The potential impact of climate change on heating and cooling loads for office buildings in the Yangtze River Delta

Located in the ‘Hot Summer Cold Winter’ climatic zone of China, the Yangtze River Delta area is one of the most challenging regions for providing occupant comfort in buildings, and effects of climate change in the next 100 years will make further increase in energy consumption. This article uses climate change data from HadCM3 to generate test reference years (TRYs) compiled for 2020s, 2050s and 2080s under various future scenarios for the cities of Ningbo, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Simulations were then conducted to see if effects of climate change can be contained or even reversed with improvements in building standards, and it was shown that energy consumption can be significantly reduced with building improvements, even in the face of climate change

A Pinned Polymer Model of Posture Control

A phenomenological model of human posture control is posited. The dynamics are modelled as an elastically pinned polymer under the influence of noise. The model accurately reproduces the two-point correlation functions of experimental posture data and makes predictions for the response function of the postural control system. The physiological and clinical significance of the model is discussed.Comment: uuencoded post script file, 17 pages with 3 figure

Characterization and immunomodulatory effects of canine adipose tissue- and bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells

Background Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) hold promise for both cell replacement and immune modulation strategies owing to their progenitor and non-progenitor functions, respectively. Characterization of MSC from different sources is an important and necessary step before clinical use of these cells is widely adopted. Little is known about the biology and function of canine MSC compared to their mouse or human counterparts. This knowledge-gap impedes development of canine evidence-based MSC technologies. Hypothesis and Objectives We hypothesized that canine adipose tissue (AT) and bone marrow (BM) MSC (derived from the same dogs) will have similar differentiation and immune modulatory profiles. Our objectives were to evaluate progenitor and non-progenitor functions as well as other characteristics of AT- and BM-MSC including 1) proliferation rate, 2) cell surface marker expression, 3) DNA methylation levels, 4) potential for trilineage differentiation towards osteogenic, adipogenic, and chondrogenic cell fates, and 5) immunomodulatory potency in vitro. Results 1) AT-MSC proliferated at more than double the rate of BM-MSC (population doubling times in days) for passage (P) 2, AT: 1.69, BM: 3.81; P3, AT: 1.80, BM: 4.06; P4, AT: 2.37, BM: 5.34; P5, AT: 3.20, BM: 7.21). 2) Canine MSC, regardless of source, strongly expressed cell surface markers MHC I, CD29, CD44, and CD90, and were negative for MHC II and CD45. They also showed moderate expression of CD8 and CD73 and mild expression of CD14. Minor differences were found in expression of CD4 and CD34. 3) Global DNA methylation levels were significantly lower in BM-MSC compared to AT-MSC. 4) Little difference was found between AT- and BM-MSC in their potential for adipogenesis and osteogenesis. Chondrogenesis was poor to absent for both sources in spite of adding varying levels of bone-morphogenic protein to our standard transforming growth factor (TGF-β3)-based induction medium. 5) Immunomodulatory capacity was equal regardless of cell source when tested in mitogen-stimulated lymphocyte reactions. Priming of MSC with pro-inflammatory factors interferon-gamma and/or tumour necrosis factor did not increase the lymphocyte suppressive properties of the MSC compared to untreated MSC. Conclusions/Significance No significant differences were found between AT- and BM-MSC with regard to their immunophenotype, progenitor, and non-progenitor functions. Both MSC populations showed strong adipogenic and osteogenic potential and poor chondrogenic potential. Both significantly suppressed stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The most significant differences found were the higher isolation success and proliferation rate of AT-MSC, which could be realized as notable benefits of their use over BM-MSC

Blood pressure estimation from photoplethysmogram and electrocardiogram signals using machine learning

Blood pressure measurement is a significant part of preventive healthcare and has been widely used in clinical risk and disease management. However, conventional measurement does not provide continuous monitoring and sometimes is inconvenient with a cuff. In addition to the traditional cuff-based blood pressure measurement methods, some researchers have developed various cuff-less and noninvasive blood pressure monitoring methods based on Pulse Transit Time (PTT). Some emerging methods have employed features of either photoplethysmogram (PPG) or electrocardiogram (ECG) signals, although no studies to our knowledge have employed the combined features from both PPG and ECG signals. Therefore this study aims to investigate the performance of a predictive, machine learning blood pressure monitoring system using both PPG and ECG signals. It validates that the employment of the combination of PPG and ECG signals has improved the accuracy of the blood pressure estimation, compared with previously reported results based on PPG signal only. © 2018 Institution of Engineering and Technology. All rights reserved

Light-Front Approach for Heavy Pentaquark Transitions

Assuming the two diquark structure for the pentaquark state as advocated in the Jaffe-Wilczek model, there exist exotic parity-even anti-sextet and parity-odd triplet heavy pentaquark baryons. The theoretical estimate of charmed and bottom pentaquark masses is quite controversial and it is not clear whether the ground-state heavy pentaquark lies above or below the strong-decay threshold. We study the weak transitions of heavy pentaquark states using the light-front quark model. In the heavy quark limit, heavy-to-heavy pentaquark transition form factors can be expressed in terms of three Isgur-Wise functions: two of them are found to be normalized to unity at zero recoil, while the third one is equal to 1/2 at the maximum momentum transfer, in accordance with the prediction of the large-Nc approach or the quark model. Therefore, the light-front model calculations are consistent with the requirement of heavy quark symmetry. Numerical results for form factors and Isgur-Wise functions are presented. Decay rates of the weak decays Theta_b+ to Theta_c0 pi+ (rho+), Theta_c0 to Theta+ pi- (rho-), Sigma'_{5b}+ to Sigma'_{5c}0 pi+ (rho+) and Sigma'_{5c}0 to N_8+ pi- (rho-) with Theta_Q, Sigma'_{5Q} and N_8 being the heavy anti-sextet, heavy triplet and light octet pentaquarks, respectively, are obtained. For weakly decaying Theta_b+ and Theta_c0, the branching ratios of Theta_b+ to Theta_c0 pi+, Theta_c0 to Theta+ pi- are estimated to be at the level of 10^{-3} and a few percents, respectively.Comment: 33 pages, 3 figures, version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Three-body structure of low-lying 18Ne states

We investigate to what extent 18Ne can be descibed as a three-body system made of an inert 16O-core and two protons. We compare to experimental data and occasionally to shell model results. We obtain three-body wave functions with the hyperspherical adiabatic expansion method. We study the spectrum of 18Ne, the structure of the different states and the predominant transition strengths. Two 0+, two 2+, and one 4+ bound states are found where they are all known experimentally. Also one 3+ close to threshold is found and several negative parity states, 1-, 3-, 0-, 2-, most of them bound with respect to the 16O excited 3- state. The structures are extracted as partial wave components, as spatial sizes of matter and charge, and as probability distributions. Electromagnetic decay rates are calculated for these states. The dominating decay mode for the bound states is E2 and occasionally also M1.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures (version to appear in EPJA

The “Narratives” fMRI dataset for evaluating models of naturalistic language comprehension

The “Narratives” collection aggregates a variety of functional MRI datasets collected while human subjects listened to naturalistic spoken stories. The current release includes 345 subjects, 891 functional scans, and 27 diverse stories of varying duration totaling ~4.6 hours of unique stimuli (~43,000 words). This data collection is well-suited for naturalistic neuroimaging analysis, and is intended to serve as a benchmark for models of language and narrative comprehension. We provide standardized MRI data accompanied by rich metadata, preprocessed versions of the data ready for immediate use, and the spoken story stimuli with time-stamped phoneme- and word-level transcripts. All code and data are publicly available with full provenance in keeping with current best practices in transparent and reproducible neuroimaging

Analysis of microstructure effects on edge crack of thin strip during cold rolling

Edge cracks in cold rolling of the thin strip affect the strip quality and productivity significantly. In this study, an experimental and mechanical investigation on microstructures has been carried out to study the edge crack formation during cold rolling of the thin strip. The effects of the feed material microstructures on the edge crack evolution were studied employing optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Experimental observation indicates that fine grain occurs in hot-rolled microstructure and coarse grain is produced in ferritic rolled microstructure. Different grain sizes affect significantly the formation mechanics of the microcrack, crack initiation, and orientation of crack extension. The grain size and grain boundaries effects on crack retardation are discussed also during edge crack initiation. During the crack growth in coarse grain, most edge crack tips will blunt, which improves the crack toughness by causing less stress concentration. Overall, the fine microstructure shows a good crack initiation resistance, whereas the coarse microstructure has a better resistance to crack propagation. This research provides additional understanding of the mechanism of microstructure influence on edge crack evolution of cold strip rolling, which could be helpful for developing defect-free thin strip

Measurement of the cross section for isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector

The dynamics of isolated-photon production in association with a jet in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV are studied with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using a dataset with an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb−1. Photons are required to have transverse energies above 125 GeV. Jets are identified using the anti- algorithm with radius parameter and required to have transverse momenta above 100 GeV. Measurements of isolated-photon plus jet cross sections are presented as functions of the leading-photon transverse energy, the leading-jet transverse momentum, the azimuthal angular separation between the photon and the jet, the photon–jet invariant mass and the scattering angle in the photon–jet centre-of-mass system. Tree-level plus parton-shower predictions from Sherpa and Pythia as well as next-to-leading-order QCD predictions from Jetphox and Sherpa are compared to the measurements