Banyan Tree Growth Optimization and Application

In the era of big data, the number of science and technology service resources has proliferated, and the integration and clustering of science and technology documents become a challenging issue. This paper proposes a novel meta-heuristic algorithm, banyan tree growth optimization (BTGO), for resource clustering of science and technology services. The proposed algorithm is inspired by the growth process of banyan tree, which periodically uses three operators including rooting, multi-trunk, and adjustment to search the solution space globally according to the growth conditions of different stages. To evaluate the performance of BTGO, 29 CEC17 benchmark functions were first utilized to examine its effectiveness. Moreover, a clustering study on UCI datasets is then presented, which compares the suggested algorithm with seven advanced metaheuristic optimization algorithms. The results of numerical experiments and standard datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of BTGO. In clustering optimization problems, BTGO can not only finding the optimal solution efficiently, but also improving the clustering accuracy and NMI significantly. Our method was successfully applied to solve the science and technology text clustering problem and validated on the Hainan Science and Technology Service Experimental Platform.</p

Equal channel angular consolidation and deformation of titanium based alloys

Pure Ti and Ti based alloys were processed by back pressure equal channel angular consolidation (BP-ECAC) of normal and dehydrided particles, and by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) of arc melted ingot. Fully dense, bulk Ti materials were obtained with extraordinarily high strength and relatively good ductility, thanks to ultrafine and nano-scaled microstructures resulting from severe plastic deformation (SPD) and/or processing induced phase transformations. BP-ECAC was shown to provide an effective method for producing high quality Ti alloys from elemental particles. © Institute of Materials Engineering Australasia Ltd

Enhanced stretch formability and mechanical properties of a magnesium alloy processed by cold forging and subsequent annealing

A magnesium alloy AZ21 was multi-directionally forged at room temperature to cumulative strains of ΣΔ. e{open}= 1.5 and then subjected to various annealing treatments. The results showed that the initial grains were gradually subdivided into ultrafine ones by mechanical twins. The annealing temperature had a pronounced effect on the microstructural evolution. At 523. K, a homogeneous structure with a mean grain size of 3.8 μm was obtained, which exhibited remarkable texture weakening compared with the as-annealed specimen, resulting in significantly increase of ductility and stretch formability. Increased and decreased annealing temperature can both lead to a coarsening of grain size. Moreover, the analysis on the recrystallization kinetics during annealing indicated that it could be well described by Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov model and the activation energy for recrystallization was calculated to be about 63.4. kJ/mol. © 2012

Classification of Alzheimer’s Disease Based on Weakly Supervised Learning and Attention Mechanism

The brain lesions images of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients are slightly different from the Magnetic Resonance Imaging of normal people, and the classification effect of general image recognition technology is not ideal. Alzheimer’s datasets are small, making it difficult to train large-scale neural networks. In this paper, we propose a network model (WS-AMN) that fuses weak supervision and an attention mechanism. The weakly supervised data augmentation network is used as the basic model, the attention map generated by weakly supervised learning is used to guide the data augmentation, and an attention module with channel domain and spatial domain is embedded in the residual network to focus on the distinctive channels and spaces of images respectively. The location information enhances the corresponding features of related features and suppresses the influence of irrelevant features.The results show that the F1-score is 99.63%, the accuracy is 99.61%. Our model provides a high-performance solution for accurate classification of AD

DSGA-Net: Deeply separable gated transformer and attention strategy for medical image segmentation network

To address the problems of under-segmentation and over-segmentation of small organs in medical image segmentation. We present a novel medical image segmentation network model with Depth Separable Gating Transformer and a Three-branch Attention module (DSGA-Net). Firstly, the model adds a Depth Separable Gated Visual Transformer (DSG-ViT) module into its Encoder to enhance (i) the contextual links among global, local, and channels and (ii) the sensitivity to location information. Secondly, a Mixed Three-branch Attention (MTA) module is proposed to increase the number of features in the up-sampling process. Meanwhile, the loss of feature information is reduced when restoring the feature image to the original image size. By validating Synapse, BraTs2020, and ACDC public datasets, the Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of the results of DSGA-Net reached 81.24%,85.82%, and 91.34%, respectively. Moreover, the Hausdorff Score (HD) decreased to 20.91% and 5.27% on the Synapse and BraTs2020. There are 10.78% and 0.69% decreases compared to the Baseline TransUNet. The experimental results indicate that DSGA-Net achieves better segmentation than most advanced methods

Cloning and characterization of a cabbage <i>BoAOS</i> gene with enhanced drought tolerance

<div><p>Allene oxide synthase (<i>AOS</i>), which is a cytochrome P450 (<i>CYP74A</i>), catalyses the first step in the biosynthesis of jasmonic acid from lipoxygenase-derived hydroperoxides of free fatty acids. The full-length cDNA of an <i>AOS</i>-like gene was cloned from <i>Brassica oleracea</i> using rapid amplification of cDNA ends and was designated as <i>BoAOS</i>. The <i>BoAOS</i> expression level was higher in alabastrums and flowers than in other tissues of cabbage, as determined by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). To characterize the <i>BoAOS</i> gene, <i>Arabidopsis</i> was transformed via <i>Agrobacterium tumefaciens</i> with a vector to express the gene under the control of a strong constitutive promoter, CaMV35S (Cauliflower Mosaic Virus). Based on analyses of tolerance to drought stress, compared with control plants, the overexpression of <i>BoAOS</i> in transgenic plants increased the endogenous jasmonic acid level and conferred higher tolerance to drought stress. Therefore, we suggest that <i>BoAOS</i> may be a suitable candidate gene to produce transgenic plants with tolerance to drought stress.</p></div

Safety, tolerability, and efficacy of pirfenidone in patients with rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 study

Background: Interstitial lung disease is a known complication of rheumatoid arthritis, with a lifetime risk of developing the disease in any individual of 7·7%. We aimed to assess the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of pirfenidone for the treatment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD). Methods: TRAIL1 was a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial done in 34 academic centres specialising in interstitial lung disease in four countries (the UK, the USA, Australia, and Canada). Adults aged 18–85 years were eligible for inclusion if they met the 2010 American College of Rheumatology and European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology criteria for rheumatoid arthritis and had interstitial lung disease on a high-resolution CT scan imaging and, when available, lung biopsy. Exclusion criteria include smoking, clinical history of other known causes of interstitial lung disease, and coexistant clinically significant COPD or asthma. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive 2403 mg oral pirfenidone (pirfenidone group) or placebo (placebo group) daily. The primary endpoint was the incidence of the composite endpoint of a decline from baseline in percent predicted forced vital capacity (FVC%) of 10% or more or death during the 52-week treatment period assessed in the intention-to-treat population. Key secondary endpoints included change in absolute and FVC% over 52 weeks, the proportion of patients with a decline in FVC% of 10% or more, and the frequency of progression as defined by Outcome Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trials (OMERACT) in the intention-to-treat population. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02808871. Findings: From May 15, 2017, to March 31, 2020, 231 patients were assessed for inclusion, of whom 123 patients were randomly assigned (63 [51%] to the pirfenidone group and 60 [49%] to the placebo group). The trial was stopped early (March 31, 2020) due to slow recruitment and the COVID-19 pandemic. The difference in the proportion of patients who met the composite primary endpoint (decline in FVC% from baseline of 10% or more or death) between the two groups was not significant (seven [11%] of 63 patients in the pirfenidone group vs nine [15%] of 60 patients in the placebo group; OR 0·67 [95% CI 0·22 to 2·03]; p=0·48). Compared with the placebo group, patients in the pirfenidone group had a slower rate of decline in lung function, measured by estimated annual change in absolute FVC (–66 vs –146; p=0·0082) and FVC% (–1·02 vs –3·21; p=0·0028). The groups were similar with regards to the decline in FVC% by 10% or more (five [8%] participants in the pirfenidone group vs seven [12%] in the placebo group; OR 0·52 [95% CI 0·14–1·90]; p=0·32) and the frequency of progression as defined by OMERACT (16 [25%] in the pirfenidone group vs 19 [32%] in the placebo group; OR 0·68 [0·30–1·54]; p=0·35). There was no significant difference in the rate of treatment-emergent serious adverse events between the two groups, and there were no treatment-related deaths. Interpretation: Due to early termination of the study and underpowering, the results should be interpreted with caution. Despite not meeting the composite primary endpoint, pirfenidone slowed the rate of decline of FVC over time in patients with RA-ILD. Safety in patients with RA-ILD was similar to that seen in other pirfenidone trials. Funding: Genentech