Search Results (29)

With rising global temperatures and increasing sustainability demands, the need for advanced pavement solutions has never been greater. This study breaks new ground by integrating phase change materials (PCMs), including paraffin-based wax (Rubitherm RT55), hydrated salt (Climator Salt S10), and fatty acid (lauric acid), as binder modifiers within warm mix asphalt (WMA) mixtures. Moving beyond the traditional focus on binder-only modifications, this research utilizes recycled cigarette filters (CFs) as a dual-purpose fiber additive, directly reinforcing the asphalt mixture while simultaneously transforming a major urban waste stream into valuable infrastructure. The performance of the developed WMA mixture has been evaluated in terms of stiffness behavior using an Indirect Tensile Strength Modulus (ITSM) test, permanent deformation using a static creep strain test, and rutting resistance using the Hamburg wheel-track test. Laboratory tests demonstrated that the incorporation of PCMs and recycled CFs into WMA mixtures led to remarkable improvements in stiffness, deformation resistance, and rutting performance. Modified mixes consistently outperformed the control, achieving up to 15% higher stiffness after 7 days of curing, 36% lower creep strain after 4000 s, and 64% reduction in rut depth at 20,000 passes. Cost–benefit analysis and service life prediction show that, despite costing USD 0.71 more per square meter with 5 cm thickness, the modified WMA mixture delivers much greater durability and rutting resistance, extending service life to 19–29 years compared to 10–15 years for the control. This highlights the value of these modifications for durable, sustainable pavements. Full article

The deposition of combustion residues in the nozzle ring (NR) of a turbocharger turbine stage changes the NR geometry significantly in a random manner. The resultant complex and highly asymmetric geometry induces low engine order (LEO) excitation, which may lead to resonance excitation of rotor blades and high cycle fatigue (HCF) failure. Therefore, a suitable prediction workflow is of great importance for the design and validation phases. The prediction of LEO excitation is, however, computationally expensive as high-fidelity, full annulus CFD models are required. Previous investigations showed that a steady-state computational model consisting of the volute, the NR, and a radial extension is suitable to reduce the computational costs massively and to qualitatively predict the level of LEO forced response. In the current paper, the aerodynamic excitation of 69 real contaminated NRs is analyzed using this simplified approach. The results obtained by the simplified simulation model are used to select 13 contaminated NR geometries, which are then simulated with a model of the entire turbine stage, including the rotor, in a transient time-marching manner to provide high-fidelity simulation results for the verification of the simplified approach. Furthermore, two contamination patterns are analyzed in a more detailed manner regarding their aerodynamic excitation. It is found that the simplified model can be used to identify and classify contamination patterns that lead to high blade vibration amplitudes. In cases where transient effects occurring in the rotor alter the harmonic pressure field significantly, the ability of the simplified approach to predict the LEO excitation is not sufficient. Full article

Phosphorylation of tyrosine is the basic mode of protein function and signal transduction in organisms. This process is regulated by protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) and protein tyrosinases (PTPs). Immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibition motif (ITIM) has been considered as regulating the PTP activity through the interaction with the partner proteins in the cell signal pathway. The ITIM sequences need to be phosphorylated first to active the downstream signaling proteins. To explore potential regulatory mechanisms, the ITIM sequences of two transmembrane immunoglobulin proteins, myelin P0 protein-related protein (PZR) and programmed death 1 (PD-1), were analyzed to investigate their interaction with proteins involved in regulatory pathways. We discovered that phosphorylated ITIM sequences can selectively interact with the tyrosine phosphatase SHP2. Specifically, PZR-N-ITIM (pY) may be critical in the interaction between the ITIM and SH2 domains of SHP2, while PD1-C-ITSM (pY) may play a key role in the interaction between the ITIM and SH2 domains of SHP2. Quite a few proteins were identified containing the SH2 domain, exhibiting phosphorylation-mediated interaction with PZR-ITIM. In this study, 14 proteins with SH2 structural domains were identified by GO analysis on 339 proteins associated to the affinity pull-down of PZR-N-ITIM (pY). Through the SH2 domains, these proteins may interact with PZR-ITIM in a phosphorylation-dependent manner. Full article

In the face of external disturbances affecting the trajectory tracking of quadrotors, a control scheme targeted at accurate position and attitude trajectory tracking was designed. Initially, a quadrotor dynamic model, essential for control design, was derived. Adaptive integral backstepping control (AIBS) was then employed within the position loop, enabling the upper boundaries of disturbances to be estimated through adaptive estimation. Subsequently, a new adaptive backstepping fast nonsingular integral terminal sliding mode control (ABFNITSM) was proposed to enable adherence to the desired Euler angles. Rapid convergence and accurate tracking were facilitated by the incorporation of the nonsingular terminal sliding mode and an integral component. The dead zone technique was deployed to curtail estimation errors, while a saturation function was used to eradicate the phenomenon of chattering. Finally, to validate the proposed control scheme, simulation experiments were conducted in the Simulink environment, and the results were contrasted with those obtained from traditional integral terminal sliding mode control (ITSM) and integral backstepping control (IBS), providing evidence of the effectiveness of the proposed method. Full article

Considerable progress has been achieved in recent decades in understanding the phenomena related to the onset of condensation in steam flows, both experimentally and especially numerically. Nevertheless, there is still a certain disagreement between the different numerical models used. Unfortunately, the available experimental validation data are not sufficiently detailed to allow for proper validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Therefore, this paper presents new experimental data for condensing steam flows, acquired in a supersonic nozzle according to Barschdorff, at the Institute of Thermal Turbomachinery Laboratory (ITSM) at the University of Stuttgart. A steady inlet pressure of approximately 784 mbar was set for three inlet temperatures down to $100.2$ ${}^{\circ }\mathrm{C}$. Condensation onset is accurately captured across the nozzle, using down to 1 mm spatial resolution for both pneumatic and light spectra measurements. CFD simulations were performed using the commercial solver ANSYS CFX. The droplet diameters are numerically overestimated by approximately a factor of 1.5. Disagreement has been found between original Barschdorff’s experiments and measurements at ITSM. However, there is a good agreement in terms of the pressure distribution along the nozzle axis between experimental and numerical results. The reproducibility of the results is excellent. Full article

Large-scale companies across various sectors maintain substantial IT infrastructure to support their operations and provide quality services for their customers and employees. These IT operations are managed by teams who deal directly with incident reports (i.e., those generated automatically through autonomous systems or human operators). (1) Background: Early identification of major incidents can provide a significant advantage for reducing the disruption to normal business operations, especially for preventing catastrophic disruptions, such as a complete system shutdown. (2) Methods: This study conducted an empirical analysis of eleven (11) state-of-the-art models to predict the severity of these incidents using an industry-led use-case composed of 500,000 records collected over one year. (3) Results: The datasets were generated from three stakeholders (i.e., agency, customer, and employee). Separately, the bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), the robustly optimized BERT pre-training approach (RoBERTa), the enhanced representation through knowledge integration (ERNIE 2.0), and the extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) methods performed the best for the agency records (93% AUC), while the convolutional neural network (CNN) was the best model for the rest (employee records at 95% AUC and customer records at 74% AUC, respectively). The average prediction horizon was approximately 150 min, which was significant for real-time deployment. (4) Conclusions: The study provided a comprehensive analysis that supported the deployment of artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps), specifically for incident management within large-scale organizations. Full article

This study examined the effects of the laboratory mixer type and mixing time on a hot-mix asphalt (HMA) using three different types of mixers and four different mixing times. The asphalt mix used is a semi-open graded mix (ESG-10) with 30% reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), and a range of tests were conducted including bitumen extraction by ignition, particle size distribution, maximum specific gravity (G_mm), a SUPERPAVE gyratory compactor (SGC), bulk specific gravity (G_mb), indirect tensile stiffness modulus (ITSM), and indirect tensile strength (IDT). The statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also applied to quantify the effect of mixer type and mixing time. The results indicated that both mixing type and time had a significant effect on the properties of the HMA (volumetric properties and compactability) and that the type of mixer used also affected the performance of the HMA (stiffness and cracking resistance), with some mixers producing asphalt mixes with better properties than others. The study ultimately demonstrated that it is possible to produce a mix that exhibits good performance and meets or does not meet the compactability specifications depending on the mixer type used. Full article

Considering the future shortage of natural aggregates, various researchers have promoted the recycling of by-products into various asphalt pavement types. This paper promoted a double-recycling technique, where thermally treated waste silt was used as a filler for the bituminous skeleton and grouting material of a geopolymer-based semiflexible pavement. Semiflexible pavements (SFP) inherit the flexibility of common asphalt pavements and simultaneously benefit from the rigidity of cement concrete pavements. For this purpose, waste silt obtained from a local asphalt plant was thermally treated at 750 °C and was used as the filler to produce the porous skeleton. Two different materials, including conventional cement-based and a geopolymer-based cement, were used as the grouting material. The geopolymer grout was produced by mixing metakaolin (MK), potassium-based liquid hardener and calcined silt as filler. The porous and grouted samples were characterized in terms of indirect tensile strength (ITS), the indirect tensile strength modulus (ITSM) and moisture sensitivity. The use of thermally treated waste silt as filler in porous asphalt demonstrated promising results and was comparable to the control samples produced with limestone as the filler. However, the control samples grouted with cement-based material outperformed the geopolymer grout in all aspects. Moreover, the addition of calcined silt improved the low-temperature fatigue performance of porous and grouted asphalt pavements. Full article

The present study has been developed to investigate the effect of freeze and thaw (F–T) cycles on the characteristics of highly rubberised asphalt materials to be used as impact-absorbing pavement (IAP) in urban road infrastructures. The tested samples were produced in the laboratory following the dry process incorporation. Two main types of crumb rubber particles in the range of 0–4 mm were used. Moreover, two types of binders, one warm and one cold, were utilised to prove the feasibility of cold-produced admixtures. The temperature range of the F–T procedure was comprised between −18 ± 2 °C (dry freezing), and 4 ± 2 °C (in water), and the cycles were repeated, on the samples, 10 times. At 0, 1, 5, and 10 cycles, the samples were tested with non-destructive and destructive testing methods, including air voids content, ITSM, ITS, and Cantabro loss. The waters of the thawing period were collected, and the pH, electric conductivity, and particle loss were measured. A consequent change in mechanical behaviour has been recorded between warm and cold produced samples. However, the tests found that the F–T cycles had limited influence on the deterioration of the highly rubberised samples. The loss of particles in the thaw waters were identified as being potentially caused by the temperature stresses. The research suggested various ways to optimise the material to enhance the cold-produced layer mechanical performances, aiming at a fume and smell-free industrialised solution and reducing the potential leaching and particle losses. Full article

Cold bitumen emulsion mixtures (CBEMs) are made up of the same materials that are used in hot mixes. However, asphalt emulsion and water are used in such mixes. To date, many countries are still not using these mixes as a structure layer. This can be attributed mainly to their low resistance to rainfall, long curing time and low early strength. The addition of cementitious filler to CBEMs as a clean paving material is a potential technique to achieve superior mechanical qualities. The aim of this research is to compare improved CBEMs that might be used as a wearing surface to hot mix asphalt (HMA). These improvements were carried out through the use of a combination of cement and limestone, or a combination of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and cement kiln dust (CKD). CBEMs were prepared according to Egyptian and British gradations using different percentages of ordinary Portland cement (OPC), CKD, and limestone. This may offer a new cold bitumen emulsion mixture to be used as a structural pavement layer in such countries. The main tests performed for the assessment of the mixes in this research are indirect tensile stiffness modulus, fatigue resistance, and resistance to rutting at different temperatures (20 °C, 45 °C, and 60 °C). The results show that adding OPC to CBEMs enhanced the results in terms of ITSM, rutting and fatigue resistance. However, significant improvements were made by binary filler made of CKD and OPC to the said mechanical properties in terms of both UK and Egyptian gradations. The ITSM values for both CBEM_UK6 and CBEM_Eg6, which contain 80% OPC + 20% CKD, improved by around 8 and 9 times in comparison to CBEM_UK1 and CBEM_Eg1, which contain 20% OPC + 80% L.S, respectively. Full article

The characterization of the receptors negatively modulating lymphocyte function is rapidly advancing, driven by success in tumor immunotherapy. As a result, the number of immune checkpoint receptors characterized from a functional perspective and targeted by innovative drugs continues to expand. This review focuses on the less explored area of the signaling mechanisms of these receptors, of those expressed in T cells. Studies conducted mainly on PD-1, CTLA-4, and BTLA have evidenced that the extracellular parts of some of the receptors act as decoy receptors for activating ligands, but in all instances, the tyrosine phosphorylation of their cytoplasmatic tail drives a crucial inhibitory signal. This negative signal is mediated by a few key signal transducers, such as tyrosine phosphatase, inositol phosphatase, and diacylglycerol kinase, which allows them to counteract TCR-mediated activation. The characterization of these signaling pathways is of great interest in the development of therapies for counteracting tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte exhaustion/anergy independently from the receptors involved. Full article

Information technology service management (ITSM) driven by artificial intelligence (AI), i.e., AITSM, is likely to change business models and enterprise operations substantially, setting off a wave of enterprise AI transformation. Empowerment from AI has brought new vitality and challenges to ITSM capabilities, and enterprises must start thinking about how the capability of AITSM can be reactivated to shape the resilience of business models and meet survival needs in complex and ever-changing environments. To systematically achieve the development of enterprise business model resilience under AITSM, this study combines the actual situation of ITSM and enterprise AI transformation practice and then deconstruct it into three sub-research questions along the primary line of driver identification–model construction–paradigm optimization. We retrieve high-quality literature in the field of information systems from common databases and discuss the topics of AITSM and business model resilience. This study finds that future research should focus on forming an accurate description of the resilience demand of business models in the current era, and thus, better explain the value cocreation process between AITSM and business units. In addition, future research should emphasize the dynamic and strategic nature of business model resilience to study the continuous optimization of business models with the help of AITSM. Full article

With the rapid development of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology, the long-term accumulated GNSS observations of global reference stations have provided valuable data for geodesy and geodynamics studies since the 1990s. Acquiring the precise velocity of GNSS stations is very important for the study of global plate movement, crustal deformation, etc. However, the seismic activities nearby some GNSS observation stations may seriously change the station’s motion trajectory. Therefore, our research was motivated to propose a method allowing for station seismic deformation, and apply it to construct an updated global GNSS velocity field. The main contributions of this work included the following. Firstly, we improved the GNSS data processing procedures and seismic data selection strategies to obtain GNSS coordinate time series with mm-level precision (3–5 and 6–8 mm in the horizontal and vertical, respectively) and information of each site impacted by seismic events, which provides necessary input data for further analysis. Secondly, an Integrated Time Series Method (ITSM) concerning the effect of seismic deformation was proposed to model the station’s nonlinear motion accurately. Distinguished with existing studies, all parameters including seismic relaxation time can be simultaneously estimated by ITSM, which improves the accuracy and reliability of GNSS station velocity significantly. Thirdly, to optimize the ITSM-based model, the influences of seismic relaxation time (a. 0.1 × true, b. 10 × true, c. true), parameterization mode (a. Offset + Velocity, b. Offset + Velocity + PSD, c. Offset + Velocity + PSD + Period), and the Post-Seismic Deformation (PSD) model (a. None, b. Exp, c. Log, d. Exp + Log) on results of GNSS time series analyzing were discussed. The results showed that the fitting accuracy of GNSS displacements was better than 5 mm and 10 mm in the horizontal and vertical, respectively. Finally, the global GNSS station velocity field (referred to as GGV2020 hereafter) was refined by ITSM using global GNSS observations and seismic data during 1990–2020. This not only helps interpret plate tectonic motion, establish and maintain a Dynamic Terrestrial Reference Frame (DTRF) but also contributes to better investigating geodynamic processes. GGV2020 results showed that the accuracy of global velocity was better than 1 mm/a, and the averages of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) were 0.19 mm/a, 0.19 mm/a, and 0.33 mm/a in the north, east, and up direction, respectively. Besides, the RMSE obeys normal distribution. Compared with ITRF2014, there was a difference of about 1–2 mm/a between them due to differences in terms of observation span, processing model, and geodetic technology. Moreover, GGV2020 is expected to enrich and update the existing velocity field products to describe the characteristics of regional crustal movement in more detail, especially in Antarctica. Full article

The homogeneity of asphalt mixtures blended with reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) is affected by many factors. Due to the complicated compositions of recycled asphalt mixtures, the inhomogeneity issue might cause insufficient mechanical properties of asphalt mixtures, even though a design method was appropriately adopted. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the influence of mixing conditions on the homogeneity of asphalt mixtures blended with RAP materials. This study focused on the macro-scale homogeneity of produced asphalt mixtures. Specifically, asphalt mixtures incorporated with 40% RAP content were produced in a laboratory using different mixing times and mixing temperatures. A multi-direction indirect tensile stiffness modulus (ITSM) test was proposed to quantify the homogeneity of produced samples. In addition, the digital image processing (DIP) method was used to identify the distribution of aggregates and RAP binder. The results indicated that the influence of mixing time on the macro-homogeneity of asphalt mixtures indicated that a longer mixing time was favorable for the material dispersion. The influence of mixing temperature mainly rested on two perspectives. One was that the temperature variation induced the change of binder viscosity. The other was that the temperature influences the diffusion process between RAP binder and new bitumen, which further affected the mechanical performance of produced asphalt mixtures. Full article

Unsteady pressure fluctuations measured by fast-response pressure transducers mounted in a low-pressure turbine cascade are compared to unsteady simulation results. Three differing simulation approaches are considered, one time-integration method and two harmonic balance methods either resolving or averaging the time-dependent components within the turbulence model. The observations are used to evaluate the capability of the harmonic balance solver to predict the transient pressure fluctuations acting on the investigated stator surface. Wakes of an upstream rotor are generated by moving cylindrical bars at a prescribed rotational speed that refers to a frequency of $f\sim 500$ Hz. The excitation at the rear part of the suction side is essentially driven by the presence of a separation bubble and is therefore highly dependent on the unsteady behavior of turbulence. In order to increase the stability of the investigated harmonic balance solver, a developed Lanczos-type filter method is applied if the turbulence model is considered in an unsteady fashion. Full article