Rainfall-induced landslide has caused significant damage to structures and casualties in the past decades, and it is of great importance to assess the post-failure behavior of slopes. This study proposes a probabilistic framework to evaluate the hazards associated with landslide runout arising from loose fill slope failures. The failure process is simulated by the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method, which is capable of capturing large deformations of landslides. The shear strength parameters of the soils are modeled as random variables, and random field simulations are performed to explore the effects of soil variability on the runout distance. Besides, the uncertainty in rainfall characteristics is represented by the Gumbel distribution, with the ensuing rainfall infiltration simulated in multiple seepage analyses to obtain pore pressure profiles in the slope, which are then adopted as initial conditions for the SPH method. Combining these various sources of uncertainty, the hazard factors indicating the risks for nearby structures are quantified based on the response uncertainty in landslide runout distances. To demonstrate this framework, the hazard levels associated with two typical layouts of loose fill slopes are evaluated, and the results may serve as risk zoning indicators for adjacent developments.
A high defect density of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) is one of the main reasons for a low efficiency of a-Si:H solar cells. An increase in defect density of conventional a-Si:H is brought about by light exposure (light induced degradation). In the present work we employed a multi-hollow discharge plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method to control the stability of a-Si:H films. The films deposited in the downstream region and in the upstream region near the discharges of the multi-hollow discharge plasma CVD reactor show light induced degradation, while ones in the upstream region far from the discharges show no degradation. The deposition rate of the species generated in the discharges decreases with increasing the distance between the substrate and the discharge, according to their surface reaction probabilities and diffusion velocities.
Plasmid DNA is used as a vector for gene therapy and DNA vaccination; therefore, the establishment of a mass production method is required. Membrane filtration is widely employed as a separation method suitable for the mass production of plasmid DNA. Furthermore, the separation of plasmid DNA using microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes is being investigated. Because plasmid DNA has a circular structure, it undergoes significant deformation during filtration and easily permeates the membrane, hindering the selection of separation membranes based on molecular weight. In this study, we applied affinity microfiltration to plasmid DNA purification. α-Fe2O3 with an isoelectric point of approximately 8 and a particle size of 0.5 μm was selected as the ligand for two-stage affinity microfiltration of plasmid DNA. In the first stage of microfiltration, the experiment was conducted at a pH of 5, and a cake of α-Fe2O3 with bound plasmid DNA was obtained. Next, liquid permeation (pH 9 and 10) through the cake was performed to elute the bound plasmid DNA. Plasmid DNA was eluted during the early phase of liquid permeation at pH 10. Furthermore, agarose gel analysis confirmed the usefulness of the two-stage affinity microfiltration method with adsorption and desorption for plasmid DNA purification.
We fabricated a Ge-on-insulator (GOI) structure by the Ge condensation method and characterized the SiGe layer during the condensation process by X-ray reciprocal space mapping and synchrotron microbeam X-ray diffraction. The crystalline quality of the SiGe layer degraded during the initial 1 h of oxidation at 1050 °C and it also rapidly degraded during 1 h of oxidation at 900 °C immediately before the formation of GOI structures. The slight degradation was caused by annealing in Ar, indicating that the degradation during the initial 1-h condensation is accelerated by Ge atoms being ejected from the oxidized interface.
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