Search

We collected nine specimens of Odorrana Fei, Ye & Huang, 1990 from Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China, which is close to the type locality of O. heatwolei (Stuart & Bain, 2005) in Phongsaly Province, northern Laos (approximately 60 km). These specimens agree with the diagnosis of O. heatwolei that body size is large in females and relatively small in males, tympanum large in males and relatively small in females, first finger longer than the second, and glandular dorsolateral fold and external vocal sacs present in males, moreover, these specimens have obvious dense tiny black dots scattered on the dorsum, which is consistent with the characters of O. heatwolei and different from O. tiannanensis (Yang & Li, 1980). Phylogenetically, the sequences of these specimens clustered with the sequence of the holotype of O. heatwolei and formed a distinct clade together, which is sister to O. tiannanensis. We resurrect O. heatwolei and extend the distribution of this species to China.

Controlling the spread of respiratory infectious diseases in healthcare settings is important to avoid nosocomial infection. We utilized computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, real-time carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring, microorganism culturing, and microorganism sequencing to quantitatively assess the exposure risk of healthcare workers to infectious respiratory particles (IRPs) in one lung function room under two ventilation configurations. The original ventilation system supplied 2 air changes per hour (ACH) for fresh air and 2 ACH for recirculated air, while the retrofitted ventilation system supplied 6 ACH of fresh air. Indoor CO2 concentration and microorganism concentration decreased after the retrofit. The ventilation modification significantly improved the discharge efficiency for 5 μm IRPs and 50 μm IRPs. The intake fraction of 5 μm aerosols and 50 μm aerosols for HCW decreased by 0.005% and 0.006%, respectively. This study also reviewed the effectiveness of the above methods when evaluating building retrofit.

This paper presents a method for selecting appropriate synthetic speech samples from a given large text-to-speech (TTS) dataset as supplementary training data for an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model. We trained a neural network, which can be optimised using cross-entropy loss or Arcface loss, to measure the similarity of a synthetic data to real speech. We found that incorporating synthetic samples with considerable dissimilarity to real speech, owing in part to lexical differences, into ASR training is crucial for boosting recognition performance. Experimental results on Librispeech test sets indicate that, in order to maintain the same speech recognition accuracy as when using all TTS data, our proposed solution can reduce the size of the TTS data down below its $30\,\%$, which is superior to several baseline methods.

This paper introduces a novel optimization framework for deep neural network (DNN) hardware accelerators, enabling the rapid development of customized and automated design flows. More specifically, our approach aims to automate the selection and configuration of low-level optimization techniques, encompassing DNN and FPGA low-level optimizations. We introduce novel optimization and transformation tasks for building design-flow architectures, which are highly customizable and flexible, thereby enhancing the performance and efficiency of DNN accelerators. Our results demonstrate considerable reductions of up to 92\% in DSP usage and 89\% in LUT usage for two networks, while maintaining accuracy and eliminating the need for human effort or domain expertise. In comparison to state-of-the-art approaches, our design achieves higher accuracy and utilizes three times fewer DSP resources, underscoring the advantages of our proposed framework., Comment: 5 pages, Accepted at FPL'23

Recent years have seen a rapid increase in digital medicine research in an attempt to transform traditional healthcare systems to their modern, intelligent, and versatile equivalents that are adequately equipped to tackle contemporary challenges. This has led to a wave of applications that utilise AI technologies; first and foremost in the fields of medical imaging, but also in the use of wearables and other intelligent sensors. In comparison, computer audition can be seen to be lagging behind, at least in terms of commercial interest. Yet, audition has long been a staple assistant for medical practitioners, with the stethoscope being the quintessential sign of doctors around the world. Transforming this traditional technology with the use of AI entails a set of unique challenges. We categorise the advances needed in four key pillars: Hear, corresponding to the cornerstone technologies needed to analyse auditory signals in real-life conditions; Earlier, for the advances needed in computational and data efficiency; Attentively, for accounting to individual differences and handling the longitudinal nature of medical data; and, finally, Responsibly, for ensuring compliance to the ethical standards accorded to the field of medicine.

This paper studies safety guarantees for systems with time-varying control bounds. It has been shown that optimizing quadratic costs subject to state and control constraints can be reduced to a sequence of Quadratic Programs (QPs) using Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). One of the main challenges in this method is that the CBF-based QP could easily become infeasible under tight control bounds, especially when the control bounds are time-varying. The recently proposed adaptive CBFs have addressed such infeasibility issues, but require extensive and non-trivial hyperparameter tuning for the CBF-based QP and may introduce overshooting control near the boundaries of safe sets. To address these issues, we propose a new type of adaptive CBFs called Auxiliary Variable CBFs (AVCBFs). Specifically, we introduce an auxiliary variable that multiplies each CBF itself, and define dynamics for the auxiliary variable to adapt it in constructing the corresponding CBF constraint. In this way, we can improve the feasibility of the CBF-based QP while avoiding extensive parameter tuning with non-overshooting control since the formulation is identical to classical CBF methods. We demonstrate the advantages of using AVCBFs and compare them with existing techniques on an Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) problem with time-varying control bounds., 8 pages, 4 figures

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) hold great potentials for near-term applications and are promising to achieve quantum advantage on practical tasks. However, VQAs suffer from severe barren plateau problem as well as have a large probability of being trapped in local minima. In this Letter, we propose a novel training algorithm with random quantum gate activation for VQAs to efficiently address these two issues. This new algorithm processes effectively much fewer training parameters than the conventional plain optimization strategy, which efficiently mitigates barren plateaus with the same expressive capability. Additionally, by randomly adding two-qubit gates to the circuit ansatz, the optimization trajectories can escape from local minima and reach the global minimum more frequently due to more sources of randomness. In real quantum experiments, the new training algorithm can also reduce the quantum computational resources required and be more quantum noise resilient. We apply our training algorithm to solve variational quantum simulation problems for ground states and present convincing results that showcase the advantages of our novel strategy where better performance is achieved by the combination of mitigating barren plateaus, escaping from local minima, and reducing the effect of quantum noises. We further propose that the entanglement phase transition could be one underlying reason why our RA training is so effective., 4.5 pages + references + supplemental, 4 figures

The Solar Upper Transition Region Imager (SUTRI) onboard the Space Advanced Technology demonstration satellite (SATech-01), which was launched to a sun-synchronous orbit at a height of 500 km in July 2022, aims to test the on-orbit performance of our newly developed Sc-Si multi-layer reflecting mirror and the 2kx2k EUV CMOS imaging camera and to take full-disk solar images at the Ne VII 46.5 nm spectral line with a filter width of 3 nm. SUTRI employs a Ritchey-Chretien optical system with an aperture of 18 cm. The on-orbit observations show that SUTRI images have a field of view of 41.6'x41.6' and a moderate spatial resolution of 8" without an image stabilization system. The normal cadence of SUTRI images is 30 s and the solar observation time is about 16 hours each day because the earth eclipse time accounts for about 1/3 of SATech-01's orbit period. Approximately 15 GB data is acquired each day and made available online after processing. SUTRI images are valuable as the Ne VII 46.5 nm line is formed at a temperature regime of 0.5 MK in the solar atmosphere, which has rarely been sampled by existing solar imagers. SUTRI observations will establish connections between structures in the lower solar atmosphere and corona, and advance our understanding of various types of solar activity such as flares, filament eruptions, coronal jets and coronal mass ejections., 29pages,16figures

Pareas (Eberhardtia) yunnanensis (Vogt, 1922) Figs 2–4; Tables 3–4 Amblycephalus yunnanensis Vogt, 1922: 142. Amblycephalus yunnanensis — Mell 1922. — Pope 1935. — Ding et al. 2020. Amblycephalus monticola yunnanensis — Mell 1931. Pareas yunnanensis — Rao & Yang 1992. — Guo et al. 2020 — Wang et al. 2020. — Liu & Rao 2021. Pareas chinensis (in part) — Zhao & Adler 1993. — Zhao 2006. — Yang & Rao 2008. — Wallach et al. 2014. Pareas cf. yunnanensis — Poyarkov et al. 2022. Revised diagnosis This species differs from Pareas geminatus by having fewer subcaudals, relatively more rows of keeled mid-dorsal scales, relatively fewer ventral scales, solid black dorsal surface of head, and no distinct large black spots or stripe on each side of head; it differs from P. xuelinensis Liu & Rao, 2021 by infralabials not fused with chin-shields, vertebral scales enlarged, having fewer ventral scales, fewer subcaudals, relatively more rows of keeled mid-dorsal scales, and solid black dorsal surface of head. SVL 387–482 mm in adults, TL 94–110 mm in adults, TL/SVL 0.22–0.25; preoculars mostly single, rarely two; postoculars and suboculars mostly fused, rarely separated; loreal bordering orbit in most individuals; prefrontal bordering orbit; supralabials 6–8, infralabials 6–8; infralabials not fused with chin-shields; dorsal scales in 15 rows throughout the body; vertebral scales enlarged; 5–7 rows of middorsal scales keeled on the middle part of the body; precloacal plate undivided; ventral scales 169–175; subcaudals 59–65, all paired. Dorsal surface of head black; no or 1–2 indistinct large black spots on each side of head, no stripe on each side of head; two wide black stripes pass from parietals to the vertical black bars on neck; dark nuchal band absent; vertical black bars distinct on trunk and indistinct on tail; iris brownish-yellow or brownish-orange. Etymology The specific epithet is a toponymic adjective given in reference to Yunnan Province, China. We propose “ Yunnan slug-eating snake” for the common English name and “ṙ南钝±蛇” (Yún Nán Dùn Tóu Shé) for the common Chinese name of this species. Type material Syntypes CHINA • 2 ♀♀ (adults); Dali Prefecture, Yunnan Province; ZMB 27660, 65431. Additional material examined CHINA – Yunnan Province • 2 ♀♀ adults; Dali Prefecture, Dali City, Xiaguan Town; 25°36′17″ N, 100°11′33″ E; elev. 2250 m; 12 Jun. 2022; S. Liu leg.; KIZ 2022033, 2022034 • 1 ♀ adult; Dali Prefecture, Dali City, Dali Town; 25°41′56″ N, 100°8′2″ E; elev. 2230 m; 13 Jun. 2022; S. Liu leg.; KIZ 2022035 • 1 juv.; Dali Prefecture, Dali City, Xiaguan Town; 25°37′52″ N, 100°11′44″ E; elev. 2140 m; 15 Jun. 2022; S. Liu leg.; KIZ 2022036. Distribution This species is currently known only from Dali City and its adjacent areas, Dali Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China (Fig. 8). Phylogenetic position Pareas yunnanensis belongs to the subgenus Eberhardtia and is a member of the P. hamptoni (Boulenger, 1905) species group (Poyarkov et al. 2022). Phylogenetically it is reconstructed as a sister species of P. geminatus (see Fig. 1)., Published as part of Liu, Shuo, Zhang, Dongru, Poyarkov, Nikolay A., Hou, Mian, Wu, Li, Rao, Dingqi, Nguyen, Tan Van & Vogel, Gernot, 2023, Resurrection of Pareas yunnanensis (Vogt, 1922) with description of a new species of Pareas from Yunnan Province, China (Squamata, Pareidae), pp. 1-26 in European Journal of Taxonomy 860 (1) on pages 9-14, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2023.860.2045, http://zenodo.org/record/7651005, {"references":["Vogt T. 1922. Zur Reptilien-und Amphibienfauna Sudchinas. Archiv fur Naturgeschichte 88 A (10): 135 - 146. Available from https: // www. biodiversitylibrary. org / page / 13203515 [accessed 12 Jan. 2023].","Mell R. 1922. Beitrage zur Fauna Sinica. I. Die vertebraten Sudchinas, Feldlisten und Feldnoten der Sauger, Vogel, Reptilien, Batrachier. Archiv fur Naturgeschichte 88 A (10): 1 - 134. Available from https: // www. biodiversitylibrary. org / page / 13203420 [accessed 12 Jan. 2023].","Pope C. H. 1935. The Reptiles of China. Turtles, Crocodilians, Snakes, Lizards. Natural History of Central Asia Vol. X. The American Museum of Natural History, New York. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 12104","Ding L., Chen Z. N., Suwannapoom C., Nguyen T. V., Poyarkov N. A. & Vogel G. 2020. A new species of the Pareas hamptoni complex (Squamata: Serpentes: Pareidae) from the Golden Triangle. Taprobanica 9 (2): 174 - 193. https: // doi. org / 10.47605 / tapro. v 9 i 2.230","Mell R. 1931. List of Chinese snakes. Lingnan Science Journal 8 [1929]: 119 - 219.","Rao D. Q. & Yang D. T. 1992. Phylogenetic systematics of Pareatinae (Serpentes) of Southeastern Asia and adjacent islands with relationship between it and the geology changes. Acta Zoologica Sinica 38: 139 - 150.","Guo Y. H., Wang G. L. & Rao D. Q. 2020. Scale microornamentation of five species of Pareas (Serpentes, Pareidae) from China. Zootaxa 4742 (3): 565 - 572. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 4742.3.10","Wang P., Che J., Liu Q., Li K., Jin J. Q., Jiang K., Shi L. & Guo P. 2020. A revised taxonomy of Asian snail-eating snakes Pareas (Squamata, Pareidae): evidence from morphological comparison and molecular phylogeny. ZooKeys 939: 45 - 64. https: // doi. org / 10.3897 / zookeys. 939.49309","Liu S. & Rao D. Q. 2021. A new species of the genus Pareas (Squamata, Pareidae) from Yunnan, China. ZooKeys 1011: 121 - 138. https: // doi. org / 10.3897 / zookeys. 1011.59029","Zhao E. M. & Adler K. 1993. Herpetology of China. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Oxford.","Zhao E. M. 2006. Snakes of China, Vol. 1. Anhui Science Technology Publishing House, Hefei.","Yang D. T. & Rao D. Q. 2008. Amphibia and Reptilia of Yunnan. Yunnan Publishing Group Corporation, Yunnan Science and Technology Press, Kunming.","Wallach V., Williams K. L. & Boundy J. 2014. Snakes of the World: A Catalogue of Living and Extinct Species. Taylor & Francis Group, London.","Poyarkov N. A., Nguyen T. V., Pawangkhanant P., Yushchenko P. V., Brakels P., Nguyen L. H., Nguyen H. N., Suwannapoom C., Orlov N. & Vogel G. 2022. An integrative taxonomic revision of slugeating snakes (Squamata: Pareidae: Pareineae) reveals unprecedented diversity in Indochina. PeerJ 10: e 12713. https: // doi. org / 10.7717 / peerj. 12713","Boulenger G. A. 1905. Descriptions of two new snakes from Upper Burma. Bombay Natural History Society 16: 235 - 236. https: // doi. org / 10.1080 / 03745480509443665"]}

Pareas (Eberhardtia) tigerinus sp. nov. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act: 6538EBDF-DB82-47C7-8EB1-9E9BD178B414 Figs 5–7; Tables 5–6 Diagnosis This species differs from Pareas nigriceps by having a relatively shorter tail, more infralabials, fewer ventral scales, fewer subcaudals, and fewer maxillary teeth; itdiffers from P. kaduri Bhosale, Phansalkar, Sawant, Gowande, Patel & Mirza, 2020 by having relatively smaller body size, keeled mid-dorsal scales in females, fewer temporals, and fewer maxillary teeth. Single preocular; postocular fused with subocular; loreal not bordering orbit; prefrontal bordering orbit; infralabials not fused with chin-shields; three chin-shield pairs, the first pair triangular, the second pair and the third pair elongate; dorsal scales in 15 rows throughout; vertebral scales enlarged; scales not keeled on the anterior part of the body, 3–5 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the middle part of the body, 5–9 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body; seven supralabials; eight infralabials; precloacal plate undivided; ventral scales 160–171; subcaudals 62–64, paired. Dorsal surface of head solid black or reddish-brown; dark nuchal band present; vertical dark bars on trunk and tail distinct; iris brownish-black or reddish-brown. Etymology The species epithet “ tigerinus ” is attributed to this species due to the similarity of the species colour pattern to the prominent lateral stripes in tigers. We propose “Tiger slug-eating snake” for the common English name and “ẋọ钝±蛇” (Hǔ Wén Dùn Tóu Shé) for the common Chinese name. Type material Holotype CHINA • ♀ adult; Yunnan Province, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Menghai County, Xiding Township; 21°49ʹ54″ N, 100°7′21″ E; elev. 1920 m; 21 Jul. 2021; S. Liu leg.; KIZ 20210705. Paratypes CHINA • 1 ♂ adult; same collection data as for preceding; 20 Jul. 2021; KIZ 20210703 • 1 ♀ adult; same collection data as for preceding; 20 Jul. 2021; KIZ 20210704. Description of holotype Adult female, SVL 434 mm, TL 109 mm, TL/SVL 0.25, TL/total length 0.20; body elongated; head distinct from neck; snout wide and blunt, projecting beyond lower jaw; body slightly compressed laterally, vertebral ridge developed. Rostral approximately as wide as high, slightly visible from above; nasals undivided; internasals wider than long; prefrontals pentagonal, bordering orbits; frontal hexagonal, longer than wide; parietals large, much longer than wide, median suture longer than frontal; single loreal, not entering orbit; single preocular; one supraocular, longer than wide; subocular and postocular fused into one thin elongated crescent-shaped scale; one anterior temporal and two posterior temporals on each side; seven supralabials on each side, not touching orbit; eight infralabials on each side, anteriormost in contact with its opposite between mental and anterior chin-shields; infralabials not fused with chin-shield; three chin-shield pairs, the first pair triangular, the second pair and the third pair elongate, the first pair slightly larger than other two; ventral scales 169; precloacal plate undivided; subcaudals 62, paired; dorsal scales in 15 rows throughout, vertebral scales enlarged, scales not keeled at anterior of body, five rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled at middle of body, seven rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled at posterior of body. Coloration of holotype in life Dorsal surface of head solid black; occipitalia yellow; dorsal surface of body yellow, a large black band on neck and not connect with the black patch on top of head; sides of head yellow; two black spots on the left side of head, one on the lower rear part of eye and one on the angle of mouth; three black spots on the right side of head, two on the lower rear part of eye and a large elongate one on the angle of mouth; ventral surface of head light yellow, a few black spots on the outer margins of the third chin-shield and the first preventral; approximately 59 vertical, slightly billowing dark bars on trunk and approximately 22 vertical, slightly billowing dark bars on tail; belly and ventral surface of tail pale yellow with sparse small black spots; iris brownish black, pupil black. Colouration of holotype in preservative The dorsal surface of the head and body became darker in alcohol; the belly and ventral surface of head and tail faded to yellowish-white; the iris changed to greyish-black and the pupil changed to white. Variation The male paratype KIZ 20210703 has a slightly darker body colour, a smaller SVL, an incomplete tail, fewer ventral scales, fewer vertical dark bars on trunk, two large black spots on each side of head, no black spots on ventral side of head, and nine rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body. The female paratype KIZ 20210704 has a much paler body colour: the dorsal surface of head, nuchal band, vertical bars on trunk and tail, and iris are reddish-brown; and there is only one reddishbrown spot at the angle of mouth on each side of head, only one posterior temporal on each side, no spots on ventral side of head, three rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the middle part of the body, and five rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body. Natural history notes The specimens were found in the forest (Fig. 7D) at night perching on bushes growing along a small stream at elevation 1920 m a.s.l. Other species of amphibians and reptiles observed at the type locality of the new species include Diploderma menghaiense Liu, Hou, Wang, Ananjeva & Rao, 2020; Pareas xuelinensis, and Raorchestes hillisi Jiang, Ren, Guo, Wang & Li, 2020. The sympatric occurrence of the new species with congeneric P. xuelinensis is remarkable, since both are members of the P. hamptoni species group. Pareas xuelinensis is usually smaller than Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. in body size, however, P. xuelinensis is more dominant than Pareas tigerinus in the population size at the type locality of the new species. Relatively, P. xuelinensis is more arboreal and Pareas tigerinus is more terrestrial through our brief observation, but the specific feeding habits of these two species are currently unknown. Distribution The new species is currently known only from its type locality in Xiding Township, Menghai County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China (Fig. 8). This new species likely occurs in Myanmar and northwestern Laos. Phylogenetic position Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. belongs to the subgenus Eberhardtia and is a member of the P. hamptoni species group. Phylogenetically, it is reconstructed as a sister species of P. nigriceps (see Fig. 1). Comparison Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. andersonii (Boulenger, 1888), P. modestus Theobald, 1868, P. macularius Theobald, 1868, and P. margaritophorus (Jan, 1866) by its yellow body background colour (vs body background colours of grey, dark grey, brownish grey, or completely black). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. abros Poyarkov, Nguyen, Vogel & Orlov, 2022, P. atayal You, Poyarkov & Lin, 2015, P. berdmorei Theobald, 1868, P. carinatus Wagler, 1830, P.formosensis (Van Denburgh, 1909), P.iwasakii (Maki, 1937), P. komaii (Maki, 1931), P. kuznetsovorum Poyarkov, Yushchenko & Nguyen, 2022, P. nuchalis (Boulenger, 1900), and P. temporalis Le, Tran, Hoang & Stuart, 2021 by subocular and postocular fused into one thin elongated crescent-shaped scale (vs subocular and postocular not fused). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. boulengeri (Angel, 1920) and P. monticola (Cantor, 1839) by 3–5 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled at middle of the body, 5–9 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body (vs all dorsal scales smooth), and having fewer ventral scales (160–171 vs 176–199). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. chinensis by one row of vertebral scales enlarged (vs vertebral scales not enlarged or three rows of vertebral scales enlarged), having fewer temporals (1+1 or 1+2 vs 2+3 or 2+4), and fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 69–76). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. geminatus by having fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 73–91) and relatively shorter tail (TL/SVL 0.25–0.26 vs 0.27–0.35). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. hamptoni by having one preocular (vs two preoculars), fewer ventral scales (160–171 vs 195–202), fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 96), relatively shorter tail (TL/SVL 0.25–0.26 vs 0.37), and infralabials not fused with the chin-shield (vs fourth or fifth infralabial fused with second chin-shield). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. kaduri by having relatively smaller body size (SVL 392–434 vs 455–550), 3–5 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the middle part of the body, 5–7 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body in females (vs all dorsal scales smooth in females), fewer temporals (1+1 or 1+2 vs 2+3), and fewer maxillary teeth (4 or 5 vs 6 or 7). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. niger (Pope, 1928) by yellow colouration of dorsum with dark crossbars (vs solid black marking on dorsum), ventral surface of tail with no or sparse spots (vs ventral surface of tail with dense black spots or ventral surface of tail completely black), and having fewer maxillary teeth (4 or 5 vs 6–8). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. stanleyi (Boulenger, 1914), P. victorianus Vogel, Nguyen & Poyarkov, 2021, and P. vindumi Vogel, 2015 by preocular present (vs preocular absent), loreal not entering the orbit (vs loreal entering orbit). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. xuelinensis by having enlarged vertebral scales (vs vertebral scales not enlarged), infralabials not fused with chin-shield (vs fourth or fifth infralabial fused with second chin-shield), having fewer ventral scales (160–171 vs 182–188), fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 87–93), and relatively shorter tail (TL/SVL 0.25–0.26 vs 0.33–0.34). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. yunnanensis by no black stripes on the neck (vs two wide black stripes pass from parietals to the vertical black bars on the neck), having dark nuchal band (vs dark nuchal band absent), having distinct dark spots on each side of the head (vs no or indistinct spots on each side of head), and iris brownish black or reddish brown (vs iris brownish yellow or brownish orange). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. is superficially most similar to P. nigriceps in morphology characteristic and coloration. However, the new species can be distinguished from P. nigriceps (Table 6) by having a relatively shorter tail (TL/SVL 0.25–0.26 vs 0.32), eight infralabials (vs seven infralabials), fewer ventral scales (160–171 vs 175), fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 76), and fewer maxillary teeth (4 or 5 vs 6 or 7)., Published as part of Liu, Shuo, Zhang, Dongru, Poyarkov, Nikolay A., Hou, Mian, Wu, Li, Rao, Dingqi, Nguyen, Tan Van & Vogel, Gernot, 2023, Resurrection of Pareas yunnanensis (Vogt, 1922) with description of a new species of Pareas from Yunnan Province, China (Squamata, Pareidae), pp. 1-26 in European Journal of Taxonomy 860 (1) on pages 14-21, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2023.860.2045, http://zenodo.org/record/7651005, {"references":["Bhosale H., Phansalkar P., Sawant M., Gowande G., Patel H. & Mirza Z. A. 2020. A new species of snaileating snakes of the genus Pareas Wagler, 1830 (Reptilia: Serpentes) from eastern Himalayas, India. European Journal of Taxonomy 729 (1): 54 - 73. https: // doi. org / 10.5852 / ejt. 2020.729.1191","Guo Y. H., Wang G. L. & Rao D. Q. 2020. Scale microornamentation of five species of Pareas (Serpentes, Pareidae) from China. Zootaxa 4742 (3): 565 - 572. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 4742.3.10","Poyarkov N. A., Nguyen T. V., Pawangkhanant P., Yushchenko P. V., Brakels P., Nguyen L. H., Nguyen H. N., Suwannapoom C., Orlov N. & Vogel G. 2022. An integrative taxonomic revision of slugeating snakes (Squamata: Pareidae: Pareineae) reveals unprecedented diversity in Indochina. PeerJ 10: e 12713. https: // doi. org / 10.7717 / peerj. 12713","You C. W., Poyarkov N. A. & Lin S. M. 2015. Diversity of the snail-eating snakes Pareas (Serpentes, Pareatidae) from Taiwan. Zoologica Scripta 44 (4): 349 - 361. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / zsc. 12111","Wagler J. G. 1830. Naturliches System der Amphibien, mit vorangehender Classification der Saugethiere und Vogel. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Zoologie. Cotta, Munchen. https: // doi. org / 10.5962 / bhl. title. 58730","Boulenger G. A. 1900. Descriptions of new reptiles and batrachians from Borneo. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 69 (2): 182 - 187. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / j. 1096 - 3642.1890. tb 01716. x","Le D. T. T., Tran T. G., Hoang H. D. & Stuart B. L. 2021. A new species of Pareas (Squamata, Pareidae) from southern Vietnam. Vertebrate Zoology 71: 439 - 451. https: // doi. org / 10.3897 / vz. 71. e 70438","Vogt T. 1922. Zur Reptilien-und Amphibienfauna Sudchinas. Archiv fur Naturgeschichte 88 A (10): 135 - 146. Available from https: // www. biodiversitylibrary. org / page / 13203515 [accessed 12 Jan. 2023].","Ding L., Chen Z. N., Suwannapoom C., Nguyen T. V., Poyarkov N. A. & Vogel G. 2020. A new species of the Pareas hamptoni complex (Squamata: Serpentes: Pareidae) from the Golden Triangle. Taprobanica 9 (2): 174 - 193. https: // doi. org / 10.47605 / tapro. v 9 i 2.230","Liu S. & Rao D. Q. 2021. A new species of the genus Pareas (Squamata, Pareidae) from Yunnan, China. ZooKeys 1011: 121 - 138. https: // doi. org / 10.3897 / zookeys. 1011.59029","Guo K. J. & Deng X. J. 2009. A new species of Pareas (Serpentes: Colubridae: Pareatinae) from the Gaoligong Mountains, southwestern China. Zootaxa 2008: 53 - 60. https: // doi. org / 10.11646 / zootaxa. 2008.1.5","Vogel G., Nguyen T. V., Zaw T. & Poyarkov N. A. 2021. A new species of the Pareas monticola complex (Squamata: Serpentes: Pareidae) from Chin Mountains with additions to the Pareas fauna of Myanmar. Journal of Natural History 54: 2577 - 2612. https: // doi. org / 10.1080 / 00222933.2020.1856953","Vogel G. 2015. A new montane species of the genus Pareas Wagler, 1830 (Squamata: Pareatidae) from northern Myanmar. Taprobanica 7 (1): 1 - 7. https: // doi. org / 10.4038 / tapro. v 7 i 1.7501"]}

Pareas (Eberhardtia) tigerinus sp. nov. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act: 6538EBDF-DB82-47C7-8EB1-9E9BD178B414 Figs 5–7; Tables 5–6 Diagnosis This species differs from Pareas nigriceps by having a relatively shorter tail, more infralabials, fewer ventral scales, fewer subcaudals, and fewer maxillary teeth; itdiffers from P. kaduri Bhosale, Phansalkar, Sawant, Gowande, Patel & Mirza, 2020 by having relatively smaller body size, keeled mid-dorsal scales in females, fewer temporals, and fewer maxillary teeth. Single preocular; postocular fused with subocular; loreal not bordering orbit; prefrontal bordering orbit; infralabials not fused with chin-shields; three chin-shield pairs, the first pair triangular, the second pair and the third pair elongate; dorsal scales in 15 rows throughout; vertebral scales enlarged; scales not keeled on the anterior part of the body, 3–5 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the middle part of the body, 5–9 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body; seven supralabials; eight infralabials; precloacal plate undivided; ventral scales 160–171; subcaudals 62–64, paired. Dorsal surface of head solid black or reddish-brown; dark nuchal band present; vertical dark bars on trunk and tail distinct; iris brownish-black or reddish-brown. Etymology The species epithet “ tigerinus ” is attributed to this species due to the similarity of the species colour pattern to the prominent lateral stripes in tigers. We propose “Tiger slug-eating snake” for the common English name and “ẋọ钝±蛇” (Hǔ Wén Dùn Tóu Shé) for the common Chinese name. Type material Holotype CHINA • ♀ adult; Yunnan Province, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Menghai County, Xiding Township; 21°49ʹ54″ N, 100°7′21″ E; elev. 1920 m; 21 Jul. 2021; S. Liu leg.; KIZ 20210705. Paratypes CHINA • 1 ♂ adult; same collection data as for preceding; 20 Jul. 2021; KIZ 20210703 • 1 ♀ adult; same collection data as for preceding; 20 Jul. 2021; KIZ 20210704. Description of holotype Adult female, SVL 434 mm, TL 109 mm, TL/SVL 0.25, TL/total length 0.20; body elongated; head distinct from neck; snout wide and blunt, projecting beyond lower jaw; body slightly compressed laterally, vertebral ridge developed. Rostral approximately as wide as high, slightly visible from above; nasals undivided; internasals wider than long; prefrontals pentagonal, bordering orbits; frontal hexagonal, longer than wide; parietals large, much longer than wide, median suture longer than frontal; single loreal, not entering orbit; single preocular; one supraocular, longer than wide; subocular and postocular fused into one thin elongated crescent-shaped scale; one anterior temporal and two posterior temporals on each side; seven supralabials on each side, not touching orbit; eight infralabials on each side, anteriormost in contact with its opposite between mental and anterior chin-shields; infralabials not fused with chin-shield; three chin-shield pairs, the first pair triangular, the second pair and the third pair elongate, the first pair slightly larger than other two; ventral scales 169; precloacal plate undivided; subcaudals 62, paired; dorsal scales in 15 rows throughout, vertebral scales enlarged, scales not keeled at anterior of body, five rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled at middle of body, seven rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled at posterior of body. Coloration of holotype in life Dorsal surface of head solid black; occipitalia yellow; dorsal surface of body yellow, a large black band on neck and not connect with the black patch on top of head; sides of head yellow; two black spots on the left side of head, one on the lower rear part of eye and one on the angle of mouth; three black spots on the right side of head, two on the lower rear part of eye and a large elongate one on the angle of mouth; ventral surface of head light yellow, a few black spots on the outer margins of the third chin-shield and the first preventral; approximately 59 vertical, slightly billowing dark bars on trunk and approximately 22 vertical, slightly billowing dark bars on tail; belly and ventral surface of tail pale yellow with sparse small black spots; iris brownish black, pupil black. Colouration of holotype in preservative The dorsal surface of the head and body became darker in alcohol; the belly and ventral surface of head and tail faded to yellowish-white; the iris changed to greyish-black and the pupil changed to white. Variation The male paratype KIZ 20210703 has a slightly darker body colour, a smaller SVL, an incomplete tail, fewer ventral scales, fewer vertical dark bars on trunk, two large black spots on each side of head, no black spots on ventral side of head, and nine rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body. The female paratype KIZ 20210704 has a much paler body colour: the dorsal surface of head, nuchal band, vertical bars on trunk and tail, and iris are reddish-brown; and there is only one reddishbrown spot at the angle of mouth on each side of head, only one posterior temporal on each side, no spots on ventral side of head, three rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the middle part of the body, and five rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body. Natural history notes The specimens were found in the forest (Fig. 7D) at night perching on bushes growing along a small stream at elevation 1920 m a.s.l. Other species of amphibians and reptiles observed at the type locality of the new species include Diploderma menghaiense Liu, Hou, Wang, Ananjeva & Rao, 2020; Pareas xuelinensis, and Raorchestes hillisi Jiang, Ren, Guo, Wang & Li, 2020. The sympatric occurrence of the new species with congeneric P. xuelinensis is remarkable, since both are members of the P. hamptoni species group. Pareas xuelinensis is usually smaller than Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. in body size, however, P. xuelinensis is more dominant than Pareas tigerinus in the population size at the type locality of the new species. Relatively, P. xuelinensis is more arboreal and Pareas tigerinus is more terrestrial through our brief observation, but the specific feeding habits of these two species are currently unknown. Distribution The new species is currently known only from its type locality in Xiding Township, Menghai County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China (Fig. 8). This new species likely occurs in Myanmar and northwestern Laos. Phylogenetic position Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. belongs to the subgenus Eberhardtia and is a member of the P. hamptoni species group. Phylogenetically, it is reconstructed as a sister species of P. nigriceps (see Fig. 1). Comparison Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. andersonii (Boulenger, 1888), P. modestus Theobald, 1868, P. macularius Theobald, 1868, and P. margaritophorus (Jan, 1866) by its yellow body background colour (vs body background colours of grey, dark grey, brownish grey, or completely black). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. abros Poyarkov, Nguyen, Vogel & Orlov, 2022, P. atayal You, Poyarkov & Lin, 2015, P. berdmorei Theobald, 1868, P. carinatus Wagler, 1830, P.formosensis (Van Denburgh, 1909), P.iwasakii (Maki, 1937), P. komaii (Maki, 1931), P. kuznetsovorum Poyarkov, Yushchenko & Nguyen, 2022, P. nuchalis (Boulenger, 1900), and P. temporalis Le, Tran, Hoang & Stuart, 2021 by subocular and postocular fused into one thin elongated crescent-shaped scale (vs subocular and postocular not fused). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. boulengeri (Angel, 1920) and P. monticola (Cantor, 1839) by 3–5 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled at middle of the body, 5–9 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body (vs all dorsal scales smooth), and having fewer ventral scales (160–171 vs 176–199). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. chinensis by one row of vertebral scales enlarged (vs vertebral scales not enlarged or three rows of vertebral scales enlarged), having fewer temporals (1+1 or 1+2 vs 2+3 or 2+4), and fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 69–76). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. geminatus by having fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 73–91) and relatively shorter tail (TL/SVL 0.25–0.26 vs 0.27–0.35). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. hamptoni by having one preocular (vs two preoculars), fewer ventral scales (160–171 vs 195–202), fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 96), relatively shorter tail (TL/SVL 0.25–0.26 vs 0.37), and infralabials not fused with the chin-shield (vs fourth or fifth infralabial fused with second chin-shield). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. kaduri by having relatively smaller body size (SVL 392–434 vs 455–550), 3–5 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the middle part of the body, 5–7 rows of mid-dorsal scales keeled on the posterior part of the body in females (vs all dorsal scales smooth in females), fewer temporals (1+1 or 1+2 vs 2+3), and fewer maxillary teeth (4 or 5 vs 6 or 7). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. niger (Pope, 1928) by yellow colouration of dorsum with dark crossbars (vs solid black marking on dorsum), ventral surface of tail with no or sparse spots (vs ventral surface of tail with dense black spots or ventral surface of tail completely black), and having fewer maxillary teeth (4 or 5 vs 6–8). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. stanleyi (Boulenger, 1914), P. victorianus Vogel, Nguyen & Poyarkov, 2021, and P. vindumi Vogel, 2015 by preocular present (vs preocular absent), loreal not entering the orbit (vs loreal entering orbit). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. xuelinensis by having enlarged vertebral scales (vs vertebral scales not enlarged), infralabials not fused with chin-shield (vs fourth or fifth infralabial fused with second chin-shield), having fewer ventral scales (160–171 vs 182–188), fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 87–93), and relatively shorter tail (TL/SVL 0.25–0.26 vs 0.33–0.34). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. can be distinguished from P. yunnanensis by no black stripes on the neck (vs two wide black stripes pass from parietals to the vertical black bars on the neck), having dark nuchal band (vs dark nuchal band absent), having distinct dark spots on each side of the head (vs no or indistinct spots on each side of head), and iris brownish black or reddish brown (vs iris brownish yellow or brownish orange). Pareas tigerinus sp. nov. is superficially most similar to P. nigriceps in morphology characteristic and coloration. However, the new species can be distinguished from P. nigriceps (Table 6) by having a relatively shorter tail (TL/SVL 0.25–0.26 vs 0.32), eight infralabials (vs seven infralabials), fewer ventral scales (160–171 vs 175), fewer subcaudals (62–64 vs 76), and fewer maxillary teeth (4 or 5 vs 6 or 7).

IntroductionThe effective fusion of text and audio information for categorical and dimensional speech emotion recognition (SER) remains an open issue, especially given the vast potential of deep neural networks (DNNs) to provide a tighter integration of the two.MethodsIn this contribution, we investigate the effectiveness of deep fusion of text and audio features for categorical and dimensional SER. We propose a novel, multistage fusion method where the two information streams are integrated in several layers of a DNN, and contrast it with a single-stage one where the streams are merged in a single point. Both methods depend on extracting summary linguistic embeddings from a pre-trained BERT model, and conditioning one or more intermediate representations of a convolutional model operating on log-Mel spectrograms.ResultsExperiments on the MSP-Podcast and IEMOCAP datasets demonstrate that the two fusion methods clearly outperform a shallow (late) fusion baseline and their unimodal constituents, both in terms of quantitative performance and qualitative behavior.DiscussionOverall, our multistage fusion shows better quantitative performance, surpassing alternatives on most of our evaluations. This illustrates the potential of multistage fusion in better assimilating text and audio information.

The present study focuses on direct numerical simulations of breaking waves generated by a wave plate at constant water depths. The aim is to quantify the dynamics and kinematics in the breaking process, together with the air entrainment and energy dissipation due to breaking. Good agreement is achieved between numerical and experimental results in terms of free-surface profiles, energy budget, and bubble statistics during wave breaking. A parametric study was conducted to examine the effects of wave properties and initial conditions on breaking features. According to research on the Bond number ($Bo$, the ratio of gravitational to surface tension forces), a larger surface tension produces more significant parasitic capillaries at the forward face of the wave profile and a thicker plunging jet, which causes a delayed breaking time and is tightly correlated with the main cavity size. A close relationship between wave statistics and the initial conditions of the wave plate is discovered, showing that breaker types can be classified according to the ratio of wave height to water depth, $H/d$. Moreover, the energy dissipation rate due to breaking can be related to the initial conditions of the wave plate by applying the conventional dissipation scaling of turbulence theory, and further correlated with the local breaking crest geometry using inertial-scaling arguments. The proposed scaling of the dissipation rate during the active breaking period is found to be in good agreement with our numerical results.

Tensor program tuning is a non-convex objective optimization problem, to which search-based approaches have proven to be effective. At the core of the search-based approaches lies the design of the cost model. Though deep learning-based cost models perform significantly better than other methods, they still fall short and suffer from the following problems. First, their feature extraction heavily relies on expert-level domain knowledge in hardware architectures. Even so, the extracted features are often unsatisfactory and require separate considerations for CPUs and GPUs. Second, a cost model trained on one hardware platform usually performs poorly on another, a problem we call cross-hardware unavailability. In order to address these problems, we propose TLP and MTLTLP. TLP is a deep learning-based cost model that facilitates tensor program tuning. Instead of extracting features from the tensor program itself, TLP extracts features from the schedule primitives. We treat schedule primitives as tensor languages. TLP is thus a Tensor Language Processing task. In this way, the task of predicting the tensor program latency through the cost model is transformed into a natural language processing (NLP) regression task. MTL-TLP combines Multi-Task Learning and TLP to cope with the cross-hardware unavailability problem. We incorporate these techniques into the Ansor framework and conduct detailed experiments. Results show that TLP can speed up the average search time by 9.1X and 3.0X on CPU and GPU workloads, respectively, compared to the state-of-the-art implementation. MTL-TLP can achieve a speed-up of 4.7X and 2.9X on CPU and GPU workloads, respectively, using only 7% of the target hardware data.

Surveys that measure subjective states like happiness or preferences often generate discrete ordinal data. Ordered response models, which are commonly used to analyze such data, suffer from a fundamental identification problem. Their conclusions depend on unjustified assumptions about the distribution of a latent variable. In this paper, we propose using survey response times to solve that problem. Response times contain information about the distribution of the latent variable even among subjects who give the same survey response, through a chronometric effect. Using an online survey, we test and verify the existence of the chronometric effect. We then provide theoretical conditions under which group differences in happiness or other variables are detectable based on response time data without making distributional assumptions. In our survey, we find evidence supporting the assumptions of traditional ordered response models for some common survey questions but not for others.

Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have recently played a dominant role in multimodal vision-language learning. Despite the great success, it lacks a holistic evaluation of their efficacy. This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of publicly available large multimodal models by building a LVLM evaluation Hub (LVLM-eHub). Our LVLM-eHub consists of $8$ representative LVLMs such as InstructBLIP and MiniGPT-4, which are thoroughly evaluated by a quantitative capability evaluation and an online arena platform. The former evaluates $6$ categories of multimodal capabilities of LVLMs such as visual question answering and embodied artificial intelligence on $47$ standard text-related visual benchmarks, while the latter provides the user-level evaluation of LVLMs in an open-world question-answering scenario. The study reveals several innovative findings. First, instruction-tuned LVLM with massive in-domain data such as InstructBLIP heavily overfits many existing tasks, generalizing poorly in the open-world scenario. Second, instruction-tuned LVLM with moderate instruction-following data may result in object hallucination issues (i.e., generate objects that are inconsistent with target images in the descriptions). It either makes the current evaluation metric such as CIDEr for image captioning ineffective or generates wrong answers. Third, employing a multi-turn reasoning evaluation framework can mitigate the issue of object hallucination, shedding light on developing an effective pipeline for LVLM evaluation. The findings provide a foundational framework for the conception and assessment of innovative strategies aimed at enhancing zero-shot multimodal techniques. Our LVLM-eHub will be available at https://github.com/OpenGVLab/Multi-Modality-Arena, Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures, a comprehensive evaluation of large vision-language models

Background: The link between exposure to ambient air pollution and mortality from cardiorespiratory diseases is well established, while evidence on neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson's Disease (PD) remains limited. Objective: We examined the association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and PD mortality in seven European cohorts. Methods: Within the project ‘Effects of Low-Level Air Pollution: A Study in Europe’ (ELAPSE), we pooled data from seven cohorts among six European countries. Annual mean residential concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), black carbon (BC), and ozone (O3), as well as 8 PM2.5 components (copper, iron, potassium, nickel, sulphur, silicon, vanadium, zinc), for 2010 were estimated using Europe-wide hybrid land use regression models. PD mortality was defined as underlying cause of death being either PD, secondary Parkinsonism, or dementia in PD. We applied Cox proportional hazard models to investigate the associations between air pollution and PD mortality, adjusting for potential confounders. Results: Of 271,720 cohort participants, 381 died from PD during 19.7 years of follow-up. In single-pollutant analyses, we observed positive associations between PD mortality and PM2.5 (hazard ratio per 5 µg/m3: 1.25; 95% confidence interval: 1.01–1.55), NO2 (1.13; 0.95–1.34 per 10 µg/m3), and BC (1.12; 0.94–1.34 per 0.5 × 10-5m-1), and a negative association with O3 (0.74; 0.58–0.94 per 10 µg/m3). Associations of PM2.5, NO2, and BC with PD mortality were linear without apparent lower thresholds. In two-pollutant models, associations with PM2.5 remained robust when adjusted for NO2 (1.24; 0.95–1.62) or BC (1.28; 0.96–1.71), whereas associations with NO2 or BC attenuated to null. O3 associations remained negative, but no longer statistically significant in models with PM2.5. We detected suggestive positive associations with the potassium component of PM2.5. Conclusion: Long-term exposure to PM2.5, at levels well below current EU air pollution limit values, may contribute to PD mortality.

The present work is devoted to the analysis of drop impact onto a deep liquid pool. It is focused on the effects of high-energy splash regimes, caused by the impact of large raindrops at high velocities. Such cases are characterized by short time scales and complex mechanisms, and they have thus received little attention until now. The BASILISK open-source solver is used to perform three-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS). The capabilities of the octree adaptive mesh refinement techniques enable to capture the small-scale features of the flow, while the Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach combined with a balanced force surface tension calculation is applied to advect the volume fraction of the liquids and reconstruct the interfaces. The numerical results compare well with experimental visualizations: both the evolution of crown and cavity, the emanation of ligaments, the formation of bubble canopy, and the growth of the downward spiral jet that pierces through the cavity bottom, are correctly reproduced. Reliable quantitative agreements are also obtained regarding the time evolution of rim positions, cavity dimensions and droplet distributions through an observation window. Furthermore, simulation gives access to various aspects of the internal flows (velocity, vorticity, pressure, energy budget), which allows to better explain the corresponding physical phenomena. Details of the early dynamics of bubble ring entrapment and splashing performance, the formation/collapse of bubble canopy, and the spreading of drop liquid, are discussed. The statistics of droplet size show the bimodal distribution in time, corroborating distinct primary mechanisms of droplet production at different stages.

From December 2022 to January 2023, SARS-CoV-2 infections caused by BA.5 and BF.7 subvariants of B.1.1.529 (Omicron) spread in China. It is urgently needed to evaluate the protective immune responses in the infected individuals against the current circulating variants to predict the future potential infection waves, such as the BQ.1.1, XBB.1.5, and CH1.1 variants. In this study, we constructed a panel of pseudotyped viruses for SARS-CoV-2 for the past and current circulating variants, including D614G, Delta, BA.1, BA.5, BF.7, BQ.1.1, XBB.1.5 and CH.1.1. We investigated the neutralization sensitivity of these pseudotyped viruses to sera from individuals who had BA.5 or BF.7 breakthrough infections in the infection wave of last December in China. The mean neutralization ID50 against infected variants BA.5 and BF.7 are 533 and 444, respectively. The highest neutralizing antibody level was observed when tested against the D614G strain, with the ID50 of 742, which is about 1.52-folds higher than that against the BA.5/BF.7 variant. The ID50 for BA.1, Delta, and BQ.1.1 pseudotyped viruses were about 2–3 folds lower when compared to BA.5/BF.7. The neutralization activities of these serum samples against XBB.1.5 and CH.1.1 decreased 7.39-folds and 15.25-folds when compared to that against BA.5/BF.7. The immune escape capacity of these two variants might predict new infection waves in future when the neutralizing antibody levels decrease furtherly.

Transfer learning plays a key role in modern data analysis when: (1) the target data are scarce but the source data are sufficient; (2) the distributions of the source and target data are heterogeneous. This paper develops an interpretable unified transfer learning model, termed as UTrans, which can detect both transferable variables and source data. More specifically, we establish the estimation error bounds and prove that our bounds are lower than those with target data only. Besides, we propose a source detection algorithm based on hypothesis testing to exclude the nontransferable data. We evaluate and compare UTrans to the existing algorithms in multiple experiments. It is shown that UTrans attains much lower estimation and prediction errors than the existing methods, while preserving interpretability. We finally apply it to the US intergenerational mobility data and compare our proposed algorithms to the classical machine learning algorithms.

Measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPT) have attracted increasing attention due to the rich phenomenology of entanglement structures and their relation with quantum information processing. Since physical systems are unavoidably coupled to environment, quantum noise needs be considered in analyzing a system with MIPT, which may qualitatively modify or even destroy certain entanglement structure of the system. In this Letter, we investigate the effect of quantum noise modeled by reset quantum channel acting on each site with probability $q$ on MIPT. Based on the numerical results from the Clifford circuits, we show that the quantum noise can qualitatively change the entanglement properties - the entanglement obeys ``area law'' instead of ``volume law'' with projective measurement rate $p, Comment: 4.5 pages + references + supplemental, 4 figures

Micro-Doppler effects of moving vehicles in a radar system are mainly induced by the rotation of wheels, whose features are closely related to the numbers, positions and radiuses of wheels. These parameters of wheels are critical for the vehicle classification and recog¬nition. However, most micro-Doppler features extraction works of vehicles are unable to explicitly extract parame¬ters of wheels. In this paper, a parameter extraction method of vehicle wheels using micro-Doppler features based on the matching pursuit (MP) is proposed. The mi¬cro-Doppler signals of wheels are generally weak compar¬ing to redundant echo signals induced by other irrelevant parts of the vehicle, which makes the micro-Doppler fea¬tures difficult to extract. In this case, several signal atom sets are created according to the motion states of irrele¬vant parts of vehicle and MP is performed to suppress the redundant signals. After the suppression, micro-Doppler signals induced by wheels have become the major part of the echo signal. Another atom set is generated according to the rotational motion of wheels to perform MP again. Then the wheel parameters, such as the estimated numbers, positions and radiuses, are extracted. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is feasible in feature extraction of moving vehicle. Besides, the accuracy can be guaranteed when the signal-to-noise ratio is greater than –5 dB.

Safety is one of the fundamental challenges in control theory. Recently, multi-step optimal control problems for discrete-time dynamical systems were formulated to enforce stability, while subject to input constraints as well as safety-critical requirements using discrete-time control barrier functions within a model predictive control (MPC) framework. Existing work usually focus on the feasibility or the safety for the optimization problem, and the majority of the existing work restrict the discussions to relative-degree one control barrier functions. Additionally, the real-time computation is challenging when a large horizon is considered in the MPC problem for relative-degree one or high-order control barrier functions. In this paper, we propose a framework that solves the safety-critical MPC problem in an iterative optimization, which is applicable for any relative-degree control barrier functions. In the proposed formulation, the nonlinear system dynamics as well as the safety constraints modeled as discrete-time high-order control barrier functions (DHOCBF) are linearized at each time step. Our formulation is generally valid for any control barrier function with an arbitrary relative-degree. The advantages of fast computational performance with safety guarantee are analyzed and validated with numerical results., The open source code is added and the paper is accepted to American Control Conference (ACC) 2023 (8 pages)

Epidemiological cohort studies have consistently found associations between long-term exposure to outdoor air pollution and a range of morbidity and mortality endpoints. Recent evaluations by the World Health Organization and the Global Burden of Disease study have suggested that these associations may be nonlinear and may persist at very low concentrations. Studies conducted in North America in particular have suggested that associations with mortality persisted at concentrations of particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 μm (PMWe focused on analyses of health effects of air pollutants at low concentrations, defined as less than current European Union (EU) Limit Values, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), and/or World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guideline values for PMIn the pooled cohort, virtually all subjects in 2010 had PMLong-term exposure to PM

BackgroundTuberculosis is a communicable disease that is a major cause of ill health. Bibliometrics is an important statistical methodology used to analyze articles and other publications in the literature study. In this study, publications on molecular epidemiology were analyzed using bibliometric analysis. The statistical analysis of influential publications, journals, countries and authors was first conducted.MethodsThe Web of Science database was searched for publications on the molecular epidemiology of tuberculosis with the keywords “tuberculosis” and “molecular epidemiology” in the title. The number of publications, citation analysis, co-authorship of the author, institution and country, keyword co-occurrence, and reference co-citations were analyzed.ResultsA total of 225 journal articles were retrieved. The mean citation was 37.72 per article and 292.69 per year. The annual publications on molecular epidemiology fluctuated within a certain range in the past. Journal of Clinical Microbiology is the most published journal with 33 articles. RASTOGI N is the most prolific author with 11 articles. The top 1 research institution is Inst Pasteur Guadeloupe. Stratified by the number of publications, the USA was the most prolific country. It also cooperates closely with other countries. Burstness analysis of references and keywords showed that the developing research trends in this field mainly focused on “genetic diversity” and “lineage” during the past decade.ConclusionThe annual publications on tuberculosis molecular epidemiology fluctuated within a specific range in the past decade. The USA continues to dominate research output and funding. The exchange of expertise, ideas, and technology is of paramount importance in this field. More frequent and deeper cooperation among countries or institutions will be essential in the future.

We study liquidity conditions in the corporate bond market during the COVID-19 pandemic. We document that the cost of trading immediately via risky-principal trades dramatically increased at the height of the sell-off, forcing customers to shift toward slower agency trades. Exploiting eligibility requirements, we show that the Federal Reserve’s corporate credit facilities have had a positive effect on market liquidity. A structural estimation reveals that customers’ willingness to pay for immediacy increased by about 200 bps per dollar of transaction, but quickly subsided after the Fed announced its interventions. Dealers’ marginal cost also increased substantially but did not fully subside.

In this work, high-speed drop impact onto deep volume of the same liquid is numerically studied in 3D using Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS). The numerical results are compared with the previous experimental works by Murphy et al. [1]. Most of the distinctive features during the impact, including the evolution of the crown and cavity, the ligaments emanating from the rim of the crown, the formation of the bubble canopy, the central spiral jet that pierces through the bottom of the cavity and the subsequent broad upward jet, are correctly reproduced. The trajectory of the upper rim of the crown as well as the depth and width of the subsurface cavity are tracked during the simulation. Very reliable quantitative agreements between numerical and experimental data are obtained with respect to the time evolution of the crown rim and cavity dimensions. The simulation shows very good qualitative and quantitative agreement against the available experimental data, which enables the further investigation of the internal mechanisms of drop impact in the future This work has been supported by the scholarship from China Scholarship Council (CSC) under the Grant CSC NO. 201908320462.

Videos contain multi-modal content, and exploring multi-level cross-modal interactions with natural language queries can provide great prominence to text-video retrieval task (TVR). However, new trending methods applying large-scale pre-trained model CLIP for TVR do not focus on multi-modal cues in videos. Furthermore, the traditional methods simply concatenating multi-modal features do not exploit fine-grained cross-modal information in videos. In this paper, we propose a multi-level multi-modal hybrid fusion (M2HF) network to explore comprehensive interactions between text queries and each modality content in videos. Specifically, M2HF first utilizes visual features extracted by CLIP to early fuse with audio and motion features extracted from videos, obtaining audio-visual fusion features and motion-visual fusion features respectively. Multi-modal alignment problem is also considered in this process. Then, visual features, audio-visual fusion features, motion-visual fusion features, and texts extracted from videos establish cross-modal relationships with caption queries in a multi-level way. Finally, the retrieval outputs from all levels are late fused to obtain final text-video retrieval results. Our framework provides two kinds of training strategies, including an ensemble manner and an end-to-end manner. Moreover, a novel multi-modal balance loss function is proposed to balance the contributions of each modality for efficient end-to-end training. M2HF allows us to obtain state-of-the-art results on various benchmarks, eg, Rank@1 of 64.9\%, 68.2\%, 33.2\%, 57.1\%, 57.8\% on MSR-VTT, MSVD, LSMDC, DiDeMo, and ActivityNet, respectively., 1 1pages, 3 figures, 5 tables

Accurately recognising patients with progressive mild cognitive impairment (pMCI) who will develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in subsequent years is very important, as early identification of those patients will enable interventions to potentially reduce the number of those transitioning from MCI to AD. Most studies in this area have concentrated on high-dimensional neuroimaging data with supervised binary/multi-class classification algorithms. However, neuroimaging data is more costly to obtain than non-imaging, and healthcare datasets are normally imbalanced which may reduce classification performance and reliability. To address these challenges, we proposed a new strategy that employs unsupervised novelty detection (ND) techniques to predict pMCI from the AD neuroimaging initiative non-imaging data. ND algorithms, including the k-nearest neighbours (kNN), k-means, Gaussian mixture model (GMM), isolation forest (IF) and extreme learning machine (ELM), were employed and compared with supervised binary support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (RF). We introduced optimisation with nested cross-validation and focused on maximising the adjusted F measure to ensure maximum generalisation of the proposed system by minimising false negative rates. Our extensive experimental results show that ND algorithms (0.727 ± 0.029 kNN, 0.7179 ± 0.0523 GMM, 0.7276 ± 0.0281 ELM) obtained comparable performance to supervised binary SVM (0.7359 ± 0.0451) with 20% stable MCI misclassification tolerance and were significantly better than RF (0.4771 ± 0.0167). Moreover, we found that the non-invasive, readily obtainable, and cost-effective cognitive and functional assessment was the most efficient predictor for predicting the pMCI within 2 years with ND techniques. Importantly, we presented an accessible and cost-effective approach to pMCI prediction, which does not require labelled data.

Micro-milling is a low-cost, efficient, and high-precision machining method for manufacturing tiny parts, and has significant application value in various fields. In order to meet the high-accuracy requirements, several composite micro-milling methods have been proposed. However, these methods cannot change surface characteristics of materials, and poor permeability of cooling medium on the tool-workpiece interface remains unsolved. Atmospheric pressure plasma jet can efficiently improve surface wettability without obviously changing surface microstructures and may have promising application potential in machining of difficult-to-cut materials. Here, we propose to induce atmospheric pressure plasma jet to the micro-milling area to improve machinability and surface quality of TC4 titanium alloy. The influences of plasma jet on material wettability and mechanical property are firstly investigated by conducting plasma modification and tensile experiments. Then, micro-milling experiments of TC4 titanium alloy are performed under different atmospheres (dry, nitrogen jet, plasma jet, minimum quantity lubrication, and plasma jet + minimum quantity lubrication). The experimental results indicate that plasma jet can promote material fracture of TC4 titanium alloy, as well as reduce cutting force and cutting temperature, thereby obtaining better surface quality.

The ground penetrating radar (GPR) data in the complex detection environment is non-stationary, non-Gaussian, and non-uniform, so the traditional noise attenuation methods are difficult to meet the requirements of denoising. Therefore, we introduced the K-singular value decomposition (K-SVD) dictionary learning into the denoising of GPR signals. It uses the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) algorithm to sparse decompose different radar data and trains the overcomplete dictionary with sample characteristics. K-SVD makes full use of the prior information and can extract features according to the sample data adaptively, which means it has strong sparse representation competence. Because radar signals can be sparsely represented in the dictionary, whereas the random noise does not have a sparse representation, the K-SVD dictionary can be used to distinguish effective signals from noise in the GPR data. We used the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and K-SVD dictionaries to process the Gaussian noise and stochastic clutter in the GPR profile. The results show that both K-SVD and DCT can effectively suppress the Gaussian noise. But for the clutter generated by the random medium, the DCT dictionary also causes damage to the effective signals while removing the noise; whereas the K-SVD dictionary learning algorithm uses the DCT dictionary as the initial dictionary and carries out adaptive learning on the noisy data, considering the information in the block and the global observation to complete the denoising, with good denoising effect and high fidelity. We finally verified the effectiveness and practicability of the K-SVD method for measured data.

In the atmosphere, cloud particles have different shapes. The study of cloud particle shapes plays an important role in understanding cloud precipitation processes, radiative transfer, and weather ...

In high-frequency hydraulic vibration and impact systems, the high-speed reciprocating motion of the impact piston, as controlled by the main valve, transfers energy to the target. Therefore, the main valve must have a fast response speed and strong flow capacity. A novel two-stage large-flowrate on–off valve is developed in this study. The first stage is a small-flowrate servo valve, and the second stage is a large-flowrate hydraulic control valve with a hollow spool. The hollow structure not only reduces the quality of the spool and improves the valve dynamic characteristics but also improves the flow capacity and reduces the pressure drop at the valve port. A structural strength simulation is performed, and the deformation and stress of the spool are calculated. Then, the internal flow channel is extracted and the pressure drop characteristics of valve are obtained by simulation. To obtain the dynamic characteristics of the valve, the control equations of the valve are established, and the simulation model is built in Simcenter Amesim software. Then, the structural parameters of the valve body are optimized in this model. Finally, a prototype is developed for hydraulic vibration and impact systems. The experimental results show that the prototype works well, the opening time of the second-stage valve is within 6 ms, and the port pressure drop at a flow rate of 1000 L/min is only 30% of the conventional opening and closing valve of the same diameter.

In this study, hydrophobic polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and hydrophilic polyetheretherketone (PEEK) membranes were used as heat exchangers in rich‐split CO2 capture process to recover the waste heat from the stripped gas (i.e., mixture of water vapor and CO2). Technical feasibilities of these two membrane exchangers were assessed by heat recovery and energy intensity in the monoethanolamine (MEA)‐based carbon capture process. The heat recovery of these two membrane exchangers with different pore sizes were then systematically compared under various operating parameters. The underlying mass and heat transfer mechanisms of two membranes were also investigated and compared to figure out the suitable candidate for heat recovery. Additionally, the potential risks of using these membrane exchangers were identified and investigated. Results showed that the PTFE membrane displays a better heat recovery performance than the PEEK membrane with the same pore size. The heat recovery of both PTFE and PEEK membranes first increases to a plateau and then drops slightly with the increased CO2‐rich solvent flow rate. The heat recovery of PTFE and PEEK membranes decreases with the increased flow rate and water vapor fraction of the inlet stripped gas, MEA temperature, and MEA concentration. Furthermore, the larger pore size results in higher heat recovery for both PTFE and PEEK membranes. PTFE membranes displayed lower MEA transfer flux than PTFE membranes at any rich MEA flow rate as the enhanced MEA transfer from the cold solution to the other side via PEEK membrane pores filled with liquid water. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The distribution of the Ziegler's Crocodile Newt Tylototriton ziegleri Nishikawa, Matsui & Nguyen, 2013 in China has been controversial. This species was originally recorded uncertainly from Guangxi Autonomous Region, China. Subsequently, this species was recorded from Yunnan and Guangdong provinces, China. Thereafter, the record from Guangdong was denied and the record from Yunnan was questioned.Two specimens of Tylototriton Anderson, 1871 were collected from Wenshan Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China, in 2021. Phylogenetically, the sequences of these two specimens clustered with the sequences of T. ziegleri (including the holotype) from its type locality with strong support, and morphologically agree well with the original description of T. ziegleri. We confirm the record of T. ziegleri in China and present detailed collection site and morphological description of the specimens from China. In addition, we found that T. panwaensis Grismer, Wood, Quah, Thura, Espinoza & Murdoch, 2019 may be the synonym of T. verrucosus Anderson, 1871. We discussed the relationship between T. verrucosus and T. panwaensis.

This study proposed a novel multi-zone applicable hybrid desiccant cooling system (MHDC) that uses condensing heat from the condenser to regenerate the solid desiccant and applied it as an outdoor air unit (OAU) with demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) in order to control the indoor humidity and air quality (IAQ). Indoor temperature and humidity control effect and system energy use were analysed compared to a conventional packaged terminal air-conditioning (PTAC) system with the heat recovery wheel (HRW) assisted OAU. The simulation result shows that in a typical high-rise building with high air tightness, The CO2 concentration in bedrooms can reach up to 3686 ppm when PTACs operate without fresh air. Without the dehumidification process, the introduction of fresh air will increase the relative humidity most of the occupancy time. The MHDC system adopted DCV can maintain IAQ except for a short period of cooking time and can handle the fresh air latent load while controlling indoor humidity without a separate regeneration heat source. However, due to the air volume limitation of OAU, the instantaneous dehumidification capacity of the MHDC system is not sufficient, resulting in a short time required to process the indoor humidity to 50 % level when the system initially started. Although the operation of the MHDC system increases the energy use of the OAU, the decrease in the latent load of zone level PTACs makes the total energy use is almost equal to the PTAC system with HRW assisted OAU, 606 kWh and 605 kWh respectively, while obtaining better indoor thermal comfort and IAQ. This study can prove that the proposed MHDC system is a possible alternative system to a conventional multi-zone air-conditioning system that can provide energy savings and thermal comfort., CLIMA 2022 conference, 2022: CLIMA 2022 The 14th REHVA HVAC World Congress

BackgroundIt is unclear whether more severe non–alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) combined with prehypertension or hypertension is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular events (CVEs). To evaluate the relationship between the severity of NAFLD and CVEs among patients with prehypertension or hypertension.MethodsIn this prospective community–based Kailuan cohort, participants without cardiovascular disease and alcohol abuse, or other liver diseases were enrolled. NAFLD was diagnosed by abdominal ultrasonography. Prehypertension was defined as systolic blood pressure (BP) of 120–139 mmHg or diastolic BP of 80–89 mmHg. Participants with NAFLD were divided into mild, moderate, and severe subgroups. Follow–up for CVEs including myocardial infarction, hemorrhagic stroke, and ischemic stroke. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate hazard ratios and 95% CIs of CVEs according to the severity of NAFLD and hypertensive statutes. The C-statistic was used to evaluate the efficiency of models.ResultsA total of 71926 participants (mean [SD] age, 51.83 [12.72] years, 53794 [74.79%] men, and 18132 [25.21%] women) were enrolled in this study, 6,045 CVEs occurred during a median of 13.02 (0.65) years of follow–up. Compared with participants without NAFLD, the hazard ratios of CVEs for patients with mild, moderate, and severe NAFLD were 1.143 (95% CI 1.071–1.221, P < 0.001), 1.218 (95% CI 1.071–1.221, P < 0.001), and 1.367 (95% CI 1.172–1.595, P < 0.001), respectively. Moreover, participants with prehypertension plus moderate/severe NAFLD and those with hypertension plus moderate/severe NAFLD had 1.558–fold (95% CI 1.293–1.877, P < 0.001) and 2.357–fold (95% CI 2.063–2.691, P < 0.001) higher risks of CVEs, respectively, compared with those with normal BP and no NAFLD. Adding a combination of NAFLD and BP status to the crude Cox model increased the C–statistic by 0.0130 (0.0115–0.0158, P < 0.001).ConclusionsOur findings indicated that the increased cardiovascular risk with elevated BP is largely driven by the coexistence of moderate/severe NAFLD, suggesting that the severity of NAFLD may help further stratify patients with prehypertension and hypertension.

Three new species were recently described from the Calotes mystaceus Duméril & Bibron, 1837 complex. Of the three new species, C. vindumbarbatus Wagner, Ihlow, Hartmann, Flecks, Schmitz & Böhme, 2021 was known only from northern Myanmar.Seven specimens of lizard were collected from Tongbiguan Nature Reserve, western Yunnan, China. Phylogenetically, these specimens clustered with the type specimens of Calotes vindumbarbatus from Myanmar with strong support and showed inappreciable genetic divergence from the type specimens of C. vindumbarbatus. We report the first country record of C. vindumbarbatus from China. In addition, a supplementary description, based on the newly-collected specimens and revised diagnosis of this species, was provided.

Advanced Internet development and the impact of COVID-19 have made online learning the most convenient way for learners to acquire knowledge. Online courses enable learners to communicate directly with teachers one-on-one and achieve mutual learning and real-time interaction. However, some instructors and learners might encounter operational difficulties during online learning. For example, learners might suffer from a frustrating emotion after failing to complete a series of tasks by operating the online learning platform since they are worried about making mistakes during the class. Moreover, not every person is familiar with the online learning software; it is imperative to establish guidelines for teachers and students to realize the software operation pattern before the class starts and improve students' self-confidence during the online course. Therefore, this article aimed to understand learners' pain points while using the online communication software-Google Meet during the online course and applied design services approaches to ideate the problems and conclude the suggested operational guideline. Accordingly, this article applied service design tools, including user journey map, how might we (HMWs) method to improve user experience and ultimately achieve an obstacles-free online learning environment.

In this report, we consider a min-max optimization problem under adversarial manipulation, where there are $n$ cost functions $Q_i(x)$'s, up to $f$ of which may be replaced by arbitrary faulty functions by an adversary. The goal is to minimize the maximum cost over $x$ among the $n$ functions in spite of the faulty functions. The problem formulation naturally extends to Byzantine fault-tolerant distributed min-max optimization. We present a simple algorithm for fault-tolerant min-max optimization, and provide some bounds on the output of the algorithm. We also present an approximate algorithm for this problem. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to consider this problem., Comment: 11 pages; Update with an approximate algorithm for the same problem in Section 4

Additional file 1. Fig. S1. Fold changes of CG, CHG, and CHH methylation levels on every chromosome of Kitaake after AzaD treatment. Fig. S2. Fold changes of CG, CHG, and CHH methylation levels on every chromosome of Nipponbare after mutation of OsMET1-2. Fig. S3. DMR distribution in different parts of the genomes of AzaD treated and osmet1-2 mutant rice plants. Fig. S4. DMR overlap ratio between AzaD treated and osmet1-2 mutant rice according to collinear comparisons between genomes of Kitaake and Nipponbare rice cultivars. Fig. S5. Gene expression levels in CK, AzaD treated, WT, and osmet1-2 mutant rice plants. Fig. S6. CG, CHG, and CHH methylation levels of class I retrotransposons and class II DNA transposons in osmet1-2 mutant rice plants. Fig. S7. Distribution of class I and class II TEs on every chromosome of Kitaake. Fig. S8. The methylation change in activated and not activated TEs. Fig. S9. Average distances of TEs from their closest genes. Fig. S10. Methylation level of TEs from different superfamilies in Kitaake. Fig. S11. CG methylation level changes of TEs. Fig. S12. CHH methylation level changes of TEs in osmet1-2 mutant rice plants. Fig. S13. Correlation between 24-nt siRNA RPKM and methylation levels in DMRs. Fig. S14. The siRNA count and CHH methylation level change in CHH DMRs in AzaD treated plants. Fig. S15. GO enrichment analysis of DEGs in both AzaD treated and osmet1-2 mutant rice plants. Fig. S16. GO enrichment analysis of DEGs in AzaD treated rice plants. Fig. S17. GO enrichment analysis of DEGs in osmet1-2 mutant rice plants. Fig. S18. Examples of DNA methylation profiles in three down-regulated genes. Table S1.. TE count from different superfamilies in CK and AzaD treatment plants. Table S2.. TE count from different superfamilies in WT and osmet1-2 mutant plants. Table S3.. PCR primer sets used in RT-qPCR.

Additional file 1.

We report the first record of Limnonectes nguyenorum McLeod, Kurlbaum & Hoang, 2015 outside of Vietnam, namely from China, based on five specimens collected from Daweishan Nature Reserve, southern Yunnan, China. Morphologically, the records from China agree with those of L. nguyenorum from Vietnam, and they also phylogenetically clustered with strong support. In addition, based on the new records from China and the previous descriptions of L. nguyenorum from Vietnam, we provide an extended diagnosis of this species.

Additional file 2 Fig. S1. Gene Ontology (GO) classification of DEGs. Fig. S2. Enriched KEGG pathways of differential expressed genes (DEGs) during the four adjacent stages of Tamarix hispida seed germination. Fig. S3. Enriched Gene Ontology (GO) terms of differential expressed genes (DEGs) during the six adjacent stages of Tamarix hispida seed germination and post- germination processes. Fig. S4. Analysis of DEGs in phenylpropanoid biosynthesis. Fig. S5. Enriched KEGG pathways and Gene Ontology (GO) terms of gene sets merging from specific stage-associated modules. Fig. S6. Enriched KEGG pathways and Gene Ontology (GO) terms of DEGs in purple, black and green modules. Fig. S7. Heatmap showing the contents of corresponding flavonoid expression at different stages.

In this paper, we present the Multi-Forgery Detection Challenge held concurrently with the IEEE Computer Society Workshop on Biometrics at CVPR 2022. Our Multi-Forgery Detection Challenge aims to detect automatic image manipulations including but not limited to image editing, image synthesis, image generation, image photoshop, etc. Our challenge has attracted 674 teams from all over the world, with about 2000 valid result submission counts. We invited the Top 10 teams to present their solutions to the challenge, from which three teams are awarded prizes in the grand finale. In this paper, we present the solutions from the Top 3 teams, in order to boost the research work in the field of image forgery detection., Comment: Workshop and challenge summary paper, containing technical reports from different teams

This thesis concerns dynamical systems subject to small noise perturbations. Our purpose is to obtain a deep understanding of how small noise perturbations influence the original unperturbed dynamical system, especially over long but finite time intervals. We consider two special systems, the random linear recurrence equation which is a discrete system, and the underdamped Langevin equation which is a continuous system. According to the classical perturbation theory, small perturbations do not impact much of the dynamics over a short time. When the time tends to infinity, in many situations, the flow can eventually merge with one of the steady states of the perturbed system. As far as we know, small perturbations gradually influence the dynamics in an accumulative way over time, resulting in the so-called transient behavior which describes the process of such a gradual change of dynamics from the unperturbed system to the steady state of the corresponding perturbed system. We demonstrate this change by utilizing the cut-off phenomenon in the random linear recurrence system. We find the time window when the solution evolves from a deterministic value to the limiting distribution. The underdamped Langevin equation is essentially a slow-fast system admitting three time scales. The unperturbed Hamiltonian system plays a dominant role in the short time scale. In the intermediate time scale, the fast variables have already tended to their stationary distributions and the slow variables transition from their initial deterministic values to the marginal distribution of the slow variables with respect to the system’s stationary distribution. Finally, in the long time scale, all variables are slaved by the stationary distribution.