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Antimicrobial resistance is considered to be one of the biggest public health problems, and airborne transmission is an important but under-appreciated pathway for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment. Previous research has shown pharmaceutical factories to be a major source of ARGs and antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) in the surrounding receiving water and soil environments. Pharmaceutical factories are hotspots of antibiotic resistance, but the atmospheric transmission and its environmental risk remain more concerns. Here, we conducted a metagenomic investigation into the airborne microbiome and resistome in three pharmaceutical factories in China. Soil (average: 38.45%) and wastewater (average: 28.53%) were major contributors of airborne resistome. ARGs (vanR/vanS, blaOXA, and CfxA) conferring resistance to critically important clinically used antibiotics were identified in the air samples. The wastewater treatment area had significantly higher relative abundances of ARGs (average: 0.64 copies/16S rRNA). Approximately 28.2% of the detected airborne ARGs were found to be associated with plasmids, and this increased to about 50% in the wastewater treatment area. We have compiled a list of high-risk airborne ARGs found in pharmaceutical factories. Moreover, A total of 1,043 viral operational taxonomic units were identified and linked to 47 family-group taxa. Different CRISPR-Cas immune systems have been identified in bacterial hosts in response to phage infection. Similarly, higher phage abundance (average: 2451.70 PPM) was found in the air of the wastewater treatment area. Our data provide insights into the antibiotic resistance gene profiles and microbiome (bacterial and non-bacterial) in pharmaceutical factories and reveal the potential role of horizontal transfer in the spread of airborne ARGs, with implications for human and animal health.

Long-term spectroscopic monitoring campaigns on active galactic nuclei (AGNs) provide a wealth of information about its interior structure and kinematics. However, a number of the observations suffer from the contamination of second-order spectra (SOS) which will introduce some undesirable uncertainties at the red side of the spectra. In this paper, we test the effect of SOS and propose a method to correct it in the time domain spectroscopic data using the simultaneously observed comparison stars. Based on the reverberation mapping (RM) data of NGC 5548 in 2019, one of the most intensively monitored AGNs by the Lijiang 2.4 m telescope, we find that the scientific object, comparison star, and spectrophotometric standard star can jointly introduce up to similar to 30% SOS for Grism 14. This irregular but smooth SOS significantly affects the flux density and profile of the emission line, while having little effect on the light curve. After applying our method to each spectrum, we find that the SOS can be corrected effectively. The deviation between corrected and intrinsic spectra is similar to 2%, and the impact of SOS on time lag is very minor. This method makes it possible to obtain the H alpha RM measurements from archival data provided that the spectral shape of the AGN under investigation does not have a large change.

Humans can not only recognize and understand the world in its current state but also envision future scenarios that extend beyond immediate perception. To resemble this profound human capacity, we introduce zero-shot task hallucination -- given a single RGB image of any scene comprising unknown environments and objects, our model can identify potential tasks and imagine their execution in a vivid narrative, realized as a video. We develop a modular pipeline that progressively enhances scene decomposition, comprehension, and reconstruction, incorporating VLM for dynamic interaction and 3D motion planning for object trajectories. Our model can discover diverse tasks, with the generated task videos demonstrating realistic and compelling visual outcomes that are understandable by both machines and humans. Project Page: https://dannymcy.github.io/zeroshot_task_hallucination, Comment: Project Page: https://dannymcy.github.io/zeroshot_task_hallucination

Bugs exist in hardware, such as CPU. Unlike software bugs, these hardware bugs need to be detected before deployment. Previous fuzzing work in CPU bug detection has several disadvantages, e.g., the length of RTL input instructions keeps growing, and longer inputs are ineffective for fuzzing. In this paper, we propose INSTILLER (Instruction Distiller), an RTL fuzzer based on ant colony optimization (ACO). First, to keep the input instruction length short and efficient in fuzzing, it distills input instructions with a variant of ACO (VACO). Next, related work cannot simulate realistic interruptions well in fuzzing, and INSTILLER solves the problem of inserting interruptions and exceptions in generating the inputs. Third, to further improve the fuzzing performance of INSTILLER, we propose hardware-based seed selection and mutation strategies. We implement a prototype and conduct extensive experiments against state-of-the-art fuzzing work in real-world target CPU cores. In experiments, INSTILLER has 29.4% more coverage than DiFuzzRTL. In addition, 17.0% more mismatches are detected by INSTILLER. With the VACO algorithm, INSTILLER generates 79.3% shorter input instructions than DiFuzzRTL, demonstrating its effectiveness in distilling the input instructions. In addition, the distillation leads to a 6.7% increase in execution speed on average.

Coverage-guided gray-box fuzzing (CGF) is an efficient software testing technique. There are usually multiple objectives to optimize in CGF. However, existing CGF methods cannot successfully find the optimal values for multiple objectives simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a gray-box fuzzer for multi-objective optimization (MOO) called MobFuzz. We model the multi-objective optimization process as a multi-player multi-armed bandit (MPMAB). First, it adaptively selects the objective combination that contains the most appropriate objectives for the current situation. Second, our model deals with the power schedule, which adaptively allocates energy to the seeds under the chosen objective combination. In MobFuzz, we propose an evolutionary algorithm called NIC to optimize our chosen objectives simultaneously without incurring additional performance overhead. To prove the effectiveness of MobFuzz, we conduct experiments on 12 real-world programs and the MAGMA data set. Experiment results show that multi-objective optimization in MobFuzz outperforms single-objective fuzzing in the baseline fuzzers. In contrast to them, MobFuzz can select the optimal objective combination and increase the values of multiple objectives up to 107%, with at most a 55% reduction in the energy consumption. Moreover, MobFuzz has up to 6% more program coverage and finds 3x more unique bugs than the baseline fuzzers. The NIC algorithm has at least a 2x improvement with a performance overhead of approximately 3%.

Deploying neural networks on microcontroller units (MCUs) presents substantial challenges due to their constrained computation and memory resources. Previous researches have explored patch-based inference as a strategy to conserve memory without sacrificing model accuracy. However, this technique suffers from severe redundant computation overhead, leading to a substantial increase in execution latency. A feasible solution to address this issue is mixed-precision quantization, but it faces the challenges of accuracy degradation and a time-consuming search time. In this paper, we propose QuantMCU, a novel patch-based inference method that utilizes value-driven mixed-precision quantization to reduce redundant computation. We first utilize value-driven patch classification (VDPC) to maintain the model accuracy. VDPC classifies patches into two classes based on whether they contain outlier values. For patches containing outlier values, we apply 8-bit quantization to the feature maps on the dataflow branches that follow. In addition, for patches without outlier values, we utilize value-driven quantization search (VDQS) on the feature maps of their following dataflow branches to reduce search time. Specifically, VDQS introduces a novel quantization search metric that takes into account both computation and accuracy, and it employs entropy as an accuracy representation to avoid additional training. VDQS also adopts an iterative approach to determine the bitwidth of each feature map to further accelerate the search process. Experimental results on real-world MCU devices show that QuantMCU can reduce computation by 2.2x on average while maintaining comparable model accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art patch-based inference methods., Comment: Accepted by the 27th Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE 2024)

Recent works in robotic manipulation through reinforcement learning (RL) or imitation learning (IL) have shown potential for tackling a range of tasks e.g., opening a drawer or a cupboard. However, these techniques generalize poorly to unseen objects. We conjecture that this is due to the high-dimensional action space for joint control. In this paper, we take an alternative approach and separate the task of learning 'what to do' from 'how to do it' i.e., whole-body control. We pose the RL problem as one of determining the skill dynamics for a disembodied virtual manipulator interacting with articulated objects. The whole-body robotic kinematic control is optimized to execute the high-dimensional joint motion to reach the goals in the workspace. It does so by solving a quadratic programming (QP) model with robotic singularity and kinematic constraints. Our experiments on manipulating complex articulated objects show that the proposed approach is more generalizable to unseen objects with large intra-class variations, outperforming previous approaches. The evaluation results indicate that our approach generates more compliant robotic motion and outperforms the pure RL and IL baselines in task success rates. Additional information and videos are available at https://kl-research.github.io/decoupskill, Comment: Accepted to IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023

In this paper, a novel robotic grasping system is established to automatically pick up objects in cluttered scenes. A composite robotic hand composed of a suction cup and a gripper is designed for grasping the object stably. The suction cup is used for lifting the object from the clutter first and the gripper for grasping the object accordingly. We utilize the affordance map to provide pixel-wise lifting point candidates for the suction cup. To obtain a good affordance map, the active exploration mechanism is introduced to the system. An effective metric is designed to calculate the reward for the current affordance map, and a deep Q-Network (DQN) is employed to guide the robotic hand to actively explore the environment until the generated affordance map is suitable for grasping. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed robotic grasping system is able to greatly increase the success rate of the robotic grasping in cluttered scenes., Comment: has been accepted by IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2019

To cluster, classify and represent are three fundamental objectives of learning from high-dimensional data with intrinsic structure. To this end, this paper introduces three interpretable approaches, i.e., segmentation (clustering) via the Minimum Lossy Coding Length criterion, classification via the Minimum Incremental Coding Length criterion and representation via the Maximal Coding Rate Reduction criterion. These are derived based on the lossy data coding and compression framework from the principle of rate distortion in information theory. These algorithms are particularly suitable for dealing with finite-sample data (allowed to be sparse or almost degenerate) of mixed Gaussian distributions or subspaces. The theoretical value and attractive features of these methods are summarized by comparison with other learning methods or evaluation criteria. This summary note aims to provide a theoretical guide to researchers (also engineers) interested in understanding 'white-box' machine (deep) learning methods.

Deep learning is experiencing a rise in foundation models that are expected to lead in various fields. The massive number of parameters necessitates the use of tensor model parallelism (TMP) in foundation model training. However, TMP requires frequent communication operations which significantly reduces the training efficiency. In this paper, we present Oases, an automated TMP method with overlapped communication to accelerate foundation model training. Oases proposes a fine-grained training schedule to maximize overlapping communication and computation operations that have data dependence. Additionally, we design the Oases planner that searches for the best model parallel strategy to achieve further accelerations. Unlike existing methods, Oases planner is specifically tailored to model the cost of overlapped communication-computation operations. We evaluate Oases on various model settings and train environments, and compare Oases to four stat-of-the-art implementations. Experimental results demonstrate that Oases achieves speedups of 1.01--1.48X over the fastest baseline, and speedups of up to 1.9X over Megatron-LM.

The MultiCoNER II task aims to detect complex, ambiguous, and fine-grained named entities in low-context situations and noisy scenarios like the presence of spelling mistakes and typos for multiple languages. The task poses significant challenges due to the scarcity of contextual information, the high granularity of the entities(up to 33 classes), and the interference of noisy data. To address these issues, our team {\bf PAI} proposes a universal Named Entity Recognition (NER) system that integrates external entity information to improve performance. Specifically, our system retrieves entities with properties from the knowledge base (i.e. Wikipedia) for a given text, then concatenates entity information with the input sentence and feeds it into Transformer-based models. Finally, our system wins 2 first places, 4 second places, and 1 third place out of 13 tracks. The code is publicly available at \url{https://github.com/diqiuzhuanzhuan/semeval-2023}., Comment: win 2 first places, 4 second places, and 1 third place out of 13 tracks

The introduction of neural radiance fields has greatly improved the effectiveness of view synthesis for monocular videos. However, existing algorithms face difficulties when dealing with uncontrolled or lengthy scenarios, and require extensive training time specific to each new scenario. To tackle these limitations, we propose DynPoint, an algorithm designed to facilitate the rapid synthesis of novel views for unconstrained monocular videos. Rather than encoding the entirety of the scenario information into a latent representation, DynPoint concentrates on predicting the explicit 3D correspondence between neighboring frames to realize information aggregation. Specifically, this correspondence prediction is achieved through the estimation of consistent depth and scene flow information across frames. Subsequently, the acquired correspondence is utilized to aggregate information from multiple reference frames to a target frame, by constructing hierarchical neural point clouds. The resulting framework enables swift and accurate view synthesis for desired views of target frames. The experimental results obtained demonstrate the considerable acceleration of training time achieved - typically an order of magnitude - by our proposed method while yielding comparable outcomes compared to prior approaches. Furthermore, our method exhibits strong robustness in handling long-duration videos without learning a canonical representation of video content.

Directed grey-box fuzzing (DGF) is a target-guided fuzzing intended for testing specific targets (e.g., the potential buggy code). Despite numerous techniques proposed to enhance directedness, the existing DGF techniques still face challenges, such as taking into account the difficulty of reaching different basic blocks when designing the fitness metric, and promoting the effectiveness of symbolic execution (SE) when solving the complex constraints in the path to the target. In this paper, we propose a directed hybrid fuzzer called HyperGo. To address the challenges, we introduce the concept of path probability and combine the probability with distance to form an adaptive fitness metric called probability-based distance. By combining the two factors, probability-based distance can adaptively guide DGF toward paths that are closer to the target and have more easy-to-satisfy path constraints. Then, we put forward an Optimized Symbolic Execution Complementary (OSEC) scheme to combine DGF and SE in a complementary manner. The OSEC would prune the unreachable branches and unsolvable branches, and prioritize symbolic execution of the seeds whose paths are closer to the target and have more branches that are difficult to be covered by DGF. We evaluated HyperGo on 2 benchmarks consisting of 21 programs with a total of 100 target sites. The experimental results show that HyperGo achieves 38.47$\times$, 30.89$\times$, 28.52$\times$, 106.09$\times$ and 143.22$\times$ speedup compared to AFLGo, AFLGoSy, BEACON, WindRanger, and ParmeSan, respectively in reaching target sites, and 3.44$\times$, 3.63$\times$, 4.10$\times$, 3.26$\times$, and 3.00$\times$ speedup in exposing known vulnerabilities. Moreover, HyperGo discovered 37 undisclosed vulnerabilities from 7 real-world programs., Comment: 16 pages

This paper proposes Shoggoth, an efficient edge-cloud collaborative architecture, for boosting inference performance on real-time video of changing scenes. Shoggoth uses online knowledge distillation to improve the accuracy of models suffering from data drift and offloads the labeling process to the cloud, alleviating constrained resources of edge devices. At the edge, we design adaptive training using small batches to adapt models under limited computing power, and adaptive sampling of training frames for robustness and reducing bandwidth. The evaluations on the realistic dataset show 15%-20% model accuracy improvement compared to the edge-only strategy and fewer network costs than the cloud-only strategy., Comment: Accepted by 60th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC2023)

A truly generalizable approach to rigid segmentation and motion estimation is fundamental to 3D understanding of articulated objects and moving scenes. In view of the closely intertwined relationship between segmentation and motion estimates, we present an SE(3) equivariant architecture and a training strategy to tackle this task in an unsupervised manner. Our architecture is composed of two interconnected, lightweight heads. These heads predict segmentation masks using point-level invariant features and estimate motion from SE(3) equivariant features, all without the need for category information. Our training strategy is unified and can be implemented online, which jointly optimizes the predicted segmentation and motion by leveraging the interrelationships among scene flow, segmentation mask, and rigid transformations. We conduct experiments on four datasets to demonstrate the superiority of our method. The results show that our method excels in both model performance and computational efficiency, with only 0.25M parameters and 0.92G FLOPs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work designed for category-agnostic part-level SE(3) equivariance in dynamic point clouds., Comment: To appear at NeurIPS 2023

Charm-hadrons possess versatile hadro-chemistry as characterized by various transverse-momentum-dependent ratios between their different species. In particular, the charm hadro-chemistry may be modified in relativistic heavy-ion collisions with respect to proton-proton collisions at the same energy, as caused by novel diffusion and hadronization mechanisms of charm quarks in the environment of the created quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in the former. Inspired by recent measurements of leptons from charm-hadron decays (separated from bottom decays) in Pb-Pb and Au-Au collisions, we investigate the effects of the charm hadro-chemistry on the leptonic observables. We find that full consideration of charm hadro-chemistry in both proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions causes only mild change of charm-leptons' suppression factor with respect to previous calculations hadronizing charm quarks into $D$ mesons only, whereas the resulting change (increase) in the charm-leptons' elliptic flow turns out to be more pronounced as a consequence of the larger collectivity of $\Lambda_c$ baryons than $D$ mesons., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

As the hardware industry moves towards using specialized heterogeneous many-cores to avoid the effects of the power wall, software developers are finding it hard to deal with the complexity of these systems. This article shares our experience when developing a programming model and its supporting compiler and libraries for Matrix-3000, which is designed for next-generation exascale supercomputers but has a complex memory hierarchy and processor organization. To assist its software development, we developed a software stack from scratch that includes a low-level programming interface and a high-level OpenCL compiler. Our low-level programming model offers native programming support for using the bare-metal accelerators of Matrix-3000, while the high-level model allows programmers to use the OpenCL programming standard. We detail our design choices and highlight the lessons learned from developing systems software to enable the programming of bare-metal accelerators. Our programming models have been deployed to the production environment of an exascale prototype system.

With photonics, the quantum computational advantage has been demonstrated on the task of boson sampling. Next, developing quantum-enhanced approaches for practical problems becomes one of the top priorities for photonic systems. Quantum walks are powerful kernels for developing new and useful quantum algorithms. Here we realize large-scale quantum walks using a fully programmable photonic quantum computing system. The system integrates a silicon quantum photonic chip, enabling the simulation of quantum walk dynamics on graphs with up to 400 vertices and possessing full programmability over quantum walk parameters, including the particle property, initial state, graph structure, and evolution time. In the 400-dimensional Hilbert space, the average fidelity of random entangled quantum states after the whole on-chip circuit evolution reaches as high as 94.29$\pm$1.28$\%$. With the system, we demonstrated exponentially faster hitting and quadratically faster mixing performance of quantum walks over classical random walks, achieving more than two orders of magnitude of enhancement in the experimental hitting efficiency and almost half of the reduction in the experimental evolution time for mixing. We utilize the system to implement a series of quantum applications, including measuring the centrality of scale-free networks, searching targets on Erd\"{o}s-R\'{e}nyi networks, distinguishing non-isomorphic graph pairs, and simulating the topological phase of higher-order topological insulators. Our work shows one feasible path for quantum photonics to address applications of practical interests in the near future.

Nearest neighbor search supports important applications in many domains, such as database, machine learning, computer vision. Since the computational cost for accurate search is too high, the community turned to the research of approximate nearest neighbor search (ANNS). Among them, graph-based algorithm is one of the most important branches. Research by Fu et al. shows that the algorithms based on Monotonic Search Network (MSNET), such as NSG and NSSG, have achieved the state-of-the-art search performance in efficiency. The MSNET is dedicated to achieving monotonic search with minimal out-degree of nodes to pursue high efficiency. However, the current MSNET designs did not optimize the probability of the monotonic search, and the lower bound of the probability is only 50%. If they fail in monotonic search stage, they have to suffer tremendous backtracking cost to achieve the required accuracy. This will cause performance problems in search efficiency. To address this problem, we propose (r,p)-MSNET, which achieves guaranteed probability on monotonic search. Due to the high building complexity of a strict (r,p)-MSNET, we propose TBSG, which is an approximation with low complexity. Experiment conducted on four million-scaled datasets show that TBSG outperforms existing state-of-the-art graph-based algorithms in search efficiency. Our code has been released on Github.

We present LAMOST~J041920.07+072545.4 (hereafter J0419), a close binary consisting of a bloated extremely low mass pre-white dwarf (pre-ELM WD) and a compact object with an orbital period of 0.607189~days. The large-amplitude ellipsoidal variations and the evident Balmer and He~I emission lines suggest a filled Roche lobe and ongoing mass transfer. No outburst events were detected in the 15 years of monitoring of J0419, indicating a very low mass transfer rate. The temperature of the pre-ELM, $T_\mathrm{eff} = 5793_{-133}^{+124}\,\rm K$, is cooler than the known ELMs, but hotter than most CV donors. Combining the mean density within the Roche lobe and the radius constrained from our SED fitting, we obtain the mass of the pre-ELM, $M_1 = 0.176\pm 0.014\,M_\odot$. The joint fitting of light and radial velocity curves yields an inclination angle of $i = 66.5_{-1.7}^{+1.4}$ degrees, corresponding to the compact object mass of $M_2 = 1.09\pm 0.05\,M_\odot$. The very bloated pre-ELM has a smaller surface gravity ($\log g = 3.9\pm 0.01$, $R_1 = 0.78 \pm 0.02\,R_\odot$) than the known ELMs or pre-ELMs. The temperature and the luminosity ($L_\mathrm{bol} = 0.62_{-0.10}^{+0.11}\,L_\odot$) of J0419 are close to the main sequence, which makes the selection of such systems through the HR diagram inefficient. Based on the evolutionary model, the relatively long period and small $\log g$ indicate that J0419 could be close to the "bifurcation period" in the orbit evolution, which makes J0419 to be a unique source to connect ELM/pre-ELM WD systems, wide binaries and cataclysmic variables., Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures, ApJ, 933, 193

NGC 5548 is one of the active galactic nuclei (AGN) selected for our long-term spectroscopic monitoring with the Lijiang 2.4~m telescope, aiming at investigating the origin and evolution of the broad-line regions (BLRs), accurately measuring the mass of the supermassive black holes (SMBHs), and understanding structure and evolution of the AGN. We have performed five-season observations for NGC~5548 with the median sampling interval ranging from 1.25 to 3 days. The light curves of the 5100~\AA\ continuum and broad emission lines are measured after subtracting contamination of the host galaxy starlight. The time lags of the broad He~{\sc ii}, He~{\sc i}, H$\gamma$, and H$\beta$ lines with respect to the 5100~\AA\ continuum are obtained for each season and their mean time lags over the five seasons are 0.69, 4.66, 4.60, 8.43 days, respectively. The H$\gamma$ and H$\beta$ velocity-resolved lag profiles in the seasons of 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2021 are constructed, from which an ``M-shaped'' structure is found in 2015 but disappears after 2018. Our five-season reverberation mapping (RM) yields an averaged virial SMBH mass of $M_\bullet/10^7M_\odot=14.22$, with a small standard deviation of $1.89$. By combining the previous 18 RM campaigns and our five-season campaign for NGC~5548, we find that there exists a time lag of 3.5~years between the changes in the BLR size and optical luminosity. In addition, we also construct the BLR radius$-$luminosity relation and the virial relation for NGC~5548., Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in ApJS

Changing-look active galactic nucleus NGC~4151, which has attracted a lot of attention, is undergoing the second dramatic outburst stage in its evolutionary history. To investigate the geometry and kinematics of the broad-line region (BLR), and measure the mass of supermassive black hole in NGC~4151, we perform a seven-month photometric and spectroscopic monitoring program in 2020--2021, using the 2.4 m telescope at Lijiang Observatory. We successfully measure the time lags of the responses from broad \ha, \hb, \hg, \hei, and \heii\ emission lines to continuum variation, which are $7.63_{-2.62}^{+1.85}$, $6.21_{-1.13}^{+1.41}$, $5.67_{-1.94}^{+1.65}$, $1.59_{-1.11}^{+0.86}$, and $0.46_{-1.06}^{+1.22}$ days, respectively, following radial stratification. The ratios of time lags among these lines are $1.23 : 1.00 : 0.91 : 0.26 : 0.07$. We find that the continuum lag between the ultraviolet and optical bands can significantly affect the lag measurements of \hei\ and \heii. Virial and infalling gas motions coexist in this campaign, which is different from previous results, implying the evolutionary kinematics of BLR. Based on our measurements and previous ones in the literature, we confirm that the BLR of NGC~4151 is basically virialized. Finally, we compute the black hole mass through multiple lines, and the measurement from \hb\ to be $ 3.94_{-0.72}^{+0.90} \times 10^7 M_{\odot}$, which is consistent with previous results. The corresponding accretion rate is $0.02_{-0.01}^{+0.01} L_{\rm Edd} c^{-2}$, implying a sub-Eddington accretor., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Quasars behind the Galactic plane (GPQs) are important astrometric references and valuable probes of Galactic gas, yet the search for GPQs is difficult due to severe extinction and source crowding in the Galactic plane. In this paper, we present a sample of 204 spectroscopically confirmed GPQs at |b|<20{\deg}, 191 of which are new discoveries. This GPQ sample covers a wide redshift range from 0.069 to 4.487. For the subset of 230 observed GPQ candidates, the lower limit of the purity of quasars is 85.2%, and the lower limit of the fraction of stellar contaminants is 6.1%. Using a multicomponent spectral fitting, we measure the emission line and continuum flux of the GPQs, and estimate their single-epoch virial black hole masses. Due to selection effects raised from Galactic extinction and target magnitude, these GPQs have higher black hole masses and continuum luminosities in comparison to the SDSS DR7 quasar sample. The spectral-fitting results and black hole mass estimates are compiled into a main spectral catalog, and an extended spectral catalog of GPQs. The successful identifications prove the reliability of both our GPQ selection methods and the GPQ candidate catalog, shedding light on the astrometric and astrophysical programs that make use of a large sample of GPQs in the future., Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, published in ApJS. Tables and spectra in this paper are available at https://doi.org/10.12149/101095

This paper presents an analytical and experimental design and deployment control analysis of a hyperbolic paraboloid cable net based on clustering actuation strategies. First, the dynamics and statics for clustered tensegrity structures (CTS) are given. Then, we propose the topology design of the deployable hyperbolic paraboloid cable net. The deployability of the cable net is achieved by using clustered cables. It is shown that the clustered cables significantly reduce the number of actuators required for control. The deployment trajectory and actuation prestress in the cables are designed to ensure the tensions are feasible during the deployment process. Then, we compare the deployment analysis's open-loop and closed-loop control strategies. Finally, a lab-scale model is constructed to validate the actuation laws. We test the static performance and deployment process of the experimental model. Results show that the closed-loop control approach is more stable and smoother than the open-loop one in the deployment process. The approaches developed in this paper can also be used for various deployable tensegrity structures., Comment: 20 pages, 24 figures

Zheng Qin,1 Kai Lu,2 Tiantian Jiang,3 Mei Wang,3 Yue Weng,3 Xiaoqiong Tang,3 Yu Zhao1 1Department of Vascular Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Cardiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of hematopathology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Xiaoqiong TangDepartment of Hematopathology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, 1 Youyi Road, Yuzhong, Chongqing, 400016, People’s Republic of China, Email tlscqmu@126.comYu ZhaoDepartment of Vascular Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, 1 Youyi Road, Yuzhong, Chongqing, 400016, People’s Republic of China, Email zhaoyucqmu@126.comBackground: We aimed to explore the potential association of body composition parameters measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) with the incidence of sarcopenia in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) (non-M3) after chemotherapy.Patients and Methods: This was a single-center observational study. Sixty-nine patients with newly diagnosed AML underwent BIA at the time of initial diagnosis and after completion of three chemotherapy sessions. Pre- and post-chemotherapy BIA parameters were compared. Sarcopenia was defined as low skeletal muscle mass plus low muscle strength according to the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia (AWGS). Association of sarcopenia with mid-arm muscle circumference (MAMC) and intracellular water (ICW) was assessed by multivariate logistic regression.Results: There was a significant increase in the prevalence of sarcopenia after chemotherapy (39.1% vs 14.5%, P< 0.001). Skeletal muscle mass (SMM), fat-free mass (FFM), and soft lean mass (SLM) showed a significant decrease after chemotherapy (P< 0.05). MAMC, ICW, an

Measuring the quasar distance through joint analysis of spectroastrometry (SA) and reverberation mapping (RM) observations is a new method for driving the development of cosmology. In this paper, we carry out detailed simulation and analysis to study the effect of four basic observational parameters (baseline length, exposure time, equivalent diameter and spectral resolution) on the data quality of differential phase curves (DPCs), furthermore on the accuracy of distance measurement. In our simulation, we adopt an axis symmetrical disc model of broad line region (BLR) to generate differential phase signals. We find that the differential phases and their Poisson errors could be amplified by extending the baseline, while the influence of OPD (optical path difference) errors can be reduced during fitting the BLR model. Longer exposure time or larger equivalent diameter helps reduce the absolute Poisson error. Therefore, the relative error of DPCs could be reduce by increasing any of the above three parameters, then the accuracy of distance measurement could be improved. In contrast, the uncertainty of $D_{\rm{A}}$ ( absolute angular distances) could be improved with higher spectral resolution, although the relative error of DPCs would be amplified. We show how the uncertainty of distance measurement varies with the relative error of DPCs. For our specific set of model parameters, without considering more complicated structures and kinematics of BLRs in our simulation, it is found that the relative error of DPCs $<$ 20$\%$ is a limit for accurate distance measurement. The relative error of DPCs have a lower limit (roughly 5$\%$) and the uncertainty of distance measurement can be better than 2$\%$.

We present the results from a spectroscopic monitoring campaign to obtain reverberation-mapping measurements and investigate the broad-line region kinematics for active galactic nuclei (AGN) of Mrk~817 and NGC~7469. This campaign was undertaken with the Lijiang 2.4-meter telescope, the median spectroscopic sampling is 2.0 days for Mrk~817 and 1.0 days for NGC~7469. We detect time lags of the broad emission lines including H$\beta$, H$\gamma$, He~{\sc ii} and He~{\sc i} for both AGNs, and including Fe~{\sc ii} for Mrk~817 with respect to the varying AGN continuum at 5100~\AA. Investigating the relationship between line widths and time lags of the broad emission lines, we find that the BLR dynamics of Mrk~817 and NGC~7469 are consistent with the virial prediction. We estimate the masses of central supermassive black hole (SMBH) and the accretion rates of both AGNs. Using the data of this campaign, we construct the velocity-resolved lag profiles of the broad H$\gamma$, H$\beta$, and He~{\sc i} lines for Mrk~817, which show almost the same kinematic signatures that the time lags in the red wing are slightly larger than the time lags in the blue wing. For NGC~7469, we only clearly construct the velocity-resolved lag profiles of the broad H$\gamma$ and H$\beta$, which show very similar kinematic signatures to the BLR of Mrk~817. These signatures indicate that the BLR of Keplerian motion in both AGNs seemingly has outflowing components during the monitoring period. We discuss the kinematics of the BLR and the measurements including SMBH mass and accretion rates., Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We report the results of a multi-year spectroscopic and photometric monitoring campaign of two luminous quasars, PG~0923+201 and PG~1001+291, both located at the high-luminosity end of the broad-line region (BLR) size-luminosity relation with optical luminosities above $10^{45}~{\rm erg~s^{-1}}$. PG~0923+201 is for the first time monitored, and PG~1001+291 was previously monitored but our campaign has a much longer temporal baseline. We detect time lags of variations of the broad H$\beta$, H$\gamma$, Fe {\sc ii} lines with respect to those of the 5100~{\AA} continuum. The velocity-resolved delay map of H$\beta$ in PG~0923+201 indicates a complicated structure with a mix of Keplerian disk-like motion and outflow, and the map of H$\beta$ in PG~1001+291 shows a signature of Keplerian disk-like motion. Assuming a virial factor of $f_{\rm BLR}=1$ and FWHM line widths, we measure the black hole mass to be $118_{-16}^{+11}\times 10^7 M_{\odot}$ for PG~0923+201 and $3.33_{-0.54}^{+0.62}\times 10^7 M_{\odot}$ for PG~1001+291. Their respective accretion rates are estimated to be $0.21_{-0.07}^{+0.06} \times L_{\rm Edd}\,c^{-2}$ and $679_{-227}^{+259}\times L_{\rm Edd}\,c^{-2}$, indicating that PG~0923+201 is a sub-Eddington accretor and PG~1001+291 is a super-Eddington accretor. While the H$\beta$ time lag of PG~0923+201 agrees with the size-luminosity relation, the time lag of PG~1001+291 shows a significant deviation, confirming that in high-luminosity AGN the BLR size depends on both luminosity and Eddington ratio. Black hole mass estimates from single AGN spectra will be over-estimated at high luminosities and redshifts if this effect is not taken into account., Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures, accepted

Compared with contact detection techniques, pavement crack identification with visual images via deep learning algorithms has the advantages of not being limited by the material of object to be detected, fast speed and low cost. The fundamental frameworks and typical model architectures of transfer learning (TL), encoder-decoder (ED), generative adversarial networks (GAN), and their common modules were first reviewed, and then the evolution of convolutional neural network (CNN) backbone models and GAN models were summarized. The crack classification, segmentation performance, and effect were tested on the SDNET2018 and CFD public data sets. In the aspect of patch sample classification, the fine-tuned TL models can be equivalent to or even slightly better than the ED models in accuracy, and the predicting time is faster; In the aspect of accurate crack location, both ED and GAN algorithms can achieve pixel-level segmentation and is expected to be detected in real time on low computing power platform. Furthermore, a weakly supervised learning framework of combined TL-SSGAN and its performance enhancement measures are proposed, which can maintain comparable crack identification performance with that of the supervised learning, while greatly reducing the number of labeled samples required., Comment: This work will be submitted for possible publication. It is a further study from 2012.14704v2

Measuring the quasar distance through joint analysis of spectroastrometry (SA) and reverberation mapping (RM) observations is a new method for driving the development of cosmology. In this paper, we carry out detailed simulation and analysis to study the effect of four basic observational parameters (baseline length, exposure time, equivalent diameter and spectral resolution) on the data quality of differential phase curves (DPCs), furthermore on the accuracy of distance measurement. In our simulation, we adopt an axis symmetrical disc model of broad line region (BLR) to generate differential phase signals. We find that the differential phases and their Poisson errors could be amplified by extending the baseline, while the influence of OPD (optical path difference) errors can be reduced during fitting the BLR model. Longer exposure time or larger equivalent diameter helps reduce the absolute Poisson error. Therefore, the relative error of DPCs could be reduce by increasing any of the above three parameters, then the accuracy of distance measurement could be improved. In contrast, the uncertainty of $D_{\rm{A}}$ ( absolute angular distances) could be improved with higher spectral resolution, although the relative error of DPCs would be amplified. We show how the uncertainty of distance measurement varies with the relative error of DPCs. For our specific set of model parameters, without considering more complicated structures and kinematics of BLRs in our simulation, it is found that the relative error of DPCs $<$ 20$\%$ is a limit for accurate distance measurement. The relative error of DPCs have a lower limit (roughly 5$\%$) and the uncertainty of distance measurement can be better than 2$\%$.

We present the results from a spectroscopic monitoring campaign to obtain reverberation-mapping measurements and investigate the broad-line region kinematics for active galactic nuclei (AGN) of Mrk~817 and NGC~7469. This campaign was undertaken with the Lijiang 2.4-meter telescope, the median spectroscopic sampling is 2.0 days for Mrk~817 and 1.0 days for NGC~7469. We detect time lags of the broad emission lines including H$\beta$, H$\gamma$, He~{\sc ii} and He~{\sc i} for both AGNs, and including Fe~{\sc ii} for Mrk~817 with respect to the varying AGN continuum at 5100~\AA. Investigating the relationship between line widths and time lags of the broad emission lines, we find that the BLR dynamics of Mrk~817 and NGC~7469 are consistent with the virial prediction. We estimate the masses of central supermassive black hole (SMBH) and the accretion rates of both AGNs. Using the data of this campaign, we construct the velocity-resolved lag profiles of the broad H$\gamma$, H$\beta$, and He~{\sc i} lines for Mrk~817, which show almost the same kinematic signatures that the time lags in the red wing are slightly larger than the time lags in the blue wing. For NGC~7469, we only clearly construct the velocity-resolved lag profiles of the broad H$\gamma$ and H$\beta$, which show very similar kinematic signatures to the BLR of Mrk~817. These signatures indicate that the BLR of Keplerian motion in both AGNs seemingly has outflowing components during the monitoring period. We discuss the kinematics of the BLR and the measurements including SMBH mass and accretion rates., Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We report the results of a multi-year spectroscopic and photometric monitoring campaign of two luminous quasars, PG~0923+201 and PG~1001+291, both located at the high-luminosity end of the broad-line region (BLR) size-luminosity relation with optical luminosities above $10^{45}~{\rm erg~s^{-1}}$. PG~0923+201 is for the first time monitored, and PG~1001+291 was previously monitored but our campaign has a much longer temporal baseline. We detect time lags of variations of the broad H$\beta$, H$\gamma$, Fe {\sc ii} lines with respect to those of the 5100~{\AA} continuum. The velocity-resolved delay map of H$\beta$ in PG~0923+201 indicates a complicated structure with a mix of Keplerian disk-like motion and outflow, and the map of H$\beta$ in PG~1001+291 shows a signature of Keplerian disk-like motion. Assuming a virial factor of $f_{\rm BLR}=1$ and FWHM line widths, we measure the black hole mass to be $118_{-16}^{+11}\times 10^7 M_{\odot}$ for PG~0923+201 and $3.33_{-0.54}^{+0.62}\times 10^7 M_{\odot}$ for PG~1001+291. Their respective accretion rates are estimated to be $0.21_{-0.07}^{+0.06} \times L_{\rm Edd}\,c^{-2}$ and $679_{-227}^{+259}\times L_{\rm Edd}\,c^{-2}$, indicating that PG~0923+201 is a sub-Eddington accretor and PG~1001+291 is a super-Eddington accretor. While the H$\beta$ time lag of PG~0923+201 agrees with the size-luminosity relation, the time lag of PG~1001+291 shows a significant deviation, confirming that in high-luminosity AGN the BLR size depends on both luminosity and Eddington ratio. Black hole mass estimates from single AGN spectra will be over-estimated at high luminosities and redshifts if this effect is not taken into account., Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures, accepted

Observing a telluric standard star for correcting the telluric absorption lines of spectrum will take a significant amount of precious telescope time, especially in the long-term spectral monitoring project. Beyond that, it's difficult to select a suitable telluric standard star near in both time and airmass to the scientific object. In this paper, we present a method of correcting the telluric absorption lines by combining the advantages of long slit spectroscopy. By rotating the slit, we observed the scientific object and a nearby comparison star in one exposure, so that the spectra of both objects should have the same telluric transmission spectrum. The telluric transmission spectrum was constructed by dividing the observed spectrum of comparison star by its stellar template, and was used to correct the telluric absorption lines of the scientific object. Using the long slit spectrograph of Lijiang 2.4-meter telescope, we designed a long-term spectroscopic observation strategy, and finished a four-year spectroscopic monitoring for a pair of objects (an active galactic nuclei and an non-varying comparison star). We applied this method to correct the telluric absorption lines of the long-term monitored spectra by Lijiang 2.4-meter telescope, and investigated the variation of the telluric absorptions at Lijiang Observatory. We found that the telluric absorption transparency is mainly modulated by the seasonal variability of the relative humidity, airmass and seeing. Using the scatter of the [O~III] $\lambda$5007 fluxes emitted from the narrow-line region of active galactic nuclei as an indicator, we found that the correction accuracy of the telluric absorption lines is 1%., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figure, accepted for publication in RAA (Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics)

NGC 2617 has attracted a lot of attention after the detection of the changes in spectral type, and its geometry and kinematics of broad-line region (BLR) are still ambiguous. In this paper, we present the high cadence ($\sim$ 2 days) reverberation mapping campaign of NGC 2617 from 2019 October to 2020 May undertaken at Lijiang 2.4 m telescope. For the first time, the velocity-resolved reverberation signature of the object was successfully detected. Both H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$ show an asymmetrical profile with a peak in the velocity-resolved time lags. For each of both lines, the lag of the line core is longer than those of the relevant wings, and the peak of the velocity-resolved lags is slightly blueshifted. These characteristics are not consistent with the theoretical prediction of the inflow, outflow or Keplerian disk model. Our observations give the time lags ofH$\alpha$, H$\beta$, H$\gamma$, and He I, with a ratio of $\tau_{\rm{H}\alpha}$:$\tau_{\rm{H}\beta}$:$\tau_{\rm{H}\gamma}$:$\tau_{\rm{He~I}}$ = 1.27:1.00:0.89:0.20, which indicates a stratified structure in the BLR of the object. It is the first time that the lags of H$\alpha$ and He I are obtained. Assuming a virial factor of $f$ = 5.5 for dispersion width of line, the masses of black hole derived from H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$ are $\rm{23.8^{+5.4}_{-2.7}}$ and $\rm{21.1^{+3.8}_{-4.4}} \times 10^{6}M_{\odot}$, respectively. Our observed results indicate the complexity of the BLR of NGC 2617., Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ

The Tibetan Plateau is the source of most of Asia's major rivers and has been called the Asian Water Tower. Detailed knowledge of its hydrogeology is paramount to enable the understanding of groundwater dynamics, which plays a vital role in headwater areas like the Tibetan Plateau. Nevertheless, due to its remoteness and the harsh environment, there is a lack of field survey data to investigate its hydrogeology. In this study, borehole core lithology analysis, soil thickness measurement, an altitude survey, hydrogeological surveys, and hydrogeophysical surveys (e.g. magnetic resonance sounding - MRS, electrical resistivity tomography - ERT, and transient electromagnetic - TEM) were conducted in the Maqu catchment within the Yellow River source region (YRSR). The hydrogeological surveys reveal that groundwater flows from the west to the east, recharging the Yellow River. The hydraulic conductivity ranges from 0.2 to 12.4ĝ€¯mĝ€¯d-1. The MRS sounding results, i.e. water content and hydraulic conductivity, confirmed the presence of an unconfined aquifer in the flat eastern area. Based on TEM results, the depth of the Yellow River deposits was derived at several places in the flat eastern area, ranging from 50 to 208ĝ€¯m. The soil thickness measurements were done in the western mountainous area of the catchment, where hydrogeophysical and hydrogeological surveys were difficult to be carried out. The results indicate that most soil thicknesses, except on the valley floor, are within 1.2ĝ€¯m in the western mountainous area of the catchment, and the soil thickness decreases as the slope increases. These survey data and results can contribute to integrated hydrological modelling and water cycle analysis to improve a full-picture understanding of the water cycle at the Maqu catchment in the YRSR. The raw dataset is freely available at https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-z6t-zpn7 (Li et al., 2020a), and the dataset containing the processed ERT, MRS, and TEM data is also available at

Graph neural networks exhibit remarkable performance in graph data analysis. However, the robustness of GNN models remains a challenge. As a result, they are not reliable enough to be deployed in critical applications. Recent studies demonstrate that GNNs could be easily fooled with adversarial perturbations, especially structural perturbations. Such vulnerability is attributed to the excessive dependence on the structure information to make predictions. To achieve better robustness, it is desirable to build the prediction of GNNs with more comprehensive features. Graph data, in most cases, has two views of information, namely structure information and feature information. In this paper, we propose CoG, a simple yet effective co-training framework to combine these two views for the purpose of robustness. CoG trains sub-models from the feature view and the structure view independently and allows them to distill knowledge from each other by adding their most confident unlabeled data into the training set. The orthogonality of these two views diversifies the sub-models, thus enhancing the robustness of their ensemble. We evaluate our framework on three popular datasets, and results show that CoG significantly improves the robustness of graph models against adversarial attacks without sacrificing their performance on clean data. We also show that CoG still achieves good robustness when both node features and graph structures are perturbed.

In order to analyse the second order wave force on a abnormity floating pontoon and the influence of dimensions of the appended pontoons and water depth on the second order wave force of the structure, the second order hydroelasticity theory of ships was used to calculate the second order wave force. The second order wave force include the difference-frequency and sum-frequency fluid forces. The first order wave potentials and responses are sure to make the major contributions to the second order hydrodynamic actions, so the first order motions of the structure were calculated and verified by comparison with the experimental results. The second order wave force of the abnormity floating pontoon was calculated and compared in the different water depth. The results showed that the water depth has significant influence on the second order wave force on the pontoon. And the results also showed that the mean drift force was only sensitive to the wave direction in the medium and high wave frequency domain., Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China

As one of the most interesting Seyfert 1 galaxies, PG 2130+099 has been the target of several reverberation mapping (RM) campaigns over the years. However, its measured broad H$\beta$ line responses have been inconsistent, with time lags of $\sim$200 days, $\sim$25 days, and $\sim$10 days being reported for different epochs while its optical luminosity changed no more than 40%. To investigate this issue, we conducted a new RM-campaign with homogenous and high cadence (about $\sim$3 days) for two years during 2017--2019 to measure the kinematics and structure of the ionized gas. We successfully detected time lags of broad H$\beta$, He II, He I, and Fe II lines with respect to the varying 5100\AA continuum, revealing a stratified structure that is likely virialized with Keplerian kinematics in the first year of observations, but an inflow kinematics of the broad-line region from the second year. With a central black hole mass of $0.97_{-0.18}^{+0.15}\times 10^7~M_{\odot}$, PG 2130+099 has an accretion rate of $10^{2.1\pm0.5}L_{\rm Edd}c^{-2}$, where $L_{\rm Edd}$ is the Eddington luminosity and $c$ is speed of light, implying that it is a super-Eddington accretor and likely possesses a slim, rather than thin, accretion disk. The fast changes of the ionization structures of the three broad lines remain puzzling., Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

The South China Block (SCB) has been regarded by many as an integral part of Gondwana, but proposed timing and processes for its accretion to Gondwana vary and remain contentious, largely owing to the lack of reliable Pan‐African age paleomagnetic data and tectono‐magmatic records from the SCB. Integrated in situ U‐Pb ages and Hf‐O isotope analyses of detrital zircons from geochronologically well‐calibrated Ediacaran‐Cambrian sedimentary rocks of western SCB reveal age populations of 2.51, 1.85, 1.20, 0.80, and 0.52 Ga. Detrital zircon age spectra indicate a major tectonic transition for the SCB during 0.56–0.54 Ga, interpreted to reflect the beginning of the collision between SCB‐Indochina and NW India blocks. The collisional event lasted until early Ordovician, leading to the suturing of the SCB‐Indochina to the northern margin of East Gondwana.

A serological survey of 2,430 archived serum samples collected between 1997 and 2012 was conducted to retrospectively determine the prevalence of Marburg virus in five African countries. Serum samples were screened for neutralizing antibodies in a pseudotype micro-neutralization assay and confirmed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Surprisingly, a seroprevalence for Marburg virus of 7.5 and 6.3% was found in Cameroon and Ghana, respectively, suggesting the circulation of filoviruses or related viruses outside of known endemic areas that remain undetected by current surveillance efforts. However, due to the lack of validated assays and appropriate positive controls, these results must be considered preliminary.

The changes of broad emission lines should be a crucial issue to understanding the physical properties of changing-look active galactic nucleus (CL-AGN). Here, we present the results of an intensive and homogeneous 6-month long reverberation mapping (RM) monitoring campaign during a low-activity state of the CL-AGN Seyfert galaxy NGC 3516. Photometric and spectroscopic monitoring was carried out during 2018--2019 with the Lijiang 2.4 m telescope. The sampling is 2 days in most nights, and the average sampling is $\sim$3 days. The rest frame time lags of H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$ are $\tau_{\rm{H}\alpha}=7.56^{+4.42}_{-2.10}$ days and $\tau_{\rm{H}\beta}=7.50^{+2.05}_{-0.77}$ days, respectively. From a RMS H$\beta$ line dispersion of $\sigma_{\rm{line}} = 1713.3 \pm 46.7$ $\rm{km}$ $\rm{s^{-1}}$ and a virial factor of $f_{\sigma}$ = 5.5, the central black hole mass of NGC 3516 is estimated to be $M_{\rm{BH}}= 2.4^{+0.7}_{-0.3} \times 10^{7} M_{\odot}$, which is in agreement with previous estimates. The velocity-resolved delays show that the time lags increase towards negative velocity for both H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$. The velocity-resolved RM of H$\alpha$ is done for the first time. These RM results are consistent with other observations before the spectral type change, indicating a basically constant BLR structure during the changing-look process. The CL model of changes of accretion rate seems to be favored by long-term H$\beta$ variability and RM observations of NGC 3516., Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ

As one of the most interesting Seyfert 1 galaxies, PG 2130+099 has been the target of several reverberation mapping (RM) campaigns over the years. However, its measured broad H$\beta$ line responses have been inconsistent, with time lags of $\sim$200 days, $\sim$25 days, and $\sim$10 days being reported for different epochs while its optical luminosity changed no more than 40%. To investigate this issue, we conducted a new RM-campaign with homogenous and high cadence (about $\sim$3 days) for two years during 2017--2019 to measure the kinematics and structure of the ionized gas. We successfully detected time lags of broad H$\beta$, He II, He I, and Fe II lines with respect to the varying 5100\AA continuum, revealing a stratified structure that is likely virialized with Keplerian kinematics in the first year of observations, but an inflow kinematics of the broad-line region from the second year. With a central black hole mass of $0.97_{-0.18}^{+0.15}\times 10^7~M_{\odot}$, PG 2130+099 has an accretion rate of $10^{2.1\pm0.5}L_{\rm Edd}c^{-2}$, where $L_{\rm Edd}$ is the Eddington luminosity and $c$ is speed of light, implying that it is a super-Eddington accretor and likely possesses a slim, rather than thin, accretion disk. The fast changes of the ionization structures of the three broad lines remain puzzling., Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

The South China Block (SCB) has been regarded by many as an integral part of Gondwana, but proposed timing and processes for its accretion to Gondwana vary and remain contentious, largely owing to the lack of reliable Pan‐African age paleomagnetic data and tectono‐magmatic records from the SCB. Integrated in situ U‐Pb ages and Hf‐O isotope analyses of detrital zircons from geochronologically well‐calibrated Ediacaran‐Cambrian sedimentary rocks of western SCB reveal age populations of 2.51, 1.85, 1.20, 0.80, and 0.52 Ga. Detrital zircon age spectra indicate a major tectonic transition for the SCB during 0.56–0.54 Ga, interpreted to reflect the beginning of the collision between SCB‐Indochina and NW India blocks. The collisional event lasted until early Ordovician, leading to the suturing of the SCB‐Indochina to the northern margin of East Gondwana.

Greybox fuzzing is a scalable and practical approach for software testing. Most greybox fuzzing tools are coverage-guided as reaching high code coverage is more likely to find bugs. However, since most covered codes may not contain bugs, blindly extending code coverage is less efficient, especially for corner cases. Unlike coverage-guided greybox fuzzing which increases code coverage in an undirected manner, directed greybox fuzzing (DGF) spends most of its time allocation on reaching specific targets (e.g., the bug-prone zone) without wasting resources stressing unrelated parts. Thus, DGF is particularly suitable for scenarios such as patch testing,bug reproduction, and special bug detection. For now, DGF has become an active research area. However, DGF has general limitations and challenges that are worth further studying. Based on the investigation of 42 state-of-the-art fuzzers that are closely related to DGF, we conduct the first in-depth study to summarize the empirical evidence on the research progress of DGF. This paper studies DGF from a broader view, which takes into account not only the location-directed type that targets specific code parts, but also the behavior-directed type that aims to expose abnormal program behaviors. By analyzing the benefits and limitations of DGF research, we try to identify gaps in current research, meanwhile, reveal new research opportunities, and suggest areas for further investigation., Comment: 37 pages, 14 figures

Recent research has sought to improve fuzzing performance via parallel computing. However, researchers focus on improving efficiency while ignoring the increasing cost of testing resources. Parallel fuzzing in the distributed environment amplifies the resource-wasting problem caused by the random nature of fuzzing. In the parallel mode, owing to the lack of an appropriate task dispatching scheme and timely fuzzing status synchronization among different fuzzing instances, task conflicts and workload imbalance occur, making the resource-wasting problem severe. In this paper, we design UltraFuzz, a fuzzer for resource-saving in distributed fuzzing. Based on centralized dynamic scheduling, UltraFuzz can dispatch tasks and schedule power globally and reasonably to avoid resource-wasting. Besides, UltraFuzz can elastically allocate computing power for fuzzing and seed evaluation, thereby avoiding the potential bottleneck of seed evaluation that blocks the fuzzing process. UltraFuzz was evaluated using real-world programs, and the results show that with the same testing resource, UltraFuzz outperforms state-of-the-art tools, such as AFL, AFL-P, PAFL, and EnFuzz. Most importantly, the experiment reveals certain results that seem counter-intuitive, namely that parallel fuzzing can achieve ``super-linear acceleration'' when compared with single-core fuzzing. We conduct additional experiments to reveal the deep reasons behind this phenomenon and dig deep into the inherent advantages of parallel fuzzing over serial fuzzing, including the global optimization of seed energy scheduling and the escape of local optimal seed. Additionally, 24 real-world vulnerabilities were discovered using UltraFuzz., Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures

Tao Zhou,1,* Shuai Wang,1,* Kai Lu,2 Chunhui Yin3 1Department of Neurosurgery, Zibo First Hospital, Zibo City 255200, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Neurology, Liaocheng Third People’s Hospital, Liaocheng City 252000, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Intervention Clinic, Weifang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Weifang City 261000, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Chunhui YinDepartment of Intervention Clinic, Weifang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 1055, Weizhou Road, Kuiwen District, Weifang City, Shandong Province 261000, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86- 0536-8190000Email yinchunhui259@163.comObjective: The roles of long non-coding RNA (lncRNAs) in ischemic stroke (IS) have been widely illustrated. Here, we focused on the function and mechanism of lncRNA SNHG7 in IS.Methods: Middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) was used for inducing mice to establish IS models in vivo. Oxygen and glucose deprivation/reoxygenation (OGD/R) was used for treating PC12 cells to establish IS models in vitro. Relative expression of SNHG7 and miR-9 was determined by qRT-PCR. The neuronal injury was assessed by measuring relative activity of ROS, malondialdehyde (MDA) level and cell viability. Cell viability was determined by MTT assay. Dual-luciferase reporter (DLR) assay was employed to test the target of SNHG7 or miR-9. Western blot was used to determine the protein expression of SIRT1. Apoptosis rate was measured by flow cytometry.Results: SNHG7 was down-regulated and miR- 9 was up-regulated by MCAO treatment in brain tissues of mice and by OGD/R treatment in PC12 cells. Overexpression of SNHG7 or suppression of miR-9 decreased the relative activity of ROS and the MDA level as well as enhancing cell viability, and SNHG7 reduced apoptosis rate in OGD/R-induced PC12 cells (IS cells). MiR-9 was targeted by SNHG7 and SIRT1 was targeted

Liuyue Xu,1 Qian Dong,2 Yaoying Long,1 Xiaoqiong Tang,1 Nan Zhang,2 Kai Lu2 1Department of Hematology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Cardiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Kai LuDepartment of Cardiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, No. 1, Yixueyuan Road, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of ChinaTel/Fax +86 23 89011562Email lukai2013@foxmail.com; zncqmu@126.comBackground: Previous studies indicated that the (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer can cause significant dyslipidemia in patients, but how long this abnormality can persist is unclear so far. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy has a long-term effect on blood lipids in breast cancer patients.Methods: A total of 159 newly diagnosed female breast cancer patients receiving the (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy subsequently and 159 female healthy controls were enrolled into the observational study. All participants’ blood lipid profiles which included TC, TG, HDL-C, and LDL-C before and at the end of the 1st and 12th month after chemotherapy were retrieved from the electronic medical record system. The blood lipid profiles and the percentage of dyslipidemia before and after chemotherapy in breast cancer patients and controls were compared.Results: Compared with the baseline before chemotherapy, TC, LDL-C, and TG increased significantly at the end of the 1st month after chemotherapy, but only the abnormal increase in TG (2.98± 0.71 mmol/L vs 2.82± 0.63 mmol/L, P< 0.05) and LDL-C (1.82± 0.42 mmol/L vs 1.59± 0.42 mmol/L, P< 0.05) continued until the 12th month after chemotherapy. Levels of HDL-C in breast cancer patients and all the blood lipid paramete

Jia Chen,1 Liuyue Xu,2 Quan He,3 Shouling Wu,4 Dayi Hu,5 Kai Lu3 1Department of Clinical Nutrition, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Hematology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Cardiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Cardiology, Kailuan General Hospital, Hebei United University, Tangshan 100816, People’s Republic of China; 5Heart Center, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing 100044, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Kai LuDepartment of Cardiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, No. 1, Yixueyuan Road, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of ChinaTel/Fax +86 23 89011562Email lukai2013@foxmail.comBackground: This prospective cohort study aimed to evaluate the potential association of ideal cardiovascular health metrics with the plasma levels of highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) among people in North China.Methods: A total of 80,968 participants were included in this study at baseline. Data relating to seven health metrics and plasma hs-CRP levels were collected at baseline and the end of follow-up. The change in health metrics of each individual was compared and recorded. The potential association of gain or loss of each health metric, as well as the change in the total number of health metrics that each individual had during follow-up, with the risk of increased hs-CRP level, were explored by multiple Cox proportional hazards models.Results: A total of 72,321 participants (94.51%) completed the follow-up, and the average follow-up time was 4.1 years. Ideal body mass index (BMI), physical activity, smoking status and total cholesterol all had significant impacts on hs-CR

Jia Chen,1,* Kai Lu,2,* Hong Chen,3 Ning Hu,3 Jie Chen,3 Xi Liang,3 Jian Qin,1 Wei Huang3 1Department of Clinical Nutrition, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Cardiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Orthopedic Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Wei HuangDepartment of Orthopedic Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, No. 1, Youyi Road, Chongqing 400016, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86-13883383330Fax +86-23 89011211Email drhuangwei@yeah.netBackground: The study aimed to investigate the potential association of trunk skeletal muscle mass (tSM) and phase angle measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) with the chance of femoral neck fractures in very elderly people.Patients and Methods: This case-control study enrolled 78 femoral neck fracture patients aged over 75 years (29 males) and 1:2 matched healthy controls. All participants were subjected to BIA examination by specialists. tSM, the corrected values by height squared of tSM (tSMI) and phase angle were compared between fracture patients and controls. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to explore the strength of association of femoral neck fracture with tSM, tSMI, and phase angle.Results: tSM (kg) of fracture patients was significantly lower than those of controls in all participants (women: 13.49± 0.42 vs 15.44± 0.39, p< 0.05; men: 15.30± 0.71 vs 17.54± 0.78, p< 0.05). In the sarcopenic subgroup, fracture patients also got a lower tSM than controls (women: 12.58± 0.21 vs 13.62± 0.16, p< 0.05; men:14.41&plus

Healthcare settings have played a major role in propagation of Ebola virus (EBOV) outbreaks. Healthcare workers (HCWs) have elevated risk of contact with EBOV-infected patients, particularly if safety precautions are not rigorously practiced. We conducted a serosurvey to determine seroprevalence against multiple EBOV antigens among HCWs of Boende Health Zone, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the site of a 2014 EBOV outbreak. Interviews and specimens were collected from 565 consenting HCWs. Overall, 234 (41.4%) of enrolled HCWs were reactive to at least 1 EBOV protein: 159 (28.1%) were seroreactive for anti-glycoprotein immunoglobulin G (IgG), 89 (15.8%) were seroreactive for anti-nucleoprotein IgG, and 54 (9.5%) were VP40 positive. Additionally, sera from 16 (2.8%) HCWs demonstrated neutralization capacity. These data demonstrate that a significant proportion of HCWs have the ability to neutralize virus, despite never having developed Ebola virus disease symptoms, highlighting an important and poorly documented aspect of EBOV infection and progression.