Experimental study on temperature drop during roller quenching process of large-section ultra-heavy steel plate.

Large-section ultra-heavy steel plates feature low cooling rate of central part during quenching process, as well as great differences in texture and performance along thickness direction. Wet jet impingement quenching test apparatus and multi-channel temperature recorder were developed to explore the temperature drop characteristics and its influential factors of ultra-heavy steel plate. The temperature drop curves of plates with different thickness (160, 220, and 300 mm) and weight (23-43 tons) were recorded during the quenching process, accompanied with the exploration on distribution rules of temperature gradient, heat flux density and cooling rate along thickness direction under different water volumes (9000-9400 m3/h) and pressures (0.4-0.8 MPa), upon which the three-dimensional inverse heat conduction model, surface heat transfer coefficient model and thermophysical parameter model were established using finite element and optimization methods. The overall results indicate the symmetric heat transfer between the upper and lower plate surfaces can be realized, when the water flow ratios of the upper and lower surfaces were 1:1.25 and 1:1.4 under pressures of 0.8 MPa and 0.4 MPa, respectively. The "temperature return" phenomenon was accompanied with changing heat flux density of wall surface of 220 mm- and 300 mm-thick plates. The lowest cooling rate along thickness direction appeared at 1/4 thickness position for the 160 mm- and 220 mm- thick plates during quenching, which was attributable to the synergy between heat flux density and temperature gradient. This work may pave a way for improving the cooling rate and quenching uniformity of ultra-heavy steel plates along thickness direction.

Antiviral effects of Bovine antimicrobial peptide against TGEV in vivo and in vitro.

BACKGROUND: In suckling piglets, transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) causes lethal diarrhea accompanied by high infection and mortality rates, leading to considerable economic losses. This study explored methods of preventing or inhibiting their production. Bovine antimicrobial peptide-13 (APB-13) has antibacterial, antiviral, and immune functions. OBJECTIVES: This study analyzed the efficacy of APB-13 against TGEV through in vivo and in vitro experiments. METHODS: The effects of APB-13 toxicity and virus inhibition rate on swine testicular (ST) cells were detected using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT). The impact of APB-13 on virus replication was examined through the 50% tissue culture infective dose (TCID50). The mRNA and protein levels were investigated by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot (WB). Tissue sections were used to detect intestinal morphological development. RESULTS: The safe and effective concentration range of APB-13 on ST cells ranged from 0 to 62.5 µg/mL, and the highest viral inhibitory rate of APB-13 was 74.1%. The log10TCID50 of 62.5 µg/mL APB-13 was 3.63 lower than that of the virus control. The mRNA and protein expression at 62.5 µg/mL APB-13 was significantly lower than that of the virus control at 24 hpi. Piglets in the APB-13 group showed significantly lower viral shedding than that in the virus control group, and the pathological tissue sections of the jejunum morphology revealed significant differences between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: APB-13 exhibited good antiviral effects on TGEV in vivo and in vitro.

Testing founder effect speciation: divergence population genetics of the spoonbills Platalea regia and Pl. minor (Threskiornithidae, Aves).

Although founder effect speciation has been a popular theoretical model for the speciation of geographically isolated taxa, its empirical importance has remained difficult to evaluate due to the intractability of past demography, which in a founder effect speciation scenario would involve a speciational bottleneck in the emergent species and the complete cessation of gene flow following divergence. Using regression-weighted approximate Bayesian computation, we tested the validity of these two fundamental conditions of founder effect speciation in a pair of sister species with disjunct distributions: the royal spoonbill Platalea regia in Australasia and the black-faced spoonbill Pl. minor in eastern Asia. When compared with genetic polymorphism observed at 20 nuclear loci in the two species, simulations showed that the founder effect speciation model had an extremely low posterior probability (1.55 × 10(-8)) of producing the extant genetic pattern. In contrast, speciation models that allowed for postdivergence gene flow were much more probable (posterior probabilities were 0.37 and 0.50 for the bottleneck with gene flow and the gene flow models, respectively) and postdivergence gene flow persisted for a considerable period of time (more than 80% of the divergence history in both models) following initial divergence (median = 197,000 generations, 95% credible interval [CI]: 50,000-478,000, for the bottleneck with gene flow model; and 186,000 generations, 95% CI: 45,000-477,000, for the gene flow model). Furthermore, the estimated population size reduction in Pl. regia to 7,000 individuals (median, 95% CI: 487-12,000, according to the bottleneck with gene flow model) was unlikely to have been severe enough to be considered a bottleneck. Therefore, these results do not support founder effect speciation in Pl. regia but indicate instead that the divergence between Pl. regia and Pl. minor was probably driven by selection despite continuous gene flow. In this light, we discuss the potential importance of evolutionarily labile traits with significant fitness consequences, such as migratory behavior and habitat preference, in facilitating divergence of the spoonbills.