CoCoFormer: A controllable feature-rich polyphonic music generation method

This paper explores the modeling method of polyphonic music sequence. Due to the great potential of Transformer models in music generation, controllable music generation is receiving more attention. In the task of polyphonic music, current controllable generation research focuses on controlling the generation of chords, but lacks precise adjustment for the controllable generation of choral music textures. This paper proposed Condition Choir Transformer (CoCoFormer) which controls the output of the model by controlling the chord and rhythm inputs at a fine-grained level. In this paper, the self-supervised method improves the loss function and performs joint training through conditional control input and unconditional input training. In order to alleviate the lack of diversity on generated samples caused by the teacher forcing training, this paper added an adversarial training method. CoCoFormer enhances model performance with explicit and implicit inputs to chords and rhythms. In this paper, the experiments proves that CoCoFormer has reached the current better level than current models. On the premise of specifying the polyphonic music texture, the same melody can also be generated in a variety of ways

Variations of “Large Class Size” in Chinese Elementary Schools and Analysis of Policy Factors

This research aims to analyze variations of “large class size” in Chinese elementary schools and the influences of education policies on it. Through SPSS21.0, Independent-Samples T Test is adopted to analyze the continuous eleven years” data in “Chinese Educational Statistics Yearbook (2001-2011)”, and the findings are as follows. Firstly, the number of “large class size” in elementary schools presents obvious variations. Secondly, the absolute number of “large class size” in elementary schools shows large fluctuations, while the proportion of “large class size” in elementary schools constantly increases. Thirdly, obvious variations appear in the spatial distribution of the number of “large class size” in elementary schools. “Large class size” in elementary schools has already transferred from urban and rural areas to counties and towns, and the number and proportion of “large class size” in elementary schools in counties and towns has exceeded the sum of that in urban and rural areas. Fourthly, variations of “large class size” in elementary schools result from “closing and merging schools” policy and “two priorities” policy in China

Low-voltage-driven and highly-diffractive holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystals with spherical morphology

It is a constant pursuit to form highly-diffractive and low-voltage-driven holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystals (HPDLCs) for meeting the requirements of practical applications. Nevertheless, the high-voltage-driven characteristic is usually given while improving the diffraction efficiency of HPDLCs, and it remains a challenge to form HPDLCs with concurrent features of high diffraction and low driving voltage via a simple method. In this work, we synthesize a non-room-temperature LC, 4-butyloxy-4′-cyanobiphenyl (4OCB), and mix it with a room-temperature nematic LC mixture named P0616A. These new LC mixtures are then homogeneously mixed with monomers and a photoinitibitor composed of 3,3′-carbonylbis(7-diethylaminocoumarin) (KCD) and N-phenylglycine (NPG), followed by patterning via laser interference, generating well-structured HPDLCs. The introduction of 4OCB into the standard formulation is found to be able to optimize the morphology and electro-optical properties of the resulting HPDLC transmission gratings. By doping 5 wt% of 4OCB into the HPDLCs, a high diffraction efficiency of 92 ± 3% is obtained; meanwhile, the threshold and saturated voltages significantly decrease by 80.8% (i.e., from 12.0 ± 0.8 to 2.3 ± 0.9 V μm−1) and 73.2% (i.e., from 19.0 ± 0.6 to 5.1 ± 0.7 V μm−1), respectively, in comparison with the pristine. The enhanced performance is believed to be ascribed to the formed larger LC droplets (70 ± 20 nm) and lower interface anchoring strength (0.7 μN m−1) of the polymer network on LCs

Effects of surface modification, carbon nanofiber concentration, and dispersion time on the mechanical properties of carbon-nanofiber–polycarbonate composites

The time effect of ultrasonication was investigated for dispersing carbon nanofibers (CNFs) into a polycarbonate (PC) matrix on the mechanical properties of thus-produced composites. The effects of CNF surface modification by plasma treatment and the CNF concentration in composites on their mechanical properties were also explored. The plasma coating was characterized by HRTEM and FT-IR. Furthermore, the plasma polymerization (10 w) treatment on the CNF enhanced the CNF dispersion in the polymer matrix. The mechanical properties of the CNF–PC composites varied with the dispersion time, at first increasing to a maximum value and then dropping down. After a long ultrasonic treatment (24 h), the properties increased again. At a high concentration, the CNF-PC suspension became difficult to disperse. Additionally, the possible mechanisms for these behaviors are simply proposed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 3792–3797, 2007Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55871/1/25112_ftp.pd

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

Fabrication and Characterization of BaCexZr1-x-yYyO3-δ powder and functional layers for proton conducting fuel cells

t Proton Conducting Fuel Cells (PCFCs) are an emerging sub-class of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) with great potential for lowering the operating temperature to 400- 600 °C and achieving higher fuel utilization due to the generation of water is on the opposite of fuel side, avoiding the dilution of fuel gas effectively. Unlike oxygen ion conducting SOFC, PCFC is characterized by proton conducting ceramic (PCC) as electrolyte material. Due to the high brittleness of ceramic materials, the traditional electrolyte- or anode-supported cell designs suffer from the poor mechanical stability and thereby the size of the cell is restricted. On account of these limitations of ceramic substrate, porous metal substrate was used here due to the advantage of mechanical stability. However, the high sintering temperature, which is characteristic for PCC materials to obtain a dense electrolyte, is incompatible with the nature of substrate used for Metal Supported Cells (MSCs). One solution to this problem is to apply Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) method to fabricate a dense thin-film electrolyte at reduced temperature. In order to make the deposition of dense thin-film electrolyte possible, comprehensive work has been done in this work. BaCexZr1-x-yYyO3-δ ceramic powder with appropriate composition was synthesized via wet-chemical method. To be more specific, colloidal sol was synthesized with zirconium n-propoxide (Zr(OC3H7)4) and 2-propanol under reflux condition at 90o C. Then the metal nitrate salts i.e. barium nitrate, yttrium nitrate and cerium nitrate were added respectively with corresponding stoichiometry. The obtained gel was dried and calcined to produce final BCZY powders. Different functional layers such as La0.8Sr0.2MnO3 (LSM) diffusion barrier layer, BCZY-NiO anode functional layer and BCZY nano-layer were developed to form a multi-layered cell architecture on ITM metal substrate, which can be used to support further deposition of dense BCZY electrolyte through Pulsed Laser Deposition. The obtained final BCZY powder along with different functional layers were characterized through X-ray diffractometer (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) in specific atmosphere, Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) analyses and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Keywords: proton conducting fuel cell, wet-chemical processing, BCZY, metal supported SOFC, diffusion barrier lay

The focus of public discourse on child abuse in kindergartens: analysis of articles on child abuse in newspapers of China from 2010 to 2017

As a social phenomenon, child abuse in kindergartens is not only an educational but also a legal issue. This study analyzed 423 critical articles on child abuse in kindergartens published by 103 newspapers in China from 2010 to 2017. The results of the research are as follows: (1) The change of public opinion on child abuse conforms to the law of public opinion development in the latent period, outbreak period, spread period, repetition period, remission period and long tail period of the dissemination of hot topics of public opinion; (2) The range of social groups concerned about child abuse has been expanding year by year, until 2017, a total of 22 categories of social groups have paid attention to child abuse; (3) The focus of public attention on the child abuse incidents includes 23 aspects, such as the supervision responsibility, harm, punishment, system, prevent, treatment and morality. Among them, it mainly focuses on supervision and rule of law, and lacks humanistic care for preschool teachers

Multiple asymmetric couplings induced unconventional corner mode in topolectrical circuits

We investigate the emergence of unconventional corner mode in a two-dimensional (2D) topolectrical circuits induced by asymmetric couplings. The non-Hermitian skin effect of two kinked one-dimensional (1D) lattices with multiple asymmetric couplings are explored. Then we extend to the 2D model, derive conditions for the non-Hermitian hybrid skin effect and show how the corner modes are formed by non-reciprocal pumping based on 1D topological modes. We provide explicit electrical circuit setups for realizing our observations via realistic LTspice simulation. Moreover, we show the time varying behaviors of voltage distributions to confirm our results. Our study may help to extend the knowledge on building the topological corner modes in the non-Hermitian presence