Impact of cold indoor thermal environmental conditions on human thermal response

To explore the thermal responses under the non-thermal equilibrium cold environmental conditions,a laboratory study was conducted in climate chamber.The local skin temperatures and thermal sensation of 20 subjects were recorded at 10 min intervals for 90 min under air temperatures of 7.4,9.1,11 and 15 °C.The results show that both local skin temperatures and mean skin temperature decrease not only with the drop of ambient air temperature but also with the exposure time.Local thermal sensation and overall the thermal sensation have the similar temperature-varying and time-varying characteristics.Predicted mean vote(PMV) model cannot correctly predict the thermal sensation under non-thermal equilibrium cold environment.The correlation between local thermal sensation and local skin temperatures shows that thermal sensation is closely related to skin temperature.Skin temperature is an effective indicator of thermal sensation.A linear relationship model between overall thermal sensation and mean skin temperature,considering both ambient temperature and exposure time,was established in the non-thermal equilibrium cold environment,which makes the evaluation of thermal sensation more objective.

An alternative approach to predict human response to blast induced ground vibration

The aim of this study is to create alternative approaches to predict human response to ground vibration.Site measurements were conducted in an urban quarry.The multiple discriminant analysis technique was used to develop classification models.The measured ground vibration values were grouped based on the limit values appearing in the literature.Two classification models were created to predict human response to ground vibration.In addition,classical predictor equations were developed to compare to the classification models.The best equations were chosen considering several error measures.All the models were tested on the independent data.The prediction accuracy of the discriminant analysis models is quite promising.Nearly eighty-nine percent of the test data were correctly classified.The classification models have a combined structure.The results of the models can be directly presented to the neighbors of the studied quarry.The models are not complex.They do not require additional software or information to practice and can be easily used by site engineers.

Extraterritorial Application of International Human Rights Conventions——From the Perspective of States Regulating the Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations of Transnational Corporations

The extraterritorial application of international human rights conventions is the legal basis for states to regulate the extraterritorial human rights obligations of transnational corporations.In recent years,it has been increasingly challenged by the new trend of the United Nations governing the human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations.A study of existing international rules and practices shows that the extraterritorial application of international human rights conventions depends on the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the States Parties,which mainly includes the actual control over extraterritorial territories and individuals as well as the execution of authority outside the territories.In view of the above,if human rights violations by individuals or transnational corporations occur in areas outside their home territories or are authorized and orchestrated by the home state,the home state shall bear the corresponding human rights responsibilities.Given the restrictive scope of the abovementioned extraterritorial application of international human rights conventions,the international cooperation obligation and the"do no harm"principle may become a new legal basis for states to fulfill their extraterritorial human rights obligations in the future,thereby expanding the basis for the extraterritorial application of international human rights conventions to deal with more serious issues of human rights violations by transnational corporations.However,on the whole,the current identification and codification of states regulating the extraterritorial human rights obligations of transnational corporations should respect the existing rules of international human rights law and should not add any new human rights obligations on states.

MATHEMATICAL STUDY OF DIFFUSIVE FLUID TRANSPORT AND DISTRIBUTION IN HUMAN DERMAL REGIONS

This paper deals with mathematical study of diffusive fluid transport and distri- bution in human dermal parts. It accounts the intracellular fluid which continuously flows through the skin shells in order to maintain fluid balance within the body. A mathematical model is envisaged for this process and the finite element method （FEM） is employed to calculate the concentration of the fluid at different skin layers. This estimation is analyzed in relation with other parameters of the tissue medium and the atmosphere.

A 249-Year Record of Floods at Appleby in Westmorland, UK

An analysis of nearly 250 years of flood records on the river Eden at Appleby-in-Westmorland has enabled a flood frequency relationship to be established. The most severe floods were in the late 18th and early 19th century. With such a long history of flooding, some remedial measures would have been expected but the local people have, to some extent, adapted to the flood hazard by means of temporary and permanent flood proofing methods such as a cemented board across a doorway and removable flood boards. These measures were overwhelmed during the 2015 flood, as were the flood gates installed by the Environment Agency in 1998. A higher level of protection from floods at Appleby is called for.

RESPONSE OF HUMAN RENAL CANCER TO UFT IN NUDE MICE

A primary human renal cell carcinoma was developed as a xenograft (NT-25) and maintained by serial transplantation in nude mice. The effect of UFT on this neogrowth was tested and evaluated as well its distribution in the animal tissues. The concentration of UFT was higher in tumor tissues than that in other tissues and in the animal experimentation UFT was found to be effective on human renal cell carcinoma.

RESPONSES OF HUMAN FETAL SPLENOCYTES AND THYMOCYTES TO INTERLEUKIN-2: LAK ACTIVITY AND PROLIFERATION

Using cytotoxicity and thymidine uptake assays, we investigated the effects of human recombinant in-terleukin-2 (rIL-2) on the induction of lympholine-activated killer (LAK) activity and cellular proliferation in splenocytes and thymocytes from human fetuses (18-22 weeks). We observed that fetal splenocytes and thymocytes incubated with low doses of rIL-2 (10-100 U ml) developed broad antitumor activity (LAK activity) although the kinetics and magnitudes of the responses were different. It indicated the LAK precursors are present in fetal spleen and thymus. Further, rIL-2 induced a strong proliferative response in splenocytes, but not in thymocytes. On the basis of the findings, we conclude that the responses of fetal splenocytes and thymocytes to IL-2 are different.

Practice and Outlook of China's Regulation on the Extraterritorial Human Rights Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations

As China’s overseas investment and business operations continue to expand,the issue of human rights risks faced by Chinese transnational corporations abroad has attracted sustained attention from society.In recent years,China has enacted a series of laws,regulations,and policies to better regulate the overseas business conduct of transnational corporations,urging them to respect the human rights of the people in host countries and fulfill their social responsibilities to achieve sustainable development.Meanwhile,China has actively participated in the formulation of the Legally Binding Instrument on Activities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises in International Human Rights Law,providing a Chinese solution to promote global governance of transnational corporations.However,in practice,the lack of institutional mechanisms,systems,and industry rules to supervise and guide transnational enterprises in fulfilling their human rights responsibilities,as well as the limited awareness of human rights risks among these enterprises,have resulted in ongoing human rights risks in their overseas business operations,particularly regarding labor rights and environmental rights.In response,China should take its national conditions into consideration and focus on the development trends of human rights issues in the business sector at the international level.Drawing on the experiences of other countries,China should explore and establish institutional and practical measures to regulate the human rights responsibilities of transnational enterprises through legislation,administration,and judiciary actions,in order to address the risks and challenges faced by Chinese enterprises in foreign investments and contribute to the sustainable development of the world and global human rights governance.

The Study on Immuno-response and Antisera Properties of Recombinant β-subunit of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin in C57 Black Mouse

In this study, the immuno-response of recombinant hCG-β and natural hCGβ was comparatively investigated by using Freund's adjuvant. The results showed that, the properties and merits of the antibodies elicited by both kinds of hCG-β were similar. The antisera had high affinity for binding with hCG (Kαγβ≈5.86×108/mol/L, Kαβ≈8.18×108/mol/L), and were found to be effective in inhibiting the binding of 125I-hCG to receptors in rat testes. Results also indicated that, similar to the antisera induced by natural hCG-β, the recombinant hCG-β induced antisera had capacity of neutralizing the biological activities of hCG. Recombinant hCG-β could be used as an immunogen for contraceptive vaccine.

Exploration on Research Methods for Exploring Human Response to Luminous Environment with Chromogenic Windows Applied

Chromogenic windows enable both energy-saving and daylighting regulation.However,the human response to the luminous environment affected by them is difficult to test,since their features of dynamic change and tinting automatically.This study explores the research methods,including experimental design and statistical analysis,by literature review and an experiment demonstration.The results show that a proper size of the test room is significant to obtain desired data,and the advanced VR technologies have the potential to be applied for testing these dynamic variables.Bayesian approaches are recommended to be tried and get more accurate interference about the experimental results.

New Developments and Challenges in the UN Norms on Human Rights Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations

With the adoption of the"Legally Binding Instrument to Regulate,in International Human Rights Law,the Activities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises"and its revised draft,the codification of the human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations has entered a new era The instrument aims to supplement the shortcomings of transnational corporations in fulfilling their human rights responsibilities by strengthening the obligations of states and to improve the host country’s inadequate remedies for human rights violations by establishing extraterritorial human rights jurisdiction of home countries But the instrument has encountered various challenges because the human rights obligations and legal responsibilities of states go beyond the current domestic human rights systems and impact the existing theories and practices of international human rights law In order to resolve the differences among countries,the future codification of the instrument should be based on existing domestic and international legal systems and practices striking a balance between the interests of developing and developed countries,taking into account the objectives of both the fair treatment of transnational corporations and human rights protection,to promote the regulatory effect of the human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations.

Responsibilities and Working Mechanism of National Human Rights Education and Training Bases

On July 22, 2014, the second group of national human rights education and train- ing bases was announced,increasing the number of national bases from the previous three to a total of eight, which reflects the advancement of human rights education and ~aining in China and has far-reaching significance.

Environmental ethics and regional sustainable development

The scientific environmental ethics plays a key role in the recognition of the human-environment interactions. Modern environmental ethics is the philosophical re-thinking of modern human race environmental behavior. The development of environmental ethics theory, as well as its application in reality, determines the viewpoints of environmental ethics. Sustainable development implies harmony on human-environment interactions and inter-generation responsibility, with emphasis on a harmonious relationship among population, resources, environment and development, so as to lay a sustainable and healthy foundation of resources and environment for future generations. The harmonious society construction in China that is raised by the Chinese central government should be covered by environmental ethics. The connotation of open environmental ethics includes a respect for nature, care for the individual human race, and respect for the development of future generations, which means giving consideration to natural values, individual and human race benefits and welfare across generations. The role of environmental ethics in regional development consists of cognition, criticism, education, inspiration, adjusting, legislation and promoting environmental regulations. The major problems in regional development are extensive resource exploration, fast population growth, irrational industrial structure, unfair welfare distribution and the twofold effects of science and technology development. The formulation of environmental ethics that aims at regional sustainable development, can not only harmonize the relationship of population, resource, environment and economic development, but also guide behavior selection, push social and political system transformation, strengthen the legal system, and raise environmental awareness of the public.

The Literati＇s Polyphonic Answers to Social Changes in Late Imperial China

The article aims to rethink the pluralistic intellectual currents and social changes of the last centuries in China： How literati reacted to the historical changes, the economic developments, the collapse of the hierarchical order, and the social mobility from the end of the Ming to the middle of the Qing dynasty. Urbanisation, the great silver inflow, the acceleration of trade, and social mobility raised new challenges to the orthodox view of the world and to Neo-Confucian norms. These new attitudes of the Chinese literati--which can be inferred both from literary and philosophical works--uncover new attitudes in the mental structure of the intellectual strata of the time. In the history of ideas we notice a progressive detachment from the orthodox view of the conflictual relationship between principle and desires, especially in the ambit of the Taizhou school. The elaboration of a new anthropological mindset aimed at the rehabilitation of passions and desires culminated with Li Zhi. This trend went on in the Qing period, from Wang Fuzhi to Dai Zhen. In literature, a similar trend, the so-called ＂cult of qing,＂ can be found with the moral justification of emotion-desire （establishing emotion as a genuine and active source of virtue）, and with the vitalistic identification of emotions as the source of life and reproduction. Another indication of change is the challenge of common and accepted truisms through the praise of ＂folly＂ in real life situations and literary works： To be ＂crazy＂ and ＂foolish＂ became a sign of distinction among certain intellectual circles, in contrast with the pedant orthodox scholars and officials and the vulgar nouveaux ziches. The unconventional character of the anti-hero Baoyu is emblematic, with his aversion for any kind of official ceremony and convention, his abnormal sensibility and impractical and naive mentality, and his consciousness of being different from others. The crisis of the established ladder of values can be seen in the exaltation of ＂amoral＂ wisdom and in the presentation of various dimensions of love, from the idealistic sentiment of ＂the talented student and the beautiful girl＂ to the metaphysical passion that overcomes death, and to the minimalist concept of＂loveis like food＂ in a carpe diem perspective. And finally another challenge is exemplified by Yuan Mei＇s reflections on the concept of Heavenly Mandate, retribution, human responsibility, and historical constructions by resorting to ＂abnormal＂ phenomena to uncover the absurdity of reality and unconscious imagery. His questions testify the polyphonic debates of the late imperial China, besides established conventions and Neo-Confucian orthodoxy.

Quantitative estimates of collective geo-tagged human activities in response to typhoon Hato using location-aware big data

Location-aware big data from social media have been widely used to quantitatively characterize natural disasters and disaster-induced losses.It is not clear how human activities collectively respond to a disaster.In this study,we examined the collective human activities in response to Typhoon Hato at multi spatial scales using aggregated location request data.We proposed a Multilevel Abrupt Changes Detection(MACD)methodological framework to detect and characterize the abrupt changes in location requests in response to Typhoon Hato.Results show that,at the grid level,most anomaly grids were located within a radius of 53 km around the typhoon trajectory.At the city level,there are significant spatial difference in terms of the human activity recovery duration(230 h on average).At the subnational level,the absolute magnitude of abrupt location request changes is strongly correlated with the typhoon-induced economic losses and the population affected.

Simulation Architecture for Modelling Interaction Between User and Elbow-articulated Exoskeleton

The aim of our work is to improve the existing user-exoskeleton models by introducing a simulation architecture that can simulate its dynamic interaction, thereby altering the initial motion of the user. A simulation architecture is developed that uses the musculoskeletal models from OpenSim, and that implements an exoskeleton control algorithm and human response model in Matlab. The musculoskeletal models need to be extended with the response of a user to external forces to simulate the dy- namic interaction. A set of experiments was performed to fit this response model. A validation test showed that more than 80% of the variance of the motion could be explained. With the human response model in the combined simulation architecture, a simulation in which an object connects with the exoskeleton or with the human is performed. The effect of the exoskeleton on, among others, muscle excitation and altered motion can be assessed with this architecture. Our work can be used to better predict the effect an exoskeleton has on the user.

Detection of natural structures and classification of HCI-HPR data using robust forward search algorithm

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to proposes a forward search algorithm for detecting and identifying natural structures arising in human-computer interaction(HCI)and human physiological response(HPR)data.Design/methodology/approach-The paper portrays aspects that are essential to modelling and precision in detection.The methods involves developed algorithm for detecting outliers in data to recognise natural patterns in incessant data such as HCI-HPR data.The detected categorical data are simultaneously labelled based on the data reliance on parametric rules to predictive models used in classification algorithms.Data were also simulated based on multivariate normal distribution method and used to compare and validate the original data.Findings-Results shows that the forward search method provides robust features that are capable of repelling over-fitting in physiological and eye movement data.Research limitations/implications-One of the limitations of the robust forward search algorithm is that when the number of digits for residuals value is more than the expected size for stack flow,it normally yields an error caution;to counter this,the data sets are normally standardized by taking the logarithmic function of the model before running the algorithm.Practical implications-The authors conducted some of the experiments at individual residence which may affect environmental constraints.Originality/value-The novel approach to this method is the detection of outliers for data sets based on the Mahalanobis distances on HCI and HPR.And can also involve a large size of data with p possible parameters.The improvement made to the algorithm is application of more graphical display and rendering of the residual plot.

On palaeogeographic map

The palaeogeographic map is a graphic representation of physical geographical character- istics in geological history periods and human history periods. It is the most important result of palaeogeographic study. The author, as the Editor-in-Chief oflournal of Palaeogeography, Chinese Edition and English Edition, aimed at the problems of the articles submitted to and published in the]ournal of Palaeogeography in recent years and the relevant papers and books of others, and integrated with his practice of palaeogeographic study and mapping, wrote this paper. The content mainly includes the data of palaeogeographic mapping, the prob- lems of palaeogeographic mapping method, the ＂Single factor analysis and multifactor comprehensive mapping method ---- Methodology of quantitative lithofacies palae- ogeography＇, i.e., the ＂4 steps mapping method＂, the nomenclature of each palaeogeographic unit in palaeogeographic map, the explanation of each palaeogeographic unit in palae- ogeographic map, the explanation of significance of palaeogeographic map and palae- ogeographic article, the evaluative standards of palaeogeographic map and palaeogeographic article, and the self-evaluation. Criticisms and corrections are welcome. 2016 China University of Petroleum {Beijing）. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Petroleum （Beijing）. This is an open access article under