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Abstract. Background:. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has potential risks for both clinically worsening pulmonary hypertension (PH) and increasing mortality. However, the data regarding the protective role of vaccination in this population are still lacking. This study aimed to assess the safety of approved vaccination for patients with PH. Methods:. In this national prospective cohort study, patients diagnosed with PH (World Health Organization [WHO] groups 1 and 4) were enrolled from October 2021 to April 2022. The primary outcome was the composite of PH-related major adverse events. We used an inverse probability weighting (IPW) approach to control for possible confounding factors in the baseline characteristics of patients. Results:. In total, 706 patients with PH participated in this study (mean age, 40.3 years; mean duration after diagnosis of PH, 8.2 years). All patients received standardized treatment for PH in accordance with guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of PH in China. Among them, 278 patients did not receive vaccination, whereas 428 patients completed the vaccination series. None of the participants were infected with COVID-19 during our study period. Overall, 398 patients received inactivated severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine, whereas 30 received recombinant protein subunit vaccine. After adjusting for baseline covariates using the IPW approach, the odds of any adverse events due to PH in the vaccinated group did not statistically significantly increase (27/428 [6.3%] vs. 24/278 [8.6%], odds ratio = 0.72, P = 0.302). Approximately half of the vaccinated patients reported at least one post-vaccination side effects, most of which were mild, including pain at the injection site (159/428, 37.1%), fever (11/428, 2.6%), and fatigue (26/428, 6.1%). Conclusions:. COVID-19 vaccination did not significantly augment the PH-related major adverse events for patients with WHO groups 1 and 4 PH, although there were some tolerable side effects. A large-scale randomized controlled trial is warranted to confirm this finding. The final approval of the COVID-19 vaccination for patients with PH as a public health strategy is promising.

Aiming at the problem of low accuracy of traditional channel estimation algorithms in the harsh environment of underground coal mines, this paper proposes an improved Super Resolution Convdutional Network (SRCNN) for channel estimation. In the improved SRCNN model, the estimated value at the pilot frequency is used as input, and the improved SRCNN model replaces the interpolation process in the traditional channel estimation algorithm to reduce the complexity, and the attention mechanism ECA module is added to improve the learning of channel features to achieve more accurate channel estimation for the underground coal mine environment. Simulation results show that the channel estimation algorithm of the improved SRCNN model outperforms the traditional channel estimation algorithm and improves the estimation accuracy by one order of magnitude compared with the channel estimation of the SRCNN model.

The thinned and sparse beamforming for semicircular FDAs were investigated, where the excitation amplitudes were also considered in thinned semicircular FDAs, and only the elements’ positions were incorporated into the sparse semicircular FDA. Firstly, the transmit–receive model was introduced to handle the inherent time-varying issue of FDA, followed by the thinned and sparse implementations successively. Note that three types of non-linearly varying frequency offsets (FO), i.e., log-FO, sin-FO, and tanh-FO, were adopted during the investigations. Under the same assumption that 50% of the elements should be saved, the sidelobe levels (SLLs) of the thinned semicircular -FDAs were reduced by 5.8 dB, 4.4 dB, and 4.4 dB, and the widths of the mainlobes were all widened by 3° in their angle dimension. Compared with the thinned semicircular FDAs, the phenomenon of mainlobe widening was alleviated in the sparse semicircular FDAs where the SLLs were reduced by 2.2 dB, 3.7 dB and 3.5 dB, and the mainlobes’ widths in the angle dimension were widened by 1°, 0° and 1°, respectively. It should be highlighted that the sparse semicircular FDA with sin-FO did not broaden the mainlobe in the angle dimension. Therefore, it can be concluded that a sparse semicircular FDA is superior over a thinned semicircular FDA, since it can reduce the same cost with a higher array resolution.

To address the common issues in traditional convolutional neural network (CNN)-based spectrum sensing algorithms in cognitive radio networks (CRNs), including inadequate signal feature representation, inefficient utilization of feature map information, and limited feature extraction capabilities due to shallow network structures, this paper proposes a spectrum sensing algorithm based on a short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and residual attention dense network (RADN). Specifically, the RADN model improves the basic residual block and introduces the convolutional block attention module (CBAM), combining residual connections and dense connections to form a powerful deep feature extraction structure known as residual in dense (RID). This significantly enhances the network’s feature extraction capabilities. By performing STFT on the received signals and normalizing them, the signals are converted into time–frequency spectrograms as network inputs, better capturing signal features. The RADN is trained to extract abstract features from the time–frequency images, and the trained RADN serves as the final classifier for spectrum sensing. Experimental results demonstrate that the STFT-RADN spectrum sensing method significantly improves performance under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions compared to traditional deep-learning-based methods. This method not only adapts to various modulation schemes but also exhibits high detection probability and strong robustness.

Abstract In this paper, we present a channel estimation approach based on deep learning to solve the problem that the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system channel estimation algorithm cannot accurately obtain the channel state information in the complex environment of the mine, resulting in system performance degradation. First, LS channel estimation matrix is considered as a low-resolution image and the actual channel state information is considered as a high-resolution image. Then the optimization of the LS channel estimation matrix is achieved by the FSRCNN image super-resolution algorithm. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm by conducting experiments in different channel environments, different number of pilots, and mismatched signal-to-noise ratio scenarios. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is much better than the traditional LS channel estimation method and the DFT-LS channel estimation method, and the accuracy of the proposed scheme approaches that of the MMSE channel estimation method when the number of pilots is low.

This study investigates the network capability by introducing a self-adaptive cognition approach that can sense and dynamically configure the communication channel requirements to optimize the wireless links in coal mines. The cognitive scheme based on dual-channel is initiated to sense the optimal channel of transmission and the multi-node mobility system is employed to cover the area of the network where signal strength is below the threshold level. The searching model of target nodes is presented to locate the field of intermittent link and cognitive controlled mobile nodes are utilized to restore the site of intermittent link. The visible light communication (VLC) and radio frequency (RF) channels are integrated into a cognition access point and the channel modeling of both links is performed to evaluate their performance in the hostile environment of coal mines. Multi-mode waveguide and geometrical optic (GO) models are employed in the modeling of RF signal propagation and the ray-tracing approach based on Lambertian radiation pattern (LRP) is utilized to characterize the visible light propagation. The estimation of received signal power and other evaluating parameters of communication reveals the significance of the proposed study against the challenges of intermittent links in coal mines.

To address the problems of gradient vanishing and limited feature extraction capability of traditional CNN spectrum sensing methods in deep network structures and to effectively avoid network degradation issues under deep network structures, this paper proposes a collaborative spectrum sensing method based on Residual Dense Network and attention mechanisms. This method involves stacking and normalizing the time-domain information of the signal, constructing a two-dimensional matrix, and mapping it to a grayscale image. The grayscale images are divided into training and testing sets, and the training set is used to train the neural network to extract deep features. Finally, the test set is fed into the well-trained neural network for spectrum sensing. Experimental results show that, under low signal-to-noise ratios, the proposed method demonstrates superior spectral sensing performance compared to traditional collaborative spectrum sensing methods.

In practical scenarios, there are always array errors, which would increase the sidelobe level (SLL) of the array and distort the performance of the electronic devices consequently. Nevertheless, most of the reported works do not take these unavoidable errors into consideration when implementing array beampattern synthesis. To remedy this problem, a low sidelobe beampattern synthesis approach is proposed in the presence of array errors based on the bat algorithm (BA). In particular, the covariance matrix of the sidelobe region in the presence of array errors is incorporated into the optimization problem. Generally, there are many factors that would contribute to array errors in practical scenarios. Therefore, to reduce the influence of the uncertainty characteristic of the errors on the low-SLL beampattern synthesis, the statistical mean method is utilized to obtain a robust calculation of the covariance matrix in the presence of array errors. Theoretical analysis using signal processing technique and electromagnetic simulation using Ansoft HFSS workbench are combined to testify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Numerical results show that peak SLLs (PSLLs) of around −22dB and −20dB can be respectively achieved in the above two simulation situations with the obtained weight vectors.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) has made it possible to regulate classical waves in novel ways, which is more energy- or information-efficient than conventional plane wave technology. This work aims to realize the transition of antenna radiation mode through the rapid design of an anisotropic dielectric lens. The deep learning neural network (DNN) is used to train the electromagnetic properties of dielectric cell structures. Nine variable parameters for changing the dielectric unit structure are present in the input layer of the DNN network. The trained network can predict the transmission phase of the unit cell structure with greater than 98% accuracy within a specific range. Then, to build the corresponding relationship between the phase and the parameters, the gray wolf optimization algorithm is applied. In less than 0.3 s, the trained network can predict the transmission coefficients of the 31 × 31 unit structure in the arrays with great accuracy. Finally, we provide two examples of neural network-based rapid anisotropic dielectric lens design. Dielectric lenses produce the OAM modes +1, −1, and −1, +2 under TE and TM wave irradiation, respectively. This approach resolves the difficult phase matching and time-consuming design issues associated with producing a dielectric lens.

Unlike conventional phased array (PA), frequency diversity array (FDA) can perform the beampattern synthesis not only in an angle dimension but also in a range dimension by introducing an additional frequency offset (FO) across the array aperture, thus greatly enhancing the beamforming flexibility of an array antenna. Nevertheless, an FDA with uniform inter-element spacing that consists of a huge number of elements is required when a high resolution is needed, which results in a high cost. To substantially reduce the cost while almost maintaining the antenna resolution, it is important to conduct a sparse synthesis of FDA. Under these circumstances, this paper investigated the transmit–receive beamforming of a sparse-fda in range and angle dimensions. In particular, the joint transmit–receive signal formula was first derived and analyzed to resolve the inherent time-varying characteristics of FDA based on a cost-effective signal processing diagram. In the sequel, the GA-based low sidelobe level (SLL) transmit–receive beamforming of the sparse-fda was proposed to generate a focused main lobe in a range-angle space, where the array element positions were incorporated into the optimization problem. Numerical results showed that 50% of the elements can be saved for the two linear FDAs with sinusoidally and logarithmically varying frequency offsets, respectively termed as sin-FO linear-FDA and log-FO linear-FDA, with only a less than 1 dB increment in SLL. The resultant SLLs are below −9.6 dB, and −12.9 dB for these two linear FDAs, respectively.

The conventional polar format algorithm (CPFA) is widely used for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) because of its simple and efficient operations. However, due to its wavefront curvature assumption, the CPFA’s depth-of-focus (DOF) is extremely small, which greatly limits the scene size, especially for high-resolution and highly squinted (HRHS) SAR. To solve this problem, an extended PFA (EPFA) is proposed in this study, re-deriving mapping functions by expanding the range history into slant- and cross-range components according to the forms of real data storage. This allows the full use of storage data, which the CPFA cannot achieve due to the large approximations introduced by the projection of echo data onto the ground. The wavefront curvature error is then analyzed and eliminated using a space-variant phase compensation function. Due to the high accuracy of expansion in the slant range plane and the space-variant correction processing, the EPFA has a larger DOF than the CPFA. The EPFA is also more suitable for undulating terrains since it avoids the projection of real data onto the ground plane performed in the CPFA. Using comparative analyses of simulated data and real-world images, the results suggest that the proposed EPFA achieves better focusing effects than the CPFA and is particularly useful for HRHS SAR.

A large amount of data transmission is one of the challenges faced by communication systems. In this paper, we revisit the intelligent receiver consisting of a neural network, and we find that the intelligent receiver can reduce the data at the transmitting end while improving the decoding accuracy. Specifically, we first construct a smart receiver model, and then design two ways to reduce the data at the transmitter side, namely, end-of-transmitter data trimming and equal-interval data trimming, to investigate the decoding performance of the receiver under the different trimming methods. The simulation results show that the receiver still has an accurate decoding performance with a small amount of trimming at the end of the transmitter data, while the decoding performance of the smart receiver is better than that of the conventional receiver with complete data when the data is trimmed at equal intervals. Moreover, the receiver with equally-spaced data cropping has a lower BER when the data at the transmitter side is reduced by the same data length. This paper provides a new solution to reduce the amount of data at the transmitter side.

With the advancement of an intellectual and numerical society, the coal mining industry has also begun to change to intelligence. As an important aspect of intelligent coal mine construction, coal mine communication has put forward more stringent standards for communication quality. For the complex communication environment in mines, the transmission of communication signals is always damaged by various noises and interferences, resulting in serious distortion of the communication signals received at the receiving end. Therefore, the use of traditional receivers for information recovery has the problem of high bit error rate (BER), which cannot meet the standard of intelligent coal mine construction. Based on this, the aim of this research is to combine convolutional neural networks (CNN) and multi-input multi-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) communication systems to design an intelligent receiver model for complex mine communication systems. At the receiver side, CNNs are used to take the place of all the information processing processes. First, features are extracted from the received IQ signal by the convolutional neural network, and then the original information bit is recovered using a multi-label classifier to finally realize end-to-end information restoration. The experimental results show that the intelligent receiver model designed in this research has more accurate information recovery capability in the complex mine channel environment compared with the traditional receiver. In addition, they also verify that the intelligent receiver can still recover information effectively when the traditional receiver cannot recover information properly in the case of partial loss of received data.

With the growing demand of mobile multimedia services, device-to-device (D2D) multicast provides an efficacious solution to local content sharing. The radio resource needs to be allocated efficiently to enhance the content sharing via D2D multicast. However, the existing resource allocation schemes for solving D2D multicast usually ignore the attribution problem of mobile users to multiple communities and the problem of social differentiation. Unlike the existing works, this paper performs the D2D video multicast in two steps: community formation and resource allocation. In the process of D2D multicast community formation, the best core users for content distribution in the network are selected in consideration of both physical and social factors, and detect whether there is overlap in the communities to which others belong. Then, we explore mobile users' social features including the historical request file similarity, the QoS request differentiation and the random mobility characteristic to arrange the best attribution schemes targeting at not only ensuring the quality of the video multicast service but also maximizing the content hit ratio. In the resource allocation step, a multi-agent hierarchical learning (MAHL) algorithm with personalized incentives based on multi-leader multi-follower Stackelberg game is proposed to maximize the throughput of the network. Simulations are conducted to reveal that compared with the other three benchmark algorithms, the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the throughput of the network under different scenarios.

There are many unavoidable array errors in practical scenarios, which would drastically increase the sidelobe level (SLL) and distort the performance of radar systems accordingly. In this paper, an effective beampattern synthesis approach is proposed to realize a low peak sidelobe level (PSLL) and wide-nulling in the presence of array errors, thus improving the consequent performance of the radar. In particular, the covariance matrix of the sidelobe region (CMSR) is incorporated into the optimization. Considering the randomness of array errors, the statistical mean method is adopted to obtain a more accurate calculation of the CMSR in the presence of array errors based on a Monte Carlo trial. To efficiently and effectively solve the optimization problem, an advanced metaheuristic algorithm, i.e., the water cycle algorithm (WCA), is adopted when seeking the corresponding optimal weight vectors. Numerical results are provided and discussed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach including the results based on a wideband linearly spaced magneto-electric (ME) dipole array.

Plant peptide hormones play various roles in plant development, pathogen defense and abiotic stress tolerance. Plant elicitor peptides (Peps) are a type of damage-associated molecular pattern (DAMP) derived from precursor protein PROPEPs. In this study, we identified nine PROPEP genes in the broccoli genome. qRT-PCR analysis indicated that the expression levels of BoPROPEPs were induced by NaCl, ABA, heat, SA and P. syringae DC3000 treatments. In order to study the functions of Peps in salinity stress response, we synthesized BoPep4 peptide, the precursor gene of which, BoPROPEP4, was significantly responsive to NaCl treatment, and carried out a salinity stress assay by exogenous application of BoPep4 in broccoli sprouts. The results showed that the application of 100 nM BoPep4 enhanced tolerance to 200 mM NaCl in broccoli by reducing the Na+/K+ ratio and promoting accumulation of wax and cutin in leaves. Further RNA-seq analysis identified 663 differentially expressed genes (DGEs) under combined treatment with BoPep4 and NaCl compared with NaCl treatment, as well as 1776 genes differentially expressed specifically upon BoPep4 and NaCl treatment. GO and KEGG analyses of these DEGs indicated that most genes were enriched in auxin and ABA signal transduction, as well as wax and cutin biosynthesis. Collectively, this study shows that there was crosstalk between peptide hormone BoPep4 signaling and some well-established signaling pathways under salinity stress in broccoli sprouts, which implies an essential function of BoPep4 in salinity stress defense.

In the complex and dynamically varying underwater acoustic (UWA) channel, cooperative communication can improve throughput for UWA sensor networks. In this paper, we design a reasonable relay selection strategy for efficient cooperation with reinforcement learning (RL), considering the characteristics of UWA channel variation and long transmission delay. The proposed scheme establishes effective state and reward expression to better reveal the relationship between RL and UWA environment. Meanwhile, simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is integrated with RL to improve the performance of relay selection, where exploration rate of RL is dynamically adapted by SA optimization through the temperature decline rate. Furthermore, the fast reinforcement learning (FRL) strategy with pre-training process is proposed for practical UWA network implementation. The whole proposed SA-FRL scheme has been evaluated by both simulation and experimental data. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed relay selection scheme can converge more quickly than classical RL and random selection with the increase of the number of iterations. The reward, access delay and data rate of SA-FRL can converge at the highest value and are close to the ideal optimum value. All in all, the proposed SA-FRL relay selection scheme can improve the communication efficiency through the selection of the relay nodes with high link quality and low access delay.

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems suffer from high BER in the mining environment. In this paper, the mine MIMO depth receiver model is proposed. The model uses densely connected convolutional networks for feature extraction and constructs multiple binary classifiers to recover the original information. Compared with conventional MIMO receivers, the model has no error accumulation caused by processes such as decoding and demodulation. The experimental results show that the model has better performance than conventional decoding methods under different modulation codes and variations in the number of transmitting terminals. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the model can still achieve effective decoding and recover the original information with some data loss at the receiver.

The environment of underground coal mines has challenging properties that makes this zone inadaptable for a stable communication system. Additionally, various deteriorating physical parameters strongly affect the performance of wireless networks, which leads to limited network coverage and poor quality of data communication. This study investigates the communication capability in underground coal mines by optimizing the wireless link to develop a stable network for an underground hazardous environment. A hybrid channel-modeling scheme is proposed to characterize the environment of underground mines for wireless communication by classifying the area of a mine into the main gallery and sub-galleries. The complex segments of mine are evaluated by categorizing the wireless links for the line-of-sight (LOS) zones and hybrid modeling is employed to examine the characteristics of electromagnetic signal propagation. For hybrid channel modeling, the multimode waveguide model and geometrical optic (GO) model are used for developing an optimal framework that improves the accessibility of the network in the critical time-varying environment of mines. Moreover, the influence of various deteriorating factors is analyzed using 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz frequency band to study its relationship with the vital constraints of an underground mine. The critical factors such as path loss, roughness loss, delay spread, and shadow fading are examined under detailed analysis with variation in link structure for the mine.

Lateral line is a system of sense organs that can aid fishes to maneuver in a dark environment. Artificial lateral line (ALL) imitates the structure of lateral line in fishes and provides invaluable means for underwater-sensing technology and robot fish control. This paper reviews ALL, including sensor fabrication and applications to robot fish. The biophysics of lateral line are first introduced to enhance the understanding of lateral line structure and function. The design and fabrication of an ALL sensor on the basis of various sensing principles are then presented. ALL systems are collections of sensors that include carrier and control circuit. Their structure and hydrodynamic detection are reviewed. Finally, further research trends and existing problems of ALL are discussed.

In nature, the lateral line of fish is a peculiar and important organ for sensing the surrounding hydrodynamic environment, preying, escaping from predators and schooling. In this paper, by imitating the mechanism of fish lateral canal neuromasts, we developed an artificial lateral line system composed of micro-pressure sensors. Through hydrodynamic simulations, an optimized sensor structure was obtained and the pressure distribution models of the lateral surface were established in uniform flow and turbulent flow. Carrying out the corresponding underwater experiment, the validity of the numerical simulation method is verified by the comparison between the experimental data and the simulation results. In addition, a variety of effective research methods are proposed and validated for the flow velocity estimation and attitude perception in turbulent flow, respectively and the shape recognition of obstacles is realized by the neural network algorithm.

There is growing evidence that out-of-school factors, such as physical and mental health, family support, and social and emotional development, significantly affect student learning (Berliner 2009). To address challenges related to poverty, schools are being charged with serving as a focal point in providing and coordinating support services for students and their families (Adelman and Taylor 2002; Dryfoos 2002). In many schools these support services are provided in fragmented ways that do not address the needs of all students or engage teachers in connecting these services to the academic mission of the school (Walsh and DePaul 2008). An emerging school-based model, broadly termed "comprehensive student support" (Walsh et al. 2016), is designed to overcome such fragmentation. In this paper, we build upon previous effectiveness work with an economic evaluation of a successful support model, "City Connects." We find that the benefits of the program exceed the costs, indicating that the program is a sound investment and should be considered an option to address the needs of students and to prevent future crises from disrupting their learning.