Application of satellite remote sensing imagery to bridge scour evaluation

The overall goal of this research is to evaluate the applicability of the existing HEC-18 method to Louisiana bridges that are mostly situated on cohesive soils and hence to develop a more reliable design method for scour depth and scour rate prediction. Pier research in sandy soils and cohesive soils shows that the sandy soils are known to erode particle by particle, while cohesive soils usually erode in clumps rather than individual particles, which is caused by from the different bonding mechanisms between sandy soils and cohesive soils. Because the bonding in cohesive soils is so complex, the prediction of scour depth in cohesive soils is more difficult and no such a set of equations have been widely accepted. In order to study the influence of soil types on scour depth prediction in Louisiana, totally seven bridges situated on clays, silts, and sands were selected as case studies for scour analysis over a 10-15 year period. The hydraulic properties were determined by analyzing satellite remote sensing data, which were then used as input to HEC-18 method via a software program WASPRO. The recorded scour survey data were also analyzed and compared with the results obtained by the HEC-18 method using the real flood data. Significant discrepancy exists among the HEC-18 prediction and surveyed scour depth, and the predicted values are always greater than the surveyed depth. Therefore, for cohesive soils, the HEC-18 method usually provides a more conservative design. Although the bridges are safe for the final scour depth, the HEC-18 method typically yields a more costly design

SES Health Gradients during the Epidemiological Transition: The Case of China

The epidemiological transition, which has already passed the developed world, is still progressing in many developing countries. A particular problem associated with this transition is the under-diagnosis and lack of treatment of chronic diseases, and these may exhibit SES gradients and exacerbate social inequality. Using hypertension as an example and data from China (CHNS), we find that the prevalence of hypertension in China is already close to levels in developed countries, under-diagnosis is pervasive, treatment is rare, and failure to control is widespread. Consistent with the literature, we find no income and education gradients in the prevalence of hypertension. However, there are strong education gradients in diagnosis and treatment in urban areas. The income gradients in all aspects of hypertension are relatively weak and sometimes nonexistent. Interestingly, we find that access to health care does not contribute to the diagnosis of hypertension, nor does it aid much in the treatment and control of hypertension. Our results suggest that the epidemiological transition has indeed occurred, but both the Chinese public and its health care system are ill-prepared. There is an urgent need to educate the public on chronic illnesses, and to raise the quality of health care so that patients receive proper diagnoses and guidance on how to treat and control those chronic illnesses.epidemiological transition, under-diagnosis, SES health gradients

SES Health Gradients during the Epidemiological Transition : The Case of China

The epidemiological transition, which has already passed the developed world, is still progressing in many developing countries. A particular problem associated with this transition is the under-diagnosis and lack of treatment of chronic diseases, and these may exhibit SES gradients and exacerbate social inequality. Using hypertension as an example and data from China (CHNS), we find that the prevalence of hypertension in China is already close to levels in developed countries, under-diagnosis is pervasive, treatment is rare, and failure to control is widespread. Consistent with the literature, we find no income and education gradients in the prevalence of hypertension. However, there are strong education gradients in diagnosis and treatment in urban areas. The income gradients in all aspects of hypertension are relatively weak and sometimes nonexistent. Interestingly, we find that access to health care does not contribute to the diagnosis of hypertension, nor does it aid much in the treatment and control of hypertension. Our results suggest that the epidemiological transition has indeed occurred, but both the Chinese public and its health care system are ill-prepared. There is an urgent need to educate the public on chronic illnesses, and to raise the quality of health care so that patients receive proper diagnoses and guidance on how to treat and control those chronic illnesses.Epidemiological transition, Under-diagnosis

Recent Results from BES

We report partial wave analysis results for $J/\psi \to \gamma K^+ K^-$ based on $7.8 \times 10^6$ BESI $J/\psi$ events, and find $0^{++}$ to be dominant in the $f_J(1710)$ mass region. Some very preliminary results are presented from the $2.2 \times 10^7$ $J/\psi$ events newly collected at the upgraded BES(BESII). Using the world largest $\psi(2S)$ data sample, BES measures branching ratios of $\psi(2S)$ radiative and hadronic decays. The preliminary R values measured by BESII in the 2-5 GeV energy region are also presented.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, proceeding paper for IV International Conference on Hyperons, Charm and Beauty Hadrons, June of 2000, Valencia, Spai

Living Arrangements of the Elderly in China: Evidence from CHARLS

Recent increases in Chinese elderly living alone or only with a spouse has raised concerns about elderly support, especially when public support is inadequate. However, using rich information from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we find that the increasing trend in living alone is accompanied with a rise in living close to each other. This type of living arrangement solves the conflicts between privacy/independence and family support. This is confirmed in further investigation: children living close by visit their parents more frequently. We also find that children who live far away provide a larger amount of net transfers to their parents, a result consistent with responsibility sharing among siblings. Having more children is associated with living with a child or having a child nearby, while investing more in a child's schooling is associated with greater net transfers to parents.living arrangement, coresidence, proximity of children, CHARLS

Assigning personality/identity to a chatting machine for coherent conversation generation

Endowing a chatbot with personality or an identity is quite challenging but critical to deliver more realistic and natural conversations. In this paper, we address the issue of generating responses that are coherent to a pre-specified agent profile. We design a model consisting of three modules: a profile detector to decide whether a post should be responded using the profile and which key should be addressed, a bidirectional decoder to generate responses forward and backward starting from a selected profile value, and a position detector that predicts a word position from which decoding should start given a selected profile value. We show that general conversation data from social media can be used to generate profile-coherent responses. Manual and automatic evaluation shows that our model can deliver more coherent, natural, and diversified responses.Comment: an error on author informatio

miRNA-16-5p inhibits the apoptosis of high glucose-induced pancreatic β cells via targeting of CXCL10: potential biomarkers in type 1 diabetes mellitus

Introduction: We aimed to elucidate the relationship between CXC chemokine ligand 10 (CXCL10) and miR-16-5p, and their functions on the biological behaviour of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Material and methods: The GSE72492 dataset from the GEO database was used to analyse gene expression. We discovered that CXCL10 was highly expressed in T1DM patients. The up-stream miRNA was predicted by Targetscan website. Low glucose (2.8 mmol/L) and high glucose (HG, 16.7 mmol/L) were utilised to treat β-TC-tet (pancreatic β cell) cells to form the model. The direct interaction between miR-16-5p and CXCL10 was verified by a dual-luciferase reporter assay. Real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR) and western blotting analyses were used to detect RNA and protein expression. CCK8 and flow cytometry were used to detect cell proliferation and apoptosis. Results: We discovered that CXCL10 was highly expressed in T1DM patients. MiR-16-5p, which was lowly expressed in T1DM patients, was verified the upstream regulatory miRNA of CXCL10. The facilitating influence of miR-16-5p up-regulation on the proliferation of HG-induced β-TC-tet cells was reversed by CXCL10 over-expression, while the knockdown results were opposite. More importantly, the restraining impact of miR-16-5p high expression on the apoptosis of HG-induced β-TC-tet cells was accelerated by CXCL10 over-expression. Correspondingly, the level of Bcl-2 was enhanced while the levels of Bax and Cleaved Caspase-3 were lowered by miR-16-5p mimic, which were reversed by CXCL10 over-expression in HG-treated β-TC-tet cells. Conclusions: Our data offered evidence that miR-16-5p implicated in T1DM cell proliferation and apoptosis through targeting CXCL10, which might provide novel therapeutic information for T1DM.

Gender Differences in Cognition among Older Adults in China

In this paper, the authors model gender differences in cognitive ability in China using a new sample of middle-aged and older Chinese respondents. Modeled after the American Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), the CHARLS Pilot survey respondents are 45 years and older in two quite distinct provinces—Zhejiang a high growth industrialized province on the East Coast, and Gansu, a largely agricultural and poor Province in the West. Their measures of cognition in CHARLS relies on two measures that proxy for different dimensions of adult cognition—episodic memory and intact mental status. They relate both these childhood health measures to adult health and SES outcomes during the adult years. They find large cognitive differences to the detriment of women that were mitigated by large gender differences in education among these generations of Chinese people. These gender differences in cognition are especially concentrated within poorer communities in China with gender difference being more sensitive to community level attributes than to family level attributes, with economic resources. In traditional poor Chinese communities, there are strong economic incentives to favor boys at the expense of girls not only in their education outcomes, but in their nutrition and eventually their adult height. These gender cognitive differences have been steadily decreasing across birth cohorts as the economy of China grew rapidly. Among younger cohorts of young adults in China, there is no longer any gender disparity in cognitive ability.