ALBERT

Description: The Mongolian pine (Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica) is one of the most common tree species in semiarid and arid areas of China, especially in the sand dunes of the Hulunbeier steppe. This study addresses the morphological and physiological characteristics of the Mongolian pine according to sand dune height. Five sites were chosen with various sand dune heights (P1–P5). Nine years after planting, tree growth, leaf area, leaf mass per leaf unit area (LMA), diameter at breast height (DBH), tree height, diameter at root collar (DRC), longest shoot length, carbon isotope composition, and intrinsic water use efficiency (iWUE) were measured to explore the responses of Mongolian pine trees to drought. DBH, tree height, DRC, leaf area, leaf length, and longest shoot length significantly decreased with greater sand dune height (p 〈 0.05). However, the carbon isotope actually increased with dune height (p 〈 0.05). Conversely, the iWUE of current-year pine needles was significantly higher at measurement points P3 (132.29 μmol CO2 mol −1 H2O), P4 (132.96 μmol CO2 mol −1 H2O), and P5 (125.34 μmol CO2 mol −1 H2O) than at the lower points P1 (95.18 ± 9.87 μmol CO2 mol −1 H2O) and P2 (103.10 ± 11.12 μmol CO2 mol −1 H2O). Greater sand dune height increases the distance to groundwater, which in this study led to an increase in iWUE in the Mongolian pines, thus these trees appear to adapt to increased sand dune height by increasing their iWUE and decreasing their leaf area. However, prolonged periods characterized by such adaptations can lead to tree death. We expect these findings to be useful when selecting plantation sites for Mongolian pines in semiarid and arid climates.

Description: The secure layout of traditional settlements is key to their sustainability. The criteria and assessment framework for spatial safety have not yet been systematically summarized, and their safety assessment criteria and dimensions have not yet been established. Therefore, this study aims to develop the constructs, assessment framework, and relational network, and analyze the association among and roles of key criteria of the spatial safety of traditional settlements using the Delphi method, DANP (DEMATEL (Decision Making and Trial Evaluation Laboratory)-based ANP (Analytic Network Process) method), and IPA (Importance–Performance Analysis) for case studies. Based on the results, this study extracted the localized elements of traditional settlements to create special local settlements. This study found that: (1) the dimensions of spatial safety include spiritual, physical, and behavioral aspects, and 16 criteria, eight of which are key criteria; (2) religious beliefs are important and have mutual influence on the organization and source of other criteria; (3) the use of IPA found that key criteria together makes up safe living places. Spiritual defense combines trust with the sense of belonging; the physical defense constructs a spatial environment; and behavioral defense involves daily life activities. Spiritual defense consists of psychological consolation and has a complementary relationship with physical defense. Behavioral defense has a social organizational system, which it reflects in spiritual and physical defenses. The spiritual, physical, and behavioral defenses are related to each other, and are reflected in the psychological, spatial, and living aspects. Overall, when taken together, the spiritual, physical, and behavioral aspects of the spatial safety criteria of settlements construct safe living places.

Description: A new elevated-temperature high-strength Mg–4Er–2Y–3Zn–0.4Mn (wt %) alloy was developed by semi-continuous casting, solid solution treatment, and hot extrusion. W phase (Mg3(Er,Y)2Zn3) with fcc structure, long period stacking ordered phases with 18R (Mg10(Er,Y)1Zn1) and 14H (Mg12(Er,Y)1Zn1) structures, and basal plane stacking faults (SFs) was formed in the as-cast alloy, mainly due to the alloy component of (Er + Y)/Zn = 1:1 and Er/Y = 1:1 (at %). After solid solution treatment and hot extrusion, the novel microstructure feature formed in as-extruded alloy is the high number-density nanospaced basal plane SFs throughout all the dynamically recrystallized (DRXed) and un-DRXed grains, which has not been previously reported. The as-extruded alloy exhibits superior tensile properties from room temperature to 300 °C. The tensile yield strength can be maintained above 250 MPa at 300 °C. The excellent elevated-temperature strength is mainly ascribed to the formation of nanospaced basal plane SFs throughout the whole Mg matrix, fine DRXed grains ~2 μm in size, and strongly basal-textured un-DRXed grains with profuse substructures. The results provide new opportunities for the development of deformed Mg alloys with satisfactory mechanical properties for high-temperature services.

Description: There is a scarcity of studies on the physical activity (PA) of children and adolescents who live at high altitudes. This study aimed to objectively assess PA of children and adolescents living in the Tibet at altitudes over 3500 m and to examine its difference by ethnicity, gender, age/grade, and body weight status groups. A sample of 397 students aged 9–18 years were recruited from 7 schools in Lhasa, Tibet. PA was measured using accelerometers (ActiGraph GT3X) for seven consecutive days and moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) was identified using the Evenson (2008) cut-points. Participant MVPA was 62.3 min/day, with 65.5 min/day during weekdays and 54.1 min/day on weekends. Indigenous Tibetans were more active than Hans, and boys had more MVPA than girls. Age had a significantly weak negative correlation with MVPA. There was no significant difference in MVPA between the non-overweight and overweight/obese groups. Overall, only 9.1% (13.8% in boys and 4.5% in girls) accumulated at least 60 min of MVPA per day. Compared to their counterparts in other regions, the daily MVPA of children and adolescents living on the Tibetan Plateau at altitudes over 3500 m was relatively high. However, the proportion of meeting the WHO’s PA recommendations was extremely low.

Description: Mechanical activation of granulated copper slag (GCS) is carried out in the present study for the purposes of enhancing pozzolanic activity for the GCS. A vibration mill mills the GCS for 1, 2, and 3 h to produce samples with specific surface area of 0.67, 1.03 and 1.37 m2/g, respectively. The samples are used to replace 30% cement (PC) to get 3 PC-GCS binders. The hydration heat and compressive strength are measured for the binders and derivative thermogravimetric /thermogravimetric analysis (DTG/TGA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are used to characterize the paste samples. It is shown that cumulative heat and compressive strength at different ages of hydration and curing, respectively, are higher for the binders blending the GCS milled for a longer time. The compressive strength after 90 d of curing for the binder with the longest milling time reaches 35.7 MPa, which is higher than the strength of other binders and close to the strength value of 39.3 MPa obtained by the PC pastes. The percentage of fixed lime by the binder pastes at 28 days is correlated with the degree of pozzolanic reaction and strength development. The percentage is higher for the binder blending the GCS with longer milling time and higher specific surface area. The pastes with binders blending the GCS of specific surface area of 0.67 and 1.37 m2/g fix lime of 15.20 and 21.15%, respectively. These results together with results from X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR, and SEM investigations demonstrate that the mechanical activation via vibratory milling is an effective method to enhance the pozzolanic activity and the extent for cement substitution by the GCS as a suitable supplementary cementitious material (SCM).

Description: Elevators were reported to cause an important part of building energy consumption. In general, each elevator has two operation states: The load state and power regeneration state. During operation, it has the potential to save energy by using regeneration power efficiently. In existing research, a set of energy storage devices are installed for every elevator, which is highly costly. In this paper, an energy conservation approach for elevators based on a direct current (DC) micro-grid is proposed, which has better economy. Then, an innovative energy-efficient device for the elevator group is designed based on a supercapacitor with similar characteristics and lifetimes. In a high-rise building case study, the experimental test and field data collection show that the innovative approach could result in a high energy efficiency within 15.87–23.1% and 24.1–54.5%, respectively. It is expected that the proposed method and designed device could be employed practically, saving energy consumption for elevator reconstruction.

Description: As China is now facing the severe challenge of rapid population ageing, the health behaviors in Chinese elderly people are of great significance for realizing the goal of “Healthy Ageing” and the construction of a “Healthy China”. Little is known about the evolutionary trends of health behaviors in the Chinese elderly and about the factors influencing these trends; thus, the purposes of this paper are: (1) To describe the classes and evolutionary trends of health behaviors in the Chinese elderly; and (2) to explore the factors that influence the changes in the health behaviors in the elderly in China. Latent class analysis (LCA) is applied in this study to analyze the classes of health behaviors in the Chinese elderly. Growth mixture modelling (GMM) is employed to describe the evolutionary trends of the health behaviors in elderly people in China. In addition, the Bivariate analysis model is adopted to identify the influencing factors of the evolution of health behaviors. The data were derived from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) from 2005 to 2014. The results reveal that the health behaviors in the Chinese elderly can be grouped into five classes: Negative, relatively negative, fair, relatively positive, and positive. Approximately 77.2% of the health behaviors in the Chinese elderly have the characteristics of “modified”, with a positive tendency. Moreover, approximately 22.8% of the health behaviors in Chinese elderly people have the characteristics of “non-modified”, with a negative tendency or remaining unchanged. The evolution of the health behaviors in the elderly in China is more affected by economic factors such as timely medical treatment during childhood, pension, occupations before the age of 60 and family income, as well as by self-rated health (SRH) and demographic characteristics such as household registration, age, and education level. Hence, various possible interventions should be made to improve the health behaviors in elderly people.

Description: The Yaluzangbu-Brahmaputra River is a hotspot for the discussions on regional security. The interactions on water between China and India are key to realizing water-related 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets in the basin. Using a series of secondary literature information, and the method of event studies, we created a timeline of the Sino-Indian relation events since the 1950s, analyzed the correlations among the contents, the duties by each side, the events of water cooperation, and the diplomatic events between them. We found the following dilemmas hamper water cooperation: (1) The scopes of, and steps towards, transboundary water cooperation are hampered by patchy Sino-Indian diplomatic relations; and (2) there is a lack of motivation for China to cooperate with India without benefits sharing, given that China has undertaken more duties and has often received negative feedback. However, we also found the following pathways toward improving water cooperation: (1) A national cooperation mechanism on transboundary rivers has been established, which may be beneficial for further water cooperation; and (2) a channel for interdisciplinary dialogue should be encouraged to bridge the disparate outlooks and improve interactions between policymakers and scientific experts.

Description: Urban road intersections play an important role in deciding the total travel time and the overall travel efficiency. In this paper, an innovative traffic grid model has been proposed, which evaluates and diagnoses the traffic status and the time delay at intersections across whole urban road networks. This method is grounded on a massive amount of floating car data sampled at a rate of 3 s, and it is composed of three major parts. (1) A grid model is built to transform intersections into discrete cells, and the floating car data are matched to the grids through a simple assignment process. (2) Based on the grid model, a set of key traffic parameters (e.g., the total time delay of all the directions of the intersection and the average speed of each direction) is derived. (3) Using these parameters, intersections are evaluated and the ones with the longest traffic delays are identified. The obtained intersections are further examined in terms of the traffic flow ratio and the green time ratio as well as the difference between these two variables. Using the central area of Beijing as the case study, the potential and feasibility of the proposed method are demonstrated and the unreasonable signal timing phases are detected. The developed method can be easily transferred to other cities, making it a useful and practical tool for traffic managers to evaluate and diagnose urban signal intersections as well as to design optimal measures for reducing traffic delay and increase operation efficiency at the intersections.

Description: Submicron lenses and cylinders exhibiting excellent properties in photodetector and quantum applications have been fabricated on a diamond surface by an inductively-coupled plasma (ICP) etching technique. During ICP etching, a layer containing 500 nm diameter balls of SiO2 was employed as mask. By changing the mixing ratio of O2, Ar and CF4 during ICP etching, several submicron structures were fabricated, such as cylinders and lenses. The simulation results demonstrated that such submicron structures on a diamond’s surface can greatly enhance the photon out-coupling efficiency of embedded nitrogen-vacancy center.