Catastrophic landslides characterized by runaway slope failures remain difficult to predict. Here, we develop a physics‐based framework to prospectively assess slope failure potential. Our method ...builds upon the physics of extreme events in natural systems: the extremes so‐called “dragon‐kings” (e.g., slope tertiary creeps prior to failure) exhibit statistically different properties than other smaller‐sized events (e.g., slope secondary creeps). We develop statistical tools to detect the emergence of dragon‐kings during landslide evolution, with the secondary‐to‐tertiary creep transition quantitatively captured. We construct a phase diagram characterizing the detectability of dragon‐kings against “black‐swans” and informing on whether the slope evolves toward a catastrophic or slow landslide. We test our method on synthetic and real data sets, demonstrating how it might have been used to forecast three representative historical landslides. Our method can in principle considerably reduce the number of false alarms and identify with high confidence the presence of true hazards of catastrophic landslides.
Plain Language Summary
Catastrophic slope failures that pose great threats to life and property remain difficult to predict due to the strong variability of slope behavior. As a result, only a limited number of large rock slope failures have been so far successfully forecasted with associated risks mitigated. Here, we propose a novel predictive framework to prospectively and quantitatively detect slope failure precursors with high confidence. Our research sheds light on one of the most challenging questions in landslide prediction: Would an active landslide slowly move or catastrophically fail in the future? Our method adds a new conceptual framework and operational methodology with a significant potential to support existing early warning systems and hence reduce landslide risks.
Key Points
Tertiary creeps of catastrophic landslides accommodate dragon‐kings showing statistically different properties than secondary slope creeps
A predictive framework is developed to forecast catastrophic landslides by detecting signatures typical of the emergence of dragon‐kings
A phase diagram characterizes the detectability of dragon‐kings against black‐swans and discriminates catastrophic and slow landslides
Series multivariable coupled system is a typical controlled object in process control industry. The interaction of various state variables between multiple inputs and outputs in the system forms a ...complex series multivariable coupled structure. This coupled structure makes the control of a controlled object in the system affect the controlled object in the upper and lower control loop. As a result, it is difficult to control one or more control loops in the system without changing the state of other links in the system. In this paper, a cooperative control method for series multivariable coupled system is proposed. A decoupling controller is designed to remove the coupling effect caused by the interaction between stages, and the system is decoupled into several independent control loops. Differential leading PI (proportional-integral) error compensation method is introduced to ensure the following performance of the controller without static error. The proposed cooperative control method satisfies the Lyapunov stability, and has been successfully applied in the simulation experiment of cascade pumping station system of Beijing East-to-West water transfer project. The proposed method reduces the difficulty to controlling the water level of forebay of each pumping station and ensures the efficient operation of the cascade pumping station system.
Pulsating heat pipes are widely used in cooling electronic devices, automotive radiators, refrigeration, and air conditioning systems. The addition of nanoparticles is one of the effective ways to ...improve the heat transfer characteristics of fluids. This paper, based on large eddy simulation (LES) numerical method and field synergy theory, investigates the heat transfer characteristics of Al
2
O
3
/Cu mixed nanofluid in a self-excited oscillating heat exchanger tube. Through multi-objective optimization of field synergy angles, field synergy factors, and structural parameters, the enhanced heat transfer mechanism of mixed nanofluids in a self-excited oscillating heat pipe is investigated. It is found that there is a significant negative correlation between the heat transfer coefficient
h
at the wall surface of the heat exchanger tube and the synergistic angle
β
. The incorporation of nanoparticles improves the synergistic properties between the velocity and temperature fields. The optimum structural parameters are
L/D
= 0.469931,
α
= 128.9904° and
d
2
/d
1
= 2.047937, and the optimization increases Nu by 1.92%, decreases f by 10.46%, and decreases the temperature synergy angle
β
by 2.24°. At the same time, the orthogonality or lack of orthogonality between isotherms and streamlines determines the extent of synergistic performance in the countercurrent vortex.
•Sustainable Development Situation in World Natural Heritage Sites.•A general comprehensive assessment indicators system.•Resident income is highly correlated with tourism.•The government ...intervention is effective in Jiuzhaigou.•After the earthquake, the level of coupling coordination dropped.
To continue directing global sustainable development efforts from 2015 to 2030, the United Nations adopted 17 global development goals known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015 expired. Sustainable development of World Natural Heritage Sites is one of these 17 MDGs and a crucial step toward achieving global sustainability. A scientific and systematic indicator system that can measure the sustainable development of natural World Heritage Sites more objectively and fairly is urgently needed to support the establishment of SDG11.4 on a Chinese scale and to help with the subsequent promotion of the development of natural World Heritage Sites. This study proposes a comprehensive assessment indicator system for the sustainable development of natural heritage sites based on the theoretical framework of “value contribution-environmental effect” to quantify the sustainable development of natural heritage sites. The study is based on the ecological environment and regional economic and social data of Jiuzhaigou World Natural Heritage Site from 2010 to 2020. Finally, the degree of coupling and coordination between the natural environment and economic development is assessed and studied. The results show that tourism to the World Heritage Site drove rapid economic development in Jiuzhaigou County between 2010 and 2020. As the fame of the World Heritage Site Jiuzhaigou has grown, so has the per capita income of local locals, making them unduly reliant on tourists for a living. Meanwhile, both the 2017 earthquake and the COVID-19 epidemic in 2019 have had substantial detrimental effects on the local economy. Furthermore, the Jiuzhaigou sustainable development trend from 2010 to 2020 exhibits a “W-shaped” curve, and there is a high level of positive coupling between the Jiuzhaigou sustainable development trend and economic development, and the two are mutually reinforcing.
Currently, the automatic segmentation of breast tumors based on breast ultrasound (BUS) images is still a challenging task. Most lesion segmentation methods are implemented based on a convolutional ...neural network (CNN), which has limitations in establishing long-range dependencies and obtaining global context information. Recently, transformer-based models have been widely used in computer vision tasks to build long-range contextual information due to their powerful self-attention mechanism, and their effect is better than that of a traditional CNN. In this paper, a CNN and a Swin Transformer are linked as a feature extraction backbone to build a pyramid structure network for feature encoding and decoding. First, we design an interactive channel attention (ICA) module using channel-wise attention to emphasize important feature regions. Second, we develop a supplementary feature fusion (SFF) module based on the gating mechanism. The SFF module can supplement the features during feature fusion and improve the performance of breast lesion segmentation. Finally, we adopt a boundary detection (BD) module to pay additional attention to the boundary information of breast lesions to improve the boundary quality in the segmentation results. Experimental results show that our network outperforms state-of-the-art image segmentation methods on breast ultrasound lesion segmentation.
•A novel network for breast lesion segmentation in ultrasound (BUS) images.•A combined CNN-Swin Transformer method enables improved feature extraction.•Contextual information awareness is enhanced by a residual Swin Transformer block.•Spatial and boundary context is captured to handle lesion morphological information.•The proposed method has higher performance than several state-of-the-art methods.
Langya Henipavirus (LayV) infection is an emerging zoonotic disease that has been causing respiratory symptoms in China since 2019. For virus entry, LayV's genome encodes the fusion protein F and the ...attachment glycoprotein G. However, the structural and functional information regarding LayV-G remains unclear. In this study, we revealed that LayV-G cannot bind to the receptors found in other HNVs, such as ephrin B2/B3, and it shows different antigenicity from HeV-G and NiV-G. Furthermore, we determined the near full-length structure of LayV-G, which displays a distinct mushroom-shaped configuration, distinguishing it from other attachment glycoproteins of HNV. The stalk and transmembrane regions resemble the stem and root of mushroom and four downward-tilted head domains as mushroom cap potentially interact with the F protein and influence membrane fusion process. Our findings enhance the understanding of emerging HNVs that cause human diseases through zoonotic transmission and provide implication for LayV related vaccine development.
A novel nitrogen doped and surface functionalized fluorescent CDs (
T1
) was synthesized by one-step and green hydrothermal method, which exhibits a satisfactory fluorescence quantum yield and a ...series of admirable features such as good aqueous solubility, narrow particle size distribution, resistance to photobleaching as well as excitation-dependent behavior. Benefitting from above merits,
T1
can be employed to serve as an outstanding sensing platform for sensitive and accurate detection of ClO
–
by remarkable fluorescence “on–off” process with rapid and anti-interference. More notably, the good biocompatibility and photostability can ensure enormous bioimaging potential and successful application of
T1
in monitoring of exogenous ClO
–
in MG-63 cells. Meanwhile,
T1
can also be regarded as a filter paper sensor providing a convenient and efficient analyzing technology for monitoring of free residual chlorine in practical environmental samples. All these results demonstrate that there exists promising possibility for practical applications of
T1
in bioimaging systems and environmental monitoring.
Graphical abstract
Low-carbon city construction is one of the key issues that must be addressed for China to achieve high-quality economic development and meet the Sustainable Development Goals. This study creates a ...comprehensive evaluation index system of low-carbon city multivariate system based on carbon emission data from 30 typical Chinese cities from 2006 to 2017 and evaluates and analyzes the trend of city low-carbon levels using the CRITIC-TOPSIS technique and MK method. Meanwhile, the influence mechanism of the multi-coupled system is investigated using the coupling coordination degree model and random forest algorithm.The results show that there are 8 cities with a significant increasing trend of low-carbon level, 19 cities with no significant monotonic change trend, and 3 cities with a decreasing trend of low-carbon level. By analyzing the coupling coordination degree, we found that the coupling coordination degree between low-carbon level and economic development in most cities tends to increase year by year, from the initial antagonistic effect to a good coordination development trend, which confirms the "inverted U-shaped" relationship between economy and carbon emission. In addition, industrial pollutant emissions, foreign direct investment, and economic output are the core drivers of low-carbon levels in cities.
IntroductionDeep brain stimulation (DBS) has been validated as a safe and effective treatment for refractory cervical dystonia (CD). Globus pallidus internus (GPi) and subthalamic nucleus (STN) are ...the two main stimulating targets. However, there has been no prospective study to clarify which target is the better DBS candidate for CD. The objective of this trial is to compare directly the efficacy and safety of GPi-DBS and STN-DBS, thereby instructing the selection of DBS target in clinical practice.Methods and analysisThis multicentre, prospective, randomised, controlled study plans to enrol 98 refractory CD patients. Eligible CD patients will be randomly allocated to GPi-DBS group or STN-DBS group, with the DBS electrodes implanted into the posteroventral portion of GPi or the dorsolateral portion of STN, respectively. The primary outcome will be the improvement of symptomatic severity, measured by the changes in the Toronto Western Spasmodic Torticollis Rating Scale (TWSTRS) severity subscale and the Tsui scale at 3 months, 6 months and 12 months after surgery. The secondary outcomes include the improvement of the TWSTRS-disability subscale, TWSTRS-pain subscale, quality of life, mental and cognitive condition, as well as the differences in stimulation parameters and adverse effects. In addition, this study intends to identify certain predictors of DBS efficacy for CD.Ethics and disseminationThe trial has been approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Chinese PLA General Hospital (S2022-613-01). The results of this study will be published in international peer-reviewed journals and shared in professional medical conferences.Trial registration numberNCT05715138.
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