The largest virialized dark halo in the universe

Using semi-analytic approach, we present an estimate of the properties of the largest virialized dark halos in the present universe for three different scenarios of structure formation: SCDM, LCDM and OCDM models. The resulting virial mass and temperature increase from the lowest values of $1.6 \times 10^{15}h^{-1}M_{\odot}$ and 9.8 keV in OCDM, the mid-range values of $9.0 \times 10^{15}h^{-1}M_{\odot}$ and 31 keV in LCDM, to the highest values of $20.9 \times 10^{15}h^{-1}M_{\odot}$, 65 keV in SCDM. As compared with the largest virialized object seen in the universe, the richest clusters of galaxies, we can safely rule out the OCDM model. In addition, the SCDM model is very unlikely because of the unreasonably high virial mass and temperature. Our computation favors the prevailing LCDM model in which superclusters may be marginally regarded as dynamically-virialized systems.Comment: 5 pages, Accepted by Int. J. Mod. Phys.

CR-SFP: Learning Consistent Representation for Soft Filter Pruning

Soft filter pruning~(SFP) has emerged as an effective pruning technique for allowing pruned filters to update and the opportunity for them to regrow to the network. However, this pruning strategy applies training and pruning in an alternative manner, which inevitably causes inconsistent representations between the reconstructed network~(R-NN) at the training and the pruned network~(P-NN) at the inference, resulting in performance degradation. In this paper, we propose to mitigate this gap by learning consistent representation for soft filter pruning, dubbed as CR-SFP. Specifically, for each training step, CR-SFP optimizes the R-NN and P-NN simultaneously with different distorted versions of the same training data, while forcing them to be consistent by minimizing their posterior distribution via the bidirectional KL-divergence loss. Meanwhile, the R-NN and P-NN share backbone parameters thus only additional classifier parameters are introduced. After training, we can export the P-NN for inference. CR-SFP is a simple yet effective training framework to improve the accuracy of P-NN without introducing any additional inference cost. It can also be combined with a variety of pruning criteria and loss functions. Extensive experiments demonstrate our CR-SFP achieves consistent improvements across various CNN architectures. Notably, on ImageNet, our CR-SFP reduces more than 41.8\% FLOPs on ResNet18 with 69.2\% top-1 accuracy, improving SFP by 2.1\% under the same training settings. The code will be publicly available on GitHub.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Phy-chemical Attributes of Nano-scale V2O5/TiO2 Catalyst and Its’ Effect on Soot Oxidation

The V2O5 catalysts which supported on nano-scale TiO2 with variation of vanadium contents (5%, 10%, 20% and 40%) were prepared by an incipient-wetness impregnation method. The phase structures of nano-scale V2O5/TiO2 catalysts with different loading rates were characterized by Scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra. The oxidation activities of catalysts over diesel soot were performed in a themogravimetric analysis (TGA) system. The kinetics of the catalytic oxidation process were analyzed based on Flynn-Wall-Ozawa method. The characterization results showed that the phase structure of V2O5 supported on TiO2 depends heavily on the vanadium contents, which will put great effects on the catalytic performances for soot oxidation. At a low vanadium loading rates (V5-V20), active species exist as monomers and polymeric states. At a high loading rate (V40), the crystalline bulk V2O5 covers the surface of TiO2. The formed crystal structure occupied the active sites and led a decreasing in the catalytic effect. By comparing the characteristics temperatures of soot oxidation over V2O5 catalysts, the catalytic activities of catalysts with different loading rates for soot oxidation can be ranked as: V5 < V10 < V40 < V20. Via pyrolysis kinetics analysis, it is revealed that the activation energy of soot oxidation is minimum when the vanadium loading rates is 20%, which is fit well with the TG experimental results. The consistency of pyrolysis kinetics and TG experimental results confirm that the best activity catalyst is V20 in discussed catalysts of this paper, which is nearest to the monolayer dispersion saturated state of V2O5/TiO2 catalyst. Moreover, it convincingly demonstrate the obvious threshold effect in V2O5 catalysts.

Analysis of two pheromone-responsive conjugative multiresistance plasmids carrying the novel mobile optrA locus from Enterococcus faecalis

Background: The acquired optrA gene, which encodes a ribosomal protection protein of the ABC-F family, can confer cross-resistance to linezolid and florfenicol, posing a serious therapeutic challenge to both human and veterinary medicine. Purpose: The objective of this study was to investigate the two Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) plasmids for their fine structure, their transferability and the presence of mobile antimicrobial resistance loci. Methods: To elucidate their fine structure, the two plasmids were completely sequenced and the sequences analysed. Besides conjugation experiments, inverse PCR assays were conducted to see whether minicircles are produced from the mobile antimicrobial resistance loci. Results: Two pheromone-responsive conjugative optrA-carrying plasmids from E. faecalis, pE211 and pE508 were identified, which can transfer with frequencies of 2.6 ×10−2 and 3.7 ×10−2 (transconjugant per donor), respectively. In both plasmids, optrA was located on the novel mobile optrA locus with different sizes (12,834 bp in pE211 and 7,561 bp in pE508, respectively), flanked by two copies of IS1216 genes in the same orientation. Inverse PCR revealed that circular forms can be generated, consisting of optrA and one copy of IS1216, indicating they are all active. The 77,562 bp plasmid pE211 also carried Tn558 and a mobile bcrABDR locus, and the 84,468 bp plasmid pE508 also harbored the genes fexA, tet(L), tet(O/W/32/O) and a mobile aac(A)-aph(D) locus. Conclusion: The presence of mobile genetic elements in these plasmids renders them flexible and these elements will aid to the persistence and dissemination of these plasmids among enterococci and potentially also other gram-positive bacteria

Transmission Dynamics of a Two-City SIR Epidemic Model with Transport-Related Infections

A two-city SIR epidemic model with transport-related infections is proposed. Some good analytical results are given for this model. If the basic reproduction number ℜ0γ≤1, there exists a disease-free equilibrium which is globally asymptotically stable. There exists an endemic equilibrium which is locally asymptotically stable if the basic reproduction number ℜ0γ>1. We also show the permanence of this SIR model. In addition, sufficient conditions are established for global asymptotic stability of the endemic equilibrium

Analgesia for total knee arthroplasty: a meta-analysis comparing local infiltration and femoral nerve block

Patients frequently experience postoperative pain after a total knee arthroplasty; such pain is always challenging to treat and may delay the patient’s recovery. It is unclear whether local infiltration or a femoral nerve block offers a better analgesic effect after total knee arthroplasty.We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to compare local infiltration with a femoral nerve block in patients who underwent a primary unilateral total knee arthroplasty. We searched Pubmed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library through December 2014. Two reviewers scanned abstracts and extracted data. The data collected included numeric rating scale values for pain at rest and pain upon movement and opioid consumption in the first 24 hours. Mean differences with 95% confidence intervals were calculated for each end point. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate potential sources of heterogeneity.While the numeric rating scale values for pain upon movement (MD-0.62; 95%CI: -1.13 to -0.12; p=0.02) in the first 24 hours differed significantly between the patients who received local infiltration and those who received a femoral nerve block, there were no differences in the numeric rating scale results for pain at rest (MD-0.42; 95%CI:-1.32 to 0.47; p=0.35) or opioid consumption (MD 2.92; 95%CI:-1.32 to 7.16; p=0.18) in the first 24 hours.Local infiltration and femoral nerve block showed no significant differences in pain intensity at rest or opioid consumption after total knee arthroplasty, but the femoral nerve block was associated with reduced pain upon movement

Net proton number cumulants from viscous hydro with equation of state including a critical end point

In the SMASH-CLVisc-hybrid framework, including SMASH for the initial conditions and the hadronic rescattering stage, and CLVisc for the quark gluon plasma (QGP) evolution, we investigate net baryon number fluctuations via considering the equation of state (EoS) with and without a critical end point (CEP) in the QCD phase transition. Specifically, two distinct QCD EoS are utilized: one with smooth crossover derived from NEOS and another with a critical end point sourced from the rPNJL model. Our results show that non-monotonic behavior of $\kappa\sigma^2$ is not observed above the collision energy $7.7 {\rm GeV}$, nor are there explicit differences between the EoS characterized by crossover and that by CEP. This could be attributed to the significant deviation of the freeze-out line from the location of CEP. It is also found that the pure SMASH result of $\kappa \sigma^2$ is positive and close to zero at 3 GeV, which is different from the negative value observed from STAR