• Title/Summary/Keyword: Tsinghua University

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Biosynthesis of Chondroitin in Engineered Corynebacterium glutamicum

  • Cheng, Fangyu;Luozhong, Sijin;Yu, Huimin;Guo, Zhigang
    • Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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    • v.29 no.3
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    • pp.392-400
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    • 2019
  • Chondroitin, the precursor of chondroitin sulfate, which is an important polysaccharide, has drawn significant attention due to its applications in many fields. In the present study, a heterologous biosynthesis pathway of chondroitin was designed in a GRAS (generally recognized as safe) strain C. glutamicum. CgkfoC and CgkfoA genes with host codon preference were synthesized and driven by promoter Ptac, which was confirmed as a strong promoter via GFPuv reporter assessment. In a lactate dehydrogenase (ldh) deficient host, intracellular chondroitin titer increased from 0.25 to 0.88 g/l compared with that in a wild-type host. Moreover, precursor enhancement via overexpressing precursor synthesizing gene ugdA further improved chondroitin titers to 1.09 g/l. Chondroitin production reached 1.91 g/l with the engineered strain C. glutamicum ${\Delta}L-CgCAU$ in a 5-L fed-batch fermentation with a single distribution $M_w$ of 186 kDa. This work provides an alternative, safe and novel means of producing chondroitin for industrial applications.

Probabilistic evaluation of chloride ingress process in concrete structures considering environmental characteristics

  • Taisen, Zhao;Yi, Zhang;Kefei, Li;Junjie, Wang
    • Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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    • v.84 no.6
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    • pp.831-849
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    • 2022
  • One of the most prevalent causes of reinforced concrete (RC) structural deterioration is chloride-induced corrosion. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive insight into the environmental effect of RC's chloride ingress process. The first step is to investigate how relative humidity, temperature, and wind influence chloride ingress into concrete. The probability of initiation time of chloride-induced corrosion is predicted using a probabilistic model that considers these aspects. Parametric analysis is conducted on several factors impacting the corrosion process, including the depth of concrete cover, surface chloride concentration, relative humidity, and temperature to expose environmental features. According to the findings, environmental factors such as surface chloride concentration, relative humidity and temperature substantially impact on the time to corrosion initiation. The long- and short-distance impacts are also examined. The meteorological data from the National Meteorological Center of China are collected and used to analyze the environmental characteristics of the chloride ingress issue for structures along China's coastline. Finally, various recommendations are made for improving durability design against chloride attacks.

An optimization design study of producing transuranic nuclides in high flux reactor

  • Wei Xu;Jian Li;Jing Zhao;Ding She;Zhihong Liu;Heng Xie;Lei Shi
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.55 no.8
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    • pp.2723-2733
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    • 2023
  • Transuranic nuclides (such as 238Pu, 252Cf, 249Bk, etc.) have a wide range of application in industry, medicine, agriculture, and other fields. However, due to the complex conversion chain and remarkable fission losses in the process of transuranic nuclides production, the generation amounts are extremely low. High flux reactor with high neutron flux and flexible irradiation channels, is regarded as the promising candidate for producing transuranic nuclides. It is of great significance to increase the conversion ratio of transuranic nuclides, resulting in higher efficiency and better economy. In this paper, we perform an optimization design evaluation of producing transuranic nuclides in high flux reactor, which includes optimization design of irradiation target and influence study of reactor core loading. It is demonstrated that the production rate increases with appropriately determined target material and target structure. The target loading scheme in the irradiation channel also has a significant influence on the production of transuranic nuclides.

(K,Na)NbO3-based Lead-free Piezoelectric Materials: An Encounter with Scanning Probe Microscopy

  • Zhang, Mao-Hua;Thong, Hao Cheng;Lu, Yi Xue;Sun, Wei;Li, Jing-Feng;Wang, Ke
    • Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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    • v.54 no.4
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    • pp.261-271
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    • 2017
  • Environment-friendly $(K,Na)NbO_3-based$ (KNN) lead-free piezoelectric materials have been studied extensively in the past decade. Significant progress has been made in this field, manifesting competitive piezoelectric performance with that of lead-based, for specific application scenarios. Further understanding of the relationship between high piezoelectricity and microstructure or more precisely, ferroelectric domain structure, domain wall pinning effect, domain wall conduction and local polarization switching underpins the continuous advancement of piezoelectric properties, with the help of piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). In this review, we will present the fundamentals of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and its cardinal derivative in piezoelectric and ferroelectric world, PFM. Some representative operational modes and a variety of recent applications in KNN-based piezoelectric materials are presented. We expect that PFM and its combination with some newly developed technology will continue to provide great insight into piezoelectric materials and structures, and will play a valuable role in promoting the performance to a new level.

Development of a double-sliding friction damper (DSFD)

  • Shen, Shaodong;Pan, Peng;Sun, Jiangbo;Gong, Runhua;Wang, Haishen;Li, Wei
    • Smart Structures and Systems
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.151-162
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    • 2017
  • In practical engineering, the friction damper is a widely used energy dissipation device because of its large deformation capacity, stable energy dissipation capability, and cost effectiveness. While based on conventional friction dampers, the double-sliding friction damper (DSFD) being proposed is different in that it features two sliding friction forces, i.e., small and large sliding friction forces, rather than a single-sliding friction force of ordinary friction dampers. The DSFD starts to deform when the force sustained exceeds the small-sliding friction force, and stops deforming when the deformation reaches a certain value. If the force sustained exceeds the large sliding friction force, it continues to deform. Such a double-sliding behavior is expected to endow structures equipped with the DSFD better performance in both small and large earthquakes. The configuration and working mechanism of the DSFD is described and analyzed. Quasi-static loading tests and finite element analyses were conducted to investigate its hysteretic behavior. Finally, time history analysis of the single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) and multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) systems were performed to investigate the seismic performance of DSFD-equipped structures. For the purpose of comparison, tests on systems equipped with conventional friction dampers were also performed. The proposed DSFD can be realized perfectly, and the DSFD-equipped structures provide better performances than those equipped with conventional friction dampers in terms of interstory drift and floor acceleration. In particular, for the MDOF system, the DSFD helps the structural system to have a uniform distributed interstory drift.

A Two-Point Modulation Spread-Spectrum Clock Generator With FIR-Embedded Binary Phase Detection and 1-Bit High-Order ΔΣ Modulation

  • Xu, Ni;Shen, Yiyu;Lv, Sitao;Liu, Han;Rhee, Woogeun;Wang, Zhihua
    • JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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    • v.16 no.4
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    • pp.425-435
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    • 2016
  • This paper describes a spread-spectrum clock generation method by utilizing a ${\Delta}{\Sigma}$ digital PLL (DPLL) which is solely based on binary phase detection and does not require a linear time-to-digital converter (TDC) or other linear digital-to-time converter (DTC) circuitry. A 1-bit high-order ${\Delta}{\Sigma}$ modulator and a hybrid finite-impulse response (FIR) filter are employed to mitigate the phase-folding problem caused by the nonlinearity of the bang-bang phase detector (BBPD). The ${\Delta}{\Sigma}$ DPLL employs a two-point modulation technique to further enhance linearity at the turning point of a triangular modulation profile. We also show that the two-point modulation is useful for the BBPLL to improve the spread-spectrum performance by suppressing the frequency deviation at the input of the BBPD, thus reducing the peak phase deviation. Based on the proposed architecture, a 3.2 GHz spread-spectrum clock generator (SSCG) is implemented in 65 nm CMOS. Experimental results show that the proposed SSCG achieves peak power reductions of 18.5 dB and 11 dB with 10 kHz and 100 kHz resolution bandwidths respectively, consuming 6.34 mW from a 1 V supply.

A modified JFNK with line search method for solving k-eigenvalue neutronics problems with thermal-hydraulics feedback

  • Lixun Liu;Han Zhang;Yingjie Wu;Baokun Liu;Jiong Guo;Fu Li
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • v.55 no.1
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    • pp.310-323
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    • 2023
  • The k-eigenvalue neutronics/thermal-hydraulics coupling calculation is a key issue for reactor design and analysis. Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov (JFNK) method, featured with super-linear convergence rate and high efficiency, has been attracting more and more attention to solve the multi-physics coupling problem. However, it may converge to the high-order eigenmode because of the multiple solutions nature of the k-eigenvalue form of multi-physics coupling issue. Based on our previous work, a modified JFNK with a line search method is proposed in this work, which can find the fundamental eigenmode together with thermal-hydraulics feedback in a wide range of initial values. In detail, the existing modified JFNK method is combined with the line search strategy, so that the intermediate iterative solution can avoid a sudden divergence and be adjusted into a convergence basin smoothly. Two simplified 2-D homogeneous reactor models, a PWR model, and an HTR model, are utilized to evaluate the performance of the newly proposed JFNK method. The results show that the performance of this proposed JFNK is more robust than the existing JFNK-based methods.