Damage detection with interval analysis for uncertainties quantification

Infrastructure damage detection is widely adopted to prevent structural collapse and cut down the maintenance for owners with timely repair, but most damage detection methods only obtain marginal performance for in-situ structures due to uncertainties. A non-probabilistic damage detection method for uncertainty quantification is presented in this study. The diagnosis elements are extracted from the coefficient matrix of the vector auto-regressive (VAR) model which is identified from the measured acceleration, and the Mahalanobis distance (MD) of these diagnosis elements between pristine and unknown condition is employed as damage feature. The interval of MD due to physical variability is computed by optimal interval analysis with the differential evolution algorithm. A modified receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is developed and the area under ROC is utilized to localize damage. The overlap rate (OR) of MD interval are defined to quantify damage severity. The numerical simulation results demonstrate that the interval analysis method can successfully detect damage when the physical variability is considering

MiR-452 negatively regulates osteoblast differentiation in periodontal ligament stem cells by targeting the polycomb-group protein, BMI1

Purpose: To determine whether miR-452 regulates osteoblast differentiation (OD) in human periodontal ligament stem cells (hPDLSCs) by targeting polycomb-group protein BMI1. Methods: hPDLSCs were stimulated to differentiate upon treatment with mineralization liquid. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and western blotting were used to measure mRNA and protein expressions, respectively. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and Alizarin red staining were used to determine the osteogenic differentiation (OD) of hPDLSCs. The bioinformatics software, Targetscan, was used to predict the potential target of miR-452, while luciferase assay, qRT- PCR, and western blot were employed to verify the target gene of miR-452, BMI1. Results: MiR-452 was downregulated during the OD of hPDLSCs, but miR-452 overexpression inhibited the OD of hPDLSCs. BMI1 was identified as a direct target gene of miR-452 during the OD of hPDLSCs, while miR-452 overexpression correlated inversely with BMI1 expression during OD of hPDLSCs. Conclusion: Overexpression of miR-452 suppresses the OD of hPDLSCs by targeting BMI1.This study may provide potential diagnostic and therapeutic basis for OD in hPDLSCs

Polysulfonic acid mucopolysaccharide exerts anti scarring effect in rats through modulation of TGF β 1/Smad signaling pathway

Purpose: To determine the anti-scarring effect of polysulfonic acid mucopolysaccharide (MSP), and the implication of TGF-β1/Smad signal transduction route.Methods: Sixty (60) male Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were assigned to control, model and polysulfonic mucopolysaccharide groups, respectively, each with 20 rats. Serum inflammatory factors, scar area and scar thickness, histopathological changes and relative concentrations of TGF-β1 Smad4, collagen types I and III, and α-SMA were determined.Results: In the control group, collagen cells were closely distributed and the skin structure was intact without inflammatory infiltration. In contrast, there were numerous necrotic dermal cells on rat skin surface in model group, with obvious inflammatory infiltration and severely damaged hair follicles. In contrast, in polysulfonic mucopolysaccharide group, the thickness of skin tissue and dermis was significantly improved, with a clear layer and reduced degree of inflammatory infiltration. Types I and III collagen and α-SMA were significantly down-regulated in polysulfonic mucopolysaccharide-fed rats, relative to model rats.Conclusion: Polysulfonic acid mucopolysaccharide exerts anti-scarring effect by regulating TGFβ1/Smad signal pathway, thus has the potential for use in minimizing scarring of the skin in clinical practice

Numerical simulation of transient flow in horizontal drainage systems

AbstractA numerical simulation model based on the characteristic-based finite-difference method with a time-line interpolation scheme was developed for predicting transient free surface flow in horizontal drainage systems. The fundamental accuracy of the numerical model was first clarified by comparison with the experimental results for a single drainage pipe. Boundary conditions for junctions and bends, which are often encountered in drainage systems, were studied both experimentally and numerically. The numerical model was applied to an actual drainage system. Comparison with a full-scale model experiment indicates that the model can be used to accurately predict flow characteristics in actual drainage networks

New spectrum of negative-parity doubly charmed baryons: Possibility of two quasistable states

The discovery of $\Xi_{cc}^{++}$ by the LHCb Collaboration triggers predictions of more doubly charmed baryons. By taking into account both the $P$-wave excitations between the two charm quarks and the scattering of light pseudoscalar mesons off the ground state doubly charmed baryons, a set of negative-parity spin-1/2 doubly charmed baryons are predicted already from a unitarized version of leading order chiral perturbation theory. Moreover, employing heavy antiquark-diquark symmetry the relevant low-energy constants in the next-to-leading order are connected with those describing light pseudoscalar mesons scattering off charmed mesons, which have been well determined from lattice calculations and experimental data. Our calculations result in a spectrum richer than that of heavy mesons. We find two very narrow $J^P=1/2^-$ $\Omega_{cc}^P$, which very likely decay into $\Omega_{cc}\pi^0$ breaking isospin symmetry. In the isospin-1/2 $\Xi_{cc}^P$ sector, three states are predicted to exist below 4.2~GeV with the lowest one being narrow and the other two rather broad. We suggest to search for the $\Xi_{cc}^{P}$ states in the $\Xi_{cc}^{++}\pi^-$ mode. Searching for them and their analogues are helpful to establish the hadron spectrum.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication as a Rapid Communication in Physical Review

Neighborhood Cognition Consistent Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Social psychology and real experiences show that cognitive consistency plays an important role to keep human society in order: if people have a more consistent cognition about their environments, they are more likely to achieve better cooperation. Meanwhile, only cognitive consistency within a neighborhood matters because humans only interact directly with their neighbors. Inspired by these observations, we take the first step to introduce \emph{neighborhood cognitive consistency} (NCC) into multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Our NCC design is quite general and can be easily combined with existing MARL methods. As examples, we propose neighborhood cognition consistent deep Q-learning and Actor-Critic to facilitate large-scale multi-agent cooperations. Extensive experiments on several challenging tasks (i.e., packet routing, wifi configuration, and Google football player control) justify the superior performance of our methods compared with state-of-the-art MARL approaches.Comment: Accepted by AAAI2020 with oral presentation (https://aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI-20/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/AAAI-20-Accepted-Paper-List.pdf). Since AAAI2020 has started, I have the right to distribute this paper on arXi