Regional debris flow susceptibility analysis based on principal component analysis and self-organizing map: a case study in Southwest China

A method was developed to analyze the susceptibilities of 541 regional basins affected by debris flows at the Wudongde Dam site in southwest China. Determining susceptibility requires information on source material quantity and occurrence frequency. However, the large number of debris flows can hinder the individual field investigation in a each small basin. Factors that may trigger debris flows can be identified using remotely sensed interpretation information. Susceptibility analysis can then be conducted based on these factors. In this study, SPOT5 satellite imagery, digital elevation models (DEM), a lithology distribution map, and rainfall monitoring data were used to identify 12 debris flow trigger factors: basin relief ratio, slope gradient in the initiation zone, drainage density, downslope curvature of the main channel, vegetation coverage, main channel aspect, topographic wetness index, Melton’s ruggedness number, lithology, annual rainfall, form factor, and cross-slope curvature of the transportation zone. Principal component analysis was used to obtain the eight principal components of these factors that contribute to susceptibility results. Then, a self-organizing map method was adopted to analyze the principal components, which resulted in a debris flow susceptibility classification. Field validation of 26 debris flow basins was used to evaluate the errors of the susceptibility classification, as well as assess the causes of such errors. The study found that principle component analysis and self-organizing map methodologies are good predictors of basin susceptibility to debris flows.     

Optimal routing for waste collection: a case study in Singapore

ABSTRACT

To collect and dispose growing amounts of municipal solid waste (MSW) changed to be a hot topic along with the rapid urbanization in past decades. Cities are more and more dependent on the incineration instead of landfilling due to the cost-efficiency and environmental concerns. Considering the limited number of incineration plants and complicated situation of transportation in both spatial and temporal dimensions in different cities, the optimal routing for waste collection turns to be meaningful research topic. In this research, the ant colony optimization (ACO)-based multi-objective routing model coupled with min-max model and Dijkstra’s algorithm is proposed to address the question of which route to take from these waste-generating points to the target incineration plant(s) considering travel time, accident probability (black spots), and population exposure, so as to support the routing decision-making. The model is successfully implemented in Singapore and the effectiveness of the model has also been justified. Besides, few limitations of this research have also been discussed, some of which would also be the future directions of our research, especially the design and integration of a web-based routing decision-making support system.     

Correspondence between the large volcanic eruptions and ENSO events over AD 1525–2000

ENSO is an interannual mode which may be affected by external forcing, such as volcanic eruptions. Based on the reconstructed volcanic eruptions chronology and ENSO sequences, both 195 large volcanic eruptions(VEI≥4) and 398 ENSO(El Ni?o and La Ni?a) events were extracted from 1525 to 2000. An analysis of the correspondence between the large volcanic eruptions and ENSO events was performed by matching the large volcanic eruptions with the types and magnitudes of ENSO events present in the 0–2 years after the eruptions. The results show the following:(1) The percentages of ENSO events within the 3 years after the large eruptions had increased to 68.3% from 31.7% compared with those with no-eruptions in the previous 0–2 years. In addition, the ratio of El Ni?o to La Ni?a events turned from 2:3 to 1:1, and more El Ni?o events occurred in the 0 year after eruptions in the low-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the tropics but more La Ni?a events occurred in the 0 year after in the high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.(2) After the eruptions, the weak(W) El Ni?o events had increased by 8 percentage points and the very strong(VS) El Ni?o events had decreased by 10 percentage points; conversely, there was a decrease by 15 percentage points of the weak La Ni?a events and an increase by 11.4 percentage points of the very strong La Ni?a events. Specifically, the percentages of strong La Ni?a events increased to a peak at 1(+1) year after the eruptions.(3) The percentage of eruptions followed by single-year ENSO was the greatest. The percentage of ENSO events that occurred in the consecutive 2 years following an eruption was approximately equal to the percentage of events that occurred consecutively 3 years following an eruption, and both sets of ENSO magnitudes showed a decreasing trend.     

Multiple Unmanned Underwater Vehicles Consensus Control with Unmeasurable Velocity Information and Environmental Disturbances Under Switching Directed Topologies

China Ocean Engineering - A consensus algorithm proposed in the paper is applied to tackle remarkable problems of unmeasurable velocities, the environmental disturbances, and the limited...     

Screening of extraction methods for glycoproteins from jellyfish (Rhopilema esculentum) oral-arms by high performance liquid chromatography

In order to select an optimum extraction method for the target glycoprotein (TGP) from jellyfish (Rhopilema esculentum) oral-arms, a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-assay for the determination of the TGP was developed. Purified target glycoprotein was taken as a standard glycoprotein. The results showed that the calibration curves for peak area plotted against concentration for TGP were linear (r = 0.9984, y = 4.5895x+47.601) over concentrations ranging from 50 to 400 mgL-1. The mean extraction recovery was 97.84% (CV2.60%). The fractions containing TGP were isolated from jellyfish (R. esculentum) oral-arms by four extraction methods: 1) water extraction (WE), 2) phosphate buffer solution (PBS) extraction (PE), 3) ultrasound-assisted water extraction (UA-WE), 4) ultrasound-assisted PBS extraction (UA-PE). The lyophilized extract was dissolved in Milli-Q water and analyzed directly on a short TSK-GEL G4000PWXL (7.8 mm×300 mm) column. Our results indicated that the UA-PE method was the optimum extraction method selected by HPLC.     

Isolation and Characterization of Collagen from Squid(Ommastreoges bartrami) Skin

Collagen of squid (Ommastrephes bartrami) skin was examined in the present study. Histology showed that collagen fiber in the skin was partially cross-linked with muscle fiber. Acid-solubilized collagen (ASC) and pepsin-solubilized collagen (PSC) were extracted from the skin and characterized. The results of amino acid composition and electrophoretic patterns revealed that ASC and PSC were both type Ⅰ collagen, containing α1 and α2 chains. FTIR (fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) investigations con-firmed the existence of helical arrangements in PSC of squid skin. The denaturation temperature (Td) and shrinkage temperature (Ts)of PSC were 29.4℃ and 52.8℃, respectively.     

Adaptive output feedback control based on DRFNN for AUV

The tracking control problem of AUV in six degrees-of-freedom (DOF) is addressed in this paper. In general, the velocities of the vehicles are very difficult to be accurately measured, which causes full state feedback scheme to be not feasible. Hence, an adaptive output feedback controller based on dynamic recurrent fuzzy neural network (DRFNN) is proposed, in which the location information is only needed for controller design. The DRFNN is used to online estimate the dynamic uncertain nonlinear mapping. Compared to the conventional neural network, DRFNN can clearly improve the tracking performance of AUV due to its less inputs and stronger memory features. The restricting condition for the estimation of the external disturbances and network's approximation errors, which is often given in the existing literatures, is broken in this paper. The stability analysis is given by Lyapunov theorem. Simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.     

Sequence analysis and quantitative detection of Norwalk-like viruses in cultured oysters of China

We isolated 4 Norwalk-like viruses (NLVs) contaminated oysters from 33 Chinese oysters collected from local commer-cial sources of Shandong Province. After amplification of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) region of NLVs genomes with RT-PCR, the open reading frame 1 (ORF1) of the RdRp was sequenced and subjected to multiple-sequence alignment. The re-suits showed that NLVs in the four isolates belong to genogroup Ⅱ. The sequence comparison showed that the similarity between four Chinese oyster isolates were higher than 99.0%, which indicated that NLVs prevalent in close areas have high homogeneity in genome sequences. In addition, the most conserved sequences between diverse NLVs were used to design primers and TaqMan probes, then the real-time quantitative PCR assay was performed. According to the standard curve of GII NLVs, the original amounts (copies) of NLVs in positive patient's fecal isolate, positive Japanese oyster isolate, and the Chinese oyster isolate were 8.9×108, 1.25×108 and 4.7×101 respectively. The detecting limit of NLVs was 1×101 copies. This study will be helpful for routine diagnosis of NLVs pathogens in foods and thus for avoiding food poisoning in the future.     

不同海域沉积物对尿素吸附的实验模拟研究

本文对采自渤海、黄海和东海3个典型海域的沉积物进行了尿素吸附/解吸的实验室模拟研究,用Freundlich吸附模型和Henry吸附模型分析了不同沉积物对尿素吸附的热力学特性,并研究了温度、沉积物粒径、有机质含量等因素对尿素在沉积物表面吸附的影响。结果表明,沉积物对尿素的吸附/解吸过程总体呈现3个阶段:快速吸附阶段（0~5 h）—慢速吸附阶段（5~12 h）—平衡阶段（12 h之后）。当水体中的尿素浓度较低时,沉积物解吸释放尿素,随着上覆水中尿素浓度逐渐增加,沉积物对上覆水中的尿素产生吸附行为,各海区沉积物对尿素的吸附能力由强至弱依次为渤海、东海、黄海,这可能与沉积物的类型有关。Freundlich方程和Henry方程均可模拟沉积物对尿素的吸附,温度、粒径以及沉积物中有机质含量等因素均对尿素在沉积物上的吸附产生影响,随着温度升高,尿素在沉积物上的吸附量变小,沉积物粒径越小,有机质含量越高,吸附尿素的能力越强,因此,揭示尿素在沉积物表面的环境行为时,必须考虑以上因素的影响。