predictability. The main deformation mechanism of the Mg-2.5Nd-0.5Zn-0.5Zr alloy was dislocation climbing. The processing maps were established to distinguish the unstable region from the working region. The maps showed that the instability generally occurred at high strain rates and low temperatures, and the common forms of instability were cracking and flow localization. The optimum machining range of the alloy was determined to be 592-773 K and 0.001-0.217 s-1. With the increase in deformation temperature, the grain size of the alloy grew slowly at the 573-673 K temperature range and rapidly at the 673-773 K temperature range.

Occurrence and exposure risk assessment of organic micropollutants in indoor dust from Malaysia.

Indoor dust is an important source of human exposure to hazardous organic micropollutants (OMPs) because humans spend about 90 % of their time in the indoor environments. This study initially analyzed the concentrations and compositions of OMPs in the dust of different indoor environments from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A total of 57 OMPs were detected and assigned to 7 chemical classes in this study. The total concentration of OMPs ranged from 5980 to 183,000 ng/g, with the median concentration of 46,400 ng/g. Personal care products, organophosphate esters, and pesticides were the dominant groups, with their median concentrations at 12,000, 10,000, and 5940 ng/g, respectively. The concentrations and compositions of influential OMPs varied in different microenvironments, suggesting different sources and usage patterns in the house. Then, the noncarcinogenic and carcinogenic risks of exposure to these substances for diverse age groups were assessed based on the median concentration. Cumulative noncarcinogenic risks of these OMPs via ingestion pathway were estimated to be negligible (1.41 × 10-4 - 1.87 × 10-3). The carcinogenic risks of these OMPs were higher than 10-6 (1.63 × 10-6 - 6.17 × 10-6) and should be noted. Theobromine accounted for more than 89 % of the cumulative cancer risk, implying that the carcinogenic risk of theobromine needs further monitoring in the future. Toddler was the most affected group for cancer risk among all the age groups, regardless of the microenvironments. These findings from this study may provide a benchmark for future efforts to ensure the safety of indoor dust for the local residents.

Experimental investigation of oil-water flow in the horizontal and vertical sections of a continuous transportation pipe.

A series of experiments were conducted to investigate flow pattern transitions and concentration distribution during simultaneous pipe flow of oil-water two-phase flow through the horizontal and vertical sections. The flowing media applied were white mineral oil and distilled water. Superficial oil and water velocities were between 0 and 0.57 m/s. Flow pattern maps revealed that the horizontal and vertical sections of the pipe lead to different flow pattern characteristics under the same flow conditions. The original contributions of this work are that a transition mechanism for predicting the boundary between oil-in-water (O/W) flow and water-in-oil (W/O) in oil-water two-phase flow was obtained. The effects of input water cut, oil and water superficial velocities on the concentration distribution of the dispersed phase were studied. The empirical formulas for the phase holdup based on the drift-flux model were obtained. The predicted results agreed well with those of the experimental data, especially for the O/W flow pattern.

Effects of ecological environment and host genotype on the phyllosphere bacterial communities of cigar tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.).

Microorganisms of plant phyllosphere play an important role in plant health and productivity and are influenced by abiotic and biotic factors. In this study, we investigated the phyllosphere bacterial communities of three cigar tobacco varieties cultivated in Guangcun (GC) and Wuzhishan (WZS), Hainan, China. Metagenomic DNA was extracted from tobacco leaf samples and sequenced by 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing. Our results showed that bacterial communities of cigar tobacco phyllosphere in GC exhibited remarkably higher alpha diversity than that in WZS. There was slight effect of tobacco genotype variations on the alpha diversity in both cultivation sites, and beta diversity and structure of bacterial community were not influenced significantly by the cultivation sites and tobacco varieties. Statistical analyses of species diversity unraveled that the dominant species in bacterial communities of cigar tobacco phyllosphere among all these samples were phylogenetically affiliated to Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria. At the genus level, the most abundant microorganism was Limnobacter, followed by Brevundimonas, unidentified_Cyanobacteria, and Pseudomonas. Additionally, environmental conditions except for humidity were negatively correlated with the relative abundance of bacterial genera. Further analyses revealed that influence of site-specific factors on tobacco bacterial community was relatively higher than genotype-specific factors. In short, this study may contribute to the knowledge base of practical applications of bacterial inoculants for tobacco leaf production.

A Novel GNSS Interference Detection Method Based on Smoothed Pseudo-Wigner-Hough Transform.

This paper develops novel Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference detection methods based on the Hough transform. These methods are realized by incorporating the Hough transform into three Time-Frequency distributions: Wigner-Ville distribution, pseudo -Wigner-Ville distribution and smoothed pseudo-Wigner-Ville distribution. This process results in the corresponding Wigner-Hough transform, pseudo-Wigner-Hough transform and smoothed pseudo-Wigner-Hough transform, which are used in GNSS interference detection to search for local Hough-transformed energy peak in a small limited area within the parameter space. The developed GNSS interference detection methods incorporate a novel concept of zero Hough-transformed energy distribution percentage to analyze the properties of energy concentration and cross-term suppression. The methods are tested with real GPS L1-C/A data collected in the presence of sweep interference. The test results show that the developed methods can deal with the cross-term problem with improved interference detection performance. In particular, the GNSS interference detection performance obtained with the smoothed pseudo-Wigner-Hough transform method is at least double that of the Wigner-Hough transform-based approach; the smoothed pseudo-Wigner-Hough transform-based GNSS interference detection method is improved at least 20% over the pseudo-Wigner-Hough transform-based technique in terms of the zero Hough-transformed energy percentage criteria. Therefore, the proposed smoothed pseudo-Wigner-Hough transform-based method is recommended in the interference detection for GNSS receivers, particularly in challenging electromagnetic environments.

Efficient Computation Reduction in Bayesian Neural Networks Through Feature Decomposition and Memorization.

The Bayesian method is capable of capturing real-world uncertainties/incompleteness and properly addressing the overfitting issue faced by deep neural networks. In recent years, Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have drawn tremendous attention to artificial intelligence (AI) researchers and proved to be successful in many applications. However, the required high computation complexity makes BNNs difficult to be deployed in computing systems with a limited power budget. In this article, an efficient BNN inference flow is proposed to reduce the computation cost and then is evaluated using both software and hardware implementations. A feature decomposition and memorization (DM) strategy is utilized to reform the BNN inference flow in a reduced manner. About half of the computations could be eliminated compared with the traditional approach that has been proved by theoretical analysis and software validations. Subsequently, in order to resolve the hardware resource limitations, a memory-friendly computing framework is further deployed to reduce the memory overhead introduced by the DM strategy. Finally, we implement our approach in Verilog and synthesize it with a 45-nm FreePDK technology. Hardware simulation results on multilayer BNNs demonstrate that, when compared with the traditional BNN inference method, it provides an energy consumption reduction of 73% and a 4× speedup at the expense of 14% area overhead.

Preparation and Characterization of Starch/Empty Fruit Bunch-Based Bioplastic Composites Reinforced with Epoxidized Oils.

This study examined the development of starch/oil palm empty fruit bunch-based bioplastic composites reinforced with either epoxidized palm oil (EPO) or epoxidized soybean oil (ESO), at various concentrations, in order to improve the mechanical and water-resistance properties of the bio-composites. The SEM micrographs showed that low content (0.75 wt%) of epoxidized oils (EOs), especially ESO, improved the compatibility of the composites, while high content (3 wt%) of EO induced many voids. The melting temperature of the composites was increased by the incorporation of both EOs. Thermal stability of the bioplastics was increased by the introduction of ESO. Low contents of EO led to a huge enhancement of tensile strength, while higher contents of EO showed a negative effect, due to the phase separation. The tensile strength increased from 0.83 MPa of the control sample to 3.92 and 5.42 MPa for the composites with 1.5 wt% EPO and 0.75 wt% ESO, respectively. EOs reduced the composites' water uptake and solubility but increased the water vapor permeability. Overall, the reinforcing effect of ESO was better than EPO. These results suggested that both EOs can be utilized as modifiers to prepare starch/empty-fruit-bunch-based bioplastic composites with enhanced properties.

Comparison of volatile components in fresh and dried Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim.

Fresh and dried Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim volatiles of two main cultivars including Dahongpao and Meihuajiao, were determined through GC-MS and compared. In all the tested samples, linalool, d-limonene, eucalyptol, 3-nonanone, and ß-myrcene were identified as the five predominant components. The percentages of these components in fresh Dahongpao were 23.89%, 21.04%, 7.46%, 5.63% and 5.87%, respectively. Similar percentages, 27.28%, 17.62%, 6.39%, 1.66% and 7.8%, were found in dried Dahongpao. In general, the contents of linalool and ß-myrcene in dried Dahongpao and Meihuajiao were slightly higher than those in fresh samples, whereas the contents of d-limonene, eucalyptol, and 3-nonanone were lower. Partial least squares discriminant analysis results showed that the two cultivars could be clearly differentiated based on volatiles, whereas, the fresh and dried Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim samples could not. This demonstrated that the drying process had no significant effect on the volatiles.

Applications of Lignocellulosic Fibers and Lignin in Bioplastics: A Review.

Lignocellulosic fibers and lignin are two of the most important natural bioresources in the world. They show tremendous potential to decrease energy utilization/pollution and improve biodegradability by replacing synthetic fibers in bioplastics. The compatibility between the fiber-matrix plays an important part in the properties of the bioplastics. The improvement of lignocellulosic fiber properties by most surface treatments generally removes lignin. Due to the environmental pollution and high cost of cellulose modification, focus has been directed toward the use of lignocellulosic fibers in bioplastics. In addition, lignin-reinforced bioplastics are fabricated with varying success. These applications confirm there is no need to remove lignin from lignocellulosic fibers when preparing the bioplastics from a technical point of view. In this review, characterizations of lignocellulosic fibers and lignin related to their applications in bioplastics are covered. Then, we generalize the developments and problems of lignin-reinforced bioplastics and modification of lignin to improve the interaction of lignin-matrix. As for lignocellulosic fiber-reinforced bioplastics, we place importance on the low compatibility of the lignocellulosic fiber-matrix. The applications of lignin-containing cellulose and lignocellulosic fibers without delignification in the bioplastics are reviewed. A comparison between lignocellulosic fibers and lignin in the bioplastics is given.

A Novel Extrusion for Manufacturing TiBw/Ti6Al4V Composite Tubes with a Quasi-Continuous Reinforced Structure.

The present work introduces a novel extrusion with filler material to produce the high-performance TiBw/Ti-6Al-4V composite tube with a quasi-continuous reinforced structure. A simulation was adopted to study the effect of the filler material on the shape accuracy of the tubes. Based on the simulation results, the flow stress of the filler material was not the important factor, but the friction coefficient between the filler and TiBw/Ti-6Al-4V composite and the canning shape were critical to the tube precision. The microstructure and mechanical performance for the as-extruded TiBw/Ti-6Al-4V composite tubes were systematically investigated. After extrusion, the transverse section microstructure of the TiBw/Ti6Al4V composite tube remained quasi-continuous and the TiBw were rotated to align the extrusion direction. Moreover, the tensile strength and elongation reached 1240 MPa and 13.5%, resulting from dynamic recrystallization and whisker rotation.

[Application of three-dimensional fluorescence spectra technique to discrimination of distilled spirits based on support vector machines].

In order to study the identifying and classification method of distilled spirits, about 100 kinds of normative distilled spirits were selected as the laboratory samples and their fluorescence spectra induced by ultraviolet light were measured by Roper-Scientific SP-2558 respectively. Then, using the statistics and plot software Origin 7.5, the authors composed the three-dimensional fluorescence spectra of the distilled spirits. In the meanwhile, the three-dimensional fluorescence spectra of the dis tilled spirits were also studied respectively. The authros compared the three-dimensional fluorescence spectra of different distilled spirits with the same brands and that of different spirits with the same brands. The authors are very confident that there must be some typical parameters, by which the authors can distinguish different kinds of distilled spirits with different brands effectively. And the authors found that while the three-dimensional fluorescence spectra of different distilled spirits with different brands are definitely different by their three typical parameters including the number of the major summit, position of the major summit and optimum wavelength, the three typical parameters of the three-dimensional fluorescence spectra of different distilled spirits with the same brand are very similar. Finally, the authors extracted the three typical parameters that are the number of the major summit, position of the major summit and optimum wavelength. Then, the data were processed by computer for emulation. As a result, the authors found that, using the three characteristic parameters, different kinds of distilled spirits can be classified ac curately by the algorithm of LS-SVM (least-squares support vector machine). The outcomes of the data emulated by different algorithms were obtained seriatim. The authors compared the outcomes, and the fact proved that more accurate outcome of identifying and classification can be obtained by LS-SVM.

[Study on ultraviolet fluorescence spectra of monomers of distilled spirits].

In the present paper, the authors measured the fluorescence spectra of water, alcohols and major microcrystalline substances of different distilled spirits and synthesized their three-dimensional fluorescence spectra. By comparing the fluorescence spectra of major monomers with those of many different kinds of distilled spirits, the authors found that ethanol and many other monomers can influence the fluorescence spectra of distilled spirits. Apart from ethanol, the major microcrystalline substances, such as alcohols, acids, aldehydes and esters influence the fluorescence spectra of distilled spirits respectively. In the meanwhile, their influences are different. The influences of different kinds of monomers differ from each other in the respects of wavelength and intensity. The order of the influences from low level to high level is: alcohols, aldehydes, acids and esters. But the same kind of monomers can bring about almost the same fluorescence spectra. So, the same kind of monomers influences the fluorescence spectra of distilled spirits similarly. To sum up, the authors come to a conclusion that apart from water, every kind of monomers can influence the fluorescence spectra of distilled spirits. And the order of the influences from low level to high level is: alcohols, aldehydes, acids and esters. In the meanwhile, they influence the fluorescence spectra in different spectral range respectively. The outcome of the study is very important for the further detailed research on the fluorescence spectra of distilled spirits in the future.