Bee products are considered true wonders of nature, used since ancient times, and studied even today for their various biological activities. In this study, we hypothesise that Romanian bee products from different origins (micro apiary products, lyophilised forms, commercial) exhibit distinct chemical compositions, influencing their biological activities. An LC-MS analysis revealed varied polyphenolic content patterns, with cumaric acid, ferulic acid, rosmarinic acid, and quercitine identified in significant amounts across all samples. Primary anti-inflammatory evaluation phases, including the inhibition of haemolysis values and protein denaturation, unveiled a range of protective effects on red blood cells (RBC) and blood proteins, contingent upon the sample concentration. Antimicrobial activity assessments against 12 ATCC strains and 6 pathogenic isolates demonstrated varying efficacy, with propolis samples showing low efficacy, royal jelly forms displaying moderate effectiveness, and apilarnin forms exhibiting good inhibitory activity, mostly against Gram-positive bacteria. Notably, the lyophilised form emerged as the most promising sample, yielding the best results across the biological activities assessed. Furthermore, molecular docking was employed to elucidate the inhibitory potential of compounds identified from these bee products by targeting putative bacterial and fungal proteins. Results from the docking analysis showed rosmarinic and rutin exhibited strong binding energies and interactions with the putative antimicrobial proteins of bacteria (−9.7 kcal/mol to −7.6 kcal/mol) and fungi (−9.5 kcal/mol to −8.1 kcal/mol). The findings in this study support the use of bee products for antimicrobial purposes in a biologically active and eco-friendly proportion while providing valuable insights into their mechanism of action. Full article

Lid-driven cavity (LDC) flow is a significant area of study in fluid mechanics due to its common occurrence in engineering challenges. However, using numerical simulations (ANSYS Fluent) to accurately predict fluid flow and mixed convective heat transfer features, incorporating both a moving top wall and a heated hemispherical obstruction at the bottom, has not yet been attempted. This study aims to numerically demonstrate forced convection in a lid-driven square cavity (LDSC) with a moving top wall and a heated hemispherical obstacle at the bottom. The cavity is filled with a Newtonian fluid and subjected to a specific set of velocities (5, 10, 15, and 20 m/s) at the moving wall. The finite volume method is used to solve the governing equations using the Boussinesq approximation and the parallel flow assumption. The impact of various cavity geometries, as well as the influence of the moving top wall on fluid flow and heat transfer within the cavity, are evaluated. The results of this study indicate that the movement of the wall significantly disrupts the flow field inside the cavity, promoting excellent mixing between the flow field below the moving wall and within the cavity. The static pressure exhibits fluctuations, with the highest value observed at the top of the cavity of 1 m width (adjacent to the moving wall) and the lowest at 0.6 m. Furthermore, dynamic pressure experiences a linear increase until reaching its peak at 0.7 m, followed by a steady decrease toward the moving wall. The velocity of the internal surface fluctuates unpredictably along its length while other parameters remain relatively stable. Full article

Drought is one of the main abiotic factors affecting global agricultural productivity. However, the application of bioinocula containing plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) has been seen as a potential environmentally friendly technology for increasing plants’ resistance to water stress. In this study, rhizobacteria strains were isolated from maize (Zea mays L.) and subjected to drought tolerance tests at varying concentrations using polyethylene glycol (PEG)-8000 and screened for plant-growth-promoting activities. From this study, 11 bacterial isolates were characterized and identified molecularly, which include Bacillus licheniformis A5-1, Aeromonas caviae A1-2, A. veronii C7_8, B. cereus B8-3, P. endophytica A10-11, B. halotolerans A9-10, B. licheniformis B9-5, B. simplex B15-6, Priestia flexa B12-4, Priestia flexa C6-7, and Priestia aryabhattai C1-9. All isolates were positive for indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), siderophore, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase, ammonia production, nitrogen fixation, and phosphate solubilization, but negative for hydrogen cyanide production. Aeromonas strains A1-2 and C7_8, showing the highest drought tolerance of 0.71 and 0.77, respectively, were selected for bioinoculation, singularly and combined. An increase in the above- and below-ground biomass of the maize plants at 100, 50, and 25% water-holding capacity (WHC) was recorded. Bacterial inoculants, which showed an increase in the aerial biomass of plants subjected to moderate water deficiency by up to 89%, suggested that they can be suitable candidates to enhance drought tolerance and nutrient acquisition and mitigate the impacts of water stress on plants. Full article

To reduce drying shrinkage of AASC mortar (AASM), mixed aggregate mixed with river sand (RS) and silica sand in three sizes was used to investigate the effect of the physical properties of mixed aggregate on shrinkage reduction. A mixture of river sand (0.2–0.8 mm), S1 (2.5–5.0 mm), S2 (1.6–2.5 mm), and S3 (1.21–160 mm) had river sand–silica sand mean diameter ratios (dr) of 7.68 (S1/RS), 3.75 (S2/RS), and 3.02 (S3/RS). The compressive strength and drying shrinkage characteristics of mixed aggregates according to fineness modulus, surface area, bulk density, and pore space were investigated. It had the highest bulk density and lowest porosity at a substitution ratio of 50%, but the highest strength was measured at a substitution ratio of 50% or less. High mechanical properties were shown when the fineness modulus of the mixed aggregate was in the range of 2.25–3.75 and the surface area was in the range of 2.25–4.25 m²/kg. As the substitution rate of silica sand increased, drying shrinkage decreased. In particular, the drying shrinkage of RS + S1 mixed aggregate mixed with S1 silica sand, which had the largest particle size, was the smallest. When silica sand or river sand was used alone, the drying shrinkage of the sample manufactured only with S1, which has the largest particle size of silica sand, was the smallest among all mixes. Compared to RS, at a 5% activator concentration, drying shrinkage was reduced by approximately 40% for S1, 27% for S2, and 19% for S3. At a 10% concentration, S1 showed a reduction effect of 39%, S2 by 28%, and S3 by 13%. As a result of this study, it was confirmed that the drying shrinkage of AASM could be reduced simply by controlling the physical properties of the aggregate mixed with two types of aggregate. This is believed to have a synergistic effect in reducing drying shrinkage when combined with various reduction methods published in previous studies on AASM shrinkage reduction. However, additional research is needed to analyze the correlation and influencing factors between the strength, pore structure, and drying shrinkage of AASM using mixed aggregate. Full article

The definition of vehicle viewpoint annotations is ambiguous due to human subjective judgment, which makes the cross-domain vehicle re-identification methods unable to learn the viewpoint invariance features during source domain pre-training. This will further lead to cross-view misalignment in downstream target domain tasks. To solve the above challenges, this paper presents a dual-level viewpoint-learning framework that contains an angle invariance pre-training method and a meta-orientation adaptation learning strategy. The dual-level viewpoint-annotation proposal is first designed to concretely redefine the vehicle viewpoint from two aspects (i.e., angle-level and orientation-level). An angle invariance pre-training method is then proposed to preserve identity similarity and difference across the cross-view; this consists of a part-level pyramidal network and an angle bias metric loss. Under the supervision of angle bias metric loss, the part-level pyramidal network, as the backbone, learns the subtle differences of vehicles from different angle-level viewpoints. Finally, a meta-orientation adaptation learning strategy is designed to extend the generalization ability of the re-identification model to the unseen orientation-level viewpoints. Simultaneously, the proposed meta-learning strategy enforces meta-orientation training and meta-orientation testing according to the orientation-level viewpoints in the target domain. Extensive experiments on public vehicle re-identification datasets demonstrate that the proposed method combines the redefined dual-level viewpoint-information and significantly outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in alleviating viewpoint variations. Full article

The hole-drilling method (HDM) is a common technique used for the determination of residual stresses, especially for metal alloy components, though also for polymers. This technique is usually implemented with strain gages, though other methods for determining the fields of displacements are quite mature, such as the use of digital image correlation (DIC). In the present paper, this combined methodology is applied to a 3D-printed PLA precurved specimen that is flattened in order to impose a bending distribution which can be considered known with a reasonable accuracy. The back-calculated stress distribution is in agreement with the expected (imposed) bending stress, however, a converging iterative procedure for obtaining the solution is introduced and discussed in the paper. Full article

In the era of the digital economy, it has become an inevitable trend for manufacturing enterprises to establish industrial Internet platforms toward achieving transformation and innovative development. However, the current development model of industrial Internet platforms is still imperfect, wherein the application scenario is complex, the investment cost is too high, the return-on-investment cycle is too long, and other factors have hindered the willingness of manufacturing enterprises to employ cloud services and capital investment. For this reason, governments have introduced a series of relevant incentive policies to promote the development of industrial Internet platforms and the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing enterprises. Considering the role of government incentives, this study first constructs an evolutionary game model with local governments, manufacturing enterprises, and industrial Internet platforms as the main players. Then, the dynamic change process of each game player’s strategy choice and the stable state of the system evolution under multiple scenarios are analyzed, and the validity of the conclusions is verified through a numerical simulation analysis. Finally, the statistical data of 28 provinces in China from 2018 to 2020 are used to conduct an empirical test to explore the impact of the industrial Internet on the transformation and innovation development of the manufacturing industry and the role of government incentives. The results show that the development of the industrial Internet has a significant role in promoting the innovation and development of the manufacturing industry; government incentives can promote the innovation and development of the industrial Internet and manufacturing industry, but incentives should not be too generous; and the impact of developing the industrial Internet on the level of innovation input/output of the manufacturing industry shows obvious regional differences. This study takes the local government as an independent game participant into consideration, which enriches the research field of combining evolutionary game theory with the transformation and innovative development of the manufacturing industry. In addition, this study provides theoretical guidance and practical references for the government to formulate incentive policies to promote the development of industrial Internet platforms and for manufacturing enterprises to utilize these platforms to carry out innovation and perform upgrades. Full article

The incidence of floods is rapidly increasing globally, causing significant property damage and human losses. Moreover, Vietnam ranks as one of the top five countries most severely affected by climate change, with 1/3 of residents facing flood risks. This study presents a model to identify flood susceptibility using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in the GIS environment for Hanoi, Vietnam. Nine flood-conditioning factors were selected and used as initial data. The AHP analysis was utilized to determine the priority levels of these factors concerning flood susceptibility and to assess the consistency of the obtained results to develop a flood-susceptibility map. The performance of the model was found to be significant based on the AUC value for the obtained receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The flood-susceptibility map has five levels of flood susceptibility: the area with a very high susceptibility to flooding accounts for less than 1% of the map, high- susceptibility areas for nearly 11%, moderate-susceptibility areas for more than 65%, low- susceptibility areas for about 22%, and very low-susceptibility areas for 2%. Most of Hanoi has a moderate level of flood susceptibility, which is expected to increase with urban expansion due to the impacts of urbanization. Our findings will be valuable for future research involving urban planners, and disaster management authorities and will enable them to make informed decisions aimed at reducing the impact of urban flooding and enhancing the resilience of urban communities. Full article

In order to quantitatively study the influence of the weakening of the disconnectable coupling joint (DC joint) on the retaining structure, the pre-axial force retention performance of the steel support, the axial force of the steel support, the horizontal displacement of the diaphragm wall, and the ground settlement around the foundation pit were monitored during the construction of the foundation pit. The evolution process of the monitoring data was analyzed, and the corresponding numerical model verified by the monitoring data was established. The influence of the yield load of the DC joint, the initial compression stiffness, and the weakening of the pre-axial force on the stability of the retaining structure was studied by numerical simulation. The results show that the pre-axial force of steel support is only 67% of the design value when the soil below is not excavated within 24 h. The DC joint has a significant weakening effect on the steel support, which is unfavorable for the stability control of the foundation pit retaining structure. The pre-axial force and initial bending stiffness have a great influence on the stability of the retaining structure. When the yield load is not lower than that of the row piles, the DC joint has no effect on the stability of the retaining structure. This model can predict and analyze the deformation trend under different working conditions to a certain extent, providing certain reference value for safety plans during construction. Full article

This research explores the impact of financial indicators on the credit ratings of companies listed on the S&P 500, employing a Sys-GMM model to address endogeneity concerns. Three independent variables categorized as market and survival factors alongside seven control variables sourced from leverage, liquidity, interest coverage, profitability, market, survival, and macroeconomic domains were investigated. The sample consisted of 2398 observations from Capital IQ Pro, spanning nine years (2013 to 2021) and encompassing 240 public companies. The findings suggest that neither Tobin’s Q (TQ) nor Total Shareholder Return (TSR) lack significant correlations with credit ratings, implying that stock market performance and total shareholder return do not directly impact credit ratings. In contrast, the Altman Z-score (AZS) emerged as a significant predictor, indicating its importance in assessing credit risk. These insights enhance the understanding of financial indicators’ impacts on credit ratings, aiding financial institutions and companies in prudent lending and financing decisions. Full article

Hyperspectral images (HSIs) contain subtle spectral details and rich spatial contextures of land cover that benefit from developments in spectral imaging and space technology. The classification of HSIs, which aims to allocate an optimal label for each pixel, has broad prospects in the field of remote sensing. However, due to the redundancy between bands and complex spatial structures, the effectiveness of the shallow spectral–spatial features extracted by traditional machine-learning-based methods tends to be unsatisfying. Over recent decades, various methods based on deep learning in the field of computer vision have been proposed to allow for the discrimination of spectral–spatial representations for classification. In this article, the crucial factors to discriminate spectral–spatial features are systematically summarized from the perspectives of feature extraction and feature optimization. For feature extraction, techniques to ensure the discrimination of spectral features, spatial features, and spectral–spatial features are illustrated based on the characteristics of hyperspectral data and the architecture of models. For feature optimization, techniques to adjust the feature distances between classes in the classification space are introduced in detail. Finally, the characteristics and limitations of these techniques and future challenges in facilitating the discrimination of features for HSI classification are also discussed further. Full article

Nutrients, total dissolved solids (TDS), and trace elements affect the suitability of water for human and natural needs. Here, trends in such water-quality constituents are analyzed for 1999–2022 for eight nested monitoring sites in the 24,000 km² Fountain Creek watershed in Colorado, USA, by using the weighted regressions on time, discharge, and season (WRTDS) methodology. Fountain Creek shares characteristics with other western U.S. watersheds: (1) an expanding but more water-efficient population, (2) a heavy reliance on imported water, (3) a semiarid climate trending towards warmer and drier conditions, and (4) shifts of water from agricultural to municipal uses. The WRTDS analysis found both upward and downward trends in the concentrations of nutrients that reflected possible shifts in effluent management, instream uptake, and water conservation by a watershed population that grew by about 40%. Selenium, other trace elements, and TDS can pose water-quality challenges downstream and their concentrations were found to have a downwards trend. Those trends could be driven by either a warming and drying of the local climate or decreased agricultural irrigation, as both would reduce recharge and subsequent mobilization from natural geologic sources via groundwater discharge. The patterns illustrate how changes in climate and water use may have affected water quality in Fountain Creek and demonstrate the patterns to look for in other western watersheds. Full article

There has always been a specific focus on nitrogen fertilization in sugar beet production due to its important effect on sugar beet root yield and quality. For stable sugar beet growth and satisfactory root yield and quality, balanced N fertilization is crucial. Thus, this study aimed to investigate spring N fertilization in two seasons as the following treatments: N₀—control, N₁—only pre-sowing fertilization, and N₂—pre-sowing with topdressing. Four different genotypes were included in the study (Serenada, Colonia, Fred, and Danton). The experiment was set up in a plain area, belonging to the temperate climate zone in Eastern Croatia (Županja and Vrbanja), with the long-term mean (LTM) (March–October) air temperature around 16 °C and the total precipitation of 515 mm. Pre-sowing N fertilization had a smaller impact on root yield in the year with higher precipitation (31% higher than LTM). Therefore, the average yields with pre-sowing fertilization (N₁) and pre-sowing fertilization with top dressing (N₂) were very similar and were only 7% higher than those of the control. In a season with less rainfall (29% less than LTM), pre-sowing fertilization with top dressing (N₂) had a more pronounced effect on the increase in sugar beet root yield, which was 17% higher compared to that of the control treatment. The sugar beet sucrose content and quality parameters (brei impurities, loss of sugar in molasses, extractable sugar) differed when N fertilization was applied among locations in both seasons. The white sugar yield was the highest at N₂ treatment with pre-sowing and topdressing N fertilization. In general, according to the average of all locations and years of research, the Serenada hybrid achieved the highest average root yield (81.1 t ha⁻¹), while Colonia exhibited the highest root sugar content (14.5%) and white sugar yield (9.7 t ha⁻¹). Full article

Research on land use carbon emission efficiency (LUCEE) in the Pan-Pearl River Delta (PPRD) can aid in formulating regional differentiated carbon reduction strategies. In this work, the inversion of carbon emissions using night-time light (NTL) data and the modified Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) model were used to measure the net carbon emissions from land use (NCELU). On this basis, the SBM-undesirable model was used to assess the LUCEE. Additionally, the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), Dagum Gini coefficient, and spatial convergence model were further introduced to analyze the spatial correlation, regional differences, and convergence trend of the LUCEE. Findings indicate that: (1) The NCELU showed an increasing fluctuation. During the period of 2006–2020, the NCELU increased from −168.58 million tons to −724.65 million tons. (2) The LUCEE exhibited a three-phase fluctuating downward trend of “decrease–rise–decrease”. The LUCEE first decreased from 0.612 in 2006 to 0.544 in 2008, then gradually increased to 0.632 in 2016, and finally decreased to 0.488 in 2020. Spatially, the LUCEE manifested a distribution characteristic of “high in the north and south, low in the middle”, with distinct spatial clustering features. (3) The overall Gini coefficient in the study period increased from 0.1819 to 0.2461. The primary contributor to the overall difference over the entire sample period was hypervariable density. (4) The PPRD and its various subregions displayed significant features of absolute and conditional β convergence. The speed of regional convergence from fastest to slowest was central > west > east, with the absolute convergence speeds of 0.0505, 0.0360, and 0.0212, respectively. Finally, policy recommendations are proposed to achieve regional carbon neutrality for the PPRD. Full article

The additional sex combs-like (ASXL) family, a mammalian homolog of the additional sex combs (Asx) of Drosophila, has been implicated in transcriptional regulation via chromatin modifications. Abnormal expression of ASXL family genes leads to myelodysplastic syndromes and various types of leukemia. De novo mutation of these genes also causes developmental disorders. Genes in this family and their neighbor genes are evolutionary conserved in humans and mice. This review provides a comprehensive summary of epigenetic regulations associated with ASXL family genes. Their expression is commonly regulated by DNA methylation at CpG islands preceding transcription starting sites. Their proteins primarily engage in histone tail modifications through interactions with chromatin regulators (PRC2, TrxG, PR-DUB, SRC1, HP1α, and BET proteins) and with transcription factors, including nuclear hormone receptors (RAR, PPAR, ER, and LXR). Histone modifications associated with these factors include histone H3K9 acetylation and methylation, H3K4 methylation, H3K27 methylation, and H2AK119 deubiquitination. Recently, non-coding RNAs have been identified following mutations in the ASXL1 or ASXL3 gene, along with circular ASXLs and microRNAs that regulate ASXL1 expression. The diverse epigenetic regulations linked to ASXL family genes collectively contribute to tumor suppression and developmental processes. Our understanding of ASXL-regulated epigenetics may provide insights into the development of therapeutic epigenetic drugs. Full article

The authors present the results of laboratory tests analysing the impact of selected cutting data and tool geometry on surface quality, chip type and cutting forces in the process of orthogonal turning of sintered cobalt. The selected cutting data are cutting speed and feed rate. During the experiments, the cutting speed was varied in the range of v_c = 50–200 m/min and the feed rate in the range of f = 0.077–0.173 mm/rev. In order to measure and acquire cutting force values, a measuring setup was assembled. It consisted of a Kistler 2825A-02 piezoelectric dynamometer with a single-position tool holder, a Kistler 5070 signal amplifier and a PC with DynoWare software (Version 2825A, Kistler Group, Winterthur, Switzerland)). The measured surface quality parameters were Ra and Rz. The components of the cutting forces obtained in the experiment varied depending on the feed rate and cutting speed. The obtained test results will make it possible to determine the optimal parameters for machining and tool geometry in order to reduce the machine operating time and increase the life of the cutting insert during the turning of sintered cobalt, which will contribute to sustainable technology. Full article

The introduction of quinoa into new growing regions and environments is of interest to farmers, consumers, and stakeholders around the world. Many plant breeding programs have already started to adapt quinoa to the environmental and agronomic conditions of their local fields. Formal quinoa breeding efforts in Washington State started in 2010, led by Professor Kevin Murphy out of Washington State University. Preharvest sprouting appeared as the primary obstacle to increased production in the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest. Preharvest sprouting (PHS) is the undesirable sprouting of seeds that occurs before harvest, is triggered by rain or humid conditions, and is responsible for yield losses and lower nutrition in cereal grains. PHS has been extensively studied in wheat, barley, and rice, but there are limited reports for quinoa, partly because it has only recently emerged as a problem. This study aimed to better understand PHS in quinoa by adapting a PHS screening method commonly used in cereals. This involved carrying out panicle-wetting tests and developing a scoring scale specific for panicles to quantify sprouting. Assessment of the trait was performed in a diversity panel (N = 336), and the resulting phenotypes were used to create PHS tolerance rankings and undertake a GWAS analysis (n = 279). Our findings indicate that PHS occurred at varying degrees across a subset of the quinoa germplasm tested and that it is possible to access PHS tolerance from natural sources. Ultimately, these genotypes can be used as parental lines in future breeding programs aiming to incorporate tolerance to PHS. Full article

The Robotics Vision Lab of Northwest Nazarene University has developed the Orchard Robot (OrBot), which was designed for harvesting fruits. OrBot is composed of a machine vision system to locate fruits on the tree, a robotic manipulator to approach the target fruit, and a gripper to remove the target fruit. Field trials conducted at commercial orchards for apples and peaches during the harvesting season of 2021 yielded a harvesting success rate of about 85% and had an average harvesting cycle time of 12 s. Building upon this success, the goal of this study is to evaluate the performance of OrBot during nighttime harvesting. The idea is to have OrBot harvest at night, and then human pickers continue the harvesting operation during the day. This human and robot collaboration will leverage the labor shortage issue with a relatively slower robot working at night. The specific objectives are to determine the artificial lighting parameters suitable for nighttime harvesting and to evaluate the harvesting viability of OrBot during the night. LED lighting was selected as the source for artificial illumination with a color temperature of 5600 K and 10% intensity. This combination resulted in images with the lowest noise. OrBot was tested in a commercial orchard using twenty Pink Lady apple trees. Results showed an increased success rate during the night, with OrBot gaining 94% compared to 88% during the daytime operations. Full article

This paper addresses a trajectory tracking control algorithm for underactuated marine vehicles moving horizontally in which the current in the North–East–Down frame is constant. This algorithm is a modification of a control scheme based on the input-output feedback linearization method, for which the application condition was that the vehicle was symmetric with respect to the left and right sides. The proposed control scheme can be applied to a fully asymmetric model, and, therefore, the geometric center can be different from the center of mass in both the longitudinal and lateral directions. A velocity transformation to generalized vehicle equations of motion was used to develop a suitable controller. Theoretical considerations were supported by simulation tests performed for a model with 3 degrees of freedom, in which the performance of the proposed algorithm was compared with that of the original algorithm and the selected control scheme based on a combination of backstepping and integral sliding mode control approaches. Full article

Psoriatic disease (PsD) affects multiple clinical domains and causes a significant inflammatory burden in patients, requiring comprehensive evaluation and treatment. In recent years, new molecules such as JAK inhibitors (JAKinhibs) have been developed. These have very clear advantages: they act quickly, have a beneficial effect on pain, are well tolerated and the administration route is oral. Despite all this, there is still little scientific evidence in daily clinical practice. This observational, retrospective, single-center study was carried out in patients diagnosed with PsA in the last two years, who started treatment with Tofacitinib or Upadacitinib due to failure of a DMARD. The data of 32 patients were analyzed, and the majority of them (75%) started treatment with Tofacitinib. Most had moderate arthritis activity and mild psoriasis involvement according to activity indices. Both Tofacitinib and Upadacitinib demonstrated significant efficacy, with rapid and statistically significant improvement in joint and skin activity indices, C-reactive protein reduction, and objective measures of disease activity such as the number of painful and inflamed joints. Although there was some difference in the baseline characteristics of the cohort, treatment responses were comparable or even superior to those in the pivotal clinical trials. In addition, there was a low frequency of mild adverse events leading to treatment discontinuation and no serious adverse events. These findings emphasize the strong efficacy and tolerability of JAKinhibs in daily clinical practice, supporting their role as effective therapeutic options for patients with PsD. Full article

One requirement posed by customers is to achieve adequate durability levels as described in technical requirement documents. Modal analysis is one of the design assessments aimed at identifying the risks of high cycle fatigue (HCF). This article presents a novel application of an artificial immune system (AIS) in the optimization of a nozzle guide vane’s modal characteristics. The aim is to optimize the system’s natural frequencies in the vibration vane and adjacent hardware (turbine casing). The geometrical characteristics accounted for in the optimization process include the shell thicknesses on the turbine casing side and the nozzle outer band features (hook thickness, leaning and position). The optimization process is based on a representative model established from FEM analysis results. The framework is robust because of the applied metamodel and does not require time-consuming FEM analysis in order to evaluate the fitness function. The aim is to minimize the model area (a derivative of the system weight) with constraints imposed on the frequency (a penalty function). The optimum design is given as the solution with an increased shell thickness in the turbine casing and leaning nozzle outer band hooks to obtain the maximum stiffness of the system. The results obtained by means of the artificial immune system (AIS) and a novel variant based on an additional costimulation procedure (CAIS) are compared with the solution obtained by means of a genetic algorithm implemented in the commercial CAE software (Ansys version 19.2). Full article

With the continuous exploitation of the marine resources, the equipment should meet the marine complex working environment. In this study, a type of environmentally friendly coating was prepared. Based on low surface energy environmental protection and anti-fouling, a film forming material with water-based epoxy-modified silicone resin emulsion was prepared. And industrial fillers were added to give it both inorganic and organic properties. Meanwhile, various contents of graphene oxide (GO) were added in the coating system. The coating properties were comprehensively analyzed, and the optimal GO content was obtained as 0.1 wt. %. The composite coating was studied by seawater immersion experiments, and the failure process of the coating in was proposed. The composite coating prepared in the present study has both environmental protection and hydrophobic anti-fouling characteristics, and its comprehensive performance is excellent through various performance evaluations, i.e., it meets the requirements of long-term coating, environmental friendliness and anti-fouling and corrosion resistance. Full article