An innovative bio-engineering retaining structure for supporting unstable soil

The paper presents a new prefabricated bio-engineering structure for the support of unstable soil.This prefabricated structure is made of a steel frame which is completely filled with soil and a face made of tree trunks among which scions or autochthonous bushes are planted.Due to the difficulties in interpreting the complex interaction between soil and structure during the installation and lifetime,an in situ test was carried out in order to evaluate the state of stress in the steel frame and to understand the global behavior of the structure under service loads.On the basis of the obtained results,a procedure for checking the structure safety was proposed and discussed.An easy design method was developed during the research.Moreover,the use of this type of prefabricated structure shows several advantages,such as good performances in terms of stabilizing effects,and easy assembly and transport.

Torrent Control and Stabilization through Bio-engineering Measures in North Western Himalayan Region

The study revealed that low cost bio-engineering measures using local grass （Saccharum munja）, shrubs （Vitex negundo and Ipomea spp.） and trees （Acacia nilotica and Acacia catechu） along with loose boulder structures （spurs, check dams and gully plugs） of suitable design and dimensions were very effective in channelizing the torrent water flow towards central line and its stabilization. In the catchment, small to medium sized gullies were treated with gully plugging by erecting loose boulder check dams along with suitable vegetative barriers ofSaccharum munja and Ipomea spp. to stop their further advancement. Different treatments of these combinations trapped the sediment to the tune of 5-15 tonnes and it was stabilized at the spur tails. In this, attractive type spur trapped the maximum sediment. The D-50 analysis of sediment deposited was also carried out and the value varied from 3.1-3.7 mm, implying deposition of higher percentage of finer fertile soil proportion and its stabilization. The mechanical as well as vegetative measures helped in the channelization of water course towards the central line to the tune of 10-80 m. The stream banks were stabilized by plantations and put to use under agro forestry systems. Different treatments in catchment, with regard to their efficacy to reduce runoff, ground water recharge, sediment and channel morphology resulted in reclamation of 43 ha area of the torrent bed.

Creating a semi-opened micro-cavity ovary through sacrificial microspheres as an in vitro model for discovering the potential effect of ovarian toxic agents

The bio-engineered ovary is an essential technology for treating female infertility.Especially the development of relevant in vitro models could be a critical step in a drug study.Herein,we develop a semi-opened culturing system(SOCS)strategy that maintains a 3D structure of follicles during the culture.Based on the SOCS,we further developed micro-cavity ovary(MCO)with mouse follicles by the microsphere-templated technique,where sacrificial gelatin microspheres were mixed with photo-crosslinkable gelatin methacryloyl(GelMA)to engineer a micro-cavity niche for follicle growth.The semi-opened MCO could support the follicle growing to the antral stage,secreting hormones,and ovulating cumulus-oocyte complex out of the MCO without extra manipulation.The MCO-ovulated oocyte exhibits a highly similar transcriptome to the in vivo counterpart(correlation of 0.97)and can be fertilized.Moreover,we found that a high ROS level could affect the cumulus expansion,which may result in anovulation disorder.The damage could be rescued by melatonin,but the end of cumulus expansion was 3h earlier than anticipation,validating that MCO has the potential for investigating ovarian toxic agents in vitro.We provide a novel approach for building an in vitro ovarian model to recapitulate ovarian functions and test chemical toxicity,suggesting it has the potential for clinical research in the future.

Modulation of drain current as a function of energies substrate for InP HEMT devices

We present the drain current modulation for an HEMT using the TCAD SILVACO simulation tool with a drift–diffusion model at ambient temperature. The obtained results show that the decreases of substrate energies induce the decreasing of the obtained drain current similarly to the transconductance, which described the device due to increasing the transferred electrons concentration towards the substrate region, consequently to increase the molar fraction where the concentration of transferred electrons increases from 49 × 10;to 65 × 10;cm;when the molar fraction increases from 0.1 to 0.9. On the other hand, the decrease of molar fraction from 0.9 to 0.1 induces the increasing of drain current by 63%, where it increases from 1.1 mA/mm to 3 mA/mm at V;= 0.6 V and V;= 1 V. This fact leads to ensuring the possibility of using the obtained results of this work related to drain current for producing performances devices that brings together the AC characteristics of HEMT with a weak drain current, which is important in the bioengineering domain.