*3.1. Materials*

Manganese chloride (MnCl2·4H2O, purity ≥ 99%, Guangfu Fine Chemical Research Institute, Tianjin, China), 2,5-dihydroxyterephthalic acid (C8O6H6, 98%, DHTP, Heowns Biochem LLC, Tianjin, China), (N, N-Dimethyl formamide (HCON(CH3)2, 99.5%, DMF, Jiangtian Chemical Technology Co., Ltd., Tianjin, China), ethanol (CH3CH2OH, ≥ 99.7%, Jiangtian Chemical Technology Co, Ltd., Tianjin, China), methanol (CH3OH, ≥ 99.7%, Jiangtian Chemical Technology Co., Ltd., Tianjin, China), chloroform (CHCl3, ≥ 99%, Jiangtian Chemical Technology Co., Ltd., Tianjin, China), polyvinylpyrrolidone ((C6H9NO)n, Sigma-Alorich, Shanghai, China), and polyethylene oxide-polypropylene-polyethylene oxide (PEO-PPO-PEP, Sigma-Aldrich, Shanghai, China) were used. The gas mixtures used in this work, including NO/Ar, NH3/Ar, SO2/Ar, and O2/Ar, were supported by Beijing AP BAIF Gases Industry Co., Ltd. All the materials and gas mixtures were used without further processing unless noted.

### *3.2. Catalyst Preparation*

According to the procedure described by Zhou et al. [22], Mn-MOF-74 was synthesized using a hydrothermal method. Briefly, 53 mL of DMF, 3.5 mL of ethanol, and 3.5 mL of H2O were added to a 100 mL beaker and then the ligands DHTP was added into the above mixture. MnCl2·4H2O (0.4396 g, 2.22 mmol) was added into the solution, dispersed by ultrasound for 0.5 h, and then transferred to a Teflon-lined hydrothermal reactor. The hydrothermal reactor was placed in an oven at 135 ◦C for 24 h. The red–brown precipitates produced were cooled to room temperature, centrifuged, and washed three times with 60 mL of methanol. Finally, the product was dried and preserved for use.

The Mn-MOF-74 samples were pretreated for 3 h at a heating rate of 2 ◦C/min in a nitrogen atmosphere at 200 ◦C to remove the residual solvent. P123-Mn-MOF-74 and PVP-Mn-MOF-74 were synthesized by an impregnation method reported in the literature [23]. One gram of P123 or PVP was dissolved in solvent and then 0.2 g of pre-treated Mn-MOF-74 was added into the solution. The mixture was allowed to rest under static conditions at room temperature for 24 h, and then was washed with CHCl3. The initial product was filtered and dried naturally.

Mn-MOF-74-CH3 was synthesized by a post-synthesis modification method referred to in the synthesis method of CH3-MOF-5 [24] but with some modification. Generally, a mixture of 15 mL CHCl3 and 0.2 g pre-treated Mn-MOF-74 was placed in a Teflon-lined hydrothermal reactor and then placed in an oven at 65 ◦C for 12 h. The initial product was washed with CHCl3 three times to remove unreacted species. The solids were dried at room temperature and stored in a desiccator for use.


*3.4. Cytotoxicity Assays*

The cytotoxic activity of the isolated and identified AEG671 as well as the activity of two other samples containing AEGs as the main components was tested. For the purpose the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium-bromide (MTT) assays with the application of a human breast adenocarcinoma cell line T47D (Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) were performed as described by Felczykowska et al. [48] and Szubert et al. [49]. T47D cells were plated at 1 × 104 cells per well of 96-well plate containing RPMI1640 (Carl Roth GmbH) medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (Merck KGaA) and penicillin-streptomycin solution (50 u and 0.05 mg per 1 mL of medium respectively; Merck KGaA) (24 h at 37 ◦C, 5% CO2). The cytotoxic effects of tested samples dissolved in 1% DMSO, at final concentrations 25, 50, 100 and 200 μg ml−1 (in culture medium) were examined after 24 h incubation (37 ◦C, 5% CO2) using a microplate reader (Spectramax i3, Molecular Devices, LLC. San Jose, CA, USA). Cell viability was calculated as the ratio of the mean absorbance value, for the six replicates containing the samples, to the mean absorbance of the six replicates of the corresponding solvent control, and expressed as a percentage. The results were considered as significant when cell viability decreased below 50%.


**7.4 Acrosome integrity**

Acrosome integrity will be assessed using fluorescein isothiocyanate–labeled peanut (*Arachis hypogaea*) agglutinin (FITC-PNA) staining. Ten µl of the diluted semen is mixed with 10 µl of Ethidiumhomodimer-1 and incubated at 37 ºC for 15 min. Five µl of the mixture is smeared on a glass slide and fixed with 95 % ethanol for 30 second. Fifty µl Fit C-PNA (dilute Fit C-PNA with PBS 1:10 v/v) is spread over the slide and incubated in a moist chamber at 4 ºC for 30 min. After incubation, it is rinsed with cold PBS and air dried. Two hundred spermatozoa are assessed under fluorescent microscope at 1000x magnification and classified as intact acrosome, damaged acrosome and missing acrosome (Cheng et al., 1996; Axner et al., 2004). The results are scored as the percentage of intact acrosome spermatozoa.


3. Optimal TGF-β PMO inhibitors in human Lin-CD34+ CD45+ HSC

TGF-β is a family of multifunctional peptide cytokines with the capacity to regulate proliferation, differentiation, adhesion, migration, and other functions in many cell types. TGF-β receptors are found on most cells, and their signal transduction positively and negatively regulates many other growth factors. Secreted TGF-β is cleaved into a latency-associated peptide (LAP) and a mature TGF-β1 protein. TGF-β is latent in the form of a TGF-β1 homodimer, a LAP homodimer, and a latent TGF-β1-binding protein (LTBP). However, TGF-β1 homodimer can be active, and the mature protein may also form heterodimers with other TGF-β family members.

The HSC is pluripotent immature cell that can generate daughter cells committed to all nine types of mature blood cells, including trillions of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. HSCs are found in the bone marrow and also circulate in the peripheral blood. HSC possesses two key properties: (1) the ability to self-renew (generating HSC replicates) and (2) the ability to generate daughter cells that differentiate into fully functional blood cells (namely, asymmetrical HSC division in which one daughter cell remains a HSC and the other daughter cells are destined to mature).

When the most primitive HSCs self-replicate, they produce daughter cells with a long (possibly unlimited) clonal life span. When HSC replication leads to differentiation divisions, they lose their multi-lineage potential and the corresponding lineage commitment accompanied by a progressive reduction in clonal life span. Previous studies have shown that ex vivo proliferation of HSC favors differentiation divisions at the expense of self-replication, resulting in a complete loss of HSC.


**1. Introduction**

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) can provide multimedia communication between vehicles with the aim of providing efficient and safe transportation [1]. Vehicles with different sensors can exchange and share information for safely breaking, localization and obstacle avoiding. Moreover, the sharing of traffic accident's live video can improve the rescue efficiency and alleviate traffic jams. However, video transmission has been considered as a challenging task for VANETs, because video transmission over VANETs can significantly increase bandwidth [2]. This work focuses on the development of video codec that supports real-time video transmission over VANETs for road safety applications.

The demanding challenges of VANETs are bandwidth limitations and opportunities, connectivity, mobility, and high loss rates [3]. Because of the resource-demanding nature of video data in road safety applications, bandwidth limitations is the bottleneck for real-time video transmission over VANETs [4,5]. Moreover, due to the limited vehicle node's battery lifetime, video delivery over VANETs remains extremely challenging. Essentially, the low-complexity video encoder can accelerate the video transmission in real-time, and achieve low delay for video streaming. Hence, in order to transmit real-time video with bandwidth constraint, it is vital to develop an efficient video encoder. A video encoder with high encoding efficiency and low encoding complexity is the core requirement of VANETs [6].

Concurrently, the main video codecs are High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, or H.265) that are developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) Group, and AV1 that is developed by Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) [7]. Nevertheless, video codec is faced with several challenges. AV1 is a newer codec, royalty free and open sourced. However, the hardware implementation of AV1 encoder will take a long time. H.265/HEVC is the state-of-the-art standardized video codecs [8]. Compared with H.265/HEVC, AV1 increases the complexity significantly without achieving an increase in coding efficiency. When supporting the most available (resource-limited/mobile) devices or having a need for real-time, low latency encoding, it would be better to stick to H.265/HEVC. However, the encoding complexity of H.265/HEVC encoder increases dramatically due to its recursive quadtree representation [9]. Although previous excellent works have been proposed for reducing H.265/HEVC encoder complexity [10–14], most of them balance the encoding complexity and encoding efficiency unsuccessfully.

To address this issue, spatial and temporal information is widely used to reduce the computation redundancy of the H.265/HEVC encoder. However, the spatiotemporal correlation between the coding unit and the neighboring coding unit is not better used. To the author's best knowledge, complexity reduction in real-time coding with the available computational power at the VANET nodes has not been well studied, especially from the viewpoint of hardware implementation. The key contributions of this work are summarized as follows:

The rest of paper is organized as follows. Related works are reviewed in Section 2. Section 3 discusses background details. In Section 4, the fast CU decision algorithm is presented. Simulation results are discussed in Section 5. Section 6 concludes this work.


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## Meet the editor

Professor Haitao Zhang graduated from Tongji University, Shanghai in China with a major in civil engineering. He currently works at the Northeast Forestry University as a professor. His research interests include pavement design theory, asphalt mix, and pavement management and maintenance.

Contents

**Section 1**

**Section 2**

*by Haitao Zhang*

Warm Mix Asphalt

Emulsified Bitumen *by Shahab Hasaninasab*

**Section 3**

*and Norma Angélica Sánchez-Flores*

*by Mohammadsoroush Tafazzoli*

**Preface III**

Introduction **1**

**Chapter 1 3**

Functional Asphalt Mixture **15**

**Chapter 2 17**

**Chapter 3 27**

**Chapter 4 35**

Asphalt Aging and Rejuvenation **55**

**Chapter 5 57**

*by Paula Cristina Arroyo-Martínez, Rey Omar Adame-Hernández,*

The Effects of Using Nano-Silica in Cold-In Place Asphalt with

The Evaluation of Asphalt Mixture Mastic as an Aging Indicator *by Carlos Alfonso Cuadro Causil, Wilmar Darío Fernández-Gómez,*

*Jorge Iván Osorio Esquivel and Fredy Alberto Reyes Lizcano*

*Ignacio Roberto Cremades-Ibáñez, Israel Sandoval-Navarro*

Incorporating Sustainable Practices in Asphalt Industry

Introductory Chapter: Asphalt and Asphalt Mixture

### Contents

### **Section 4** Asphalt Pavement **77 Chapter 6 79** Microwave Processing of Mixtures of Asphalt and Şırnak Asphaltite Slime - Development of The Compression Ability, Shear and Tension Strength *by Yıldırım İsmail Tosun* **Chapter 7 105** Polymer-Modified Bio-Asphalt: A Sustainable Panacea to Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Preface

Road pavement types include asphalt pavement, cement concrete pavement, and earth pavement. With the rapid growth of economy, people continue to improve and innovate in the construction of roads. In recent years, asphalt has been used to build most expressways or first-grade highways. People are also constantly renovating a large number of old asphalt pavements to improve the pavement quality and make it flatter, so as to extend the service life of the pavement. At present, the main problems in the research of asphalt and asphalt mixture are how to further improve the durability of asphalt pavement and the prevention and control of asphalt pavement diseases. These problems are the key problems that affect the service life of asphalt pavement. The proposal and research of these problems will further promote the application of asphalt pavement. The traditional asphalt pavement mainly emphasizes the mechanical properties of the pavement. With the continuous development of human society, asphalt pavement should not only meet the requirements of mechanical properties, but also meet the functional requirements, such as pavement drainage, noise reduction, and so on. Asphalt pavement, with both a mechanical performance index and functional index, has gradually become a

> **Haitao Zhang** Professor,

Harbin, PR China

College of Civil Engineering, Northeast Forestry University,

research hotspot.

*by Modupe Abayomi Emmanuel*


Author details

high-current ion beam can improve the delivery of plasma flow to a substrate, as well as

Figure 17. Influence radial electron beam on beam focusing: (a) trajectories of cu + beam; (b) space charge density in the

We considered the transport aspect and effect of fast electrons on transport characteristics lowenergy ion plasma beam. Figure 17 shows results of modeling transport copper ion beam with current 100A through plasma lens with presence of fast electrons in the volume. One can see that accumulation high-energy electrons on the axis and their space charge can provide addi-

A new approach was proposed for the elimination of micro-droplets from the dense metal plasma, based on evaporation and thus removal of micro-droplets from the arc plasma by energetic electrons within the electrostatic PL. These electrons are generated self-consistently by secondary emission in the near-wall plasma layer from the internal surface of the lens central electrode and serves to evaporate, and thus remove micro-droplets from the plasma flow. The experiments [29] demonstrate the effectiveness of the electrostatic PL for focusing and manipulating wide-aperture, high-current, low-energy, streaming metal ion plasma flows. In these experiments, the self-sustained focusing of high-density, wide-aperture, low-energy ion plasma flow was observed. It has been shown that the presence of fast electrons in the volume of the plasma lens both improves the propagating ion plasma flow toward the substrate and introduces additional energy for effective evaporation and elimination of micro-droplets from the plasma flow.

We review some new results of development novel generation of cylindrical plasma devices based on the concept of magnetic insulation of electrons and equipotentialization magnetic field lines and an electrostatic PL configuration. The PL configuration of crossed electric and magnetic fields provides an attractive and suitable method for establishing stable plasma

providing micro-droplet removal via the fast electrons within the lens region.

tional compensation and focusing of the high-current ion beam.

286 Plasma Science and Technology - Basic Fundamentals and Modern Applications

4.3. Conclusion remarks

beam.

5. Conclusions

Iryna Litovko1 \* and Alexey Goncharov2


*2.5. The Concept of Theory of Change in Relation to SDGs*

There is a wide use of the Theory of Change (ToC) across many academic disciplines, including environmental and organisational psychology, but it has also increasingly been connected to sociology and political science. ToC emerged from the field of programme theory and programme evaluation in the mid-1990s as a new way of analysing the theories motivating programmes and initiatives working for social and political change. It is focused not just on generating knowledge about whether a programme is effective but also on explaining what methods it uses to be effective. The original work in the 1980s has been developed further by the work of notable methodologists, such as Huey Chen's work on theory-driven evaluations [33,34], Peter Rossi's systematic approach to theory-driven evaluation in social sciences [35], Michael Patton's focus on integrating the theory with practice [36,37] and Carol Weiss' seminal work that takes a stakeholder-centric perspective [38–42] to find more effective ways of evaluating complex community programmes.

Weiss suggests [38] that complex community programmes had not sufficiently aligned local stakeholders on the change process and what the outcomes will be. She noted that the logic chains are particularly weak in the midsection of the causal chain, without which the longer-term goals are weakened. Weiss uses the term "Theory of Change" to describe the causal links across the inputs–outputs–outcomes pathway. She also focused attention on what users could claim in terms of impacts, separating claims of "attribution" from a wider, less direct, "contribution". Based on her work [38–42], ToC has been applied extensively across international development, public health and human rights and has since become a central theory that underpins the approach to project benefits management [43–46].

The literature review has highlighted the potential benefits and tensions of linking global goals to local delivery on infrastructure projects. As a result of these findings, the derived research question is the following: how do senior leaders in the construction sector rate and use global UN SDGs for infrastructure investment decisions at the local level? The sub-questions that flow from this are as follows.

Considering the aforementioned literature, it is possible to synthesise the fifth proposition related to the concept of the Theory of Change in relation to SDGs as follows.

**Proposition 5 (P5).** *Measurement of SDG performance should include a full project lifecycle perspective and take account of longer-term project outcomes and wider impacts.*


**2. Methods**

*Search strategy.* For the purpose of this review, a systematic search of the literature databases (e.g., PubMed) by the EndNote software as well as other reference and electronic databases (e.g., Cochrane Library) have been searched by specifically chosen MESH terms, back to 1960. In total, while using the main four single terms ("cerebral", "sinus", "venous", "thrombosis") and combinations thereof, 4049 peer-reviewed titles have been initially found which have been later reduced down to 43 titles, among which 25 review papers have been also identified. Many references for this review came from the authors' own archives. Two of us (PAA, BDD) independently reviewed all 43 titles for inclusion as retrieved as above and 35 of them were decided to be included. Additionally, through hand-searching the references of the selected articles and other relevant electronic sources (e.g., Google Scholar), several additional relevant titles were also reviewed for inclusion. Finally, out of the initially 4049 identified titles and all other relevant titles, 39 articles were studied and included in this review. Any disagreements between the original reviewers have been resolved by a third, blinded reviewer (NTC); any further discrepancies have been solved by an open consensus among all of the reviewers.