The Islands Project for Managing Populations in Genetic Training of Spiking Neural Networks

The TENNLab software framework enables researchers to explore spiking neuroprocessors, neuromorphic applications and how they are trained. The centerpiece of training in TENNLab has been a genetic algorithm called Evolutionary Optimization For Neuromorphic System (EONS). EONS optimizes a single population of spiking neural networks, and heretofore, many methods to train with multiple populations have been ad hoc, typically consisting of shell scripts that execute multiple independent EONS jobs, whose results are combined and analyzed in another ad hoc fashion. The Islands project seeks to manage and manipulate multiple EONS populations in a controlled way. With Islands, one may spawn off independent EONS populations, each of which is an “Island.” One may define characteristics of a “stagnated” island, where further optimization is unlikely to improve the fitness of the population on the island. The Island software then allows one to create new islands by combining stagnated islands, or to migrate populations from one island to others, all in an attempt to increase diversity among the populations to improve their fitness. This thesis describes the software structure of Islands, its interface, and the functionalities that it implements. We then perform a case study with three neuromorphic control applications that demonstrate the wide variety of features of Islands

Paper capillary force driven hollow channel as a platform for multiphase flows bioassays

AbstractThis paper develops a simple, inexpensive, and portable diagnostic assays that may be useful in remote settings, and in particular, in less industrialized countries where simple assays are becoming increasingly important for detecting disease and monitoring health. In this assays, the paper capillary force is first used to transport complex fluids such as whole blood or colloidal suspensions that contain particulates in a new type channel - paper capillary driven hollow channel, which offset the disadvantages of current paper microfluidic technologies. To demonstrate the various applications of the paper capillary force driven hollow channel, several devices are design and made to complete the purpose of exhibiting laminar flow in a T-junction microchannel, sheath a core stream in a three-inlet channel and transportation whole blood

Spatial network structure and influencing factors of carbon emission intensity in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao greater bay area

Introduction: In response to China’s ambitious dual-carbon goals, this study investigates the spatial correlation and influencing factors of carbon emission intensity within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Great Bay Area (GBA), a region pivotal for the nation’s energy conservation and emission reduction efforts. Through a comprehensive analysis encompassing the period from 2000 to 2020, this research aims to delineate the spatial dynamics of carbon emissions and identify actionable insights for regional low-carbon development.Methods: Utilizing an integrated methodology comprising spatial autocorrelation analysis, Social Network Analysis (SNA), and the Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP), the study analyzes carbon emission data alongside socio-economic variables. These methodologies allow for a nuanced exploration of the spatial correlation structure and the determination of factors influencing carbon emission intensity across the GBA.Results: Findings reveal a cyclical fluctuation in the spatial network of carbon emissions from 2000 to 2020, characterized by varying degrees of cohesion among cities, indicating significant opportunities for spatial optimization. A “core-periphery” pattern emerges, with economically robust cities such as Hong Kong and Macao at the core, and less developed cities like Huizhou and Jiangmen on the periphery. Cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen play crucial mediator roles. The QAP analysis further identifies six major influencing factors: geographic spatial proximity, economic development level, urbanization rate, industrial configuration, level of technological innovation, and environmental protection efforts, with the latter four having a markedly positive impact on spatial relevance.Discussion: The study’s insights underscore the importance of understanding the spatial dynamics of carbon emissions and the role of socioeconomic factors in shaping these patterns. For policymakers and stakeholders in the GBA, these findings highlight the necessity of targeted intervention strategies that consider both the unique position of cities within the spatial network and the broader socio-economic context. This approach can significantly contribute to achieving China’s dual-carbon objectives, promoting energy conservation, and facilitating the transition to a low-carbon economy

Synergetic treatment of dye contaminated wastewater using microparticles functionalized with carbon nanotubes/titanium dioxide nanocomposites

This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry. The highly efficient treatment of azo dye contaminated wastewater from the textile industry is an important but challenging problem. Herein, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microparticles, incorporating multiple-walled carbon nanotubes/titanium dioxide (MWCNTs/TiO2) nanocomposites, were successfully synthesized to treat wastewater containing Rhodamine B (RhB) dyes in a synergetic approach, by combining sorption and photocatalytic degradation. The surfactant wrapping sol-gel method was applied to synthesize MWCNTs/TiO2 nanocomposites with TiO2 nanoparticles evenly distributed on the surface of the MWCNTs. The PDMS microparticles were fabricated with an oil-in-water (O/W) single emulsion template, using needle-based microfluidic devices. MWCNTs/TiO2 nanocomposites (at a weight ratio of 1%, and 2%, respectively) were mixed with the PDMS precursor as the dispersed phase, and an aqueous solution of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) was used as the continuous phase. Highly monodispersed microparticles, with average diameters of 692.7 μm (Coefficient of Variation, CV = 0.74%) and 678.3 μm (CV = 1.04%), were formed at an applied flow rate of the dispersed and continuous phase of 30 and 200 μL min-1, respectively. The fabricated hybrid microparticles were employed for the treatment of RhB, involving a dark equilibrium for 5 hours and UV irradiation for 3 hours. The experimental conditions of applied PDMS type, mass loading amount, treatment duration, photodegradation kinetics, initial concentration of pollutants and environmental pH values were investigated in this work. The PDMS microparticles with 2 wt% MWCNTs/TiO2 nanocomposites can exhibit a removal efficiency of 85%. Remarkably, an efficiency of 70% can be retained after the microparticles have been recycled and reused for 3 cycles. The PDMS-MWCNTs/TiO2 microparticles possess a superior performance over conventional treatment approaches for dye contaminated wastewater, especially in recyclability and the prevention of secondary pollution. This work provides a feasible and eco-friendly route for developing an efficient and low-cost microfluidic method for treating complicated water environmental systems

Prediction of the C-13 NMR chemical shifts of organic species adsorbed on H-ZSM-5 zeolite by the ONIOM-GIAO method

The ONIOM-GIAO method has been used to accurately predict C-13 NMR chemical shifts for a series of organic species adsorbed on H-ZSM-5 zeolite. This is useful for the spectroscopic identification of complicated catalytic systems

Review of advanced road materials, structures, equipment, and detection technologies

As a vital and integral component of transportation infrastructure, pavement has a direct and tangible impact on socio-economic sustainability. In recent years, an influx of groundbreaking and state-of-the-art materials, structures, equipment, and detection technologies related to road engineering have continually and progressively emerged, reshaping the landscape of pavement systems. There is a pressing and growing need for a timely summarization of the current research status and a clear identification of future research directions in these advanced and evolving technologies. Therefore, Journal of Road Engineering has undertaken the significant initiative of introducing a comprehensive review paper with the overarching theme of “advanced road materials, structures, equipment, and detection technologies”. This extensive and insightful review meticulously gathers and synthesizes research findings from 39 distinguished scholars, all of whom are affiliated with 19 renowned universities or research institutions specializing in the diverse and multidimensional field of highway engineering. It covers the current state and anticipates future development directions in the four major and interconnected domains of road engineering: advanced road materials, advanced road structures and performance evaluation, advanced road construction equipment and technology, and advanced road detection and assessment technologies

Temperature Effects on Dynamic Properties of Suspended Cables Subjected to Dual Harmonic Excitations

The paper aims at studying the influences of temperature on the suspended cables’ dynamical behaviors subjected to dual harmonic excitations in thermal environments. Significantly, the quadratic nonlinearity and the corresponding secondary resonances are considered. By introducing a tension variation factor, the nonlinear vibration equations of motion could be obtained based on the condensation model. By using Galerkin’s procedure, the continuous model of the nonlinear system is reduced to a set of infinite models with quadratic and cubic nonlinearities. By using the multiple scales method, the resultant reduced model is solved and the stability analysis is also presented in two simultaneous resonance cases. Nonlinear dynamical behaviors with thermal effects are presented using bifurcation diagrams, time-history curves, phase portraits, frequency spectrums, and Poincaré sections. The numerical results show that thermal effects induce different scenarios. The sensitivities of linear (natural frequency) and nonlinear (quadratic and cubic) coefficients to temperature variations are different. The temperature may increase or decrease the response amplitudes depending on the excitation amplitude and the sag-to-span ratio. The inflection point is shifted and exhibited at a smaller or larger excitation amplitude in thermal environments. The resonant range between two Pitchfork bifurcations seems to be reduced when the temperature is decreasing. The response amplitude is very sensitive to temperature, and even an opposite spring behavior may be exhibited due to warming/cooling conditions. However, the periodic motions seem independent of temperature variations

A buyer-traceable DNN model IP protection method against piracy and misappropriation

Recently proposed model functionality and attribute extraction techniques have exacerbated unauthorized low-cost reproduction of deep neural network (DNN) models for similar applications. In particular, intellectual property (IP) theft and unauthorized distribution of DNN models by dishonest buyers are very difficult to trace by existing framework of digital rights management (DRM). This paper presents a new buyer-traceable DRM scheme against model piracy and misappropriation. Unlike existing methods that require white-box access to extract the latent information for verification, the proposed method utilizes data poisoning for distributorship embedding and black-box verification. Composite backdoors are installed into the target model during the training process. Each backdoor is created by applying a data augmentation method to some clean images of a selected class. The data-augmented images with a wrong label associated with a buyer are injected into the training dataset. The ownership and distributorship of a backdoor-trained user model can be validated by querying the suspect model with a set of composite triggers. A positive suspect will output the dirty labels that pinpoint the dishonest buyer while an innocent model will output the correct labels with high confidence. The tracking accuracy and robustness of the proposed IP protection method are evaluated on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and GTSRB datasets for different applications. The results show an average of 100% piracy detection rate, 0% false positive rate and 96.81% traitor tracking success rate with negligible model accuracy degradation.National Research Foundation (NRF)Submitted/Accepted versionThis research is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore, under its National Cybersecurity Research & Development Programme/Cyber-Hardware Forensic & Assurance Evaluation R&D Programme (Award: CHFA-GC1-AW01)

To Explore Clinical Value of Single-port Video-assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery in Elderly Patients with Non-small Cell Lung Cancer: Lobectomy, Segmentectomy and Lobectomy vs Segmentectomy

Background and objective The morbidity of lung cancer has long been the highest in cancer. Stage I, stage II and partly of stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are mainly treated by surgery. Lobectomy and segmentectomy both are common lung resection methods. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) has been widely used in clinical, and the application of single-portvideo-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (SP VATS) has gradually been recognized and accepted by professors. With increasing degree of eldly in society, eldly patients already have become inceasingly difficulties in the diagnosis and treatment of NSCLC. The aim of this study is to explore and analyze clinical value of SP VATS lobectomy and segmentectomy in elderly patients with NSCLC. Methods In this retrospective observational study, the outcomes of 417 consecutive patients who had undergone SP VATS anatomic segmentectomy or lobectomy for NSCLC from May 2014 to December 2016 on department of thoracic surgery in Fujian Medical University Affiliated Union Hospital were examined, including 139 elderly-case (lobectomy vs segmentectomy: 124 vs 15) and 278 nonelderly-case (lobectomy vs segmentectomy: 248 vs 30). The condition of perioperative period and postoperative short-time recovery could be compared with lobectomy and segmentectomy between elderly and nonelderly cases and lobectomy and segmentectomy in elderly cases. Results The morbidty of preoperative complications was significant difference (P0.05). Numbers of dissected lymph nodes and mediastinal nodal stations of SP VATS lobectomy in elderly patients with NSCLC were more than segmentectomy (P0.05). Postoperative drainage volume [(1,150.15±140.02) mL vs (853.53±177.04) mL] and duration [(7.00±1.31) d vs (5.00±0.74) d], duration of postoperative hospital stay [(3.18±1.32) d vs (5.04±1.30) d], costs [(70.06±5.23) thousands yuan vs (61.20±5.22) thousands yuan ] or postoperative complications (5.97% vs 20.00%)(P>0.05). Notwithstanding, group of SP VATS anatomic segmentectomy found more postoperative atrialfibrillation and the vein thrombosis of lower limbs (P<0.05). Conclusion Elderly patients having more basic diseases and taking increasely risk of postoperative complications. SP VATS anatomic segmentectomy andlobectomy do not increase the risk of elderly patients with surgery. SP VATS segmentectomy is as safe and effective as SP VATS lobectomy in elderly patients, who fit to undergo SP VATS segmentectomy seem to get as same short-time effect as SP VATS lobectomy