Universal scaling of strange particle pTp_{\rm T} spectra in pp collisions

As a complementary study to that performed on the transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) spectra of charged pions, kaons and protons in proton-proton (pp) collisions at LHC energies 0.9, 2.76 and 7 TeV, we present a scaling behaviour in the $p_{\rm T}$ spectra of strange particles ($K_{S}^{0}$, $\rm \Lambda$, $\rm \Xi$ and $\phi$) at these three energies. This scaling behaviour is exhibited when the spectra are expressed in a suitable scaling variable $z=p_{\rm T}/K$, where the scaling parameter $K$ is determined by the quality factor method and increases with the center of mass energy ($\sqrt{s}$). The rates at which $K$ increases with $\mathrm{ln}\sqrt{s}$ for these strange particles are found to be identical within errors. In the framework of the colour string percolation model, we argue that these strange particles are produced through the decay of clusters that are formed by the colour strings overlapping. We observe that the strange mesons and baryons are produced from clusters with different size distributions, while the strange mesons (baryons) $K_{S}^{0}$ and $\phi$ ($\rm \Lambda$ and $\rm \Xi$) originate from clusters with the same size distributions. The cluster's size distributions for strange mesons are more dispersed than those for strange baryons. The scaling behaviour of the $p_{\rm T}$ spectra for these strange particles can be explained by the colour string percolation model in a quantitative way.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures, accepted by EPJ

Laboratory Study on the Polymer Flexible Cement Slurry System

A polymer flexible cement slurry system has been developed because cement stone has poor deformability and can be destroyed easily in complex underground conditions and the subsequent construction of wells. A lot of laboratory experiments has been done to evaluate the properties of this slurry system and the emphasis was put on the properties of cement stone such as compressive strength, flexural strength, corrosion resistance and volume shrinkage. The result of study indicated, this polymer flexible slurry cement system had properties of resisting high temperature, salt endurance, low fluid loss, zero free liquid, the thickening curve emerged right angle with short transition period and anti-gas channeling. The compression strength of the cement stone was high, plasticity was strengthened, permeability was low, it was good to able to bear corrosion.Key words: Oil well cement; Strength of cement; Flexibility of cement; Resistance to corrosio

College Students’ Attitudes, Stigma, and Intentions Toward Seeking Online and Face-to-Face Counseling

Objective(s): To investigate differences in public stigma, self-stigma, attitudes (value and discomfort), and intentions to seek help between online and face-to-face counseling. To identify a difference in the relationship between these variables and both counseling modalities. Method: An online survey completed by 538 college students from one university in the Southeastern United States. The sample included 412 females and 126 males with a mean age of 20.21 years (SD = 1.26). Results: Significantly higher levels of self-stigma and discomfort toward online counseling were reported. Significantly higher value and intentions were reported toward face-to-face counseling. Self-stigma was positively related to public stigma, value was negatively related to self-stigma, and intentions toward seeking help was positively related to value. Conclusions: Results suggest face-to-face counseling is seen as a more favorable method of service delivery compared to online counseling. Value toward online counseling is an important predictor for seeking this type of help

New Fast Fall Detection Method Based on Spatio-Temporal Context Tracking of Head by Using Depth Images

© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. In order to deal with the problem of projection occurring in fall detection with two-dimensional (2D) grey or color images, this paper proposed a robust fall detection method based on spatio-temporal context tracking over three-dimensional (3D) depth images that are captured by the Kinect sensor. In the pre-processing procedure, the parameters of the Single-Gauss-Model (SGM) are estimated and the coefficients of the floor plane equation are extracted from the background images. Once human subject appears in the scene, the silhouette is extracted by SGM and the foreground coefficient of ellipses is used to determine the head position. The dense spatio-temporal context (STC) algorithm is then applied to track the head position and the distance from the head to floor plane is calculated in every following frame of the depth image. When the distance is lower than an adaptive threshold, the centroid height of the human will be used as the second judgment criteria to decide whether a fall incident happened. Lastly, four groups of experiments with different falling directions are performed. Experimental results show that the proposed method can detect fall incidents that occurred in different orientations, and they only need a low computation complexity

Periweaning Failure to Thrive Syndrome (PFTS): Is There a Genetic Component?

Periweaning Failure to Thrive Syndrome (PFTS) is a serious and potentially fatal disorder with variable morbidity and mortality rates that have been reported in US and Canadian farms. A genetic basis has been hypothesized. To investigate what regions of the genome could be linked to that, a total of 70 affected and 37 non-affected piglets were genotyped with over 60,000 genetic markers to investigate genetic differences between the two groups. This allows for the identification of genomic regions that could be linked to resistance to the disease providing new insights and knowledge on the genetic basis of this syndrome

Je li dobar napad najbolja obrana? usporedba brazilskih i talijanskih stilova nogometne igre

The main purpose was to test the mythical belief that Brazilian soccer teams possess an offensive style of play while Italian teams rely on a defensive game plan. A dominant rationalization for these perceived differences is rooted in the cultural and social differences between the two nations. Data (goals scored, goals conceded, and points per game) from international competitions (World Cup), and from the local premier leagues (Brazilian and Italian) were descriptively and inferentially analyzed. Descriptive and inferential analyses revealed that: (1) Brazilian teams scored more goals per game than Italian teams at both the national and league level; (2) the relationship between goals scored and performance (points per game) was significant and of strong magnitude for Italian teams only (r=.84); and (3) strong defense is essential for successful performance in the World Cup for both the Brazilian and Italian national teams. Altogether, there was evidence of differences in Brazilian and Italian playing styles in regard to offensive (goals scored) and defensive (goals conceded) outcomes. Specific avenues for future directions are offered.Glavni je cilj bio ispitati mistično vjerovanje da brazilske nogometne momčadi njeguju napadački stil igre, dok se talijanske momčadi više oslanjaju na obrambeni stil igre. Objašnjenje zamijećenih razlika je ukorijenjeno najviše u kulturnim i socijalnim razlikama između ta dva naroda. Podaci (postignuti golovi, primljeni golovi i bodovi po utakmici) prikupljeni s utakmica međunarodnih natjecanja (svjetska prvenstva) i nacionalnih prvih liga (brazilska i talijanska) analizirani su opisno i statistički. Deskriptivna i statistička analiza ukazale su na sljedeće: (1) brazilske momčadi postižu u prosjeku više golova od talijanskih (na reprezentativnim natjecanjima, ali i u okviru ligaških natjecanja); (2) odnos između postignutih golova i uspješnosti (bodova) bio je značajan i imao visoku korelaciju samo za talijanske momčadi (r=0,84) i (3) snažna obrana pokazala se ključnom za uspjeh na svjetskim prvenstvima za obje momčadi. Zaključno, postoje dokazi o razlikama između brazilskih i talijanskih stilova igre u odnosu na napadačke (broj postignutih golova) i obrambene (broj primljenih golova) ishode. U radu se raspravlja o ograničenjima istraživanja, kao i o smjerovima mogućih istraživanja u budućnosti

Structural roles of TiO2 in CaF2- SiO2-CaO-TiO2 submerged arc welding fluxes

A series of fused CaF2-SiO2-CaO-based fluxes geared towards submerged arc welding has been prepared with incremental TiO2 additions. Through systematic investigation on physical properties, quantitative relationship between TiO2 content and corresponding structural information has been established, and the roles played by TiO2 have been profiled. It is found that TiO2 has been introduced into the silicate network by acting as network-former, increasing the degree of polymerization while lowering the strength of the flux.The National Natural Science Foundation of China, Newton Advanced Fellowship by the Royal Society , Special Fund for Key Program of Science and Technology of Liaoning Province, Research Fund for Central Universities, Xingliao Talents Program and State Key Laboratory of Metal Material for Marine Equipment and Application.http://link.springer.com/journal/116632021-08-20am2021Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineerin

HSP90/AXL/eIF4E-regulated unfolded protein response as an acquired vulnerability in drug-resistant KRAS-mutant lung cancer

Drug resistance and tumor heterogeneity are formidable challenges in cancer medicine, which is particularly relevant for KRAS-mutant cancers, the epitome of malignant tumors recalcitrant to targeted therapy efforts and first-line chemotherapy. In this study, we delineate that KRAS-mutant lung cancer cells resistant to pemetrexed (MTA) and anti-MEK drug trametinib acquire an exquisite dependency on endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress signaling, rendering resistant cancer cells selectively susceptible to blockage of HSP90, the receptor tyrosine kinase AXL, the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E), and the unfolded protein response (UPR). Mechanistically, acquisition of drug resistance enables KRAS-mutant lung cancer cells to bypass canonical KRAS effectors but entail hyperactive AXL/eIF4E, increased protein turnover in the ER, and adaptive activation of an ER stress-relief UPR survival pathway whose integrity is maintained by HSP90. Notably, the unique dependency and sensitivity induced by drug resistance are applicable to KRAS-mutant lung cancer cells undergoing de novo intratumor heterogeneity. In line with these findings, HSP90 inhibitors synergistically enhance antitumor effects of MTA and trametinib, validating a rational combination strategy to treat KRAS-mutant lung cancer. Collectively, these results uncover collateral vulnerabilities co-occurring with drug resistance and tumor heterogeneity, informing novel therapeutic avenues for KRAS-mutant lung cancer

Scale Robust Deep Oriented-text Detection Network

Abstract(#br)Text detection is a prerequisite of text recognition, and multi-oriented text detection is a hot topic recently. The existing multi-oriented text detection methods fall short when facing two issues: 1) text scales change in a wide range, and 2) there exists the foreground-background class imbalance. In this paper, we propose a scale-robust deep multi-oriented text-detection model, which not only has the efficiency of the one-stage deep detection model, but also has the comparable accuracy of the two-stage deep text-detection model. We design the feature refining block to fuse multi-scale context features for the purpose of keeping text detection in a higher-resolution feature map. Moreover, in order to mitigate the foreground-background class imbalance, Focal Loss is adopted to up weight the hard-classified samples. Our method is implemented on four benchmark text datasets: ICDAR2013, ICDAR2015, COCO-Text and MSRA-TD500. The experimental results demonstrate that our method is superior to the existing one-stage deep text-detection models and comparable to the state-of-the-art text detection methods

Brain Functional Network Improved by Magnetic Stimulation at Acupoints during Mental Fatigue

Abstract To investigate the effects of magnetic stimulation at acupoints on brain functional network during mental fatigue, magnetic stimulation was applied to stimulate SHENMEN (HT7), HEGU (LI4) and LAOGONG (PC8) acupoint in this paper. The brain functional networks of normal state, mental fatigue state and stimulated state were constructed and the characteristic parameters were comparatively studied based on the complex network theory. The results showed that the connection of the network was enhanced by stimulating the HT7, LI4 and PC8 acupoint. In conclusion, magnetic stimulation at acupoints can effectively relieve mental fatigue