A Hybrid-Preference Neural Model for Basket-Sensitive Item Recommendation

Basket-Sensitive Item Recommendation (BSIR) is a challenging task that aims to recommend an item to add to the current basket given a user’s historical behaviors. The recommended item is supposed to be relevant to the items in current basket. Previous works mainly produce a recommendation based on user’s current basket, ignoring the inherent preference released by user’s long-term behaviors and failing to accurately distinguish the item importance in the basket for detecting user intent. To tackle the above issues, we propose a hybrid model, i.e., Hybrid-Preference Neural Model (HPNM), where a user’s inherent preference is recognized by modeling the historical sequential baskets and the recent preference is identified by focusing on the current basket. In detail, we apply an attention mechanism for distinguishing the importance of items in a basket to generate an accurate basket representation. GRU is utilized for modeling the basket-level sequential information to obtain user’s long-term preference and the representation of the current session is regarded as user’s short-term preference. We evaluate the performance of our proposals against the state-of-the-art baselines in the field of BSIR on two public datasets, i.e., TaFeng and Foursquare. The experimental results show that HPNM can achieve obvious improvements against the baselines in terms of HLU and Recall. In addition, we find HPNM with an attention mechanism can lead to a larger improvement against the baseline for item recommendation in terms of HLU and Recall on testing baskets with relatively fewer items

PPChain: A Blockchain for Pandemic Prevention and Control Assisted by Federated Learning

Taking COVID-19 as an example, we know that a pandemic can have a huge impact on normal human life and the economy. Meanwhile, the population flow between countries and regions is the main factor affecting the changes in a pandemic, which is determined by the airline network. Therefore, realizing the overall control of airports is an effective way to control a pandemic. However, this is restricted by the differences in prevention and control policies in different areas and privacy issues, such as how a patient’s personal data from a medical center cannot be effectively combined with their passenger personal data. This prevents more precise airport control decisions from being made. To address this, this paper designed a novel data-sharing framework (i.e., PPChain) based on blockchain and federated learning. The experiment uses a CPU i7-12800HX and uses Docker to simulate multiple virtual nodes. The model is deployed to run on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 3090Ti GPU. The experiment shows that the relationship between a pandemic and aircraft transport can be effectively explored by PPChain without sharing raw data. This approach does not require centralized trust and improves the security of the sharing process. The scheme can help formulate more scientific and rational prevention and control policies for the control of airports. Additionally, it can use aerial data to predict pandemics more accurately

Effects of Mowing Frequency on Soil Nematode Diversity and Community Structure in a Chinese Meadow Steppe

Soil nematodes are one of the most important components in terrestrial ecosystems and the critical factor driving the belowground process. The grasslands of Northeast China have been subject to mowing for ages, which theoretically should have had substantial effects on the processes associated with soil nematodes. However, relevant studies have barely been conducted to date. This study examined variations in soil nematode abundance, biomass, diversity, and community structure, with respect to varying mowing frequencies. The results showed that a higher mowing frequency significantly reduced the abundance of soil nematodes, biomass, diversity, and community structure stability in the ecosystem, while intermediate mowing frequency enhanced these parameters to different extents. Our findings indicate that the changing patterns of the nematode indices with mowing frequency conform to the intermediate disturbance theory. This study provides a theoretical basis for formulating grassland-related management measures and maintaining the stability of grassland ecosystems

Loneliness in Older Migrants: Exploring the Role of Cultural Differences in Their Loneliness Experience

Introduction and background: The scientific literature suggests the necessity of studying loneliness from a broader social perspective. This article aims to broaden the research on loneliness in older migrants by exploring the role of cultural differences through the lens of the social environment (as measured in social capital, discrimination, and ageism) and social situation (as measured in relational mobility, childness, and marital status). Based on Hofstede’s Individualism Index, older migrants involved in the BBC Loneliness Experiment (N = 2164) were classified into three groups: cultural migrants (i.e., from a collectivist to individualist culture) (N = 239), migrants with a similar culture (i.e., within an individualist culture) (N = 841), and ageing non-migrants (N = 1084). Objectives: The two main objectives were 1) to compare the levels of loneliness among these three groups, and 2) to unravel how different influencing factors, such as the social environment, social situation, coping strategies, and personal characteristics, are related to loneliness. Methods: Bivariate analyses were performed to determine the differences in the loneliness, social environment, social situation, and personal characteristic variables between the groups, with adjusted p-values according to the Bonferroni correction to limit the potential for type I errors (α = 0.005). Multiple linear regressions were performed to unravel the relationships between loneliness and the different influencing factors, namely the social environment, social situation, coping strategies, and personal characteristics. Results: The bivariate analyses show no significant difference in loneliness across the three groups. The multiple linear regressions demonstrate that the social environment (i.e., social capital, discrimination, and ageism) is significantly associated with loneliness. Social capital acts as a protective factor for cultural migrants (β = −0.27, p < 0.005, 95% CI [−0.48, −0.05]), similar-culture migrants (β = −0.13, p < 0.005, 95% CI [−0.25, −0.03]), and non-migrants (β = −0.21, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.28, −0.12]). Discrimination and ageism are both risk factors for loneliness across the three groups. The Social situation, as measured in married/cohabitation status and relational mobility, shows a significant association with loneliness in the non-migrants and similar-culture migrants but not the cultural migrants. In terms of individual resources for coping strategies, engagement in active coping is protective for all three groups. Non-coping, the unawareness of any coping strategies, is a risk factor, while passive coping shows no significant association. Discussion: The results show that the structural factor of the social environment in which older migrants’ find themselves, rather than their culture of origin, is more important for older migrants’ feelings of loneliness in later life. A favorable social environment with high social capital and low levels of discrimination and ageism protects against loneliness in the ageing population across cultures. Practical implications for loneliness interventions for older migrants are put forward

Highly Efficient and Visible Light Responsive Heterojunction Composites as Dual Photoelectrodes for Photocatalytic Fuel Cell

In the present work, a novel photocatalytic fuel cell (PFC) system involving a dual heterojunction photoelectrodes, viz. polyaniline/TiO2 nanotubes (PANI/TiO2 NTs) photoanode and CuO/Co3O4 nanorods (CuO/Co3O4 NRs) photocathode, has been designed. Compared to TiO2 NTs electrode of PFC, the present heterojunction design not only enhances the visible light absorption but also offers the higher efficiency in degrading Rhodamine B–a model organic pollutant. The study includes an evaluation of the dual performance of the photoelectrodes as well. Under visible-light irradiation of 3 mW cm−2, the cell composed of the photoanode PANI/TiO2 NTs and CuO/Co3O4 NRs photocathode forms an interior bias of +0.24 V within the PFC system. This interior bias facilitated the transfer of electrons from the photoanode to photocathode across the external circuit and combined with the holes generated therein along with a simultaneous power production. In this manner, the separation of electron/hole pair was achieved in the photoelectrodes by releasing the holes and electrons of PANI/TiO2 NTs photoanode and CuO/Co3O4 NRs photocathode, respectively. Using this PFC system, the degradation of Rhodamine B in aqueous media was achieved to an extent of 68.5% within a reaction duration of a four-hour period besides a simultaneous power generation of 85 μA cm−2

Effects of Mowing Frequency on Soil Nematode Diversity and Community Structure in a Chinese Meadow Steppe

Soil nematodes are one of the most important components in terrestrial ecosystems and the critical factor driving the belowground process. The grasslands of Northeast China have been subject to mowing for ages, which theoretically should have had substantial effects on the processes associated with soil nematodes. However, relevant studies have barely been conducted to date. This study examined variations in soil nematode abundance, biomass, diversity, and community structure, with respect to varying mowing frequencies. The results showed that a higher mowing frequency significantly reduced the abundance of soil nematodes, biomass, diversity, and community structure stability in the ecosystem, while intermediate mowing frequency enhanced these parameters to different extents. Our findings indicate that the changing patterns of the nematode indices with mowing frequency conform to the intermediate disturbance theory. This study provides a theoretical basis for formulating grassland-related management measures and maintaining the stability of grassland ecosystems

Loneliness in Older Migrants: Exploring the Role of Cultural Differences in Their Loneliness Experience

Introduction and background: The scientific literature suggests the necessity of studying loneliness from a broader social perspective. This article aims to broaden the research on loneliness in older migrants by exploring the role of cultural differences through the lens of the social environment (as measured in social capital, discrimination, and ageism) and social situation (as measured in relational mobility, childness, and marital status). Based on Hofstede’s Individualism Index, older migrants involved in the BBC Loneliness Experiment (N = 2164) were classified into three groups: cultural migrants (i.e., from a collectivist to individualist culture) (N = 239), migrants with a similar culture (i.e., within an individualist culture) (N = 841), and ageing non-migrants (N = 1084). Objectives: The two main objectives were (1) to compare the levels of loneliness among these three groups, and (2) to unravel how different influencing factors, such as the social environment, social situation, coping strategies, and personal characteristics, are related to loneliness. Methods: Bivariate analyses were performed to determine the differences in the loneliness, social environment, social situation, and personal characteristic variables between the groups, with adjusted p-values according to the Bonferroni correction to limit the potential for type I errors (α = 0.005). Multiple linear regressions were performed to unravel the relationships between loneliness and the different influencing factors, namely the social environment, social situation, coping strategies, and personal characteristics. Results: The bivariate analyses show no significant difference in loneliness across the three groups. The multiple linear regressions demonstrate that the social environment (i.e., social capital, discrimination, and ageism) is significantly associated with loneliness. Social capital acts as a protective factor for cultural migrants (β = −0.27, p p p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.28, −0.12]). Discrimination and ageism are both risk factors for loneliness across the three groups. Social situation, as measured in married/cohabitation status and relational mobility, shows a significant association with loneliness in the non-migrants and similar-culture migrants but not the cultural migrants. In terms of individual resources for coping strategies, engagement in active coping is protective for all three groups. Non-coping, the unawareness of any coping strategies, is a risk factor, while passive coping shows no significant association. Discussion: The results show that the structural factor of the social environment in which older migrants’ find themselves, rather than their culture of origin, is more important for older migrants’ feelings of loneliness in later life. A favorable social environment with high social capital and low levels of discrimination and ageism protects against loneliness in the ageing population across cultures. Practical implications for loneliness interventions for older migrants are put forward

Design of a SOFC single cell test device

The electrical performance of single cell of anode-supported planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) received much concern. In this paper, measurement principle, design method and experimental processes of the electrical performance test device for SOFC single cell were introduced. The fluid system of the device consisted of flowmeters, valves, tubes, furnace, etc. The measurement system of the device consisted of digital direct current voltage meter, chromatography work station, and industrial computer, etc. The operator could aquire the test data by the electronic load and work station operation software in the industrial computer