ALBERT

Beschreibung: In this paper, thermal cycles with different heat inputs and cooling rates were investigated for a novel lean duplex stainless steel 2002 using a welding simulation. The microstructure and pitting resistance of the simulated heat-affected zones were studied. With the increasing heat input, the amount and size of the austenite phase both increased, along with a transformation from rods to dendritic structures. The critical pitting temperature (CPT) and the pitting potential (Epit) both increased first and then declined as the heat input increased, indicating a strong dependence of pitting resistance on the heat input. For the different cooling rates, the amount of ferrite increased as the cooling rate increased from 0.25 °C/s to 20 °C/s. The CPT and Epit both increased with the increasing cooling rates, indicating an improved pitting resistance. The pits initiated preferentially at the boundaries of ferrite and austenite due to the precipitation of M23C6 in the specimens with different cooling rates.

Beschreibung: Using the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model, this research measures total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) and disaggregate input efficiency for 10 countries across the Baltic Sea from 2004 to 2014. Real capital, labor, energy use, and carbon dioxide (CO2) are input variables, real gross domestic product (GDP) is the output variable, and renewable energy consumption and urban population are the environmental variables. The results provide not only the TFEE scores, in which statistical noise is considered, but also the determinants of inefficiency, which show the following. (i) Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Latvia perform better with respect to energy efficiency than other countries in the Baltic Sea Region. (ii) Interestingly, the average energy use efficiency scores from 2004 to 2014 in the 10 Baltic countries exhibit a gradual upward trend except for 2009. (iii) For the inefficiency estimates, higher renewable energy consumption and urban population correspond to higher TFEE scores.

Beschreibung: In multi-scale information systems, the information is often characterized at multi scales and multi levels. To facilitate the computational process of multi-scale information systems, we employ the matrix method to represent the multi-scale information systems and to select the optimal scale combination of multi-scale decision information systems in this study. To this end, we first describe some important concepts and properties of information systems using some relational matrices. The relational matrix is then introduced into multi-scale information systems, and used to describe some main concepts in systems, including the lower and upper approximate sets and the consistence of systems. Furthermore, from the view of the relation matrix, the scale significance is defined to describe the global optimal scale and the local optimal scale of multi-scale information systems. Finally, the relational matrix is used to compute the scale significance and to construct the optimal scale selection algorithms. The efficiency of these algorithms is examined by several practical examples and experiments.

Beschreibung: Background: Koumiss is a traditionally fermented mare’s milk described with health-promoting potentials for decades. However, only a few studies focused on the probiotic strains isolated from koumiss. In this study, we collected koumiss samples from Inner Mongolian pasturing area of China and selected a promising strain of Lactobacillus helveticus, isolate NS8, based on the survival abilities in gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and adhesion to intestinal endothelial cells in vitro. As the ability to positively modulate host immune response is a feature of increasing importance in measuring the probiotic potential of a bacterial strain, our study mainly focus on the immunomodulatory properties of L. helveticus NS8 by using in vivo and ex vivo analyses. Results: L. helveticus NS8 was identified by molecular-typing methods, both at genus and species levels. As a typical food niche-specific bacteria, NS8 showed a moderate survival ability in GIT environment in vitro. However, an excellent binding capacity to the human intestinal epithelial cells, along with significant autoaggregation and cell-surface hydrophobicity was observed. Additionally, the presence of S-layer protein was responsible for the cell surface properties of this strain. NS8 was found to be rather protective against TNBS (2,4,6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid)-induced murine colitis. In the meantime, co-culture with NS8 induced an increased level of secretion of anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 in peripheral blood mono-nuclear cells (PBMCs). Furthermore, NS8 was also able to diminish the proinflammatory effects of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in mouse macrophage cell line RAW264.7 by inducing higher levels of IL-10. Specially, adding of the purified S-layer protein didn’t influence the production of IL-10. The specific ligand-host receptor interactions on the NS8 specific immune responses need to be learned further. Conclusion: In summary, L. helveticus NS8 exhibited good probiotic and particularly immunomodulatory properties, with a potential for development of functional food commercially or therapeutic adjuvant for inflammatory diseases.

Beschreibung: A major goal for port authorities, operators, and investors is to achieve efficient operations and effective environmental protection. This is because the environmental performance of a container port is important for its competitiveness and sustainable development. However, the container ports along the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) have caused numerous problems with the rapid development, among which the most significant problem is environmental pollution. In this paper, we aim to measure and compare the environmental performance and operational efficiency of ten major container ports along the MSR, including the ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kelang, Laem Chabang, Colombo, Dubai, Barcelona, Antwerp, and Hamburg. We develop an improved, inseparable data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with slack-based measures (SBMs) to evaluate and compare the environmental performance and operational efficiency, and we incorporate the desirable output of container throughput as well as the undesirable output of CO2 emission. Our results show that. Overall. these container ports perform better in terms of operational efficiency than environmental performance. We also provide insights for management and policy makers for container ports with different levels of operational efficiency and environmental performance.

Beschreibung: Flash floods are one of the natural disasters that threaten the lives of many people all over the world every year. Flash floods are significantly affected by the intensification of extreme climate events and interactions with exposed and vulnerable socio-economic systems impede regional development processes. Hence, it is important to estimate the loss due to flash floods before the disaster occurs. However, there are no comprehensive vulnerability assessment results for flash floods in China. Fortunately, the National Mountain Flood Disaster Investigation Project provided a foundation to develop this proposed assessment. In this study, an index system was established from the exposure and disaster reduction capability categories, and is based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methods. We evaluated flash flood vulnerability by adopting the support vector machine (SVM) model. Our results showed 439 counties with high and extremely high vulnerability (accounting for 10.5% of the land area and corresponding to approximately 100 million hectares (ha)), 571 counties with moderate vulnerability (accounting for 19.18% of the land area and corresponding to approximately 180 million ha), and 1128 counties with low and extremely low vulnerability (accounting for 39.43% of the land area and corresponding to approximately 370 million ha). The highly-vulnerable counties were mainly concentrated in the south and southeast regions of China, moderately-vulnerable counties were primarily concentrated in the central, northern, and southwestern regions of China, and low-vulnerability counties chiefly occurred in the northwest regions of China. Additionally, the results of the spatial autocorrelation suggested that the “High-High” values of spatial agglomeration areas mainly occurred in the Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangxi, Chongqing, and Beijing areas. On the basis of these results, our study can be used as a proposal for population and building distribution readjustments, and the management of flash floods in China.

Beschreibung: In contrast to most of the coseismic gravity change studies, which are generally based on data from the Gravity field Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, we use observations from the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) Satellite Gravity Gradient (SGG) mission to estimate the coseismic gravity and gravity gradient changes caused by the 2011 Tohoku-Oki Mw 9.0 earthquake. We first construct two global gravity field models up to degree and order 220, before and after the earthquake, based on the least-squares method, with a bandpass Auto Regression Moving Average (ARMA) filter applied to the SGG data along the orbit. In addition, to reduce the influences of colored noise in the SGG data and the polar gap problem on the recovered model, we propose a tailored spherical harmonic (TSH) approach, which only uses the spherical harmonic (SH) coefficients with the degree range 30–95 to compute the coseismic gravity changes in the spatial domain. Then, both the results from the GOCE observations and the GRACE temporal gravity field models (with the same TSH degrees and orders) are simultaneously compared with the forward-modeled signals that are estimated based on the fault slip model of the earthquake event. Although there are considerable misfits between GOCE-derived and modeled gravity gradient changes (ΔVxx, ΔVyy, ΔVzz, and ΔVxz), we find analogous spatial patterns and a significant change (greater than 3σ) in gravity gradients before and after the earthquake. Moreover, we estimate the radial gravity gradient changes from the GOCE-derived monthly time-variable gravity field models before and after the earthquake, whose amplitudes are at a level over three times that of their corresponding uncertainties, and are thus significant. Additionally, the results show that the recovered coseismic gravity signals in the west-to-east direction from GOCE are closer to the modeled signals than those from GRACE in the TSH degree range 30–95. This indicates that the GOCE-derived gravity models might be used as additional observations to infer/explain some time-variable geophysical signals of interest.

Beschreibung: Natural magnetotelluric signals are extremely weak and susceptible to various types of noise pollution. To obtain more useful magnetotelluric data for further analysis and research, effective signal-noise identification and separation is critical. To this end, we propose a novel method of magnetotelluric signal-noise identification and separation based on ApEn-MSE and Stagewise orthogonal matching pursuit (StOMP). Parameters with good irregularity metrics are introduced: Approximate entropy (ApEn) and multiscale entropy (MSE), in combination with k-means clustering, can be used to accurately identify the data segments that are disturbed by noise. Stagewise orthogonal matching pursuit (StOMP) is used for noise suppression only in data segments identified as containing strong interference. Finally, we reconstructed the signal. The results show that the proposed method can better preserve the low-frequency slow-change information of the magnetotelluric signal compared with just using StOMP, thus avoiding the loss of useful information due to over-processing, while producing a smoother and more continuous apparent resistivity curve. Moreover, the results more accurately reflect the inherent electrical structure information of the measured site itself.

Beschreibung: Seabed sediment predictions at regional and national scales in Australia are mainly based on bathymetry-related variables due to the lack of backscatter-derived data. In this study, we applied random forests (RFs), hybrid methods of RF and geostatistics, and generalized boosted regression modelling (GBM), to seabed sand content point data and acoustic multibeam data and their derived variables, to develop an accurate model to predict seabed sand content at a local scale. We also addressed relevant issues with variable selection. It was found that: (1) backscatter-related variables are more important than bathymetry-related variables for sand predictive modelling; (2) the inclusion of highly correlated predictors can improve predictive accuracy; (3) the rank orders of averaged variable importance (AVI) and accuracy contribution change with input predictors for RF and are not necessarily matched; (4) a knowledge-informed AVI method (KIAVI2) is recommended for RF; (5) the hybrid methods and their averaging can significantly improve predictive accuracy and are recommended; (6) relationships between sand and predictors are non-linear; and (7) variable selection methods for GBM need further study. Accuracy-improved predictions of sand content are generated at high resolution, which provide important baseline information for environmental management and conservation.