Effects of the windshield inclination angle on head/brain injuries in car-to-pedestrian collisions using computational biomechanics models

Car-to-pedestrian collision(CPC)accidents occur frequently,and pedestrians often suffer serious head/brain injuries.One major cause is the primary impact with the windshield.Here,we use an umerical sim ulation method to study the influence of the windshield in-clination angle of a passenger car on pedestrian head/brain injury due to CPC accidents.The range of the windshield inclination angle was set at 24°-50°,with an interval of 2°.The results show that the windshield angle significantly affects the pedestrian kine-matics and exerts different effects on the head injury when evaluating with various head injury criteria.Regarding the head peak linear/rotational acceleration and acceleration-based head injury criterion(HIC)/rotational injury criterion(RIC),the predictions at the secondary impact stage have no clear relationship with the windshield angle(R^(2)=0.04,0.07,0.03 and 0.26,respectively)and their distributions are scattered.In the primary impact,the peak linear acceleration and HIC show a weak trend of first decreasing and then increasing with the increasing of the windshield angle,and the rotational acceleration and RIC tend to remain relatively con-stant.Regarding the cum ulative strain dama ge measure(CSDM)criterion,the predictions at the primary impact are slightly lower than those at the secondary impact,and the trend of first decreasing and then increasing with the increase in the windshield angle is observed at both impact stages.When the windshield inclination angle is approximately 32°-40°,the head injury severity in both impact phases is generally lower than that predicted at other windshield angles.

The risk factors and threshold level of subchronic inhalation exposure of reclaimed water

Inhalation of reclaimed water is known to cause lung infammation,and free endotoxins have been shown to be a major risk factor for acute exposure.Subchronic exposure has also been shown to induce infammatory responses with visible tissue damage.However,subchronic risk factors have yet to be identified,and a threshold for the protection of occupational populations during urban reuse is necessary.In this study,potential risk factors in reclaimed water were examined by subchronic exposure with fractionated reclaimed water,and the health risk threshold was tested with a series of diluted reclaimed water.Accordingly,following a 12-week exposure,macromolecules and microorganisms were found to be two major risk factors in reclaimed water that could cause pulmonary infammation,including increased proportion of polymorphonuclear leukocytes in bronchoalveolar fuid,formation of inducible bronchus-associated lymphoid tissue,and elevation of Immunoglobulin A levels.Moreover,infammation persisted after a 4-week recovery period.The calculated threshold of reclaimed water exposure for mice was 31.8 Endotoxin Unit(EU)/(kg·day)under when exposed to 50%additional relative humidity from reclaimed water at 25℃ for 2 hr/day.Meanwhile,the subchronic threshold estimate for humans under the same exposure conditions was found to be 12.2 EU/(kg·day),corresponding to endotoxin levels of 61.7 EU/mL in reclaimed water.The threshold level of endotoxin was lower than that in most non-potable reclaimed water.The findings of this study suggest that occupational exposure of reclaimed water can serve as a potential risk to workers.

Aerosol exposure assessment during reclaimed water utilization in China and risk evaluation in case of Legionella

Reclaimed water utilization provides an effective way to alleviate water shortage.However,the residual pathogens in the recycled water like Legionella,could be spread into the air as aerosols through water-to-air transmission process.Inhaling the aerosols by the people nearby increases their susceptibility to diseases.For estimating the health risks associated with the potential exposure of airborne Legionella emitted from the urban use of reclaimed water in China,nationwide questionnaire was designed to investigate the exposure habits of Chinese population in different scenarios.Quantitative microbial risk assessment(QMRA)served as the suitable explanatory tool to estimate the risk.The results indicated that annual infection probability of populations exposed to Legionella for three scenarios,0.0764(95%CI:0.0032−0.6880)for road cleaning,1.0000(95%CI:0.1883−1.0000)for greenfield irrigation,0.9981(95%CI:0.0784−1.0000)for landscape fountain,were markedly higher than the threshold recommended by WHO(10^(−4) per person per year(pppy))according to the concentration distribution of Legionella in the reclaimed water.An age-,educational background-,region-and gender-specific data in annual infection probability also showed different tendencies for some subpopulations.This study provides some detailed information on the health risks from the water reuse in China and will be useful to promote the safe application of reclaimed water in water-deficient areas.

Geology,Mineralogy,and Isotopic Characteristics of the Zhonghe Ag-Pb-Zn Deposit,Western Henan Province,Central China

Located in Luoning County,western Henan Province,Central China,the Zhonghe Ag-Pb-Zn ore field,is a newly discovered deposit in the Xiaoshan District.Ore bodies controlled by NNW Faults occur as veins within the Paleoproterozoic Xiong’er Group or the Early Cretaceous porphyritic granite.Given that the Zhonghe deposit has been covered by thick Quaternary sediments,the paragenetic mineral assemblage was determined mainly by microscopic observations,including the quartzsiderite-pyrite alteration (StageⅠ),polymetallic sulfide precipitation (StageⅡ),silver mineralization(Stage Ⅲ),and quartz-carbonate stage (StageⅣ).The host minerals for silver are diverse,such as freibergite,pyrargyrite,polybasite,argyrodite,canfieldite,argentite,and native silver,whereas those for Pb and Zn are galena and sphalerite,respectively.In order to constrain the ore-forming components of the Zhonghe deposit,a combined in-situ analysis was conducted on represented sulfides from StageⅡand Stage Ⅲ.In-situ δ^(34)S values of the analyzed sulfides,including the pyrite,chalcopyrite,sphalerite,and galena,display a relatively narrow range (0.90‰-5.0‰),which is close to magmatic sulfur source.The ^(206)Pb/^(204)Pb and^(207)Pb/^(204)Pb ratios show a narrow range (17.140-17.360 and 15.385-15.490),whereas the ^(208)Pb/^(204)Pb ratios exhibit a broad variation (36.601-37.943),indicating a contamination of the Xiong’er Group.Synthesis of geochronological and geochemical data from the Xiaoshan District,we contend that the ore-forming materials of the Zhonghe Ag-Pb-Zn deposit are originated from the lower crust,which has presumably been influenced by the large-scale lithospheric delamination of the eastern North China Craton during the Early Cretaceous.In consideration of the geological setting,mineralogy,and geochemical compositions,we suggest that the Zhonghe Ag-Pb-Zn deposit is characterized as intermediate sulfidation type epithermal deposit,and may be a potential exploration target for porphyry Mo-Cu deposits.

Data fusion in data scarce areas using a back-propagation artificial neural network model： a case study of the South China Sea

The cloud cover for the South China Sea andits coastal area is relatively large throughout the year,which limits the potential application of optical remotesensing. A H J-charge-coupled device （HJ-CCD） has theadvantages of wide field, high temporal resolution, andshort repeat cycle. However, this instrument suffers fromits use of only four relatively low-quality bands whichcan＇t adequately resolve the features of long wavelengths.The Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper-plus （ETM＋）provides high-quality data, however, the Scan LineCorrector （SLC） stopped working and caused striping ofremote sensed images, which dramatically reduced thecoverage of the ETM＋ data. In order to combine theadvantages of the HJ-CCD and Landsat ETM＋ data, weadopted a back-propagation artificial neural network （BP-ANN） to fuse these two data types for this study. Theresults showed that the fused output data not only have theadvantage of data intactness for the HJ-CCD, but also havethe advantages of the multi-spectral and high radiometricresolution of the ETM＋ data. Moreover, the fused datawere analyzed qualitatively, quantitatively and from apractical application point of view. Experimental studiesindicated that the fused data have a full spatial distribution,multi-spectral bands, high radiometric resolution, a smalldifference between the observed and fused output data, anda high correlation between the observed and fused data.The excellent performance in its practical application is afurther demonstration that the fused data are of highquality.