With the tremendous advancements in Internet, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence, the power and potential of digital technologies has a special appeal to political rulers. How can ...qualitative researchers explore tech-driven authoritarianism when they have limited access to state institutions? This article addresses this question by arguing for a wider and more nuanced understanding of tech-driven authoritarianism as a state-market complex mediating the political application of digital technologies. Based on my own research on China’s Internet surveillance, I find that the engagement of the private sector, especially technology companies, in authoritarian control creates new opportunities for qualitative researchers to study state power in non-state fields. By reflecting on my experience of field-site choice, gaining access, and informant recruitment, I discuss how thorough preparation in both theory and fieldwork approaches help qualitative investigators develop creative ways of collecting information on tech-driven authoritarianism.
Due to their widespread use, organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs) are commonly detected in various environmental matrices and have been identified as emerging contaminants. Considering the ...adverse effects of OPFRs, many researchers have paid their attention on the absorption, bioaccumulation, metabolism and internal exposure processes of OPFRs in animals and humans. In this article, we first review the diverse absorption routes of OPFRs by animals and humans (e.g., inhalation, ingestion, dermal absorption and gill absorption). Bioaccumulation and biomagnification potentials of OPFRs in different types of organisms and food webs are also summarized, based on quite limited available data and results. For metabolism, we review the Phase-I and Phase-II metabolic processes for each type of OPFRs (chlorinated OPFRs, alkyl-OPFRs and aryl-OPFRs) in the animals and humans, as well as toxicokinetic information and putative exposure biomarkers on OPFRs. Finally, we highlight gaps in our knowledge and critical directions for future internal exposure studies of OPFRs in animals and humans.
•The absorption, bioaccumulation, metabolism and internal exposure of OPFRs are reviewed.•Inhalation, ingestion and dermal contact are the main OPFRs absorptionpathways for humans.•General in vivo and in vitro metabolic pathways of three different types of OPFRs are proposed.•DAPs and MAPs are considered as putative biomarkers for the assessment of internal exposure of OPFRs in humans.
The Internet has become an increasingly indispensable existence. It not only affects people's daily life and work, but also continuously promotes the development of human economy. But now that the ...Internet has become popular, people are not only concerned about where the content appears, whether there is traffic or not, the shortcomings of the current network structure are also constantly showing up. In order to solve these existing problems, some researchers have proposed the information center network structure, which is a content-centric structure that can highlight the main characteristics of the network cache, that is, there will be a cache in every router. Function, but also can issue a request function for the user. In the era of digitization of a large amount of information, traditional music has begun to undergo major changes. Not only the mode of music creation, but also some music with electronic music as the main body adds more color to traditional music. Therefore, the emergence of electronic music may create a new stage for music in the future, and traditional music is currently the most understood art. It is a main body of traditional music and occupies most of the position of music, especially by the older generation. With the continuous expansion of the attraction of traditional music, young people are beginning to join in the pursuit of traditional music. Therefore, traditional music has gained a lot of fresh blood. Many young people have invested in the pace of creating traditional music. Young people are unique. The idea of combining these traditional music with electronic music has produced a very wonderful artistic effect, which has promoted the development of traditional Chinese music, and has also brought new challenges to electronic music.
Currently, concrete structures have increasingly higher requirements for the shear capacity of beams, and ultrahigh-performance concrete (UHPC) beams are increasingly widely used. To facilitate the ...design of UHPC beams, this paper constructs a UHPC beam shear strength prediction model. First, static shear tests were conducted on 6 UHPC beam specimens with a length of 2 m and a cross-sectional size of 200 mm × 300 mm to explore the effects of the UHPC strength, shear span ratio, hoop ratio, and steel fiber content on the shear resistance and failure morphology of the UHPC beams. Based on the results of this study and a static load experiment of 102 UHPC beams in the literature, the construction includes the shear span ratio (λ), beam section width (b), beam section height (h), hoop ratio (ρ
), UHPC compressive strength (f
), steel fiber volume fraction (V
), and the UHPC beam shear capacity (V
) 7 parameter database. Based on the construction of the database, 1200 BPNN models were trained through trial and error. The models were evaluated using the correlation coefficient R, root mean square error RMSE, and a20-index indicators, and the optimal BPNN model (6-15-8-1) was determined based on the ranking of RMSE. After the optimal BPNN is optimized by a genetic algorithm, the prediction performance of the model is improved. The correlation coefficient between the predicted value and the experimental value is R
= 0.98667, and RMSE = 7.38. This model can reliably predict the shear strength of UHPC beams and provide designers with a reference for the design of UHPC beams. Finally, after sensitivity analysis, the influence of each input parameter on the UHPC shear capacity is determined.
As potential substitutes for polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs) have been frequently detected in the environment. However, the genotoxicity induced by ...these OPFRs has rarely been described, and the results reported in previous studies are conflicting and inconsistent.
The present study aimed to determine how OPFRs induced genetic toxicity in vivo.
Using Chinese rare minnow as a model, the toxicity of three OPFRs was screened with RNA-seq. To verify the OPFR-induced genotoxicity, alkaline comet assay, cell apoptosis analysis, HPLC-based DNA methylation assay, 8-OHdG assay, bioconcentration and biotransformation investigation were performed.
According to transcriptomic data, TDCIPP exposure substantially altered the pathways related to DNA damage, including the cell cycle, DNA replication, Fanconi anemia pathway, p53 signaling pathway, and various DNA repair pathways. Although TBOEP and TPHP did not affect DNA damage, TDCIPP induced DNA damage in a dose-dependent manner. TDCIPP also induced apoptosis, altered the activities of caspase-3 and -9, and increased the 8-OHdG levels, while a significant difference in the levels of DNA methylation induced by OPFRs was not observed.
Based on these results, TDCIPP induced DNA oxidative damage, eventually leading to genotoxicity in vivo.
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•TDCIPP induced DNA damage in a dose-dependent manner.•TDCIPP exposure altered multiple pathways related to DNA damage.•TDCIPP-induced DNA damage was attributed to oxidative DNA lesions instead of DNA methylation.•TDCIPP-induced genotoxicity may pose an unacceptable ecological risk to aquatic organisms.
•The impact of a “buy-online-and-pickup-in-store” channel is studied.•Adding a “buy-online-and-pickup-in-store” channel may be profitable.•Adding a “buy-online-and-pickup-in-store” channel might ...result in a lower price.•Both manufacturer and retailer may not benefit from adding a Store channel.
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This paper studies the impact of a “buy-online-and-pickup-in-store (BOPS)” channel on quality, prices, and profits of a manufacturer and a retailer. We analyze a Stackelberg game-theoretic model where the manufacturer produces and sells a product with a quality level to the retailer at a wholesale price, and the retailer sells the product to end customers at a selling price through a Store channel, an Online channel or a BOPS channel (if available). The retailer would incur an extra handling cost if opening the BOPS channel, and customers would incur a shipping and transaction cost if purchasing from the Online channel and the Store channel, respectively. We find that both the manufacturer and the retailer can benefit from adding the BOPS channel under certain conditions. Moreover, when the BOPS channel is not available, adding the Store channel is beneficial for both parties and results in lower quality and wholesale price but higher selling price when the shipping cost is relatively high. When the Store channel is dominated by the available BOPS channel, however, opening the Store channel cannot benefit both parties. We also show that adding the BOPS channel would increase (reduce) both consumer surplus and social welfare for a sufficiently low (high) handling cost. We further observe that it is profitable for a centralized decision maker to add the BOPS channel via increasing both the price and quality under some simple conditions. Finally, we extend our base model to a more general one and illustrate our main results remain valid.
•Tillage-induced soil microrelief (TSM) is a key measure to control soil erosion.•TSMs named of depressions and mounds (DM) and troughs and ridges (TR) were tested.•The TSM runoff reduction benefit ...decreases with increasing rainfall duration.•TSM does not reduce soil loss under high rainfall intensity and long duration.•TR has better soil erosion reduction benefits than DM under the same rain conditions.
Tillage-induced surface microrelief (TSM) is commonly thought of as an effective measure to control soil erosion on agricultural lands. The objective of this study is to discuss how rainfall intensity and duration affect the role of TSM in soil erosion. Three rainfall intensities of 60, 90 and 120 mm/h and four rainfall durations of 15, 30, 60 and 90 min for each intensity were investigated. Two slope ranges, corresponding to a gentle slope (5° to 10°) and a steep slope (20° to 25°), were considered. Two different TSMs, consisting of depressions and mounds (DM) and troughs and ridges (TR), were used for testing in a soil box that was 2 m long by 1 m wide. A smooth surface (SS) served as a control. The runoff and sediment reduction benefits (RRB and SRB), represented by the ratios of the difference between the tilled slope and SS to that of SS, were used to quantify the role of TSM in soil erosion. The results showed that DM and TR delayed runoff initiation regardless of rainfall intensity and slope. The TSM RRB and SRB decreased with increasing rainfall intensity, duration and slope. Compared to the SS, the DM RRB decreased from 43% to 6% when the rainfall duration increased from 15 to 90 min, and the TR RRB decreased from 100% to 31% on the gentle slopes; on the steep slopes, the DM and TR RRBs decreased from 24% and 46% to nearly zero when the rainfall duration increased from 15 to 90 min. When rainfall intensity was below 90 mm/h and the duration was shorter than 60 min, DM and TR were effective at controlling soil loss; when the duration increased to 90 min or the rainfall intensity was 120 mm/h, the sediment form DM and TR was much higher than that from SS. In particular, the sediment from DM and TR increased by 114% to 330% when the rainfall intensity was 120 mm/h. This indicates that DM and TR were not effective at controlling soil loss during rainfall with a high rainfall intensity and/or long duration. In addition, TR exhibited greater effectiveness at controlling soil and water loss than DM under the same situations. Therefore, rainfall conditions and slopes are important factors influencing the soil and water conservation benefits of TSMs, and the effectiveness of TSMs on soil erosion reduction needs to be further assessed in conjunction with climate change.
This study evaluates the effect of climate change on electricity generation, electricity demand, and GHG emissions. For this purpose, using climate scenarios RCPs changes of climatic parameters are ...predicted. Due to the high importance of energy demand in the management of energy generation resources innovation research is related to forecasting electricity demand. The novelty is the use of an Artificial Neural Network optimized to predict the energy demand. To optimize the ANN method, the Improved Pathfinder algorithm has been used. The use of the optimization method in the ANN method provides a model with more precision and fewer errors for the prediction of energy demand. The results showed that due to the weather changes, hydropower generation for the near future under RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 increases by about 2.765 MW, 1.892 MW, and 1.219 MW and for the far future increases by about 3.430 MW, 2.475 MW, and 1.827 MW. The electricity demand forecasting by The ANN-IPF model for the near and far future will increase compared to the base period of 391.9 MW and 716.65 MW, respectively. Therefore, the gap between the demand the power supply will increase. Using other resources, the difference between demand and power supply will decrease.
•The electricity demand has been stimulated by optimized ANN.•The hydropower generation has been predicted by RCPs scenarios.•The climate change impact on electricity supply and demand has been assessed.•The gap supply-demand electricity and the effect it on GHG emissions has been evaluated.•To reduce the supply-demand gap less -carbon resources should be used.
The ability to identify a specific cancer using minimally invasive biopsy holds great promise for improving the diagnosis, treatment selection, and prediction of prognosis in cancer. Using ...whole-genome methylation data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and machine learning methods, we evaluated the utility of DNA methylation for differentiating tumor tissue and normal tissue for four common cancers (breast, colon, liver, and lung). We identified cancer markers in a training cohort of 1,619 tumor samples and 173 matched adjacent normal tissue samples. We replicated our findings in a separate TCGA cohort of 791 tumor samples and 93 matched adjacent normal tissue samples, as well as an independent Chinese cohort of 394 tumor samples and 324 matched adjacent normal tissue samples. The DNA methylation analysis could predict cancer versus normal tissue with more than 95% accuracy in these three cohorts, demonstrating accuracy comparable to typical diagnostic methods. This analysis also correctly identified 29 of 30 colorectal cancer metastases to the liver and 32 of 34 colorectal cancer metastases to the lung. We also found that methylation patterns can predict prognosis and survival. We correlated differential methylation of CpG sites predictive of cancer with expression of associated genes known to be important in cancer biology, showing decreased expression with increased methylation, as expected. We verified gene expression profiles in a mouse model of hepatocellular carcinoma. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the utility of methylation biomarkers for the molecular characterization of cancer, with implications for diagnosis and prognosis.
A novel concept of treating oil reservoirs by nanofluids is being developed to improve oil recovery and reduce the trapped oil in hydrocarbon reservoirs. Nanoparticles show great potential in ...enhancing oil recovery under ambient conditions. In this paper, the approaches of wettability alteration by using nanofluid, stability of nanofluids, and the most reliable wettability alteration mechanisms associated with variant types of nanoparticles have been reviewed. Moreover, the parameters that have a significant influence on nanofluid flooding have been discussed. Finally, the recent studies of the effect of nanoparticles on wettability alteration have been summarised and analysed. Furthermore, this paper presents possible opportunities and challenges regarding wettability alteration using nanofluids.
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