Xylose utilization is one of the key issues in lignocellulose bioconversion. Because of glucose repression, in most engineered yeast with heterogeneous xylose metabolic pathway, xylose is not consumed until glucose is completely utilized. Although simultaneous glucose and xylose utilization have been achieved in yeast by RPE1 deletion, we regulated ZWF1 and PGI1 transcription to improve simultaneous xylose and glucose utilization by controlling the metabolic flux from glucose into the PP pathway. Xylose and glucose consumption increased by approximately 80 and 72%, respectively, whereas ZWF1 was overexpressed by multi-copy plasmids with a strong transcriptional promoter. PGI1 expression was knocked down by promoter replacement; the glucose and xylose metabolism increased when PGI1p was replaced by weak promoters, SSA1p and PDA1p. ZWF1 overexpression decreased while PGI1 down-regulation increased the ethanol yield to some extent in the recombinant strains.

The objective of this study was to describe the fecal microbiota succession of piglets from birth to post-weaning by pyrosequencing. The dominant bacterial phyla were Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and Fusobacteria, although the composition of the fecal microbiota changed as the piglets grew. Bacteroides, Parabacteroides, Prevotella, Lactobacillus, unclassified Lachnospiraceae, Ruminococcus, Oscillospira, Phascolarctobacterium, and Desulfovibrio were the core genera in the feces of piglets and existed from birth to post-weaning. Bacteroides was the most abundant at birth; however, the proportion of Bacteroides decreased as the piglets aged, while the proportion of Prevotella increased until it became the most abundant genus at the post-weaning stage. Principal coordinate analysis indicated that the microbial communities of piglet fecal samples from birth to post-weaning could be separated into four groups according to the similarity of community composition. These corresponded to time points on day 0 (birth); day 7; days 14, 21, and 28 (pre-weaning); and day 35 (post-weaning). This study suggests that the development of the intestinal microbiota in the piglet is a gradual and sequential process. This methodology establishes a basis for broader studies to investigate the microbiota of the piglet intestinal tract.

Three novel triazine-based charring-foaming agents (M2-CFA, M4-CFA, and M6-CFA) were synthesized successfully with only water as the solvent and were characterized by FT-IR and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). These three charring-foaming agents and the byproduct 944-by were employed to study the effectiveness of the novel intumescent flame retardant dopant on the fire retardancy of polypropylene(PP) investigated through UL-94 and limiting oxygen index (LOI) tests. TGA results showed that the M4-CFA presented good char formation ability (char residue: 26.8% at 700 °C). It was found that the sample with a 2/1 mass ratio of APP to M4-CFA exhibited the best flame retardancy among all the PP composites: 35.5% LOI and a V-0 rating of UL-94. Additionally, the microstructure and morphology of char residues were further studied by XRD, Raman spectroscopy and SEM.

Titanium silicalite (TS-1) without and with extra-framework titanium have been prepared and TiO₂ is also prepared under the same conditions. All the samples are characterized with XRD, FT-IR, and UV–Vis. The effects of extra-framework titanium in TS-1 on the ammoximation of cyclohexanone have been studied in a continuous slurry reactor. The characterization results reveal that the extra-framework titanium exists as anatase. The catalytic evaluation results show that the anatase has a positive effect on the ammoximation of cyclohexanone by extending the catalytic life because it also exhibits some activity, while the conversion of cyclohexanone and the selectivity to cyclohexanone oxime are not influenced. The anatase TiO₂ does not catalyze H₂O₂ decomposition appreciably compared with TS-1 without extra-framework titanium. The results are very useful in guiding the TS-1 production.

A support vector regression based on the mean impact value (MIV) model was constructed to identify the bioactive compounds inhibiting proliferation of HeLa cells in a combination of turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) and liquorice (Glycyrrhiza) extracts. The quantitative chemical fingerprint from 50 batches of turmeric and liquorice extracts was established using high performance liquid chromatography hyphenated to an ultraviolet visible detector. Qualitative results were obtained using ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry. A total of 46 peaks (peaks 1–15 from turmeric and 16–46 from liquorice) were selected as “common peaks” for analysis. The inhibitory effect of the combined extracts on HeLa cells was measured by MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay. It was found that 15 compounds (peaks: 8, 12, 30, 24, 46, 11, 14, 9, 3, 1, 44, 18, 7, 45 and 43) possessing high absolute MIV exhibited a significant correlation with the cytotoxicity against HeLa cells; most of these have already been confirmed with potential cytotoxicity in previous research. The important potential application of the present model can be extended to help discover active compounds from complex herbal medicine prior to traditional bioassay-guided separation. It is considered that this could be a useful tool for re-developing herbal medicine based on the use of these active compounds.

Super absorbent polymers (SAPs) are gradually being applied in concrete production as internal curing agents. SAP can effectively reduce early age autogenous shrinkage of concrete, alleviate the hazards caused by concrete cracking and improve its freeze–thaw resistance. However, the relationships between SAP dosage, SAP particle size and the water–cement ratio of concrete have certain influences on the evolution of the compressive strength of SAP-incorporated concrete. In this study, experiments were conducted to investigate the relationships between the water–cement ratio of concrete, the SAP dosage and SAP particle size. The significant factors influencing concrete strength are determined and equations are proposed for predicting the strength of SAP-incorporated concrete at 3, 7 and 28 days. The findings from this study, such as the SAP dosage should not be larger than 0.2%, are expected to form a theoretical basis for the rational use of SAP as an additive to concrete.

Finite element analysis and parametric studies were performed to investigate the flexural capacity of the panel zone of diaphragm-through joints between concrete-filled square steel tubular columns and H-shaped steel beams. Through the comparisons of failure modes, load–displacement curves, and bearing capacity, it was found that the flexural capacity of the panel zone of diaphragm-through joints was determined by the tensile action and influence of the web of H-shaped steel beams, and the axial load should be taken into account. The steel tube and the diaphragm were the major parts of the joint that resisted the bending moment. The contribution of in-filled concrete had little influence on the flexural capacity of the panel zone of the joint and could be neglected. According to the results of these numerical studies, a formula that considered the influence of the web of H-shaped steel beams and the axial load was developed based on the yield lines in the diaphragm and the steel tube. The results of the proposed formula were in good agreement with the numerical data of this investigation.

Sequence placement logic plays a significant role in construction simulation of high arch dams and directly affects the simulation process and results. To establish a sequence logic for dam block placement, the construction scheme, real-time construction process, and random factors of the site all need to be considered in detail. There are few studies available currently that take all these factors into consideration. To address this problem, a real-time update of sequence placement logic for high arch dams based on evidence weight discount is proposed in this study. First, the subjective weight of the dam block sequence priority criteria is built using a consistent matrix method based on the construction scheme. Second, using evidence theory, dynamic objective weight of the priority criteria and basic probability assignment is built. Finally, using a weight self-adaptive adjustment method and comprehensive evidence discounting, the placing probabilities of different dam blocks are obtained. A case study indicates that this method can realize real-time update of sequence placement logic.

The hydraulic characteristics of artificial waterfalls constitute an important research area for both academia and industry. As yet, the hydraulic parameters used in the hydraulic design of landscape waterfalls are not well understood for use in qualitative and quantitative analyses. Due to their complicated shapes and appearances, it remains a challenging problem to design or simulate realistic waterfall scenes. In this paper, we present a hybrid model and an efficient numerical method for simulating the hydraulic characteristics of waterfalls and investigate the critical flow in waterfall design and the adherent flow phenomenon. We fit empirical equations to predict the size and shape of different waterfall flow patterns to provide a basis for the design and construction of waterscapes in the real world. We then apply our work to an artificial waterfall in Kraal Jiang River and the results demonstrate that our model achieves desirable control qualities and good agreement in a real-world application.

In this paper, we propose a novel fractional-order fast terminal sliding mode control method, based on an integer-order scheme, to stabilize the chaotic motion of two typical microcomponents. We apply the fractional Lyapunov stability theorem to analytically guarantee the asymptotic stability of a system characterized by uncertainties and external disturbances. To reduce chattering, we design a fuzzy logic algorithm to replace the traditional signum function in the switching law. Lastly, we perform numerical simulations with both the fractional-order and integer-order control laws. Results show that the proposed control law is effective in suppressing chaos.

Adaptive support-weight (ASW) stereo matching algorithm is widely used in the field of three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction owing to its relatively high matching accuracy. However, since all the weight coefficients need to be calculated in the whole disparity range for each pixel, the algorithm is extremely time-consuming. To solve this problem, a fast ASW algorithm is proposed using twice aggregation. First, a novel weight coefficient which adapts cosine function to satisfy the weight distribution discipline is proposed to accomplish the first cost aggregation. Then, the disparity range is divided into several sub-ranges and local optimal disparities are selected from each of them. For each pixel, only the ASW at the location of local optimal disparities is calculated, and thus, the complexity of the algorithm is greatly reduced. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can reduce the amount of calculation by 70% and improve the matching accuracy by 6% for the 15 images on Middlebury Website on average.