Applications of two neuro-based metaheuristic techniques in evaluating ground vibration resulting from tunnel blasting

Peak particle velocity (PPV) caused by blasting is an unfavorable environmental issue that can damage neighboring structures or equipment. Hence, a reliable prediction and minimization of PPV are essential for a blasting site. To estimate PPV caused by tunnel blasting, this paper proposes two neuro-based metaheuristic models: neuro-imperialism and neuro-swarm. The prediction was made based on extensive observation and data collecting from a tunnelling project that was concerned about the presence of a temple near the blasting operations and tunnel site. A detailed modeling procedure was conducted to estimate PPV values using both empirical methods and intelligence techniques. As a fair comparison, a base model considered a benchmark in intelligent modeling, artificial neural network (ANN), was also built to predict the same output. The developed models were evaluated using several calculated statistical indices, such as variance account for (VAF) and a-20 index. The empirical equation findings revealed that there is still room for improvement by implementing other techniques. This paper demonstrated this improvement by proposing the neuro-swarm, neuro-imperialism, and ANN models. The neuro-swarm model outperforms the others in terms of accuracy. VAF values of 90.318% and 90.606% and a-20 index values of 0.374 and 0.355 for training and testing sets, respectively, were obtained for the neuro-swarm model to predict PPV induced by blasting. The proposed neuro-based metaheuristic models in this investigation can be utilized to predict PPV values with an acceptable level of accuracy within the site conditions and input ranges used in this study

Layer-wise Representation Fusion for Compositional Generalization

Despite successes across a broad range of applications, sequence-to-sequence models' construct of solutions are argued to be less compositional than human-like generalization. There is mounting evidence that one of the reasons hindering compositional generalization is representations of the encoder and decoder uppermost layer are entangled. In other words, the syntactic and semantic representations of sequences are twisted inappropriately. However, most previous studies mainly concentrate on enhancing token-level semantic information to alleviate the representations entanglement problem, rather than composing and using the syntactic and semantic representations of sequences appropriately as humans do. In addition, we explain why the entanglement problem exists from the perspective of recent studies about training deeper Transformer, mainly owing to the ``shallow'' residual connections and its simple, one-step operations, which fails to fuse previous layers' information effectively. Starting from this finding and inspired by humans' strategies, we propose \textsc{FuSion} (\textbf{Fu}sing \textbf{S}yntactic and Semant\textbf{i}c Representati\textbf{on}s), an extension to sequence-to-sequence models to learn to fuse previous layers' information back into the encoding and decoding process appropriately through introducing a \emph{fuse-attention module} at each encoder and decoder layer. \textsc{FuSion} achieves competitive and even \textbf{state-of-the-art} results on two realistic benchmarks, which empirically demonstrates the effectiveness of our proposal.Comment: work in progress. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2305.1216

Gut microbiome dysbiosis in men who have sex with men increases HIV infection risk through immunity homeostasis alteration

ObjectivesRecent studies pointed out that gut microbiome dysbiosis in HIV infection was possibly confounded in men who have sex with men (MSM), but there is a lack of evidence. It also remained unclear how MSM-associated gut microbiome dysbiosis affected human health. This study aimed to compare the differences in gut microbiome changes between HIV and MSM and reveal the potential impacts of MSM-associated gut microbiome dysbiosis on the immune system.MethodsWe searched available studies based on the PubMed database, and all gut microbiome changes associated with HIV infection and MSM were extracted from the enrolled studies. The gutMgene database was used to identify the target genes and metabolites of the gut microbiome. Bioinformatic technology and single-cell RNA sequencing data analysis were utilized to explore the impacts of these gut microbiome changes on human immunity.ResultsThe results showed significant overlaps between the gut microbiome associated with HIV and that of MSM. Moreover, bioinformatic analysis revealed that gut microbiome dysbiosis in MSM had an impact on several pathways related to immunity, including the IL-17 signaling pathway and Th17 cell differentiation. Additionally, target genes of MSM-associated gut microbiome were found to be highly expressed in monocytes and lymphocytes, suggesting their potential regulatory role in immune cells. Furthermore, we found that MSM-associated gut microbiome could produce acetate and butyrate which were reported to increase the level of inflammatory factors.ConclusionIn conclusion, this study highlighted that MSM-associated gut microbiome dysbiosis might increase the risk of HIV acquisition by activating the immune system. Further studies are expected to elucidate the mechanism by which gut microbiome dysbiosis in MSM modulates HIV susceptibility

Protection Effect of Zhen-Wu-Tang on Adriamycin-Induced Nephrotic Syndrome via Inhibiting Oxidative Lesions and Inflammation Damage

Zhen-wu-tang (ZWT), a well-known formula in China, is widely used to treat chronic kidney diseases. However, very little information on ZWT’s mechanism of action is currently available. In this study, we investigated the possible protective role and underlying mechanism of ZWT on nephrotic syndrome (NS) induced by Adriamycin (intravenous injection, 6.0 mg/kg) in rats using biochemical and histopathological approaches. ZWT decreased urine protein excretion and the serum levels of total cholesterol, triglycerides, blood urea nitrogen, and creatinine significantly in diseased rats. A decrease in plasma levels of total protein and albumin was also recorded in nephropathic rats. Pathological results show an improved pathological state and recovering glomerular structure in ZWT treatment groups. ZWT decreased renal IL-8 level but increased renal IL-4 level. In addition, rats subjected to ZWT exhibited less IgG deposition in glomerulus compared with model group. RT-PCR results showed that ZWT decreased the mRNA expression of NF-κB p65 and increased the mRNA expression of IκB. Furthermore, ZWT reduced the level of MDA and increased SOD activity. These results demonstrated that ZWT ameliorated Adriamycin-induced NS in rats possibly by inhibiting Adriamycin-induced inflammation damage, enhancing body’s antioxidant capacity, thereby protecting glomerulus from injury

Curcumin’s Metabolites, Tetrahydrocurcumin and Octahydrocurcumin, Possess Superior Anti-inflammatory Effects in vivo Through Suppression of TAK1-NF-κB Pathway

Curcumin (CUR), a promising naturally occurring dietary compound, is commonly recognized as the potential anti-inflammatory agent. While the application of CUR was hampered by its low stability and poor systemic bioavailability, it has been suggested that the biological activities of CUR are intimately related to its metabolites. In the current investigation, we aimed to comparatively explore the anti-inflammatory effects of tetrahydrocurcumin (THC), octahydrocurcumin (OHC), and CUR, and to elucidate the underlying action mechanisms on experimental mice models of acute inflammation, i.e., xylene-induced ear edema, acetic acid-induced vascular permeability, and carrageenan-induced paw edema. The results showed that THC and OHC exerted significant and dose-dependent inhibitions on the formation of ear edema induced by xylene and paw edema provoked by carrageenan and inhibited the Evans blue dye leakage in peritoneal cavity elicited by acetic acid. Moreover, THC and OHC treatments were more effective than CUR in selectively inhibiting the expression of cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) and suppressing nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathways via transforming growth factor β activated kinase-1 (TAK1) inactivation in the carrageenan-induced mouse paw edema model

Comparative evaluation of the diagnosis, reporting and investigation of malaria cases in China, 2005-2014: transition from control to elimination for the national malaria programme

Background: The elimination of malaria requires high-quality surveillance data to enable rapid detection and response to individual cases. Evaluation of the performance of a national malaria surveillance system could identify shortcomings which, if addressed, will improve the surveillance program for malaria elimination.Methods: Case-level data for the period 2005–2014 were extracted from the China National Notifiable Infectious Disease Reporting Information System and Malaria Enhanced Surveillance Information System. The occurrence of cases, accuracy and timeliness of case diagnosis, reporting and investigation, were assessed and compared between the malaria control stage (2005–2010) and elimination stage (2011–2014) in mainland China.Results: A total of 210 730 malaria cases were reported in mainland China in 2005–2014. The average annual incidence declined dramatically from 2.5 per 100 000 people at the control stage to 0.2 per 100 000 at the elimination stage, but the proportion of migrant cases increased from 9.8 % to 41.0 %. Since the initiation of the National Malaria Elimination Programme in 2010, the overall proportion of cases diagnosed by laboratory testing consistently improved, with the highest of 99.0 % in 2014. However, this proportion was significantly lower in non-endemic provinces (79.0 %) than that in endemic provinces (91.4 %) during 2011–2014. The median interval from illness onset to diagnosis was 3 days at the elimination stage, with one day earlier than that at the control stage. Since 2011, more than 99 % cases were reported within 1 day after being diagnosed, while the proportion of cases that were reported within one day after diagnosis was lowest in Tibet (37.5 %). The predominant source of cases reporting shifted from town-level hospitals at the control stage (67.9 % cases) to city-level hospitals and public health institutes at the eliminate stage (69.4 % cases). The proportion of investigation within 3 days after case reporting has improved, from 74.6 % in 2010 to 98.5 % in 2014.Conclusions: The individual case-based malaria surveillance system in China operated well during the malaria elimination stage. This ensured that malaria cases could be diagnosed, reported and timely investigated at local level. However, domestic migrants and overseas populations, as well as cases in the historically malarial non-endemic areas and hard-to-reach area are new challenges in the surveillance for malaria elimination.<br/

Quantitative Model for the Surface-related Electron Transfer in CdS Quantum Dots

The influence of surface S2- dangling bonds and surface doped ions(Se2-, Cu2+, and Hg2+) on the photoluminescence of Cd2+-rich CdS QDs was investigated. A quantitative model was proposed to understand the complex transfer processes of excited electrons in CdS QDs. The transfer of excited electrons from either the conduction band or the Cd2+-related trap-state to the surface S2--related shallow hole trap-state is effective. However, the trap of excited electrons by surface doped ion trap-states from the Cd2+-related trap-state is more effective than that from the conduction band. The efficiency of trapping electrons from both the conduction band and the Cd2+-related trap-state can be quantitatively understood with the help of the proposed model. The results show that the transfer efficiency of excited electrons is dependent on the location of the energy-level of the relevant surface-related trap-state. The trap of excited electrons by the surface trap-state with energy-level closer to that of the conduction band is more effective, especially for the trap of excited electrons from Cd2+-related trap-state.Measurement and Testing Center of Zhejiang Province, China [02079