Bacteriophages vB_Sen-TO17 and vB_Sen-E22, Newly Isolated Viruses from Chicken Feces,Specific for Several Salmonella enterica Strains

Two newly discovered bacteriophages, isolated from chicken feces and infecting Salmonella enterica strains, are described in this report. These phages have been named vB_Sen-TO17 and vB_Sen-E22, and we present their molecular and functional characterization. Both studied viruses are able to infect several S. enterica strains and develop lytically, but their specific host ranges differ significantly. Electron microscopic analyses of virions have been performed, and full genome sequences were determined and characterized, along with molecular phylogenetic studies. Genomes of vB_Sen-TO17 (ds DNA of 41,658 bp) and vB_Sen-E22 (dsDNA of 108,987 bp) are devoid of homologs of any known or putative gene coding for toxins or any other proteins potentially deleterious for eukaryotic cells. Both phages adsorbed efficiently (>95% adsorbed virions) within 10 min at 42 °C (resembling chicken body temperature) on cells of most tested host strains. Kinetics of lytic development of vB_Sen-TO17 and vB_Sen-E22, determined in one-step growth experiments, indicated that development is complete within 30–40 min at 42 °C, whereas burst sizes vary from 9 to 79 progeny phages per cell for vB_Sen-TO17 and from 18 to 64 for vB_Sen-E22, depending on the host strain. Virions of both phages were relatively stable (from several percent to almost 100% survivability) under various conditions, including acidic and alkaline pH values (from 3 to 12), temperatures from −80 °C to 60 °C, 70% ethanol, chloroform, and 10% DMSO. These characteristics of vB_Sen-TO17 and vB_Sen-E22 indicate that these phages might be considered in further studies on phage therapy, particularly in attempts to eliminate S. enterica from chicken intestine.     

焊丝中Si元素含量对铝合金接头裂纹敏感性的影响规律及机理

使用扫描电镜、能谱、温度场实时采集等测试方法，研究了焊丝中Si含量对AA6063铝合金GMAW焊接头热裂纹敏感性的影响规律及机理. 结果表明，当焊丝为纯铝时，鱼骨试样的焊缝中心会出现细长的焊接裂纹；当焊丝中的Si含量为4.5% ~ 6%时，裂纹的长度变短，但是开裂距离明显增加；当焊丝中的Si含量达到11% ~ 13%时，试样焊缝无裂纹出现. 随着Si含量的不断提高，合金易出现裂纹的凝固温度区间先增大后减小；焊丝中Si含量的不同还会影响凝固后期金属液的流动性，使得焊缝晶界处的物相成分和形态都有明显的区别；同时，Si含量的提高会使得接头的冷却速度先增加后减小，从而导致应力状态改变，热裂纹敏感性先升高后降低.     

Governance choices and policy outcomes in the Latin American and caribbean electricity sector

The paper first provides, for Latin America and the Caribbean, country-specific synthetic quantitative measures of the degree of adoption of governance reforms in the electricity sector, focusing on four key dimensions (market structure, private sector participation (PSP), regulatory autonomy and operational organization). These measures are then correlated with standard policy performance outcomes measures. The findings suggest that, the reforms, considered jointly, were statistically significantly associated with higher technical and process quality but not with social or service improvements. Considered individually, increased regulatory autonomy enjoyed the highest positive correlation with desirable outcomes, but PSP has no significant correlation with any of the outcomes. In sum, as of 2018, governance reforms, considered jointly, had still not delivered on some promised payoffs, notably in addressing energy poverty, although the sensitivity analysis suggests that, for some indicators, the relationships are stronger for larger than for smaller countries.     

Extruded meat alternatives made from Maillard-reacted beef bone hydrolysate and plant proteins: part I – Effect of moisture content

This study investigated the effects of moisture content (MC) on the physicochemical properties of extruded meat alternatives made from Maillard-reacted beef bone hydrolysate and plant proteins. Samples were extruded at 170 °C (maximum barrel temperature), at 3.6 kg h⁻¹ (liquid feed rate) and at 1.8, 2.2, 2.6 and 3.0 kg h⁻¹ (dry feed rates) to obtain MC of 60%MC, 56%MC, 52%MC and 49%MC, respectively. Meat alternatives at 52%MC showed the greatest degree of texturisation. However, meat alternatives at 49%MC were the closest in terms of both textural and microstructural properties to reference sample, boiled chicken breast. Results from protein solubility suggested that a large amount of aggregated proteins were associated with hydrogen bonds, while disulphide bonds were the main contributor in the formation of fibrous structure in meat alternatives. Results showed that the change in MC as process parameter played an important role in the formation of fibrous structure in extruded meat alternatives.     

Study of the surfactant role in latex–aerogel systems by scanning transmission electron microscopy on aqueous suspensions

For insulation applications, boards thinner than 2 cm are under design with specific thermal conductivities lower than 15 mW m^?1 K^?1. This requires binding slightly hydrophobic aerogels which are highly nanoporous granular materials. To reach this step and ensure insulation board durability at the building scale, it is compulsory to design, characterise and analyse the microstructure at the nanoscale. It is indeed necessary to understand how the solid material is formed from a liquid suspension. This issue is addressed in this paper through wet‐STEM experiments carried out in an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM). Latex–surfactant binary blends and latex–surfactant–aerogel ternary systems are studied, with two different surfactants of very different chemical structures. Image analysis is used to distinguish the different components and get quantitative morphological parameters which describe the sample architecture. The evolution of such morphological parameters during water evaporation permits a good understanding of the role of the surfactant.     

Research on heat dissipation performance and flow characteristics of air‐cooled battery pack

With the depletion of fossil fuels and the aggravation of environmental pollution, the research and development speed of electric vehicles has been accelerating, and the thermal management of battery pack has become increasingly important. This paper selects the electric vehicle battery pack with natural air cooling as the study subject, conducts simulation analysis of the heat dissipation performance of battery packs with and without vents. Then this paper researches on the influence of internal flow field and external flow field. Field synergy principle is used to analyze the effect of velocity field and temperature field amplitude. The results show the following: it is found that the maximum temperature rise and the internal maximum temperature difference of the battery pack with vents are reduced by about 23.1% and 19.9%, raising speed value can improve the heat dissipation performance, and raising temperature value can decrease the heat dissipation performance. Reasonable design of the vents can make the inner and outer flow field work synergistically to achieve the best cooling effect. Then the reference basis for the air cooling heat dissipation performance analysis of electric vehicle, battery pack structure arrangement, and air‐inlet and air‐outlet pattern choosing are offered.     

Probabilistic seismic damage assessment of reinforced concrete buildings considering directionality effects

Most of buildings and structures are usually projected according to two main axes. However, the geographical position of these buildings varies randomly. Such random distributions of the azimuthal positions of structures, in most of the cities, generally, are not accounted for when assessing their seismic risk; certainly, the direction of the seismic loads is another highly random variable. Moreover, an additional important source of uncertainty is related to the structural response, mainly due to the random character of the mechanical properties. There is a consensus that uncertainties must be considered for adequately assessing the seismic risk of structures, but these directionality effects have not been deeply explored so far. In this article, the influence of the high uncertainty involved in these input variables on the expected seismic damage is analysed. Thus, an actual earthquake, which affected the southern part of Spain, is studied. Notably, damages on a group of affected buildings, located close to the epicentre, are analysed and discussed in detail. The results show that the influence of the random azimuthal position of structures is an important source of uncertainty and that it should be taken into account when estimating the expected seismic risk in urban areas.     

Laplacian regularized robust principal component analysis for process monitoring

Principal component analysis (PCA) is one of the most widely used techniques for process monitoring. However, it is highly sensitive to sparse errors because of the assumption that data only contains an underlying low-rank structure. To improve classical PCA in this regard, a novel Laplacian regularized robust principal component analysis (LRPCA) framework is proposed, where the “robust” comes from the introduction of a sparse term. By taking advantage of the hypergraph Laplacian, LRPCA not only can represent the global low-dimensional structures, but also capture the intrinsic non-linear geometric information. An efficient alternating direction method of multipliers is designed with convergence guarantee. The resulting subproblems either have closed-form solutions or can be solved by fast solvers. Numerical experiments, including a simulation example and the Tennessee Eastman process, are conducted to illustrate the improved process monitoring performance of the proposed LRPCA.     

风洞模型加速度负反馈振动主动控制方法研究

针对尾撑式风洞模型强方向性振动问题,基于异位配置加速度负反馈控制器对风洞模型振动主动控制方法进行研究。首先,通过模态分析得到系统低阶模态振动的强方向性并基于系统特性设计了具有结构耦合性的内嵌压电陶瓷作动器的风洞模型振动主动控制系统。然后,基于异位配置NAF控制器分别设计了针对第二阶模态和前两阶模态的单模态NAF控制算法和双模态NAF控制算法。最后,进行了实验验证,结果表明:双模态NAF控制算法控制效果较好,前两阶模态阻尼比分别提高近13倍和近40倍,镇定时间分别缩短近11s和近26s。