ALBERT

Description: On February 6, 2023, at 01 : 17 UTC, a M = 7 8 earthquake struck the southern area of Turkey near Gaziantep town and was followed by a second earthquake of M = 7 5 at 10 : 24 UTC with the epicenter in Elbistan city. Both events were associated with the Anatolian Fault System and have claimed over 50,000 victims, as reported by the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, and caused serious damage in the regions of southern Turkey and northern Syria. Seismic waves related to strong Turkey earthquakes have been recorded both by seismic stations throughout the globe and on other devices such as the ground deformation (GNSS, strainmeters, or tiltmeters) networks. In this paper, we show and analyze the earthquake signals recorded by bore-hole tilt stations that monitor seismic and volcanic activities at Mt. Etna. Tilt stations showed very large variations, despite their distance from the epicenter (approximately 1950 km) with a period between 10 and 25 seconds. We compared tilt and seismic data for a co–located station evidencing a very similar waveform that highlight how tiltmeters respond to translational acceleration rather than ground tilt during a teleseism, suggesting that, for waves with this period, they may behave as horizontal seismometers. By using these signals, we evidence the different behaviors of two of the most used models of tiltmeters on volcanoes (Lily and Pinnacle) and how they are useful for instrument calibration.

Description: Published

Description: 9030495

Description: OSV3: Sviluppo di nuovi sistemi osservazionali e di analisi ad alta sensibilità

Description: JCR Journal

Description: The Timpe Fault System (TFS) represents the source of shallow earthquakes that strike numerous towns and villages on Mt. Etna’s eastern flank. In the last 40 years, three destructive seismic events reached (heavily damaging) in 1984 (October 25), 2002 (October 29), and 2018 (December 26). These events followed a few days after the occurrence of strong seismic swarms and the sudden acceleration of the eastern flank seaward. The damaging seismic events in 2002 and 2018 were associated with dike intrusions and eruptions of the volcano; however, no eruptive activity was observed at the time of the 1984 earthquakes. In this study, we investigate seismic parameters for the 1984 sequence, in order to interpret the seismicity in terms of volcanic activity. Parameters such as localization, cumulative seismic moment, and hourly occurrence frequency of the 1984 seismic swarm have been analysed and shown to have typical values of Mt. Etna’s intrusive seismic swarms. This suggests that the 1984 episode may have been an aborted intrusive magma episode that triggered similar processes (long and powerful intrusions with acceleration of the eastern flank movement and destructive earthquakes), as in 2002 and 2018. These three episodes suggest that an evaluation of some seismic parameters during future intrusive swarms may furnish indications of a possible reactivation of the TFS.

Description: Published

Description: 8565536

Description: 6V. Pericolosità vulcanica e contributi alla stima del rischio

Description: JCR Journal

Description: Let G k , n ℂ for 2 ≤ k

Description: Motivated by applications in evacuation planning, we consider a problem of optimizing flow with arc reversals in which the transit time depends on the orientation of the arc. In the considered problems, the transit time on an arc may change when it is reversed, contrary to the problems considered in the existing literature. Extending the existing idea of auxiliary network construction to allow asymmetric transit time on arcs, we present strongly polynomial time algorithms for solving single-source-single-sink maximum dynamic contraflow problem and quickest contraflow problem. The results are substantiated by a computational experiment in a Kathmandu road network. An algorithm to solve the corresponding earliest arrival contraflow problem with a pseudo-polynomial-time complexity is also presented. The partial contraflow approach for the corresponding problems has also been discussed.

Description: Mixed estimators in nonparametric regression have been developed in models with one response. The biresponse cases with different patterns among predictor variables that tend to be mixed estimators are often encountered. Therefore, in this article, we propose a biresponse nonparametric regression model with mixed spline smoothing and kernel estimators. This mixed estimator is suitable for modeling biresponse data with several patterns (response vs. predictors) that tend to change at certain subintervals such as the spline smoothing pattern, and other patterns that tend to be random are commonly modeled using kernel regression. The mixed estimator is obtained through two-stage estimation, i.e., penalized weighted least square (PWLS) and weighted least square (WLS). Furthermore, the proposed biresponse modeling with mixed estimators is validated using simulation data. This estimator is also applied to the percentage of the poor population and human development index data. The results show that the proposed model can be appropriately implemented and gives satisfactory results.

Description: In the present paper, we summarize the results of the research devoted to the problem of stability of the fluid flow moving in a channel with flexible walls and interacting with the walls. The walls of the vessel are subject to traveling waves. Experimental data show that the energy of the flowing fluid can be transferred and consumed by the structure (the walls), inducing “traveling wave flutter.” The problem of stability of fluid-structure interaction splits into two parts: (a) stability of fluid flow in the channel with harmonically moving walls and (b) stability of solid structure participating in the energy exchange with the flow. Stability of fluid flow, the main focus of the research, is obtained by solving the initial boundary value problem for the stream function. The main findings of the paper are the following: (i) rigorous formulation of the initial boundary problem for the stream function, ψ x , y , t , induced by the fluid-structure interaction model, which takes into account the axisymmetric pattern of the flow and “no-slip” condition near the channel walls; (ii) application of a double integral transformation (the Fourier transformation and Laplace transformation) to both the equation and boundary and initial conditions, which reduces the original partial differential equation to a parameter-dependent ordinary differential equation; (iii) derivation of the explicit formula for the Fourier transform of the stream function, ψ ˜ k , y , t ; (iv) evaluation of the inverse Fourier transform of ψ ˜ k , y , t and proving that reconstruction of ψ x , y , t can be obtained through a limiting process in the complex k -plane, which allows us to use the Residue theorem and represent the solution in the form of an infinite series of residues. The result of this research is an analytical solution describing blood flowing through a channel with flexible walls that are being perturbed in the form of a traveling wave.

Description: Analytical solutions for the transient single-phase and two-phase inward solid-state diffusion and solidification applied to the radial cylindrical and spherical geometries are proposed. Both solutions are developed from the differential equation that treats these phenomena in Cartesian coordinates, which are modified by geometric correlations and suitable changes of variables to achieve closed-form solutions. The modified differential equations are solved by using two well-known closed-form solutions based on the error function, and then equations are obtained to analyze the diffusion interface position as a function of time and position in cylinders and spheres. These exact correlations are inserted into the closed-form solutions for the slab and are used to update the roots for each radial position of the moving boundary interface. The predictions provided by the proposed analytical solutions are validated against the results of a numerical approach. Finally, a comparative study of diffusion in slabs, cylinders, and spheres is also presented for single-phase and two-phase solid-state diffusion and solidification, which shows the importance of the effects imposed by the radial cylindrical and spherical curvatures with respect to the Cartesian coordinate system in the process kinetics. The analytical model is proved to be general, as far as, a semi-infinite solution for diffusion problems with phase change exists in the form of the error function, which enables exact closed-form analytical solutions to be derived, by updating the root at each radial position the moving boundary interface.

Description: The contraflow approach has been extensively considered in the literature for modeling evacuations and has been claimed, due to its lane-direction-reversal capability, as an efficient idea to speed up the evacuation process. This paper considers the contraflow evacuation model on network with prioritized capacitated vertices that allows evacuees to be held at intermediate spots too, respecting their capacities and priority order. In particular, it studies the maximum flow evacuation planning problem and proposes polynomial and pseudo-polynomial time solution algorithms for static network and dynamic multinetwork, respectively. A real dataset of Kathmandu road network with evacuation spaces is considered to implement the algorithm designed for dynamic multinetwork and to observe its computational performance.

Description: This paper presents a mathematical model of glucose-insulin dynamics which is specific for type 2 diabetic patients. The general modelling is obtained by simplification of a global compartmental model by John Thomas Sorensen. The model parameters are estimated using nonlinear optimization and data collected in Rwanda for type 2 diabetic patients. In order to identify and evaluate possible abnormalities of type 2 diabetic patients, the Sampling Importance Resampling (SIR) particle filtering algorithm is used and implemented through discretization of the developed mathematical model. This process is done by clamping insulin and glucose concentrations at around clinical trial values as proposed by Defronzo. Furthermore, for detecting potential abnormalities in type 2 diabetic patients, we compare our results with results obtained from a simulation of the mathematical model for healthy subjects. The proposed mathematical model allows further investigation of the dynamic behavior of glucose, insulin, glucagon, stored insulin, and labile insulin in different organs for type 2 diabetic patients.

Description: Research has shown that current health expenditure in most countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is inadequate and unsustainable. Yet, fraud, abuse, and waste in health insurance claims by service providers and subscribers threaten the delivery of quality healthcare. It is therefore imperative to analyze health insurance claim data to identify potentially suspicious claims. Typically, anomaly detection can be posited as a classification problem that requires the use of statistical methods such as mixture models and machine learning approaches to classify data points as either normal or anomalous. Additionally, health insurance claim data are mostly associated with problems of sparsity, heteroscedasticity, multicollinearity, and the presence of missing values. The analyses of such data are best addressed by adopting more robust statistical techniques. In this paper, we utilized the Bayesian quantile regression model to establish the relations between claim outcome of interest and subject-level features and further classify claims as either normal or anomalous. An estimated model component is assumed to inherently capture the behaviors of the response variable. A Bayesian mixture model, assuming a normal mixture of two components, is used to label claims as either normal or anomalous. The model was applied to health insurance data captured on 115 people suffering from various cardiovascular diseases across different states in the USA. Results show that 25 out of 115 claims (21.7%) were potentially suspicious. The overall accuracy of the fitted model was assessed to be 92%. Through the methodological approach and empirical application, we demonstrated that the Bayesian quantile regression is a viable model for anomaly detection.

Description: In this paper, we study a decomposition D -module structure of the polynomial ring. Then, we illustrate a geometric interpretation of the Specht polynomials. Using Brauer’s characterization, we give a partial generalization of the fact that factors of the discriminant of a finite map π : spec B ⟶ spec A generate the irreducible factors of the direct image of B under the map π .

Description: We investigate a class of locally conformal almost Kähler structures and prove that, under some conditions, this class is a subclass of almost Kähler structures. We show that a locally conformal almost Kähler manifold admits a canonical foliation whose leaves are hypersurfaces with the mean curvature vector field proportional to the Lee vector field. The geodesibility of the leaves is also characterized, and their minimality coincides with the incompressibility of the Lee vector field along the leaves.

Description: We provide a characterization of the finite dimensionality of vector spaces in terms of the right-sided invertibility of linear operators on them.

Description: The concept of frames in Hilbert spaces continues to play a very interesting role in many kinds of applications. In this paper, we study the notion of dual continuous K -g-frames in Hilbert spaces. Also, we establish some new properties.

Description: Any continuous function with values in a Hausdorff topological space has a closed graph and satisfies the property of intermediate value. However, the reverse implications are false, in general. In this article, we treat additional conditions on the function, and its graph for the reverse to be true.

Description: For a Gaussian prime π and a nonzero Gaussian integer β = a + b i ∈ ℤ i with a ≥ 1 and β ≥ 2 + 2 , it was proved that if π = α n β n + α n − 1 β n − 1 + ⋯ + α 1 β + α 0 ≕ f β where n ≥ 1 , α n ∈ ℤ i 0 , α 0 , … , α n − 1 belong to a complete residue system modulo β , and the digits α n − 1 and α n satisfy certain restrictions, then the polynomial f x is irreducible in ℤ i x . For any quadratic field K ≔ ℚ m , it is well known that there are explicit representations for a complete residue system in K , but those of the case m ≡ 1   mod 4 are inapplicable to this work. In this article, we establish a new complete residue system for such a case and then generalize the result mentioned above for the ring of integers of any imaginary quadratic field.

Description: For parabolic Shilov equations with continuous coefficients, the problem of finding classical solutions that satisfy a modified initial condition with generalized data such as the Gelfand and Shilov distributions is considered. This condition arises in the approximate solution of parabolic problems inverse in time. It linearly combines the meaning of the solution at the initial and some intermediate points in time. The conditions for the correct solvability of this problem are clarified and the formula for its solution is found. Using the results obtained, the corresponding problems with impulse action were solved.

Description: Combinatorial sums and binomial identities have appeared in many branches of mathematics, physics, and engineering. They can be established by many techniques, from generating functions to special series. Here, using a simple mathematical induction principle, we obtain a new combinatorial sum that involves ordinary powers, falling powers, and binomial coefficient at once. This way, and without the use of any complicated analytic technique, we obtain a result that already exists and a generalization of an identity derived from Sterling numbers of the second kind. Our formula is new, genuine, and several identities can be derived from it. The findings of this study can help for better understanding of the relation between ordinary and falling powers, which both play a very important role in discrete mathematics.

Description: A graph G is called cycle books B 4 , m , 2 if G consists of m cycles C 4 with a common path P 2 . Figueroa-Centeno, Ichishima, and Muntaner-Batle conjecture that the graph B 4 , m , 2 is super edge-magic total if and only if m is even or m ≡ 5   mod 8 . In this article, we prove this conjecture for m  ≥ 36 and m  = 0 mod (2).

Description: A mapping   ℸ :   V G ⟶ N ∪ 0 for a connected graph G = V , E is called a radial radio labelling if it satisfies the inequality     ℸ x −   ℸ   y + d x , y ≥ rad G + 1 ∀ x , y ∈ V G , where rad G is the radius of the graph G . The radial radio number of ℸ denoted by r r ℸ   is the maximum number mapped under ℸ . The radial radio number of G denoted by r r G is equal to min { r r ℸ   / ℸ   is a radial radio labelling of G }.

Description: For a polynomial p z of degree n , it follows from the maximum modulus theorem that max z = R ≥ 1 p z ≤ R n max z = 1 p z . It was shown by Ankeny and Rivlin that if p z ≠ 0 for z

Description: In this paper, we introduce a new class of contact pseudo framed (CPF)-manifolds M , g , f , λ , ξ by a real tensor field f of type 1,1 , a real function λ such that f 3 = λ 2 f where ξ is its characteristic vector field. We prove in our main Theorem 2 that M admits a closed 2-form Ω if λ is constant. In 1976, Blair proved that the vector field ξ of a normal contact manifold is Killing. Contrary to this, we have shown in Theorem 2 that, in general, ξ of a normal CPF-manifold is non-Killing. We also have established a link of CPF-hypersurfaces with curvature, affine, conformal collineations symmetries, and almost Ricci soliton manifolds, supported by three applications. Contrary to the odd-dimensional contact manifolds, we construct several examples of even- and odd-dimensional semi-Riemannian and lightlike CPF-manifolds and propose two problems for further consideration.

Description: In this article, we present an approach which allows taking into account the effect of extreme values in the modeling of financial asset returns and in the valorisation of associated options. Specifically, the marginal distribution of asset returns is modelled by a mixture of two Gaussian distributions. Moreover, we model the joint dependence structure of the returns using a copula function, the extremal one, which is suitable for our financial data, particularly the extreme values copulas. Applications are made on the Atos and Dassault Systems actions of the CAC40 index. Monte Carlo method is used to compute the values of some equity options such as the call on maximum, the call on minimum, the digital option, and the spreads option with the basket (Atos, Dassault systems) as underlying.

Description: This paper presents a new approach to determine the number of solutions of three-variable Frobenius-related problems and to find their solutions by using order reducing methods. Here, the order of a Frobenius-related problem means the number of variables appearing in the problem. We present two types of order reduction methods that can be applied to the problem of finding all nonnegative solutions of three-variable Frobenius-related problems. The first method is used to reduce the equation of order three from a three-variable Frobenius-related problem to be a system of equations with two fixed variables. The second method reduces the equation of order three into three equations of order two, for which an algorithm is designed with an interesting open problem on solutions left as a conjecture.

Description: In this paper, we present and establish a new result on the stability analysis of solutions for fuzzy nonlinear fractional differential equations by extending Lyapunov’s direct method from the fuzzy ordinary case to the fuzzy fractional case. As an application, several examples are presented to illustrate the proposed stability result.

Description: Proposed in 1937, the Collatz conjecture has remained in the spotlight for mathematicians and computer scientists alike due to its simple proposal, yet intractable proof. In this paper, we propose several novel theorems, corollaries, and algorithms that explore relationships and properties between the natural numbers, their peak values, and the conjecture. These contributions primarily analyze the number of Collatz iterations it takes for a given integer to reach 1 or a number less than itself, or the relationship between a starting number and its peak value.

Description: This article deals with the study of mathematical models and the assessment of the stability of the motion of ships, investigating properties of the system such as kinetics and stability. This is essential for the selection of suitable control methods according to the requirements set out for the problem. Some control methods require the author to specify control parameters before the operation of the system can be started. Therefore, the survey of the article is useful for the above problem. Control methods through simulation results (PID controller, lag compensator, and lead compensator) give me results that reflect properties of the system (the stability of the operation cycle of the ship model). In addition, control methods for this model, which serve for research and education, are also presented below. Simulation is done by Matlab.

Description: The study recognized the worth of understanding the how’s of handling censoring and censored data in survival analysis and the potential biases it might cause if researchers fail to identify and handle the concepts with utmost care. We systematically reviewed the concepts of censoring and how researchers have handled censored data and brought all the ideas under one umbrella. The review was done on articles written in the English language spanning from the late fifties to the present time. We googled through NCBI, PubMed, Google scholar and other websites and identified theories and publications on the research topic. Revelation was that censoring has the potential of biasing results and reducing the statistical power of analyses if not handled with the appropriate techniques it requires. We also found that, besides the four main approaches (complete-data analysis method; imputation approach; dichotomizing the data; the likelihood-based approach) to handling censored data, there were several other innovative approaches to handling censored data. These methods include censored network estimation; conditional mean imputation method; inverse probability of censoring weighting; maximum likelihood estimation; Buckley-Janes least squares algorithm; simple multiple imputation strategy; filter algorithm; Bayesian framework; β -substitution method; search-and-score-hill-climbing algorithm and constraint-based conditional independence algorithm; frequentist; Markov chain Monte Carlo for imputed data; quantile regression; random effects hierarchical Cox proportional hazards; Lin’s Concordance Correlation Coefficient; classical maximum likelihood estimate. We infer that the presence of incomplete information about subjects does not necessarily mean that such information must be discarded, rather they must be incorporated into the study for they might carry certain relevant information that holds the key to the understanding of the research. We anticipate that through this review, researchers will develop a deeper understanding of this concept in survival analysis and select the appropriate statistical procedures for such studies devoid of biases.

Description: We extend the well-known characterizations of convergence in the spaces l p ( 1 ≤ p

Description: In this paper, we are interested in the inverse problem of the determination of the unknown part ∂ Ω , Γ 0 of the boundary of a uniformly Lipschitzian domain Ω included in ℝ N from the measurement of the normal derivative ∂ n v on suitable part Γ 0 of its boundary, where v is the solution of the wave equation ∂ t t v x , t − Δ v x , t + p x v x = 0 in Ω × 0 , T and given Dirichlet boundary data. We use shape optimization tools to retrieve the boundary part Γ of ∂ Ω . From necessary conditions, we estimate a Lagrange multiplier k Ω which appears by derivation with respect to the domain. By maximum principle theory for hyperbolic equations and under geometrical assumptions, we prove a uniqueness result of our inverse problem. The Lipschitz stability is established by increasing of the energy of the system. Some numerical simulations are made to illustrate the optimal shape.

Description: Various space missions, including the Russian and Chinese interplanetary exploration collaboration in 2011 and the Phobos-Grunt space project to be relaunched by the Chinese in 2025, carry a soil preparation system (SOPSYS), which is an instrument used for scientific experiments. The design and manufacture of this precision instrument require stringent manufacturing processes and workflow of the highest quality, with every process in the project carefully monitored and controlled. All processes should be completed within the deadline so that the space project can be launched at the scheduled time. The colored Petri net (CPN) modeling method can describe a variety of resource types and execution logic, and it can be formally verified. Based on these advantages, we clearly describe the complex structure of the SPOSYS unit production process. In addition, we use critical time and the 6 sigma system to evaluate the availability and reliability of workflows, and we use elimination and simplification (ECRS) methods and constraint theory to improve the manufacturing process of the SOPSYS unit. We further provide optimization theories, methods, and insights for workflow management in time-sensitive and independent manufacturing systems.

Description: Automated seizure detection system based on electroencephalograms (EEG) is an interdisciplinary research problem between computer science and neuroscience. Epileptic seizure affects 1% of the worldwide population and can lead to severe long-term harm to safety and life quality. The automation of seizure detection can greatly improve the treatment of patients. In this work, we propose a neural network model to extract features from EEG signals with a method of arranging the dimension of feature extraction inspired by the traditional method of neurologists. A postprocessor is used to improve the output of the classifier. The result of our seizure detection system on the TUSZ dataset reaches a false alarm rate of 12 per 24 hours with a sensitivity of 59%, which approaches the performance of average human detector based on qEEG tools.

Description: The influence of size effect on the hydromechanical behavior of rock mass has long been recognized. As a result, analysis of the rock mass size effect has been developed. However, when conducting size effect studies, the representativeness of the sample is less considered. Therefore, combining the existing statistical methods and sampling methods, a comprehensive representative sampling method for rock mass is present. In this method, a large number of sample statistics of different sizes are provided in the progressive coverage method; then, the plane density of the track length is defined as the value of stratification to perform stratified sampling for representative samples. Furthermore, it is applied to a joint network model generated in accordance with the actual situation and compared with those of other methods. The sampling results show that the proposed method can provide a certain reference value for studying the scale-dependent behavior of rock mass mechanical parameters.

Description: The Linxing area is located in the north of the eastern margin of the Ordos Basin, which has great resource potential for tight gas. In this paper, fluid inclusion analysis and basin modeling are the main means to clarify the gas accumulation mechanism of the Upper Paleozoic in the Linxing area. Petrographic analysis shows that fluid inclusions can be classified into 5 types: aqueous inclusions, hydrocarbon-bearing aqueous inclusions, hydrocarbon inclusions, crystal-bearing aqueous inclusions, and aqueous-carbonic inclusions. According to the statistical analysis of homogenization temperature and salinity of fluid inclusions, combined with the burial-thermal evolution, the study area was divided into 3 areas: the inner-magma baking area, the middle-anomal thermal area, and the outer-normal thermal area. The gas accumulation characteristics are differences among the 3 areas, the closer to Zijinshan magmatic pluton, the earlier gas accumulation period; and the vertical gas accumulation in the inner-magma baking area and the middle-anomal thermal area was not a slow and gradual process from bottom to top. The period from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous is the key period for rapid pressure accumulation in the Upper Paleozoic reservoirs, which is consistent with the period of natural gas accumulation. The area near the Zijinshan magmatic pluton was the high fluid potential area during the gas accumulation period, which indicates that natural gas and other fluids migrated from Zijinshan magmatic pluton to the surrounding area. It is concluded that in the Linxing area, the Zijinshan magmatic pluton had a significant impact on natural gas accumulation, and the natural gas accumulation model under the control of magmatic thermal-tectonic effect was proposed.

Description: With the increasingly close relations between cities in China, it is of great significance to explore the regular characteristics of the intercity connection. Through Tencent’s population migration heat and Baidu map big data, this paper analyzes the regular characteristics of the relations between complex cities based on such index as the rich node propensity index, preference level index, and relative heat index and also investigates the influence of geographical proximity factors on the external relations of different cities. The research has the following results. Firstly, the relations between cities have obvious club characteristics. The rich nodes tend to connect with the rich nodes, while the nonrich nodes tend to connect with the nonrich nodes. Secondly, the connection between cities has the effect of hierarchical proximity, and cities mainly establish spatial connections with cities of the same level and adjacent level. Thirdly, the relations between cities also have the effect of geographical proximity, and the degree of influence of geographical proximity in low-level cities is greater than that in high-level cities. Fourthly, the external connection mode of high-level cities is to establish close contact with high-level cities adjacent to the level, with strong attraction to low-level cities adjacent to the location at the same time. The low-level cities are closely related to the high-level cities adjacent to the location and other cities of geographical proximity or adjacent level. This study helps to further understand the complex characteristics and laws of intercity connections and urban networks.

Description: In Nepal, forest management priority is shifting to scientific management from conventional management. Though, the forest officials claims that scientific management is beneficial to the forest user groups, comparative financial assessment with conventional management remains unexplored. Following a case study approach, this study compares financial efficiency of two forest management systems in the community forests, focusing on benefit-cost ratio. The study conducted documents review, focus group discussions, and rapid survey to quantify costs and benefits from each forest management system. Conventional management gave a higher benefit-cost ratio to the forest user groups, irrespective of whether forest products are sold at a subsidized price or par with the market price. However, scientific management required high forest management costs and thus had a lower benefit-cost ratio. Sensitivity analysis between two systems revealed that conventional management gave a higher benefit-cost ratio in all cases. The study concludes that forest user groups would bear financial loss if they do not fix the price of the timber at par with the market in scientific management, and in such a case, the tagged price will be beyond affordability of the forest users. Furthermore, scientific management has discouraged kind contribution of users in managing forest. Besides, social and environmental consequences of scientific management cannot be ignored. Hence, the study argues for reconsidering current scientific management considering likely economic and social consequences to the forest user groups.

Description: The seepage of gas-liquid two-phase flow in fracture is a commonly found phenomenon in nature. To reveal the underlying mechanism and the critical condition of the chaos occurrence, a stochastic gas-liquid two-phase flow seepage model is established, and then investigated through a numerical simulation and a horizontal Hele-Shaw experiment. The numerical simulation and laboratory experiment results show that the seepage chaos of gas-liquid two-phase flow takes place when the relative saturation is in the range of gas relative saturation 44%-70%, and the occurrence probability can be expressed in polynomials. The chaos probability exceeds 80% when the relative saturation of gas is 47%-65%, and the chaos probability is 100% when the relative gas saturation is 57%-60%. It is found that the stochastic variation of gas connection cluster and the compressibility of gas lead to a remarkable change of pressure gradient of the gas-liquid flow both in magnitude and direction. Therefore, the turbulent flow is formed, the kinetic energy of fluid transport decreases gradually, and the flow is stopped at last.

Description: An effective porosity is defined as the ratio of volume of interconnected pore space to total volume of a porous sample. It controls the magnitude of fluid flow and is a key parameter in the assessment of recoverable resources. However, its accurate measurement in tight formations is challenging, due to their complex pore structure and lithofacies heterogeneity. In this study, porosities of sixteen lacustrine shale samples from the second Member of the Kongdian Formation (Ek2) in the Cangdong Sag, Bohai Bay Basin were measured and compared using multiple methods and sample sizes to compare and contrast the effective porosity results. The methods included helium pycnometry (HP; cubes of 1 cm3 and grains at 500-841 μm), water immersion porosimetry (WIP; cubes), mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP; cubes), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR; cubes). Finally, samples were completely sealed using paraffin for bulk density measurements to evaluate the extent of potential clay swelling in shale samples involving probing fluids. Results from the HP, WIP, and MIP methods for skeletal density, bulk density, and effective porosity with cubic samples were compared. While very similar skeletal densities were found for all three methods, a lower bulk density, and therefore lower porosity, from the MIP approach can be attributed to the experimental conditions (e.g., vacuum efficiency, applied pressure, wettability of water/helium vs. mercury) and the probable presence of pores with diameters larger than 50 μm not measurable by MIP. Furthermore, the HP porosity of granular samples with 500-841 μm grain sizes can be regarded as approaching the total porosity. The complicated relationship between WIP and NMR porosities may result from the heat-induced volatilization of moisture in pores during NMR tests, and countercurrent imbibition of water replacing the residual hydrocarbons during the saturation process for sample preparation in both tests. The swelling behavior of the lacustrine Ek2 shale with water is not significant because of the low content of expansive clay minerals. In summary, the WIP and HP methods are recommended for effective porosity measurement, whereas the NMR and MIP methods are invaluable for the measurement of pore-size distribution, with additional information on the effective porosity.

Description: A tuned mass damper inerter (TMDI) is a new class of passive control device based on the inclusion of an inerter mechanism into a conventional tuned mass damper (TMD). The inerter device provides inertial resisting forces to the controlled system, through relatively small masses, converting it in a mechanism with the potential to enhance the performance of passive energy dissipating systems. This work presents a study of an optimal TMDI design through an exhaustive search process. TMDI device design using the cited parameter selection methodology consists in the determination of the damper critical damping ratio, ζTMDI, and frequency ratio, υTMDI, which result in the minimum structural response of a multidegree of freedom structural system, considering predefined values for mass ratio (µ) and inertance ratio (β). The used optimization process examines all possible damping device design parameter combinations to select the set of values that results in the best device performance to reduce response parameters in a structure. Four different optimization processes are performed by independently minimizing four performance indices: J1 associated to the reduction of the structure’s maximum peak displacement, J2 calculates the minimal RMS value for the structure’s peak displacement, J3 seeks by the minimal peak interstorey drift, and JP determines the lowest value for a linear weighted combination of the abovementioned three indices. A numerical example is developed with the purpose of validating the proposed optimization procedure and to evaluate the benefits of using TMDI as controlling devices for structures under seismic excitation, by carrying out a comparative analysis to contrast the performance of the optimization alternatives developed, running up to 1968192 cases. The obtained results show that devices designed based on exhaustive search optimization produce peak displacement reductions of up to 35% and peak structure displacement RMS reductions of up to 30%.

Description: The lower Silurian Longmaxi Formation hosts a highly productive shale gas play in the Zhaotong region of southern China. According to core observation, X-ray diffraction analyses, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations, the shale comprises primarily quartz, carbonate minerals, and clay minerals, with minor amounts of plagioclase, K-feldspar, and pyrite. The clay mineral content ranges from 15.0% to 46.1%, with an average of 29.3% in the Zhaotong region. Organic geochemical analyses show that the Longmaxi Formation has good potential for shale gas resources by calculating total organic carbon, vitrinite reflectance, and gas content. Scanning electron microscope images demonstrate that reservoir pore types in the Longmaxi shale include organic pores, interparticle pores, intercrystalline pores, intraparticle pores, and fractures. Reservoir distribution is controlled by lithofacies, mineral composition, and geochemical factors. In addition, we investigated the relationships between reservoir parameters and production from 15 individual wells in the Zhaotong region by correlation coefficients. As a result, the brittleness index, total organic carbon (TOC), porosity, and gas content were used to define high-quality reservoirs in the Longmaxi shale. Based on these criteria, we mapped the thickness and distribution of high-quality reservoirs in the Longmaxi Formation and selected highlighted several key sites for future exploration and development.

Description: In the present study, we employ fluorescence spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, and molecular docking methods. Binding of anticancer drug anastrozole with human lysozyme (HL) is studied. Binding of anastrozole to HL is moderate but spontaneous. There is anastrozole persuaded hydrodynamic change in HL, leading to molecular compaction. Binding of anastrozole to HL also decreased in vitro lytic activity of HL. Molecular docking results suggest the electrostatic interactions and van der Waals forces played key role in binding interaction of anastrozole near the catalytic site. Binding interaction of anastrozole to proteins other than major transport proteins in blood can significantly affect pharmacokinetics of this molecule. Hence, rationalizing drug dosage is important. This study also points to unrelated effects that small molecules bring in the body that are considerable and need thorough investigation.

Description: Controlling and maintaining the orientation of the balloon-borne gondola for high-altitude flight is a prerequisite for ensuring the pointing control of observation instruments. When the balloon-borne gondola is flying in the stratosphere of the atmosphere, the existing external interferences will be converted into the coupling moment to the azimuth control system. Meanwhile, those uncertain factors and the frictional nonlinearity of the control system will also cause a certain magnitude of coupling moment. The existence of such coupling moment largely impacts on the accuracy and stability of the orientation control for the angular momentum exchange devices of the balloon-borne gondola. To address such an issue, this paper proposes and implements a novel type of integrated decoupler device. With this decoupler adopted, the aziDmuth control system could sense the existence of coupling torque and azimuth fluctuations quickly and suppress the influences of external interference, uncertain factors, and system structure nonlinearity on the azimuth control effectively, thereby improving the control accuracy of the azimuth control system. Both simulations and experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed device. The results show that the integration of the decoupler and the controller of the azimuth control system provide the azimuth control of the balloon-borne gondola with high accuracy and stability. Such a decoupler device design has a broad potential and could not only be used for balloon-borne gondola control but also could be applied onto other control systems using angular momentum exchange devices as actuators.

Description: When mine water inrush accidents occur, timely and accurately identifying the water inrush source plays an important role in determining the cause of water inrush and making a solution to a disaster. According to the differences of water chemical composition in each water sources of mine, eight kinds of indicators of water chemical composition were selected as sample variables for water inrush source identification. On this basis, an identification model of water inrush source was established by using principal component analysis (PCA) and Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) combined. The model was used to identify the water inrush source of 14 groups of training samples and 12 groups of samples to be judged in different water sources of the Xiandewang coal mine, and it was compared with the results of the conventional identification model which used the FDA method. Results of this study showed that having processed data by using the PCA method can effectively eliminate the effects of information superposition between sample indicators, and the identification accuracy of mine water inrush source was significantly increased. Related study in this paper can provide some basis and reference for the study of mine water inrush source identification technology.

Description: The abundance of organic matter in shales, which has a direct effect on the hydrocarbon generation potential of shales, is an important organic geochemical parameter for evaluating shale gas reservoirs. The total organic carbon content (TOC content) in shale is controlled by the abundance of original sedimentary organic matter. Therefore, it is very important to study the mechanism of organic matter enrichment in shale. In this paper, the Lower Cambrian marine shales from the Lower Yangtze region are selected as the research subject, most of which originate from a typical area well called Well JXY1. The degree of pyritization (DOP) is used to characterize the redox environment of the water body, while the P/Al ratio is used to analyze the biological productivity of paleoseawater. The paleosalinity of seawater is calculated via carbon and oxygen isotope analysis. In addition, the early Cambrian hydrothermal activities were studied by using core description; Si, Al, Fe, and Mn elemental analysis; and oxygen isotope calculations. The results show that during the early Cambrian Wangyinpu sedimentary period, the seawater was an anaerobic water body with H2S, and the oxygen concentration was approximately 0 mL/L. In the middle stages of the Wangyinpu sedimentary period, the water body had the strongest reducibility and the highest biological productivity. Moreover, the paleoocean in this period between the Yangtze plate and the Cathaysian plate was greatly affected by hydrothermal activities, with temperatures ranging from 90°C to 120°C. Active hydrothermal activities promoted high biological productivity and an anaerobic environment, both of which were conducive to the preservation and enrichment of organic matter, resulting in extremely high TOC content in the Wangyinpu shales (from 6.5% to approximately 16%).

Description: Gates are important operating facilities and resources in civil airports. It is a core task in the airport operation management to select reasonable gates for inbound and outbound flights. We present a continuous time formulation with second-order cone programming (SOCP) for the gate assignment problem which allocates flights to available gates to optimize both the transfer time of passengers and the robustness of the airport operations schedules. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program, and then, the quadratic objective that minimizes the walking distance of transferring passengers is linearized, and the objective that minimizes the variance of idle time at the gates is transformed to a second-order cone constraint with a linear objective function. Then, a Lagrangian relaxation algorithm is developed by exploiting the problem structure. Computational tests are carried out to illustrate the efficiency of the model and the algorithms. It is shown that the continuous time formulation is more efficient than the existing model, and the Lagrangian relaxation algorithm can obtain better solutions faster than a commercial solver.

Description: In this paper, we propose an innovative method for conventional triaxial tests of concrete with a confining cell. The polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe is used as a mould to cast concrete and also as a membrane to isolate the concrete specimen from oil under confinements. This method is termed as PMM (i.e., PVC pipe is used as a mould and membrane). However, a heat-shrink sleeve is used as a membrane in the traditional test method (TMM). Specimens were made from mortar without coarse aggregates in the present experiment. Under six confinements (0–70 MPa), the conventional triaxial compression tests were performed on ultrahigh-strength (150 MPa) and high-strength (82 MPa) mortar specimens by PMM and TMM. The results indicate the following: (i) there is a characteristic confinement p0; when the confinement is lower than p0, the strength by PMM is higher than that by TMM; on the contrary, when the confinement is higher than p0, the strengths by both methods are almost identical. In this work, p0 is between 0 and 5 MPa. (ii) When the confinement is 5–70 MPa, the relationship between the peak stress of high-strength mortar and confinement is characterized by a monotonically rising straight line; however, a monotonically rising upward convex curve describes the peak stress of ultrahigh-strength mortar related to the confinement. (iii) The residual strength using PMM is significantly higher than that using TMM at zero confinement or lower confinements, but the residual strengths by these two methods are approximately identical at higher confinements. (iv) The transverse cracks appear in the mortar specimen inside the PVC pipe after enduring a triaxial loading using PMM. However, there is no such phenomenon when TMM is applied.

Description: Electroencephalography-(EEG-) based control is a noninvasive technique which employs brain signals to control electrical devices/circuits. Currently, the brain-computer interface (BCI) systems provide two types of signals, raw signals and logic state signals. The latter signals are used to turn on/off the devices. In this paper, the capabilities of BCI systems are explored, and a survey is conducted how to extend and enhance the reliability and accuracy of the BCI systems. A structured overview was provided which consists of the data acquisition, feature extraction, and classification algorithm methods used by different researchers in the past few years. Some classification algorithms for EEG-based BCI systems are adaptive classifiers, tensor classifiers, transfer learning approach, and deep learning, as well as some miscellaneous techniques. Based on our assessment, we generally concluded that, through adaptive classifiers, accurate results are acquired as compared to the static classification techniques. Deep learning techniques were developed to achieve the desired objectives and their real-time implementation as compared to other algorithms.

Description: This paper studies the global stability of a discrete-time pathogen dynamic model with both cell-mediated and antibody immune responses. Both latently and actively infected cells are incorporated into the model. We discretize the continuous-time model by using the nonstandard finite difference (NSFD) method. We establish that NSFD preserves the nonnegativity and boundedness of the solutions of the model. We derive four threshold parameters which govern the existence and stability of the steady states. We establish by using the Lyapunov method, the global stability of the five steady states of the model. We illustrate our theoretical results by using numerical simulations.

Description: The high-temperature gas-cooled reactor pebble-bed module (HTR-PM) nuclear power plant consists of two nuclear steam supply system modules, each of which drives the steam turbine by the superheated steam flow and is fed by the heated-up water flow. The shared steam/water system induces mutual effects on normal operation conditions and transients of the nuclear power plant, which is worthy of safety concerns and intensive study. In this paper, a coupling code package was developed with the TINTE and vPower codes to understand how the HTR-PM operated. The TINTE code was used to analyze the reactor core and primary circuit, while the vPower code simulated the steam/water flow in the conventional island. Two TINTE models were built and coupled to one vPower model through the data exchange in the steam generator models. Using this code package, two typical transients were simulated by decreasing the primary flow rate or introducing the negative reactivity of one module. Important parameters, including the reactor power, the fuel temperature, and the reactor inlet and outlet helium temperatures of two modules, had been studied. The calculation results preliminarily proved that this code package can be further used to evaluate working performance of the HTR-PM.

Description: Using standard techniques from geometric quantization, we rederive the integral product of functions on ℝ2 (non-Euclidian) which was introduced by Pierre Bieliavsky as a contribution to the area of strict quantization. More specifically, by pairing the nontransverse real polarization on the pair groupoid ℝ2×ℝ¯2, we obtain the well-defined integral transform. Together with a convolution of functions, which is a natural deformation of the usual convolution of functions on the pair groupoid, this readily defines the Bieliavsky product on a subset of L2ℝ2.

Description: Chloride corrosion test was carried out in 4% NaCl solution to study the chloride corrosion resistance of rubber concrete. Rubber concrete was prepared by using 20 mesh, 1∼3 mm, and 3∼6 mm rubber particles instead of sand by 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% of the cementitious material mass. The P-wave velocity and compressive strength of rubber concrete were measured. The microstructure of rubber concrete corroded by chloride was analyzed by SEM. The micromorphology was compared with the macrofailure characteristics under uniaxial compression. The results show that the rubber concrete was still in the early stage of erosion. With the increase of immersion time at the age of 110 days, the P-wave velocity and compressive strength of concrete were generally on the rise. Furthermore, during the period of erosion, the mechanical properties of rubber concrete increased with the increase of rubber particle size and decreased with the increase of the content. Therefore, when the rubber particle size was 3∼6 mm and the content was 5%, the antierosion performance was the best. This study has a certain guiding significance for the chloride corrosion resistance of rubber concrete.

Description: Background. Young people are challenged with sexual and reproductive health (SRH) problems due to limited access to services and information. It contributes a high burden of sexually transmitted disease, unsafe abortion, and premature mortality, especially in low-income countries like Ethiopia. Hence, this study aimed at assessing the SRH service utilization and associated factors among college students at West Arsi Zone in Oromia region, Ethiopia. Methods. Institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 519 randomly selected college students from January 01, 2019, up to April 30, 2019. Data were collected through self-administered pretested questionnaires. Data entry and analysis for descriptive and logistic regression models were performed by using SPSS (version 23). The result was declared as statistically significant at p 

Description: In this paper, an intelligent modeling approach is presented to predict the shear strength of the internal reinforced concrete (RC) beam-column joints and used to analyze the sensitivity of the influence factors on the shear strength. The proposed approach is established based on the famous boosting-family ensemble machine learning (ML) algorithms, i.e., gradient boosting regression tree (GBRT), which generates a strong predictive model by integrating several weak predictors, which are obtained by the well-known individual ML algorithms, e.g., DT, ANN, and SVM. The strong model is boosted as each weak predictor has its own weight in the final combination according to the performance. Compared with the conventional mechanical-driven shear strength models, e.g., the well-known modified compression field theory (MCFT), the proposed model can avoid the complicated derivation process of shear mechanism and calibration of the involved empirical parameters; thus, it provides a more convenient, fast, and robust alternative way for predicting the shear strength of the internal RC joints. To train and test the GBRT model, a total of 86 internal RC joint specimens are collected from the literatures, and four traditional ML models and the MCFT model are also employed as comparisons. The results indicate that the GBRT model is superior to both the traditional ML models and MCFT model, as its degree-of-fitting is the highest and the predicting dispersion is the lowest. Finally, the model is used to investigate the influences of different parameters on the shear strength of the internal RC joint, and the sensitivity and importance of the corresponding parameters are obtained.

Description: In this paper, we present a survey of the inverse eigenvalue problem for a Laplacian equation based on available Cauchy data on a known part Γ0 and a homogeneous Dirichlet condition on an unknown part Γ0 of the boundary of a bounded domain, Ω⊂ℝN. We consider variations in the eigenvalues and propose a conformal mapping tool to reconstruct a part of the boundary curve of the two-dimensional bounded domain based on the Cauchy data of a holomorphic function that maps the unit disk onto the unknown domain. The boundary values of this holomorphic function are obtained by solving a nonlocal differential Bessel equation. Then, the unknown boundary is obtained as the image of the boundary of the unit disk by solving an ill-posed Cauchy problem for holomorphic functions via a regularized power expansion. The Cauchy data were restricted to a nonvanishing function and to the normal derivatives without zeros. We prove the existence and uniqueness of the holomorphic function being considered and use the fixed-point method to numerically analyze the results of convergence. We’ll calculate the eigenvalues and compare the result with the shape obtained via minimization functional method, as developed in a previous study. Further, we’ll observe via simulations the shape of Γ and if it preserves its properties with varying the eigenvalues.

Description: Generating relations involving the special functions have already proved their important role in mathematics and other fields of sciences. In this paper, we aim to provide some presumably new generating relations in connection with the generalized multi-index Bessel–Maitland function Jνjm,qλjm,γ.. The main results presented here, being very general, can yield a number of particular or equivalent identities, some of which are explicitly demonstrated.

Description: As the externalized carrier of intrinsic value, value decision-making is an important factor affecting the social value system. As an old Chinese saying goes, “A friend in need is a friend indeed,” crisis environment provides the background for the conflicts of multiple values, while individual social value orientation (SVO) determines the ranking of the value states. This paper defined the SVO types by means of Slider Measure method on the basis of environment description, constructed a decision-making game model in accordance with SVO differences, and finally analysed the mechanism of people’s decision-making. Taking the epidemic situation as the background, this paper conducted an empirical analysis with the sample of college students. The results showed that the most SVO types of college students were prosocial orientation, followed by individualistic orientation, altruistic orientation, and competitive orientation. In the crisis environment, individual SVO type and decision-making constituted a mapping relationship. There was an equilibrium point in the decision of prosocial orientation, and the dominant decision of altruistic orientation or individualistic orientation is relatively stable.

Description: High heterogeneity and nonuniformly distributed multiscale pore systems are two characteristics of the unconventional reservoirs, which lead to very complex transport mechanisms. Limited by inadequate computational capability and imaging field of view, flow simulation cannot be directly performed on complex pore structures. The traditional methods usually coarsen the grid to reduce the computational load but will lead to the missing microstructure information and inaccurate simulation results. To develop a better understanding of flow properties in unconventional reservoirs, this study proposed a new upscaling method integrated gray lattice Boltzmann method (GLBM) and pore network model (PNM), accounting for the fluid flow in heterogeneous porous media. This method can reasonably reduce the computational loads while preserving certain micropore characteristics. Verifications are conducted by comparing the simulation and experimental results on tight sandstones, and good agreements are achieved. The proposed method is proven to be capable of estimating bulk properties in highly heterogenous unconventional reservoirs. This method could contribute to the development of multiscale pore structure characterizations and enhance the understandings of fluid flow mechanisms in unconventional reservoirs.

Description: To solve the problems of current short-term forecasting methods for metro passenger flow, such as unclear influencing factors, low accuracy, and high time-space complexity, a method for metro passenger flow based on ST-LightGBM after considering transfer passenger flow is proposed. Firstly, using historical data as the training set to transform the problem into a data-driven multi-input single-output regression prediction problem, the problem of the short-term prediction of metro passenger flow is formalized and the difficulties of the problem are identified. Secondly, we extract the candidate temporal and spatial features that may affect passenger flow at a metro station from passenger travel data based on the spatial transfer and spatial similarity of passenger flow. Thirdly, we use a maximal information coefficient (MIC) feature selection algorithm to select the significant impact features as the input. Finally, a short-term forecasting model for metro passenger flow based on the light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) model is established. Taking transfer passenger flow into account, this method has a low space-time cost and high accuracy. The experimental results on the dataset of Lianban metro station in Xiamen city show that the proposed method obtains higher prediction accuracy than SARIMA, SVR, and BP network.

Description: Natural polyphenols contained in olive mill wastewaters (OMW) have been usually associated with great bioactive properties as “antioxidants”. In this work, we recovered the polyphenols after adsorption onto natural clay “ghassoul” by different solvents: water, ethyl acetate, and methanol (PPW, PPA, and PPM, respectively) to avoid environmental pollution. Also, we tested the antioxidant activity of the extracted polyphenols by two methods: 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and total antioxidant capacity (TAC). Then, we analyzed antimicrobial activity by the microdilution technique to determine at the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC). The OMW of the Fez-Meknes region has a very acidic pH, considerable amounts of mineral matter, and a high concentration of polyphenols and organic content. The results of the test from DPPH showed good antiradical potential for polyphenols extracted with water, but the TAC showed an important capacity for all extracts unless PPA. The antibacterial activity is not the same on the four bacteria studied (Escherichia coli, Salmonella sp, Staphylococcus aureus, and Enterococcus faecalis), and all extracts inhibit most tested germs that do not have the same MIC and the same sensitivity. Only the PPW showed the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) that is equal to 0.290 mg/mL for Salmonella sp and Staphylococcus aureus, which confirms that the extraction by water of the adsorbed polyphenols is an original solution to recover the polyphenols and also to obtain a natural phenolic antioxidant which can be used in the pharmaceutical, nourishment, and cosmetic industry.

Description: People are the most important factors of economy and the primary carriers of social culture. Cross-border migration brings economic and cultural impacts to the origin and destination and is also a key to reflect the international relations of related countries. In fact, the migration relationships of countries are complex and multilateral, but most traditional migration models are bilateral. Network theories could provide a better description of global migration to show the structure and statistical characteristics more clearly. Based on the estimated migration data and disparity filter algorithm, the networks describing the global multilateral migration relationships have been extracted among 200 countries over fifty years. The results show that the global migration networks during 1960–2015 exhibit a clustering and disassortative feature, implying globalized and multipolarized changes of migration during these years. The networks were embed into a Poincaré disk, yielding a typical and hierarchical “core-periphery” structure, which is associated with angular density distribution, and has been used to describe the “multicentering” trend since 1990s. Analysis on correlation and evolution of communities indicates the stability of most communities, yet some structural changes still exist since 1990s, which reflect that the important historical events are contributable to regional and even global migration patterns.

Description: Most of the existing knowledge graph embedding models are supervised methods and largely relying on the quality and quantity of obtainable labelled training data. The cost of obtaining high quality triples is high and the data sources are facing a serious problem of data sparsity, which may result in insufficient training of long-tail entities. However, unstructured text encoding entities and relational knowledge can be obtained anywhere in large quantities. Word vectors of entity names estimated from the unlabelled raw text using natural language model encode syntax and semantic properties of entities. Yet since these feature vectors are estimated through minimizing prediction error on unsupervised entity names, they may not be the best for knowledge graphs. We propose a two-phase approach to adapt unsupervised entity name embeddings to a knowledge graph subspace and jointly learn the adaptive matrix and knowledge representation. Experiments on Freebase show that our method can rely less on the labelled data and outperforms the baselines when the labelled data is relatively less. Especially, it is applicable to zero-shot scenario.

Description: With the rapid development of e-commerce, logistic enterprises must better predict customer demand to improve distribution efficiency, so as to deliver goods in advance, which makes logistics stochastic and dynamic. In order to deal with this challenge and respond to the concept of “green logistics,” an electric vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands (EVRPSD) and proactive remedial measures is investigated, and an EVRPSD model with probability constraints is established. At the same time, a hybrid heuristic algorithm, combining a saving method and an improved Tabu search algorithm, is proposed to solve the model. Moreover, two insertion strategies with the greedy algorithm for charging stations and dynamic nodes are introduced. Finally, a large number of experimental data show that the heuristic algorithm proposed in this paper is feasible and effective.

Description: Portfolio investment is adopted by the venture capital to diversify those risks involved in project selection, investing or operating so that the venture capitalist can expect a relatively stable income and lower financing risks. Based on the design of portfolio investment contract with unlimited funds developed by Kanniainen and Keuschnigg, and Inderst et al., this article makes a modification and presents a model given the limitation of funds available for the venture capitalist. It is demonstrated that the marginal benefit of efforts paid by the entrepreneurs exceeds the marginal cost, given the limitation of funds available, which will conduce to a high-level engagement of the entrepreneurs. Thus, by adopting the design of renegotiation contract, the venture capitalist can manage to stimulate the entrepreneurs to make efforts, which is to result in moral hazard reduction.

Description: The fracture development and distribution around the deep soft rock roadway are pivotal to any underground design. In this paper, both field investigation and numerical simulation were taken to study the fracture evolution and rock deformation of a coal mine roadway at Kouzidong mine, Fuyang, Anhui Province, China. Based on the borehole imaging technique, we found an asymmetric distribution of the fracture zone in the surrounding rock of the roadway. By analyzing the C value of the fractures in the borehole images,we found that the fracture interval distribution of the surrounding rock of the tunnel, the number of fractures will fluctuate decrease with the increase of the depth. To effectively study the fracture propagation and distribution of the roadway under longwall retreatment and roadway excavation, the global-local numerical technique was applied via FLAC3D and PFC2D. In the roadway excavation process, fractures were first formed in the shallow section of the roadway and progressively propagated toward the deeper soft rock layer; the main failure mechanism was a tensile failure. During longwall retreatment, fractures continuously developed toward the deeper soft rock layer. However, the failure mechanism transformed to shear failure. From numerical results, it can be seen that the stress concentration at the ribs was released, which led to shear failure at the roof and floor. Due to the extensive tensile cracks in the shallow section, the surrounding rock experienced expansion and fracture. The deep shear failure also induced the formation of the nonadjacent crushing zone and elastic zone, which is in line with the borehole imaging results.

Description: To meet the different requirements in the industrial area, a novel reconfigurable parallel mechanism is proposed based on the spatial multiloop overconstrained mechanism. The configurations can be changed by driving the low-DOF (degree-of-freedom) overconstrained mechanism. The mobility of this mechanism is investigated. And the kinematic model and Jacobian matrix are both established. Based on the Jacobian matrix, the workspace, stiffness, and conditional number are all analyzed. To focus on the application in the industrial area, this paper proposes a method to establish the relationship between the performance and the structural parameters by using the modified BP neural network. Based on this method, the structural parameters can be chosen by the requirements of the special task in the industrial area. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to verify the method.

Description: Huge data on the web come from discussion forums, which contain millions of threads. Discussion threads are a valuable source of knowledge for Internet users, as they have information about numerous topics. The discussion thread related to single topic comprises a huge number of reply posts, which makes it hard for the forum users to scan all the replies and determine the most relevant replies in the thread. At the same time, it is also hard for the forum users to manually summarize the bulk of reply posts in order to get the gist of discussion thread. Thus, automatically extracting the most relevant replies from discussion thread and combining them to form a summary are a challenging task. With this motivation behind, this study has proposed a sentence embedding based clustering approach for discussion thread summarization. The proposed approach works in the following fashion: At first, word2vec model is employed to represent reply sentences in the discussion thread through sentence embeddings/sentence vectors. Next, K-medoid clustering algorithm is applied to group semantically similar reply sentences in order to reduce the overlapping reply sentences. Finally, different quality text features are utilized to rank the reply sentences in different clusters, and then the high-ranked reply sentences are picked out from all clusters to form the thread summary. Two standard forum datasets are used to assess the effectiveness of the suggested approach. Empirical results confirm that the proposed sentence based clustering approach performed superior in comparison to other summarization methods in the context of mean precision, recall, and F-measure.

Description: Silty sand is highly permeable and has a large internal friction angle. To ensure the stable and efficient construction of the Earth pressure balance (EPB) shield in silt stratum, it is necessary to reduce the disturbance to the stratum during tunneling and reduce the risk of spewing and blocking during soil discharge. Thus, a new type of dense slurry-EPB shield construction technology is proposed. Using a custom-made test device, the consolidation tests were conducted on sand after mixing it with different amounts of slurry to study the change in the pore pressure in the mixed soil and sand stratum and analyze the stress transmission rule. In addition, slump tests were conducted on the mixed soil to study the change in the fluidity. Based on the laboratory test results, a field investigation was carried out to study the effects of the amount of slurry addition on the pore pressure in the stratum, the driving parameters, and the sand’s flowability during shield tunneling. The results show that when the amount of slurry reaches a certain value, the filter cake effect occurs. The greater the amount of slurry added during the shield tunneling, the smaller the rate of change of the pore pressure in the stratum. When the amount of BC2 slurry added reached 8 m3 per ring, the rate of change was reduced by 57%, and the slump value improved by 93%. The type of filter cake of the DS-EPB shield was only internal filter cake during tunneling, which reduced the disturbance of the excavation face and improved the flowability of the sand. These results are of great significance to the application and promotion of DS-EPB shields in sandy cobble strata.

Description: Low-permeability reservoirs have tiny pores with winding and complicated pore throats. The oil recovery efficiency of low-permeability reservoirs can be enhanced through the displacement of reservoir oil through imbibition. In the present study, experiments were conducted to investigate variations in the imbibition height of hydrophilic and weakly-hydrophilic rock samples under different interfacial tensions. An imbibition model considering imbibition resistance and bending of pore throats was established based on fractal theory. According to the experimental results, variations in the imbibition height of low-permeability rock samples with time can be divided into three stages. In the first stage, the capillary force plays a dominant role, while the viscous force and gravity have very slight effects. The imbibition height first increases rapidly and then levels off to a constant rate. With the increase in interfacial tension, the imbibition rate in the first stage increases, the ultimate imbibition height increases initially and then decreases, and the contribution of the imbibition height in the first stage to the ultimate imbibition height becomes greater. There is an optimal interfacial tension that causes the ultimate imbibition height to reach its maximum. The calculated results obtained from the proposed imbibition model are consistent with the experimental results, indicating that the model can accurately reflect the change in the imbibition height in low-permeability reservoirs in the first stage.

Description: The Otago Schist in the South Island of New Zealand represents an exhumed Mesozoic accretionary prism. Two coastal areas (Akatore Creek and Bruce Rocks) south of Dunedin preserve structural and geochemical evidence for the development of postmetamorphic hydrothermal systems that involved widespread fluid-rock reaction at shallow crustal depths. The Jurassic to Triassic pumpellyite-actinolite (Akatore Creek) to upper greenschist facies (Bruce Rocks) metamorphic fabrics were crosscut by sets of regionally extensive Cretaceous exhumation joints. Many of the joints were subsequently reactivated to form networks of small-displacement (

Description: Fast factorized backprojection (FFBP) takes advantage of high accuracy of time-domain algorithms while also possessing high efficiency comparable with conventional frequency domain algorithms. When phase errors need to be compensated for high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging, however, neither polar formatted subimages within FFBP flow nor the final Cartesian image formed by FFBP is suitable for phase gradient autofocus (PGA). This is because these kinds of images are not capable of providing PGA with a clear Fourier transform relationship (FTR) between image domain and range-compressed phase history domain. In this paper, we make some essential modifications to the original FFBP and present a scheme to incorporate overlapped-subaperture frame for an accurate PGA processing. The raw data collected by an airborne high-resolution spotlight SAR are used to demonstrate the performance of this algorithm.

Description: The Loess Plateau is one of the most tectonically and seismically active areas in the world. Observations from past strong earthquakes, particularly the Minxian–Zhangxian and Wenchuan earthquakes, have shown distinctive evidence of seismic site effects in the mountainous area of southeastern Gansu province. In this study, seismic damage in the loess areas of southeastern Gansu province induced by these earthquakes was investigated and briefly described. Different types of ground motion were selected, and the one-dimensional equivalent linear method was used for numerical analysis of the ground motion effects in the loess regions. Moreover, seismic response analysis of a typical loess tableland was conducted. The results showed that the seismic responses of a typical loess tableland under different seismic excitations have totally different dynamic characteristics. Moreover, the seismic damage in loess regions was more serious under far-field seismic excitation compared with near-field seismic excitation with the same peak acceleration. Through this study, the quantitative assessment of ground motion effects can be approximately estimated and the mechanism of site amplification effects on ground motion is further explained.

Description: This paper considers the two-player location game in a closed-loop market with quantity competition. Based on the Cournot and Hotelling models, a circle model is established for a closed-loop market in which two players (firms) play a location game under quantity competition. Using a two-stage (location-then-quantity) pattern and backward induction method, the existence of subgame-perfect Nash equilibria is proved for the location game in the circle model with a minimum distance transportation cost function. In addition, sales strategies are proposed for the two players for every local market on the circle when the players are in the equilibrium positions. Finally, an algorithm for simulating the competitive dynamics of the closed-loop market is designed, and two numerical simulations are provided to substantiate the effectiveness of the obtained results.

Description: Widely distributed in North China, Ordovician karst is characterized by having high thickness, nonuniform aquosity, and significant water pressure-bearing properties. Deep mining in North China is threatened by associated water hazards; hence, research on the hydrogeological characteristics of deep Ordovician karst is needed. In this study, the Weibei coalfield in Shaanxi Province, China, was selected as the study area, especially mines in the Hancheng and Chenghe mining areas. In situ experiments, including water pumping, water drainage, water injecting and water pressure, and laboratory experiments, were conducted to study the hydrogeological characteristics of the Ordovician karst top in the study area. A comprehensive analysis was conducted on controlling factors for the development of the Ordovician karst top in the study area, and a method for evaluating the water inrush risk in coal mining areas based on karst hydrogeological characteristics was proposed. The research results indicated that the Ordovician karst top in the study area was characterized by heterogeneity, vertical zonation, and partially filled properties, which were mainly controlled by two factors: sedimentation and tectonism. The hydrogeological conditions of the Ordovician karst could be divided into three types: nonfilled and nonsignificant tectonism, filled and nonsignificant tectonism, and significant tectonism. Among them, the filled and nonsignificant tectonism type Ordovician karst top type had a filling thickness of 20 m. Based on karst hydrogeological characteristics, the methods were proposed to evaluate the water inrush risk in the coal mining floor. The practical tests verified the methods.

Description: Hyperspectral remote sensing technology has a strong capability for ground object detection due to the low spatial resolution of hyperspectral imaging spectrometers. A single pixel that leads to a hyperspectral remote sensing image usually contains more than one feature coverage type, resulting in a mixed pixel. The existence of a mixed pixel affects the accuracy of the ground object identification and classification and hinders the application and development of hyperspectral technology. For the problem of unmixing of mixed pixels in hyperspectral images (HSIs), the linear mixing model can model the mixed pixels well. Through the collation of nearly five years of the literature, this paper introduces the development status and problems of linear unmixing models from four aspects: geometric method, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF), Bayesian method, and sparse unmixing.

Description: It is critical to select an optimized sand control method for an interbedded sandstone and mudstone reservoir (ISMR) due to its serious sand production hazards. However, currently, most general sand control methods cannot meet the requirements of sand control in interbedded sandstone and mudstone reservoirs (e.g., Bohai Bay oil and gas fields from China). Ensuring efficiency of sand control and increasing the oil and gas production rate in this interbedded sandstone and mudstone become more and more important. In this paper, a “multilayer rotatable sand control experimental device” for the interbedded sandstone and mudstone reservoir was developed. A series of sand control experimental studies were conducted by using the proposed device. The net-to-gross ratio (NTG) and well inclinations are two major factors considered in the experimental analysis. In addition, a sensitivity analysis regarding formation particle size distribution (PSD), clay content, and mineral compositions is performed in the experiment under a moderate sand control mode. With systematic experimental test results in this work, combined with numerous existing sand control models, a set of optimum sand control design and the associated optimization template for ISMR were developed, which have been successfully applied in Bohai Bay. Field application results show that NTG and well inclination are two critical parameters in the design of sand control in ISMR. The optimal indexes of a sand control mode are determined as NTG of 0.4 and well inclination of 45°. The introduction of these two key factors in sand control design broadens the application range of moderate sand production.

Description: The paper presents a conceptual design of a 10 MW multipurpose nuclear research reactor (MPRR) loaded with the low-enriched uranium (LEU) VVR-KN fuel type. Neutronics and burnup calculations have been performed using the REBUS-MCNP6 linkage system code and the ENDF/B-VII.0 data library. The core consists of 36 fuel assemblies: 27 standard fuel assemblies and 9 control fuel assemblies with the uranium density of 2.8 gU/cm3 and the 235U enrichment of 19.75 wt.%. The cycle length of the core is 86 effective full-power days with the excess reactivity of 9600 and 1039 pcm at the beginning of cycle and the end of cycle, respectively. The highest power rate and the highest discharged burnup of fuel assembly are 393.49 kW and 56.74% loss of 235U, respectively. Thermal hydraulics analysis has also been conducted using the PLTEMP4.2 code for evaluating the safety parameters at a steady state of the hottest channel. The maximum temperatures of coolant and fuel cladding are 66.0°C and 83.0°C, respectively. This value is lower than the design limit of 98°C for cladding temperature. Thermal fluxes at the vertical irradiation channels and the horizontal beam ports have been evaluated. The maximum thermal fluxes of 2.5 × 1014 and 8.9 ×1013 n·cm−2·s−1 are found at the neutron trap and the beryllium reflector, respectively.

Description: Object tracking based on low-rank sparse learning usually makes the drift phenomenon occur when the target faces severe occlusion and fast motion. In this paper, we propose a novel tracking algorithm via reverse low-rank sparse learning and fractional-order variation regularization. Firstly, we utilize convex low-rank constraint to force the appearance similarity of the candidate particles, so as to prune the irrelevant particles. Secondly, fractional-order variation is introduced to constrain the sparse coefficient difference in the bounded variation space, which allows the difference between consecutive frames to exist, so as to adapt object fast motion. Meanwhile, fractional-order regularization can restrain severe occlusion by considering more adjacent frames information. Thirdly, we employ an inverse sparse representation method to model the relationship between target candidates and target template, which can reduce the computation complexity for online tracking. Finally, an online updating scheme based on alternating iteration is proposed for tracking computation. Experiments on benchmark sequences show that our algorithm outperforms several state-of-the-art methods, especially exhibiting better adaptability for fast motion and severe occlusion.

Description: The scale dependence of surface roughness is critical in characterising the hydromechanical properties of field-scale rock joints but is still not well understood, particularly when different orders of roughness are considered. We experimentally reveal the scale dependence of two-order roughness, i.e., waviness and unevenness through fractal parameters using the triangular prism surface area method (TPM). The surfaces of three natural joints of granite with the same dimension of 1000 mm×1000 mm are digitised using a 3D laser scanner at three different measurement resolutions. Waviness and unevenness are quantitatively separated by considering the area variation of joint surface as grid size changes. The corresponding fractal dimensions of waviness and unevenness in sampling window sizes ranging from 100 mm×100 mm to 1000 mm×1000 mm at an interval of 100 mm×100 mm are determined. We find that both the fractal dimensions of waviness and unevenness vary as the window size increases. No obvious stationarity threshold has been found for the three rock joint samples, indicating the surface roughness of natural rock joints should be quantified at the scale of the rock mass in the field.

Description: In this paper, the multibody parachute-payload system is simplified and analyzed. A six-degree-of-freedom rigid body flight dynamic model is established to calculate the flight trajectory, attitude, velocity, and drop point of the parachute-payload system. Secondly, the random interference factors that may be encountered in the actual airdrop test of the parachute system are analyzed. According to the distribution law of the interference factors, they are introduced into the flight dynamic model. The Monte Carlo method is used to simulate the target and predict the flight trajectory and landing point distribution of the parachute system. The simulation results can provide technical support and theoretical basis for the parachute airdrop test. Finally, the genetic algorithm is used to identify the aerodynamic parameters of the large-scale Disk-Gap-Band parachute. The simulation results are in good agreement with the test results, which shows that the research method proposed in this paper can be applied to study practical engineering problems.

Description: An assessment of uncertainty in flood hydrograph features, e.g., peak discharge and flood volume due to variability in the rainfall-runoff model (HEC-HMS) parameters and rainfall characteristics, e.g., depth and duration, is conducted. Flood hydrographs are generated using a rain pattern generator (RPG) and HEC-HMS models through Monte Carlo simulation considering uncertainty in stochastic variables. The uncertainties in HEC-HMS parameters (e.g., loss, base flow, and unit hydrograph) are estimated using their probability distribution functions. The flood events are obtained by simulating runoff for rainfall events using the generated model parameters. The uncertainties due to rainfall and model parameters on generated flood hydrographs are evaluated using the relative coefficient of variation (RCV). The results reveal a higher RCV index for flood volume (RCV = 153) than peak discharge (RCV = 116) for a 12-hr rainfall duration. The average relative RCV (ARRCV) index computed for hydrological component (e.g., base flow, loss, or unit hydrograph) indicates the highest impact of rainfall depth on flood volume and peak. The results indicate that rainfall depth is the main source of uncertainty of flood peak and volume.

Description: A novel posture motion-based spatiotemporal fused graph convolutional network (PM-STGCN) is presented for skeleton-based action recognition. Existing methods on skeleton-based action recognition focus on independently calculating the joint information in single frame and motion information of joints between adjacent frames from the human body skeleton structure and then combine the classification results. However, that does not take into consideration of the complicated temporal and spatial relationship of the human body action sequence, so they are not very efficient in distinguishing similar actions. In this work, we enhance the ability of distinguishing similar actions by focusing on spatiotemporal fusion and adaptive feature extraction for high discrimination information. Firstly, the local posture motion-based attention (LPM-TAM) module is proposed for the purpose of suppressing the skeleton sequence data with a low amount of motion in the temporal domain, and the representation of motion posture features is concentrated. Besides, the local posture motion-based channel attention module (LPM-CAM) is introduced to make use of the strongly discriminative representation between different action classes of similarity. Finally, the posture motion-based spatiotemporal fusion (PM-STF) module is constructed which fuses the spatiotemporal skeleton data by filtering out the low-information sequence and enhances the posture motion features adaptively with high discrimination. Extensive experiments have been conducted, and the results demonstrate that the proposed model is superior to the commonly used action recognition methods. The designed human-robot interaction system based on action recognition has competitive performance compared with the speech interaction system.

Description: The article addresses the extended Graetz–Nusselt problem in finite-length microchannels for prescribed wall heat flux boundary conditions, including the effects of rarefaction, streamwise conduction, and viscous dissipation. The analytical solution proposed, valid for low-intermediate Peclet values, takes into account the presence of the thermal development region. The influence of all transport parameters (Peclet Pe, Knudsen Kn, and Brinkman Br) and geometrical parameters (entry length and microchannel aspect ratio) is investigated. Performances of different wall heat flux functions have been analyzed in terms of the averaged Nusselt number. In the absence of viscous dissipation Br=0, the best heating protocol is a decreasing wall heat flux function. In the presence of dissipation Br〉0, the best heating protocol is a uniform wall heat flux.

Description: Many people use traditional methods such as quasi-Newton method and Gauss–Newton-based BFGS to solve nonlinear equations. In this paper, we present an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm to solve nonlinear equations. The novel algorithm introduces the historical and local optimum information of particles to update a particle’s velocity. Five sets of typical nonlinear equations are employed to test the quality and reliability of the novel algorithm search comparing with the PSO algorithm. Numerical results show that the proposed method is effective for the given test problems. The new algorithm can be used as a new tool to solve nonlinear equations, continuous function optimization, etc., and the combinatorial optimization problem. The global convergence of the given method is established.

Description: At present, there are two main standards, ISO 23828 : 2013 and SAE J 2572–2014, which prescribe the hydrogen consumption test using the pressure method, gravimetric method, and flow method. However, these methods do not meet the test requirements for electric energy consumption and the range of plug-in hybrid fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) which are the main technical considerations in China and Europe. In this paper, a new test method for the hydrogen consumption, electric energy consumption, and range of FCVs is proposed without the use of additional hydrogen supply, measurement instruments, or energy consumption correction, which can improve the operability of the test and avoid the conversion between electric energy and hydrogen. One plug-in hybrid FCV and one nonplug-in hybrid FCV were tested using the proposed method. The results show that the new method meets the requirements of fuel economy test for FCVs with hydrogen consumption rate, electric energy consumption rate, the range for plug-in hybrid FCVs, hydrogen consumption rate, and the range for nonplug-in FCVs.

Description: Karst collapse pillars (KCPs) frequently cause severe groundwater inrush disasters in coal mining above a confined aquifer. An accurate understanding of the damage and fracture evolution, permeability enhancement, and seepage changes in KCPs under the combined action of mining-induced stress and confined hydraulic pressure is of great significance for the early prediction and prevention of groundwater inrush from KCPs in coal seam floors. In this study, a micromechanics-based coupled stress-seepage-damage (SSD) modeling approach, in which the macroscopic mechanical and hydraulic properties of the rock are explicitly related to the microcrack kinetics, is proposed to simulate the fracture evolution and the associated groundwater flow in KCPs. An in situ high-precision microseismic monitoring technology is used to verify the micromechanical modeling results, which indicate that the numerical model successfully reproduces the damage and fracture evolution in a coal seam floor with a KCP during the mining process. The presented model also provides a visual representation of the complex process of KCP activation and groundwater inrush channel formation. A numerical study shows that the damage and activation of a KCP start from the edge of the KCP, gradually develop toward the interior of the KCP, and eventually connect with the damage fracture zone of the floor, forming a primary water-conducting channel in the KCP, causing the confined groundwater to flow into the working face. Groundwater inrush from a KCP is a gradual process instead of a mutation process. A reduction in the distance between the working face and a KCP and increases in the confined hydraulic pressure and the initial water-conducting height of the KCP can significantly increase the risk of groundwater inrush from the KCP.

Description: Biofilm is a microbial association or community attached to different biotic or abiotic surfaces or environments. These surface-attached microbial communities can be found in food, medical, industrial, and natural environments. Biofilm is a critical problem in the medical sector since it is formed on medical implants within human tissue and involved in a multitude of serious chronic infections. Food and food processing surface become an ideal environment for biofilm formation where there are sufficient nutrients for microbial growth and attachment. Therefore, biofilm formation on these surfaces, especially on food processing surface becomes a challenge in food safety and human health. Microorganisms within a biofilm are encased within a matrix of extracellular polymeric substances that can act as a barrier and recalcitrant for different hostile conditions such as sanitizers, antibiotics, and other hygienic conditions. Generally, they persist and exist in food processing environments where they become a source of cross-contamination and foodborne diseases. The other critical issue with biofilm formation is their antibiotic resistance which makes medication difficult, and they use different physical, physiological, and gene-related factors to develop their resistance mechanisms. In order to mitigate their production and develop controlling methods, it is better to understand growth requirements and mechanisms. Therefore, the aim of this review article is to provide an overview of the role of bacterial biofilms in antibiotic resistance and food contamination and emphasizes ways for controlling its production.

Description: In this paper, a delayed control strategy for a class of nonlinear underactuated fourth-order systems is developed. The proposal is based on the implementation of the tangent linearization technique, differential flatness, and a study of the σ-stabilization of the characteristic equation of the closed-loop system. The tangent linearization technique allows obtaining a local controllability property for the analyzed class of systems. Also, it can reduce the complexity of the global control design, through the use of a cascade connection of two second-order controllers instead of designing a global controller of the fourth-order system. The stabilizing behavior of the delayed controller design is supported by the σ-stability criterion, which provides the controller parameter selection to reach the maximum exponential decay rate on the system response. To illustrate the efficiency of the theoretical results, the proposal is experimentally assessed in two cases of study: a flexible joint system and a pendubot.

Description: According to the waste type identification requirement in waste classification, a waste type identification method based on a bird flock neural network (BFNN) was proposed. The problem of obtaining the feature dataset of waste images was considered, and color histogram and texture feature extraction techniques were used. The local optimum problem of a typical backpropagation neural network (BPNN) was considered, and a bird flock optimization (BFO) algorithm was proposed. The accuracy problem of the typical BPNN was considered, and a new online weight adjustment method of neurons was proposed. The number of hidden layer neurons (nodes) of the typical BPNN was considered, and an online adjustment method was proposed. The experimental results show that the recyclables (paper, plastic, glass, and cloth) and nonrecyclables can effectively be identified by the waste type identification method based on the BFNN, and the recognition accuracy is 81% which meets actual needs.

Description: Recently, knowledge graph embedding methods have attracted numerous researchers’ interest due to their outstanding effectiveness and robustness in knowledge representation. However, there are still some limitations in the existing methods. On the one hand, translation-based representation models focus on conceiving translation principles to represent knowledge from a global perspective, while they fail to learn various types of relational facts discriminatively. It is prone to make the entity congestion of complex relational facts in the embedding space reducing the precision of representation vectors associating with entities. On the other hand, parallel subgraphs extracted from the original graph are used to learn local relational facts discriminatively. However, it probably causes the relational fact damage of the original knowledge graph to some degree during the subgraph extraction. Thus, previous methods are unable to learn local and global knowledge representation uniformly. To that end, we propose a multiview translation learning model, named MvTransE, which learns relational facts from global-view and local-view perspectives, respectively. Specifically, we first construct multiple parallel subgraphs from an original knowledge graph by considering entity semantic and structural features simultaneously. Then, we embed the original graph and construct subgraphs into the corresponding global and local feature spaces. Finally, we propose a multiview fusion strategy to integrate multiview representations of relational facts. Extensive experiments on four public datasets demonstrate the superiority of our model in knowledge graph representation tasks compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Description: A GPU-based Multigroup Genetic Algorithm was proposed, which parallelized the traditional genetic algorithm with a coarse-grained architecture island model. The original population is divided into several subpopulations to simulate different living environments, thus increasing species richness. For each subpopulation, different mutation rates were adopted, and the crossover results were optimized by combining the crossover method based on distance. The adaptive mutation strategy based on the number of generations was adopted to prevent the algorithm from falling into the local optimal solution. An elite strategy was adopted for outstanding individuals to retain their superior genes. The algorithm was implemented with CUDA/C, combined with the powerful parallel computing capabilities of GPUs, which greatly improved the computing efficiency. It provided a new solution to the TSP problem.

Description: A multimode resource-constrained project scheduling problem (MRCPSP) may have multifeasible solutions, due to its nature of targeting multiobjectives. Given the NP-hard MRCPSP and intricate multiobjective algorithms, finding the optimized result among those solutions seems impossible. This paper adopts data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate a series of solutions of an MRCPSP and to find an appropriate choice in an objective way. Our approach is applied to a typical MRCPSP in practice, and the results validate that DEA is an effective and objective method for MRCPSP solution selection.

Description: The study of rock blasting failure pattern is of engineering importance. In order to investigate rock blasting failure pattern with one free boundary, high-speed photography technology is introduced into the two-dimensional granite model. Through high-speed camera images, a crack that originated from spalling is observed and then propagates inward. By using the high-speed digital image correlation method, the full-strain fields on the surface of the specimens are calculated. The preliminary results show that von Mises strain localization appears on the specimen surface near the free boundary. The axial strains near that crack present three kinds of characteristics. There are the joint action areas of the strain localization by analyzing strains in different directions, and the strain localizations are related to the crack propagation. Ultimately, after analysis of the experimental results, the preliminary diagrammatic drawing of rock blasting failure pattern under stress wave action with one free boundary is drawn.

Description: Okanin is a major flavonoid found in Coreopsis tinctoria Nutt., arousing huge interest recently for its considerable biological characteristics including antioxidant, antineurotoxic, and antidiabetic activities. An ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) was successfully used to determine okanin in rat plasma after oral administration of okanin. Bavachalcone acted as an internal standard (IS). By gradient elution, IS and analyte were separated on a C18 column for 7 min at a flow rate of 0.25 mL/min with acetonitrile-0.1% acetic acid mobile phase. The stability, matrix effect, extraction recovery, accuracy, precision, linearity, and selectivity of the method were firstly demonstrated. The major pharmacokinetic parameters of okanin in rat plasma were then measured using the developed UPLC-MS method. An UPLC-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF-MS) was finally established to obtain the specific and accurate mass of okanin in rat plasma after oral administration, and its proposed fragmentation was further elaborated.

Description: A common challenge faced by liner operators in practice is to effectively allocate empty containers now in a way that minimizes the expectation of costs and reduces inefficiencies in the future with uncertainty. To incorporate uncertainties in the operational model, we formulate a two-stage stochastic programming model for the stochastic empty container repositioning (ECR) problem. This paper proposes a separable piecewise linear learning algorithm (SPELL) to approximate the expected cost function. The core of SPELL involves learning steps that provide information for updating the expected cost function adaptively through a sequence of piecewise linear separable approximations. Moreover, SPELL can utilize the network structure of the ECR problem and does not require any information about the distribution of the uncertain parameters. For the two-stage stochastic programs, we prove the convergence of SPELL. Computational results show that SPELL performs well in terms of operating costs. When the scale of the problem is very large and the dimensionality of the problem is increased, SPELL continues to provide consistent performance very efficiently and exhibits excellent convergence performance.

Description: The unstoppable quest for low-cost reinforcing agent gingered the enthusiasm towards developing and utilising the agro-based waste product as reinforcement since they are promptly accessible, sustainable, and inexpensive to purchase. In this study, AA6061/rice husk ash matrix composites were produced through metallurgical stir casting techniques. Different weight percentages of reinforcement in the range of 2%, 4%, 6%, and 8% were used to fabricate the composites. The reinforced composites were characterized by SEM/EDS for microstructural study. The mechanical behaviour was examined for all the produced samples. SEM/EDS analysis revealed the presence of silica, a major constituent of rice husk ash in the produced composites. The results of the mechanical behaviour show that upgrading the weight percentage of reinforcing agent increases the mechanical properties. AA6061/8% rice hush ash generated a consistent rise with filler concentration in comparison with the aluminium alloy in all operating functions.

Description: The rock and soil on the shore of the bank are unsteady and slide in a poor environment, affecting the water body in the river channel and forming landslide-generated tsunamis. This directly impacts the navigation of vessels in the river. In this study, the river course and sailing ships in the Wanzhou section of the Three Gorges Reservoir area were taken as the research objects. Through a physical model test with a large scale ratio, the variation of the water level at the monitoring points in the channel was determined, and the variation law of the water level in the whole channel was derived and converted into a prototype through the scale ratio. A model of the ship’s manoeuvring motion was established, and the ship’s manoeuvring motion characteristics in still water were verified. The correlations between the maximum roll angle and the navigation position, sailing speed, and rudder angle were investigated in detail. A safety risk response theory of navigation in the area of landslide-generated tsunamis was proposed, and a scientific basis was provided for the safe navigation of ships in the Three Gorges Reservoir area.