Groundwater level prediction with meteorologically sensitive Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) neural networks

Precise estimation of groundwater level (GWL) fluctuations has a substantial effect on water resources management. In the present study, to forecast the regional mean monthly time series groundwater level (GWL) with a range of 4.82 (m) in Urmia plain, three different layer structures of Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) deep learning-based neural network models via the module of sequence-to-sequence regression are designed. In this sense, 180-time series datasets of regional mean monthly meteorological, hydrological, and observed water table depths of 42 different monitoring piezometers during the period of Oct 2002–Sep 2017 are employed as the input variables. By using Shannon entropy method, the most influential parameters on GWL are determined as regional mean monthly air temperature (Tam), precipitation (Pm), total (sum) water diversion discharge (Wdm) of four main rivers. Nevertheless, Cosine amplitude sensitivity analysis confirmed Tam as a dominant factor. For preventing overfitting problem, an algorithm tuning technique via different kinds of hyperparameters is operated. In this respect, several scenarios are implemented and the optimal hyperparameters are accomplished via the trial-and-error process. As stated by the performance evaluation metrics, Model Grading process, and Total Learnable Parameters (TLP) value, the innovative and unique suggested model (3), entitled GRU2+, (Double-GRU model coupled with Addition layer (+)) with seven layers is carefully chosen as the best model. The unique suggested model (3) in the optimal hyperparameters, resulted in an R2 of 0.91, a total grade (TG) of 7.76, an RMSE of 0.094 (m), and a running time of 47 (s). Thus, the model (3) can be certainly employed as an effective model to forecast GWL in different agricultural areas. © 2022 Elsevier B.V

Monitoring and Estimating Sugarcane Losses during Harvesting Using Sound Analysis

Mechanical harvesting of sugarcane is done in two ways: green and burnt, and usually burnt harvest has between 25-50% less losses. When harvesting sugarcane, the sound of sugarcane pieces hitting the wall of the primary extractor hood can clearly be heard. Accordingly, it was decided to use the audio system to determine the relationship between these sounds and the losses of the primary extractor. To record sounds in the basic extractor, two models of full-directional and one-way capacitive microphone (cardioid) and Cool Record Edit Deluxe and Audacity software were used. To detect the wavelength of the sounds caused by the collision of different parts of sugarcane with the hood cap and extractor blades by throwing a large volume of straw along with 25 cm pieces of sugarcane billets, a sound record was set. A camera was also installed there to record the video of what was happening under the extractor compartment. The results showed that the one-way capacitive microphone installed in the upper part of the primary extractor housing received clearer sounds. Analyzing the recorded sounds and comparing them with the images obtained from the camera under the primary extractor revealed that the audio loss detection system detects the losses in the primary extractor with an accuracy of about 75 to 80%. The loss rate at 1200 rpm was about 1.5 times higher than the loss rate at 1100 rpm

The Role of Professional Sports on Quality of Sleep and Life in Veterans and Disabled Professional Cycling Team Athletes

Background: Due to physical and mobility limitations, veterans and disabled people have poorer quality of life and sleep. The purpose of this study was to survey the quality of sleep and life in veterans and disabled professional cycling team athletes participating in the national championship competition. Methods: Fifty-two subjects participated in this descriptive-analytical study, including twenty-six veterans and disabled professional cyclists who had participated in a national championship competition held in Shiraz and 26 volunteer non-athlete veterans and disabled persons selected by convenient sampling. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and SF-12 questionnaire were used to collect data and Mann-Whitney U test and Spearman correlation coefficient were used for data analysis. Results: There was a significant difference in the total score of quality of life and its scales between the two groups (P<0.05); so that, the cyclist group showed a better status. Also, there was a significant difference between the two groups in total score of sleep quality (P = 0.001) and the constructs of sleep latency (P=0.01), sleep duration (P=0.008), sleep disturbances (P=0.007) and use of sleeping medications (P=0.001); so that, the cyclist group had a lower score in the mentioned items and had a better status. There was no significant correlation between the total score of quality of life and total score of sleep quality in the cyclist (r=-0.14, P=0.49) or non-athlete (r=-0.06, P=0.74) groups. Conclusion: The present study showed that the veteran and disabled professional cyclists that participated in the national championship had good sleep quality and quality of life compared to the non-athlete disabled persons

Assessment of the toxicity effects of nicotine on sperm and IVF and the potential protective role of silymarin—an experimental study in mice

Abstract Background: Male infertility is usually caused via the inability to produce adequate quantities of healthy and active sperms. Nicotine (NIC) is an alkaloid organic compound, predominantly found in the leaves of the tobacco plant. The major part of the nicotine is not ionized, so it can easily pass through cell membranes. Meanwhile, most of the disorders are caused by oxidative stress due to oxygen free radicals and other reactive species. Antioxidant supplements and antioxidant-rich foods can reduce induced oxidative stress without becoming destabilized themselves. This study aimed to examine spermato-protective potential of silymarin (SIL), on sperm and in vitro fertility (IVF) rate in nicotine-treated mice. Results: Our results show a significant increase in the number of abnormal sperm morphology after nicotine exposure, when compared to control groups (p < 0.05). On the other hand, SIL had a significant effect on the sperm count at each of the treated doses. Further, in the mice that received nicotine plus silymarin, the viable sperm percentage and the progressive sperm motility were significant (p < 0.05). Also, a significant reduction in the number of two-cell embryos and blastocyst-derived embryo was seen with increment in the number of dead embryos in mice receiving nicotine alone (p < 0.05). Conclusions: In conclusion, SIL could support prevention of the adverse reproductive effects of nicotine. Moreover, SIL200 mg/kg may be therefore considered as a spermato-protective agent in dietary and herbal supplements. © 2020, The Author(s). Author:Antioxidant, Fertility, In vitro fertility, Nicotine, Silymarin, Spermatogenesi

The effect of bilingualism on the processing of clustering and switching in verbal fluency tasks

Background: This study examined the effect of bilingualism on the processing of clustering and switching in verbal fluency tasks in Farsi-Balochi bilinguals. Methods: Ninety participants entered this study, including 45 Farsi monolinguals and 45 Farsi-Balochi bilinguals. All participants were male university students between the ages of 18 to 24 years. Verbal fluency tests were performed and the clustering and switching scores were calculated. Data was analyzed in SPSS-16 software. Results: The monolingual group obtained a score of 32.84 in the total semantic fluency task and 24.13 in the phonemic fluency task, while the bilingual group obtained 30.70 in the semantic task and 29.37 in the phonemic task. The number of switches between the clusters and the mean cluster size were 35.82 and 2.6 in the monolingual group and 38.65 and 2.26 in the bilingual group, respectively. The difference between groups in phonemic fluency, phonemic switching, and semantic clustering was significant (p˂0.05). Discussion: The bilingual group performed better in phonemic fluency and switched more between the clusters. Meanwhile, the monolinguals produced more words in each cluster than the bilinguals

HDPV-SLAM: Hybrid Depth-augmented Panoramic Visual SLAM for Mobile Mapping System with Tilted LiDAR and Panoramic Visual Camera

This paper proposes a novel visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system called Hybrid Depth-augmented Panoramic Visual SLAM (HDPV-SLAM), that employs a panoramic camera and a tilted multi-beam LiDAR scanner to generate accurate and metrically-scaled trajectories. RGB-D SLAM was the design basis for HDPV-SLAM, which added depth information to visual features. It aims to solve the two major issues hindering the performance of similar SLAM systems. The first obstacle is the sparseness of LiDAR depth, which makes it difficult to correlate it with the extracted visual features of the RGB image. A deep learning-based depth estimation module for iteratively densifying sparse LiDAR depth was suggested to address this issue. The second issue pertains to the difficulties in depth association caused by a lack of horizontal overlap between the panoramic camera and the tilted LiDAR sensor. To surmount this difficulty, we present a hybrid depth association module that optimally combines depth information estimated by two independent procedures, feature-based triangulation and depth estimation. During a phase of feature tracking, this hybrid depth association module aims to maximize the use of more accurate depth information between the triangulated depth with visual features tracked and the deep learning-based corrected depth. We evaluated the efficacy of HDPV-SLAM using the 18.95 km-long York University and Teledyne Optech (YUTO) MMS dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that the two proposed modules contribute substantially to the performance of HDPV-SLAM, which surpasses that of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) SLAM systems.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, To be published in IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE) 202

A high-performance rubberised alkali-activated mortar for repair of RC beams

The application of recycled waste tyre rubber in construction materials is increasingly growing due to its economic, environmental, and technical benefits. This study, in particular, examines the potential use of a waste tire rubber alkali-activated mortar in effective repair of damaged RC beams, which contains a very slight embodied-carbon footprint compared to the existing repair mortars. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed mortar for repair purposes, an extensive set of small-scale mortar samples with diverse contents are designed, assembled, and tested for compressive strength, flexural strength, bonding strength, and water absorption capacity. After discovering the efficient mortar mix that in general provides improved performance, large-scale RC beams are designed, constructed, damaged, repaired, and tested in flexure. It is found that the proposed mortar showed remarkable results and potential as a repair material. It contains significantly lower embodied carbon (35.3 kg/m3) compared to ordinary mortar (530.8 kg/m3). Also, the beam repaired by the proposed mortar exhibits high overall performance including strength capacity, ductility index, and bonding feature that are superior to the existing mortars. In particular, the experimental results demonstrated about 20 % increase in cracking load and 30 % increase in maximum displacement compared to the undamaged beam