Shape asymmetries and lopsidedness-radial-alignment in simulated galaxies

Galaxies are observed to be lopsided, meaning that they are more massive and more extended along one direction than the opposite. However, the galaxies generated in cosmological simulations are much less lopsided, inconsistent with observations. In this work, we provide a statistical analysis of the lopsided morphology of 2148 simulated isolated satellite galaxies generated by TNG50-1 simulation, incorporating the effect of tidal fields from halo centres. We study the radial alignment (RA) between the major axes of satellites and the radial direction of their halo centres within truncation radii of $3R_h$, $5R_h$ and $10R_h$. According to our results, RA is absent for all these truncations. We also calculate the far-to-near-side semi-axial ratios of the major axes, denoted by $a_-/a_+$, which measures the semi-axial ratios of the major axes in the hemispheres between backwards (far-side) and facing (near-side) the halo centres. If the satellites are truncated within radii of $3R_h$ and $5R_h$ with $R_h$ being the stellar half mass radius, the numbers of satellites with longer semi-axes on the far-side are found to be almost equal to those with longer semi-axes on the near-side. Within a larger truncated radius of $10R_h$, the number of satellites with axial ratios $a_-/a_+ <1.0$ is about $10\%$ more than that with $a_-/a_+ > 1.0$. Therefore, the tidal fields from halo centres play a minor role in the generation of lopsided satellites. The lopsidedness radial alignment (LRA), i.e., an alignment of long semi-major-axes along the radial direction of halo centres, is further studied. No clear evidence of LRA is found in our sample within the framework of $\Lambda$CDM Newtonian dynamics. In comparison, the LRA can be naturally induced by the external fields from the central host galaxy in Milgromian dynamics. (See paper for full abstract)Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, submitted to MNRA

Optimization of ultrasound-microwave synergistic extraction of prebiotic oligosaccharides from sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas L.)

peer-reviewedIn this study, efficient ultrasound–microwave-assisted extraction (UMAE) of prebiotic oligosaccharides from sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas L.) was investigated. Response surface methodology was used to optimize the extraction conditions: extraction time, ultrasonic power, and microwave power. The prebiotic effect of extracted oligosaccharides on Bifidobacterium adolescentis was also investigated. The results show that the processing conditions of UMAE for optimum the yields of prebiotic oligosaccharides from sweet potatoes (PPOS4 and PPOS5) and corresponding absorbance (OD) are 100 s extraction time, 300 W ultrasonic power, and 200 W microwave power. Under these conditions, the experimental yields of PPOS4 and PPOS5 and the corresponding OD were 1.472%, 5.476%, and 2.966, respectively, which match the predicted values well. Compared with the conventional hot-water extraction (HWE), microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), and ultrasound assisted extraction (UAE) methods, the UMAE procedure exhibited significantly high extraction efficiency (p < 0.05). Comparison of SEM images of tissues of the sweet potatoes after extractions indicate microfractures and disruption of cell walls in the potato tissues. These results confirm that UMAE has great potential and efficiency in the extraction of bioactive substances in the food and medicinal industries

BSDF Importance Baking: A Lightweight Neural Solution to Importance Sampling General Parametric BSDFs

Parametric Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Functions (BSDFs) are pervasively used because of their flexibility to represent a large variety of material appearances by simply tuning the parameters. While efficient evaluation of parametric BSDFs has been well-studied, high-quality importance sampling techniques for parametric BSDFs are still scarce. Existing sampling strategies either heavily rely on approximations, resulting in high variance, or solely perform sampling on a portion of the whole BSDF slice. Moreover, many of the sampling approaches are specifically paired with certain types of BSDFs. In this paper, we seek an efficient and general way for importance sampling parametric BSDFs. We notice that the nature of importance sampling is the mapping between a uniform distribution and the target distribution. Specifically, when BSDF parameters are given, the mapping that performs importance sampling on a BSDF slice can be simply recorded as a 2D image that we name as importance map. Following this observation, we accurately precompute the importance maps using a mathematical tool named optimal transport. Then we propose a lightweight neural network to efficiently compress the precomputed importance maps. In this way, we have brought parametric BSDF important sampling to the precomputation stage, avoiding heavy runtime computation. Since this process is similar to light baking where a set of images are precomputed, we name our method importance baking. Together with a BSDF evaluation network and a PDF (probability density function) query network, our method enables full multiple importance sampling (MIS) without any revision to the rendering pipeline. Our method essentially performs perfect importance sampling. Compared with previous methods, we demonstrate reduced noise levels on rendering results with a rich set of appearances

Effect of far-infrared therapy device on arteriovenous fistula maturation and lifespan in hemodialysis patients: a randomized controlled clinical trial

IntroductionArteriovenous fistula (AVF) is the first choice of vascular access for hemodialysis treatment, and its surgical maturity rate is not high, and its postoperative complications (mostly stenosis) significantly shorten its life. At present, there are few studies on treatment methods to improve the maturity and survival of AVF. In this study, the effect of far infrared therapy (FIR) on the maturity and longevity of arteriovenous fistula in hemodialysis patients was discussed, and the protective mechanism of AVF induced by FIR therapy was explored, aiming at exploring a new treatment method.MethodsThe hemodialysis patients admitted to the 900th Hospital of the Chinese Joint Logistics Support Force of the People's Liberation Army from January 2021 to April 2023 were randomly divided into control group and intervention group, with 40 cases in each group. Among them, the control group was coated with mucopolysaccharide polysulfonate cream; Intervention group: The patients were treated with mucopolysaccharide polysulfonate cream and far infrared radiation at the same time. After 3 months' intervention, the arteriovenous fistula (vein diameter, mature time of arteriovenous fistula, blood flow controlled by pump during dialysis, blood flow of brachial artery during dialysis and the occurrence of complications of internal fistula (oozing, occlusion and infection) and the pain score (numerical rating scale, NRS) of the two groups were compared, and the curative effects were compared.ResultsThere was no significant difference in general data between the two groups (P &gt; 0.05), which indicated that the study was comparable. After 3 months' intervention, the vein diameter, pump-controlled blood flow and brachial artery blood flow in the intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P &lt; 0.05). And the maturity time, NRS score and complication rate of arteriovenous fistula were significantly lower than those of the control group (P &lt; 0.05). The primary patency rate of AVF in the intervention group was higher than that in the control group, and the overall patency rate between the two groups was statistically significant (P &lt; 0.05).ConclusionsAs a promising new treatment method, far infrared therapy can effectively promote the maturity of AVF, increase venous diameter, pump controlled blood flow during dialysis, brachial artery blood flow during dialysis, and prolong the service life of AVF

GaitStrip: Gait Recognition via Effective Strip-based Feature Representations and Multi-Level Framework

Many gait recognition methods first partition the human gait into N-parts and then combine them to establish part-based feature representations. Their gait recognition performance is often affected by partitioning strategies, which are empirically chosen in different datasets. However, we observe that strips as the basic component of parts are agnostic against different partitioning strategies. Motivated by this observation, we present a strip-based multi-level gait recognition network, named GaitStrip, to extract comprehensive gait information at different levels. To be specific, our high-level branch explores the context of gait sequences and our low-level one focuses on detailed posture changes. We introduce a novel StriP-Based feature extractor (SPB) to learn the strip-based feature representations by directly taking each strip of the human body as the basic unit. Moreover, we propose a novel multi-branch structure, called Enhanced Convolution Module (ECM), to extract different representations of gaits. ECM consists of the Spatial-Temporal feature extractor (ST), the Frame-Level feature extractor (FL) and SPB, and has two obvious advantages: First, each branch focuses on a specific representation, which can be used to improve the robustness of the network. Specifically, ST aims to extract spatial-temporal features of gait sequences, while FL is used to generate the feature representation of each frame. Second, the parameters of the ECM can be reduced in test by introducing a structural re-parameterization technique. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our GaitStrip achieves state-of-the-art performance in both normal walking and complex conditions.Comment: Accepted to ACCV202

DyGait: Exploiting Dynamic Representations for High-performance Gait Recognition

Gait recognition is a biometric technology that recognizes the identity of humans through their walking patterns. Compared with other biometric technologies, gait recognition is more difficult to disguise and can be applied to the condition of long-distance without the cooperation of subjects. Thus, it has unique potential and wide application for crime prevention and social security. At present, most gait recognition methods directly extract features from the video frames to establish representations. However, these architectures learn representations from different features equally but do not pay enough attention to dynamic features, which refers to a representation of dynamic parts of silhouettes over time (e.g. legs). Since dynamic parts of the human body are more informative than other parts (e.g. bags) during walking, in this paper, we propose a novel and high-performance framework named DyGait. This is the first framework on gait recognition that is designed to focus on the extraction of dynamic features. Specifically, to take full advantage of the dynamic information, we propose a Dynamic Augmentation Module (DAM), which can automatically establish spatial-temporal feature representations of the dynamic parts of the human body. The experimental results show that our DyGait network outperforms other state-of-the-art gait recognition methods. It achieves an average Rank-1 accuracy of 71.4% on the GREW dataset, 66.3% on the Gait3D dataset, 98.4% on the CASIA-B dataset and 98.3% on the OU-MVLP dataset

The influence of coal mining subsidence on the movement and deformation of loess slope in the loess gully area of Northern Shaanxi

Introduction: How to solve the contradiction between coal mining and soil and water conservation is a key scientific problem to realize ecological environment protection and high-quality development in the middle reaches of the Yellow River.Methods: Using FLAC3D numerical simulation experiment method, the influence of loess slope surface shape and coal seam overburden structure coupling on slope movement and deformation is studied.Results: Under any surface slope shape, the average slope subsidence coefficient (q slope average) increases with the increase of sand layer coefficient after coal mining subsidence. When the sand layer coefficient is less than 0.71, the q slope average increases rapidly, with an increase of more than 2.86%, and when the sand layer coefficient is greater than 0.71, the q slope average tends to be stable. Under any surface slope shape, the q slope average decreases with the increase of sand-mud ratio. When the overburden structure characteristics of any coal seam and the natural slope of the surface slope are less than or equal to 5°, the q slope average of the convex slope is the largest, and the q slope average of the four slope types is ranked as follows: convex slope &gt; straight slope ≈ composite slope &gt; concave slope; When the structural characteristics of overlying strata in any coal seam and the natural slope of surface slope are more than 5°, the q slope average of concave slope is the largest, and the q slope average of four slope types is in the order of concave slope &gt; straight slope ≈ composite slope &gt; convex slope. With the increase of the natural slope of the surface slope, the q slope average first decreases and then increases, and the inflection point is 15°. The influence law of loess slope surface morphology and coal seam overburden structure on the average horizontal movement of slope surface is similar to that of average subsidence of slope surface.Discussion: The results can provide scientific basis for surface movement and deformation and soil and water conservation in the mining subsidence area of northern Shaanxi in the middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin in China

Listening skills development in the process of learning Chinese as a foreign language of Russian Linguistics students

В данной статье говорится о преподавании китайского языка как иностранного в форме аудирования в русскоговорящей аудитории студентов-лингвистов. Подчеркивается актуальность изучения китайского языка в России, анализируются сложности аудирования китайского языка в целом и предлагаются варианты организации работы на занятиях ККИ, учитывающие особенности обучающихся студентов-лингвистов.This article talks about teaching Chinese as a foreign language in the form of listening to the Russian-speaking students of Linguistics. The relevance of studying the Chinese language in Russia is emphasized, the difficulties in developing Chinese listening skills are analyzed, and options for organizing work in the Chinese lessons as a foreign language are proposed, taking into account the peculiarities of studying students of Linguistics

Knee loading repairs osteoporotic osteoarthritis by relieving abnormal remodeling of subchondral bone via Wnt/β-catenin signaling

Osteoporotic osteoarthritis (OPOA) is a common bone disease mostly in the elderly, but the relationship between Osteoporotic (OP) and osteoarthritis (OA) is complex. It has been shown that knee loading can mitigate OA symptoms. However, its effects on OPOA remain unclear. In this study, we characterized pathological linkage of OP to OA, and evaluated the effect of knee loading on OPOA. We employed two mouse models (OA and OPOA), and conducted histology, cytology, and molecular analyses. In the OA and OPOA groups, articular cartilage was degenerated and Osteoarthritis Research Society International score was increased. Subchondral bone underwent abnormal remodeling, the differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) to osteoblasts and chondrocytes was reduced, and migration and adhesion of pre-osteoclasts were enhanced. Compared to the OA group, the pathological changes of OA in the OPOA group were considerably aggravated. After knee loading, however, cartilage degradation was effectively prevented, and the abnormal remodeling of subchondral bone was significantly inhibited. The differentiation of BMSCs was also improved, and the expression of Wnt/β-catenin was elevated. Collectively, this study demonstrates that osteoporosis aggravates OA symptoms. Knee loading restores OPOA by regulating subchondral bone remodeling, and may provide an effective method for repairing OPOA

Co-constructing the assessment criteria for EFL writing by instructors and students: A participative approach to constructively aligning the CEFR, curricula, teaching and learning

The current assessment in language classrooms prevailingly utilizes the criteria provided by instructors, regarding learners as passive recipients of assessment. The current study drew upon sustainable assessment and the community of practice to highlight the importance of involving learners in co-constructing the assessment criteria and argued that using the criteria provided by instructors could lead to discrepancy between assessment, teaching, and learning. It adopted a participatory approach and investigated how to involve learners in co-constructing the assessment criteria with instructors in tertiary English writing instruction in China, based on the European Language Profile (ELP), an evolved version of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Two writing instructors and 146 tertiary students played different, yet interactive roles in adapting the assessment criteria in the local context. Instructors drafted the criteria in line with curricula, teaching, learning and learners. Learners utilized the draft criteria in a training session and suggested possible modifications to the criteria in a survey. Suggestions were used to revise the descriptors alongside teachers’ reflections via reflective logs. A follow-up survey explored students’ perceptions of the feasibility and usefulness of the modified descriptors to investigate the effectiveness of co-constructing the assessment criteria for learning and reveal further improvement if necessary. Vigilant decision-making processes were thickly described regarding how assessment descriptors were selected, arranged, and modified to constructively align them with curricula, teaching, and learning. Statistical and thematic analyses were conducted to examine the accessibility, feasibility, and usefulness of the assessment descriptors prior to and after the modifications. Results substantiated the effectiveness and thus the importance of co-constructing assessment criteria for enhancing the quality of assessment criteria and developing learners’ cognitive and metacognitive knowledge of writing and assessment. Implications for language tutors regarding co-constructing assessment criteria in local contexts were deliberated on at the end of the article