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It is important to sufficiently guarantee an automotive system's safety, because otherwise terrible consequences may happen. Generally the safety in an automotive system includes two aspects: reliability and timeliness. Previous studies have proposed many approaches to how to improve them. However, few of them consider the development cost along with their improvement. In this study, we aim to propose a method that can build a safety-guaranteed and development cost-minimized schedule for functionality modeled as a directed acyclic graph running on an automotive system. Unlike previous studies that tightly couple the development cost minimization with other requirements together, we start by building a schedule with the minimum development cost by ignoring safety requirement. Then, reliability and real-time requirements are subsequently taken into consideration. Together with automotive safety integrity level decomposition options provided by International Standard called ISO 26262, the decomposition is evaluated for each task to improve its safety, and tasks are then successively chosen to adjust the schedule, such that its safety can be maximized with incurring the least extra development cost. This procedure continues until a schedule that meets safety requirement is built. Experiments on a real-life automotive benchmark and extensive synthetic functionality demonstrate that our proposed heuristics outperform the state-of-the-art heuristic algorithm, and a typical intelligent optimization algorithm.

The aim of this work was to examine the impact of equilibrium judgment criteria on adsorption test of samples with different adsorption kinetics and determine how long it takes for different particle size samples to attain equilibrium adsorption data. The adsorption data of coal samples with three different particle sizes was obtained by manometric method at the different time intervals. High pressure CH4 adsorption equilibrium measurements and low pressure N2 and CO2 adsorption measurements were carried out for coal samples of eight various particle sizes. The results demonstrated that both the equilibrium and disequilibrium adsorption data satisfied the Langmuir equation. The Langmuir volume (VL) increased on the equilibrium time increase and it became more remarkable with increasing particle size. The Langmuir pressure (PL) showed an opposite and more obvious trend. When the particle size of the coal sample decreased from 2 to 4 to

This paper demonstrates the analysis of a long-distance high-power microwave wireless power transmission (MWPT) system based on asymmetrical resonant magnetron and cyclotron-wave rectifier. In the system, the novel magnetron with the asymmetrical resonant cavity, the straps, and the output loop coupling circuit can effectively promote the beam–wave interaction, suppress the mode competition, and enhance the output coupling, which results in a 400 kW output microwave power with a conversion efficiency of 45%. The transceiver Cassegrain antenna system with its simple structure, high conversion efficiency, and high power capacity can attain an integral power transmission efficiency of 2.6% at 10 km distance. The cyclotron-wave rectifier with high efficiency and single-tube high power capacity can achieve 85% microwave to DC conversion efficiency. Finally, the long-distance high-power MWPT system can achieve 8.5 kW DC power with about 1% DC–DC transmission efficiency at the operating 2.45 GHz frequency and for the 10 km distance. Such a system is likely a potential and attracting solution to remotely power the fuel-free aerial vehicle from the ground, can also provide electrical power to an isolated mountain top or an island, and even an alternative to transmit the power from space solar power satellite in geostationary orbit to the ground.

Achieving the high accuracy of blind roads and crosswalks recognition is important for blind guiding equipment to help blind people sense the surrounding environment. A lightweight semantic segmentation network is proposed to quickly and accurately segment blind roads and crosswalks in a complex road environment. Specifically, a lightweight network with depthwise separable convolution as a component is used as a basic module to reduce the number of parameters of the model and increase the speed of semantic segmentation. In order to ensure the segmentation accuracy of the network, we use a densely connected atrous spatial pyramid pooling module to extract feature information of different angles and context feature modules to enhance the effectiveness of different levels of feature information fusion. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we collect and produce a data set from a real environment, which contains two objects of blind roads and crosswalks 1 . Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to some state-of-the-art approaches, the proposed approach greatly improves the segmentation speed, while achieving better or similar accuracy, which shows that the proposed approach provides a better basis for the application of devices for guiding the blind. 1 https://github.com/qweawq/Blind-road-and-crosswalk-dataset

A high output power and high-efficiency ${L}$ -band inverted relativistic magnetron (IRM) driven by a virtual cathode (VC) is proposed. By switching the configuration of cathode and anode, a greater magnitude of current could be generated from an external annular emission surface. In order to excite the desired mode more efficiently and enhance the mode stability, the emitting region is divided into eight azimuthally periodic parts. The prolonged VC is formed in the interaction region by dc electric field directly. The particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation demonstrates that the proposed IRM could generate an output a TM01 mode with a microwave power of 1.97 GW for a diode voltage of 600 kV and a uniform guiding magnetic field of 0.18 T. Comparing with IRM with an emission surface inside the interaction region, the power conversion efficiency is improved from 18% to 86%.

A compact relativistic magnetron (RM) system with diffraction output is proposed, whose novelty lies in the omnidirectional radiation through the slotted waveguide array antenna. In the array antenna, a periodically slotted ridged circular waveguide is employed to obtain omnidirectional radiation and decrease its radius. Meanwhile, the RF field is directly coupling and radiating without complex mode conversion. Moreover, the interaction resonant system applies a ten-cavity rising-sun slow-wave structure to optimize the dispersion characteristics of the operating mode. The particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate that the RM could achieve 70% device efficiency and gigawatt radiation with an operating voltage of 400 kV. Besides, the output RF field is omnidirectional radiating with a gain up to 12.77 dBi at the operating frequency of 1.32 GHz, which is likely to be used in the high-power microwave area defense.

Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased risks of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Nevertheless, the mechanisms remain unknown. This study analyzed the correlations between vitamin D levels and inflammation in COPD patients. One hundred and one patients with COPD and 202 control subjects were enrolled. Serum 25(OH)D level and inflammatory cytokines were detected. Serum 25(OH)D was decreased and inflammatory cytokines were increased in COPD patients. According to forced expiratory volume in 1 s, COPD patients were divided into three grades. Furthermore, serum 25(OH)D was gradually decreased in COPD patients ranging from grade 1–2 to 4. Serum 25(OH)D was inversely associated with inflammatory cytokines in COPD patients. Further analysis found that NF-κB and AP-1 signaling were activated in COPD patients. Besides, inflammatory signaling was gradually increased in parallel with the severity of COPD. By contrast, pulmonary nuclear vitamin D receptor was decreased in COPD patients. In vitro experiments showed that 1,25(OH)2D3 inhibited LPS-activated inflammatory signaling in A549 cells (human lung adenocarcinoma cell). Mechanically, 1,25(OH)2D3 reinforced physical interactions between vitamin D receptor with NF-κB p65 and c-Jun. Our results indicate that vitamin D is inversely correlated with inflammatory signaling in COPD patients. Inflammation may be a vital mediator of COPD progress in patients with low vitamin D levels.

The poor outcomes in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) necessitate new treatments. Recent studies emphasize anisomycin as a promising anti-cancer drug candidate. In this work, we systematically investigated the efficacy of anisomycin alone and its combination with the standard-of-care drugs in NSCLC. We showed that anisomycin inhibited growth, migration, and survival in NSCLC cells regardless of genetic mutation status, and to a greater extent than in normal lung epithelial cells. Isobologram analysis showed that the combination of anisomycin with cisplatin, paclitaxel, or gefitinib was synergistic in NSCLC but not normal lung cells. We further demonstrated that anisomycin inhibited NSCLC growth in mice. The combination of anisomycin with cisplatin was more effective than cisplatin alone and completely arrested NSCLC growth throughout the whole duration of treatment. JNK and p38 MAPK were not required for anisomycin's action. In contrast, anisomycin inhibits PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway. Overexpression of constitutively active Akt reversed the pro-apoptotic effect of anisomycin. Our work demonstrates the selective anti-NSCLC activity of anisomycin via suppressing PI3K/Akt/mTOR. Our findings provide preclinical evidence to initialize the clinical trial of using anisomycin to sensitize NSCLC to current therapy.

Considering that the kidneys segmentation challenge for image processing because of the gray level from abdominal computer tomography (CT) scans is a great similarity of adjacent organs, partial volume effects and so on, a novel multi-feature sparse constraints strategy is proposed to diagnose the benign and malignant renal tumors, which can improve the accuracy and reliability of segmentation. The weighted sparse measure is defined by introducing weights in the l1-norm of vectors. The weight is inversely proportional to the similarity between data, therefore the weighted l1-norm penalty on the linear representation coefficients tends to force similar data be involved while dissimilar data uninvolved in the linear representation of a datum. The resulted representation can overcome the drawbacks of l1-norm penalty that the presentation coefficients are usually over sparse and not robust for highly correlated data. Experimental results and objective assessment indexes show that the proposed method can effectively segment CT images with good visual consistency. In addition, the dice coefficients of renal and renal tumors were 0.933 and 0.854, respectively. In addition, our method can also be used for the diagnosis of renal tumors, and has also achieved good performance.

Photoreceptor apoptosis is recognized as one key pathogenesis of retinal degeneration, the counteraction of which represents a promising approach to safeguard visual function. Recently, mesenchymal stem cell transplantation (MSCT) has demonstrated immense potential to treat ocular disorders, in which extracellular vesicles (EVs), particularly exosomes, have emerged as effective ophthalmological therapeutics. However, whether and how MSCT protects photoreceptors against apoptotic injuries remains largely unknown. Here, we discovered that intravitreal MSCT counteracted photoreceptor apoptosis and alleviated retinal morphological and functional degeneration in a mouse model of photoreceptor loss induced by N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU). Interestingly, effects of MSCT were inhibited after blockade of exosomal generation by GW4869 preconditioning. Furthermore, MSC-derived exosomal transplantation (EXOT) effectively suppressed MNU-provoked photoreceptor injury. Notably, therapeutic efficacy of MSCT and EXOT on MNU-induced retinal degeneration was long-lasting as photoreceptor preservance and retinal maintenance were detected even after 1–2 months post to injection for only once. More importantly, using a natural occurring retinal degeneration model caused by a nonsense mutation of Phosphodiesterase 6b gene (Pde6bmut), we confirmed that MSCT and EXOT prevented photoreceptor loss and protected long-term retinal function. In deciphering therapeutic mechanisms regarding potential exosome-mediated communications, we identified that miR-21 critically maintained photoreceptor viability against MNU injury by targeting programmed cell death 4 (Pdcd4) and was transferred from MSC-derived exosomes in vivo for functional regulation. Moreover, miR-21 deficiency aggravated MNU-driven retinal injury and was restrained by EXOT. Further experiments revealed that miR-21 mediated therapeutic effects of EXOT on MNU-induced photoreceptor apoptosis and retinal dysfunction. These findings uncovered the efficacy and mechanism of MSCT-based photoreceptor protection, indicating exosomal miR-21 as a therapeutic for retinal degeneration.

This study examined the influence of particle sizes and adsorption equilibrium time (AET) on pore structure characterization using low pressure N2 adsorption (LPGA-N2) method. The results demonstrate that pore structures change with progressive crushing. The increase in pore volume in the minipore and mesopore with decreasing coal particle sizes was caused by creating additional large pores during the crushing. The tendency of decreasing at first and then increasing was observed for both the specific surface area (SSA) and micropore volume, demonstrating that the micropore structure was primarily damaged and then followed by additional micropores being created when the sample was broken down smaller than 80 mesh. It is difficult to choose a suitable coal particle size for LPGA-N2 measurement to yield pore structure parameters closest to the “real” values due to the difficulty in evaluating the compound effect of crushing on pore structures. To make testing results closer to the coal structure under in situ conditions, we propose 1∼3 mm as the preferred coal particle size. Additionally, many replicate experiments were performed by adjusting the AET to ensure LPGA-N2 isotherms in equilibrium states. The results indicate that a decrease in particle size did not reduce the time for reaching N2 adsorption equilibrium. Comparison of pore size distributions under different AETs shows that the AETs' increase has a little influence on the measurement of minipore and mesopore but has a positive correlation with micropore, revealing that N2 adsorption equilibrium is mainly influenced by the micropore whose volume is underestimated at small AETs. The optimal AET for LPGA-N2 measurement was 8 min and its yielded data can more accurately characterize the pore structure parameters.

We propose a compact dual-frequency relativistic magnetron with TEM mode output. The resonant system consists of two axially separated beam–wave interaction regions for generating dual-frequency microwave. Under the same diode voltage and axial magnetic field, the RF field of the operating $\pi $ -mode can almost be simultaneously established. Furthermore, the diffraction output and the all cavity axial extraction are integrated to realize the TEM mode output. Particle-in-cell simulation shows that when the diode voltage is 400 kV, microwaves with output powers of 740 and 876 MW generate, with frequencies of 2.05 and 2.35 GHz, respectively. With an axial magnetic field of 0.44 T, the device efficiency of over 43% in the dual-frequency relativistic magnetron is achieved.

Background and Aims: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a new respiratory infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (commonly known as SARS-CoV-2) with multiple organ injuries. The aim of this study was to analyze COVID-19-associated liver dysfunction (LD), its association with the risk of death and prognosis after discharge. Methods: Three-hundred and fifty-five COVID-19 patients were recruited. Clinical data were collected from electronic medical records. LD was evaluated and its prognosis was tracked. The association between LD and the risk of death was analyzed. Results: Of the 355 COVID-19 patients, 211 had mild disease, 88 had severe disease, and 51 had critically ill disease. On admission, 223 (62.8%) patients presented with hypoproteinemia, 151(42.5%) with cholestasis, and 101 (28.5%) with hepatocellular injury. As expected, LD was more common in critically ill patients. By multivariate logistic regression, male sex, older age and lymphopenia were three important independent risk factors predicting LD among COVID-19 patients. Risk of death analysis showed that the fatality rate was higher in patients with hypoproteinemia than in those without hypoproteinemia (relative risk=9.471, p

To realize multiband mode conversion in the high-power microwave (HPM) application system, a novel compact dual-band mode converter based on a universal method is proposed in this article. The proposed converter has a hybrid circular-embedded coaxial structure, and it integrates the conventional plate-inserted coaxial TEM-TE11 converter and serpentine circular TM01-TE11 converter simultaneously. Its outer and inner waveguides have the same curvature distributions along a longitudinal direction. Both the numerically calculated results and simulations exhibit that its maximum conversion efficiencies at two central frequencies are over 99% with a structure length of 240 mm. Simulated results indicate that the bandwidths reach 390 MHz (at ${X}$ -band) and 4.2 GHz (at Ka-band), respectively, when the conversion efficiencies are over 95%. A prototype is fabricated and measured. The far-field results demonstrate that coaxial TE11 and circular TE11 modes with high purity are detected at the output port of converter, and the S-parameter measurements illustrate that high conversion efficiencies at 8.4 and 30.5 GHz are obtained. The measurement results have a good agreement with the theoretical predictions and simulations.

Three full-scale exterior beam–column joints with anti-seismic steel reinforcement were tested under quasi-static cyclic loading and column axial compressive loading. The test variables were column axial load ratio and joint core hoop reinforcement ratio. Experimental results, including failure mode, hysteretic curve, ductility, energy dissipation, stiffness degradation, and decoupling of deformations, were presented and analyzed. The tests revealed that the anti-seismic rebar resulted in good joint seismic performance and that column axial load ratio and joint core hoop reinforcement ratio impose limited influence of joint performance when the joint failed in beam flexural failure. The calibrated finite element models developed based on OpenSees were then used to simulate the behavior of joint specimens. Parametric studies via finite element modeling were performed to study the influence of various parameters on the performance of beam–column joints.

In this article, an artificial neural network (ANN)-based large-signal model (LSM) of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) with accurate buffer-related trapping effects characterization and modeling is proposed. A hybrid small-signal parameter-extraction method for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs is used to acquire the parasitic parameters. To simplify the modeling procedure of the drain–source current $I_{\mathrm{ ds}}$ , an ANN-based model associated with the empirical equations taking into account the trapping effects, self-heating effects, and breakdown issue is developed. The low-frequency dispersions related to the buffer-related trapping effects have been well modeled by using a new empirical equation, which has been verified by small-signal S-parameters. Also, a new thermal factor $K_{T}$ and an improved Shockley diode equation are given in the proposed model as well. The developed LSM has been fully verified by a $2\times 100\,\,\mu \text{m}$ AlGaN/GaN HEMT with the pulsed I–V, small-signal S-parameters, power sweep, and load—pull measurements.

As a functional monosaccharide, L-arabinose has protective effects on metabolic syndrome, but whether it is effective for cerebral ischemia in diabetic patients remains unknown. The middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model of type 2 diabetic rats was prepared and applied to determine the effect of L-arabinose on cerebral infarction (CI) with or without diabetes. Results showed that diabetes aggravated neurological deficits, increased the volume of CI, brain edema, and blood–brain barrier (BBB) permeability after CI, which were alleviated by L-arabinose by repairing the damaged tight-junction proteins (zonula occludens 1 and claudin-5). L-arabinose could reverse the expression of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) p65, intercellular cell adhesion molecule-1, and tumor necrosis factor α in the MCAO model with diabetes. Conclusions: L-arabinose alleviates diabetes-aggravated cerebral ischemic injury by alleviating the destruction of the BBB via the downregulation of the NF-κB signaling pathway.

The dynamic analysis and optimal design of reactive extraction are challenging due to high nonlinearity of model equations and tough decision of judging criteria. In this work, a dynamic rate-based method is developed on gPROMS platform to get easy access to the solutions of reactive extraction with phase splitting. Based on rigorous criteria, dynamic analysis from initial state to final equilibrium (e.g., evolution of phase composition, mass transfer rate and reaction rate) and optimal design of operating conditions (e.g., extractant dosage and feed molar ratio) are achieved. To illustrate the method, the esterification of n-hexyl acetate is taken as an example. The approach proves to be reliable in the analysis and optimization of the exemplified system, which provides instructive reference for further process design and simulation of reactive extraction.

Binary butterfly optimization approach (bBOA) is a recent high performing feature selection algorithm presented in 2018 which is based on the food foraging behavior of butterflies. This paper tries to improve the structure of the bBOA to enhance its classification accuracy, dimension reduction and reliability in feature selection task for who are interested in the fields of data mining and pattern recognition. The new initialization strategy and differential evolution strategy are applied to reduce the randomness of bBOA's initialization and local search process. Then, a new parameter is added to make the bBOA's transfer function more adaptive to the change of exploration and exploitation. Besides, evolution population dynamics (EPD) mechanism is employed as an extension of bBOA. The new method called optimization and extension of binary butterfly optimization approaches (OEbBOA) is tested with the K nearest neighbor classier in which twenty UCI datasets and seven recent algorithms are utilized to assess the performance of the OEbBOA algorithm. The experimental results and nonparametric Wilcoxons rank sum test confirm the efficiency of the proposed OEbBOA in maximizing classification accuracy while minimizing the number of features selected.

It may be very difficult to receive the signals from satellite positioning systems due to the existing obstacles in indoor environment. Arising from the popularity of smart phones, Wi-Fi based indoor positioning technology has the advantages with convenient deployment and low hardware cost. In this study, we focused on indoor positioning using Wi-Fi fingerprint data that were collected in shopping malls. Due to the volatility of Wi-Fi signals and the high-dimensional sparseness of fingerprint data, we proposed a feature extraction algorithm, called joint multi-task stacked denoising auto-encoder (JMT-SDAE), aiming at reducing the dimensionality of the original fingerprint data and improving the indoor positioning performance in shopping malls. Furthermore, the features extracted by JMT-SDAE and gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) were merged to construct a hybrid model, named as JMT-SDAE+GBDT. The experimental results based on 13 location datasets showed that the proposed feature fusion model had better positioning accuracy when compared with other existing positioners, and thus confirmed the effectiveness of our proposed feature extraction algorithm through multi-task learning.

A compact ${L}$ -band relativistic magnetron (RM) with the diffraction output (DO) of the TEM mode is proposed. In this DO configuration, a ridged circular waveguide is used to replace the cylindrical waveguide to decrease its radial dimension. The RF field of the operating $\pi $ -mode is extracted from every resonator cavity and guided to the ridged circular waveguide. Even at the operating frequency of 1.55 GHz, the ridged circular waveguide can reduce the cutoff radius of the RF wave to 73 mm. The output RF field is further effectively converted to the TEM mode by a compact mode converter. Moreover, in the resonant system, a 10-cavity rising-sun slow wave structure (SWS) is applied to lower the phase velocity of the operating spatial harmonic and enhance the mode separation between the operating mode and the adjacent mode. The particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations demonstrate that the practical RM could output a relatively pure TEM mode at the frequency of 1.55 GHz, and its total efficiency is up to 60% with gigawatt radiation power for a diode voltage of 400 kV.

Background Our earlier report indicated that active vitamin D3 inhibited epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in bleomycin (BLM)-induced pulmonary fibrosis. The objective of this study was to further investigate whether vitamin D deficiency exacerbates BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Methods This study consists of two independent experiments. Experiment 1, male mice were fed with vitamin D deficient (VDD) fodder. Experiment 2, Cyp27b1+/+, Cyp27b1+/− and Cyp27b1−/− mice were fed with standard diet. For pulmonary fibrosis, mice were intratracheally instilled with a single dose of BLM (1.5 mg/kg). Serum 25(OH) D level was measured. Pulmonary collagen deposition was assessed by Sirius red staining. EMT was measured and transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β)/Smad3 signaling was evaluated in the lungs of BLM-treated mice. Results The relative weight of lungs was elevated in BLM-treated mice. Col1α1 and Col1α2, two collagen protein genes, were upregulated, and collagen deposition, as determined by Sirius red staining, was observed in the lungs of BLM-treated mice. E-cadherin, an epithelial marker, was downregulated. By contrast, vimentin and α-SMA, two EMT markers, were upregulated in the lungs of BLM-treated mice. Pulmonary TGF-β/Smad3 signaling was activated in BLM-induced lung fibrosis. Further analysis showed that feeding VDD diet, leading to vitamin D deficiency, aggravated elevation of BLM-induced relative lung weight. Moreover, feeding VDD diet aggravated BLM-induced TGF-β/Smad3 activation and subsequent EMT in the lungs. In addition, feeding VDD diet exacerbated BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Additional experiment showed that Cyp27b1 gene knockout, leading to active vitamin D3 deficiency, exacerbated BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Moreover, Cyp27b1 gene knockout aggravated pulmonary TGF-β/Smad2/3 activation and subsequent EMT in BLM-induced lung fibrosis. Conclusion Vitamin D deficiency exacerbates BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis partially through aggravating TGF-β/Smad2/3-mediated EMT in the lungs.

The paper presents numerical findings of reinforced concrete interior beam-column joints under monotonic antisymmetrical load. The finite element models considered compression and tension damage were calibrated by test results in terms of the load-displacement, failure modes, and strains of longitudinal steel. The emphasis was put on studying the effects of hoop reinforcement ratio in joint core and the axial compression ratio on the responses of the joints. The results show that, in addition to the truss and strut-and-tie mechanisms, the confinement mechanism also existed in the joint core. A certain amount of stirrup is not only able to enhance the confinement in joint core, undertake a part of shear force and thus to increase the shear capacity, prevent the outward buckling of steel bars in column, improve the stress distribution in joint core, delay cracking and restrain the propagation of cracks, but also to increase the yield load, decrease the yield displacement of beam and improve the joint ductility. However, excessive horizontal stirrups contribute little to the joint performance. In a certain range, larger axial compression ratio is beneficial for the joint mechanical behavior, while it is negative when axial compression ratio is too large.

Tectonic deformation acts as an indispensable factor affecting the crystalline structure, but its relationship with the evolution mechanism of the morphological structure is seldom considered. In this work, the characterization of microcrystalline and morphological structures in tectonic coal was comprehensively explored using X-ray diffraction (XRD), pore structure analyzers (liquid nitrogen and mercury intrusion methods), and micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). The XRD results indicate that a transformation of the chemical composition was observed in the coal body after continuous tectonic deformation. Meanwhile, the variation in microcrystalline parameters, such as the interlayer spacing (d), stacking height (L), effective stacking layer number (N), aromaticity (f), and graphitization degree (g), reveal that the microcrystalline structure of tectonic coal has experienced a positive evolution with graphitization and aromatization. Pore morphological analyses demonstrate that pore volume distributions of micropores, mesopores, and macropores were totally enhanced by tectonism while the pore shape potentially changes slightly. Simultaneously, the incremental noneffective pores of tectonic coal may promote gas accumulation and storage in the pore space. Fracture morphological analyses utilizing micro-CT lay emphasis on the orderly distributed cleats with a uniform scale in original coal, whereas the reconstruction of microstructures in tectonic coal illustrates a scattered distribution with good connectivity. In addition, the evolution of the macromolecular structure has an influence on the growth of nanoscale pores since the lattice defects may generate from the interlayer of the aromatic ring or the internal space. This research is of an enlightening significance for understanding the influence of tectonic stress on the chemical structure evolution of coals and its relationship with the nanoscale morphological structure development in tectonic coal.

This study examined the influences of crushing on the microporous and ultramicroporous structures of coal by low-pressure CO2 adsorption (LPGA-CO2). Many replicate experiments were carried out by a...

The mode converter is a key component in a gyrotron traveling-wave tube (gyro-TWT) application system, which can transform the output circular TE $_{0n}$ modes (in a gyro-TWT loaded with lossy ceramic dielectric or photonic bandgap interaction structure, the output mode is normally a TE $_{0n}$ mode) into a mode conducive to transmission and emission (linearly polarized Gaussian-like HE11 mode). In particular, the bandwidth of the TE01–TE11 mode converter is the most important challenge in the conversion sequence. In this paper, based on the deformation of the transverse cross section and the modified multi-frequency iteration synthesis technique along the longitudinal propagation axis, a novel method for synthesis of a broad bandwidth mode converter is proposed. Then, an application of the method to a wideband serpentine TE01–TE11 mode converter with an elliptical section is given. This novel mode converter including transitional waveguides achieves a 19.18% relative bandwidth (conversion efficiency over 95%) at center frequency 30.5 GHz, which increases nearly 195% compared with the conventional circular design, and its structure length is 1151.65 mm. Overall, this method offers a novel solution to the requirement of broad bandwidth in the high-power microwave transmission system.

Gesture recognition is important in human–machine interaction. Current methods for solving gesture recognition have several disadvantages such as low recognition rate, slow speed and poor performance on recognizing multiple targets or long-distance targets in complex environments. In view of the above problems, we propose a gesture recognition approach that can recognize gestures quickly and accurately from complex background. This approach works on a deep convolutional network, which consists of a basic network module for extracting feature information, a squeeze-and-excitation networks for increasing feature channel affinity and a feature pyramid attention module for fusing context information with different scales. To test the proposed approach, we make a data set that contains 3289 images from difference complex scenes. Generally gestures in those images can be generally classified into 16 types. We have uploaded this data set for researchers use. Experimental results demonstrate that the recognition accuracy and speed of the proposed method can achieve 83.45% and 32.2 frames per second respectively, which has better comprehensive performance compared with other state-of-the-art recognition algorithms.

Energy piles are sustainable green foundations. Although several geotechnical design methods have been proposed, no methods have yet been developed to quantify the uncertainty propagation in thermo-mechanical pile-soil interactions. The probabilistic model proposed in this paper, which is based on load-transfer curves, considers the effects of spatial variability for energy pile design. The developed random finite difference method is used to address the effects of vertical spatial variability on the ultimate limit state design and serviceability limit state design. This study points to the necessity of modeling the soil spatial variability in the thermo-mechanical pile-soil interactions in energy piles.

Scene flow is an essential part of a stereo-based perception system for autonomous driving and mobile robotics. As in most of these platforms, the computing resource is limited but the computing requirement is high, embedded and parallelized algorithms are of vital importance for real-time tasks. This paper develops a cross-platform embedded scene flow algorithm by using an OpenCL (Open Computing Language) programming. Meanwhile, we propose a method to achieve a good performance by using a novel coarse-grained software pipeline for the embedded stream application. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can boost the average processing speed to 50 fps for different commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, including desktop graphics processing units (GPUs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and mobile phone platforms. For certain GPUs, the peak frame rates can also reach 1000 fps. By comparing the efficiency among the serial platform, we illustrate that with the help of OpenCL programming, COTS platforms can provide enough computing resources for the stereo-based perception algorithm.

BackgroundSeveral studies demonstrate that endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-mediated epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is involved in the process of bleomycin (BLM)-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Tauroursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA), a bile acid with chaperone properties, is an inhibitor of ER stress. This study aimed to investigate the preventive effects of TUDCA on BLM-induced EMT and lung fibrosis.MethodsThe model of lung fibrosis was established by intratracheal injection with a single dose of BLM (3.0 mg/kg). In TUDCA + BLM group, mice were intraperitoneally injected with TUDCA (250 mg/kg) daily.ResultsBLM-induced alveolar septal destruction and inflammatory cell infiltration were alleviated by TUDCA. BLM-induced interstitial collagen deposition, as determined by Sirius Red staining, was attenuated by TUDCA. BLM-induced elevation of pulmonary α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and reduction of pulmonary E-cadherin were attenuated by TUDCA. BLM-induced pulmonary Smad2/3 phosphorylation was suppressed by TUDCA. BLM-induced elevation of Ki67 and PCNA was inhibited by TUDCA in mice lungs. In addition, BLM-induced elevation of HO-1 (heme oxygenase-1) and 3-NT (3-nitrotyrosine) was alleviated by TUDCA. Finally, BLM-induced upregulation of pulmonary GRP78 and CHOP was attenuated by TUDCA.ConclusionsThese results provide evidence that TUDCA pretreatment inhibits Smad2/3-medited EMT and subsequent lung fibrosis partially through suppressing BLM-induced ER stress and oxidative stress.

There are some problems such as few and old equipment in urban community sports fitness facilities, which makes it difficult for community fitness resources to continue to meet the fitness needs of community residents. The opening of university sports resources can alleviate the problem of residents' fitness difficulty to a certain extent. In order to explore the problems faced by the opening of university sports resources, this study established the analytic hierarchy process model based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Delphi law in the background of national public service of fitness, and combined with the questionnaire survey method to study the influencing factors of opening of college sports. The model modified by the Delphi method contains 6 first-level and 22 second-level influencing factors. It is found that the most important factor in the first level is the hardware factor of college sports resources, and the most important factor of the second level is the spatial layout of university sports resources. The results show that improving the hardware facilities of university sports resources, improving the management mode of sports resources, and increasing the targeted financial subsidies and tax reduction and exemption are helpful to enhance the willingness to open sports resources and improve the quality of opened sports resources. It is hoped that this study can promote the opening of college sports resources and promote the continuous improvement of the service level of sports resources. RESUMO Há alguns problemas, tais como equipamentos antiquados e em menores quantidades em instalações esportivas na Comunidade urbana, o que dificulta que os recursos de exercícios físicos continuem atendendo as necessidades de atividades físicas dos moradores das comunidades. A abertura de recursos desportivos universitários pode atenuar, em certa medida, o problema da dificuldade dos moradores de praticar atividades físicas. A fim de explorar os problemas enfrentados pela abertura dos recursos desportivos universitários, este estudo estabeleceu o modelo de processo hierárquico analítico baseado no processo hierárquico analítico (Analytic Hierarchy Process — AHP) e na Lei Delphi no contexto do serviço público nacional de atividades físicas, combinado com o método de inquérito por questionário para estudar os fatores que influenciam a abertura dos recursos esportivos universitários. O modelo modificado pelo método Delphi contém 6 fatores influenciadores de primeiro nível e 22 fatores influenciadores de segundo nível. Constata-se que o fator de primeiro nível mais importante é o fator físico dos recursos esportivos universitários, e o fator de segundo nível mais importante é a disposição espacial dos recursos esportivos universitários. Os resultados mostram que a melhoria das instalações físicas dos recursos desportivos universitários, a melhoria do modo de gestão dos recursos desportivos e o aumento dos subsídios financeiros e a redução e isenção de impostos são úteis para aumentar a disponibilidade da abertura dos recursos desportivos e melhorar a qualidade dos recursos desportivos abertos. Espera-se que este estudo possa promover o processo de abertura dos recursos esportivos universitários e promover a melhoria contínua do nível de serviço de recursos esportivos. RESUMEN Explorar los problemas que enfrenta la apertura de los recursos deportivos universitarios, este estudio estableció el proceso de jerarquía analítica (PJA) y la ley Delphi en el contexto del servicio público nacional de educación física, y los combinó con la encuesta por cuestionario para estudiar los factores que influyen en la apertura de los deportes universitarios. El modelo modificado por el método Delphi contiene 6 factores de influencia de primer nivel y 22 de segundo nivel. Encontramos que el factor más importante en el primer nivel es el factor hardware de los recursos deportivos universitarios, y el factor más importante del segundo nivel es la distribución espacial de los recursos deportivos universitarios. Los resultados muestran que mejorar las instalaciones de hardware de los recursos deportivos universitarios, mejorar el modo de gestión de los recursos deportivos y aumentar los subsidios financieros específicos y la reducción y exención de impuestos son útiles para mejorar la disposición a abrir recursos deportivos y mejorar la calidad de los recursos deportivos abiertos. Esperamos que este estudio pueda promover la apertura de recursos deportivos universitarios y promover la mejora continua del nivel de servicio de los recursos deportivos.

SysML and Modelica are two main languages for systems modeling yet focusing on different aspects, so it is essential to integrate SysML and Modelica to ensure interoperability. This work presents the MBSE framework in Changan Automobile, which consists of two method pillars, SysML dominated one and Modelica dominated one. SysPhS standard is applied to normalize the syntax for both conceptual design and physical simulation in the first approach. The second approach makes full use of commercial or customized Modelica library to reduce repeat work. Cooling system and HVAC system simulations are conducted as instances of the two approaches. These two approaches could be chosen according to modeling purpose and simulation capability maturity of the enterprise.

Cavity filter is widely used in microwave receiver front-end subsystem for the advantage of its low insertion loss, excellent band selectivity, and relative high power handle characteristics. However, the short high power microwave pulse transmission response in cavity filter is seldom studied, especially under high power microwave (HPM) electromagnetic environment. By the Particle-In-Cell/Monte Carlo Collision simulation and high power tests, the transient microwave breakdown phenomenon of an S band comb-line cavity filter are discussed. The simulation and test results show that when the input microwave pulse width is 50ns, the microwave breakdown power threshold value is about 500W. And the filter output would be nearly suppressed while the input power above 3.5kW. The simulation data of different microwave pulse widths demonstrate that the breakdown power threshold is approximately inversely proportional to the microwave pulse width in case of the pulse width is lower than 100ns.

A pelvic accessory spleen is uncommon and most patients with this condition are asymptomatic. Ureteral calculus is a common disease and can cause acute abdominal pain. We report a 51‐year‐old male patient who presented at our hospital with acute right lower abdominal pain and gross hematuria. A large mass on the right side of the pelvis was detected on an ultrasound examination, as well as a calculus in the lower segment of the right ureter. Computed tomography angiography showed the presence of a long vascular pedicle with an artery originating from the splenic artery and a vein that joined with the splenic vein. Laparoscopy was carried out and it showed a solid mass covered with omentum on the right lower abdomen. The mass was then removed surgically. Histopathological examination of the resected specimens confirmed splenic tissue. We speculate that the accessory spleen and ureteral calculus caused right lower abdominal pain in our case. However, the ureteral calculus might have played a much more important role in causing acute right lower abdominal pain than the accessory spleen.

Visual sensors such as optical camera possess fatal shortcomings like vulnerable to the weather condition and light intensity, which may cause catastrophic disasters. Fortunately, the prevalent 3D sensors like Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) can overcome these drawbacks. Fusing both monocular camera and 3D Lidar data can often achieve a better performance than solely using one of them. In this paper, we propose an object detection approach by fusing monocular camera data and Lidar data in decision level based on Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. First, the 3D point cloud collected from Lidar is projected onto the image plane and the upsampling method is adopted to receive dense depth maps. Then, the RGB images and dense depth maps are separately fed into YOLOv3 detection framework to extract the object features. Next, the final detection attributes, the class confidence and bounding box, are generated by using Dempster’s combination rule and extracting intersection of the associated bounding boxes. Finally, the mean Average Precision (mAP) performance of the proposed method is improved by 0.5% and 3.1% compared with sigle camera method and Lidar method, respectively.

This work presents a self-adaptive cuckoo search algorithm with a new encoding mechanism to minimize the energy consumption in a heterogeneous distributed embedded system that runs tasks with arbitrary precedence constraints. We use the heterogeneous earliest-finish-time rule to construct a relatively high-quality initial solution. For the first time, a parameter feedback control scheme based on Monte-Carlo policy evaluation is used to balance the global and local search, in which way its search ability is greatly enhanced. In the end, the proposed self-adaptive cuckoo search approach is validated with two benchmarks and extensively randomly generated cases, and the experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach have better performance than its counterparts.

Quick Response (QR) Code would be easily affected by motion blur. In this study, a new recognition method for blurry QR Code is presented. First, a motion deblurring algorithm based on generative adversarial networks (GAN) is applied to perform the blind motion deblurring on single QR Code image for improving the quality of QR Code pictures. Then a modified local adaptive thresholding algorithm applying integral image technology is utilized in order to acquire binary QR Code pictures. Finally, this algorithm would be compared with some previous methods. Furthermore, for testing this algorithm, a database which contains motion blurry QR Code images from both public database and real scenes is collected. Experimental results show that this proposed algorithm perform well on motion blurry QR Code recognition missions.

Senescence is closely related to the occurrence of retinal degeneration. Recent studies have shown that bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs) have significant therapeutic effects on retinal degeneration, While BMMSCs suffer from functional decline in bone aging. Whether senescence affects BMMSCs therapy on retinal degeneration remains unknown. Here, we applied the previously established bone progeria animal model, the senescence-accelerated mice-prone 6 (SAMP6) strain, and surprisingly discovered that SAMP6 mice demonstrated retinal degeneration at 6 months old. Furthermore, BMMSCs derived from SAMP6 mice failed to prevent MNU-induced retinal degeneration in vivo. As expected, BMMSCs from SAMP6 mice exhibited impairment in the differentiation capacities, compared to those from the age-matched senescence-accelerated mice-resistant 1 (SAMR1) strain. Moreover, BMMSCs from SAMR1 mice counteracted MNU-induced retinal degeneration, with increased expression of the retina survival hallmark, N-myc downstream regulated gene 2 (NDRG2). Taken together, these findings reveal that bone progeria diminished the therapeutic effects of BMMSC on retinal degeneration.

This paper demonstrates a Ku-band medium and long distance microwave wireless energy transmission system based on the rectifier diode. The transmitting compact Cassegrain antenna with an aperture of 1.5m forms a more centralized and uniform 2m x 2m field zone, which has more than 80% transmission efficiency. According to the distribution of receiving field, the multiple ways synthesizers connected to rectangular patch arrays are designed. And the results predict that the receiving efficiency of the antenna is directly related to the performance of the system, which reaches 50%, not including the possible insert loss. Besides, the Ku-band rectifying circuit is optimized and measured, and the comparing results show that the practical rectifier diode can obtain more than 40% conversion efficiency at the operating frequency of 12.75GHz. Finally, the microwave wireless energy transmission system is designed, and it finally obtains 4% DC-DC conversion efficiency at a distance of 60m, which is likely to be used in unmanned aerial vehicle hovering charging system, robot charging while working, isolated island wireless power supplying and wireless charging of various sensors.

Acute lung injury (ALI) is a common disease that may result in acute respiratory failure and death. However, there are still no effective treatments for ALI. Several studies have shown that farnesoid X receptor (FXR) has an anti-inflammatory effect. We investigated the effects of obeticholic acid (OCA), an agonist of FXR, on Lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced ALI in mice. Sixty male mice were randomly divided into six groups, and orally administered with or without OCA once daily for 3 consecutive days before LPS (1.0 mg/kg). Animals were sacrificed at 0 h, 2 h or 6 h after LPS. As expected, OCA enhanced pulmonary FXR activity. OCA prevented LPS-induced ALI. Additional experiment showed that OCA alleviated LPS-induced up-regulation of pulmonary pro-inflammatory and chemokine genes. Moreover, OCA also repressed LPS-induced the release of TNF-α and KC in serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. In contrast, OCA further up-regulated LPS-induced the expression of Il-10, an anti-inflammatory cytokine. Further study showed that OCA inhibited LPS-evoked NF-κB signaling in the lungs. OCA attenuated LPS-induced ERK1/2, JNK, p38 and Akt phosphorylation in the lungs. Overall, these results suggest that OCA prevent LPS-induced ALI may be through enhancing pulmonary FXR activity and then blockading several inflammatory signaling pathways.

In the financial business, there are cumbersome and error-prone manual procedures and long workflows. In this paper, MSCNN model is proposed to solve automatically identify and classify images such as documents. First, the image data is preprocessed to enhance the image features. Then, the image is extracted by the cross-connect structure and multi-channel convolution. Finally, the image is classified by softmax layer. The experimental results on the dataset show that the proposed model has a high classification accuracy in image classification.

Metasurfaces offer exciting opportunities that enable precise control of microwave propagation, phase, and polarization, which has been recently studied to realize the versatility of such surfaces. However, there have been few attempts to realize mode conversion using them. In this communication, we demonstrate a novel method for mode conversion that consists of a mode generator, a wavefront transforming mirror, and a metasurface. The measured polarization content can reach 98.3% at the center frequency of 94 GHz using the proposed method, indicating that the circular TE0,1 mode has been successfully converted into linear polarization through the metasurface. The proposed method will be an important step forward in the advancement of millimeter communication and radar systems.

This paper presents an efficient system reliability approach for the internal instability of mechanically stabilized earth walls in a heavy haul railway. The first-order reliability method is adopted to assess the wall failures due to rupture and pullout. The effects of uncertainties in the backfill unit weight, the friction angle of backfill and the friction along the soil-reinforcement interface, as well as the width, thickness and tensile strength of steel strips are explicitly explored. Moreover, the system reliability analysis clearly demonstrates the impact of steel corrosion on the life-cycle retaining wall stability.

The additive model of shear strength of reinforced concrete (RC) members, i.e. shear strength (V) is equal to the sum of the contribution from concrete (Vc) and that from transverse reinforcement (Vs), has been widely accepted in the literature and engineering practice. Shear span-to-depth ratio (a/d) is known to be a significant factor affecting V of RC members. However, very few quantitative studies on the influence of a/d on Vc and Vs have been reported in the literature. Another issue is related to the controversial relationship between the shear force at first diagonal cracking (Vcr) and Vc, for which different guidelines are given in ACI, AASHTO LRFD and CSA codes. Through direct measurement of Vc and Vs from 11 RC beam tests, this work provides experimental evidence for these issues. The experimental results show that Vc can be very different from Vcr. At small shear span-to-depth ratio (a/d), Vc is much larger than Vcr, while it is the opposite for beams with a large a/d value. Not all stirrups crossing the critical shear crack yield at ultimate shear strength, and Vc as well as Vs are not constant under increasing member deformation. Although design codes give a conservative prediction of V, they predict an un-conservative value of Vc at large a/d.

As the one of the most catastrophic hazards in underground mining, coal and gas outburst seriously threatens the safe mining of collieries. To understand the formation and transport mechanism of outburst coal-gas flow in roadway as well as evaluate the effects of gas desorption on its development, a new apparatus was developed to conduct simulated experiments with different gases of CO2 and N2. Results indicated that the outburst coal-gas flow was a high-speed (up to 41.02 m/s during tests) gas-solid two phases flow with extreme complexity, its transport/destructiveness characteristics were significantly influenced by a number of factors including the outburst pressure, coal sample composition, ejection distance and so on. Among these factors, the gas desorption showed the greatest impact when compared to the controlled tests which only considered the effect of free gas expansion. With the effect of gas desorption, especially the rapid gas desorption from powdered coal, the total outburst energy could be promoted by 1.30–2.43 times; the peak values of outburst shockwave could be enhanced by at least 13.67%–63.22%; the transport type of coal-gas flow could be changed from dynamic pressure pneumatic conveying to the static pressure conveying which providing higher capability for outburst coal/rock conveying; the motion of ejected coal flow could have higher speed, longer transport duration and could suffer secondary acceleration. As the result, the destructiveness of outburst coal-gas flow would be remarkably intensified. A further analysis for the energy consumption during the outburst coal-gas flow transport indicated that the free gas expansion energy was insufficient for the conveying of ejected coal (only accounting for less than half of the total energy), the difference of which was made up by the gas desorption, especially the rapid gas desorption from powdered coal (the average contribution ratio reached 56.0%, while the maximum reached 64.1%). Thus, it can be concluded that the rapid gas desorption from powdered coal played a decisive role on the promotion of outburst.

Based on the modified apertures coupling theory, this paper demonstrates a millimeter-wave broadband interferometric in situ alignment and monitor system. The numerically calculated results for the directional coupler have been validated by a comparison with the simulated ones, and the results show that the directional coupler can be applied in the interferometric systems. By nulling the difference of the power signals as well as the mixing signals from each coupler pair, spatial and angular alignments of a beam oblique incidence on the mirror can be performed, meanwhile, the power and the incident angle can be detected. Finally, the adjustment precision of the interferometric system completely meets the requirements and it is expected to be used in the active denial system and the high-power radar system.

Under the effect of load and time, cracks occur inevitability, leading to the issues of aesthetics, long-term durability, and even structural safety for reinforced concrete (RC) structures. Despite a promising economic benefit brought by high-strength steel bars, the application leads to a wider crack width for RC members compared with low-strength ones. Therefore, the quantification of the safety level on maximum crack width for RC members with high-strength steel bars is essential. In this paper, an experimental database that contains 1309 sets of data for crack width was constructed, and the prediction models of crack width were assessed in terms of model error. Then, the reliability assessment for serviceability limit state (SLS) of maximum crack width was performed systematically for RC beams with high-strength steel bars and low-strength ones within six well-recognized concrete design guidelines. The results showed that the reliability index for SLS of maximum crack width was lower for high-strength reinforcement configuration compared with low-strength ones. Furthermore, a parametric study was conducted to identify the effect on the reliability level of the maximum crack width. Subsequently, an optimum design procedure was given to control the maximum crack width for concrete members in terms of reliability level. Compared with low-strength steel bars, the required steel ratio was relatively small for high-strength ones with equivalent bearing capacity and safety level of crack width, indicating that the economic advantages of high-strength steel bars can be shown sufficiently by reasonable design.

A compact Ka-band monopulse Cassegrain antenna based on the reflectarray elements is presented in this letter. The proposed antenna consists of a main-reflectarray, a subreflectarray, a substrate integrated waveguide comparator, and a monopulse feed to achieve good sum–difference characteristics. Compared with traditional monopulse Cassegrain antenna, the total length of the proposed antenna is shrunken to 67.85%. The results of measurement agree with that of simulation very well. The measured SUM beam gain of the proposed antenna is 29.4 dBi by eliminating the loss of Ka-band comparator, the 3 dB beamwidth is 3.85°, the first sidelobe level is under −12 dB, the cross-polarization level is better than −20 dB, and the gain ratios between the SUM and DIFF are about 3 and 5 dB in azimuth and elevation plane, respectively. The measured results show that the proposed antenna is a good candidate for the low-cost multimode tracking system with limited space, especially for that working at high frequency.