MRL-Seg: Overcoming Imbalance in Medical Image Segmentation With Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning

Medical image segmentation is a critical task for clinical diagnosis and research. However, dealing with highly imbalanced data remains a significant challenge in this domain, where the region of interest (ROI) may exhibit substantial variations across different slices. This presents a significant hurdle to medical image segmentation, as conventional segmentation methods may either overlook the minority class or overly emphasize the majority class, ultimately leading to a decrease in the overall generalization ability of the segmentation results. To overcome this, we propose a novel approach based on multi-step reinforcement learning, which integrates prior knowledge of medical images and pixel-wise segmentation difficulty into the reward function. Our method treats each pixel as an individual agent, utilizing diverse actions to evaluate its relevance for segmentation. To validate the effectiveness of our approach, we conduct experiments on four imbalanced medical datasets, and the results show that our approach surpasses other state-of-the-art methods in highly imbalanced scenarios. These findings hold substantial implications for clinical diagnosis and research

Study on AADDS Plunger Pump Driving Bearing Properties

The Auto Anti-Deviation Drilling System (AADDS) is a high-performance, highly automated vertical drilling hydraulic guide control system. This article takes its power extraction device - driving bearing for the study object, analyzed the single-plunger pump's principle, established the mathematical model of hydraulic guide system, applied Matlab/Simulink to simulate the pump outlet flow under different contour curve of the driving bearing. The results show the oval-shaped bearing is of high efficiency under lower drilling speed, and its performance is better than that of original eccentric-shaped and clover-shaped

Archaea: An under-estimated kingdom in livestock animals

Archaea are considered an essential group of gut microorganisms in both humans and animals. However, they have been neglected in previous studies, especially those involving non-ruminants. In this study, we re-analyzed published metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data sequenced from matched samples to explore the composition and the expression activity of gut archaea in ruminants (cattle and sheep) and monogastric animals (pig and chicken). Our results showed that the alpha and beta diversity of each host species, especially cattle and chickens, calculated from metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data were significantly different, suggesting that metatranscriptomic data better represent the functional status of archaea. We detected that the relative abundance of 17 (cattle), 7 (sheep), 20 (pig), and 2 (chicken) archaeal species were identified in the top 100 archaeal taxa when analyzing the metagenomic datasets, and these species were classified as the “active archaeal species” for each host species by comparison with corresponding metatranscriptomic data. For example, The expressive abundance in metatranscriptomic dataset of Methanosphaera cuniculi and Methanosphaera stadtmanae were 30- and 27-fold higher than that in metagenomic abundance, indicating their potentially important function in the pig gut. Here we aim to show the potential importance of archaea in the livestock digestive tract and encourage future research in this area, especially on the gut archaea of monogastric animals

Updated perspective of EPAS1 and the role in pulmonary hypertension

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a group of syndromes characterized by irreversible vascular remodeling and persistent elevation of pulmonary vascular resistance and pressure, leading to ultimately right heart failure and even death. Current therapeutic strategies mainly focus on symptoms alleviation by stimulating pulmonary vessel dilation. Unfortunately, the mechanism and interventional management of vascular remodeling are still yet unrevealed. Hypoxia plays a central role in the pathogenesis of PH and numerous studies have shown the relationship between PH and hypoxia-inducible factors family. EPAS1, known as hypoxia-inducible factor-2 alpha (HIF-2α), functions as a transcription factor participating in various cellular pathways. However, the detailed mechanism of EPAS1 has not been fully and systematically described. This article exhibited a comprehensive summary of EPAS1 including the molecular structure, biological function and regulatory network in PH and other relevant cardiovascular diseases, and furthermore, provided theoretical reference for the potential novel target for future PH intervention

Elastohydrodynamic lubrication in point contact on the surfaces of particle-reinforced composite

Appreciable friction and serious wear are common challenges in the operation of advanced manufacturing equipment, and friction pairs may be susceptible to damage even with oil lubrication when point contact exists. In this study, a type of particle-reinforced composite material is introduced for one of the components of a heavy-load contact pair, and the performance improvement of elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) is analyzed considering the rheological properties of non-Newtonian fluids. The Ree–Eyring EHL model is used considering the surface of the particle-reinforced composite, in which the film thickness includes the particle-induced elastic deformation. The problem of inclusions with different eigenstrains is solved by using Galerkin vectors. The influences of particle properties, size, burial depth, and interparticle distance on point-contact EHL are investigated. Furthermore, using several cases, the structural parameters of the particles in the composites are optimized, and an appropriate parameter range is obtained with the goal of reducing friction. Finally, the results for the EHL traction coefficient demonstrate that appropriate particle properties, size, burial depth, and interparticle distance can effectively reduce the traction coefficient in heavy-load contact

Dynamic Analysis of Test Frame of Railway Subgrade Dynamic Response Test System

In this paper, we take the railway subgrade dynamic response test system as the study object, the laboratory test reaction frameâ??s model factors were analyzed through the finite element analysis software MSC.Patran/Nastran. The former six-order original frequencies and vibration modes of the frame were caculated and evaluated in detail. Then we studied its transient response under two working conditions: when itâ??s fully loaded and suddenly unloaded, and the deformation displacement curves of the key points of the frame were obtained. These results provide a basis for the detailed study to the mechanical behavior of the frame and setting the proper working frequencies of the hydraulic servo excitation cylinder to avoid the resonance

Investigation of Rotating Detonation Fueled by Liquid Kerosene

The performance of rotating detonation engines (RDEs) is theoretically better than that of traditional aero engines because of self-pressurization. A type of swirl injection scheme is introduced in this paper for two-phase detonation. On the one hand, experiments are performed on continuous rotating detonation of ternary “kerosene, hydrogen and oxygen-enriched air” mixture in an annular combustor. It is found that increasing the mass fraction of hydrogen can boost the wave speed and the stability of detonation waves’ propagation. One the other hand, characteristics of kerosene–hot air RDE is investigated for engineering application. Some unstable phenomena are recorded, such as changes of the number of detonation waves, low-frequency oscillations, and sporadic detonation

Balanced Bipartite Graph Based Register Allocation for Network Processors in Mobile and Wireless Networks

Mobile and wireless networks are the integrant infrastructure of mobile and pervasive computing that aims at providing transparent and preferred information and services for people anytime anywhere. In such environments, end-to-end network bandwidth is crucial to improve user's transparent experience when providing on-demand services such as mobile video playing. As a result, powerful computing power is required for networked nodes, especially for routers. General-purpose processors cannot meet such requirements due to their limited processing ability, and poor programmability and scalability. Intel's network processor IXP is specially designed for fast packet processing to achieve a broad bandwidth. IXP provides a large number of registers to reduce the number of memory accesses. Registers in an IXP are physically partitioned as two banks so that two source operands in an instruction have to come from the two banks respectively, which makes the IXP register allocation tricky and different from conventional ones. In this paper, we investigate an approach for efficiently generating balanced bipartite graph and register allocation algorithms for the dual-bank register allocation in IXPs. The paper presents a graph uniform 2-way partition algorithm (FPT), which provides an optimal solution to the graph partition, and a heuristic algorithm for generating balanced bipartite graph. Finally, we design a framework for IXP register allocation. Experimental results demonstrate the framework and the algorithms are efficient in register allocation for IXP network processors

The Simulation and Optimization of the Electro-Hydraulic Proportional Control System Based on Simulink/SRO

Nowadays, the electro-hydraulic valves are widely used in industrial manufacture for their low-cost and accuracy. Aiming at electro-hydraulic proportional position system, a model of the system is established in Simulink. The system is simulated respectively as the situation of without PID controller, with the PID controller turned by critical ratio method and SRO optimize module. The results show that: the position control system with electro-hydraulic proportional valve is of good static and dynamic characteristics, and meets the requirements of industrial production fairly, and it also indicates the usage of computer automation optimization technology can design the control system with good performance in a short time and can improve the design efficiency

Distributed equalisation strategy for multi-battery energy storage systems

Multi-battery energy storage systems (MBESSs) are widely adopted to overcome the uncertainty problem of renewable energy sources. However, state-of-charge (SOC) imbalance issue of MBESSs brings great challenges to the optimal dispatching strategy and the lifetime management strategy for the MBESS. This study proposes a distributed equalisation strategy for the MBESSs to solve the stated problem. An equitable operation optimisation model is proposed in the distributed equalisation strategy. The equitable optimisation model can be simplified as a convex quadratic optimisation problem. An equitable approximation method is utilised to solve the convex quadratic optimisation problem according to the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker optimality conditions. Based on the equitable approximation method, the SOC balance process is distributed into different iteration steps. The iteration of the SOC balance process is implemented by the communication system connecting the distributed management systems (DMSs). The distributed SOC balance step is implemented by the DMSs of the batteries. The proposed strategy is validated by a hardware-in-the-loop simulation system based on the RT-LAB. Test results show that the proposed strategy ensure the SOC balance and improve the robustness of the MBESS