Soil Water Content Regression Analysis of Measurement Data from Hyperspectral Camera in Weathered Granite Soils

Soil water content is one of the most common physical parameters that cause landslides or debris flow. Therefore, it is of very importance to determine or predict the water content quickly and non-destructively. This study investigates the hyperspectral information in the visible near-infrared regions (VNIR) of different samples of granite soils possessing varying water content. Totally 162 granite samples were taken from each mountain area. The samples with different water contents were examined using a hyperspectral radiometer operating in the 400~1000nm range by obtaining the spectral curves. It was found that the variation of VNIR is consistent with the water content variation of weathered granite soils, and the hyperspectral camera was able to detect it. A Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) analysis was applied to develop a calibration-model. The PLSR model resulted in a good correlation between the water content and VNIR profile. The results demonstrate that the hyperspectral camera combined with the PLSR model can be a useful and non-destructive tool for determining soil water contents in the weathered granite soils

Thermal performance evaluation of horizontal spiral coil-type ground heat exchangers

Geothermal energy has been widely used over the world instead of fossil fuel for environmental merits. A ground-source heat pump (GSHP) system utilizes a constant ground temperature to absorb heat during winter and to emit heat in summer. The GSHP system can be devieded into a closed type system and an open type system. The closed type system using a horizontal ground heat exchanger (HGHE) is relatively inexpensive and easy to install compared to the other types of systems. Among the types of HGHEs, since a horizontal spiral-coil type GHE has the advantageous arrangement for heat exchange between the heat exchanger and surrounding ground, it is the most effective type of the HGHE in terms of thermal performance. However, the thermal performance of a horizontal spiral-coil type GHE critically depends on its dimension which consists of the radius and pitch of a spiral, and thus it is important to accurately analyze how the radius and pitch affect the thermal performance of the horizontal spiral-coil type GHE. Therefore, this paper investigated the thermal performance of a horizontal spiral-coil type GHE according to its diverse shapes to suggest a beneficial design specification of the horizontal spiral-coil type GHE. In order to evaluate the thermal performance of the heat exchanger, a spiral-coil type HGHE was installed in a steel box of which the size was 5 m x 1 m x 1 m filled with dry Joomunjin standard sand, and a thermal response test (TRT) was conducted for 30 hours continuously. Besides, a numerical analysis was performed for its verification and a parametric study of the horizontal spiral-coil GHE using a numerical program which is based on a finite element method (FEM). As a result, in case that the pitch of the horizontal spiral-coil type GHE was more than 0.6 m, there was no more significant benefit in the thermal performance

Modified cardiovascular SOFA score in sepsis: development and internal and external validation

Background : The Sepsis-3 criteria introduced the system that uses the Sequential Organ-Failure Assessment (SOFA) score to define sepsis. The cardiovascular SOFA (CV SOFA) scoring system needs modification due to the change in guideline-recommended vasopressors. In this study, we aimed to develop and to validate the modified CV SOFA score. Methods : We developed, internally validated, and externally validated the modified CV SOFA score using the suspected infection cohort, sepsis cohort, and septic shock cohort. The primary outcome was 28-day mortality. The modified CV SOFA score system was constructed with consideration of the recently recommended use of the vasopressor norepinephrine with or without lactate level. The predictive validity of the modified SOFA score was evaluated by the discrimination for the primary outcome. Discrimination was assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC). Calibration was assessed using the calibration curve. We compared the prognostic performance of the original CV/total SOFA score and the modified CV/total SOFA score to detect mortality in patients with suspected infection, sepsis, or septic shock. Results : We identified 7,393 patients in the suspected cohort, 4038 patients in the sepsis cohort, and 3,107 patients in the septic shock cohort in seven Korean emergency departments (EDs). The 28-day mortality rates were 7.9%, 21.4%, and 20.5%, respectively, in the suspected infection, sepsis, and septic shock cohorts. The model performance is higher when vasopressor and lactate were used in combination than the vasopressor only used model. The modified CV/total SOFA score was well-developed and internally and externally validated in terms of discrimination and calibration. Predictive validity of the modified CV SOFA was significantly higher than that of the original CV SOFA in the development set (0.682 vs 0.624, p < 0.001), test set (0.716 vs 0.638), and all other cohorts (0.648 vs 0.557, 0.674 vs 0.589). Calibration was modest. In the suspected infection cohort, the modified model classified more patients to sepsis (66.0 vs 62.5%) and identified more patients at risk of septic mortality than the SOFA score (92.6 vs 89.5%). Conclusions : Among ED patients with suspected infection, sepsis, and septic shock, the newly-developed modified CV/total SOFA score had higher predictive validity and identified more patients at risk of septic mortality.National Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF2020R1A2C3004508) to Kyuseok Kim. National Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF2020R1F1A1052908) to Tae Gun Shin

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Measurement of the top quark forward-backward production asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic moments in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric (d̂ t) and chromomagnetic (μ̂ t) moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable AFB(1) is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate t t ¯ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for t t ¯ final states. The values found for the parameters are AFB(1)=0.048−0.087+0.095(stat)−0.029+0.020(syst),μ̂t=−0.024−0.009+0.013(stat)−0.011+0.016(syst), and a limit is placed on the magnitude of | d̂ t| &lt; 0.03 at 95% confidence level. [Figure not available: see fulltext.

MUSiC : a model-unspecific search for new physics in proton-proton collisions at root s=13TeV

Results of the Model Unspecific Search in CMS (MUSiC), using proton-proton collision data recorded at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb(-1), are presented. The MUSiC analysis searches for anomalies that could be signatures of physics beyond the standard model. The analysis is based on the comparison of observed data with the standard model prediction, as determined from simulation, in several hundred final states and multiple kinematic distributions. Events containing at least one electron or muon are classified based on their final state topology, and an automated search algorithm surveys the observed data for deviations from the prediction. The sensitivity of the search is validated using multiple methods. No significant deviations from the predictions have been observed. For a wide range of final state topologies, agreement is found between the data and the standard model simulation. This analysis complements dedicated search analyses by significantly expanding the range of final states covered using a model independent approach with the largest data set to date to probe phase space regions beyond the reach of previous general searches.Peer reviewe

Search for new particles in events with energetic jets and large missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A search is presented for new particles produced at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV, using events with energetic jets and large missing transverse momentum. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 101 fb(-1), collected in 2017-2018 with the CMS detector. Machine learning techniques are used to define separate categories for events with narrow jets from initial-state radiation and events with large-radius jets consistent with a hadronic decay of a W or Z boson. A statistical combination is made with an earlier search based on a data sample of 36 fb(-1), collected in 2016. No significant excess of events is observed with respect to the standard model background expectation determined from control samples in data. The results are interpreted in terms of limits on the branching fraction of an invisible decay of the Higgs boson, as well as constraints on simplified models of dark matter, on first-generation scalar leptoquarks decaying to quarks and neutrinos, and on models with large extra dimensions. Several of the new limits, specifically for spin-1 dark matter mediators, pseudoscalar mediators, colored mediators, and leptoquarks, are the most restrictive to date.Peer reviewe