ALBERT

Description: The influence of size effect on the hydromechanical behavior of rock mass has long been recognized. As a result, analysis of the rock mass size effect has been developed. However, when conducting size effect studies, the representativeness of the sample is less considered. Therefore, combining the existing statistical methods and sampling methods, a comprehensive representative sampling method for rock mass is present. In this method, a large number of sample statistics of different sizes are provided in the progressive coverage method; then, the plane density of the track length is defined as the value of stratification to perform stratified sampling for representative samples. Furthermore, it is applied to a joint network model generated in accordance with the actual situation and compared with those of other methods. The sampling results show that the proposed method can provide a certain reference value for studying the scale-dependent behavior of rock mass mechanical parameters.

Description: The Linxing area is located in the north of the eastern margin of the Ordos Basin, which has great resource potential for tight gas. In this paper, fluid inclusion analysis and basin modeling are the main means to clarify the gas accumulation mechanism of the Upper Paleozoic in the Linxing area. Petrographic analysis shows that fluid inclusions can be classified into 5 types: aqueous inclusions, hydrocarbon-bearing aqueous inclusions, hydrocarbon inclusions, crystal-bearing aqueous inclusions, and aqueous-carbonic inclusions. According to the statistical analysis of homogenization temperature and salinity of fluid inclusions, combined with the burial-thermal evolution, the study area was divided into 3 areas: the inner-magma baking area, the middle-anomal thermal area, and the outer-normal thermal area. The gas accumulation characteristics are differences among the 3 areas, the closer to Zijinshan magmatic pluton, the earlier gas accumulation period; and the vertical gas accumulation in the inner-magma baking area and the middle-anomal thermal area was not a slow and gradual process from bottom to top. The period from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous is the key period for rapid pressure accumulation in the Upper Paleozoic reservoirs, which is consistent with the period of natural gas accumulation. The area near the Zijinshan magmatic pluton was the high fluid potential area during the gas accumulation period, which indicates that natural gas and other fluids migrated from Zijinshan magmatic pluton to the surrounding area. It is concluded that in the Linxing area, the Zijinshan magmatic pluton had a significant impact on natural gas accumulation, and the natural gas accumulation model under the control of magmatic thermal-tectonic effect was proposed.

Description: With the increasingly close relations between cities in China, it is of great significance to explore the regular characteristics of the intercity connection. Through Tencent’s population migration heat and Baidu map big data, this paper analyzes the regular characteristics of the relations between complex cities based on such index as the rich node propensity index, preference level index, and relative heat index and also investigates the influence of geographical proximity factors on the external relations of different cities. The research has the following results. Firstly, the relations between cities have obvious club characteristics. The rich nodes tend to connect with the rich nodes, while the nonrich nodes tend to connect with the nonrich nodes. Secondly, the connection between cities has the effect of hierarchical proximity, and cities mainly establish spatial connections with cities of the same level and adjacent level. Thirdly, the relations between cities also have the effect of geographical proximity, and the degree of influence of geographical proximity in low-level cities is greater than that in high-level cities. Fourthly, the external connection mode of high-level cities is to establish close contact with high-level cities adjacent to the level, with strong attraction to low-level cities adjacent to the location at the same time. The low-level cities are closely related to the high-level cities adjacent to the location and other cities of geographical proximity or adjacent level. This study helps to further understand the complex characteristics and laws of intercity connections and urban networks.

Description: The seepage of gas-liquid two-phase flow in fracture is a commonly found phenomenon in nature. To reveal the underlying mechanism and the critical condition of the chaos occurrence, a stochastic gas-liquid two-phase flow seepage model is established, and then investigated through a numerical simulation and a horizontal Hele-Shaw experiment. The numerical simulation and laboratory experiment results show that the seepage chaos of gas-liquid two-phase flow takes place when the relative saturation is in the range of gas relative saturation 44%-70%, and the occurrence probability can be expressed in polynomials. The chaos probability exceeds 80% when the relative saturation of gas is 47%-65%, and the chaos probability is 100% when the relative gas saturation is 57%-60%. It is found that the stochastic variation of gas connection cluster and the compressibility of gas lead to a remarkable change of pressure gradient of the gas-liquid flow both in magnitude and direction. Therefore, the turbulent flow is formed, the kinetic energy of fluid transport decreases gradually, and the flow is stopped at last.

Description: An effective porosity is defined as the ratio of volume of interconnected pore space to total volume of a porous sample. It controls the magnitude of fluid flow and is a key parameter in the assessment of recoverable resources. However, its accurate measurement in tight formations is challenging, due to their complex pore structure and lithofacies heterogeneity. In this study, porosities of sixteen lacustrine shale samples from the second Member of the Kongdian Formation (Ek2) in the Cangdong Sag, Bohai Bay Basin were measured and compared using multiple methods and sample sizes to compare and contrast the effective porosity results. The methods included helium pycnometry (HP; cubes of 1 cm3 and grains at 500-841 μm), water immersion porosimetry (WIP; cubes), mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP; cubes), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR; cubes). Finally, samples were completely sealed using paraffin for bulk density measurements to evaluate the extent of potential clay swelling in shale samples involving probing fluids. Results from the HP, WIP, and MIP methods for skeletal density, bulk density, and effective porosity with cubic samples were compared. While very similar skeletal densities were found for all three methods, a lower bulk density, and therefore lower porosity, from the MIP approach can be attributed to the experimental conditions (e.g., vacuum efficiency, applied pressure, wettability of water/helium vs. mercury) and the probable presence of pores with diameters larger than 50 μm not measurable by MIP. Furthermore, the HP porosity of granular samples with 500-841 μm grain sizes can be regarded as approaching the total porosity. The complicated relationship between WIP and NMR porosities may result from the heat-induced volatilization of moisture in pores during NMR tests, and countercurrent imbibition of water replacing the residual hydrocarbons during the saturation process for sample preparation in both tests. The swelling behavior of the lacustrine Ek2 shale with water is not significant because of the low content of expansive clay minerals. In summary, the WIP and HP methods are recommended for effective porosity measurement, whereas the NMR and MIP methods are invaluable for the measurement of pore-size distribution, with additional information on the effective porosity.

Description: The lower Silurian Longmaxi Formation hosts a highly productive shale gas play in the Zhaotong region of southern China. According to core observation, X-ray diffraction analyses, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations, the shale comprises primarily quartz, carbonate minerals, and clay minerals, with minor amounts of plagioclase, K-feldspar, and pyrite. The clay mineral content ranges from 15.0% to 46.1%, with an average of 29.3% in the Zhaotong region. Organic geochemical analyses show that the Longmaxi Formation has good potential for shale gas resources by calculating total organic carbon, vitrinite reflectance, and gas content. Scanning electron microscope images demonstrate that reservoir pore types in the Longmaxi shale include organic pores, interparticle pores, intercrystalline pores, intraparticle pores, and fractures. Reservoir distribution is controlled by lithofacies, mineral composition, and geochemical factors. In addition, we investigated the relationships between reservoir parameters and production from 15 individual wells in the Zhaotong region by correlation coefficients. As a result, the brittleness index, total organic carbon (TOC), porosity, and gas content were used to define high-quality reservoirs in the Longmaxi shale. Based on these criteria, we mapped the thickness and distribution of high-quality reservoirs in the Longmaxi Formation and selected highlighted several key sites for future exploration and development.

Description: When mine water inrush accidents occur, timely and accurately identifying the water inrush source plays an important role in determining the cause of water inrush and making a solution to a disaster. According to the differences of water chemical composition in each water sources of mine, eight kinds of indicators of water chemical composition were selected as sample variables for water inrush source identification. On this basis, an identification model of water inrush source was established by using principal component analysis (PCA) and Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) combined. The model was used to identify the water inrush source of 14 groups of training samples and 12 groups of samples to be judged in different water sources of the Xiandewang coal mine, and it was compared with the results of the conventional identification model which used the FDA method. Results of this study showed that having processed data by using the PCA method can effectively eliminate the effects of information superposition between sample indicators, and the identification accuracy of mine water inrush source was significantly increased. Related study in this paper can provide some basis and reference for the study of mine water inrush source identification technology.

Description: The abundance of organic matter in shales, which has a direct effect on the hydrocarbon generation potential of shales, is an important organic geochemical parameter for evaluating shale gas reservoirs. The total organic carbon content (TOC content) in shale is controlled by the abundance of original sedimentary organic matter. Therefore, it is very important to study the mechanism of organic matter enrichment in shale. In this paper, the Lower Cambrian marine shales from the Lower Yangtze region are selected as the research subject, most of which originate from a typical area well called Well JXY1. The degree of pyritization (DOP) is used to characterize the redox environment of the water body, while the P/Al ratio is used to analyze the biological productivity of paleoseawater. The paleosalinity of seawater is calculated via carbon and oxygen isotope analysis. In addition, the early Cambrian hydrothermal activities were studied by using core description; Si, Al, Fe, and Mn elemental analysis; and oxygen isotope calculations. The results show that during the early Cambrian Wangyinpu sedimentary period, the seawater was an anaerobic water body with H2S, and the oxygen concentration was approximately 0 mL/L. In the middle stages of the Wangyinpu sedimentary period, the water body had the strongest reducibility and the highest biological productivity. Moreover, the paleoocean in this period between the Yangtze plate and the Cathaysian plate was greatly affected by hydrothermal activities, with temperatures ranging from 90°C to 120°C. Active hydrothermal activities promoted high biological productivity and an anaerobic environment, both of which were conducive to the preservation and enrichment of organic matter, resulting in extremely high TOC content in the Wangyinpu shales (from 6.5% to approximately 16%).

Description: Electroencephalography-(EEG-) based control is a noninvasive technique which employs brain signals to control electrical devices/circuits. Currently, the brain-computer interface (BCI) systems provide two types of signals, raw signals and logic state signals. The latter signals are used to turn on/off the devices. In this paper, the capabilities of BCI systems are explored, and a survey is conducted how to extend and enhance the reliability and accuracy of the BCI systems. A structured overview was provided which consists of the data acquisition, feature extraction, and classification algorithm methods used by different researchers in the past few years. Some classification algorithms for EEG-based BCI systems are adaptive classifiers, tensor classifiers, transfer learning approach, and deep learning, as well as some miscellaneous techniques. Based on our assessment, we generally concluded that, through adaptive classifiers, accurate results are acquired as compared to the static classification techniques. Deep learning techniques were developed to achieve the desired objectives and their real-time implementation as compared to other algorithms.

Description: As the externalized carrier of intrinsic value, value decision-making is an important factor affecting the social value system. As an old Chinese saying goes, “A friend in need is a friend indeed,” crisis environment provides the background for the conflicts of multiple values, while individual social value orientation (SVO) determines the ranking of the value states. This paper defined the SVO types by means of Slider Measure method on the basis of environment description, constructed a decision-making game model in accordance with SVO differences, and finally analysed the mechanism of people’s decision-making. Taking the epidemic situation as the background, this paper conducted an empirical analysis with the sample of college students. The results showed that the most SVO types of college students were prosocial orientation, followed by individualistic orientation, altruistic orientation, and competitive orientation. In the crisis environment, individual SVO type and decision-making constituted a mapping relationship. There was an equilibrium point in the decision of prosocial orientation, and the dominant decision of altruistic orientation or individualistic orientation is relatively stable.

Description: High heterogeneity and nonuniformly distributed multiscale pore systems are two characteristics of the unconventional reservoirs, which lead to very complex transport mechanisms. Limited by inadequate computational capability and imaging field of view, flow simulation cannot be directly performed on complex pore structures. The traditional methods usually coarsen the grid to reduce the computational load but will lead to the missing microstructure information and inaccurate simulation results. To develop a better understanding of flow properties in unconventional reservoirs, this study proposed a new upscaling method integrated gray lattice Boltzmann method (GLBM) and pore network model (PNM), accounting for the fluid flow in heterogeneous porous media. This method can reasonably reduce the computational loads while preserving certain micropore characteristics. Verifications are conducted by comparing the simulation and experimental results on tight sandstones, and good agreements are achieved. The proposed method is proven to be capable of estimating bulk properties in highly heterogenous unconventional reservoirs. This method could contribute to the development of multiscale pore structure characterizations and enhance the understandings of fluid flow mechanisms in unconventional reservoirs.

Description: To solve the problems of current short-term forecasting methods for metro passenger flow, such as unclear influencing factors, low accuracy, and high time-space complexity, a method for metro passenger flow based on ST-LightGBM after considering transfer passenger flow is proposed. Firstly, using historical data as the training set to transform the problem into a data-driven multi-input single-output regression prediction problem, the problem of the short-term prediction of metro passenger flow is formalized and the difficulties of the problem are identified. Secondly, we extract the candidate temporal and spatial features that may affect passenger flow at a metro station from passenger travel data based on the spatial transfer and spatial similarity of passenger flow. Thirdly, we use a maximal information coefficient (MIC) feature selection algorithm to select the significant impact features as the input. Finally, a short-term forecasting model for metro passenger flow based on the light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) model is established. Taking transfer passenger flow into account, this method has a low space-time cost and high accuracy. The experimental results on the dataset of Lianban metro station in Xiamen city show that the proposed method obtains higher prediction accuracy than SARIMA, SVR, and BP network.

Description: People are the most important factors of economy and the primary carriers of social culture. Cross-border migration brings economic and cultural impacts to the origin and destination and is also a key to reflect the international relations of related countries. In fact, the migration relationships of countries are complex and multilateral, but most traditional migration models are bilateral. Network theories could provide a better description of global migration to show the structure and statistical characteristics more clearly. Based on the estimated migration data and disparity filter algorithm, the networks describing the global multilateral migration relationships have been extracted among 200 countries over fifty years. The results show that the global migration networks during 1960–2015 exhibit a clustering and disassortative feature, implying globalized and multipolarized changes of migration during these years. The networks were embed into a Poincaré disk, yielding a typical and hierarchical “core-periphery” structure, which is associated with angular density distribution, and has been used to describe the “multicentering” trend since 1990s. Analysis on correlation and evolution of communities indicates the stability of most communities, yet some structural changes still exist since 1990s, which reflect that the important historical events are contributable to regional and even global migration patterns.

Description: Most of the existing knowledge graph embedding models are supervised methods and largely relying on the quality and quantity of obtainable labelled training data. The cost of obtaining high quality triples is high and the data sources are facing a serious problem of data sparsity, which may result in insufficient training of long-tail entities. However, unstructured text encoding entities and relational knowledge can be obtained anywhere in large quantities. Word vectors of entity names estimated from the unlabelled raw text using natural language model encode syntax and semantic properties of entities. Yet since these feature vectors are estimated through minimizing prediction error on unsupervised entity names, they may not be the best for knowledge graphs. We propose a two-phase approach to adapt unsupervised entity name embeddings to a knowledge graph subspace and jointly learn the adaptive matrix and knowledge representation. Experiments on Freebase show that our method can rely less on the labelled data and outperforms the baselines when the labelled data is relatively less. Especially, it is applicable to zero-shot scenario.

Description: Portfolio investment is adopted by the venture capital to diversify those risks involved in project selection, investing or operating so that the venture capitalist can expect a relatively stable income and lower financing risks. Based on the design of portfolio investment contract with unlimited funds developed by Kanniainen and Keuschnigg, and Inderst et al., this article makes a modification and presents a model given the limitation of funds available for the venture capitalist. It is demonstrated that the marginal benefit of efforts paid by the entrepreneurs exceeds the marginal cost, given the limitation of funds available, which will conduce to a high-level engagement of the entrepreneurs. Thus, by adopting the design of renegotiation contract, the venture capitalist can manage to stimulate the entrepreneurs to make efforts, which is to result in moral hazard reduction.

Description: Huge data on the web come from discussion forums, which contain millions of threads. Discussion threads are a valuable source of knowledge for Internet users, as they have information about numerous topics. The discussion thread related to single topic comprises a huge number of reply posts, which makes it hard for the forum users to scan all the replies and determine the most relevant replies in the thread. At the same time, it is also hard for the forum users to manually summarize the bulk of reply posts in order to get the gist of discussion thread. Thus, automatically extracting the most relevant replies from discussion thread and combining them to form a summary are a challenging task. With this motivation behind, this study has proposed a sentence embedding based clustering approach for discussion thread summarization. The proposed approach works in the following fashion: At first, word2vec model is employed to represent reply sentences in the discussion thread through sentence embeddings/sentence vectors. Next, K-medoid clustering algorithm is applied to group semantically similar reply sentences in order to reduce the overlapping reply sentences. Finally, different quality text features are utilized to rank the reply sentences in different clusters, and then the high-ranked reply sentences are picked out from all clusters to form the thread summary. Two standard forum datasets are used to assess the effectiveness of the suggested approach. Empirical results confirm that the proposed sentence based clustering approach performed superior in comparison to other summarization methods in the context of mean precision, recall, and F-measure.

Description: Low-permeability reservoirs have tiny pores with winding and complicated pore throats. The oil recovery efficiency of low-permeability reservoirs can be enhanced through the displacement of reservoir oil through imbibition. In the present study, experiments were conducted to investigate variations in the imbibition height of hydrophilic and weakly-hydrophilic rock samples under different interfacial tensions. An imbibition model considering imbibition resistance and bending of pore throats was established based on fractal theory. According to the experimental results, variations in the imbibition height of low-permeability rock samples with time can be divided into three stages. In the first stage, the capillary force plays a dominant role, while the viscous force and gravity have very slight effects. The imbibition height first increases rapidly and then levels off to a constant rate. With the increase in interfacial tension, the imbibition rate in the first stage increases, the ultimate imbibition height increases initially and then decreases, and the contribution of the imbibition height in the first stage to the ultimate imbibition height becomes greater. There is an optimal interfacial tension that causes the ultimate imbibition height to reach its maximum. The calculated results obtained from the proposed imbibition model are consistent with the experimental results, indicating that the model can accurately reflect the change in the imbibition height in low-permeability reservoirs in the first stage.

Description: The Otago Schist in the South Island of New Zealand represents an exhumed Mesozoic accretionary prism. Two coastal areas (Akatore Creek and Bruce Rocks) south of Dunedin preserve structural and geochemical evidence for the development of postmetamorphic hydrothermal systems that involved widespread fluid-rock reaction at shallow crustal depths. The Jurassic to Triassic pumpellyite-actinolite (Akatore Creek) to upper greenschist facies (Bruce Rocks) metamorphic fabrics were crosscut by sets of regionally extensive Cretaceous exhumation joints. Many of the joints were subsequently reactivated to form networks of small-displacement (

Description: This paper considers the two-player location game in a closed-loop market with quantity competition. Based on the Cournot and Hotelling models, a circle model is established for a closed-loop market in which two players (firms) play a location game under quantity competition. Using a two-stage (location-then-quantity) pattern and backward induction method, the existence of subgame-perfect Nash equilibria is proved for the location game in the circle model with a minimum distance transportation cost function. In addition, sales strategies are proposed for the two players for every local market on the circle when the players are in the equilibrium positions. Finally, an algorithm for simulating the competitive dynamics of the closed-loop market is designed, and two numerical simulations are provided to substantiate the effectiveness of the obtained results.

Description: Widely distributed in North China, Ordovician karst is characterized by having high thickness, nonuniform aquosity, and significant water pressure-bearing properties. Deep mining in North China is threatened by associated water hazards; hence, research on the hydrogeological characteristics of deep Ordovician karst is needed. In this study, the Weibei coalfield in Shaanxi Province, China, was selected as the study area, especially mines in the Hancheng and Chenghe mining areas. In situ experiments, including water pumping, water drainage, water injecting and water pressure, and laboratory experiments, were conducted to study the hydrogeological characteristics of the Ordovician karst top in the study area. A comprehensive analysis was conducted on controlling factors for the development of the Ordovician karst top in the study area, and a method for evaluating the water inrush risk in coal mining areas based on karst hydrogeological characteristics was proposed. The research results indicated that the Ordovician karst top in the study area was characterized by heterogeneity, vertical zonation, and partially filled properties, which were mainly controlled by two factors: sedimentation and tectonism. The hydrogeological conditions of the Ordovician karst could be divided into three types: nonfilled and nonsignificant tectonism, filled and nonsignificant tectonism, and significant tectonism. Among them, the filled and nonsignificant tectonism type Ordovician karst top type had a filling thickness of 20 m. Based on karst hydrogeological characteristics, the methods were proposed to evaluate the water inrush risk in the coal mining floor. The practical tests verified the methods.

Description: It is critical to select an optimized sand control method for an interbedded sandstone and mudstone reservoir (ISMR) due to its serious sand production hazards. However, currently, most general sand control methods cannot meet the requirements of sand control in interbedded sandstone and mudstone reservoirs (e.g., Bohai Bay oil and gas fields from China). Ensuring efficiency of sand control and increasing the oil and gas production rate in this interbedded sandstone and mudstone become more and more important. In this paper, a “multilayer rotatable sand control experimental device” for the interbedded sandstone and mudstone reservoir was developed. A series of sand control experimental studies were conducted by using the proposed device. The net-to-gross ratio (NTG) and well inclinations are two major factors considered in the experimental analysis. In addition, a sensitivity analysis regarding formation particle size distribution (PSD), clay content, and mineral compositions is performed in the experiment under a moderate sand control mode. With systematic experimental test results in this work, combined with numerous existing sand control models, a set of optimum sand control design and the associated optimization template for ISMR were developed, which have been successfully applied in Bohai Bay. Field application results show that NTG and well inclination are two critical parameters in the design of sand control in ISMR. The optimal indexes of a sand control mode are determined as NTG of 0.4 and well inclination of 45°. The introduction of these two key factors in sand control design broadens the application range of moderate sand production.

Description: The scale dependence of surface roughness is critical in characterising the hydromechanical properties of field-scale rock joints but is still not well understood, particularly when different orders of roughness are considered. We experimentally reveal the scale dependence of two-order roughness, i.e., waviness and unevenness through fractal parameters using the triangular prism surface area method (TPM). The surfaces of three natural joints of granite with the same dimension of 1000 mm×1000 mm are digitised using a 3D laser scanner at three different measurement resolutions. Waviness and unevenness are quantitatively separated by considering the area variation of joint surface as grid size changes. The corresponding fractal dimensions of waviness and unevenness in sampling window sizes ranging from 100 mm×100 mm to 1000 mm×1000 mm at an interval of 100 mm×100 mm are determined. We find that both the fractal dimensions of waviness and unevenness vary as the window size increases. No obvious stationarity threshold has been found for the three rock joint samples, indicating the surface roughness of natural rock joints should be quantified at the scale of the rock mass in the field.

Description: A novel posture motion-based spatiotemporal fused graph convolutional network (PM-STGCN) is presented for skeleton-based action recognition. Existing methods on skeleton-based action recognition focus on independently calculating the joint information in single frame and motion information of joints between adjacent frames from the human body skeleton structure and then combine the classification results. However, that does not take into consideration of the complicated temporal and spatial relationship of the human body action sequence, so they are not very efficient in distinguishing similar actions. In this work, we enhance the ability of distinguishing similar actions by focusing on spatiotemporal fusion and adaptive feature extraction for high discrimination information. Firstly, the local posture motion-based attention (LPM-TAM) module is proposed for the purpose of suppressing the skeleton sequence data with a low amount of motion in the temporal domain, and the representation of motion posture features is concentrated. Besides, the local posture motion-based channel attention module (LPM-CAM) is introduced to make use of the strongly discriminative representation between different action classes of similarity. Finally, the posture motion-based spatiotemporal fusion (PM-STF) module is constructed which fuses the spatiotemporal skeleton data by filtering out the low-information sequence and enhances the posture motion features adaptively with high discrimination. Extensive experiments have been conducted, and the results demonstrate that the proposed model is superior to the commonly used action recognition methods. The designed human-robot interaction system based on action recognition has competitive performance compared with the speech interaction system.

Description: Karst collapse pillars (KCPs) frequently cause severe groundwater inrush disasters in coal mining above a confined aquifer. An accurate understanding of the damage and fracture evolution, permeability enhancement, and seepage changes in KCPs under the combined action of mining-induced stress and confined hydraulic pressure is of great significance for the early prediction and prevention of groundwater inrush from KCPs in coal seam floors. In this study, a micromechanics-based coupled stress-seepage-damage (SSD) modeling approach, in which the macroscopic mechanical and hydraulic properties of the rock are explicitly related to the microcrack kinetics, is proposed to simulate the fracture evolution and the associated groundwater flow in KCPs. An in situ high-precision microseismic monitoring technology is used to verify the micromechanical modeling results, which indicate that the numerical model successfully reproduces the damage and fracture evolution in a coal seam floor with a KCP during the mining process. The presented model also provides a visual representation of the complex process of KCP activation and groundwater inrush channel formation. A numerical study shows that the damage and activation of a KCP start from the edge of the KCP, gradually develop toward the interior of the KCP, and eventually connect with the damage fracture zone of the floor, forming a primary water-conducting channel in the KCP, causing the confined groundwater to flow into the working face. Groundwater inrush from a KCP is a gradual process instead of a mutation process. A reduction in the distance between the working face and a KCP and increases in the confined hydraulic pressure and the initial water-conducting height of the KCP can significantly increase the risk of groundwater inrush from the KCP.

Description: In this paper, a delayed control strategy for a class of nonlinear underactuated fourth-order systems is developed. The proposal is based on the implementation of the tangent linearization technique, differential flatness, and a study of the σ-stabilization of the characteristic equation of the closed-loop system. The tangent linearization technique allows obtaining a local controllability property for the analyzed class of systems. Also, it can reduce the complexity of the global control design, through the use of a cascade connection of two second-order controllers instead of designing a global controller of the fourth-order system. The stabilizing behavior of the delayed controller design is supported by the σ-stability criterion, which provides the controller parameter selection to reach the maximum exponential decay rate on the system response. To illustrate the efficiency of the theoretical results, the proposal is experimentally assessed in two cases of study: a flexible joint system and a pendubot.

Description: Recently, knowledge graph embedding methods have attracted numerous researchers’ interest due to their outstanding effectiveness and robustness in knowledge representation. However, there are still some limitations in the existing methods. On the one hand, translation-based representation models focus on conceiving translation principles to represent knowledge from a global perspective, while they fail to learn various types of relational facts discriminatively. It is prone to make the entity congestion of complex relational facts in the embedding space reducing the precision of representation vectors associating with entities. On the other hand, parallel subgraphs extracted from the original graph are used to learn local relational facts discriminatively. However, it probably causes the relational fact damage of the original knowledge graph to some degree during the subgraph extraction. Thus, previous methods are unable to learn local and global knowledge representation uniformly. To that end, we propose a multiview translation learning model, named MvTransE, which learns relational facts from global-view and local-view perspectives, respectively. Specifically, we first construct multiple parallel subgraphs from an original knowledge graph by considering entity semantic and structural features simultaneously. Then, we embed the original graph and construct subgraphs into the corresponding global and local feature spaces. Finally, we propose a multiview fusion strategy to integrate multiview representations of relational facts. Extensive experiments on four public datasets demonstrate the superiority of our model in knowledge graph representation tasks compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Description: The paper describes a mathematical and physical modelling of flow of complex slurries in pipelines, i.e. a flow of slurries composed of solids covering a very broad range of particle sizes that overlaps more than one flow patterns – non-Newtonian, pseudohomogeneous, heterogeneous and fully-stratified. A typical examples are residual products (“tailings”) from mining industry with normal average particle sizes of 20 to 100 μm or more. Experimental results of flows of complex slurries composing of non-Newtonian carrier fluid and three fractions of glass particles in 50 mm pipe are presented. Depending on the particle size, particles show different flow patterns and therefore considerable differences in pressure drops. Fine particles tend behave as a homogeneous matter, while coarser particles exhibit heterogeneous behaviour and even coarser particles form a sliding bed. A mathematical 3-component predictive model for turbulent flow of complex slurries is presented based on well-established semi-empirical formulae developed originally for flows with Newtonian carrier. The predicted values of pressure drops show very reasonable agreement with experimental results and indicate suitability of the model for engineering practice.

Description: A multimode resource-constrained project scheduling problem (MRCPSP) may have multifeasible solutions, due to its nature of targeting multiobjectives. Given the NP-hard MRCPSP and intricate multiobjective algorithms, finding the optimized result among those solutions seems impossible. This paper adopts data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate a series of solutions of an MRCPSP and to find an appropriate choice in an objective way. Our approach is applied to a typical MRCPSP in practice, and the results validate that DEA is an effective and objective method for MRCPSP solution selection.

Description: Based on the oligopoly game theory and the intellectual property rights protection policy, we investigate the complex dynamical behaviors of a mixed duopoly game with quadratic cost. In the new system, a few parameters are improved by considering intellectual property rights protection and the stability conditions of the Nash equilibrium point are discussed in detail. A set of the two-dimensional bifurcation diagrams is demonstrated by using numerical modeling, and these diagrams show abundant complex dynamical behaviors, such as coexistence of attractors, different bifurcation, and fractal structures. These dynamical properties can present the long-run effects of strengthening intellectual property protection.

Description: Implementing artificial neural networks is commonly achieved via high-level programming languages such as Python and easy-to-use deep learning libraries such as Keras. These software libraries come preloaded with a variety of network architectures, provide autodifferentiation, and support GPUs for fast and efficient computation. As a result, a deep learning practitioner will favor training a neural network model in Python, where these tools are readily available. However, many large-scale scientific computation projects are written in Fortran, making it difficult to integrate with modern deep learning methods. To alleviate this problem, we introduce a software library, the Fortran-Keras Bridge (FKB). This two-way bridge connects environments where deep learning resources are plentiful with those where they are scarce. The paper describes several unique features offered by FKB, such as customizable layers, loss functions, and network ensembles. The paper concludes with a case study that applies FKB to address open questions about the robustness of an experimental approach to global climate simulation, in which subgrid physics are outsourced to deep neural network emulators. In this context, FKB enables a hyperparameter search of one hundred plus candidate models of subgrid cloud and radiation physics, initially implemented in Keras, to be transferred and used in Fortran. Such a process allows the model’s emergent behavior to be assessed, i.e., when fit imperfections are coupled to explicit planetary-scale fluid dynamics. The results reveal a previously unrecognized strong relationship between offline validation error and online performance, in which the choice of the optimizer proves unexpectedly critical. This in turn reveals many new neural network architectures that produce considerable improvements in climate model stability including some with reduced error, for an especially challenging training dataset.

Description: Social networks are a complex system that members communicate, create new connections or destroy existing connections, and further deliver major impacts on each member’s life. Given the spread of the Internet and increased academic pressure, sedentary and prescreen behaviors are very common among adolescents; meanwhile, sports behaviors are gradually decreasing. This situation has had an adverse effect on health. This paper used a questionnaire survey to investigate the influence of social networks on adolescent sports behavior, including the intermediary role of social efficacy and moderating effect of self-presentation. The questionnaire survey was conducted on 568 students from 6 high schools in Shaanxi, Henan, and Shandong Provinces. After this, factor analysis and weighted least squares method were used for the empirical test. Based on theoretical and empirical analysis, this paper found the following: (1) Social networks of adolescents have obvious positive predictive effects on their sports behavior. A single online social network and an offline social network, instrumental network, emotional network, and mixed network have obvious positive predictive effects on adolescent sports behaviors. However, under the influence of multiple types of social networks, an offline social network has a negative predictive effect, while a mixed network has effects that are not as obvious. (2) Social efficacy plays an intermediary role in the relationship between social network and adolescent sports behavior. (3) The moderating effect of self-presentation is not significant.

Description: Height measurement for moving pedestrians is quite significant in many scenarios, such as pedestrian positioning, criminal suspect tracking, and virtual reality. Although some existing height measurement methods can detect the height of the static people, it is hard to measure height accurately for moving pedestrians. Considering the height fluctuations in dynamic situation, this paper proposes a real-time height measurement based on the Time-of-Flight (TOF) camera. Depth images in a continuous sequence are addressed to obtain the real-time height of the pedestrian with moving. Firstly, a normalization equation is presented to convert the depth image into the grey image for a lower time cost and better performance. Secondly, a difference-particle swarm optimization (D-PSO) algorithm is proposed to remove the complex background and reduce the noises. Thirdly, a segmentation algorithm based on the maximally stable extremal regions (MSERs) is introduced to extract the pedestrian head region. Then, a novel multilayer iterative average algorithm (MLIA) is developed for obtaining the height of dynamic pedestrians. Finally, Kalman filtering is used to improve the measurement accuracy by combining the current measurement and the height at the last moment. In addition, the VICON system is adopted as the ground truth to verify the proposed method, and the result shows that our method can accurately measure the real-time height of moving pedestrians.

Description: Since China’s first stock index futures, China Securities Index 300 (CSI300) stock index futures were published in 2010, and China’s stock index futures market is now in a period of rapid development and play a key role in price discovery. During 2014 to 2015, China’s stock index futures market fluctuated abnormally, and the overuse of high-frequency trading (HFT) strategies in the stock index futures market was blamed as the main reason of the abnormal volatility. To lower down market fluctuation, the regulatory institute then announced a series of trade restriction policy to prevent the overuse of HFT behaviour. However, until now, the impact of such trade restriction policy for HFT remains uncertain. To tackle this issue, based on minute-level HFT data from the CSI 300 index futures market, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between HFT and the exogenous liquidity risk and how HFT affects China’s stock index futures market on its liquidity using the liquidity-adjusted value at risk (LVaR) model. The findings indicate that HFT improves the return of the liquidity provider and reduces the exogenous liquidity risk significantly.

Description: Summary On 24th August 2016 at 01:36 UTC a ML6.0 earthquake struck several villages in central Italy, among which Accumoli, Amatrice and Arquata del Tronto. The earthquake was recorded by about 350 seismic stations, causing 299 fatalities and damage with macroseismic intensities up to 11. The maximum acceleration was observed at Amatrice station (AMT) reaching 916 cm/s2 on E-W component, with epicentral distance of 15 km and Joyner and Boore distance to the fault surface (RJB) of less than a kilometre. Motivated by the high levels of observed ground motion and damage, we generate broadband seismograms for engineering purposes by adopting a hybrid method. To infer the low frequency seismograms, we considered the kinematic slip model by Tinti et al. (2016). The high frequency seismograms were produced using a stochastic finite-fault model approach based on dynamic corner-frequency. Broadband synthetic time series were therefore obtained by merging the low and high frequency seismograms. Simulated hybrid ground motions were compared both with the observed ground motions and the ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs), to explore their performance and to retrieve the region-specific parameters endorsed for the simulations. In the near-fault area we observed that hybrid simulations have a higher capability to detect near source effects and to reproduce the source complexity than the use of GMPEs. Indeed, the general good consistency found between synthetic and observed ground motion (both in the time and frequency domain), suggests that the use of regional-specific source scaling and attenuation parameters together with the source complexity in hybrid simulations improves ground motion estimations. To include the site effect in stochastic simulations at selected stations, we tested the use of amplification curves derived from HVRSs (horizontal-to-vertical response spectra) and from HVSRs (horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratios) rather than the use of generic curves according to NTC-18 Italian seismic design code. We generally found a further reduction of residuals between observed and simulated both in terms of time histories and spectra.

Description: Rock dwelling organisms (lithobionts) such as cyanobacteria (prokaryotes) and chlorolichens (eukaryotes) abound in the Negev Desert, where they cover almost all calcareous bedrocks and rock particles (cobbles, boulders). In a small limestone watershed in the Negev Highlands, cyanobacteria inhabit the south-facing (SF) bedrocks, epilithic lichens (accompanied by endolithic lichens) inhabit the north-facing (NF) bedrocks, while endolithic lichens cover most of the cobbles and boulders in both aspects. In order to study their contribution to runoff water, a pair of runoff plots was established on habitats with cyanobacteria, endolithic lichens, and epilithic lichens. Rain and runoff were collected during the hydrological year 2006/07, and the chemical composition (Ca, Mg, Na, K, Cl, SO4, HCO3, Si) of the rain and runoff water was analyzed. Several patterns were observed: (a) as indicated by Si, more dust accumulated on the bedrocks; (b) all substrates exhibited high amounts of Ca, and HCO3; (c) while SF-bedrocks showed enrichment in K, both bedrocks (and especially the NF bedrocks), as well as the NF boulders showed an enrichment in Mg. While the enrichment in Ca and HCO3 can be explained by the contribution of the limestone parent material, the enrichment in K and Mg can be explained by the contribution of the living lithobionts, with K being mainly contributed by the cyanobacteria and Mg mainly by the epilithic lichens. Ion enrichment may therefore be aspect-dependent, reflecting the lithobiont distribution within the drainage basin, partially explaining the enrichment in K and Mg previously recorded in runoff water from the Negev.

Description: Sand burial is a ubiquitous disturbance that influences the ecological and hydrological properties of moss crusts in many sandy desert areas. There is little available information regarding the effect of sand burial on the water repellency (WR) of moss crusts in desert areas. Therefore, this study evaluated the effects of sand burial (sand depths of 0 (control), 0.5, 1, 2, 4 and 10 mm) followed by three simulated precipitation regimes (through applying 4 and 6 mm, 2 and 3 mm, and 1 and 1.5 mm of distilled water at 8-day intervals in spring and autumn, respectively) on the WR of a widespread moss crust dominated by Bryum argenteum Hedw. in a revegetated area of the Tengger Desert, China. The results showed moss crust WR remained subcritical during the whole experiment, and that it considerably decreased immediately after sand burial, even though the values of WR were significantly higher in autumn than those in spring under the same treatment (p 〈 0.05). Furthermore, the depth threshold (TD) values for sand burials that reduced WR to zero were 1 and 2 mm in spring and autumn, respectively. After a recovery period of nearly one-season (72 days), the WR of the moss crust significantly increased (p 〈 0.05). In addition, sand burial had two separate effects on moss crust WR. Specifically, shallower sand burial (burial depth less than 0.5 mm) increased moss crust WR, whereas deeper sand burial (burial depth exceeds 0.5 mm) decreased it. The TD values also significantly increased to 2 and 4 mm in spring and autumn, respectively. These findings about the effects of sand burial on moss crust WR provide additional information that can be used to better understand the influence of sand burial on moss crust colonization and maintenance in arid sand-burial-stressed ecosystems, and to help explain why there are some contrasting viewpoints on biocrust WR.

Description: The objectives of the study were to: (1) assess the strength of associations of direct CO2 and N2O emissions with the seasonal variations in the relevant soil properties under both tillage systems; 2) evaluate how CT and RT affect magnitudes of seasonal CO2 and N2O fluxes from soil. Field studies were carried out on plots for conventional tillage (up to 0.22–0.25 m) and reduced tillage (up to 0.10–0.12 m) during the growing season and post-harvest period of red clover. The results showed that daily CO2 emissions significantly correlated only with soil temperature during the growing season under conventional and reduced tillage. Soil temperature demonstrated its highest influence on daily N2O emissions only at the beginning of the growing season in both tillage systems. There were no significant inter-system differences in daily CO2 and N2O emissions from soil during the entire period of observations. Over the duration of post-harvest period, water-filled pore space was a better predictor of daily CO2 emissions from soils under CT and RT. The conventional and reduced tillage did not cause significant differences in cumulative N2O and CO2 fluxes from soil.

Description: This article analyzes the technical difficulties in full-section backfill mining and briefly introduces the technical principle and advantages of backfilling combined with caving fully mechanized mining (BCCFM). To reveal the strata behavior law of the BCCFM workface, this work establishes a three-dimensional numerical model and designs a simulation method by dynamically updating the modulus parameter of the filling body. By the analysis of numerical simulation, the following conclusions about strata behavior of the BCCFM workface were drawn. (1) The strata behavior of the BCCFM workface shows significant nonsymmetrical characteristics, and the pressure in the caving section is higher than that in the backfilling section. φ has the greatest influence on the backfilling section and the least influence on the caving section. C has a significant influence on the range of abutment pressure in the backfilling section. (2) There exits the transition area with strong mine pressure of the BCCFM workface. φ and C have significant effect on the degree of pressure concentration but little effect on the influence range of strong mine pressure in the transition area. (3) Under different conditions, the influence range of strong mine pressure is all less than 6 m. This article puts forward a control strategy of mine pressure in the transition area, which is appropriately improving the strength of the transition hydraulic support within the influence range (6 m) in the transition area according to the pressure concentration coefficient. The field measurement value of Ji15-31010 workface was consistent with numerical simulation, which verifies the reliability of control strategy of the BCCFM workface.

Description: The development of measurement technologies allows for acquiring various data. The Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) technology is frequently combined with classic geodetic measurements – tacheometry or levelling. This article presents a process of the diaphragm wall monitoring during excavation supported with a top-down method. The construction technology applied required proper planning and performance of measurements in difficult construction site conditions in the city centre. TLS allowed for limiting works at daytime and performing monitoring during the night break in works at the construction site as well as limiting the impact of the subsoil process vibrations on the values of displacements and deformations determined. The authors present a comparison of the results of displacement and deformation measurements with a terrestrial laser scanning and tacheometric measurement method. The possibilities of using the data acquired, among others, for the indication of filtration areas, spatial surface deformation analyses and assessment of the wall execution compliance with the design are presented. The analyses carried out show that the TLS may be used in the investment process from the very beginning, being a component of the Building Information Modelling (BIM).

Description: Community is the core spatial unit for evaluating sustainable development. However, single data and method seem inadequate for conducting a scientific, effective, and innovative sustainable evaluation of complex community units. In this study, we perform a sustainable-oriented land use scheme using multisource remote sensing, machine learning, and object-based postclassification refinement. Furthermore, we assess the sustainability of the traffic community by data-driven and combined housing, ecosystem services, and landscape configuration. The results indicated that (1) the relationship between housing, ecosystem services, and landscape pattern has obvious synergistic effects, although with dissimilar importance in different sustainability levels. High sustainability level is intensely coordinated with landscape configuration, medium sustainability level is more affected by ecosystem services, and low sustainability level is more related to housing. (2) Community sustainability presents a significant spatial distribution. The communities of high sustainability level are mainly located in both sides of the Pearl River and emerging urban areas, while those of medium sustainability level are distributed sporadically in the study area and those of low sustainability level are concentrated in old towns. (3) Community transformation cannot be accomplished at one step. Along with the continuous optimization of landscape configuration, the priority should be given to housing reconstruction and improvement of ecosystem services further. We provide scientific and effective data-based evidence for urban decision-makers by integrating the advantages of the Earth Observation System and multifactor analysis.

Description: Summary We explore here the benefits of using constraints from seismic tomography in gravity data inversion and how inverted density distributions can be improved by doing so. The methodology is applied to a real field case in which we reconstruct the density structure of the Pyrenees along a southwest-northeast transect going from the Ebro basin in Spain to the Arzacq basin in France. We recover the distribution of densities by inverting gravity anomalies under constraints coming from seismic tomography. We initiate the inversion from a prior density model obtained by scaling a pre-existing compressional seismic velocity Vp model using a Nafe-Drake relationship : the Vp model resulting from a full-waveform inversion of teleseismic data. Gravity data inversions enforce structural similarities between Vp and density by minimizing the norm of the cross-gradient between the density and Vp models. We also compare models obtained from 2.5D and 3D inversions. Our results demonstrate that structural constraints allow us to better recover the density contrasts close to the surface and at depth, without degrading the gravity data misfit. The final density model provides valuable information on the geological structures and on the thermal state and composition of the western region of the Pyrenean lithosphere.

Description: Climate change and human activity are two linked factors that alter the spatiotemporal distribution of the available water. Assessing the relative contribution of the two factors on runoff changes can help the planners and managers to better formulate strategies and policies regarding regional water resources. In this work, using two typical sub-basins of the Yellow River as the study area, we first detected the trend and the breakpoint in the annual streamflow data with the Pettitt test during the period 1964–2011. Next, a Budyko-based climate elasticity model and a monthly hydrological model were employed as an integrated method to distinguish the relative contributions of climate change and human activities to the long-term changes in runoff. The results showed that a significant decline in the annual runoff occurred in the two sub-basins during the study period, and the abrupt change point in the annual runoff at the two sub-basins both occurred in 1997. The conceptual hydrological model performed well in reproducing monthly runoff time series at the two sub-basins. The Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) between observed and simulated runoff during the validation period exceeds 0.83 for the two sub-basins. Climate elasticity method and hydrological model give consistent attribution results: human activities are the major drivers responsible for the decreased annual runoff in the Ten Great Gullies Basin. The relative contributions of climate change and human activities to the changes in the annual runoff were 22–32% and 68–78%, respectively.

Description: The two-dimensional particle image velocimetry (PIV) data are inevitably contaminated by noise due to various imperfections in instrumentation or algorithm, based on which the well-established vortex identification methods often yield noise or incomplete vortex structure with a jagged boundary. To make up this deficiency, a novel method was proposed in this paper and the efficiency of the new method was demonstrated by its applications in extracting the two-dimensional spanwise vortex structures from 2D PIV data in open-channel flows. The new method takes up a single vortex structure by combining model matching and vorticity filtering, and successfully locates the vortex core and draws a streamlined vortex boundary. The new method shows promise as being more effective than commonly used schemes in open-channel flow applications.

Description: Lake Śniardwy is the largest among more than 7000 Polish lakes. So far, it has not been a subject of detailed investigations concerning long-term changes in water temperature or ice regime. A considerable change in thermal and ice conditions has been observed in the period 1972–2019. Mean annual water temperature increased by 0.44°C dec−1 on average, and was higher than an increase in air temperature (0.33°C dec−1). In the monthly cycle, the most dynamic changes occurred in April (0.77°C dec−1). In the case of ice cover, it appeared increasingly later (5.3 days dec−1), and disappeared earlier (3.0 days dec−1). The thickness of ice cover also decreased (2.4 cm dec−1). Statistical analysis by means of a Pettitt test showed that the critical moment for the transformations of the thermal and ice regime was the end of the 1980’s. In addition to the obvious relations with air temperature for both characteristics, it was evidenced that the occurrence of ice cover depended on wind speed and snow cover. The recorded changes in the case of Lake Śniardwy are considered unfavourable, and their consequences will affect the course of physical, chemical, and biological processes in the largest lake in Poland.

Description: Dams have an important role in the industrial development of countries. Irrespective of the reason for dam break, the flood can cause devastating disasters with loss of life and property especially in densely populated areas. In this study, the effects of the vegetation on the flood wave propagation in case of dam break were investigated experimentally by using the distorted physical model of Ürkmez Dam. The horizontal and vertical scales of the distorted physical model are 1/150 and 1/30, respectively. The dam break scenarios were achieved by means of a gate of rectangular and triangular shape. The results obtained from experiments performed with vegetation were compared and interpreted with those obtained from experiments at which the vegetation configuration was absent. The analysis of the experimental data showed that the presence of vegetation causes a significant decrease in water depths as the flood wave propagates to the downstream and greatly reduces its impact on the settlements. It is also revealed that dam break shape plays an important role in temporal variation of flood wave.

Description: Objects’ measurements often boil down to the determination of changes due to external factors affecting on their structure. The estimation of changes in a tested object, in addition to proper measuring equipment, requires the use of appropriate measuring methods and experimental data result processing methods. This study presents a statement of results of geometrical measurements of a steel cylinder that constitutes the main structural component of the historical weir Czersko Polskie in Bydgoszcz. In the initial stage, the estimation of reliable changes taking place in the cylinder structure involved the selection of measuring points essential for mapping its geometry. Due to the continuous operation of the weir, the points covered only about one-third of the cylinder area. The set of points allowed us to determine the position of the cylinder axis as well as skews and deformations of the cylinder surface. In the next stage, the use of methods based on artificial neural networks allowed us to predict the changes in the tested object. Artificial neural networks have proved to be useful in determining displacements of building structures, particularly hydro-technical objects. The above-mentioned methods supplement classical measurements that create the opportunity for carrying out additional analyses of changes in a spatial position of such structures. The purpose of the tests is to confirm the suitability of artificial neural networks for predicting displacements of building structures, particularly hydro-technical objects.

Description: Practically, supply disruption may lead production process to entirely halt (completely disrupted) or the output to differ in the order size (partially disrupted), which makes it more difficult for the retailer to satisfy stochastic market demand. Under the circumstance, the retailer is likely to procure products from two suppliers to effectively alleviate the demand-supply mismatches. Thus, under supply disruption and stochastic demand, this paper develops both backup sourcing and simultaneous sourcing (SS) strategies to analyze the retailer’s performance, where backup sourcing includes wholesale price priority (WPP) and supply reliability priority (SRP). Specifically, (1) under WPP, when the selling price is relatively lower (higher), the retailer is suggested to activate the reliable backup supplier after the realization of supply disruption (demand uncertainty). (2) Under SRP, two scenarios including minor disruption and major disruption can be identified, where the retailer’s order quantity from the reliable (unreliable) supplier under minor disruption scenario is more (less) than that under major. (3) Finally, this paper systematically compares the retailer’s preferences among WPP, SRP, and SS via theoretical results and numerical examples. That is, when the unreliable supplier is more likely to work normally or shortage cost (selling price) is relatively lower, the retailer prefers SPR regarding the unreliable supplier as backup sourcing due to its lower wholesale price and acceptable supply disruption. Otherwise, the retailer is inclined to WPP regarding the reliable supplier as backup sourcing for ensuring all market demand to be satisfied. In addition, unless the emergency prices of two suppliers are extremely higher, backup sourcing strategies could perform better than simultaneous sourcing strategy.

Description: This study investigates a multidepot heterogeneous vehicle routing problem for a variety of hazardous materials with risk analysis, which is a practical problem in the actual industrial field. The objective of the problem is to design a series of routes that minimize the total cost composed of transportation cost, risk cost, and overtime work cost. Comprehensive consideration of factors such as transportation costs, multiple depots, heterogeneous vehicles, risks, and multiple accident scenarios is involved in our study. The problem is defined as a mixed integer programming model. A bidirectional tuning heuristic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm are developed to solve the problem of different scales of instances. Computational results are competitive such that our algorithm can obtain effective results in small-scale instances and show great efficiency in large-scale instances with 70 customers, 30 vehicles, and 3 types of hazardous materials.

Description: Single image super-resolution (SISR) is a traditional image restoration problem. Given an image with low resolution (LR), the task of SISR is to find the homologous high-resolution (HR) image. As an ill-posed problem, there are works for SISR problem from different points of view. Recently, deep learning has shown its amazing performance in different image processing tasks. There are works for image super-resolution based on convolutional neural network (CNN). In this paper, we propose an adaptive residual channel attention network for image super-resolution. We first analyze the limitation of residual connection structure and propose an adaptive design for suitable feature fusion. Besides the adaptive connection, channel attention is proposed to adjust the importance distribution among different channels. A novel adaptive residual channel attention block (ARCB) is proposed in this paper with channel attention and adaptive connection. Then, a simple but effective upscale block design is proposed for different scales. We build our adaptive residual channel attention network (ARCN) with proposed ARCBs and upscale block. Experimental results show that our network could not only achieve better PSNR/SSIM performances on several testing benchmarks but also recover structural textures more effectively.

Description: A floor aquifuge usually bends and fails when mining above a confined aquifer, which may lead to water inrush disaster. The floor aquifuge was simplified as a thin disc model in this paper, and a series of coupled bending-seepage tests of sandstone were carried out by a patent test system. The variation characteristics of load-displacement, load-time, and permeability-time were analyzed. The deflection and stress in the thin disc rock samples were deduced; the initiation and propagation of cracks were analyzed. The failure behavior of the thin disc rock samples was described. It shows the following: (1) The bending failure behavior relates to the stress distribution and crack evolution inside the thin disc. (2) The main cause of crack initiation is a tension-shear failure. (3) The 5 mm thickness thin discs form petal-shaped cracks, due to tensile stress, while petal-shaped cracks only appear at the cap block of the 10 mm discs, which are sheared into two pieces along the conical surface with an inclination about 45°. (4) Water inrush occurs after bending failure in the floor aquifuge, and it is an opportune moment to grout along the crack propagation trend lines to prevent the water inrush disasters.

Description: Evapotranspiration (ET) is an essential component of watershed hydrological cycle. Spatial-temporal variations analyses of evapotranspiration and potential evapotranspiration (PET) have remarkable theoretical and practical significances for understanding the interaction between climate changes and hydrological cycle and optimal allocation of water resources under global warming background. The MODIS-estimated ET agreed well with basin evapotranspiration from water balance principle methods in the study. The spatiotemporal variations results based on MOD16 ET data showed the following: (1) multiyear mean ET and PET were 464.2 mm and 1192.2 mm, and annual ET showed an upward trend at a rate of 3.48 mm/a, while PET decreased significantly at a rate of −8.18 mm/a. The annual ET trend showed a complemental relationship with PET; (2) at the seasonal scale, ET was highest in summer and least in winter, while PET was higher in spring and summer. The change of ET and PET in spring and summer had a great contribution to the annual variations; (3) ET and PET in the northern part were significantly stronger than those in the western and southern parts; (4) ET in cropland increased significantly, while PET decreased obviously in grass and forest; (5) changes of ET and PET were closely related to climatic factors. The rise in temperature caused the increase in ET and the decrease of wind speed contributed more to the decrease in PET. The results can provide a scientific basis for water resources planning and management.

Description: With the gestation and development of new technologies, new products, new formats, and new models, venture capital investment, as one of the most important forms of open innovation in large companies, plays an increasingly important role in the innovation of mature large companies and entrepreneurial enterprises. To deal with the complex and dynamic environment, the niche of Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) ecological community is investigated from the perspective of the innovation ecosystem. By analyzing the innovation of CVC ecological community with the use of the logistic expansion model, this paper analyzes the stability of evolution game through the replicator dynamic equation and discusses ten parameters of niche state. In the end, we conclude that there are four optimization strategies in the coevolution of major corporations and entrepreneurial firms, namely, niche separation, niche expansion, niche K-R, and niche alliance.

Description: Multiobject detection tasks in complex scenes have become an important research topic, which is the basis of other computer vision tasks. Considering the defects of the traditional single shot multibox detector (SSD) algorithm, such as poor small object detection effect, reliance on manual setting for default box generation, and insufficient semantic information of the low detection layer, the detection effect in complex scenes was not ideal. Aiming at the shortcomings of the SSD algorithm, an improved algorithm based on the adaptive default box mechanism (ADB) is proposed. The algorithm introduces the adaptive default box mechanism, which can improve the imbalance of positive and negative samples and avoid manually set default box super parameters. Experimental results show that, compared with the traditional SSD algorithm, the improved algorithm has a better detection effect and higher accuracy in complex scenes.

Description: The nonlinear resonant responses, mode interactions, and multitime periodic and chaotic oscillations of the cantilevered pipe conveying pulsating fluid are studied under the harmonic external force in this research. According to the nonlinear dynamic model of the cantilevered beam derived using Hamilton’s principle under the uniformly distributed external harmonic excitation, we combine Galerkin technique and the method of multiple scales together to obtain the average equation of the cantilevered pipe conveying pulsating fluid under 1 : 3 internal resonance and principal parametric resonance. Based on the average equation in the polar form, several amplitude-frequency response curves are obtained corresponding to the certain parameters. It is found that there exist the hardening-spring type behaviors and jumping phenomena in the cantilevered pipe conveying pulsating fluid. The nonlinear oscillations of the cantilevered pipe conveying pulsating fluid can be excited more easily with the increase of the flow velocity, external excitation, and coupling degree of two order modes. Numerical simulations are performed to study the chaos of the cantilevered pipe conveying pulsating fluid with the external harmonic excitation. The simulation results exhibit the existence of the period, multiperiod, and chaotic responses with the variations of the fluid velocity or excitation. It is found that, in the cantilevered pipe conveying pulsating fluid, there are the multitime nonlinear vibrations around the left-mode and the right-mode positions, respectively. We also observe that there exist alternately the periodic and chaotic vibrations of the cantilevered pipe conveying pulsating fluid in the certain range.

Description: Summary The relatively short duration of the early stages of subduction results in a poor geological record, limiting our understanding of this critical stage. Here, we utilize a 2D numerical model of incipient subduction, that is the stage after a plate margin has formed with a slab tip that extends to a shallow depth and address the conditions under which subduction continues or fails. We assess energy budgets during the evolution from incipient subduction to either a failed or successful state, showing how the growth of potential energy, and slab pull, is resisted by the viscous dissipation within the lithosphere and the mantle. The role of rheology is also investigated, as deformation mechanisms operating in the crust and mantle facilitate subduction. In all models, the onset of subduction is characterized by high lithospheric viscous dissipation and low convergence velocities, whilst successful subduction sees the mantle become the main area of viscous dissipation. In contrast, failed subduction is defined by the lithospheric viscous dissipation exceeding the lithospheric potential energy release rate and velocities tend towards zero. We show that development of a subduction zone depends on the convergence rate, required to overcome thermal diffusion and to localise deformation along the margin. The results propose a minimum convergence rate of ∼ 0.5 cm yr−1 is required to reach a successful state, with 100 km of convergence over 20 Myr, emphasizing the critical role of the incipient stage.

Description: Summary Although many studies have revealed that the atmospheric effects of electromagnetic wave propagation (including ionospheric and tropospheric water vapor) have serious impacts on Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) measurement results, atmospheric corrections have not been thoroughly and comprehensively investigated in many well-known cases of InSAR focal mechanism solutions, which means there is no consensus on whether atmospheric effects will affect the InSAR focal mechanism solution. Moreover, there is a lack of quantitative assessment on how much the atmospheric effect affects the InSAR focal mechanism solution. In this paper, we emphasized that it was particularly important to assess the impact of InSAR ionospheric and tropospheric corrections on the underground nuclear explosion modeling quantitatively. Therefore, we investigated the 4th North Korea (NKT-4) underground nuclear test using ALOS-2 liters-band SAR images. Because the process of the underground nuclear explosion was similar to the volcanic magma source activity, we modeled the ground displacement using the Mogi model. Both the ionospheric and tropospheric phase delays in the interferograms were investigated. Furthermore, we studied how the ionosphere and troposphere phase delays could bias the estimation of Mogi source parameters. The following conclusions were drawn from our case study: The ionospheric delay correction effectively mitigated the long-scale phase ramp in the full-frame interferogram, the standard deviation decreased from 1.83 cm to 0.85 cm compared to the uncorrected interferogram. The uncorrected estimations of yield and depth were 8.44 kt and 370.33 m, respectively. Compared to the uncorrected estimations, the ionospheric correction increased the estimation of yield and depth to 9.43 kt and 385.48 m while the tropospheric correction slightly raised them to 8.78 kt and 377.24 m. There were no obvious differences in the location estimations among the four interferograms. When both corrections were applied, the overall standard deviation was 1.16 cm, which was even larger than the ionospheric corrected interferogram. We reported the source characteristics of NKT-4 based on the modeling results derived from the ionospheric corrected interferogram. The preferred estimation of NKT-4 was a Mogi source located at 129°04′22.35‘E, 41°17′54.57″N buried at 385.48 m depth. The cavity radius caused by the underground explosion was 22.02 m. We reported the yield estimation to be 9.43 kt. This study showed that for large-scale natural deformation sources such as volcanoes and earthquakes, atmospheric corrections would be more significant, but even if the atmospheric signal did not have much complexity, the corrections should not be ignored.

Description: Ventilator is important equipment for mines as it safeguards the lives under the shaft and ensures other equipment’s proper functioning by providing fresh air. Therefore, how to effectively control the ventilator system becomes more significant. In order to acquire the commonly used model and control strategy for ventilator systems, a new universal ventilator model is established based on the blast capacity differential pressure in the ventilating duct and the ventilator motor model. Then, an adaptive Chebyshev neural network (ACNN) controller is proposed to effectively control the ventilator system where the unknown load torque and the unknown disturbance caused by the complex environment under the shaft are approximated by the Chebyshev neural network (CNN). Afterwards, an appropriate Lyapunov function candidate is designed to guarantee the stability of the proposed controller and the closed-loop ventilator system. Finally, the ACNN controller has been demonstrated to be effective in terms of validity and precision for the new proposed ventilator model through the simulations.

Description: SUMMARY Self-consistent modelling of magmatic systems is challenging as the melt continuously changes its chemical composition upon crystallization, which may affect the mechanical behaviour of the system. Melt extraction and subsequent crystallization create new rocks while depleting the source region. As the chemistry of the source rocks changes locally due to melt extraction, new calculations of the stable phase assemblages are required to track the rock evolution and the accompanied change in density. As a consequence, a large number of isochemical sections of stable phase assemblages are required to study the evolution of magmatic systems in detail. As the state-of-the-art melting diagrams may depend on nine oxides as well as pressure and temperature, this is a 10-D computational problem. Since computing a single isochemical section (as a function of pressure and temperature) may take several hours, computing new sections of stable phase assemblages during an ongoing geodynamic simulation is currently computationally intractable. One strategy to avoid this problem is to pre-compute these stable phase assemblages and to create a comprehensive database as a hyperdimensional phase diagram, which contains all bulk compositions that may emerge during petro-thermomechanical simulations. Establishing such a database would require repeating geodynamic simulations many times while collecting all requested compositions that may occur during a typical simulation and continuously updating the database until no additional compositions are required. Here, we describe an alternative method that is better suited for implementation on large-scale parallel computers. Our method uses the entries of an existing preliminary database to estimate future required chemical compositions. Bulk compositions are determined within boundaries that are defined manually or through principal component analysis in a parameter space consisting of clustered database entries. We have implemented both methods within a massively parallel computational framework while utilizing the Gibbs free energy minimization program Perple_X. Results show that our autonomous approach increases the resolution of the thermodynamic database in compositional regions that are most likely required for geodynamic models of magmatic systems.

Description: In this paper, the risk zone mapping of declining lowland forests belonging to „Morović“, management unit „Varadin-Županja“ (northern Serbia) is performed using geostatistics analysis. Based on the monitoring of groundwater level, the Kriging method has been performed for the spatial distribution of groundwater level for a multiyear period (2010–2013) – reference level and characteristic levels for the wettest and the driest year during the analyzed period. Risk assessment was determined by the variance of characteristics compared to reference levels. Then, multi-criteria decision analysis methods (AHP, PROMETHEE II) were applied to define the rank of each department (smaller forest management units) located in the research area. These analyses are very important because they enable to locate of the area with a high risk of forest decline and to rank departments using criteria: deviation from water level recorded during dry periods, species demand for water, conservation status and purpose of the unit (seed stands or technical wood). The proposed methodology is usable for the determination of the primary localities for the application of management measures conducting on the level of lower planned units (departments) and thus lead to the successful planning and more efficient forest management. Obtained results at the researched area showed that a negative influence on the watering regime has groundwater level decreasing compared to the reference level because it directly affects available water for the plants. Based on multicriteria analysis methods, it was deduced that the most endangered parts are located at the edge, while this risk is much lower in the central part of the management unit. A combination of applied methods (geostatistics and multicriteria analysis) is of great importance for forestry management.

Description: This paper presents a revised sequence stratigraphy for the lower, middle and upper Badenian depositional systems of the Austrian Vienna Basin based on the integration of 3D seismic surveys and well data. The study area in the central and northern part of the Austrian Vienna Basin is covered with 3D seismic data. According to a new sequence stratigraphic framework established in the southern part of the Vienna Basin, the Badenian is subdivided into three 3rd order depositional sequences. For each sequence, paleogeographic maps are created, representing coeval depositional systems within a chronostrati-graphic interval. Lower Badenian sediments of the 1st sequence (Ba1) represent fillings of the pre-Badenian sub-basins with a major change of sediment transport direction. The early stage of the 1st sequence is dominated by subaerial braided river deposits which use two pronounced canyon systems (Mistelbach Canyon and Reinthal Canyon) on the northwestern margin of the Vienna Basin as a bypass zone towards the marine depositional system of the North Alpine-Carpathian Foredeep. The late stage of the 1st sequence reflects the change from subaerial to marine depositional environments with main sediment influx from the west, creating two major eastwards prograding delta systems (Zistersdorf Delta and Mühlberg Delta). Depositional systems of the middle Badenian 2nd sequence (Ba2) reflect the interplay between ongoing extensional fault tectonics and major sea-level changes. Lower Badenian paleo-highs in the northern part are drowned during the 3rd sequence (Ba3), thus the Mühlberg Delta and the Zistersdorf Delta merge into one delta system. During the Ba3 the drowning of the Spannberg Ridge initiates a clockwise rotation of the Zistersdorf Delta. Thus, the former Zistersdorf Delta transforms into the Matzen Delta covering the Spannberg Ridge. Together with the Mühlberg Delta, they represent the last full marine depositional system of the eastward prograding paleo-Danube Delta in the Austrian Vienna Basin.

Description: A three-dimensional numerical model was applied to simulate submerged spatial hydraulic jumps (SSHJ) downstream of a symmetric vent that discharges into a wider channel. Simulations were carried out for different aspect ratios of the vent, expansion ratios of vent width to downstream channel width, tailwater depth, and inlet Froude number. Depending on these factors, simulations indicated the formation of steady asymmetric SSHJ, oscillatory asymmetric SSHJ, and steady symmetric SSHJ, consistent with results of previous experimental studies. The model reproduced observed depth downstream of vent, jump length, and velocity profiles along channel centerline for steady symmetric SSHJ. For oscillatory asymmetric SSHJ, simulated oscillation frequencies had Strouhal numbers that varied with expansion ratio and ranged between 0.003 and 0.015. With piers downstream of the vent, oscillatory SSHJ continued to exhibit jet deflections when pier length was relatively short ( ≲ 0.2 of jump length) but became steady asymmetric for longer piers.

Description: Nonlinear evolution equations widely describe phenomena in various fields of science, such as plasma, nuclear physics, chemical reactions, optics, shallow water waves, fluid dynamics, signal processing, and image processing. In the present work, the derivation and analysis of Lie symmetries are presented for the time-fractional Benjamin–Bona–Mahony equation (FBBM) with the Riemann–Liouville derivatives. The time FBBM equation is reduced to a nonlinear fractional ordinary differential equation (NLFODE) using its Lie symmetries. These symmetries are derivations using the prolongation theorem. Applying the subequation method, we then use the integrating factor property to solve the NLFODE to obtain a few travelling wave solutions to the time FBBM.

Description: The Cloud Computing paradigm is focused on the provisioning of reliable and scalable virtual infrastructures that deliver execution and storage services. This paradigm is particularly suitable to solve resource-greedy scientific computing applications such as parameter sweep experiments (PSEs). Through the implementation of autoscalers, the virtual infrastructure can be scaled up and down by acquiring or terminating instances of virtual machines (VMs) at the time that application tasks are being scheduled. In this paper, we extend an existing study centered in a state-of-the-art autoscaler called multiobjective evolutionary autoscaler (MOEA). MOEA uses a multiobjective optimization algorithm to determine the set of possible virtual infrastructure settings. In this context, the performance of MOEA is greatly influenced by the underlying optimization algorithm used and its tuning. Therefore, we analyze two well-known multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (NSGA-II and NSGA-III) and how they impact on the performance of the MOEA autoscaler. Simulated experiments with three real-world PSEs show that MOEA gets significantly improved when using NSGA-III instead of NSGA-II due to the former provides a better exploitation versus exploration trade-off.

Description: Early and Late Cretaceous alkaline and alkaline–carbonatitic complexes from southern Brazil are located along the main tectonic lineaments of the South America Platform. Calcium-, magnesium-, and ferrocarbonatites are well represented and frequently associated even in the same complex. Primary carbonates present significant variations in C–O isotopic compositions, which are mainly due to isotope exchange with H2O–CO2-rich hydrothermal fluids, whereas fractional crystallization or liquid immiscibility probably affects the δ18O and δ13C values by no more than 2δ‰. Our isotope exchange model implies that the most significant isotopic variations took place in a hydrothermal environment, e.g., in the range 400–80°C, involving fluids with the CO2/H2O ratio ranging from 0.8 to 1. Sr–Nd–Pb isotope systematics highlight heterogeneous mixtures between HIMU and EMI mantle components, similar to the associated alkaline rocks and the flood tholeiites from southern Brazil. In spite of the strong variation shown by C–O isotopes, Sr–Nd–Pb–Os isotopic systematics could be related to an isotopically enriched source where the chemical heterogeneities reflect a depleted mantle “metasomatized” by small-volume melts and fluids rich in incompatible elements. These fluids are expected to have promoted crystallization of K-rich phases in the mantle, which produced a veined network variously enriched in LILE and LREE. The newly formed veins (enriched component) and peridotite matrix (depleted component) underwent a different isotopic evolution with time as reflected by the carbonatites. These conclusions may be extended to the whole Paraná–Etendeka system, where isotopically distinct parent magmas were generated following two main enrichment events of the subcontinental lithospheric mantle at 2.0–1.4 and 1.0–0.5 Ga, respectively, as also supported by Re–Os systematics. The mantle sources preserved the isotopic heterogeneities over a long time, suggesting a nonconvective lithospheric mantle beneath different cratons or intercratonic regions. Overall, the data indicate that the alkaline–carbonatitic magmatism originated from a locally heterogeneous subcontinental mantle.

Description: This study aims to carry out a systematic review of the literature on the impact of technology in the tourism industry and its application in rural tourism research to serve the objective of socio-economic development. Research articles were selected from journals indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, or those that are listed in the Australian Business Deans Council or University Grants Commission – Consortium for Academic & Research Ethics list. This study provides a summarized conclusion of research trends undergoing rural tourisms area while simultaneously highlighting the themes and areas that could be addressed through the tourism industry. This study tries to establish a link between the use of technology and the development of the rural tourism industry. Also, it concludes that the use of technology has evolved the way that rural tourism could be conducted. Furthermore, it has opened up ways to use rural tourism as a means to solve existing socio-economic challenges in society. This study is new and it certainly adds to the value of researchers and academicians working in this domain by providing them with research areas that require a thought to ponder upon.

Description: There is a large amount of information and maintenance data in the aviation industry that could be used to obtain meaningful results in forecasting future actions. This study aims to introduce machine learning models based on feature selection and data elimination to predict failures of aircraft systems. Maintenance and failure data for aircraft equipment across a period of two years were collected, and nine input and one output variables were meticulously identified. A hybrid data preparation model is proposed to improve the success of failure count prediction in two stages. In the first stage, ReliefF, a feature selection method for attribute evaluation, is used to find the most effective and ineffective parameters. In the second stage, a K-means algorithm is modified to eliminate noisy or inconsistent data. Performance of the hybrid data preparation model on the maintenance dataset of the equipment is evaluated by Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) as Artificial Neural network (ANN), Support Vector Regression (SVR), and Linear Regression (LR) as machine learning algorithms. Moreover, performance criteria such as the Correlation Coefficient (CC), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) are used to evaluate the models. The results indicate that the hybrid data preparation model is successful in predicting the failure count of the equipment.

Description: The optical images collected by remotely operated vehicles (ROV) contain a lot of information about underwater (such as distributions of underwater creatures and minerals), which plays an important role in ocean exploration. However, due to the absorption and scattering characteristics of the water medium, some of the images suffer from serious color distortion. These distorted color images usually need to be enhanced so that we can analyze them further. However, at present, no image enhancement algorithm performs well in any scene. Therefore, in order to monitor image quality in the display module of ROV, a no-reference image quality predictor (NIPQ) is proposed in this paper. A unique property that differentiates the proposed NIPQ metric from existing works is the consideration of the viewing behavior of the human visual system and imaging characteristics of the underwater image in different water types. The experimental results based on the underwater optical image quality database (UOQ) show that the proposed metric can provide an accurate prediction for the quality of the enhanced image.

Description: Identification of community structures and the underlying semantic characteristics of communities are essential tasks in complex network analysis. However, most methods proposed so far are typically only applicable to assortative community structures, that is, more links within communities and fewer links between different communities, which ignore the rich diversity of community regularities in real networks. In addition, the node attributes that provide rich semantics information of communities and networks can facilitate in-depth community detection of structural information. In this paper, we propose a novel unified Bayesian generative model to detect generalized communities and provide semantic descriptions simultaneously by combining network topology and node attributes. The proposed model is composed of two closely correlated parts by a transition matrix; we first apply the concept of a mixture model to describe network regularities and then adjust the classic Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model to identify community semantically. Thus, the model can detect broad types of network structure regularities, including assortative structures, disassortative structures, and mixture structures and provide multiple semantic descriptions for the communities. To optimize the objective function of the model, we use an effective Gibbs sampling algorithm. Experiments on a number of synthetic and real networks show that our model has superior performance compared with some baselines on community detection.

Description: This work investigates a decentralized state feedback scheme of neural network control for an interconnected system. The completely unknown associated terms are estimated directly by the neural structure. A modified approach is proposed to deal with the state feedback format. By combining the Lyapunov function and backstepping technology together, an adaptive decentralized controller is established, and we can construct the boundedness of all signals in the closed-loop structure through the controller, which can drive the formation of a given reference signal. In the end, the effectiveness of the presented strategy is referred to a simulation example.

Description: A novel four-dimensional energy, economic, and environmental (3E) under energy reduction constraints chaotic system is proposed. The acquisition of environmental quality data is the key to this paper. During the course of the study, we used Bayesian estimation algorithm to calibrate the environmental quality. Based on the official data, the Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation neural network method was optimized by genetic algorithm to effectively identify the parameters in the 3E system. The research results show that although increasing energy reduction inputs can improve environmental quality, the effect on energy intensity and overall stability of the system is not obvious. When polluting input in the ecological environment system affects its maximum capacity, the environmental system collapses (i.e., the ecological system can no longer purify the environment through the self-circulation process and will eventually die out). Therefore, it is necessary to correctly grasp the ecological environment protection and the relationship between economic developments and explore synergies to promote ecological priorities and green development new ideas.

Description: Transformation of refractory cratonic mantle into more fertile lithologies is the key to the fate of cratonic lithosphere. This process has been extensively studied in the eastern North China Craton (NCC) while that of its western part is still poorly constrained. A comprehensive study of newly-found pyroxenite xenoliths from the Langshan area, in the northwestern part of this craton is integrated with a regional synthesis of pyroxenite and peridotite xenoliths to constrain the petrogenesis of the pyroxenites and provide an overview of the processes involved in the modification of the deep lithosphere. The Langshan pyroxenites are of two types, high-Mg# [Mg2+/(Mg2++Fe2+)*100 = ∼ 90, atomic ratios] olivine-bearing websterites with high equilibration temperatures (880 ∼ 970 oC), and low-Mg# (70 ∼ 80) plagioclase-bearing websterites with low equilibration temperatures (550 ∼ 835 oC). The high-Mg# pyroxenites show trade-off abundances of olivine and orthopyroxene, highly depleted bulk Sr-Nd (ƐNd = +11.41, 87Sr/86Sr = ∼0.7034) and low clinopyroxene Sr isotopic ratios (mean 87Sr/86Sr = ∼0.703). They are considered to reflect the reaction of mantle peridotites with silica-rich silicate melts derived from the convective mantle. Their depletion in fusible components (e.g., FeO, TiO2 and Na2O) and progressive exhaustion of incompatible elements suggest melt extraction after their formation. The low-Mg# pyroxenites display layered structures, convex-upward rare earth element patterns, moderately enriched bulk Sr-Nd isotopic ratios (ƐNd = -14.20 ∼ -16.74, 87Sr/86Sr = 0.7070 ∼ 0.7078) and variable clinopyroxene Sr-isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr = 0.706-0.711). They are interpreted to be crustal cumulates from hypersthene-normative melts generated by interaction between the asthenosphere and heterogeneous lithospheric mantle. Combined with studies on regional peridotite xenoliths, it is shown that the thinning and refertilization of the lithospheric mantle was accompanied by crustal rejuvenation and that such processes occurred ubiquitously in the northwestern part of the NCC. A geodynamic model is proposed for the evolution of the deep lithosphere, which includes long-term mass transfer through a mantle wedge into the deep crust from the Paleozoic to the Cenozoic, triggered by subduction of the Paleo-Asian ocean and the Late Mesozoic lithospheric extension of eastern Asia.

Description: Fishermen are known to try to avoid fishing in stormy weather, as storms pose a physical threat to fishers, their vessels, and their gear. In this article, a dataset and methods are developed to investigate the degree to which fishers avoid storms, estimate storm aversion parameters, and explore how this response varies across vessel characteristics and across regions of the United States. The data consist of vessel-level trip-taking decisions from six federal fisheries across the United States combined with marine storm warning data from the National Weather Service. The estimates of storm aversion can be used to parameterize predictive models. Fishers’ aversion to storms decreases with increasing vessel size and increases with the severity of the storm warning. This information contributes to our understanding of the risk-to-revenue trade-off that fishers evaluate every time they consider going to sea, and of the propensity of fishers to take adaptive actions to avoid facing additional physical risk.

Description: Sardine Sardinops sagax is an ecologically and economically important Clupeid found off the entire South African coast that includes both coastal upwelling and western boundary current systems. Although the management of the sardine fisheries historically assumed a single, panmictic population, the existence of three, semi-discrete subpopulations has recently been hypothesized. We conducted otolith δ18O and microstructure analyses to investigate nursery habitat temperatures and early life growth rates, respectively, of sardine collected from three biogeographic regions around South Africa’s coast to test that hypothesis. Analyses indicated that for both summer- and winter-captured adults and summer-captured juveniles, fishes from the west coast grew significantly slower in water that was several degrees cooler than those from the south and east coasts. This suggests that mixing of sardines between regions, particularly the west and other coasts, is relatively limited and supports the hypothesis of semi-discrete subpopulations. However, the west-south differences disappeared in the results for winter-captured juveniles, suggesting that differences in early life conditions between regions may change seasonally, and/or that all or most winter-captured juveniles originated from the west coast. Further elucidating the interactions between South African sardine subpopulations and the mechanisms thereof is important for sustainable harvesting of this species.

Description: Two models of vibrations of the Euler–Bernoulli beam under a moving force, based on two different versions of the nonlocal gradient theory of elasticity, namely, the Eringen model, in which the strain is a function of stress gradient, and the nonlocal model, in which the stress is a function of strains gradient, were studied and compared. A dynamic response of a finite, simply supported beam under a moving force was evaluated. The force is moving along the beam with a constant velocity. Particular solutions in the form of an infinite series and some solutions in a closed form as well as the numerical results were presented.

Description: The method of unconventional solid rock loosening with undercutting anchors and the literature analysis of the problem are presented. The tests and test results of the rocks loosening process with a fixed undercutting anchor are described. The tests were carried out within the RODEST project, OPUS 10 competition No. 2015/19/B/ST10/02817, financed by the National Science Centre. Numerical modeling process as well as a series of laboratory and in situ tests were carried out. The test stand equipment and methodology for the in situ tests are presented. The tests were conducted in four mines, which allowed to obtain and determine the following characteristics: loosening force as a function of anchoring depth (for a given type of rock),the range of rock loosening in a function of anchoring depth (for a given type of rock), andloosened rock volume as a function of anchoring depth (for a given type of rock).The in situ test results are compared with the concrete capacity design (CCD) model used for the calculation of anchor load capacity in concrete.

Description: The design of shallow foundations on swelling soils needs a thorough study to evaluate the effect of swelling potential soil on the final foundation heave. For this reason, a simple analytical approach based on the soil stress state under the foundation can be used to calculate the foundation heave. This paper reports a set of analytical and numerical analysis using the finite-difference code (FLAC 3D), performed on an isolated shallow foundation founded on a swelling soil mass at N’Gaous city in Batna Province, Algeria, subjected to distributed vertical loads. Further, the influence of some parameters on total heave was analyzed, such as the embedded foundation and soil stiffness. The analysis results from the proposed 3D modelling was compared and discussed with analytical results. The numerical results obtained show a good agreement with the analytical solutions based on oedometer tests proposed in the literature, and deliver a satisfactory prediction of the heave of the shallow foundations.

Description: The objective of this paper is to describe the effect of cavities on the bearing capacity of two interfering footings based on granular soil using an exclusively experimental approach with a test model designed in the laboratory. The experimental protocol was carried out based on the variation of several parameters such as the spacing (x) (axis to axis) between the footings, and the distance (H) between the footings and cavities and between the cavities axes (L). The results highlight the effect of cavities and the interference of two strip footings on the bearing capacity factor (q) and efficiency factor (EF). Moreover, the results revealed that, in the case wherein the distance between the footings and the cavity is greater than 3, the cavity impact is eliminated.

Description: The present study shows the results of a 2D local seismic response (LSR) analysis, simulated for a geomechanical model consisting of a layered carbonate rock mass with hypogean karst caves and a structural–lithostratigraphic complex setting, in an area within the Municipality of Turi (Apulia, Italy). In this case study a Distinct Element Code (DEM) code (UDEC) was used for the LSR simulations conducted on a model both in the absence and in the presence of two overlapping karst caves. The preliminary stress–strain model analysis show some tensile yielding points clustered on the roof of the upper karst cave, already in static conditions, and the phenomenon becomes even more noticeable in dynamic conditions. This is perfectly in agreement with the real occurrence of a sinkhole that brought to the light the underlying karst cave, in the case study area, in the recent past.The amplification/deamplification factor (FA) was calculated as the ratio of the top value to the bottom value in the model, both of the max X-acceleration and of the spectral Fourier amplitude in three different ranges of frequencies, in order to estimate the effects of LSR on the X-component of the seismic input. According to the previous studies, the results obtained show a generalised deamplification of the seismic ground motion at the top of the model, both without and with underground karst caves, caused by the presence of the upper karst cave and by the seismic energy absorption because of layers’ discontinuity.

Description: This paper focuses on the setup of axial bearing capacity of open ended tubular steel piles that are used for offshore foundation systems such as those of wind turbines. A comparative evaluation of the most commonly used models for setup prediction shows an upper estimate bound and a lower estimate bound, which correspond approximately to a setup rate of 60% increase per log cycle of time and 20% increase per log cycle of time, respectively. This finding is validated with the results of case histories reported in literature, which show that the setup values of most case histories considered lie in the best estimate zone between the upper estimate zone and the lower estimate zone. The analysis results show a minimum setup factor of approximately 1.5 for 100 days following end of driving of open-ended tubular steel pile driven in sand.

Description: Dynamic tests are one of the most significant diagnostic procedures applied in Bridge Health Monitoring in many countries. The paper presents a proposal of unified classification of the bridge dynamic tests together with review of the testing methods, including tests under designed and controlled loads, arranged short-term tests under normal traffic loads as well as permanent dynamic monitoring by means of built-in gauges mounted on a structure. Classification of bridge dynamic tests is proposed taking into account various types of vibration excitation methods, measured parameters and possible applications of obtained results in the Bridge Health Monitoring. General rules and procedures of bridge dynamic tests are described and discussed.

Description: This article presents a modified incremental model describing pre-failure deformations of granular soils under classical triaxial conditions. The original shape of equations has been proposed by Sawicki and Świdziński [40, 41]. A new form of equations that are consistent with the proposed definitions of deviatoric loading and unloading is suggested. Triaxial tests necessary for calibrating the proposed model have been performed. The modified model is used to simulate the deformations and stability of sand for every pre-failure loading path and makes it possible to describe the behaviour of granular soil under both drained and undrained conditions.A comparison of experimental and numerical results is presented. All investigations were performed in a classical tri-axial apparatus.

Description: This article presents the methodology and results of single shear tests of bolt rods under dynamic impact loading generated by means of a drop hammer. Comparative analysis was also performed for bolt rod load capacity, stress and shear work under static and dynamic (impact) loading. The developed method of single shear testing of bolt rods under impact loading makes it possible to obtain repeatable test results concerning maximum bolt rod shearing force, shear stress and shear work values.Comparative shear tests of four types of bolt rods under static and impact loading showed that the APB-type bolt rods made of AP770 steel, which was characterised by having the highest strength, exhibited the greatest shear work. AM22-type bolt rods exhibited a very similar work value. Though the AM22-type bolt rods made of A500sh steel demonstrated lower strength than the APB-type bolts, as well as a smaller diameter and cross section, they dissipated the impact energy better thanks to their higher plasticity. This could indicate the direction of optimisation for bolt rods in order to increase their impact strength.Mathematical relationships were also formulated for selected tests, describing the real single shear courses F d =f(t) of bolts under impact loading. The obtained relationships could be applied in the load assessment process of bolt rods intended for use under roof caving, tremor and rock burst conditions.

Description: The results of studies of the crushing process in a double toggle jaw crusher are presented. This process was carried out on six sets of crushing plates. The first three of them are used in industrial crushers – plates with a flat working surface and a triangular profile (in this work, under consideration were profiles with teeth angle γ = 90°). The fourth and fifth type refer to plates with a variable pitch t and teeth height with a triangular shape of the teeth. In the sixth solution, plates with variable pitch and width of the wedged teeth are proposed.The results of the basic process parameters are shown, that is, average degree of fineness n, technical performance Wt, crushing energy L and crushing force F, sieve analysis of crushing product. The obtained results are the basis for the assessment of the suitability of various types of plates, especially plates with a new profile, which have an altered shape in comparison with the plates used in crushers so far.The crushing tests were carried out with the same dimension of outlet slot er = 24 mm, close to the pitch size for plates with triangular profile. Tests were performed on the “Mucharz” sandstone. Samples from a series of blocks of different size and geometric shape were prepared. This work also presents feed mass influence on crushing process efficiency.The plates with variable pitch and width of teeth are beneficial because of lower crushing force and energy.

Description: Wellbore collapse is an instability-event that occurs at low mud density and leads to unfavorable economic project, reaching billions of US dollars. Thus, it is important to accurately determine its value, especially in deepwater horizontal wellbores. The main reasons for nontrivial problems with such wellbores are evident: the shale encountered are anisotropic in nature and possess planes of weakness; they react with water-based mud, generate osmotic stresses, swell, and fall unto the wellbore bottom, thereby increasing the non-productive time. To this end, salts are added to reduce the collapse tendency, but it is not currently known what amount of salt addition maintains stability, and does not lead to wellbore fracture; in deepwater, the current trend in global warming means there is a future concern to the industry. As the climate temperature increases, more ice melts from the polar region, the seawater expands and the sea level rises. How to incorporate the corresponding effect on collapse gradient is scarcely known. This study captures the major concerns stated above into wellbore stability analysis. Following the classical approach for geomechanical analysis, Mogi-Coulomb criterion was combined with a constitutive stress equation comprising contributions from mechanical and osmotic potentials of mud and shale. A sophisticated industry model was used to consider the deepwater effect. The results show significant reduction in collapse gradient as the water depth increases, also, larger difference between the mud and shale chemical activities represents higher complexities in the wellbore. In addition, the reduction in the chemical activities of mud limited to 37.5% of the initial value can be practically safe.

Description: Increasingly high demands on environmental protection are intensifying the development of sustainable construction. Ventilated facades can provide an energy-efficient alternative to standard facades, that is, external thermal insulation composite systems (ETICS). The article compares standard facades, which was a reference, to ventilated facades in two variants: closed joints and open joints. The comparison was made by means of numerical simulations of computational fluid dynamic (CFD), under conditions of high outside temperature and high sunshine. The results showed great benefits of using ventilated facades in such external climate conditions. It was also observed that the selection of the variant of ventilated facade in the system of close or open joints has minimal influence on thermal efficiency of the whole partition.

Description: Recently, the use of NoSQL databases has grown to manage unstructured data for applications to ensure performance and scalability. However, many organizations prefer to transfer data from an operational NoSQL database to a SQL-based relational database for using existing tools for business intelligence, analytics, decision making, and reporting. The existing methods of NoSQL to relational database transformation require manual schema mapping, which requires domain expertise and consumes noticeable time. Therefore, an efficient and automatic method is needed to transform an unstructured NoSQL database into a structured database. In this paper, we proposed and evaluated an efficient method to transform a NoSQL database into a relational database automatically. In our experimental evaluation, we used MongoDB as a NoSQL database, and MySQL and PostgreSQL as relational databases to perform transformation tasks for different dataset sizes. We observed excellent performance, compared to the existing state-of-the-art methods, in transforming data from a NoSQL database into a relational database.

Description: The orogenic development after the continental collision between Laurussia and Gondwana, led to two contrasting associations of mantle-derived magmatic rocks on the territory of the Bohemian Massif: (i) a 340–310 Ma lamprophyre-lamproite orogenic association and (ii) a 300–275 Ma lamprophyre association of anorogenic affinity. Major types of potassic mantle-derived magmatic rocks recognised in the orogenic and anorogenic associations include: (i) calc-alkaline to alkaline lamprophyres, (ii) alkaline “orthopyroxene minettes” (and geochemically related rocks), and (iii) peralkaline lamproites. These three types significantly differ with respect to mineral, whole-rock and Sr–Nd–Pb–Li isotope composition, and spatial distribution. The calc-alkaline lamprophyres occur throughout the entire Saxo-Thuringian and Moldanubian zones, whereas the different types of malte-derived potassic rocks are spatially restricted to particular zones. Rocks of the Carboniferous lamprophyre-lamproite orogenic association are characterised by variable negative εNd(i) and variably radiogenic Sr(i), whereas the rocks of the Permian lamprophyre association of anorogenic affinity are characterised by positive εNd(i) and relatively young depleted-mantle Nd-model ages reflecting increasing input from upwelling asthenospheric mantle. The small variation in the Pb isotopic composition of post-collisional potassic mantle-derived magmatic rocks (of both the orogenic and anorogenic series) implies that the Pb budget of the mantle beneath the Bohemian Massif is dominated by the same crust-derived material, which itself may include material derived from several sources. The source rocks of “orthopyroxene minettes” are characterised by isotopically light (“eclogitic”) Li and strongly radiogenic (crustal) Sr and may have been metasomatised by high-pressure fluids along the edge of a subduction zone. In contrast, the strongly Al2O3 and CaO depleted mantle source of the lamproites is characterised by isotopically heavy Li and high SiO2 and extreme K2O contents. This mantle source may have been metasomatised predominantly by melts. The mantle source of the lamprophyres may have undergone metasomatism by both fluids and melts.

Description: In the development of technology for smart cities, the installation and deployment of electronic motor vehicle registration identification have attracted great attention in terms of smart transportation in recent years. Vehicle velocity measurement is one of the fundamental data collection efforts for motor vehicles. The velocity detection using electronic registration identification of motor vehicles is constrained by the detection algorithm, the material of the automobile windshield, the placement of the decals, the installation method of the signal reader, and the angle of the antenna. The software and hardware for electronic motor vehicle registration identification produced in the standard manner cannot meet the accuracy of velocity detection for all scenarios. Based on the actual application requirements, we propose a calibration method for the numerical output of the automobile velocity detector based on edge computing of the optimized multiple reader/writer velocity values and based on a particle swarm-optimized radial basis function (RBF) neural network. The proposed method was tested on a two-way eight-lane road, and the test results showed that it can effectively improve the accuracy of velocity detection using electronic registration identification of motor vehicles. Compared with the actual velocity, 87.12% of all the data samples had an error less than 5%, and 91.76% of the data samples for vehicles in the center lane had an error less than 5%. By calibrating the electronic vehicle velocity based on the registration identification, the accuracy of velocity detection in different application environments can be improved. Moreover, the method can establish an accurate foundation for application in traffic flow management, environmental protection, traffic congestion fee collection, and special vehicle traffic management.

Description: This article presents the results of experimental work carried out both in situ (coring; pressuremeter test) and in the laboratory (drying-wetting and oedometric tests) to describe the volumetric behavior on drying-wetting path of a swelling clayey soil of eastern Algeria. In order to perform drying-wetting tests the osmotic technique and saturated salts solutions were used. These suction-imposed methods have gained widespread acceptance as reliable methods for imposing suction on soil specimens. They allowed to sweep a wide range of suctions between 0 and 500 MPa. The ability to impose suction on soil specimens allows for drying and wetting stress paths to be applied to evaluate resulting changes in state parameters (void ratio, degree of saturation and water content). These paths were carried out on specimens with different initial states. Slurries of soil were used to characterize the reference behavior, while the undisturbed soil samples allow to describe the behavior of material under in situ conditions. In the last part of this article and to specify the behavior observed in the saturated domain, a comparison between the resulting deformations of the drying-wetting test and those resulting from the oedometric test was made.

Description: The algorithm presented in this paper is intended for the analysis of deformations of shells in the construction phase of soil-shell objects when strain gauges and geodetic measurements are used. During the construction of such an object, large displacement values occur and the impact of axial forces on the displacement of a corrugated metal sheet is small. Internal forces (strain gauges), as well as the displacements of a selected circumferential band of the shell are determined directly from such observations.The paper presents two examples of the analysis of large span shell structures of constructed objects, as well as the assessment of the effectiveness of the finite difference method (FDM) in beam schemes. Good deformation mapping was indicated using the collocation algorithm and the differential approach to the solution when there is a dense mesh and regular distribution of measuring points. In the analysed examples, a significant divergence between the support conditions adopted in the FEM calculation models and the actual static conditions in the objects was indicated. The collocation algorithm is especially designed for such situations. Collocation points in such a solution are used to consider a beam – separated from a structure and without boundary constraints, but with specific changes in curvature – as a reference system, which is determined from the geodetic measurements of two collocation points.

Description: The article addresses the application of non-classical operational calculus to approximative solutions of engineering problems. The engineering-sound examples show that a continuous–discrete problem transformation from differential unequivocal problem to a differential wildcard problem, triggering a change in solution quality. A number of approximative methods are capable to alter both quantitative and qualitative solution effects.

Description: In a piled-raft foundation, the interaction between structural elements and soil continuum can be simulated very precisely by numerical modeling. In the present study, 3D finite element model has been used to examine the settlement, load-sharing, bending moment, and shear force behavior of piled-raft foundation on different soil profiles for different load configurations and pile-raft configurations (PRCs). The model incorporates the pile-to-soil and raft-to-soil interactions by means of interface elements. The effect of parameters such as pile spacing and raft thickness are also studied. For any soil profile, larger pile spacing is observed to be more efficient in reducing the average settlement and enhancing the load-sharing coefficient. The smaller pile spacing is observed to be efficient in reducing the differential settlement. For any soil profile, the behavior of piled-raft foundation is significantly affected by the PRCs and load configurations. Furthermore, the raft thickness has significant effect on settlement, bending moment, and shears force. Thus, the results of the present study can be used as guidelines for analyzing and designing large piled-raft foundation.