Alternate-day fasting (ADF) is a novel diet therapy that may achieve reduction in body weight and improvement of dyslipidaemia, but the impact of this diet on patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver ...disease (NAFLD) remains unknown. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of ADF on the body weight and lipid profile of individuals with NAFLD.
NAFLD patients (n = 271) were randomised to the ADF group, time-restricted feeding (TRF) group, or the control group and subjected to the respective diet for 12 weeks. Anthropometric measurements (body weight, fat mass/fat-free mass) were performed, and plasma lipids were analysed enzymatically.
Within 4 weeks, the body weight decreased significantly (P < 0.001) in the ADF group by 4.56 ± 0.41 kg (6.1 ± 0.5%) and the TRF group by 3.62 ± 0.65 kg (4.83 ± 0.9%) compared to the control group, and it decreased even more after 12 weeks in both groups (ADF: - 4.04 ± 0.54 kg, 5.4 ± 0.7%; TRF: - 3.25 ± 0.67 kg, 4.3 ± 0.9%). Fat mass was significantly reduced by ADF (- 3.49 ± 0.37 kg; 11 ± 1.2%) and TRF (- 2.91 ± 0.41 kg; 9.6 ± 1.3%), with ADF leading to a further reduction in fat mass after 12 weeks (- 3.48 ± 0.38 kg; 11 ± 1.2%). Total cholesterol was significantly decreased at both time points in the ADF group (- 0.91 ± 0.07 mmol/L; 18.5 ± 1.5%) compared to the control and TRF groups. Both ADF (- 0.64 ± 0.06 mmol/L; 25 ± 1.9%) and TRF (0.58 ± 0.07 mmol/L; 20 ± 1.7%) achieved a significant reduction in serum triglycerides (P < 0.001) after 12 weeks. Changes in fat free mass, HDL, LDL, fasting insulin, glucose, liver stiffness, and systolic or diastolic blood pressure did not differ between the groups.
ADF appears to be an effective diet therapy for individuals with NAFLD that can achieve weight loss and improvement of dyslipidaemia within a relatively short period of time (4 to 12 weeks). Potential preventive effects of ADF on cardiovascular disease need to be confirmed by future investigations.
ChiCTR1900024411, this trial was retrospectively registered on July 10, 2019.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Biochar, as a kind of soil amendment, has important effects on soil water retention. In this research, 4 different kinds of biochars were used to investigate their influences on hydraulic properties ...and water evaporation in a sandy soil from Hebei Province, China. Biochar had strong absorption ability in the sandy soil. The ratio of water content in the biochar to that in the sandy soil was less than the corresponding ratio of porosity. Because of the different hydraulic properties between the sandy soil and the biochar, the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the sandy soil gradually decreased with the increasing biochar addition. The biochar with larger pore volume and average pore diameter had better water retention. More water was retained in the sandy soil when the biochar was added in a single layer, but not when the biochar was uniformly mixed with soil. Particle size of the added biochar had a significant influence on the hydraulic properties of the mixture of sand and biochar. Grinding the biochar into powder destroyed the pore structure, which simultaneously reduced the water absorption ability and hydraulic conductivity of the biochar. For this reason, adding biochar powder to the sandy soil would not decrease the water evaporation loss of the soil itself.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Summary
In flowering plants, the interaction of pollen tubes with female tissues is important for the accomplishment of double fertilization. Little information is known about the mechanisms that ...underlie signalling between pollen tubes and female tissues. In this study, two Arabidopsis pollen tube‐expressed CrRLK1L protein kinases, Buddha's Paper Seal 1 (BUPS1) and BUPS2, were identified as being required for normal tip growth of pollen tubes in the pistil. They are expressed prolifically in pollen and pollen tubes and are localized on the plasma membrane of the pollen tube tip region. Mutations in BUPS1 drastically reduced seed set. Most of the bups1 mutant pollen tubes growing in the pistil exhibited a swollen pollen tube tip, leading to failure of fertilization. The bups2 pollen tubes had a slightly abnormal morphology but could still accomplish double fertilization. The bups1 bups2 double mutant exhibited a slightly enhanced phenotype compared to the single bups1 mutants. The BUPS1 proteins could form homomers and heteromers with BUPS2, whereas BUPS2 could only form heteromers with BUPS1. The BUPS proteins could interact with the Arabidopsis pollen‐expressed RopGEFs in the yeast two‐hybrid (Y2H) and bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assays. The results indicated that the BUPSs may mediate normal polar growth of pollen tubes in the pistil.
Significance Statement
The pollen‐expressed CrRLK1L Protein Kinases BUPSs are important for normal tip growth of pollen tubes in the Arabidopsis pistil. They might interact with the pollen‐expressed RopGEFs and might mediate the interaction of the pollen tube with the female tissues in pollen tube growth.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Using a nonlinear energy sink to reduce vibration in a broad frequency range has been widely discussed. This paper reports on a study of nonlinear damping of vibration in a system consisting of a ...ring isolator (under harmonic excitation) and a nonlinear energy sink, with the goal of designing a broadband isolator of light weight. A full mathematical model of the ring with the nonlinear energy sink is established, leading to two coupled nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) with closed boundary conditions. The PDEs are discretized via the Galerkin method. A harmonic balance analysis is used to derive the frequency response functions of the transmissibility, and the harmonic balance solutions are compared with numerical results using a finite difference method. It is found that the disappearance of a crossed frequency response curve may decrease the transmissibility at the resonances. Also, the quasi-periodic motion can indicate emergence of a knot-shaped crossed resonance curve. The effects of mass, nonlinear stiffness, and damping ratio are examined. With a suitable ring size, the nonlinear energy sink in a ring isolator is superior to a conventional linear absorber of the same mass, damping, and stiffness.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
•The rubber stress-strain relation is revealed to depend on its hardness.•Rubber materials are mechanically modeled via ANN for the first time.•An algorithm is proposed to optimize the weights and ...thresholds of ANN.•The improved accuracy and convergence rate of the algorithm are demonstrated.
Rubber is considered as a new material for making landing gear shock absorbers for new energy electric aircraft. This investigation tested nitrile butadiene rubber blocks with different hardness at different loading rates to determine their stress-strain relationships. The mechanical behaviors of rubbers are predicted via an artificial neural network model for the first time. A self-adjusting particle swarm optimization was proposed to optimize the artificial neural network's weights and thresholds with the inertia factors and learning factors automatically adjusted. The number of neurons was optimized. The results revealed that the Young's modulus of the rubber increases with the increasing strain. With larger hardness and a larger strain rate, both the Young's modulus and its increasing rate become larger. The proposed self-adjusting particle swarm optimization improves the accuracy and the convergence speed. With the optimal number of neurons, the proposed artificial neural network has a mean square error of 1.611 × 10−4 in predicting the stress-strain relationships of the rubber. Compared with traditional artificial neural network models and an artificial neural network optimized by a traditional particle swarm optimization, the proposed model increases the accuracy by 56.5% and 26.5%, respectively. It is an initial attempt to account the coupling effect of the hardness and the strain rate in the rubber constitutive model.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
•A novel vibration control and energy harvesting experimental device is proposed for the whole-spacecraft system.•The complexification-averaging (CX-A) method is devoted to analyze the ...whole-spacecraft system.•The experimental and theoretical analysis results show that the NES-GMM device has a positive effect on vibration reduction and energy harvesting.•The integration of NES-GMM device causes very little change in the resonance frequency of the whole-spacecraft system.
Giant magnetostrictive material (GMM) is integrated into a nonlinear energy sink (NES) to construct a NES-GMM device for vibration control and energy harvesting. The NES-GMM device is experimentally embedded in a scaled model of a whole-spacecraft system. LMS Test.Lab software and an oscilloscope are used to collect vibration and energy signals of the whole-spacecraft system with and without the NES-GMM device under sine sweeping frequency excitations. The transmissibility amplitudes, resonant frequencies, and voltage values demonstrate the effeteness of vibration control and energy harvesting of the NES-GMM device under different various conditions. The experimental system is modeled as a two-degrees-of-freedom (2DOF) linear primary system with a nonlinear NES-GMM additional subsystem. The complexification-averaging (CX-A) method verified with numerical verifications is developed to investigate analytically the vibration reduction and energy harvesting of the NES-GMM device for the whole-spacecraft system. The experimental and theoretical results show that the NES-GMM device reduces the vibration and produces the electricity and that the device hardly changes the resonance frequencies of the original whole-spacecraft system. The saddle-node (SN) bifurcation is detected in the steady-state periodic response of the system. The performance of the NES-GMM device is examined for its varying parameters.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Nonlinear vibration absorbers have been widely used for vibration suppression of elastic structures, but they were usually placed within the structures. However, designing such a vibration damping ...device within an engineering structure is possibly difficult. In this paper, an inertial nonlinear energy sinks (NES) is mounted on the boundaries of the elastic beam to suppress its vibration. Although this vibration suppression approach is more in line with engineering requirements, it introduces nonlinear oscillators at boundaries. This brings certain difficulties to the structural vibration analysis and the optimal absorber design. An approximate analytical approach for the steady-state response is developed in this work and verified by numerical solutions. The comparison with the uncontrolled system demonstrates the high-efficiency vibration suppression of the inertial NES installed on the boundary. Besides, the optimization of the NES parameters is performed. Resonance amplitude of the elastic structure can be reduced by 98% with the optimized NES. In summary, this paper proposes a novel approach to suppress the bending vibration of elastic structures through boundary NESs. The vibration reduction effect is very significant, and it is more feasible to implement. Therefore, this work is helpful to study the vibration of elastic structures with nonlinear boundaries and to promote the application of nonlinear vibration absorbers.
Graphic abstract
A boundary damping strategy is proposed to solve the problem of the difficulty of installing the vibration absorber in engineering. Introduce an inertial nonlinear energy sinks (NES) to reduce the weight of the shock absorber. The nonlinear boundary is separated and merged into the elastic beam vibration control equation to realize the decoupling of the continuum model. Resonance peak of the elastic structure can be reduced by 98% with the optimized NES. This work is helpful to study the vibration of elastic structures with nonlinear boundaries and to promote the application of nonlinear vibration absorbers.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
This article presents an observer‐controller structure for nonlinear systems with external disturbances, uncertainties and performance constraints. Firstly, considering the unmeasurable state issue, ...a sliding mode observer is designed to estimate the unknown state. Then an integral barrier Lyapunov function (iBLF) is established to ensure that the observer estimation errors are held within the performance constraints. With the objective of utilizing iBLF, an equivalent output injection technique is adopted. Combining with backstepping technique, an observer‐controller scheme is given. The controller can hold all signals in the closed‐loop system bounded with the help of iBLF, and the tracking error will converge to a bounded tight set without violating the corresponding constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is clarified via a vessel heading control example.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Bimetallic coordination polymers (BiCPs) with Zn and Co were synthesized and applied as anode materials. When the rate was increased to 2 A g(-1), a capacity of 622 mA h g(-1) after 500 cycles could ...still be maintained.
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