Monitoring and control of wind-induced vibrations of hanger ropes of a suspension bridge

Xu G. Hua,Zheng Q. Chen,Xu Lei,Qin Wen,Hua W. Niu 국제구조공학회 2019 Smart Structures and Systems, An International Jou Vol.23 No.6

In August 2012, during the passage of the typhoon Haikui (1211), large amplitude vibrations were observed on long hangers of the Xihoumen suspension Bridge, which destroyed a few viscoelastic dampers originally installed to connect a pair of hanger ropes transversely. The purpose of this study is to identify the cause of vibration and to develop countermeasures against vibration. Field measurements have been conducted in order to correlate the wind and vibration characteristics of hangers. Furthermore, a replica aeroelastic model of prototype hangers consisting of four parallel ropes was used to study the aeroelastic behavior of hanger ropes and to examine the effect of the rigid spacers on vibration mitigation. It is shown that the downstream hanger rope experiences the most violent elliptical vibration for certain wind direction, and the vibration is mainly attributed to wake interference of parallel hanger ropes. Based on wind tunnel tests and field validation, it is confirmed that four rigid spacers placed vertically at equal intervals are sufficient to suppress the wake-induced vibrations. Since the deployment of spacers on hangers, server hanger vibrations and clash of hanger ropes are never observed.

Heat Stability of the Antimicrobial Activity of Selected Plant Extracts against Aeromonas hydrophila

Hua Xu,Azlin Mustapha,안주희 한국식품위생안전성학회 2008 한국식품위생안전성학회지 Vol.23 No.1

Antimicrobial stability of grape seed extract (ActiVinTM), pine bark extract (Pycnogenol), and oleo-resin rosemary (Herbalox) on the growth of Aeromonas hydrophila was investigated in cooked ground beef. Whencompared to the control, the populations of A. hydrophila were most effectively reduced by 4.06 log CFU/g for 1%Pycnogenoladded after cooking at 10 days of refrigerated storage, followed by 3.06 log CFU/g for 1% Pycnogenoladded before cooking and 1.36 log CFU/g for ActiVinTM. Bacteriostatic and bactericidal activities were observed forPycnogenoladded before and after cooking, respectively. Pycnogenolconsists of heat-labile and heat-stable com-pounds. ActiVinTM and Pycnogenol could be considered for use as multifunctional preservatives in meat and meatproducts.

Lovastatin derivative dehydrolovastatin ameliorates ulcerative colitis in mice by suppressing NF-κB and inflammatory cytokine expression

Xu Zhang,Qing-Hua Deng,Jian-Hua Deng,Sheng-Ju Wang,Qiu Chen 대한생리학회-대한약리학회 2020 The Korean Journal of Physiology & Pharmacology Vol.24 No.2

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is associated with intestinal immune imbalance and inflammatory response. Because dehydrolovastatin (DLVT), a derivative of lovastatin, has been recently shown to inhibit inflammation and relieve immune arthritis induced by chemical stimuli, we studied its effect and possible mechanism on UC induced by dextran sulfate sodium. The BALB/c mice were classified into six groups: normal control group, model group, DLVT high dose group, DLVT low dose group, salazosulfapyridine (SASP) group and lovastatin (LVT) group. The disease activity indices of UC and pathological changes were investigated. The myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity in colon tissue and inflammatory factors such as IL-6, IL-10, IL-17, and TNF- in the serum were analyzed by ELISA, while the expression of NF-B p65 protein in colon tissue was detected by immunohistochemistry and western blot. DLVT relieved the disease activity indices and pathological damage of the UC mice. Furthermore, DLVT significantly decreased MPO activity and improved the imbalance of inflammatory cytokines through inhibiting the expression of NF-B p65. Meanwhile, the positive drug of SASP has a similar effect to DLVT, but the effect of DLVT in both decreasing IL-17, TNF-, and increasing IL-10 was significantly stronger than that of SASP. These results suggest that DLVT may ameliorates the symptoms of UC.

Kinetic evaluation of physiological heterogeneity in bacterial spores during thermal inactivation

Xu, Hua,He, Xinlong,Gou, Jingyu,Lee, Hyeon-Yong,Ahn, Juhee The Microbiology Research Foundation 2009 The Journal of general and applied microbiology Vol.55 No.4

Diabetes Mellitus Reduces Prostate Cancer Risk - No Function of Age at Diagnosis or Duration of Disease

Xu, Hua,Mao, Shan-Hua,Ding, Guan-Xiong,Ding, Qiang,Jiang, Hao-Wen Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2013 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.14 No.1

Background: Prior studies examining the relation between diabetes mellitus (DM) and prostate cancer risk have reported controversial findings. We examined this association by conducting a detailed meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed literature. Methods: A comprehensive search for articles of MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and bibliographies of retrieved articles published up to November, 2012 was performed. Methodological quality assessment of the trials was based on the Newcastle-Ottawa Scaleq and the meta-analysis was performed using STATA 12.0. Dose-response regression was conducted with SPSS 19.0. Results: We included 29 studies in the meta-analysis (13 case-control studies, 16 cohort studies), and found an inverse association between DM and prostate cancer (relative risk (RR) 0.84, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.78-0.91). An inverse association was also observed in non-Asian populations (RR 0.81, 95% CI 0.76-0.87) and population-based studies (RR 0.80, 95% CI 0.77-0.91). No statistical significance was found of the association between prostate cancer risk and the duration of DM (p=0.338), and risk seemed not related with the age of DM diagnosis. Conclusions: This study suggested an inverse relationship between DM and prostate cancer, but without links to duration of disease or age of diagnosis.

Genetic Polymorphism of Interleukin-1A (IL-1A), IL-1B, and IL-1 Receptor Antagonist (IL-1RN) and Prostate Cancer Risk

Xu, Hua,Ding, Qiang,Jiang, Hao-Wen Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.20

Purpose: We aimed to investigate the associations between polymorphisms of interleukin-1A (IL-1A), IL-1B, and IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RN) and prostate cancer (PCa) risk. Materials and Methods: A comprehensive search for articles of MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and bibliographies of retrieved articles published up to August 3, 2014 was performed. Methodological quality assessment of the trials was based on a standard quality scoring system. The meta-analysis was performed using STATA 12.0. Results: We included 9 studies (1 study for IL-1A, 5 studies for IL-1B, and 3 studies for IL-1RN), and significant association was found between polymorphisms of IL-1B-511 (rs16944) as well as IL-1B-31 (rs1143627) and PCa risk. IL-1B-511 (rs16944) polymorphism was significantly associated with PCa risk in homozygote and recessive models, as well as allele contrast (TT vs CC: OR, 0.74; 95%CI, 0.58-0.94; P=0.012; TT vs TC+CC; OR, 0.79; 95%CI, 0.63-0.98; P=0.033; T vs C: OR, 0.86; 95%CI, 0.77-0.96; P=0.008). The association between IL-1B-31 (rs1143627) polymorphism and PCa risk was weakly significant under a heterozygote model (OR, 1.35; 95%CI, 1.00-1.80; P=0.047). Conclusions: Sequence variants in IL-1B-511 (rs16944) and IL-1B-31 (rs1143627) are significantly associated with PCa risk, which provides additional novel evidence that proinflammatory cytokines and inflammation play an important role in the etiology of PCa.

LDBAS: Location-aware Data Block Allocation Strategy for HDFS-based Applications in the Cloud

( Hua Xu ),( Weiqing Liu ),( Guansheng Shu ),( Jing Li ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2018 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.12 No.1

Big data processing applications have been migrated into cloud gradually, due to the advantages of cloud computing. Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is one of the fundamental support systems for big data processing on MapReduce-like frameworks, such as Hadoop and Spark. Since HDFS is not aware of the co-location of virtual machines in the cloud, the default scheme of block allocation in HDFS does not fit well in the cloud environments behaving in two aspects: data reliability loss and performance degradation. In this paper, we present a novel location-aware data block allocation strategy (LDBAS). LDBAS jointly optimizes data reliability and performance for upper-layer applications by allocating data blocks according to the locations and different processing capacities of virtual nodes in the cloud. We apply LDBAS to two stages of data allocation of HDFS in the cloud (the initial data allocation and data recovery), and design the corresponding algorithms. Finally, we implement LDBAS into an actual Hadoop cluster and evaluate the performance with the benchmark suite BigDataBench. The experimental results show that LDBAS can guarantee the designed data reliability while reducing the job execution time of the I/O-intensive applications in Hadoop by 8.9% on average and up to 11.2% compared with the original Hadoop in the cloud.

Double Modification of Electrode Surface for the Selective Detection of Epinephrine and Its Application to Flow Injection Amperometric Analysis

Xu, Guang-Ri,Qi, Xin-hua,Yang, Fengxia,Lee, Jae-Joon,Xu, Ming-Lu,Zhang, Yu-Ping,Kim, Sunghyun WILEY-VCH Verlag 2009 Electroanalysis Vol.21 No.22

<P>A glassy carbon electrode having two polymer layers has been applied to selectively detect epinephrine. The inner layer formed by electropolymerization of macrocyclic nickel complex functioned as an electrocatalyst for epinephrine oxidation and the outer layer composed of hydrolyzed polyurethane γ-benzyl L-glutamate as a screening layer. Differential pulse voltammetry showed almost 100% recovery of epinephrine even in 100-fold excess of interferents. When applied to a dual glassy carbon electrode as an amperometric detector in flow injection analysis, a linear response over 0.1 μM and 10 μM was obtained. Recovery tested for 5-fold diluted human urine samples was 97.5%.</P>

High Pressure Inactivation Kinetics of Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes in Milk, Orange Juice, and Tomato Juice

Hua Xu,Hyeon-Yong Lee,Juhee Ahn 한국식품과학회 2009 Food Science and Biotechnology Vol.18 No.4

Effects of pressure come-up and holding times on the inactivation of Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes were evaluated in deionized water, milk, orange juice, and tomato juice with pH 6.76, 6.85, 3.46, and 4.11, respectively. The inoculated samples were subjected to high pressure treatments at 300, 400, and 500 ㎫ for less than10 min at 30℃. At 500 ㎫, the numbers of S. enterica and L. monocytogenes in deionized water, orange juice, and tomato juice were reduced by more than 6 log CFU/㎖ during the come-up time. Compared to orange and tomato juices, milk showed a considerable baroprotective effect against S. enterica and L. monocytogenes. At 300 ㎫, the D values for S. enterica in milk, orange juice, and tomato juice were 0.94, 0.41, and 0.45 min, while those for L. monocytogenes were 9.56, 1.11, and 0.94 min, respectively. Low pH resulted in a noticeable synergistic effect on the inactivation of S. enterica and L. monocytogenes in orange and tomato juices. Therefore, these results might provide more useful information for designing the entire high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) conditions, taking the come-up time reduction, and food system.

Functional Properties of Squid By-products Fermented by Probiotic Bacteria

Hua Xu,Jingyu Gou,Geun-Pyo Choi,Hyeon-Yong Lee,Juhee Ahn 한국식품과학회 2009 Food Science and Biotechnology Vol.18 No.3

The effects of probiotic bacteria on the functional properties of squid by-products were investigated during fermentation. Bifidobacterium longum, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus brevis, Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus paracasei, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, and Pediococcus acidilactici were used to ferment the squid by-products for 96 hr at 37℃. The numbers of all probiotics increased to 10?-10? CFU/g after 96 hr fermentation. No substantial pH changes were observed. L. rhamnosus and P. acidilactici showed the highest 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging activities. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) secreted from B cells increased after adding the extracts of probiotic-fermented squid by-products. The human NK cells were grown well in the B cell-growing broth cultured with the extracts of squid by-products fermented by L. rhamnosus and P. acidilactici. Trimethylamine (TMA) and dimethylamine (DMA) contents were significantly decreased after probiotic-fermentation. Therefore, L. rhamnosus GG and P. acidilactici can be used for the fermentation of squid by-products and their use would provide benefits in functional food products.