Addressing climate change requires substantial shifts in individual behavior. Providing information about climate externalities through carbon labels is a promising tool to foster sustainable choices when individuals weigh environmental against personal outcomes. We study the impact of carbon labels over time and their underlying mechanisms in a repeated risky choice task. We ran two preregistered experiments (US samples, N = 1,268) with realized carbon and monetary payoffs, examining how choice is influenced by the timing of carbon information (One-off vs. Recurring) and participants’ political preference (i.e., Democrat or Republican voters). In Study 1, we find that both Democrats and Republicans reduce carbon emissions when carbon labels were provided. Further, recurring labels significantly reduced carbon choices compared to one-off labels. Study 2 replicated the results in a within-participant design and showed that the impact of recurring carbon labels on sustainable choices cannot be explained by the strength of emission recall. This suggests that recurring labels amplify the importance given to the climate attribute in the decision process, operating via attentional rather than informational mechanisms. Our results emphasize the importance of providing climate externality information at time of use to raise awareness about climate costs and bolster sustainable preferences across population segments.

We develop a comprehensive model for the creeping Poiseuille Bingham flow in channels equipped with a patterned wall, i.e. decorated with grooves or stripes that may represent a superhydrophobic (SH) or a chemically patterned (CP) surface, respectively, with longitudinal, transverse and oblique groove (stripe) orientations with respect to the applied pressure gradient. We rely on the Navier slip law to model the boundary condition on the slippery grooves. We develop semi-analytical, explicit-form and complementary computational fluid dynamics models, with solutions that have reasonable agreement. In contrast to its Newtonian analogue, a distinct solution for the oblique configuration, with an a priori unknown transform matrix, must be developed due to the viscoplastic nonlinear rheology. Our focus is to systematically analyse the effects of the Bingham number ($B$), slip number ($b$), groove periodicity length ($\ell$), slip area fraction ($\varphi$) and groove orientation angle ($\theta$), on the slip velocities, effective slip length ($\chi$), slip angle difference ($\theta -s$), mixing index ($I_M$), flow anisotropy and flow regimes. In particular, we demonstrate that, as $B$ increases, the maximum values of the shear component of $\chi$, $\theta -s$ and $I_M$ occur progressively at smaller values of $\theta$, compared with their Newtonian counterparts.

Loess is a collapsible soil; when it collapses, it can cause significant damage to structures built on it. Improvement in the stability and strength performance of loess is necessary to meet engineering needs. In the present study, the effects on the physical-chemical and rheological characteristics of Ghardaïa loess of adding bentonite and lime (southern Algeria) were examined. Rheological characterization of suspensions was implemented to assess the mechanical sensitivity of the bonds and the structural inter-particle resistance to both the chemical effect and mechanical impact. By analyzing the viscosity results and the evolution of the rheological parameters, the improvements needed in terms of the resistance characteristics of the loess-bentonite and loess-lime mixtures were evaluated and confirmed. The loess physical sensitivity was examined through grain-size distribution and plasticity properties. The pH and electrical conductivity of the mixtures were also used to explore structural modifications. Physical test results showed that introduction of the additives changed the loess texture and improved the plasticity of mixtures. Chemical examination (via change in pH and electrical conductivity) revealed the structural changes in the mixtures studied. Rheological test results showed that increasing concentrations of bentonite and lime improves the mechanical strength and increased the yield stress, consistency, and viscosity of the suspensions. The creation of cement interactions between mixture particles explained the increase in those parameters. Hydration, agglomeration, and inter-particle flocculation induced by the additives promoted these interactions. The experimental results led to the conclusion that bentonite and lime may represent an effective means to improve the performance in terms of preventing loess collapse and to increase its resistance to mechanical impact. The results presented in the present study may provide a geotechnical and rheological working database for the control and treatment of loess collapse and landslides in the region under study. Technical data related to loess may, therefore, be beneficial in terms of civil engineering, public works, hydraulics, and the manufacture of construction materials.

Plane Poiseuille flow of a Bingham fluid in a channel armed with a superhydrophobic (SH) lower wall is analysed via a semi-analytical model, accompanied by complementary direct numerical simulations (DNS). The SH surface represents a groovy structure with air trapped inside its cavities. Therefore, the fluid adjacent to the wall undergoes stick–slip conditions. The model is developed based on introducing infinitesimal wall-induced perturbations into the motion equations, followed by Fourier series expansions, and solving the resulting equations as a boundary value problem. The Navier slip law accounts for the slip at the liquid/air interface (assuming the Cassie state). The presented analysis is fairly comprehensive, covering the creeping and inertial regimes for thick channels (via the semi-analytical and DNS solutions). The main dimensionless numbers are the Reynolds ($Re$), Bingham ($Bi$) and slip ($b$) numbers, as well as the groove periodicity length ($\ell$) and the slip area fraction ($\varphi$). By increasing $Bi$, the perturbation and slip velocity fields grow. As $Re$ increases, the perturbation and slip velocity fields become asymmetric. For certain flow parameters, an unyielded plug zone may appear on the SH wall liquid/air interface, while its formation is accelerated by inertial effects. The results classify the regimes of creeping and inertial flows via predicting the onset of the unyielded plug zone formation at the SH wall.

Text-to-scene conversion systems map natural language text to formal representations required for visual scenes. The difficulty involved in this mapping is one of the most critical challenges for developing these systems. The current study mapped Persian natural language text as the headmost system to a conceptual scene model. This conceptual scene model is an intermediate semantic representation between natural language and the visual scene and contains descriptions of visual elements of the scene. It will be used to produce meaningful animation based on an input story in this ongoing study. The mapping task was modeled as a sequential labeling problem, and a conditional random field (CRF) model was trained and tested for sequential labeling of scene model elements. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no dataset for this task exists; thus, the required dataset was collected for this task. The lack of required off-the-shelf natural language processing modules and a significant error rate in the available corpora were important challenges to dataset collection. Some features of the dataset were manually annotated. The results were evaluated using standard text classification metrics, and an average accuracy of 85.7% was obtained, which is satisfactory.

Experiments are conducted to explore the rolling of a cylinder over a pool of viscous fluid. The speed, width and loading of the cylinder are varied along with the initial depth and length of the viscous pool. Depending on the conditions, the cylinder will either ride on a lubrication film or remain in solid contact with the underlying substrate. For the former situation, a lubrication theory is presented that describes the pressure underneath the cylinder and the thickness of the film. The theory approximates the flow by the one-dimensional Reynolds equation with the addition of one term, with an adjustable parameter, to account for the flux of fluid to the cylinder sides. Once this parameter is calibrated against experiment, the theory predicts peak lubrication pressures, gap sizes and film thicknesses to within approximately ten per cent. For lubricated rolling, the film splits evenly between the cylinder and substrate downstream of the nip. The printer's instability arises during the splitting process, patterning the residual fluid films on the substrate and cylinder. If the pool length is less than the cylinder circumference, the fluid adhering to the cylinder is rotated back into contact with the substrate, and when there is sufficient adhered fluid a lubrication film forms that can again be modelled by the theory. Conversely, if there is insufficient adhered fluid, no contiguous lubrication film is formed; instead, the pattern from the printer's instability ‘prints’ from the cylinder to the substrate.

Our objective was to quantify the cross-sectional associations between dietary fatty acid (DFA) patterns and cognitive function among Hispanic/Latino adults. This study included data from 8942 participants of the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, a population-based cohort study (weighted age 56·2 years and proportion female 55·2 %). The National Cancer Institute method was used to estimate dietary intake from two 24-h recalls. We derived DFA patterns using principal component analysis with twenty-six fatty acid and total plant and animal MUFA input variables. Global cognitive function was calculated as the average z-score of four neurocognitive tests. Survey linear regression models included multiple potential confounders such as age, sex, education, depressive symptoms, physical activity, energy intake and CVD. DFA patterns were characterised by the consumption of long-chain SFA, animal-based MUFA and trans-fatty acids (factor 1); short to medium-chain SFA (factor 2); very-long-chain n-3 PUFA (factor 3); very-long-chain SFA and plant-based MUFA and PUFA (factor 4). Factor 2 was associated with greater scores for global cognitive function (β = 0·037 (sd 0·012)) and the Digit Symbol Substitution (DSS) (β = 0·56 (sd 0·17)), Brief Spanish English Verbal Learning-Sum (B-SEVLT) (β = 0·23 (sd 0·11)) and B-SEVLT-Recall (β = 0·11 (sd 0·05)) tests (P < 0·05 for all). Factors 1 (β = 0·04 (sd 0·01)) and 4 (β = 0·70 (sd 0·18)) were associated with the DSS test (P < 0·05 for all). The consumption of short to medium-chain SFA may be associated with higher cognitive function among US-residing Hispanic/Latino adults. Prospective studies are necessary to confirm these findings.

Plant proteinase inhibitors are among the promising biopesticides which are induced in plants tissues against the several Lepidoptera pests to inhibit digestive proteases. In this study, protein extracts of two nonhost plant seeds, Amaranthus retroflexus Linnaeus (Amaranthaceae) and Cuminum cyminum Linnaeus (Apiaceae), were examined on Helicoverpaarmigera (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). The results obtained by using azocasein as a substrate showed that inhibitory activity of general proteases of the larvae fed on a diet incorporated with both inhibitors was dose dependent. Seed extracts of A. retroflexus and C. cyminum at the highest concentration showed that inhibition activities of chymotrypsin-like proteinase and trypsin-like proteinase were between 31–45% and 28–61%, respectively. Based on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, all of the proteinase isoforms, including those of A. retroflexus seed extracts, disappeared entirely, and only one band was detected in the seed extracts of C. cyminum. Larval mortality in the larvae fed on A. retroflexus and C. cyminum seed extracts was 56 ± 2.15 and 68 ± 2.23, respectively, but mortality in control (no seed protein extract) was 12 ± 2.34 individuals. Also, the life table parameters were affected significantly by A. retroflexus and C. cyminum protein seed extracts. Therefore, A. retroflexus and C. cyminum seed protein extracts showed inhibitory effect on H. armigera digestive proteinases and adverse effects on survival and fitness of the pest; hence, they could be introduced as a successful biopesticide in the near future.

The robotic intervention has great potential in the rehabilitation of post-stroke patients to regain their lost mobility. In this paper, firstly, we present a design of a novel, 7 degree-of-freedom (DOF) upper limb robotic exoskeleton (u-Rob) that features shoulder scapulohumeral rhythm with a wide range of motions (ROM) compared to other existing exoskeletons. An ergonomic shoulder mechanism with two passive DOF was included in the proposed exoskeleton to provide scapulohumeral motion with corresponding full ROM. Also, the joints of u-Rob have more range of motions compared to its existing counterparts. Secondly, we propose a fractional sliding mode control (FSMC) to control u-Rob. Applying the Lyapunov theory to the proposed control algorithm, we showed the stability of it. To control u-Rob, FSMC has shown effectiveness to handle unmodeled dynamics (e.g. friction, disturbance, etc.) in terms of better tracking and chatter compared to traditional SMC.

This paper addresses the application of a novel elimination algorithm with a newly developed homotopy continuation method (HCM) for forward kinematics of a specific hybrid modular manipulator known as n-(6UPS). First, the kinematic model of n-(6UPS) was extracted using a homogenous transformation matrix method. Then, a novel algebraic elimination algorithm was developed to transform the highly nonlinear proposed kinematic model into a system of polynomial equations for each module. Next, the HCM is considered to solve the system of equations. Comparison of the results from the proposed approach with experimental data and other methods demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed contribution.