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In this study, a simple and environmentally stable method was developed to synthesize silver Nanoparticles (AgNPs). In addition, carex meyeriana kunth was used as a reducing and stabilizing agent with good bacterial inhibitory effects against Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Bacillus subtilis at very low doses. AgNPs were added to the Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) solution as an antibacterial agent and AgNPs-loaded PVA hydrogel (gel) was formed using the freeze-thaw method. The hydrogel containing AgNPs had a powerful antibacterial effect and the PVA/Ag hydrogel was tested as a trauma dressing, which is a promising composite material for development.

Our work is aimed at studying peculiarities of the manifestation of psychological barriers in the development of creative abilities in younger teenagers of Ukraine and China. The object of study is the mental states and abilities of young adolescents. The research methods: theoretical – analysis, generalization and systematization of theoretical approaches and empirical results; empirical – observation, conversation, analysis of activity products, testing and mathematical and statistical methods. In the scientific literature, it has long been recognized that the development of creative abilities has a significant impact on the formation of a personality, in particular, its opportunities for self-actualization increase. It is especially important to develop the creative abilities of children who are just forming as individuals. This paper presents the results of its own research and provides a comparative analysis of the manifestation of psychological barriers in the development of creative abilities in young adolescents of the Ukrainian and Chinese sample groups made it possible to reveal that the most evident barriers in the young adolescents of the Ukrainian sample group are self-doubt, lack of interest, fear of making a mistake, reluctance to take risks, and among the young teenage Chinese sample group – lack of interest, fear of being unsuccessful at school, reluctance to take risks, and fear of losing friends. However we can observe that in both sample groups there are the same barriers, which are related to the specifics of the development of children of this age and the leading activities of children in young adolescence.

Our work is aimed at studying peculiarities of the manifestation of psychological barriers in the development of creative abilities in younger teenagers of Ukraine and China. The object of study is the mental states and abilities of young adolescents. The research methods: theoretical – analysis, generalization and systematization of theoretical approaches and empirical results; empirical – observation, conversation, analysis of activity products, testing and mathematical and statistical methods. In the scientific literature, it has long been recognized that the development of creative abilities has a significant impact on the formation of a personality, in particular, its opportunities for self-actualization increase. It is especially important to develop the creative abilities of children who are just forming as individuals. This paper presents the results of its own research and provides a comparative analysis of the manifestation of psychological barriers in the development of creative abilities in young adolescents of the Ukrainian and Chinese sample groups made it possible to reveal that the most evident barriers in the young adolescents of the Ukrainian sample group are self-doubt, lack of interest, fear of making a mistake, reluctance to take risks, and among the young teenage Chinese sample group – lack of interest, fear of being unsuccessful at school, reluctance to take risks, and fear of losing friends. However we can observe that in both sample groups there are the same barriers, which are related to the specifics of the development of children of this age and the leading activities of children in young adolescence.

Commonsense knowledge-graphs (CKGs) are important resources towards building machines that can 'reason' on text or environmental inputs and make inferences beyond perception. While current CKGs encode world knowledge for a large number of concepts and have been effectively utilized for incorporating commonsense in neural models, they primarily encode declarative or single-condition inferential knowledge and assume all conceptual beliefs to have the same likelihood. Further, these CKGs utilize a limited set of relations shared across concepts and lack a coherent knowledge organization structure resulting in redundancies as well as sparsity across the larger knowledge graph. Consequently, today's CKGs, while useful for a first level of reasoning, do not adequately capture deeper human-level commonsense inferences which can be more nuanced and influenced by multiple contextual or situational factors. Accordingly, in this work, we study how commonsense knowledge can be better represented by -- (i) utilizing a probabilistic logic representation scheme to model composite inferential knowledge and represent conceptual beliefs with varying likelihoods and (ii) incorporating a hierarchical conceptual ontology to identify salient concept-relevant relations and organize beliefs at different conceptual levels. Our resulting knowledge representation framework can encode a wider variety of world knowledge and represent beliefs flexibly using grounded concepts as well as free-text phrases. As a result, the framework can be utilized as both a traditional free-text knowledge graph and a grounded logic-based inference system more suitable for neuro-symbolic applications. We describe how we extend the PrimeNet knowledge base with our framework through crowd-sourcing and expert-annotation, and demonstrate its application for more interpretable passage-based semantic parsing and question answering.

Name lookup is a key technology for the forwarding plane of content router in Named Data Networking (NDN). To realize the efficient name lookup, what counts is deploying a highperformance index in content routers. So far, the proposed indexes have shown good performance, most of which are optimized for or evaluated with URLs collected from the current Internet, as the large-scale NDN names are not available yet. Unfortunately, the performance of these indexes is always impacted in terms of lookup speed, memory consumption and false positive probability, as the distributions of URLs retrieved in memory may differ from those of real NDN names independently generated by content-centric applications online. Focusing on this gap, a smart mapping model named Pyramid-NN via neural networks is proposed to build an index called LNI for NDN forwarding plane. Through learning the distributions of the names retrieved in the static memory, LNI can not only reduce the memory consumption and the probability of false positive, but also ensure the performance of real NDN name lookup. Experimental results show that LNI-based FIB can reduce the memory consumption to 58.258 MB for 2 million names. Moreover, as it can be deployed on SRAMs, the throughput is about 177 MSPS, which well meets the current network requirement for fast packet processing., Comment: This paper has been published in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. The final version can be accessed from IEEE Xplore

Background: Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) poses substantial public health risks in large cities globally. Concentrations of NO2 shows high spatial variation, yet intra-urban measurements of NO2 in Chinese cities are sparse. The size of Chinese cities and shortage of some datasets is challenging for high spatial resolution modelling. The aim here was to combine advantages of dispersion and land-use regression (LUR) modelling to simulate population exposure to NO2 at high spatial resolution for health burden calculations, in the example megacity of Guangzhou. Methods: Ambient concentrations of NO2 simulated by the ADMS-Urban dispersion model at 83 'virtual' monitoring sites, selected to span both the range of NO2 concentration and weighting by population density, were used to develop a LUR model of 2017 annual-mean NO2 across Guangzhou at 25 m × 25 m spatial resolution. Results: The LUR model was validated against both the 83 virtual sites (adj R 2: 0.96, RMSE: 5.48 μg m−3; LOOCV R 2: 0.96, RMSE: 5.64 μg m−3) and, independently, against available observations (n = 11, R 2:: 0.63, RMSE: 18.0 μg m−3). The modelled population-weighted long-term average concentration of NO2 across Guangzhou was 52.5 μg m−3, which contributes an estimated 7270 (6960−7620) attributable deaths. Reducing concentrations in exceedance of the China air quality standard/WHO air quality guideline of 40 μg m−3 would reduce NO2-attributable deaths by 1900 (1820–1980). Conclusions: We demonstrate a general hybrid modelling method that can be employed in other cities in China to model ambient NO2 concentration at high spatial resolution for health burden estimation and epidemiological study. By running the dispersion model with alternative mitigation policies, new LUR models can be constructed to quantify policy effectiveness on NO2 population health burden.

In view of the problem that it is difficult to obtain the displacement, internal force and damage status from one beam model established in most numerical analysis models, an improved method for calculating bending moment and shearing force is presented in this paper, which can change this situation. This method portrays how to obtain the internal force from model established using 3-D solid element which can be able to show the failure process easily. The research results are as follows: (1) Deflection equation of beam established using 3-D solid element can be fitted by extracting displacement value of each node on the axis, thus bending moment and shearing force value can be directly figured out by putting the equation of deflection curve into approximately differential equation of deflection curve. (2) The reliability of the results calculated in this method would be easily affected by force, shape of cross section and the highest degree of polynomial, etc. When the beam is in a state of small deformation and the highest degree of polynomial is kept between 20 and 30, the results will be more reliable, besides, beam model whose shape of the cross section is rectangular is more suitable for the method than the circular one. (3) This method can always be applied to beam model, no matter its constraint conditions and loading conditions are complex or not.

Based on a 2D discrete element method (PFC2D code) and limit equilibrium method, a new method is proposed to obtain critical slip surface and to determine the factor of safety of the slope model. After the calibration process, the excavation process on the rectangular assembly of particles can make the slope model of the DEM. As the trial acceleration of gravity increases, the critical slip surface tends to change from shallow to deep, which indicates more serious failures in the slope. With higher trial accelerations of gravity, the factor of safety calculated by this method continually increases as well. Therefore, the critical trial acceleration of gravity that places the slope in a critical state of failure is essential to ensure the results are correct. The gravity increase method is applied to render the critical state of failure for slope model. As soon as the continuous failure surface forms, the influence parameters of particles on the critical slip surface also can be determined. Connecting the centre of these particles forms the critical slip surface, which is more consistent with the actual situation in nature due to the absence of assumptions of the critical slip surface in this method. Then, the factor of safety is calculated by the Spencer method that has the ability of dealing with noncircular, complex slip surface. This method proves to be a promising tool to analyse slope stability with the DEM. The character of progressive failure process of slope can be well modelled by DEM by investigating the development of failure in the slope body. By studying temporal and spatial risk of slope instability by the total failure process, it is possible for managers and engineers to detect temporal and spatial risks so robust suggestions and mitigation measures can be made.

International Computer Music Conference Proceedings: vol. 2018, (dlps) bbp2372.2018.017, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.bbp2372.2018.017, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.

Since the turn of this century, cities are homes to more than half of the world's population even though they cover only three per cent of the Earth's land surface. Cities are often the fast-growing innovation and socio economic hub of a region; however, they also face the challenge of finding new space to accommodate the increasing number of urban habitants. While there has been a long tradition of urban modelling in geography and transportation research to understand urban growth dynamics and identify new growth directions, with its roots in both social physics and urban and regional economics, considerable globally efforts are being expended in developing models to understand how cities grow and evolve. However, urban modelling is still challenged by a diversity of methods, metrics, indicators and data (OECD 2011). After all, cities are places where people come together to interact with one another and therefore our understanding on the evolution of cities must be enriched by studies of networks, interactions, connections and transactions (Batty 2013). Thus, this special issue focuses on modelling the various aspects of urban dynamics ranging from urban evacuation modelling, agent-based simulation for on-line meetings to the modelling of truck driving and residents' outdoor recreation behaviours, all of which contributes to enhance our understanding on the interaction of urban individuals which shape the form and outcome of our cities.

U radu se daje poboljšani model multi-DGs sustava za poboljšanje stabilnosti. Distribuirana proizvodnja (DGs) u sustavu opremljena je dodatnim regulatorom snage kao metodom za poboljšanje stabilnosti vjetro-toplinskog višežilnog sustava. Najprije se analizira utjecaj multi-DGs sustava na oscilacije sustava. Tada se postižu uvjeti da DGs stvaraju pozitivno prigušenje energetskog sustava. Zatim, uzmajući vjetroelektranu za predmet istraživanja, porast frekvencije točke zajedničkog spajanja (PCC) u vjetroelektrani je povratna informacija za aktivne upravljčke petlje za reguliranje aktivne snage vjetroturbine. U isto vrijeme multi-DGs sustav zadržava pozitivan učinak prigušenja na energetski sustav koji omogućuje poboljšanje dinamičkog ponašanja vjetroelektrane. Kao treće, razmatra se učinak vremenskog kašnjenja na funkcioniranje sustava upravljanja te se razmatraju i dokazuju dva prijedloga za rješenje vremenskog zastoja, smatrajući ih ograničenjem za dodatno aktivno upravljanje snagom. Konačno, implimentira se simulacija vremenskog područja i provjerava se točnost predložene metode pomoću root locus analize i simulacije vremenskog područja. Rezultati pokazuju da dodatni regulator snage može značajno poboljšati prigušenje energetskog sustava. Ipak, vjetroelektrana će imati negativno prigušenje i cijeli sustav čak ne će održati stabilnost snage kad dođe do povećanja vremenskog zastoja i kad se prekoraći kritični vremenski zastoj., This paper presents an improved model of multi-DGs system for enhancing the stability. The distributed generations (DGs) in the system are equipped with the additional active power controller as the technique of enhancing the wind-thermal-bundled system stability. Firstly, the influence of multi-DGs system on the oscillation of the system is analysed. Then, the conditions for DGs producing positive damping to the power system are obtained. Secondly, taking the wind farm as the study object, the increment of the frequency of the point of common coupling (PCC) in the wind farm is feedback to the active control loops for regulating the active power of wind turbine. At the same time, the multi-DGs system holds a positive damping effect on the power system which enables the dynamic behaviour of the wind farm to be improved. Thirdly, the effect of time delay on control performance is further considered and two propositions for solving critical time-delay are put forward and proved, which are used as the constraint condition of additional active power control. Finally, the time domain simulation is implemented and the correctness of the proposed method is verified by the root locus analysis and frequency domain simulation. The results show that the additional active power control can significantly enhance the power system damping. However, the wind farm will provide negative damping and even the whole system will not maintain the power angle stability when the time-delay increases and exceeds the critical time-delay.

China has been experiencing rapid urbanization since the economic reforms and open-up in the late 1970s, with the expansion and restructuring of existing cities taking place at an unprecedented pace, as well as the emergence of many new cities. However, it remains a challenge for urban planners and decision-makers to identify and assess the suitability of areas for future urban development. Building on previous studies, this paper presents a novel approach using an Entire-Array-Polygon (EAP) method to assess the urban development suitability in the fast developing city-region in China. A suitability indicator system was developed to reflect the environmental and economic conditions as well as the living conditions of residents. A major advantage of the EAP model is that it does not rely on the assignment of weight ages for different indicators. Instead, all factors are mapped against one standardised platform. An application of the EAP model in Ezhou, a medium-scale city adjacent to the provincial capital city of Wuhan in Hubei Province, China, over a 15-year period (1998-2012) shows a differentiated suitability evolution for urban development in its three districts, Echeng, Huarong and Liangzihu. While Echeng remains most suitable for urban development, its development suitability decreased sharply from 1998 to 2009, indicating limited space for further growth. In contrast, the suitability in Huarong increased significantly attributed to rapid development of Gedian Economic and Technological Development Zone, while Liangzihu district experienced marginal increase in urban development suitability due to limited land space as well as the conservation of the Liangzi Lake. Our application demonstrates that the EAP method is effective in assisting planners to assess urban development suitability and identify potentials for future development.

As a novel oral drug delivery system, proliposome was applied to improve the solubility of active components of Ginkgo biloba extract (GbE). There are currently few reports focusing on the pharmacokinetic characteristics of proliposome of GbE (GbP). A rapid and sensitive ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method for the simultaneous quantification of active components of GbP and a commercial tablet product (Ginaton) in rat plasma was developed and successfully validated. The method was applied to the comparative pharmacokinetic evaluation of GbP and Ginaton in rat plasma. The results indicated that GbP has a significant effect on absorption, elimination and bioavailability of flavonoids and terpenoid lactones in comparison with Ginaton. The obtained results would be helpful for evaluating the absorption mechanism in the gastrointestinal tract in pharmacokinetic level and guiding the development of the novel oral drug delivery system.

As a novel oral drug delivery system, proliposome was applied to improve the solubility of active components of Ginkgo biloba extract (GbE). There are currently few reports focusing on the pharmacokinetic characteristics of proliposome of GbE (GbP). A rapid and sensitive ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method for the simultaneous quantification of active components of GbP and a commercial tablet product (Ginaton) in rat plasma was developed and successfully validated. The method was applied to the comparative pharmacokinetic evaluation of GbP and Ginaton in rat plasma. The results indicated that GbP has a significant effect on absorption, elimination and bioavailability of flavonoids and terpenoid lactones in comparison with Ginaton. The obtained results would be helpful for evaluating the absorption mechanism in the gastrointestinal tract in pharmacokinetic level and guiding the development of the novel oral drug delivery system.

Substantial progress has been achieved in antiviral therapy for chronic hepatitis B; however, options for women of child-bearing age with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B remain a challenge. In this study, we sought to determine whether de novo combination therapy of Adefovir plus Lamivudine was a super treatment for women of child-bearing age with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B prior to conception. A total of 122 women patients of child-bearing age with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B were randomly assigned to receive (i) 10 mg Adefovir plus 100 mg Lamivudine (64 patients) or (ii) 10 mg Adefovir monotherapy (58 patients), administrated orally once daily for 96 weeks. The therapeutic efficacy within each group was compared at weeks 48 and 96. The results showed that de novo combination therapy of Adefovir plus Lamivudine significantly reduced HBV-DNA detectability, and enhanced ALT normalization and HBeAg seroconversion in women of child-bearing age with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B. No virological breakthrough and genotypic resistance were observed in the combination therapy group. Additionally, the combination therapy with Adefovir plus Lamivudine was well tolerated. This study suggests that de novo combination therapy of Adefovir plus Lamivudine offers a therapeutic advantage for women of child-bearing age with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B when taken before conception.

Ispitan je utjecaj dodatka različitih surfaktanata na rast stanica i proizvodnju metabolita vitamina K2, poput unutarstaničnih i izvanstaničnih menakinona MK-4 i MK-6, pri submerznom uzgoju bakterije Escherichia sp. Svi su surfaktanti produljili eksponencijalnu fazu rasta bakterije. Betain, polioksietilen oleil eter i Tween-80 povoljno su djelovali na rast stanica mutanta bakterije Escherichia sp. FM3-1709. Najveći je rast stanica bio Xmax=(12,6±0,2) g/L, najveća stopa proizvodnje biomase Qx=(0,21±0,01) g/(L·h), a najveći prinos biomase YX/S=(2,42±0,02) g/g. Rezultati pokazuju da se dodatkom surfaktanata smanjila proizvodnja unutarstaničnog MK-4, dok se proizvodnja izvanstaničnog MK-4 bitno povećala. Od pet ispitanih surfaktanata, najbolji su rezultati postignuti dodatkom neionskog surfaktanta polioksietilen oleil etera (1,0 g/L), pri čemu je koncentracija izvanstaničnog MK-4 bila (33,6±0,4) mg/L, a izvanstaničnog MK-6 (2,56±0,07) mg/L, dok je ukupni prinos MK-4 bio (47,6±0,4) mg/L, a MK-6 (6,0±0,1) mg/L. Dodatak je polioksilen oleil etera djelovao puno povoljnije na lučenje MK-4, nego na lučenje MK-6., The effects of the addition of various surfactants on the cell growth and production of vitamin K2 metabolites, such as intracellular menaquinone-4 (MK-4), extracellular MK-4, intracellular MK-6 and extracellular MK-6, were studied in the submerged culture of Escherichia sp. All of the added surfactants caused the extension of the exponential phase. Betaine, polyoxyethylene oleyl ether and Tween-80 were favourable to the cell growth of Escherichia sp. mutant strain FM3-1709. The highest cell growth (Xmax), biomass production rate (Qx) and biomass yield (Yx/s) were (12.6±0.2) g/L, (0.21±0.01) g/(L·h) and (2.42± 0.02) g/g, respectively. The results show that the addition of all surfactants led to a lower production of intracellular MK-4, whereas the production of extracellular MK-4 increased remarkably. Among the five investigated surfactants, the addition of the nonionic surfactant polyoxyethylene oleyl ether (1.0 g/L) led to the highest production of extracellular MK-4 ((33.6±0.4) mg/L), MK-6 ((2.56±0.07) mg/L) and the highest yield of total MK-4 ((47.6±0.4) mg/L) and MK-6 ((6.0±0.1) mg/L). The addition of polyoxyethylene oleyl ether proved to be more beneficial for the secretion of MK-4 than MK-6.

With the rapid growth of an AC adjusted speedsystem application, it is necessary to controland reduce harmonic pollution since theproblem brought about by the device of powerelectronics not only blocks the development ofpower electronics technology, but also causessevere harm in an electric power system. In thispaper an improved three-level direct torquealgorithm for brushless doubly-fed machines hasbeen developed for reducing the torque and fluxripples in a brushless doubly-fed machine. Thismethod based on 48 fixed synthesizing vectors isimplemented in the brushless doubly-fed machine.Compared with the traditional two-level directtorque control algorithm, this new methodbroadens the selection range on voltage vectors. Italso effectively reduces the torque ripples andimproves the properties of the magnetic chaintrack. In addition, this algorithm improves thedynamic performance and robustness of both thebrushless doubly-fed machine and its controlsystem. To validate the proposed method, somemathematic simulations have been done so that thesimulation results have shown the effectiveness ofthe proposed method. Moreover, this proposedmethod has been implemented in the brushlessdoubly-fed machine system showing anenhancement in the motor performance.

With the rapid growth of an AC adjusted speedsystem application, it is necessary to controland reduce harmonic pollution since theproblem brought about by the device of powerelectronics not only blocks the development ofpower electronics technology, but also causessevere harm in an electric power system. In thispaper an improved three-level direct torquealgorithm for brushless doubly-fed machines hasbeen developed for reducing the torque and fluxripples in a brushless doubly-fed machine. Thismethod based on 48 fixed synthesizing vectors isimplemented in the brushless doubly-fed machine.Compared with the traditional two-level directtorque control algorithm, this new methodbroadens the selection range on voltage vectors. Italso effectively reduces the torque ripples andimproves the properties of the magnetic chaintrack. In addition, this algorithm improves thedynamic performance and robustness of both thebrushless doubly-fed machine and its controlsystem. To validate the proposed method, somemathematic simulations have been done so that thesimulation results have shown the effectiveness ofthe proposed method. Moreover, this proposedmethod has been implemented in the brushlessdoubly-fed machine system showing anenhancement in the motor performance.

Pervasive computing (PvC) systems are emerging as promising solutions to many practical problems, e.g., elderly care in home. However, such systems have long been developed without sufficient verification. Formal methods, eps. model checking are sound techniques for complex system analysis regarding correctness and reliability requirements. In this work, a formal modelling framework is proposed to model the general the system design (e.g., concurrent communications) and the critical environment inputs (e.g., human behaviours). Correctness requirements are specified in formal logics which are automatically verifiable against a system model. Furthermore, Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are adopted for modelling probabilistic behaviours of PvC systems. Three problems are analysed which are overall reliability prediction based on component reliabilities, reliability distribution w.r.t., how reliable should the component be to reach an overall reliability requirement and sensitivity analysis w.r.t., how does a component reliability affect the overall reliability. Finally, the usefulness of our approaches are demonstrated on a smart healthcare system with unexpected bugs and system flaws exposed.