Search

We previously proposed contextual spelling correction (CSC) to correct the output of end-to-end (E2E) automatic speech recognition (ASR) models with contextual information such as name, place, etc. Although CSC has achieved reasonable improvement in the biasing problem, there are still two drawbacks for further accuracy improvement. First, due to information limitation in text only hypothesis or weak performance of ASR model on rare domains, the CSC model may fail to correct phrases with similar pronunciation or anti-context cases where all biasing phrases are not present in the utterance. Second, there is a discrepancy between the training and inference of CSC. The bias list in training is randomly selected but in inference there may be more similarity between ground truth phrase and other phrases. To solve above limitations, in this paper we propose an improved non-autoregressive (NAR) spelling correction model for contextual biasing in E2E neural transducer-based ASR systems to improve the previous CSC model from two perspectives: Firstly, we incorporate acoustics information with an external attention as well as text hypotheses into CSC to better distinguish target phrase from dissimilar or irrelevant phrases. Secondly, we design a semantic aware data augmentation schema in training phrase to reduce the mismatch between training and inference to further boost the biasing accuracy. Experiments show that the improved method outperforms the baseline ASR+Biasing system by as much as 20.3% relative name recall gain and achieves stable improvement compared to the previous CSC method over different bias list name coverage ratio., Accepted by ICASSP 2023

We present $\textbf{$\texttt{SkillQG}$}$: a question generation framework with controllable comprehension types for assessing and improving machine reading comprehension models. Existing question generation systems widely differentiate questions by $\textit{literal}$ information such as question words and answer types to generate semantically relevant questions for a given context. However, they rarely consider the $\textit{comprehension}$ nature of questions, i.e. the different comprehension capabilities embodied by different questions. In comparison, our $\texttt{SkillQG}$ is able to tailor a fine-grained assessment and improvement to the capabilities of question answering models built on it. Specifically, we first frame the comprehension type of questions based on a hierarchical skill-based schema, then formulate $\texttt{SkillQG}$ as a skill-conditioned question generator. Furthermore, to improve the controllability of generation, we augment the input text with question focus and skill-specific knowledge, which are constructed by iteratively prompting the pre-trained language models. Empirical results demonstrate that $\texttt{SkillQG}$ outperforms baselines in terms of quality, relevance, and skill-controllability while showing a promising performance boost in downstream question answering task., Comment: Accepted at ACL 2023 Findings

Existing metrics for assessing question generation not only require costly human reference but also fail to take into account the input context of generation, rendering the lack of deep understanding of the relevance between the generated questions and input contexts. As a result, they may wrongly penalize a legitimate and reasonable candidate question when it (i) involves complicated reasoning with the context or (ii) can be grounded by multiple evidences in the context. In this paper, we propose $\textbf{QRelScore}$, a context-aware $\underline{\textbf{Rel}}$evance evaluation metric for $\underline{\textbf{Q}}$uestion Generation. Based on off-the-shelf language models such as BERT and GPT2, QRelScore employs both word-level hierarchical matching and sentence-level prompt-based generation to cope with the complicated reasoning and diverse generation from multiple evidences, respectively. Compared with existing metrics, our experiments demonstrate that QRelScore is able to achieve a higher correlation with human judgments while being much more robust to adversarial samples., 16 pages, 7 figures

Objectives Probabilistic damaged stability is one of the most important factors to ensure the safety of ships. With the release of SOLAS 2020, the passenger ship subdivision index R requirement has been greatly increased. Therefore, attention should be paid to the probabilistic damaged stability of cruise ships.Methods The R of SOLAS 2020 and SOLAS 2009 were compared and analyzed for medium cruise ships. The initial scheme was analyzed by using Maxsurf software. The difference between the R of SOLAS 2020 and the attained subdivision index A was large. Through analysis of the influencing factors of A, three kinds of improvement measures, including increasing the longitudinal subdivision, setting up cross-flooding fitting, and reducing the height of the center of gravity, were put forward. Also, the improvement schemes were analyzed.Results Compared with SOLAS 2009, SOLAS 2020 has increased R of medium cruise ships carrying about 1 250 passengers by about 13.6%. The improvement of A is more than 10% by setting up cross-flooding fitting, 8.7% by increasing longitudinal subdivision, and the improvement of A is weaker by reducing the height of the center of gravity because of the larger initial GM. By adopting the combination scheme of improvement measures, the medium cruise ship meets the requirement of subdivision index R of SOLAS 2020.Conclusions Through comparison, aiming at the medium-sized cruise ship with large GM, the improvement effect of setting up cross-flooding fitting is seen to be the best, followed by increasing the longitudinal subdivision, and the effect of reducing the height of the center of gravity is weak.

Constacyclic codes over finite fields are a family of linear codes and contain cyclic codes as a subclass. Constacyclic codes are related to many areas of mathematics and outperform cyclic codes in several aspects. Hence, constacyclic codes are of theoretical importance. On the other hand, constacyclic codes are important in practice, as they have rich algebraic structures and may have efficient decoding algorithms. In this paper, two classes of constacyclic codes are constructed using a general construction of constacyclic codes with cyclic codes. The first class of constacyclic codes is motivated by the punctured Dilix cyclic codes and the second class is motivated by the punctured generalised Reed-Muller codes. The two classes of constacyclic codes contain optimal linear codes. The parameters of the two classes of constacyclic codes are analysed and some open problems are presented in this paper.

This paper proposes a new "decompose-and-edit" paradigm for the text-based speech insertion task that facilitates arbitrary-length speech insertion and even full sentence generation. In the proposed paradigm, global and local factors in speech are explicitly decomposed and separately manipulated to achieve high speaker similarity and continuous prosody. Specifically, we proposed to represent the global factors by multiple tokens, which are extracted by cross-attention operation and then injected back by link-attention operation. Due to the rich representation of global factors, we manage to achieve high speaker similarity in a zero-shot manner. In addition, we introduce a prosody smoothing task to make the local prosody factor context-aware and therefore achieve satisfactory prosody continuity. We further achieve high voice quality with an adversarial training stage. In the subjective test, our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in both naturalness and similarity. Audio samples can be found at https://ydcustc.github.io/retrieverTTS-demo/., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables. Accepted by Interspeech 2022

BCH codes and their dual codes are two special subclasses of cyclic codes and are the best linear codes in many cases. A lot of progress on the study of BCH cyclic codes has been made, but little is known about the minimum distances of the duals of BCH codes. Recently, a new concept called dually-BCH code was introduced to investigate the duals of BCH codes and the lower bounds on their minimum distances in \cite{GDL21}. For a prime power $q$ and an integer $m \ge 4$, let $n=\frac{q^m-1}{q+1}$ \ ($m$ even), or $n=\frac{q^m-1}{q-1}$ \ ($q>2$). In this paper, some sufficient and necessary conditions in terms of the designed distance will be given to ensure that the narrow-sense BCH codes of length $n$ are dually-BCH codes, which extended the results in \cite{GDL21}. Lower bounds on the minimum distances of their dual codes are developed for $n=\frac{q^m-1}{q+1}$ \ ($m$ even). As byproducts, we present the largest coset leader $\delta_1$ modulo $n$ being of two types, which proves a conjecture in \cite{WLP19} and partially solves an open problem in \cite{Li2017}. We also investigate the parameters of the narrow-sense BCH codes of length $n$ with design distance $\delta_1$. The BCH codes presented in this paper have good parameters in general.

Objective. To investigate the mechanisms underlying the development of right heart-associated PE. Background. Right heart-related pulmonary edema (PE) refers to PE resulting from impaired right heart function caused by primary or secondary factors, which is common in critically ill patients. Although the clinical manifestations of different types of right heart-related PE are similar, the pathophysiological changes and treatment methods are significantly different. According to the hemodynamic mechanism, right heart-related PE is primarily classified into two types. One is the increase of right heart flow, including extravascular compression, intravascular compression, cardiac compression, and cardiac decompression. The other type is the abnormal distribution of pulmonary circulation, including obstruction, resistance, pleural decompression, or negative pressure. With the development of hemodynamic monitoring, hemodynamic data not only help us understand the specific pathogenesis of right heart-related PE but also assist us in determining the direction of therapy and enabling individualized treatment. Summary. This article presents a review on right heart-associated PE, with a perspective of hemodynamic analysis, and emphasizes the importance of right heart function in the management of circulation. Understanding the mechanism of right heart-associated PE will not only aid in better monitoring right heart function but also help intensivists make a more accurate identification of various types of PE in the clinic.

In this paper, a hybrid control strategy is studied and implemented on an Inductive Power Transfer (IPT) system to simultaneously realize zero-voltage switching (ZVS) and constant current (CC) and constant voltage (CV) battery charging. A steady-state analysis of pulse frequency modulation was conducted, based on the characteristic of voltage gain versus switching frequency, and CC and CV charging modes were promised. The ZVS of the inverter was obtained by satisfying the minimum requirement of full discharge of the junction capacitor on the MOSFETs using a commutation current during the dead-time interval. Two control degrees of freedom are needed to realize the two control targets. This hybrid control strategy adopts a self-oscillating (SO) control to achieve ZVS and phase shift (PS) control and a constant output for the series–series (SS)-compensated IPT system. To validate the hybrid control strategy, a 1.6 kW prototype with 360–440 V input voltage and 250–400 V output voltage was built and the experimental results show that the peak efficiency can reach 96.1%. Compared with the conventional variable frequency (VF) control, the hybrid control method proves that an additional control variable can fulfill the control target in a more flexible manner, which makes the switching frequency close to the resonant frequency during the charging process, minimizing the reactive current in the resonant tank and improving system efficiency.

How to effectively and accurately evaluate the reliability of the design, structure, material and process of flip-chip packaging devices in mass production has always been a hot topic in the industry. Currently, the destructive physical analysis (DPA) on high-reliability conventional packaging devices worldwide is carried out mainly based on the Methods of Destructive Physical Analysis for Military Electronic Components (GJB4027) or the Destructive Physical Analysis for Electronic, Electromagnetic, and Electromechanical Parts (MIL-STD-1580). However, the structure and process of flip-chip packaging devices are significantly different from those of traditional packaging devices, so traditional evaluation items are unable to effectively evaluate the reliability of flip-chip packaging devices. In this paper, typical ceramic and plastic encapsulated flip-chip packaging devices are chosen for study. The structural feature and the reliability weaknesses of flip-chip packaging devices are identified. Moreover, highly comprehensive DPA methods for flip-chip packaged devices with high applicability and efficiency are proposed by combining the typical failure modes of flip-chip packaging devices, which were verified by the examples. Herein, the reliability of key structural units such as flip-chip covers, bumps, underfill, substrates and solder balls can be effectively assessed by the new DPA method, providing a basis and assistance for revisions of advanced packaging device standards and destructive physical analysis.

The Burkholderia pyrrocinia Lyc2 strain isolated from healthy plant rhizosphere showed significant antimicrobial activities against a variety of plant pathogens. In this study, a random mutation library was constructed using an EZ-Tn5 transposome kit and Erwinia amylovora was used as an indicator to screen for mutants with defective antibacterial activity. The transposon gene was verified in the chromosome of the Lyc2 strain using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The gene that was disrupted by transposon was amplified by rescue cloning for functional and bioinformatics analyses. Antibacterial analysis indicated that the mutant Lyc2-MT2918 was defective in antibacterial activity. Sequence alignment of the mutant suggested that the disrupted gene Glu-2918 was homologous to the glutathione (GSH) synthase gene Bamb-2918 of strain B. ambifaria AMMD. Genetic functional analysis and complementary assay of the disrupted gene, which was predicted to encode GSH synthase, indicated the essential role of the Glu-2918 gene in the antibacterial activity of strain Lyc2.

To study the clinical effects of Diding Oral Medicine as an alternative to preventative antibiotics in perioperative hemorrhoids. From August 2017 to February 2018, a total of 214 patients who were treated with external exfoliation and internal ligation of mixed hemorrhoids in our hospital were divided into the control group and experimental group by way of stratified random (107 cases in each group). Patients in the control group were given antibiotics preventatively before operation, while patients in the experimental group took Diding Oral Medicine before operation, and the white blood cell count, neutrophil count, wound recovery, pain score, anal bulge score, and pathogen culture of wound secretions were compared between the 2 groups. There was no significant difference in white blood cell count and neutrophil count between both groups before and after operation (P > .05). The wound seepage score, wound edema score, and wound area score in the experimental group were lower than those in the control group, and the wound healing in the experimental group was shorter than that in the control group (all P

Recently, a new concept called multiplicative differential cryptanalysis and the corresponding $c$-differential uniformity were introduced by Ellingsen et al.~\cite{Ellingsen2020}, and then some low differential uniformity functions were constructed. In this paper, we further study the constructions of perfect $c$-nonlinear (PcN) power functions. First, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the Gold function to be PcN and a conjecture on all power functions to be PcN over $\gf(2^m)$. Second, several classes of PcN power functions are obtained over finite fields of odd characteristic for $c=-1$ and our theorems generalize some results in~\cite{Bartoli,Hasan,Zha2020}. Finally, the $c$-differential spectrum of a class of almost perfect $c$-nonlinear (APcN) power functions is determined., C-differential uniformity, perfect c-nonlinear function, almost perfect c-nonlinear function, differential spectrum

We consider a branching random walk with immigration in a random environment, where the environment is a stationary and ergodic sequence indexed by time. We focus on the asymptotic properties of the sequence of measures $(Z_n)$ that count the number of particles of generation $n$ located in a Borel set of real line. In the present work, a series of limit theorems related to the above counting measures are established, including a central limit theorem, a moderate deviation principle and a large deviation result as well as a convergence theorem of the free energy.

Changwu Tan,1– 3,* Xiaoqiang Wang,4,* Yuchang Wang,1– 3 Chuansen Wang,1– 3 Zhi Tang,5 Zhiping Zhang,1– 3 Jingping Liu,1– 3 Gelei Xiao1– 3 1Department of Neurosurgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410008, People’s Republic of China; 2Diagnosis and Treatment Center for Hydrocephalus, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410008, People’s Republic of China; 3National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410008, People’s Republic of China; 4Pediatric Neurological Disease Center, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Neurosurgery, Hunan Cancer Hospital and the Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410013, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Gelei XiaoDepartment of Neurosurgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410008, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +8613707314060Email xiaogelei@csu.edu.cnAbstract: Idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) is a rare neurological disorder with no clear prevalence factors and is a significant danger to the elderly. The intracranial glymphatic system is the internal environment that maintains brain survival and metabolism, and thus fluid exchange changes in the glymphatic system under various pathological conditions can provide important insights into the pathogenesis and differential diagnosis of many neurodegenerative diseases such as iNPH. iNPH can be diagnosed using a combination of clinical symptoms, imaging findings and history, and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers due to the glymphatic system disorder. However, only few researchers have linked the two. Shunt surgery can improve the glymphatic system disorders in iNPH patients, and the surgical approach is determined using a combination of clinical diagnosis and trials. Therefore, we have composed this review to provide a future opportunity for elucidating the pathogenesis of iNPH based on the glymphatic system, and link the glymphatic system to the diagnosis and treatment of iNPH. The review will provide new insights into the medical research of iNPH.Keywords: idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus, glymphatic system, pathogenesis, diagnostic methods, shunt surgery

Rich functionalities of transition-metal oxides and their interfaces bear an enormous technological potential. Its realization in practical devices requires, however, a significant improvement of yet relatively low electron mobility in oxide materials. Recently, a mobility boost of about two orders of magnitude has been demonstrated at the spinel/perovskite ��-Al2O3/SrTiO3 interface compared to the paradigm perovskite/perovskite LaAlO3/SrTiO3. We explore the fundamental physics behind this phenomenon from direct measurements of the momentum-resolved electronic structure of this interface using resonant soft-X-ray angle-resolved photoemission. We find an anomaly in orbital ordering of the mobile electrons in ��-Al2O3/SrTiO3 which depopulates electron states in the top STO layer. This rearrangement of the mobile electron system pushes the electron density away from the interface that reduces its overlap with the interfacial defects and weakens the electron-phonon interaction, both effects contributing to the mobility boost. A crystal-field analysis shows that the band order alters owing to the symmetry breaking between the spinel ��-Al2O3 and perovskite SrTiO3. The band-order engineering exploiting the fundamental symmetry properties emerges as another route to boost the performance of oxide devices.

BCH codes are an interesting class of cyclic codes due to their efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In many cases, BCH codes are the best linear codes. However, the dimension and minimum distance of BCH codes have been seldom solved. Until now, there have been few results on BCH codes over $\gf(q)$ with length $q^m+1$, especially when $q$ is a prime power and $m$ is even. The objective of this paper is to study BCH codes of this type over finite fields and analyse their parameters. The BCH codes presented in this paper have good parameters in general, and contain many optimal linear codes., Comment: This paper is amalgamated with another paper

It is well-known that cyclic codes have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In recent years, antiprimitive BCH codes have attracted a lot of attention. The objective of this paper is to study BCH codes of this type over finite fields and analyse their parameters. Some lower bounds on the minimum distance of antiprimitive BCH codes are given. The BCH codes presented in this paper have good parameters in general, containing many optimal linear codes. In particular, two open problems about the minimum distance of BCH codes of this type are partially solved in this paper., Comment: This manuscript was first submitted to IEEE Tran. Inf. Theory in 06, April, 2021

We proposed and analyzed a scheme to generate large-size Schrödinger cat states based on linear operations of Fock states and squeezed vacuum states and conditional measurements. By conducting conditional measurements via photon number detectors, two unbalanced Schrödinger kitten states combined by a beam splitter can be amplified to a large-size cat state with the same parity. According to simulation results, two Schrödinger odd kitten states of $β=1.06$ and $β=1.11$ generated from one-photon-subtracted squeezed vacuum states of $-$3 dB, are amplified to an odd cat state of $β=1.73$ with a fidelity of $F=99\%$. A large-size Schrödinger odd cat state with $β=2.51$ and $F=97.30\%$ is predicted when the input squeezed vacuum states are increased to $-$5.91 dB. According to the analysis on the impacts of experimental imperfections in practice, Schrödinger odd cat states of $β>2$ are available. A feasible configuration based on a quantum frequency comb is developed to realize the large-size cat state generation scheme we proposed.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Primer sequences.

Graph edit distance / similarity is widely used in many tasks, such as graph similarity search, binary function analysis, and graph clustering. However, computing the exact graph edit distance (GED) or maximum common subgraph (MCS) between two graphs is known to be NP-hard. In this paper, we propose the hierarchical graph matching network (HGMN), which learns to compute graph similarity from data. HGMN is motivated by the observation that two similar graphs should also be similar when they are compressed into more compact graphs. HGMN utilizes multiple stages of hierarchical clustering to organize a graph into successively more compact graphs. At each stage, the earth mover distance (EMD) is adopted to obtain a one-to-one mapping between the nodes in two graphs (on which graph similarity is to be computed), and a correlation matrix is also derived from the embeddings of the nodes in the two graphs. The correlation matrices from all stages are used as input for a convolutional neural network (CNN), which is trained to predict graph similarity by minimizing the mean squared error (MSE). Experimental evaluation on 4 datasets in different domains and 4 performance metrics shows that HGMN consistently outperforms existing baselines in the accuracy of graph similarity approximation.

Jian Zhang, 1 Hongyan Zhang, 2 Jianqi Jiang, 2 Nan Cui, 2 Xiao Xue, 2 Tianying Wang, 2 Xiaoqiang Wang, 3 Yunpeng He, 2 Dongkai Wang 2 1Department of Chinese Medicine Pharmacology, School of Traditional Chinese Pharmacy, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, School of Pharmaceutical Engineering, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Dongkai WangDepartment of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 24-43520529Email wangycsyphu@126.comBackground: Carbon dots (CDs) have attracted extensive attention in recent years because of their high biocompatibility and unique optical property. But they could not be well applied in the drug delivery system to enable distribution in tumor sites with their low pH sensitivity. They are barriers for drug delivery. CDs as an imaging properwere conjugated with doxorubicin (DOX)lipid-coatedcalcium phosphate (LCP) nanoparticle, for a pH-sensitive nanocarrier and delivery of the antitumor drugs.Materials and Methods: CDs were prepared by one-step hydrothermal treatment of citric acid and ethylenediamine. The nanoparticles were simply prepared by using microemulsion technology to form calcium phosphate (CaP) core and further coated with cationic lipids.Results: The structure was characterized by FTIR, XRD and TEM. In vitro release study revealed that DOX-CDs@LCP was pH dependent. The cytotoxicity assay demonstrated that it exhibited enhanced efficiency compared to the control group (DOX-CDs), but weaker than free DOX. The cellular uptake revealed that these pH-sensitive nanoparticles could be taken up effectively and deliver DOX into thecytoplasm to reach antitumor effect. The fluorescence imaging indicated that DOX-CDs@LCP mostly distributed in the tumor region due to the enhanced permeability and retention effect (EPR) to reduce its systematical toxicity. Importantly, an antitumor activity study demonstrated that the DOX-CDs@LCP nanoparticles had higher antitumor activity than any other groups and lower toxicity. The results showed that LCP could significantly promote the release in tumor microenvironment due to pH-response. The DOX-CDs could enhance load capacity and reduce drug premature releasing; real-time tracking of efficacy as confocal imaging contrast agent. Thus, DOX-CDs@LCP had antitumor capacity and lower systematic toxicity in tumor therapy.Conclusion: DOX-CDs@LCP wereproven as a promising tumor pH-sensitive and imaging-guided drug delivery system for liver cancer chemotherapy.Keywords: carbon dots, calcium phosphate photodynamic therapy, pH-sensitive, bioimaging, tumor targeting, therapy

In this paper, by analyzing the limitations of the traditional trigonometric elevation method, and on the basis of establishing a mathematical model of trigonometric elevation, a convenient and fast trigonometric elevation method without instrument height and prism height is improved, and the operation steps of the method are introduced in detail. The accuracy analysis was evaluated and the method was applied to actual engineering. The results show that under the premise of ensuring the measurement accuracy, this method not only reduces the range of measurement error sources, but also improves the measurement efficiency.

Field programmable gate array(FPGA) has a wide application in signal processing, hardware accelerating and chip prototype verification because of its rich on-chip resources, flexibility and programmability. As a major resource in FPGA, block random access memory(BRAM) has the characteristic of high speed and high-capacity. To solve the critical timing convergence in high speed BRAM, function verification method for high speed BRAM based on cross timing domain has been proposed. The presented method has been verified by functional simulation and using FPGA. Experiment result has shown that the proposed approach can meet the functional verification of high speed BRAM up to 640 MHz，and it has the feature of modularization which can be easily constructed to test BRAM of high-capacity.

[Objectives] As ship structure members are mainly joined together by brackets, the mechanical properties of bracket joint have a great influence on the ultimate strength of the whole ship. [Methods] Ultimate strength experiments under bending loads are carried out to have better understanding of the mechanical properties and ultimate loads of different brackets,thereby obtaining the load-displacement curves, stress distribution and damage phenomena of specimens with different brackets. Analyses of their ultimate strength and average stiffness are carried out.[Results] It is observed that the ultimate strength of a triangle bracket specimen is greater than that of an arc bracket specimen, and the average stiffness of a triangle bracket specimen is lower than that of a larger arc bracket specimen. Under the same load,the peak stress of a triangle bracket is greater than that of an arc bracket;specimens with the same kind of bracket and different sizes have the same damage mode;however,different kinds of brackets contribute to varying damage modes even when they have the same size specimens;the ultimate strength and average stiffness between the two groups of specimens have the same changing rule and diverging changing degrees.[Conclusions] The analysis and obtained results of this paper provide useful references for improving the design of ship brackets.

In this paper, the morphological and optical properties of LTO/TaOx composite structure films and electrochromic properties of “ITO/NiOx/LTO/TaOx/WOx/ITO” electrochromic devices (ECDs) based on LTO/TaOx composite structure films are reported. The composite films are deposited on the ITO substrate by reactive magnetron sputtering. The results of XRD, SEM, and AFM show that LTO film is amorphous and the performance of films prepared by sputtering power of 100 W for 5 h is the best. The optical transmittance of the multilayer structure is tested using an ultraviolet-visible spectrum and the refractive index dispersion is calculated using the relationship between the peaks in the spectrum based on equal inclination interference theory. Optical transmittance and refractive index dispersion are changed with the increase of magnetron sputtering power. Electrochromic tests show that all-solid-state ECDs based on composite films have 13 s coloring and 14 s fading response time, and the average optical modulation amplitude is 58%.

The composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) with its excellent properties is used for high-pressure storage in aerospace industries. Before they can be reliably incorporated into space flight applications, a significant amount of work has been conducted for better predicting the condition status and residual life of COPVs. A novel MXene film sensor technology that can provide real-time and in situ structural health monitoring of composite structures was proposed in this work. An excellent MXene film sensor can be obtained based on the method proposed in this paper. Before sensor is applied to pressure vessels, coupon tests include tensile loading testing and fatigue loading testing is carried out. For coupon tests, the piezoresistive response of MXene sensor is understood. MXene sensors made on a flexible printed circuit (FPC) have been integrated into a composite pressure vessel, and are used to monitor changes in the hoop and axial strain fields during hydraulic pressure tests. The piezoresistive response of MXene sensor is obtained and the main working mechanism of MXene is explained. The distributed strain measurement of the vessel provides a more efficient process of monitoring structural integrity to further understand the failure mechanisms of the vessel.

Buckling restrained braces (BRBs) are normally incorporated in the beam-column structures to serve as energy dissipation members due to their stable hysteretic behavior. However, the structures equipped with BRBs may suffer excessive residual deformations when they are subjected to large earthquakes. To minimize the residual deformations of the structures with traditional BRBs, a novel self-centering buckling restrained brace (SC-BRB) consisting of a self-centering system and a traditional BRB system is developed in the present study. Large-scale experimental studies are carried out and the hysteretic behavior of the proposed system is compared with the traditional BRB and self-centering brace (SCB). Experimental results show that the SC-BRB exhibits flag-shaped hysteresis response with a small residual deformation and a moderate energy dissipation capability. The proposed SC-BRB is applied to a reinforced concrete (RC) double-column bridge pier for seismic retrofitting. Nonlinear dynamic analyses are carried out to examine its effect on the seismic behavior of the bridge. Numerical results demonstrate that the bridge equipped with SC-BRB system shows much smaller residual displacement compared to the ones equipped with traditional BRB and SCB systems. Numerical results also indicate that SC-BRB system tends to amplify the peak acceleration of the bridge.

In order to study the physical details of viscous flow in ship roll motions and improve the accuracy of ship roll damping numerical simulation, the application of the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique is investigated in model tests of forced ship rolling in calm water. The hydrodynamic force and flow field at the bilge region are simultaneously measured for barges at different amplitudes and frequencies in which the self-made forced rolling facility was used. In the model test, the viscous flow variation with the time around the bilge region was studied during ship rolling motion. The changes in ship roll damping coefficients with the rolling amplitude and period were also investigated. A comparison of the model test results with the Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD)results shows that the numerical ship roll damping coefficients agree well with the model test results, while the differences in the local flow details exist between the CFD results and model test results. Further research into the model test technique and CFD application is required.

In this paper, we present a quantum singular value decomposition algorithm for third-order tensors inspired by the classical algorithm of tensor singular value decomposition (t-svd) and then extend it to order-$p$ tensors. It can be proved that the quantum version of the t-svd for a third-order tensor $\mathcal{A} \in \mathbb{R}^{N\times N \times N}$ achieves the complexity of $\mathcal{O}(N{\rm polylog}(N))$, an exponential speedup compared with its classical counterpart. As an application, we propose a quantum algorithm for recommendation systems which incorporates the contextual situation of users to the personalized recommendation. We provide recommendations varying with contexts by measuring the output quantum state corresponding to an approximation of this user's preferences. This algorithm runs in expected time $\mathcal{O}(N{\rm polylog}(N){\rm poly}(k)),$ if every frontal slice of the preference tensor has a good rank-$k$ approximation. At last, we provide a quantum algorithm for tensor completion based on a different truncation method which is tested to have a good performance in dynamic video completion., 29 pages, 5 figure. Comments are welcome!

The hoverfly,Eupeodes corollae,is a worldwide natural enemy of aphids and a plant pollinator. To provide insights into the biology of this species, we examined its population genetic structure by obtaining 1.15-GB random genomic sequences using next-generation sequencing and developing genome-wide microsatellite markers. A total of 79,138 microsatellite loci were initially isolated from the genomic sequences; after strict selection and further testing of 40 primer pairs in eight individuals, 24 polymorphic microsatellites with high amplification rates were developed. These microsatellites were used to examine the population genetic structure of 96 individuals from four field populations collected across southern to northern China. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 5 to 13 with an average of 8.75; the observed and expected heterozygosity varied from 0.235 to 0.768 and from 0.333 to 0.785, respectively. Population genetic structure analysis showed weak genetic differentiation among the four geographical populations ofE. corollae, suggesting a high rate of gene flow reflecting likely widespread migration ofE. corollaein China.

Higher order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) is an important tool for analyzing big data in multilinear algebra and machine learning. In this paper, we present two quantum algorithms for HOSVD. Our methods allow one to decompose a tensor into a core tensor containing tensor singular values and some unitary matrices by quantum computers. Compared to the classical HOSVD algorithm, our quantum algorithms provide an exponential speedup. Furthermore, we introduce a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm of HOSVD model applied in recommendation systems., Comment: 14 pages; 6 figures; submitted for publication; comments are welcome!

Let $\mathbb{F}_{p^m}$ be the finite field of order $p^m$, where $p$ is an odd prime and $m$ is a positive integer. In this paper, we investigate a class of subfield codes of linear codes and obtain the weight distribution of \begin{equation*} \begin{split} \mathcal{C}_k=\left\{\left(\left( {\rm Tr}_1^m\left(ax^{p^k+1}+bx\right)+c\right)_{x \in \mathbb{F}_{p^m}}, {\rm Tr}_1^m(a)\right) : \, a,b \in \mathbb{F}_{p^m}, c \in \mathbb{F}_p\right\}, \end{split} \end{equation*} where $k$ is a nonnegative integer. Our results generalize the results of the subfield codes of the conic codes in \cite{Hengar}. Among other results, we study the punctured code of $\mathcal{C}_k$, which is defined as $$\mathcal{\bar{C}}_k=\left\{\left( {\rm Tr}_1^m\left(a x^{{p^k}+1}+bx\right)+c\right)_{x \in \mathbb{F}_{p^m}} : \, a,b \in \mathbb{F}_{p^m}, \,\,c \in \mathbb{F}_p\right\}.$$ The parameters of these linear codes are new in some cases. Some of the presented codes are optimal or almost optimal. Moreover, let $v_2(\cdot)$ denote the 2-adic order function and $v_2(0)=\infty$, the duals of $\mathcal{C}_k$ and $\mathcal{\bar{C}}_k$ are optimal with respect to the Sphere Packing bound if $p>3$, and the dual of $\mathcal{\bar{C}}_k$ is an optimal ternary linear code for the case $v_2(m)\leq v_2(k)$ if $p=3$ and $m>1$.

Tobacco brown spot disease, caused by Alternaria alternata, is responsible for causing significant losses in tobacco production in China. The use of biocontrol microorganisms to prevent and control this disease represent an important, environment-friendly, management strategy. In the present study, 17 bacterial strains with antimicrobial activity were isolated from 40 rhizosphere soil samples and evaluated for antifungal activity to identify an effective biocontrol agent for the control of tobacco brown spot disease in tobacco. Among the isolated strains, Bacillus siamensis, strain LZ88, exhibited the strongest antifungal activity with an inhibition rate of 81.96%. We confirmed that strain LZ88 controlled both mycelial growth and spore production in A. alternata by secreting protein-like antifungal metabolites and through the release of volatile organic compounds. Strain LZ88 also had the ability to induce plant basal immunity as evidenced by increased expression of the defense-related enzymes, peroxidase (POD) and polyphenol oxidase (PPO), in tobacco leaves. Results of greenhouse experiments indicated that LZ88 could effectively reduce the occurrence and degree of severity of tobacco brown spot disease. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report regarding the use of B. siamensis to control brown spot disease in tobacco.

Chatter is one of the most unexpected and uncontrollable phenomenon during the milling operation. It is very important to develop an effective monitoring method to identify the chatter as soon as possible, while existing methods still cannot detect it before the workpiece has been damaged. This paper proposes an energy aggregation characteristic-based Hilbert–Huang transform method for online chatter detection. The measured vibration signal is firstly decomposed into a series of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using ensemble empirical mode decomposition. Feature IMFs are then selected according to the majority energy rule. Subsequently Hilbert spectral analysis is applied on these feature IMFs to calculate the Hilbert time/frequency spectrum. Two indicators are proposed to quantify the spectrum and thresholds are automatically calculated using Gaussian mixed model. Milling experiments prove the proposed method to be effective in protecting the workpiece from severe chatter damage within acceptable time complexity.

It has been reported that RhoA activation and Rho-kinase (ROCK) expression are increased in chronic hypoxic lungs, and the long-term inhibition of ROCK markedly improves the survival of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). However, whether Rho-kinase α (ROCK2) participates in regulation of the growth of pulmonary arterial endothelial cells (PAECs) remains unknown. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of hypoxia on the proliferation of PAECs and the role of ROCK2 in the underlying mechanism. The results of western blotting and reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis showed that hypoxia increased the activity and expression of ROCK2 in PAECs, and the stimulating effects of hypoxia on the proliferation of PAECs were attenuated by either the ROCK inhibitor Y27632 or transfection with ROCK2 small interfering RNA. Moreover, analysis of cyclin A and cyclin D1 mRNA expression indicated that ROCK2 mediates the cell cycle progression promoted by hypoxia. These results indicate that hypoxia promotes the proliferation of pulmonary arterial endothelial cells via activation of the ROCK2 signaling pathway.

Ca₂Gd₈(SiO₄)₆O₂:A (A = Eu³⁺ and Dy³⁺) phosphors were successfully synthesized by the sol-gel process. X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric and differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and photoluminescence spectra were used to characterize the resulting phosphors. The results of XRD indicated that the diffraction peaks of the phosphor powder agreed well with the standard card. Under short ultraviolet excitation, the doped rare earth ions (A) showed their characteristic emis- sions in Ca⁺Gd₈(SiO₄)₆O₂ phophors, i.e., ⁵D₀ --> ⁷F₂ (615 nm) for Eu³⁺ and ⁴F₉/₂2 --> ⁶H₁₅/₂ (483 nm) and ⁴F₉/₂ --> ⁶H₁₃/₂ (575 nm) for Dy³⁺. The optimum concentration for doped rare earth ions was determined to be 9 mol% Eu³⁺ and 3 mol% Dy³⁺ of Gd³⁺ in Ca₂Gd₈(SiO₄)₆O₂

This paper reports the synthesis and luminescence properties of rare earth doped CaYAI₃O₇ prepared via a sol-gel process. The phosphors have intense luminescence. In Ce³⁺/Tb³⁺ co-doped materials, there is energy transfer from Ce³⁺ to Tb³⁺ that enhances the luminescence of Tb³⁺. These materials may find applications in solid state lighting and radiation detection.

Ficus carica L., belonging to the Moraceae family, is one of the earliest cultivated fruit trees. Fig is an important crop for dry and fresh consumption worldwide because it contains an abundant source of minerals and vitamins. Moreover, fig fruit has been a typical component in health-promoting diets for millennia. A previously uncharacterized disease was observed on fig fruit during 2016 and 2017 in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China (N 36°08′49″, E 120°25′5″). Approximately 5 to 8% of fruit on greater than 500 trees was lost due to the disease during the 2016 and 2017 seasons. The symptoms were first observed on green fruit, and infected fruit initially showed soaked symptoms on the surface, which subsequently became covered with fluffy mycelia that ultimately caused fruit decay. Infected fruit were collected, and small pieces of discolored or necrotic tissues were rinsed with 70% alcohol for 10 s followed by 1% NaOCl for 60 s, after which they were washed with sterile distilled water (Wang et al. 2015). Pieces were subsequently plated in Petri dishes containing potato dextrose agar (PDA) and incubated for 4 days at 28°C in the dark. The obtained isolates were purified through single-spore culture. Colonies of all isolates on the PDA plates were identical, producing mycelia that were initially white and fluffy but that subsequently turned gray and then black as they matured. Mycelia were hyaline, smooth, septate, 110.5 to 260 × 3 to 4 μm; stipe extension septate, erect to flexuous, 123.5 to 179 μm long, and 2 to 3.5 μm wide at the apical septum. Hyphae were hyaline and septate, consistent with the description of Botryosphaeria dothidea. The pycnidia contained hyaline, nonseptate, fusiform conidia measuring 13.5 to 26.5 × 4.8 to 8.0 μm. Perithecia contained clavate asci, which averaged 130.5 × 17 μm. The internal transcribed spacer region, partial translation elongation factor 1-alpha, and β-tubulin genes of the rDNA of the isolate were sequenced using primers ITS4/ITS5 (GenBank accession no. MN428793), EF1-728F/EF1-986R (MN478488), and Bt2a/Bt2b (MN508257), respectively (Sun et al. 2014). Based on morphological features and phylogenetic analysis, we concluded that the isolates belonged to B. dothidea. To test the pathogenicity, F. carica fruit were collected, surface sterilized with 1% NaOCl, and rinsed with sterilized distilled water. Plugs (5 × 5 mm) of B. dothidea from the PDA plate were placed on the surface of the fruit (n = 10) and incubated at 28°C and 60% humidity in the dark. Four days after inoculation, bot rot symptoms appeared, and the surfaces of the fruit were covered with fluffy mycelia. In contrast, fruit inoculated with PDA plugs that did not contain B. dothidea remained symptom-free. B. dothidea was reisolated from diseased fruit, fulfilling Koch’s postulates. To our knowledge, this is the first report of B. dothidea causing bot rot in F. carica in China.

Polymer materials are excellent insulation materials due to low conductivity, low loss and high breakdown field strength. In recent years, with the improvement of power system voltage level and the increase of transmission capacity, the dielectric property, mechanical performance and thermal stability of conventional insulating materials are put forward higher requirements. By using organic nanoparticles to modify the polymer, it can effectively improve the breakdown strength, suppress space charge injection, reduce dielectric loss and thus improve the insulation performance. In this paper, the nano-SiO 2 particles treated by different surface modifiers were melting blended with crosslinked polyethylene to prepare the XLPE/SiO 2 nanocomposites. The nano-SiO 2 particles is well dispersed in the XLPE matrix observing by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the dispersion effect depends on the polarity of the compatibilizer and the matching effect of the surface modifier. The melting and crystallization behavior of the nanocomposites were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), the crystal morphology and crystal distribution of the samples were observed by SEM. The results show that the organic SiO2 plays a role of the heterogeneous nucleation in the polymer to reduce the melting point of the polymer, decrease the crystal size and distribute more evenly. The nucleation effect of nanoparticles leads to an increase in the crystallization rate. The space charge characteristics of nanocomposites are measured by pulse electro-acoustic method (PEA). The results indicate that the interfacial effects of organic nano-SiO 2 introduce deep traps in the polymer matrix, which are beneficial to bound charge and reduce the carrier mobility, thus effectively avoiding the accumulation and migration of space charges. The effect of organic surface modifier on the space charge transfer and suppression characteristics of nanocomposites is discussed based on the structural characteristics.

We consider a $\mathbb{R}^d$-valued branching random walk with a stationary and ergodic environment $\xi=(\xi_n)$ indexed by time $n\in\mathbb{N}$. Let $Z_n$ be the counting measure of particles of generation $n$. With the help of the uniform convergence of martingale and the multifractal analysis, we establish a large deviation result for the measures $Z_n$ as well as a moderate deviation principle.

High titer of β1-adrenoreceptor autoantibodies (β1-AA) has been reported to appear in heart failure patients. It induces sustained β1-adrenergic receptor (β1-AR) activation which leads to heart failure (HF), but the mechanism is as yet unclear. In order to investigate the mechanisms causing β1-AR non-desensitization, we studied the beating frequency of the neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (NRCMs) under different conditions (an injection of isoprenaline (ISO) for one group and β1-AA for the other) and established three dynamic models in order to best describe the true relationships shown in medical experiments; one model used a control group of healthy rats; then in HF rats one focused on conformation changes in β1-AR; the other examined interaction between β1-AR and β2-adrenergic receptors (β2-AR). Comparing the experimental data and corresponding Akaike information criterion (AIC) values, we concluded that the interaction model was the most likely mechanism. We used mathematical methods to explore the mechanism for the development of heart failure and to find potential targets for prevention and treatment. The aim of the paper was to provide a strong theoretical basis for the clinical development of personalized treatment programs. We also carried out sensitivity analysis of the initial concentration β1-AA and found that they had a noticeable effect on the fitting results.

To obtain a good surface layer performance of the complex functional profile during the high-speed cold roll-beating forming process, this paper analyzed the metal plastic flow and residual stress-formed mechanism by using a theoretical model of the metal flow and residual stress generation. By using simulation software, the cold roll-beating forming process of a spline shaft was simulated and analyzed. The metal flow and residual stress formation law in the motion were researched. In a practical experiment, the changes in the grains in the spline tooth profile section and the residual stress distribution on the tooth profile were studied. A microcorrespondence relationship was established between the metal plastic flow and the residual stress generation. The conclusions indicate that the rate at which the metal flow decreases changes gradually at different metal layers. The residual stress value is directly related to the plastic flow difference. As the roll-beating speed increases, the uneven degree of plastic deformation at the workpiece surface increases, and the residual stress in the tooth profile is generally greater. At the same roll-beating speed, the rate change trend of the metal flow decreases gradually from the surface to the inner layer and from the dedendum to the addendum. The residual stress distribution on the surface of the tooth profile decreases from the dedendum to the addendum. These findings provide a basis and guidance for the controlled use of residual stress, obtaining better surface layer quality in the high-speed cold roll-beating process of the complex functional profile.

Inverse square root has played an important role in Cholesky decomposition, which devoted to hardware efficient compressed sensing. However, the performance is usually limited by the trade-off between throughput and precision. This paper presents hardware implementation of fixed-point single iterated multiplicative inverse square root. Multiple piecewise linear approximation in softly nonlinear range is used to compute the initial value. Single iterated Newton-Raphson method is employed to obtain high precision. Multiple constants multiplication technique is proposed to achieve high throughput. The combination of these techniques yields high performance in terms of throughput and precision. It obtains more than 70 % of throughput improvement and almost 100 × higher precision over the inverse square root Intellectual Property (IP) from Altera. In addition, Cholesky decomposition has been presented to validate the proposed architecture, which shows that 42 % of throughput improvement is achieved compared with the IP.

The electrochemical detection of phytohormones is extremely difficult owing to their poor electrochemical activities, strong electrode passivation (fouling), and complicated electrochemical behaviors and reaction mechanism. In this paper, an interesting electrochemical phenomenon on voltammetric behaviors for the electrochemical oxidation of 6-benzylaminopurine (6-BAP) which was one of the well-known phytohormones under the different pH conditions was investigated, and the content of 6-BAP in real samples was detected by the adsorptive stripping voltammetry using MWCNT/GCE. The pH-controlled voltammetric behaviors like peak potentials, peak currents, peak shapes and peak number of 6-BAP were discussed by the protonation–dissociation equilibria of 6-BAP in combination with electrocatalytic oxidation mechanism of 6-BAP. The electrochemical sensing performance such as the linear range, limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ), sensitivity, selectivity, precision and applicability for the pH-controlled stripping voltammetric detection of 6-BAP was also evaluated. There was an observable difference in the number of peaks for the electrochemical oxidation of 6-BAP under strong acidic (three peaks), near neutral (two peaks), and strong alkaline (one peak) pH conditions. The electrochemical oxidation reaction of 6-BAP was adsorption-controlled irreversible processes, which were not affected by three different pH values. Oxidation peaks with relatively well-defined peak shapes and high peak currents were selected for the adsorptive stripping voltammetric detection of 6-BAP, and peak currents were proportional to 6-BAP concentrations in linear ranges of 0.3–50 μM with LOD of 0.098 μM and LOQ of 0.326 μM at pH 3.0, 0.5–60 μM with LOD of 0.165 μM and LOQ of 0.545 μM at pH 7.0, and 0.7–60 μM with LOD of 0.235 μM and LOQ of 0.776 μM at pH 10.0. The adsorptive stripping voltammetric determination of 6-BAP content with real samples in acid solution was more feasible and applicable.