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This article predicts bending very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) life of three typical nickel-based alloys SM2550, BG2532, and G3 used for completion strings. Fatigue tests were conducted on the three alloys using an ultrasonic fatigue system at a frequency of 20 kHz. The results showed that the fatigue strength ranges of the three alloys were markedly different, reflecting their different sensitivities to fatigue loading. Scanning electron microscope observations revealed numerous fatigue crack origins with internal decohesion in the fatigue source region. To achieve unified prediction of the fatigue life for the three alloys, a prediction model based on deep learning was built with inputs including fatigue initiation quantity, cleavage facet size, and other fatigue fracture characteristics. It was found that single source feature was insufficient to obtain satisfactory prediction accuracy for all alloys, while multifeature coupling integration could significantly improve the prediction precision, enabling reliable prediction of alloy fatigue life. This study provides new insights into bending VHCF life prediction. This article predicts bending VHCF life for three completion strings. Bending VHCF life model utilizing deep wise separable convolution was established. Deep learning can effectively integrate with bending VHCF analyses., Funding Agencies|The 111 Center; Technology Development Project Foundation of PetroChina Southwest Oil and Gas Field CDB Operating Company; The 2023 Open Project of Failure Mechanics and Engineering Disaster Prevention, Key Lab of Sichuan Province [52205182]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [2023NSFSC0916]; Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province [20220303-16]; [FMEDP202303]

Being able to explore and play in quality open spaces in the neighbourhood is crucial for refugee children since refugee facilities often have inadequate playspaces indoors and outdoors. Access to meso-environment playspaces (around refugee accommodations) would provide refugee children with the opportunity for optimal physical, cognitive, emotional and social development and support their social inclusion. This study explores refugee children’s access to play areas in meso environments with six study sites in Berlin. Active space for refugee children’s play is assessed using: (1) open-source data collection, (2) method notions of perceived distance and spaces, (3) staff survey with site investigation and (4) space syntax theories of potential accessibility. Results indicated the fact of unequal playspace distributions for refugee children in Berlin with children-oriented assessment. The utilisation of space syntax in the context of refugee children is relatively unexplored. This study is thereby contributing to the space syntax literature by exploring the broader application potential of its methods. Further studies should broaden study sites with more precise environmental measures.

Background: Previous research have identified built environmental attributes associated with refugee children’s physical activity (PA); however, there is a lack of research focusing on refugee children’s environmental perceptions at the individual level. We examined the perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA. Methods: Perceptions of PA environments by refugee children (n = 15, 6 to 13 years old) and their parents (n = 10) were captured by questionnaires and drawing workshops from one refugee accommodation in Berlin. Besides, photovoice was conducted with three children to obtain an in-depth understanding of their experiences of existing environments for PA. Research was applied between June and July 2019. All research material was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Refugee children and their parents identified micro-environments as the centre of children’s daily PA, they usually played indoors but most parents perceived there was no spaces. In meso environments, children and parents thought there were insufficient spaces and were worried about neighbourhood safety. Furthermore, parents concerned more about ‘space accessibility’ for their children’s playing purposes instead of ‘space quality (e.g., equipment)’ . Children also indicated the importance of informal spaces for their PA. Conclusions: Refugee children perceive a lack of space and safety when attempting to play in the existing micro and meso environments. Related practitioners should focus on providing more play spaces in micro environments and safe access to existing neighbourhood playfields. These efforts can augment much-needed research on strategies to better integrate refuge facilities to their urban context and essential in minimising current health and spatial inequality issues these vulnerable groups face across Germany and worldwide.

Background: Previous research have identified built environmental attributes associated with refugee children’s physical activity (PA); however, there is a lack of research focusing on refugee children’s environmental perceptions at the individual level. We examined the perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA. Methods: Perceptions of PA environments by refugee children (n = 15, 6 to 13 years old) and their parents (n = 10) were captured by questionnaires and drawing workshops from one refugee accommodation in Berlin. Besides, photovoice was conducted with three children to obtain an in-depth understanding of their experiences of existing environments for PA. Research was applied between June and July 2019. All research material was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Refugee children and their parents identified micro-environments as the centre of children’s daily PA, they usually played indoors but most parents perceived there was no spaces. In meso environments, children and parents thought there were insufficient spaces and were worried about neighbourhood safety. Furthermore, parents concerned more about ‘space accessibility’ for their children’s playing purposes instead of ‘space quality (e.g., equipment)’ . Children also indicated the importance of informal spaces for their PA. Conclusions: Refugee children perceive a lack of space and safety when attempting to play in the existing micro and meso environments. Related practitioners should focus on providing more play spaces in micro environments and safe access to existing neighbourhood playfields. These efforts can augment much-needed research on strategies to better integrate refuge facilities to their urban context and essential in minimising current health and spatial inequality issues these vulnerable groups face across Germany and worldwide.

Being able to explore and play in quality open spaces in the neighbourhood is crucial for refugee children since refugee facilities often have inadequate playspaces indoors and outdoors. Access to meso-environment playspaces (around refugee accommodations) would provide refugee children with the opportunity for optimal physical, cognitive, emotional and social development and support their social inclusion. This study explores refugee children’s access to play areas in meso environments with six study sites in Berlin. Active space for refugee children’s play is assessed using: (1) open-source data collection, (2) method notions of perceived distance and spaces, (3) staff survey with site investigation and (4) space syntax theories of potential accessibility. Results indicated the fact of unequal playspace distributions for refugee children in Berlin with children-oriented assessment. The utilisation of space syntax in the context of refugee children is relatively unexplored. This study is thereby contributing to the space syntax literature by exploring the broader application potential of its methods. Further studies should broaden study sites with more precise environmental measures.

Background: Previous research have identified built environmental attributes associated with refugee children’s physical activity (PA); however, there is a lack of research focusing on refugee children’s environmental perceptions at the individual level. We examined the perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA. Methods: Perceptions of PA environments by refugee children (n = 15, 6 to 13 years old) and their parents (n = 10) were captured by questionnaires and drawing workshops from one refugee accommodation in Berlin. Besides, photovoice was conducted with three children to obtain an in-depth understanding of their experiences of existing environments for PA. Research was applied between June and July 2019. All research material was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Refugee children and their parents identified micro-environments as the centre of children’s daily PA, they usually played indoors but most parents perceived there was no spaces. In meso environments, children and parents thought there were insufficient spaces and were worried about neighbourhood safety. Furthermore, parents concerned more about ‘space accessibility’ for their children’s playing purposes instead of ‘space quality (e.g., equipment)’ . Children also indicated the importance of informal spaces for their PA. Conclusions: Refugee children perceive a lack of space and safety when attempting to play in the existing micro and meso environments. Related practitioners should focus on providing more play spaces in micro environments and safe access to existing neighbourhood playfields. These efforts can augment much-needed research on strategies to better integrate refuge facilities to their urban context and essential in minimising current health and spatial inequality issues these vulnerable groups face across Germany and worldwide.

Being able to explore and play in quality open spaces in the neighbourhood is crucial for refugee children since refugee facilities often have inadequate playspaces indoors and outdoors. Access to meso-environment playspaces (around refugee accommodations) would provide refugee children with the opportunity for optimal physical, cognitive, emotional and social development and support their social inclusion. This study explores refugee children’s access to play areas in meso environments with six study sites in Berlin. Active space for refugee children’s play is assessed using: (1) open-source data collection, (2) method notions of perceived distance and spaces, (3) staff survey with site investigation and (4) space syntax theories of potential accessibility. Results indicated the fact of unequal playspace distributions for refugee children in Berlin with children-oriented assessment. The utilisation of space syntax in the context of refugee children is relatively unexplored. This study is thereby contributing to the space syntax literature by exploring the broader application potential of its methods. Further studies should broaden study sites with more precise environmental measures.

Modern additive manufacturing systems still suffer from low fabrication accuracy and speed. This issue is particularly severe for thermal reaction bonding material extrusion systems, where the motion and the deposition processes are coupled. To enhance the deposition accuracy, this work established a method to use real-time in-situ thermal images to capture and compensate for the geometrical accuracy of the printed parts and establish the spatial and temporal relationship between the inaccuracy and the deposition trajectory commands. The paper derives an analytical slender condition to process the printing regions with low curvature while establishing deposition direction allocation methods to account for the trajectory regions with high curvature. Real-time thermal image localization is performed with key printing feature detection and calibration. The localized and calibrated thermal images are aligned with the defined deposition direction to acquire the deposition inaccuracies. With the deposition dynamics considered, the deposition inaccuracy is reduced via dynamic deposition rate compensation. The proposed thermal imaging and compensation techniques have been experimentally verified with a material extrusion experimental platform to illustrate its capabilities to alleviate the deposition inaccuracy during the corner regions. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Learning is crucial for automated negotiation, and recent years have witnessed a remarkable achievement in application of reinforcement learning (RL) for various negotiation tasks. Conventional RL methods focus generally on learning from active interactions with opposing negotiators. However, collecting online data is expensive in many realistic negotiation scenarios. While previous studies partially mitigate this problem through the use of opponent simulators (i.e., agents following known strategies), in reality it is usually hard to fully capture an opponent's negotiation strategy. Moreover, a further challenge lies in an agent's capability of adapting to dynamic variations of an opponent's preferences or strategies, which may happen from time to time for different reasons in subsequent negotiations. In response to these challenges, this article proposes a novel Deep Offline Reinforcement learning Negotiating Agent framework that allows to learn an effective strategy using previously collected negotiation datasets without requiring interaction with an opponent. This is in contrast to existing RL-based negotiation approaches that all rely on active interaction with opponents. Furthermore, the strategy fine-tuning mechanism is included to adjust the learned strategy in response to the preferences or strategy changes of the opponent. The performance of the proposed framework is evaluated based on a diverse set of state-of-the-art baselines under different settings. Experimental results show that the framework allows to learn effective strategies exclusively with offline datasets, and is also capable of effectively adapting to changes of an opponent's preferences or strategy.

While achieving tremendous success, there is still a major issue standing out in the domain of automated negotiation: it is inefficient for a negotiating agent to learn a strategy from scratch when being faced with an unknown opponent. Transfer learning can alleviate this problem by utilizing the knowledge of previously learned policies to accelerate the current task learning. This work presents a novel Transfer Learning based Negotiating Agent (TLNAgent) framework that allows a negotiating agent to transfer previous knowledge from source strategies optimized by deep reinforcement learning, to boost its performance in new tasks. TLNAgent comprises three key components: the negotiation module, the adaptation module and the transfer module. To be specific, the negotiation module is responsible for interacting with the other agent during negotiation. The adaptation module measures the helpfulness of each source policy based on a fusion of two selection mechanisms. The transfer module is based on lateral connections between source and target networks and accelerates the agent’s training by transferring knowledge from the selected source strategy. Our comprehensive experiments clearly demonstrate that TL is effective in the context of automated negotiation, and TLNAgent outperforms state-of-the-art Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC) negotiating agents in various domains.

The additive manufacturing (AM) system today still suffers from low precision, low product stability, low automation level, and low data utilization. The urgent need for enhancements on these fronts leads to the various monitoring and control techniques for AM process. Currently, most existing AM monitoring and corresponding control methods are built on statistical models and used to refine the AM process under a parameter-tuning framework. They help regulate the steady-state or low-frequency behavior in AM process but do not address issues related to AM’s unsteady or dynamic behavior. These unsteady and dynamic behaviors are especially prevalent in high-speed, high-acceleration AM systems with moving parts (e.g., fused filament fabrication, directed energy deposition) and dynamic trajectory regions (e.g., corners). Therefore, in this paper, we proposed a monitoring and control solution that addresses printing inaccuracies with real-time thermal image monitoring. The method depends on a low-order analytical model describing the printed path boundary and an established non-contacting deposition direction. The thermal image observations are thus converted to the dynamic time-domain compensation signals to account for dynamic over-extrusion. The method is verified with a fused filament fabrication printer to alleviate its over-extrusion when printing corners. Copyright © 2023 by ASME.

Background: Previous research have identified built environmental attributes associated with refugee children’s physical activity (PA); however, there is a lack of research focusing on refugee children’s environmental perceptions at the individual level. We examined the perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA. Methods: Perceptions of PA environments by refugee children (n = 15, 6 to 13 years old) and their parents (n = 10) were captured by questionnaires and drawing workshops from one refugee accommodation in Berlin. Besides, photovoice was conducted with three children to obtain an in-depth understanding of their experiences of existing environments for PA. Research was applied between June and July 2019. All research material was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Refugee children and their parents identified micro-environments as the centre of children’s daily PA, they usually played indoors but most parents perceived there was no spaces. In meso environments, children and parents thought there were insufficient spaces and were worried about neighbourhood safety. Furthermore, parents concerned more about ‘space accessibility’ for their children’s playing purposes instead of ‘space quality (e.g., equipment)’ . Children also indicated the importance of informal spaces for their PA. Conclusions: Refugee children perceive a lack of space and safety when attempting to play in the existing micro and meso environments. Related practitioners should focus on providing more play spaces in micro environments and safe access to existing neighbourhood playfields. These efforts can augment much-needed research on strategies to better integrate refuge facilities to their urban context and essential in minimising current health and spatial inequality issues these vulnerable groups face across Germany and worldwide.

Being able to explore and play in quality open spaces in the neighbourhood is crucial for refugee children since refugee facilities often have inadequate playspaces indoors and outdoors. Access to meso-environment playspaces (around refugee accommodations) would provide refugee children with the opportunity for optimal physical, cognitive, emotional and social development and support their social inclusion. This study explores refugee children’s access to play areas in meso environments with six study sites in Berlin. Active space for refugee children’s play is assessed using: (1) open-source data collection, (2) method notions of perceived distance and spaces, (3) staff survey with site investigation and (4) space syntax theories of potential accessibility. Results indicated the fact of unequal playspace distributions for refugee children in Berlin with children-oriented assessment. The utilisation of space syntax in the context of refugee children is relatively unexplored. This study is thereby contributing to the space syntax literature by exploring the broader application potential of its methods. Further studies should broaden study sites with more precise environmental measures.

Video colorization task has recently attracted wide attention. Recent methods mainly work on the temporal consistency in adjacent frames or frames with small interval. However, it still faces severe challenge of the inconsistency between frames with large interval.To address this issue, we propose a novel video colorization framework, which combines semantic correspondence into automatic video colorization to keep long-range consistency. Firstly, a reference colorization network is designed to automatically colorize the first frame of each video, obtaining a reference image to supervise the following whole colorization process. Such automatically colorized reference image can not only avoid labor-intensive and time-consuming manual selection, but also enhance the similarity between reference and grayscale images. Afterwards, a semantic correspondence network and an image colorization network are introduced to colorize a series of the remaining frames with the help of the reference. Each frame is supervised by both the reference image and the immediately colorized preceding frame to improve both short-range and long-range temporal consistency. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method outperforms other methods in maintaining temporal consistency both qualitatively and quantitatively. In the NTIRE 2023 Video Colorization Challenge, our method ranks at the 3rd place in Color Distribution Consistency (CDC) Optimization track.

Exemplar-based image colorization aims to colorize a target grayscale image based on a color reference image, and the key is to establish accurate pixel-level semantic correspondence between these two images. Previous methods search for correspondence across the entire reference image, and this type of global matching is easy to get mismatch. We summarize the difficulties in two aspects: (1) When the reference image only contains a part of objects related to target image, improper correspondence will be established in unrelated regions. (2) It is prone to get mismatch in regions where the shape or texture of the object is easily confused. To overcome these issues, we propose SPColor, a semantic prior guided exemplar-based image colorization framework. Different from previous methods, SPColor first coarsely classifies pixels of the reference and target images to several pseudo-classes under the guidance of semantic prior, then the correspondences are only established locally between the pixels in the same class via the newly designed semantic prior guided correspondence network. In this way, improper correspondence between different semantic classes is explicitly excluded, and the mismatch is obviously alleviated. Besides, to better reserve the color from reference, a similarity masked perceptual loss is designed. Noting that the carefully designed SPColor utilizes the semantic prior provided by an unsupervised segmentation model, which is free for additional manual semantic annotations. Experiments demonstrate that our model outperforms recent state-of-the-art methods both quantitatively and qualitatively on public dataset.

Exemplar-based video colorization is an essential technique for applications like old movie restoration. Although recent methods perform well in still scenes or scenes with regular movement, they always lack robustness in moving scenes due to their weak ability in modeling long-term dependency both spatially and temporally, leading to color fading, color discontinuity or other artifacts. To solve this problem, we propose an exemplar-based video colorization framework with long-term spatiotemporal dependency. To enhance the long-term spatial dependency, a parallelized CNN-Transformer block and a double head non-local operation are designed. The proposed CNN-Transformer block can better incorporate long-term spatial dependency with local texture and structural features, and the double head non-local operation further leverages the performance of augmented feature. While for long-term temporal dependency enhancement, we further introduce the novel linkage subnet. The linkage subnet propagate motion information across adjacent frame blocks and help to maintain temporal continuity. Experiments demonstrate that our model outperforms recent state-of-the-art methods both quantitatively and qualitatively. Also, our model can generate more colorful, realistic and stabilized results, especially for scenes where objects change greatly and irregularly.

Being able to explore and play in quality open spaces in the neighbourhood is crucial for refugee children since refugee facilities often have inadequate playspaces indoors and outdoors. Access to meso-environment playspaces (around refugee accommodations) would provide refugee children with the opportunity for optimal physical, cognitive, emotional and social development and support their social inclusion. This study explores refugee children’s access to play areas in meso environments with six study sites in Berlin. Active space for refugee children’s play is assessed using: (1) open-source data collection, (2) method notions of perceived distance and spaces, (3) staff survey with site investigation and (4) space syntax theories of potential accessibility. Results indicated the fact of unequal playspace distributions for refugee children in Berlin with children-oriented assessment. The utilisation of space syntax in the context of refugee children is relatively unexplored. This study is thereby contributing to the space syntax literature by exploring the broader application potential of its methods. Further studies should broaden study sites with more precise environmental measures.

Background: Previous research have identified built environmental attributes associated with refugee children’s physical activity (PA); however, there is a lack of research focusing on refugee children’s environmental perceptions at the individual level. We examined the perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA. Methods: Perceptions of PA environments by refugee children (n = 15, 6 to 13 years old) and their parents (n = 10) were captured by questionnaires and drawing workshops from one refugee accommodation in Berlin. Besides, photovoice was conducted with three children to obtain an in-depth understanding of their experiences of existing environments for PA. Research was applied between June and July 2019. All research material was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Refugee children and their parents identified micro-environments as the centre of children’s daily PA, they usually played indoors but most parents perceived there was no spaces. In meso environments, children and parents thought there were insufficient spaces and were worried about neighbourhood safety. Furthermore, parents concerned more about ‘space accessibility’ for their children’s playing purposes instead of ‘space quality (e.g., equipment)’ . Children also indicated the importance of informal spaces for their PA. Conclusions: Refugee children perceive a lack of space and safety when attempting to play in the existing micro and meso environments. Related practitioners should focus on providing more play spaces in micro environments and safe access to existing neighbourhood playfields. These efforts can augment much-needed research on strategies to better integrate refuge facilities to their urban context and essential in minimising current health and spatial inequality issues these vulnerable groups face across Germany and worldwide.

Background: Previous research have identified built environmental attributes associated with refugee children’s physical activity (PA); however, there is a lack of research focusing on refugee children’s environmental perceptions at the individual level. We examined the perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA. Methods: Perceptions of PA environments by refugee children (n = 15, 6 to 13 years old) and their parents (n = 10) were captured by questionnaires and drawing workshops from one refugee accommodation in Berlin. Besides, photovoice was conducted with three children to obtain an in-depth understanding of their experiences of existing environments for PA. Research was applied between June and July 2019. All research material was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Refugee children and their parents identified micro-environments as the centre of children’s daily PA, they usually played indoors but most parents perceived there was no spaces. In meso environments, children and parents thought there were insufficient spaces and were worried about neighbourhood safety. Furthermore, parents concerned more about ‘space accessibility’ for their children’s playing purposes instead of ‘space quality (e.g., equipment)’ . Children also indicated the importance of informal spaces for their PA. Conclusions: Refugee children perceive a lack of space and safety when attempting to play in the existing micro and meso environments. Related practitioners should focus on providing more play spaces in micro environments and safe access to existing neighbourhood playfields. These efforts can augment much-needed research on strategies to better integrate refuge facilities to their urban context and essential in minimising current health and spatial inequality issues these vulnerable groups face across Germany and worldwide.

Being able to explore and play in quality open spaces in the neighbourhood is crucial for refugee children since refugee facilities often have inadequate playspaces indoors and outdoors. Access to meso-environment playspaces (around refugee accommodations) would provide refugee children with the opportunity for optimal physical, cognitive, emotional and social development and support their social inclusion. This study explores refugee children’s access to play areas in meso environments with six study sites in Berlin. Active space for refugee children’s play is assessed using: (1) open-source data collection, (2) method notions of perceived distance and spaces, (3) staff survey with site investigation and (4) space syntax theories of potential accessibility. Results indicated the fact of unequal playspace distributions for refugee children in Berlin with children-oriented assessment. The utilisation of space syntax in the context of refugee children is relatively unexplored. This study is thereby contributing to the space syntax literature by exploring the broader application potential of its methods. Further studies should broaden study sites with more precise environmental measures.

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have shown promising potential for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) using deep learning. However, PINNs face training difficulties for evolutionary PDEs, particularly for dynamical systems whose solutions exhibit multi-scale or turbulent behavior over time. The reason is that PINNs may violate the temporal causality property since all the temporal features in the PINNs loss are trained simultaneously. This paper proposes to use implicit time differencing schemes to enforce temporal causality, and use transfer learning to sequentially update the PINNs in space as surrogates for PDE solutions in different time frames. The evolving PINNs are better able to capture the varying complexities of the evolutionary equations, while only requiring minor updates between adjacent time frames. Our method is theoretically proven to be convergent if the time step is small and each PINN in different time frames is well-trained. In addition, we provide state-of-the-art (SOTA) numerical results for a variety of benchmarks for which existing PINNs formulations may fail or be inefficient. We demonstrate that the proposed method improves the accuracy of PINNs approximation for evolutionary PDEs and improves efficiency by a factor of 4-40x., Comment: 23 pages, 20 figures

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are decentralized digital tokens to represent the unique ownership of items. Recently, NFTs have been gaining popularity and at the same time bringing up issues, such as scams, racism, and sexism. Decentralization, a key attribute of NFT, contributes to some of the issues that are easier to regulate under centralized schemes, which are intentionally left out of the NFT marketplace. In this work, we delved into this centralization-decentralization dilemma in the NFT space through mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. Centralization-decentralization dilemma is the dilemma caused by the conflict between the slogan of decentralization and the interests of stakeholders. We first analyzed over 30,000 NFT-related tweets to obtain a high-level understanding of stakeholders' concerns in the NFT space. We then interviewed 15 NFT stakeholders (both creators and collectors) to obtain their in-depth insights into these concerns and potential solutions. Our findings identify concerning issues among users: financial scams, counterfeit NFTs, hacking, and unethical NFTs. We further reflected on the centralization-decentralization dilemma drawing upon the perspectives of the stakeholders in the interviews. Finally, we gave some inferences to solve the centralization-decentralization dilemma in the NFT market and thought about the future of NFT and decentralization., Comment: Accepted by CSCW 2024

There has been recent interest in novel Clifford geometric invariants of linear transformations. This motivates the investigation of such invariants for a certain type of geometric transformation of interest in the context of root systems, reflection groups, Lie groups and Lie algebras: the Coxeter transformations. We perform exhaustive calculations of all Coxeter transformations for $A_8$, $D_8$ and $E_8$ for a choice of basis of simple roots and compute their invariants, using high-performance computing. This computational algebra paradigm generates a dataset that can then be mined using techniques from data science such as supervised and unsupervised machine learning. In this paper we focus on neural network classification and principal component analysis. Since the output -- the invariants -- is fully determined by the choice of simple roots and the permutation order of the corresponding reflections in the Coxeter element, we expect huge degeneracy in the mapping. This provides the perfect setup for machine learning, and indeed we see that the datasets can be machine learned to very high accuracy. This paper is a pump-priming study in experimental mathematics using Clifford algebras, showing that such Clifford algebraic datasets are amenable to machine learning, and shedding light on relationships between these novel and other well-known geometric invariants and also giving rise to analytic results., Comment: v1: 34 pages, 16 Figures, 12 Tables. v2: Typos corrected and some comments added. Matches the author-accepted version for publication in Advances in Applied Clifford Algebras

Studies have shown that refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations, where they face an uncertain transition (wartezustand). Such temporary settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and development. It has been shown that a large proportion of refugee children are not sufficiently physically active. It is possible that the built environment around refugee children hinders them from being active. There is a strong evidence base for neighbourhood environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA. However, this evidence base is unlikely to apply to refugee settlements, as they are unique and different from typical neighbourhood environments. To facilitate refugee children’s PA, it is necessary to identify environmental factors in relevant contexts associated with their PA. The literature review of this dissertation identified a small number of studies on this topic. However, research is still at an early stage, and there is limited understanding of how diverse environmental attributes in and around refugee accommodations are related to children’s PA levels. The dissertation, therefore, examined the following three research questions, each focusing on distinct aspects of refugee settlements: a. What are micro-environmental characteristics of refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? b. What are meso- environmental characteristics around refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? c. What are perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA in/around refugee accommodations, from both parents’ and children’s perspectives? Six refugee accommodations in Berlin were selected as primary study sites. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to investigate the abovementioned research questions. For research questions a and b, space syntax was mainly used to investig

Zhuang J, Chen S, Hu Y, Yang F, Huo Q, Xie N. Int J Nanomedicine. 2021;16:1691—1976. At the authors request, The Editor and Publisher of International Journal of Nanomedicine wish to retract the published article. Concerns were raised following the authors request to remove images of lung metastatic nodules from Figure 7C. It was found images in Figure 7D appeared to have been duplicated with those from a similar article from the first author, Jialang Zhuang et al. Utilizing a high-throughput microdevice to study breast tumor cells clustering and metastasis, Analytica Chimica Acta 1151, 2021 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aca.2021.338222). Specifically, Figure 7D Saline, appears to have been duplicated with the same image in Figure 3F MDA-MB-231 Control, from Jialang Zhuang et al, 2021. Figure 7D MSN@Dox+siTIE2, appears to have been duplicated with the same image in Figure 3F MDA-MB-231 SB273005, from Jialang Zhuang et al, 2021. Figure 7D MSN-siTIE2/Apt@Dox, appears to have been duplicated with the same image in Figure 3F MCF-7, from Jialang Zhuang et al, 2021. The authors responded to our queries and explained the images were mistakenly duplicated during figure preparation by the first author, who accepts responsibility for this error. The authors provided data for the study, but it was not satisfactory. Both the Editor and authors agreed to retract the article and the authors wish to apologize for this error. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”. This retraction relates to this paper

Amoebae from tropical geometry and the Mahler measure from number theory play important roles in quiver gauge theories and dimer models. Their dependencies on the coefficients of the Newton polynomial closely resemble each other, and they are connected via the Ronkin function. Genetic symbolic regression methods are employed to extract the numerical relationships between the 2d and 3d amoebae components and the Mahler measure. We find that the volume of the bounded complement of a d-dimensional amoeba is related to the gas phase contribution to the Mahler measure by a degree-d polynomial, with d = 2 and 3. These methods are then further extended to numerical analyses of the non-reflexive Mahler measure. Furthermore, machine learning methods are used to directly learn the topology of 3d amoebae, with strong performance. Additionally, analytic expressions for boundaries of certain amoebae are given., Comment: 45 pages; 33 Figures

Studies have shown that refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations, where they face an uncertain transition (wartezustand). Such temporary settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and development. It has been shown that a large proportion of refugee children are not sufficiently physically active. It is possible that the built environment around refugee children hinders them from being active. There is a strong evidence base for neighbourhood environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA. However, this evidence base is unlikely to apply to refugee settlements, as they are unique and different from typical neighbourhood environments. To facilitate refugee children’s PA, it is necessary to identify environmental factors in relevant contexts associated with their PA. The literature review of this dissertation identified a small number of studies on this topic. However, research is still at an early stage, and there is limited understanding of how diverse environmental attributes in and around refugee accommodations are related to children’s PA levels. The dissertation, therefore, examined the following three research questions, each focusing on distinct aspects of refugee settlements: a. What are micro-environmental characteristics of refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? b. What are meso- environmental characteristics around refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? c. What are perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA in/around refugee accommodations, from both parents’ and children’s perspectives? Six refugee accommodations in Berlin were selected as primary study sites. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to investigate the abovementioned research questions. For research questions a and b, space syntax was mainly used to investig

Refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations with limited space and limited access to communal facilities. Such environmental settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and social inclusion. While there is a strong evidence base for environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA, only a few studies have focused on refugee children. This article presents an exploratory study on the spatial characteristics of six refugee accommodations in Berlin and their relation to school-aged refugee children’s opportunities to engage in PA. Micro-environmental attributes included building typology and availability, size, and access to communal PA spaces using Space Syntax. PA opportunities were assessed using staff surveys, interviews, and field trips. Results indicated that none of the case studies provided a comprehensive range of PA opportunities. They also revealed unequal access within the facilities. Whereas the role of size was inconsistent, vital predictors included fewer floors and corridors with easy access to internal and external PA spaces. Our recommendations include prioritizing compact buildings with moderate heights when retrofitting existing facilities and raising awareness for the importance of active play for this vulnerable group.

Refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations with limited space and limited access to communal facilities. Such environmental settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and social inclusion. While there is a strong evidence base for environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA, only a few studies have focused on refugee children. This article presents an exploratory study on the spatial characteristics of six refugee accommodations in Berlin and their relation to school-aged refugee children’s opportunities to engage in PA. Micro-environmental attributes included building typology and availability, size, and access to communal PA spaces using Space Syntax. PA opportunities were assessed using staff surveys, interviews, and field trips. Results indicated that none of the case studies provided a comprehensive range of PA opportunities. They also revealed unequal access within the facilities. Whereas the role of size was inconsistent, vital predictors included fewer floors and corridors with easy access to internal and external PA spaces. Our recommendations include prioritizing compact buildings with moderate heights when retrofitting existing facilities and raising awareness for the importance of active play for this vulnerable group.

Studies have shown that refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations, where they face an uncertain transition (wartezustand). Such temporary settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and development. It has been shown that a large proportion of refugee children are not sufficiently physically active. It is possible that the built environment around refugee children hinders them from being active. There is a strong evidence base for neighbourhood environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA. However, this evidence base is unlikely to apply to refugee settlements, as they are unique and different from typical neighbourhood environments. To facilitate refugee children’s PA, it is necessary to identify environmental factors in relevant contexts associated with their PA. The literature review of this dissertation identified a small number of studies on this topic. However, research is still at an early stage, and there is limited understanding of how diverse environmental attributes in and around refugee accommodations are related to children’s PA levels. The dissertation, therefore, examined the following three research questions, each focusing on distinct aspects of refugee settlements: a. What are micro-environmental characteristics of refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? b. What are meso- environmental characteristics around refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? c. What are perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA in/around refugee accommodations, from both parents’ and children’s perspectives? Six refugee accommodations in Berlin were selected as primary study sites. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to investigate the abovementioned research questions. For research questions a and b, space syntax was mainly used to investig

Refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations with limited space and limited access to communal facilities. Such environmental settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and social inclusion. While there is a strong evidence base for environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA, only a few studies have focused on refugee children. This article presents an exploratory study on the spatial characteristics of six refugee accommodations in Berlin and their relation to school-aged refugee children’s opportunities to engage in PA. Micro-environmental attributes included building typology and availability, size, and access to communal PA spaces using Space Syntax. PA opportunities were assessed using staff surveys, interviews, and field trips. Results indicated that none of the case studies provided a comprehensive range of PA opportunities. They also revealed unequal access within the facilities. Whereas the role of size was inconsistent, vital predictors included fewer floors and corridors with easy access to internal and external PA spaces. Our recommendations include prioritizing compact buildings with moderate heights when retrofitting existing facilities and raising awareness for the importance of active play for this vulnerable group.

Zhuang J, Chen S, Hu Y, Yang F, Huo Q, Xie N. Int J Nanomedicine. 2021;16:1691—1976. At the authors request, The Editor and Publisher of International Journal of Nanomedicine wish to retract the published article. Concerns were raised following the authors request to remove images of lung metastatic nodules from Figure 7C. It was found images in Figure 7D appeared to have been duplicated with those from a similar article from the first author, Jialang Zhuang et al. Utilizing a high-throughput microdevice to study breast tumor cells clustering and metastasis, Analytica Chimica Acta 1151, 2021 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aca.2021.338222). Specifically, Figure 7D Saline, appears to have been duplicated with the same image in Figure 3F MDA-MB-231 Control, from Jialang Zhuang et al, 2021. Figure 7D MSN@Dox+siTIE2, appears to have been duplicated with the same image in Figure 3F MDA-MB-231 SB273005, from Jialang Zhuang et al, 2021. Figure 7D MSN-siTIE2/Apt@Dox, appears to have been duplicated with the same image in Figure 3F MCF-7, from Jialang Zhuang et al, 2021. The authors responded to our queries and explained the images were mistakenly duplicated during figure preparation by the first author, who accepts responsibility for this error. The authors provided data for the study, but it was not satisfactory. Both the Editor and authors agreed to retract the article and the authors wish to apologize for this error. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”. This retraction relates to this paper

Refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations with limited space and limited access to communal facilities. Such environmental settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and social inclusion. While there is a strong evidence base for environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA, only a few studies have focused on refugee children. This article presents an exploratory study on the spatial characteristics of six refugee accommodations in Berlin and their relation to school-aged refugee children’s opportunities to engage in PA. Micro-environmental attributes included building typology and availability, size, and access to communal PA spaces using Space Syntax. PA opportunities were assessed using staff surveys, interviews, and field trips. Results indicated that none of the case studies provided a comprehensive range of PA opportunities. They also revealed unequal access within the facilities. Whereas the role of size was inconsistent, vital predictors included fewer floors and corridors with easy access to internal and external PA spaces. Our recommendations include prioritizing compact buildings with moderate heights when retrofitting existing facilities and raising awareness for the importance of active play for this vulnerable group.

Studies have shown that refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations, where they face an uncertain transition (wartezustand). Such temporary settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and development. It has been shown that a large proportion of refugee children are not sufficiently physically active. It is possible that the built environment around refugee children hinders them from being active. There is a strong evidence base for neighbourhood environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA. However, this evidence base is unlikely to apply to refugee settlements, as they are unique and different from typical neighbourhood environments. To facilitate refugee children’s PA, it is necessary to identify environmental factors in relevant contexts associated with their PA. The literature review of this dissertation identified a small number of studies on this topic. However, research is still at an early stage, and there is limited understanding of how diverse environmental attributes in and around refugee accommodations are related to children’s PA levels. The dissertation, therefore, examined the following three research questions, each focusing on distinct aspects of refugee settlements: a. What are micro-environmental characteristics of refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? b. What are meso- environmental characteristics around refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? c. What are perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA in/around refugee accommodations, from both parents’ and children’s perspectives? Six refugee accommodations in Berlin were selected as primary study sites. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to investigate the abovementioned research questions. For research questions a and b, space syntax was mainly used to investig

Studies have shown that refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations, where they face an uncertain transition (wartezustand). Such temporary settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and development. It has been shown that a large proportion of refugee children are not sufficiently physically active. It is possible that the built environment around refugee children hinders them from being active. There is a strong evidence base for neighbourhood environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA. However, this evidence base is unlikely to apply to refugee settlements, as they are unique and different from typical neighbourhood environments. To facilitate refugee children’s PA, it is necessary to identify environmental factors in relevant contexts associated with their PA. The literature review of this dissertation identified a small number of studies on this topic. However, research is still at an early stage, and there is limited understanding of how diverse environmental attributes in and around refugee accommodations are related to children’s PA levels. The dissertation, therefore, examined the following three research questions, each focusing on distinct aspects of refugee settlements: a. What are micro-environmental characteristics of refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? b. What are meso- environmental characteristics around refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? c. What are perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA in/around refugee accommodations, from both parents’ and children’s perspectives? Six refugee accommodations in Berlin were selected as primary study sites. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to investigate the abovementioned research questions. For research questions a and b, space syntax was mainly used to investig

Studies have shown that refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations, where they face an uncertain transition (wartezustand). Such temporary settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is essential for their health and development. It has been shown that a large proportion of refugee children are not sufficiently physically active. It is possible that the built environment around refugee children hinders them from being active. There is a strong evidence base for neighbourhood environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA. However, this evidence base is unlikely to apply to refugee settlements, as they are unique and different from typical neighbourhood environments. To facilitate refugee children’s PA, it is necessary to identify environmental factors in relevant contexts associated with their PA. The literature review of this dissertation identified a small number of studies on this topic. However, research is still at an early stage, and there is limited understanding of how diverse environmental attributes in and around refugee accommodations are related to children’s PA levels. The dissertation, therefore, examined the following three research questions, each focusing on distinct aspects of refugee settlements: a. What are micro-environmental characteristics of refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? b. What are meso- environmental characteristics around refugee accommodations associated with refugee children’s PA? c. What are perceived environmental barriers and facilitators of refugee children’s PA in/around refugee accommodations, from both parents’ and children’s perspectives? Six refugee accommodations in Berlin were selected as primary study sites. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to investigate the abovementioned research questions. For research questions a and b, space syntax was mainly used to investig

Coalitional games can be used to model a variety of problems in the real world. In coalitional game theory, how players form coalitions and divide payoffs is one fundamental issue to be answered. This demo presents an online negotiation environment for coalitional games (ONECG), in which coalitional negotiation can be conduced in a distributed way between people, agents, or in mixed settings via offer exchange and natural language communication. ONECG also allows configuration of specifications of coalitional games, and supports the rapid development of new negotiating agents through a set of well-defined APIs. This new environment is helpful to facilitate research on training human negotiation skills in coalitional games as well as the design of negotiation agents.

Research has identified built environmental attributes associated with children’s physical activity (PA); however, less is known for environmental correlates of refugee children’s PA. This narrative review summarised the current evidence of associations between built environment attributes and refugee children’s PA. Six databases were searched with three sets of terms related to exposure (built environment); outcome (PA); and target population (refugee children aged 6–12 years). Eight studies (one quantitative; seven qualitative) met the inclusion criteria. Key PA barriers were limited play space and lack of neighbourhood safety. Design of refugee facilities and surrounding environments should provide better access to formal, informal and safe spaces for children’s play.

This paper has been retracted.Jialang Zhuang,1,2,* Siqi Chen,1,3,* Ye Hu,1 Fan Yang,1 Qin Huo,1 Ni Xie1 1Biobank, Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518035, People’s Republic of China; 2Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, 518035, People’s Republic of China; 3Graduate School of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, 510182, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Ni Xie Email xn100@szu.edu.cnIntroduction: Metastatic breast cancer seriously harms women’s health and is currently the tumour type with the highest mortality rate in women. Recently, the combinatorial therapeutic approaches that integrate anti-cancer drugs and genetic agents is an attractive and promising strategy for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Moreover, such a combination strategy requires better drug carriers that can effectively deliver the cargo to the breast cancer cells and achieve controlled release in the cells to achieve better therapeutic effects.Methods: The tumour-targeted and redox-responsive mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) functionalised with DNA aptamers (AS1411) as a co-delivery system was developed and investigated for the potential against metastatic breast cancer. Doxorubicin (Dox) was loaded onto the MSNs, while AS1411 and a small interfering RNA (siTIE2) were employed as gatekeepers via attachment to the MSNs with redox-sensitive disulfide bonds.Results: The controlled release of Dox and siTIE2 was associated with intracellular glutathione. AS1411 mediated the targeted delivery of Dox by increasing its cellular uptake in metastatic breast cancer, ultimately resulting in a lower IC50 in MDA-MB-231 cells (human breast cancer cell line with high metastatic potency), improved biodistribution in tumour-bearing mice, and enhanced in vivo anti-tumour effects. The in v

Research has identified built environmental attributes associated with children’s physical activity (PA); however, less is known for environmental correlates of refugee children’s PA. This narrative review summarised the current evidence of associations between built environment attributes and refugee children’s PA. Six databases were searched with three sets of terms related to exposure (built environment); outcome (PA); and target population (refugee children aged 6–12 years). Eight studies (one quantitative; seven qualitative) met the inclusion criteria. Key PA barriers were limited play space and lack of neighbourhood safety. Design of refugee facilities and surrounding environments should provide better access to formal, informal and safe spaces for children’s play.

Research has identified built environmental attributes associated with children’s physical activity (PA); however, less is known for environmental correlates of refugee children’s PA. This narrative review summarised the current evidence of associations between built environment attributes and refugee children’s PA. Six databases were searched with three sets of terms related to exposure (built environment); outcome (PA); and target population (refugee children aged 6–12 years). Eight studies (one quantitative; seven qualitative) met the inclusion criteria. Key PA barriers were limited play space and lack of neighbourhood safety. Design of refugee facilities and surrounding environments should provide better access to formal, informal and safe spaces for children’s play.

This paper has been retracted.Jialang Zhuang,1,2,* Siqi Chen,1,3,* Ye Hu,1 Fan Yang,1 Qin Huo,1 Ni Xie1 1Biobank, Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518035, People’s Republic of China; 2Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, 518035, People’s Republic of China; 3Graduate School of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, 510182, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Ni Xie Email xn100@szu.edu.cnIntroduction: Metastatic breast cancer seriously harms women’s health and is currently the tumour type with the highest mortality rate in women. Recently, the combinatorial therapeutic approaches that integrate anti-cancer drugs and genetic agents is an attractive and promising strategy for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Moreover, such a combination strategy requires better drug carriers that can effectively deliver the cargo to the breast cancer cells and achieve controlled release in the cells to achieve better therapeutic effects.Methods: The tumour-targeted and redox-responsive mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) functionalised with DNA aptamers (AS1411) as a co-delivery system was developed and investigated for the potential against metastatic breast cancer. Doxorubicin (Dox) was loaded onto the MSNs, while AS1411 and a small interfering RNA (siTIE2) were employed as gatekeepers via attachment to the MSNs with redox-sensitive disulfide bonds.Results: The controlled release of Dox and siTIE2 was associated with intracellular glutathione. AS1411 mediated the targeted delivery of Dox by increasing its cellular uptake in metastatic breast cancer, ultimately resulting in a lower IC50 in MDA-MB-231 cells (human breast cancer cell line with high metastatic potency), improved biodistribution in tumour-bearing mice, and enhanced in vivo anti-tumour effects. The in v

Research has identified built environmental attributes associated with children’s physical activity (PA); however, less is known for environmental correlates of refugee children’s PA. This narrative review summarised the current evidence of associations between built environment attributes and refugee children’s PA. Six databases were searched with three sets of terms related to exposure (built environment); outcome (PA); and target population (refugee children aged 6–12 years). Eight studies (one quantitative; seven qualitative) met the inclusion criteria. Key PA barriers were limited play space and lack of neighbourhood safety. Design of refugee facilities and surrounding environments should provide better access to formal, informal and safe spaces for children’s play.

Research has identified built environmental attributes associated with children’s physical activity (PA); however, less is known for environmental correlates of refugee children’s PA. This narrative review summarised the current evidence of associations between built environment attributes and refugee children’s PA. Six databases were searched with three sets of terms related to exposure (built environment); outcome (PA); and target population (refugee children aged 6–12 years). Eight studies (one quantitative; seven qualitative) met the inclusion criteria. Key PA barriers were limited play space and lack of neighbourhood safety. Design of refugee facilities and surrounding environments should provide better access to formal, informal and safe spaces for children’s play.

Qianqian Cheng,1 Xiaodi Feng,1 Qi Meng,1,2 Yaqi Li,1 Siqi Chen,1 Guoen Wang,1 Ke Nie1 1School of Chinese Materia Medica, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province 510006, People’s Republic of China; 2School of Chinese Medicine, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan, Shandong Province 250355, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Ke NieSchool of Chinese Materia Medica, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, 280 Waihuan East Road, Panyu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province 510006, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 203 935 2557Email nicknk@hotmail.comPurpose: [6]-gingerol is a bioactive compound extracted from ginger, a traditional anti-emetic herb in Chinese medicine. Previous studies have demonstrated that [6]-gingerol can ameliorate chemotherapy-induced pica in rats, although the underlying mechanism has not been elucidated. This study is designed to investigate [6]-gingerol’s antiemetic mechanism focusing on the 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin, 5-HT) system by evaluating the synthesis, metabolism and reuptake of 5-HT, as well as the mechanism of 5-hydroxytryptamine type 3 receptor (5-HT3 receptor), in a cisplatin-induced pica model of rats.Methods: Rats were randomly divided into control group (vehicle + saline, Con), [6]-gingerol control group (50 mg/kg [6]-gingerol + saline, G-con), ondansetron control group (2.6 mg/kg ondansetron + saline, O-con), cisplatin model group (vehicle + cisplatin, Model), ondansetron-treated group (2.6 mg/kg ondansetron + cisplatin, O-treated), high dosage of [6]-gingerol-treated group (100 mg/kg [6]-gingerol + cisplatin, GH-treated), and low dosage of [6]-gingerol-treated group (50 mg/kg [6]-gingerol + cisplatin, GL-treated). The rats were administered with [6]-gingerol, ondansetron, and vehicle (3% Tween-80) by gavage twice (7:00 AM and 7:00 PM). One hour after the first treatment (8:00 AM), rats in groups Model, O-treated, GH-treated and GL-tre

Automated negotiation has been gained a mass of attention mainly because of its broad application potential in many fields. This work studies a prominent class of automated negotiations – multi-lateral multi-issue negotiations under real-time constraints, where the negotiation agents are given no prior information about their opponents’ preferences over the negotiation outcome space. A novel negotiation approach is proposed that enables an agent to obtain efficient agreements in this challenging multi-lateral negotiations. The proposed approach achieves that goal by, (1) employing sparse pseudo-input Gaussian processes (SPGPs) to model opponents, (2) learning fuzzy opponent preferences to increase the satisfaction of other parties, and (3) adopting an adaptive decision-making mechanism to handle uncertainty in negotiation.

Coalitional games can be used to model a variety of problems in the real world. In coalitional game theory, how players form coalitions and divide payoffs is one fundamental issue to be answered. This demo presents an online negotiation environment for coalitional games (ONECG), in which coalitional negotiation can be conduced in a distributed way between people, agents, or in mixed settings via offer exchange and natural language communication. ONECG also allows configuration of specifications of coalitional games, and supports the rapid development of new negotiating agents through a set of well-defined APIs. This new environment is helpful to facilitate research on training human negotiation skills in coalitional games as well as the design of negotiation agents.

Negotiation is any process through which the players on their own try to reach an agreement. It is a task that has a broad spectrum of practical applications to a variety of social, economic, and politic phenomena. When it comes to complicated problems such as negotiations with a large number of issues, finding good agreements is however a tough challenge for human beings, especially in the case that they lack negotiation experience, opponent information, and the available negotiation time is limited. In order to overcome these limitations, there exists considerable interest in automating their negotiation process by means of software agents to assist humans in the decision-making process. Automated negotiation therefore provides people with a realistic alternative solution. This chapter first overviews forms, protocols, and three main approaches of automated negotiation, namely, heuristic, game theoretic, and argumentation approaches. Then, the focus is on the study of complex practical negotiation — multiissue negotiation that runs under real-time constraints and in which the negotiating agents have no prior knowledge about their opponents’ preferences and strategies. Finally, two classes of state-of-the-art negotiation agents for complex negotiation are presented, namely, the agents based on regression techniques and the agents based on transfer learning to support its decision-making process during negotiation.