THE DECAY OF THE RUSSIA-EU ENERGY DIALOGUE MECHANISM FROM A ROLE PERSPECTIVE

The energy issue is at the core of the interaction between Russia and Europe. This paper, based on the perspective of role theory, systematically reviews the evolution of the Russia-Europe energy dialogue mechanism in the post-Cold War era. It combines role positioning and role expectations as two core variables to analyze the influencing factors of the Russia-Europe energy dialogue mechanism. Therefore, six influencing factors are summarized, including political culture, energy strategy, and energy groups related to role positioning, as well as historical traditions, international crises, and energy revolutions related to role expectations. The paper argues that the evolution of the Russia-Europe energy dialogue mechanism exhibits three characteristics: firstly, consistency with Russia-Europe relations; secondly, idealism in role expectations formed due to political cultural differences; and thirdly, the constraining nature of the asymmetrical structure on energy cooperation. Consequently, the Russia-Europe energy dialogue mechanism is in a state of stagnation, and Russia-Europe energy cooperation is showing a fragmented trend

Identifying Model Weakness with Adversarial Examiner

Machine learning models are usually evaluated according to the average case performance on the test set. However, this is not always ideal, because in some sensitive domains (e.g. autonomous driving), it is the worst case performance that matters more. In this paper, we are interested in systematic exploration of the input data space to identify the weakness of the model to be evaluated. We propose to use an adversarial examiner in the testing stage. Different from the existing strategy to always give the same (distribution of) test data, the adversarial examiner will dynamically select the next test data to hand out based on the testing history so far, with the goal being to undermine the model's performance. This sequence of test data not only helps us understand the current model, but also serves as constructive feedback to help improve the model in the next iteration. We conduct experiments on ShapeNet object classification. We show that our adversarial examiner can successfully put more emphasis on the weakness of the model, preventing performance estimates from being overly optimistic.Comment: To appear in AAAI-2

A scheme on indoor tracking of ship dynamic positioning based on distributed multi-sensor data fusion

Investigating the model ship dynamic positioning system by simulating the actual sea conditions in the laboratory can not only avoid the risks caused by the directly experiments on a true ship, but also reduce the costs. With the purpose of realizing the high accuracy control of the dynamic positioning, besides a high accuracy mathematical model of the ship, an important condition is that the position information provided by the position detection system must be accurate, reliable and continuous. The global positioning system (GPS) signal is restricted when the model ship dynamic positioning system is set indoors. This paper describes a novel scheme for ship target tracking based on the multi-sensor data fusion techniques. To improve the accuracy of indoor positioning and ship target tracking, the characteristics of many sensors are systematically analyzed, such as radar, difference global positioning system (DGPS) and ultrasonic sensors. Other important factors, including the indoor temperature, position and environment, are also taken into account to further optimize the performance. Combining the Kalman filter method, the time alignment method, the coordinate transformation method and the optimal fusion criterion method, the core algorithm of our framework employs the track correlation as the performance index of the optimal fusion. The experimental results indicate that our method outperforms the methods based on a single ultrasonic sensor. The maximum error between the estimated location and the real location is only 1.32 cm, which meets the standard for engineering applications

Aerodynamic Response and Running Posture Analysis When the Train Passes a Crosswind Region on a Bridge

Trains running on a bridge face more significant safety risks. Based on the Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes turbulence model, a three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics computational model of the train–bridge–wind barrier was proposed in this study to measure the transient aerodynamic load of the train. The transient aerodynamic load was input into the wind–train–bridge coupling dynamic system to perform dynamic analysis of running safety. Significant fluctuations in the aerodynamic coefficients were found when the train entered and exited the wind barrier due to the dramatic change in flow pattern. The maximum value of the derailment coefficient decreased with the height of wind barriers, which hardly affected the wheel load reduction rate. The 2 m high wind barrier had no evident influence on the running posture of a general high-speed train, while the 4 m high wind barrier was proven to have better protection. Over-protection was found with an even higher wind barrier

Adaptive step-size forward advection method for aerosol process simulation

Outdoor aerosol processes are often associated with disasters and diseases, which threaten human life and health. Outdoor aerosols are a fluid system affected by meteorological conditions and three-dimensional complex terrain. Their variable wind speed and direction and complex terrain boundary conditions make simulating advection processes difficult. Based on incompressible flow conditions, we designed an adaptive time step algorithm for forward advection for the rapid simulation of aerosol processes. The method is based on the first-order forward semi-Lagrangian advection method with unconditional mass conservation. The first-order truncated error coefficient function theory generates an adaptive time step to control the accuracy of forward advection. Smoke aerosol simulation experiments in two small outdoor scenes were designed, and the effects of the traditional backward advection and forward fixed step methods were compared with the algorithm in this study. The proposed simulation method showed improved accuracy compared with the other two methods in experimental scenarios; moreover, compared with those of the traditional backward method, the computation time was significantly reduced and the conservation of mass was significantly improved. Thus, the proposed method is a fast simulation method for outdoor aerosol numerical prediction

Chloroplast genome characterization of Rubus arcticus L.

Rubus arcticus Linnaeus (1753) is a medicinal and edible plant in the Rosaceae with wide distribution in northeast China. The total length of the genome was 156,668 bp with a GC content of 37.1%, including a large single-copy (LSC, 85,958 bp) region, a small single-copy region (SSC, 18,756 bp), and inverted repeat (IR, 51,954 bp) regions. A total of 129 genes were identified. The numbers of protein genes tRNAs and rRNAs were 85, 36, and 8, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that R. arcticus belongs to the Rubus genus. Published R. arcticus chloroplast genomes have yielded insights into the closely related species identification, phylogenetic position and Rubus evolution

Discovery of 2‑(((1<i>r</i>,4<i>r</i>)‑4-(((4-Chlorophenyl)­(phenyl)­carbamoyl)­oxy)­methyl)­cyclohexyl)­methoxy)­acetate (Ralinepag): An Orally Active Prostacyclin Receptor Agonist for the Treatment of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

The design and synthesis of a new series of potent non-prostanoid IP receptor agonists that showed oral efficacy in the rat monocrotaline model of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) are described. Detailed profiling of a number of analogues resulted in the identification of <b>5c</b> (ralinepag) that has good selectivity in both binding and functional assays with respect to most members of the prostanoid receptor family and a more modest 30- to 50-fold selectivity over the EP3 receptor. In our hands, its potency and efficacy are comparable or superior to MRE269 (the active metabolite of the clinical compound NS-304) with respect to in vitro IP receptor dependent cAMP accumulation assays. <b>5c</b> had an excellent PK profile across species. Enterohepatic recirculation most probably contributes to a concentration–time profile after oral administration in the cynomolgus monkey that showed a very low peak-to-trough ratio. Following the identification of an acceptable solid form, <b>5c</b> was selected for further development for the treatment of PAH