2D Time-frequency interference modelling using stochastic geometry for performance evaluation in Low-Power Wide-Area Networks

In wireless networks, interferences between trans- missions are modelled either in time or frequency domain. In this article, we jointly analyze interferences in the time- frequency domain using a stochastic geometry model assuming the total time-frequency resources to be a two-dimensional plane and transmissions from Internet of Things (IoT) devices time- frequency patterns on this plane. To evaluate the interference, we quantify the overlap between the information packets: provided that the overlap is not too strong, the packets are not necessarily lost due to capture effect. This flexible model can be used for multiple medium access scenarios and is especially adapted to the random time-frequency access schemes used in Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs). By characterizing the outage probability and throughput, our approach permits to evaluate the performance of two representative LPWA technologies Sigfox{\textsuperscript \textregistered} and LoRaWA{\textsuperscript \textregistered}

Ultra Dual-Path Compression For Joint Echo Cancellation And Noise Suppression

Echo cancellation and noise reduction are essential for full-duplex communication, yet most existing neural networks have high computational costs and are inflexible in tuning model complexity. In this paper, we introduce time-frequency dual-path compression to achieve a wide range of compression ratios on computational cost. Specifically, for frequency compression, trainable filters are used to replace manually designed filters for dimension reduction. For time compression, only using frame skipped prediction causes large performance degradation, which can be alleviated by a post-processing network with full sequence modeling. We have found that under fixed compression ratios, dual-path compression combining both the time and frequency methods will give further performance improvement, covering compression ratios from 4x to 32x with little model size change. Moreover, the proposed models show competitive performance compared with fast FullSubNet and DeepFilterNet. A demo page can be found at hangtingchen.github.io/ultra_dual_path_compression.github.io/.Comment: Accepted by Interspeech 202

A new species of Passaloecus Shuckard (Hymenoptera, Crabronidae) from China, with a key to Oriental species

A new species of Passaloecus Shuckard, P. birugatus Bashir & Chen, sp. nov., is described and illustrated from Yunnan Province, China. The new species can be easily distinguished from known species of Passaloecus by its very long petiole, which is distinctly longer than wide, obscure scrobal suture, propodeum rugae and striations, body punctation, and coloration. An identification key to the Oriental species of Passaloecus is given

Brain age predicts disability accumulation in multiple sclerosis

OBJECTIVE: Neurodegenerative conditions often manifest radiologically with the appearance of premature aging. Multiple sclerosis (MS) biomarkers related to lesion burden are well developed, but measures of neurodegeneration are less well-developed. The appearance of premature aging quantified by machine learning applied to structural MRI assesses neurodegenerative pathology. We assess the explanatory and predictive power of brain age analysis on disability in MS using a large, real-world dataset. METHODS: Brain age analysis is predicated on the over-estimation of predicted brain age in patients with more advanced pathology. We compared the performance of three brain age algorithms in a large, longitudinal dataset (\u3e13,000 imaging sessions from \u3e6,000 individual MS patients). Effects of MS, MS disease course, disability, lesion burden, and DMT efficacy were assessed using linear mixed effects models. RESULTS: MS was associated with advanced predicted brain age cross-sectionally and accelerated brain aging longitudinally in all techniques. While MS disease course (relapsing vs. progressive) did contribute to advanced brain age, disability was the primary correlate of advanced brain age. We found that advanced brain age at study enrollment predicted more disability accumulation longitudinally. Lastly, a more youthful appearing brain (predicted brain age less than actual age) was associated with decreased disability. INTERPRETATION: Brain age is a technically tractable and clinically relevant biomarker of disease pathology that correlates with and predicts increasing disability in MS. Advanced brain age predicts future disability accumulation

Dynamics of transcriptome changes during subcutaneous preadipocyte differentiation in ducks

Pekin duck is an important animal model for its ability for fat synthesis and deposition. However, transcriptional dynamic regulation of adipose differentiation driven by complex signal cascades remains largely unexplored in this model. This study aimed to explore adipogenic transcriptional dynamics before (proliferation) and after (differentiation) initial preadipocyte differentiation in ducks.https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-019-6055-

Comprehensive phylogeny of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) based on transcriptomic and genomic data

Our understanding of phylogenetic relationships among bony fishes has been transformed by analysis of a small number of genes, but uncertainty remains around critical nodes. Genomescale inferences so far have sampled a limited number of taxa and genes. Here we leveraged 144 genomes and 159 transcriptomes to investigate fish evolution with an unparalleled scale of data: >0.5 Mb from 1,105 orthologous exon sequences from 303 species, representing 66 out of 72 ray-finned fish orders. We apply phylogenetic tests designed to trace the effect of whole-genome duplication events on gene trees and find paralogy-free loci using a bioinformatics approach. Genome-wide data support the structure of the fish phylogeny, and hypothesis-testing procedures appropriate for phylogenomic datasets using explicit gene genealogy interrogation settle some long-standing uncertainties, such as the branching order at the base of the teleosts and among early euteleosts, and the sister lineage to the acanthomorph and percomorph radiations. Comprehensive fossil calibrations date the origin of all major fish lineages before the end of the Cretaceous.Fil: Hughes, Lily C.. National Museum of Natural History; Estados Unidos. The George Washington University; Estados UnidosFil: Ortí, Guillermo. National Museum of Natural History; Estados Unidos. The George Washington University; Estados UnidosFil: Huang, Yu. Beijing Genomics Institute; China. Chinese Academy of Sciences; República de ChinaFil: Sun, Ying. China National Genebank; China. Beijing Genomics Institute; ChinaFil: Baldwin, Carole C.. National Museum of Natural History; Estados UnidosFil: Thompson, Andrew W.. National Museum of Natural History; Estados Unidos. The George Washington University; Estados UnidosFil: Arcila, Dahiana. National Museum of Natural History; Estados Unidos. The George Washington University; Estados UnidosFil: Betancur, Ricardo. National Museum of Natural History; Estados Unidos. Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Rio Piedras; Puerto RicoFil: Li, Chenhong. Shanghai Ocean University; ChinaFil: Becker, Leandro Anibal. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto Andino Patagónico de Tecnologías Biológicas y Geoambientales. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Instituto Andino Patagónico de Tecnologías Biológicas y Geoambientales.; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universitario Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Bellora, Nicolás. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto Andino Patagónico de Tecnologías Biológicas y Geoambientales. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Instituto Andino Patagónico de Tecnologías Biológicas y Geoambientales.; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universitario Bariloche; ArgentinaFil: Zhao, Xiaomeng. Chinese Academy of Sciences; República de China. Beijing Genomics Institute; ChinaFil: Li, Xiaofeng. Chinese Academy of Sciences; República de China. Beijing Genomics Institute; ChinaFil: Wang, Min. Beijing Genomics Institute; ChinaFil: Fang, Chao. Chinese Academy of Sciences; República de ChinaFil: Xie, Bing. Bgi-shenzhen; ChinaFil: Zhoui, Zhuocheng. China Fisheries Association; ChinaFil: Huang, Hai. Hainan Tropical Ocean University; ChinaFil: Chen, Songlin. Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute Chinese Academy Of Fishery Science; ChinaFil: Venkatesh, Byrappa. A-star, Institute Of Molecular And Cell Biology;Fil: Shi, Qiong. Chinese Academy of Sciences; República de Chin

High-speed imaging of the ultrasonic deagglomeration of carbon nanotubes in water

Ultrasonic treatment is effective in deagglomerating and dispersing nanoparticles in various liquids. However, the exact deagglomeration mechanisms vary for different nanoparticle clusters, owing to different particle geometries and inter-particle adhesion forces. Here, the deagglomeration mechanisms and the influence of sonotrode amplitude during ultrasonication of multiwall carbon nanotubes in de-ionized water were studied by a combination of high-speed imaging and numerical modeling. Particle image velocimetry was applied to images with a higher field of view to calculate the average streaming speeds distribution. These data allowed direct comparison with modeling results. For images captured at higher frame rates and magnification, different patterns of deagglomeration were identified and categorized based on different stages of cavitation zone development and for regions inside or outside the cavitation zone. The results obtained and discussed in this paper can also be relevant to a wide range of carbonaceous and other high aspect ratio nanomaterials

Fish-T1K (Transcriptomes of 1,000 Fishes) Project: Large-Scale Transcriptome Data for Fish Evolution Studies

Ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) represent more than 50 % of extant vertebrates and are of great evolutionary, ecologic and economic significance, but they are relatively underrepresented in ‘omics studies. Increased availability of transcriptome data for these species will allow researchers to better understand changes in gene expression, and to carry out functional analyses. An international project known as the “Transcriptomes of 1,000 Fishes” (Fish-T1K) project has been established to generate RNA-seq transcriptome sequences for 1,000 diverse species of ray-finned fishes. The first phase of this project has produced transcriptomes from more than 180 ray-finned fishes, representing 142 species and covering 51 orders and 109 families. Here we provide an overview of the goals of this project and the work done so far

An adaptive PC-Kriging method for time-variant structural reliability analysis

The practical application of time-variant reliability analysis is limited by its computationally expensive models which describe the structural system behavior. This paper presents a new adaptive PC-Kriging (APCK) approach to accurately and efficiently assess the time-variant reliabilities. Time interval is firstly discretized with a series of time instants and then the stochastic process is reconstructed by standard normal random variables and deterministic function of time. PC-Kriging (PCK) models are built at each time instant to predict the instantaneous responses of performance function. To improve the accuracy and efficiency, a new update strategy based on the integration of U- and H- learning functions is developed to refine the PCK models of instantaneous responses. One or two best samples are identified by the proposed learning criterion for updating the PCK models. Finally, Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) is used to estimate the time-variant reliability based on the updated PCK models. Four examples are used to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method

Simulation on Temperature and Ampacity of Mining Flame-proof High Voltage Cable Connector

To investigate the accident causes of mining flame-proof high voltage (F-HV) cable connector, the temperature and ampacity of LBG1-200/6 high voltage cable connector are analyzed. At first, the material properties and structure of connector are introduced from the aspects of electrical, insulation and thermal. Then the electromagnetic field and thermal field coupling model of cable connector are established by the finite element method. Finally, in the numerical examples, temperature distribution and ampacity change caused by power harmonics, dielectric loss and slight structure change are quantitatively plotted and analyzed. The paper provides great insight into the security operation of F-HV cable connector