STUDY ON VIBRATION RESPONSE OF A NON-UNIFORM BEAM WITH NONLINEAR BOUNDARY CONDITION

Forced vibration of non-uniform beam with nonlinear boundary condition is studied in this paper by proposing an iterative model combining Adomian Decomposition Method and modal analysis. An exponentially tapered beam with a hardening nonlinearity spring boundary is simulated as a case study. The model accuracy is proved by comparing iteration results and analysis solutions with linear and weakly nonlinear boundary conditions. Sin-weep nonlinear frequency spectrum is then obtained by the proposed model. The influence of boundary nonlinearity on the vibration response of non-uniform beam is analyzed. And the effect of different excitation amplitudes on nonlinearity in the vibration response is studied. The mathematical model and numerical solutions proposed in this paper can be used to solve and analysis broad vibration problems on general non-uniform beams with different nonlinear boundary conditionsunder various excitations

When does In-context Learning Fall Short and Why? A Study on Specification-Heavy Tasks

In-context learning (ICL) has become the default method for using large language models (LLMs), making the exploration of its limitations and understanding the underlying causes crucial. In this paper, we find that ICL falls short of handling specification-heavy tasks, which are tasks with complicated and extensive task specifications, requiring several hours for ordinary humans to master, such as traditional information extraction tasks. The performance of ICL on these tasks mostly cannot reach half of the state-of-the-art results. To explore the reasons behind this failure, we conduct comprehensive experiments on 18 specification-heavy tasks with various LLMs and identify three primary reasons: inability to specifically understand context, misalignment in task schema comprehension with humans, and inadequate long-text understanding ability. Furthermore, we demonstrate that through fine-tuning, LLMs can achieve decent performance on these tasks, indicating that the failure of ICL is not an inherent flaw of LLMs, but rather a drawback of existing alignment methods that renders LLMs incapable of handling complicated specification-heavy tasks via ICL. To substantiate this, we perform dedicated instruction tuning on LLMs for these tasks and observe a notable improvement. We hope the analyses in this paper could facilitate advancements in alignment methods enabling LLMs to meet more sophisticated human demands.Comment: Under revie

A POLYMER-BASED MICROFLUIDIC RESISTIVE SENSOR FOR DETECTING DISTRIBUTED LOADS

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a polymer-based microfluidic resistive sensor for detecting distributed loads. The sensor is comprised of a polymer rectangular microstructure with an embedded electrolyte-filled microchannel and an array of electrodes aligned along the microchannel length. Electrolyte solution in the microchannel serves as impedance transduction. Distributed loads acting on the polymer microstructure give rise to different deflection along the microstructure length, which is recorded as the resistance change in electrolyte solution. This sensor can detect distributed loads by monitoring the resistance change at each pair of electrodes. A sensor with an in-plane dimension of ~20mm10mm and five pairs of electrodes is fabricated using a CNC machine. 1M KCl solution is used as the electrolyte. Using a custom built electronic circuit on breadboard and a custom LabVIEW program, the static and dynamic performance of the sensor is characterized, demonstrating the feasibility of employing this sensor to detect distributed loads

Effect of Water-Added Content on the Quality and Structural Characteristics of High-moisture Extruded SoybeanMeal-Based Meat Analogues

Soybean meal is a high quality plant protein resource. Exploring the possibility of using soybean meal instead of soybean protein isolate as raw material for high water extrusion plant protein meat processing is of great significance for production enterprises to control production cost and improve the economic value of soybean meal. In this study, the soybean meal was used as raw material to systemlly explore the effect of the water-added content (10.5, 11, 11.5, 12 kg/h) on the quality and structural characteristics of high-mositure extruded vegetable protein meat through determining the hardness, elasticity, chewiness, color and luster, water-holding capacity, oil-holding capacity, and chemical-crosslinking force and using Fourier infrared spectrum and scanning electron microscope. The results showed that the hardness, elasticity, and chewability of the vegetable protein meat were significantly decreased with the increasing water-added content during extrusion (P<0.05), while the brightness value, water-holding capacity, and oil-holding capacity showed a trend of increasing first and then decreasing. When the water-added content was 11.5 kg/h, the vegetable protein meat had better quality characteristics and appearance color, and the denser fibrous filaments were formed inside, and their layered structure became clear and neat, showing the fine directional structure. The results of Fourier infrared spectroscopy and chemical-crosslinking confirmed that the water-added content had a significant effect on the structure of vegetable protein meat, and the structure was maintained by the interaction of covalent bond and non-covalent bond

Use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and adverse outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background There are concerns that the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may increase the risk of adverse outcomes among patients with coronavirus COVID-19. This study aimed to synthesize the evidence on associations between the use of NSAIDs and adverse outcomes. Methods A systematic search of WHO COVID-19 Database, Medline, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Embase, China Biology Medicine disc, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang Database for all articles published from January 1, 2020, to November 7, 2021, as well as a supplementary search of Google Scholar. We included all comparative studies that enrolled patients who took NSAIDs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data extraction and quality assessment of methodology of included studies were completed by two reviewers independently. We conducted a meta-analysis on the main adverse outcomes, as well as selected subgroup analyses stratified by the type of NSAID and population (both positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or not). Findings Forty comparative studies evaluating 4,867,795 adult cases were identified. Twenty-eight (70%) of the included studies enrolled patients positive to SARS-CoV-2 tests. The use of NSAIDs did not reduce mortality outcomes among people with COVID-19 (number of studies [N] = 29, odds ratio [OR] = 0.93, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.75 to 1.14, I2  = 89%). Results suggested that the use of NSAIDs was not significantly associated with higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with or without COVID-19 (N = 10, OR = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.86 to 1.07, I2  = 78%; N = 8, aOR = 1.01, 95% CI: 0.94 to 1.09, I2  = 26%), or an increased probability of intensive care unit (ICU) admission (N = 12, OR = 1.28, 95% CI: 0.94 to 1.75, I2  = 82% ; N = 4, aOR = 0.89, 95% CI: 0.65 to 1.22, I2  = 60%), requiring mechanical ventilation (N = 11, OR = 1.11, 95% CI: 0.79 to 1.54, I2  = 63%; N = 5, aOR = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.52 to 1.24, I2  = 66%), or administration of supplemental oxygen (N = 5, OR = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.52 to 1.24, I2  = 63%; N = 2, aOR = 1.00, 95% CI: 0.89 to 1.12, I2  = 0%). The subgroup analysis revealed that, compared with patients not using any NSAIDs, the use of ibuprofen (N = 5, OR = 1.09, 95% CI: 0.50 to 2.39; N = 4, aOR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.78 to 1.16) and COX-2 inhibitor (N = 4, OR = 0.62, 95% CI: 0.35 to 1.11; N = 2, aOR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.45 to 1.18) were not associated with an increased risk of death. Interpretation Data suggests that NSAIDs such as ibuprofen, aspirin and COX-2 inhibitor, can be used safely among patients positive to SARS-CoV-2. However, for some of the analyses the number of studies were limited and the quality of evidence was overall low, therefore more research is needed to corroborate these findings. Funding There was no funding source for this study

Ultrasound-Mediated DNA Transformation in Thermophilic Gram-Positive Anaerobes

Thermophilic, Gram-positive, anaerobic bacteria (TGPAs) are generally recalcitrant to chemical and electrotransformation due to their special cell-wall structure and the low intrinsic permeability of plasma membranes. transformants/µg of methylated DNA. Delivery into X514 cells was confirmed via detecting the kanamycin-resistance gene for pIKM2, while confirmation of pHL015 was detected by visualization of fluorescence signals of secondary host-cells following a plasmid-rescue experiment. Furthermore, the foreign β-1,4-glucanase gene was functionally expressed in X514, converting the host into a prototypic thermophilic consolidated bioprocessing organism that is not only ethanologenic but cellulolytic.In this study, we developed an ultrasound-based sonoporation method in TGPAs. This new DNA-delivery method could significantly improve the throughput in developing genetic systems for TGPAs, many of which are of industrial interest yet remain difficult to manipulate genetically

Efficient location privacy algorithm for Internet of Things (IoT) services and applications

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. Location-based Services (LBS) have become a very important area for research with the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT) technology and the ubiquitous use of smartphones and social networks in our daily lives. Although users can enjoy a lot of flexibility and conveniences from the LBS with IoT, they may also lose their privacy. Untrusted or malicious LBS servers with all users' information can track users in various ways or release personal data to third parties. In this work, we first analyze the current dummy-location selection (DLS) algorithm-an efficient location privacy preservation approach and design an attack algorithm for DLS (ADLS) for test emerging IoT security. For efficiently preserving user's location privacy, we propose a novel dummy location privacy-preserving (DLP) algorithm by considering both computational costs and various privacy requirements of different users. Extensive simulation experiments have been carried out to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed schemes. Evaluation results show that the ADLS algorithm has a high probability of identifying the user's real location out from chosen dummy locations in the DLS algorithm. Our proposed DLP algorithm has clear advantages over the DLS algorithm in term of lower probability of revealing the user's real location and improved computational cost and efficiency (i.e., time, speed, accuracy, and complexity) while preserve the same privacy level as DLS algorithm

Development of Helical Chiral Catalysts and Their Applications in Asymmetric Catalysis

The design and development of novel chiral catalysts for efficient construction of carbon-carbon bonds, especially in an enantioselective manner, stays as a major goal for organic chemists. In the last two decades, various organocatalysts have been developed to solve important problems in asymmetric organic synthesis. Novel chiral catalysts based on previously unexplored 1-azahelicenes have been developed by our group and found great applications in mechanistically unrelated reactions. As part of Ph.D. research projects, the design and development of new helical chiral catalysts based on 11, 12-benzo-1-aza[6]helicene N-oxide and their applications in asymmetric synthesis are presented in this thesis. First, the development of a diastereomeric salt-mediated optical resolution of 11,12-benzo-1-aza[6]helicene will be discussed. This process performed best when (-)-dibenzoyl-L-tartaric acid monohydrate was used as resolving agent and acetonitrile was used as solvent. Second, substrate scope of the helical chiral hydrogen-bond donor catalyzed nitroalkene Diels-Alder reaction has been extensively studied. An efficient, synthetically versatile synthesis to access a new class of dienes has been designed and developed. The activity profiles of these new dienes have also been tested in the context of nitroalkene Diels-Alder reactions. Third, a series of novel helical chiral catalysts has been designed and synthesized via simple reactions. These catalysts include both Lewis base catalysts and Brønsted acid catalysts. Structures of some of the catalysts have been elucidated unambiguously by X-ray crystallography. Last, the asymmetric allylation of ketoimines by helical chiral pyridine N-oxides have been developed to access enantiomerically pure α-trisubstituted homoallylic amines. Study revealed that a product inhibition probably occurred in this reaction, and extensive efforts have been devoted to solve this problem. Good yield and high level of selectivity has been realized with this allyltrichlorosilane-mediated reaction by utilizing a Lewis basic solvent