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Discussion can be an important and powerful tool in efforts to build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive future for STEM (i.e., science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). However, facilitating discussions on difficult, complex, and often uncomfortable issues, like racism and sexism, can feel daunting. We outline a series of steps that can be used by educators to facilitate productive discussions that empower everyone to listen, contribute, learn, and ultimately act to transform STEM.

The effects of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles on the intestinal microbiome and fecal metabolome in C57BL/6 mice were investigated and the correlation between the intestinal microbiome and fecal metabolome was analyzed. A control group and an experimental group were set up, which were orally administered with phosphate buffered saline (PBS) and 100 (mg/kg mb·d) of TiO2 nanoparticles for 13 continuous weeks, respectively. Blood glucose and lipids were measured. Furthermore, 16S rDNA gene sequencing and gas chromatography-mass chromatography (GC-MS) were used to identified the significantly differential microorganisms and metabolites between the two groups. Our results showed that compared with the control group, fasting blood glucose was significantly increased in the experimental group (P = 0.032). The relative abundance of Firmicutes, Allobaculum, Lactobacillus, and Oscillospira was increased. The differential metabolites were associated with the glycerolipid, galactose and tryptophan metabolic pathways. Firmicutes bacteria were negatively correlated with the differential metabolites, while bacteria from other phyla were positively correlated with the differential metabolites. Therefore, we infer that the subchronic toxicity of TiO2 nanoparticles to mice may be associated with abnormal glycolipid metabolism in feces.

In order to meet the functional requirements of professional skiers for ski underwear, such as warmth, breathability, moisture absorption, sweat drainage, and stretch elasticity, six single-sided jacquard knit fabric structures were designed and then knitted with polyester and DRYARN. Then, 12 fabrics were acquired and ranked comprehensively by the one-way analysis of variance and grey correlative analysis based on entropy. According to the fabric properties and sweat distribution on the human skin surface, the professional ski underwear was zoning designed and the wearing experiment and evaluation were carried out on the “Newton” sweated manikin system. The analysis results show that the fabric with DRYARN® material has better air permeability and moisture permeability. Thermal resistance, Clo value, and permeability play important roles in comprehensive evaluation. The results of wearing experiment show that the seamless professional ski underwear woven based on body mapping sportswear has superior function and reasonable design, which can provide technical support for the design of professional seamless ski underwear.

As the Rural Revitalization Strategy continues to progress, there is an increasing demand for the digitization of rural houses, roads, and roadside trees. Given the characteristics of rural areas, such as narrow roads, high building density, and low-rise buildings, the precise and automated generation of outdoor floor plans and 3D models for rural areas is the core research issue of this paper. The specific research content is as follows: Using the point cloud data of the outer walls of rural houses collected by backpack LiDAR as the data source, this paper proposes an algorithm for drawing outdoor floor plans based on the topological relationship of sliced and rasterized wall point clouds. This algorithm aims to meet the needs of periodically updating large-scale rural house floor plans. By comparing the coordinates of house corner points measured with RTK, it is verified that the floor plans drawn by this algorithm can meet the accuracy requirements of 1:1000 topographic maps. Additionally, based on the generated outdoor floor plans, this paper proposes an algorithm for quickly generating outdoor 3D models of rural houses using the height information of wall point clouds. This algorithm can quickly generate outdoor 3D models of rural houses by longitudinally stretching the floor plans, meeting the requirements for 3D models in spatial analyses such as lighting and inundation. By measuring the distance from the wall point clouds to the 3D models and conducting statistical analysis, results show that the distances are concentrated between −0.1 m and 0.1 m. The 3D model generated by the method proposed in this paper can be used as one of the basic data for real 3D construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonstationary fuzzy inference systems (NFIS) are able to tackle uncertainties and avoid the difficulty of type-reduction operation. Combining NFIS and neural network, a first-order sparse TSK nonstationary fuzzy neural network (SNFNN-1) is proposed in this paper to improve the interpretability/translatability of neural networks and the self-learning ability of fuzzy rules/sets. The whole architecture of SNFNN-1 can be considered as an integrated model of multiple sub-networks with a variation in center, variation in width or variation in noise. Thus, it is able to model both "intraexpert" and "interexpert" variability. There are two techniques adopted in this network: the Mean Shift-based fuzzy partition and the Group Lasso-based rule selection, which can adaptively generate a suitable number of clusters and select important fuzzy rules, respectively. Quantitative experiments on six UCI datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]