Online Customer Service System Using Hybrid Model

In a traditional customer service support environment, service engineers typically provide a worldwide customer base support through the use of telephone calls. Such a mode of support is inefficient, ineffective and generally results in high costs, long service cycles, and poor quality of service. The rapid growth of the World Wide Web and Intelligent Agent technology, with its widespread acceptance and accessibility, have resulted in the emergence of Web-based and AI Agent-based systems. Depending on the functionality provided by such systems, most of the associated disadvantages of the traditional customer service support environment can be eliminated. This paper describes a framework for Web-based and AI Agent-based online customer service support system, and discusses the method to use Rough Set Theory and Neural Network Theory to support intelligent fault diagnosis by customers or service engineers

Automatic thickness estimation for skeletal muscle in ultrasonography: evaluation of two enhancement methods

BACKGROUND: Ultrasonography is a convenient technique to investigate muscle properties and has been widely used to look into muscle functions since it is non-invasive and real-time. Muscle thickness, a quantification which can effectively reflect the muscle activities during muscle contraction, is an important measure for musculoskeletal studies using ultrasonography. The traditional manual operation to read muscle thickness is subjective and time-consuming, therefore a number of studies have focused on the automatic estimation of muscle fascicle orientation and muscle thickness, to which the speckle noises in ultrasound images could be the major obstacle. There have been two popular methods proposed to enhance the hyperechoic regions over the speckles in ultrasonography, namely Gabor Filtering and Multiscale Vessel Enhancement Filtering (MVEF). METHODS: A study on gastrocnemius muscle is conducted to quantitatively evaluate whether and how these two methods could help the automatic estimation of the muscle thickness based on Revoting Hough Transform (RVHT). The muscle thickness results obtained from each of the two methods are compared with the results from manual measurement, respectively. Data from an aged subject with cerebral infarction is also studied. RESULTS: It’s shown in the experiments that, Gabor Filtering and MVEF can both enable RVHT to generate comparable results of muscle thickness to those by manual drawing (mean ± SD, 1.45 ± 0.48 and 1.38 ± 0.56 mm respectively). However, the MVEF method requires much less computation than Gabor Filtering. CONCLUSIONS: Both methods, as preprocessing procedure can enable RVHT the automatic estimation of muscle thickness and MVEF is believed to be a better choice for real-time applications

Epithelial Membrane Protein 1 is a Potential Prognostic Biomarker for Ovarian Cancer

Background: Epithelial membrane protein 1 (EMP1) is a cell junction protein located in the plasma membrane. The function of EMP1 in cancer cells varies in different tumour types. In the present study we investigated the expression of EMP1 and its clinical significance in ovarian cancer. Methods: Sequencing data from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and from several other public databases was used to study the expression of EMP1 and its gene regulation networks in ovarian cancer patients. Oncomine and Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis tools (GEPIA) were used to evaluate EMP1 expression. EMP1 alterations were identified using cBioPortal and the prognostic value of EMP1 was assessed using Kaplan-Meier analysis and OncoLnc online tools. Genes that were co-expressed with EMP1 were identified using LinkedOmics and the Link-Interpreter module was used to analyse pathway enrichment and the possible functions of co-expressed genes. Results: EMP1 was highly expressed in ovarian cancer and was associated with advanced tumour stage and poor overall survival (OS). Amplification of the EMP1 gene was also common in ovarian cancer. EMP1 participates mainly in the biological processes of epidermal development, cell adhesion, peptidyl tyrosine modification and angiogenesis. Functional network analysis suggests that EMP1 regulates tumorigenesis and progression of ovarian cancer through different signalling pathways that include several kinases, microRNAs (miRNAs) and transcription factors related to tumorigenesis. Conclusions: This study confirmed the expression of EMP1 in ovarian cancer and elucidated its regulatory networks, thus providing a theoretical basis for further studies into its functions. EMP1 could potentially serve as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in ovarian cancer patients. However, owing to the limited sample size and range of experimental work, further validation studies are needed to confirm the role of EMP1 in ovarian cancer

Preparation of the Flexible Green Body of YAG Ceramic Fiber by Melt Spinning

YAG ceramic fiber, with its high thermal conductivity and easy to achieve limit size, provides design flexibility as a laser gain medium. Its mainstream forming method was mainly high-pressure extrusion, but there were disadvantages, such as lack of flexibility. In this work, the flexible green body of YAG ceramic fiber was prepared by melt spinning. The melting characteristics of TPU with four different Shore hardnesses were systematically investigated. The microstructure, element homogeneity of the surface and fracture SEM images of the prepared ceramic fiber were also analyzed in detail. The optimized process parameters of YAG ceramic fiber preparation were as follows: the melting temperature was 220 °C, the screw feed rate of the double-cone screw extruder was F = 15.0 mm/min and the TPU-95A# was used. The ceramic fiber with the mass ratio of TPU-95A# to ceramic powder = 4:6 had the best microstructure quality. It had good flexibility and could be knotted with a bending radius of about 2.5 mm, and the tensile strength reached approximately 20 MPa. These results are crucial for advancing YAG ceramic fiber applications

Cognitive mechanism related to line drawings and its applications in intelligent process of visual media: a survey

Line drawings, as a concise form, can be recognized by infants and even chimpanzees. Recently, how the visual system processes line-drawings attracts more and more attention from psychology, cognitive science and computer science. The neuroscientific studies revealed that line drawings generate similar neural actions as color photographs, which give insights on how to efficiently process big media data. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on line drawing studies, including cognitive mechanism of visual perception, computational models in computer vision and intelligent process in diverse media applications. Major debates, challenges and solutions that have been addressed over the years are discussed. Finally some of the ensuing challenges in line drawing studies are outlined.</p

Dinitrile compound containing ethylene oxide moiety with enhanced solubility of lithium salts as electrolyte solvent for high-voltage lithium-ion batteries

A dinitrile compound containing ethylene oxide moiety (4,7-dioxa-1,10-decanedinitrile, NEON) is synthesized as an electrolyte solvent for high-voltage lithium-ion batteries. The introduction of ethylene oxide moiety into the conventional aprotic aliphatic dinitrile compounds improves the solubility of lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6) used commercially in the lithium-ion battery industry. The electrochemical performances of the NEON-based electrolyte (0.8 M LiPF6 + 0.2 M lithium oxalyldifluoroborate in NEON:EC:DEC, v:v:v = 1:1:1) are evaluated in graphite/Li, LiCoO2/Li, and LiCoO2/graphite cells. Half-cell tests show that the electrolyte exhibits significantly improved compatibility with graphite by the addition of vinylene carbonate and lithium oxalyldifluoroborate and excellent cycling stability with a capacity retention of 97 % after 50 cycles at a cutoff voltage of 4.4 V in LiCoO2/Li cell. A comparative experiment in LiCoO2/graphite full cells shows that the electrolyte (NEON:EC:DEC, v:v:v = 1:1:1) exhibits improved cycling stability at 4.4 V compared with the electrolyte without NEON (EC:DEC, v:v = 1:1), demonstrating that NEON has a great potential as an electrolyte solvent for the high-voltage application in lithium-ion batteries

Tensile Property and Corrosion Performance of Ag Microalloying of Al-Cu Alloys for Positive Electrode Current Collectors of Li-Ion Batteries

The development of a current collector for Li-ion batteries is of great significance for improving the performance of Li-ion batteries. Tensile property and corrosion performance of the positive electrode current collectors are an indispensable prerequisite for the realization of high-performance Li-ion batteries. In our study, the effects of Ag alloying on the microscopic structure, electrical conductivity, tensile property and corrosion resistance of Al-xCu (x = 0.1&ndash;0.15%) alloy foils were investigated. Moderate Ag addition on the Al-Cu alloy could reduce the size of second phases and promote the formation of second phases. The tensile strength of the Al-0.1Cu-0.1Ag alloy was higher than that of the Al-0.1Cu alloy at both room and high temperatures. All of the alloy foils demonstrated high electrical conductivity around 58% ICAS. The corrosion potential and corrosion current density of the Al-0.1Cu alloy were demonstrated by Tafel polarization to be &minus;873 mV and 37.12 &mu;A/cm2, respectively. However, the Al-0.1Cu-0.1Ag alloy showed enhanced corrosion resistance after the Ag element was added to the Al-0.1Cu alloy, and the Al-0.1Cu-0.1Ag alloy had a greater positive corrosion potential of &minus;721 mV and a lower corrosion current density of 1.52 &mu;A/cm2, which suggests that the Ag element could significantly improve the corrosion resistance of the Al-Cu alloy

Investigating the epidemiological relevance of secretory otitis media and neighboring organ diseases through an Internet search

Background This study examined the epidemiological correlations between secretory otitis media (SOM) and diseases of neighboring organs. We measured changes in disease incidences during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic using Internet big data spanning from 2011 to 2021. Methods This study used the Baidu Index (BI) to determine the search volume for the terms “secretory otitis media (SOM)”, “tonsillitis”, “pharyngolaryngitis”, “adenoid hypertrophy (AH)”, “nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC)”, “nasal septum deviation (NSD)”, “rhinosinusitis”, “allergic rhinitis (AR)”, and “gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)” in Mandarin from January 2011 to December 2021. The correlations between these terms were analyzed using Spearman’s correlation coefficients. The results were compared search data from 2019 and 2021 to assess the effects of isolation on SOM in 2020. Results The seasonal variations trends of SOM and other diseases coincided well (P  0.05). The total search volumes for SOM, rhinosinusitis, NPC, and AH decreased in 2020 compared to 2019. Discussion SOM exhibited a discernible epidemiological connection with rhinosinusitis, nasal septal deviation (NSD), tonsillitis, pharyngolaryngitis, and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). A decrease in public gatherings was observed to effectively reduce the incidences of SOM. This underscores the pivotal role of social measures in influencing the prevalence of SOM and emphasizes the intricate interplay between SOM and various associated health factors, with implications for public health strategies