rCOS: A refinement calculus for object systems

This article presents a mathematical characterization of object-oriented concepts by defining an observation-oriented semantics for a relational objectoriented language with a rich variety of features including subtypes, visibility, inheritance, type casting, dynamic binding and polymorphism. The language is expressive enough for the specification of object-oriented designs and programs. We also propose a calculus based on this model to support both structural and behavioral refinement of object-oriented designs. We take the approach of the development of the design calculus based on the standard predicate logic in Hoare and He’s Unifying Theories of Programming (UTP). We also consider object reference in terms of object identity as values and mutually dependent methods

Effect of ethanol extract of Punica granatum L against Freund’s complete adjuvant-induced arthritis in rats

Purpose: To investigate the protective effect of ethanol extract of P. granatum against arthritis in rat model. Methods: Twenty-six adult male Wistar rats (120 - 150 g) were separated into four groups (n = 6): normal control, arthritic control and two treatment groups. With the exception of normal control group, arthritis was induced by intraplantar administration of Freund’s complete adjuvant (FCA) on the 1st day of drug administration. The arthritic control group was not treated, while the treatment groups received extract orally at 500 or 750 mg/kg for the period of 4 weeks and at the end of each week, paw volume, thermal hyperalgesia, arthritic score and mechanical nociceptive threshold were performed to assess arthritis. Biochemical indicators and inflammatory cytokines in serum were determined using standard procedures. Results: There was significant decrease in paw volume and arthritic score; paw withdrawal latency was enhanced in extract-treated groups, compared to arthritic control group (p < 0.05). Furthermore, ALT, AST and ALP levels, as well as RF and MDA activities decreased significantly with extract treatment, compared with arthritic control group (p < 0.05). Treatment with the extract attenuated the altered level of interleukin 1β (IL-1β) and TNF-α levels in arthritic rats. Histological examination showed that treatment with the extract significantly reversed histological changes induced by arthritis. Conclusion: The results reveal that the beneficial effect of ethanol extract of P. granatum against FCAinduced arthritis is due to its ability to reduce the levels of inflammatory cytokines

Calibration of the in-orbit center-of-mass of TaiJi-1

Taiji program is a space mission aiming to detect gravitational waves in the low frequency band. Taiji-1 is the first technology demonstration satellite of the Taiji Program in Space, with the gravitational reference sensor (GRS) serving as one of its key scientific payloads. For accurate accelerometer measurements, the test-mass center of the GRS must be positioned precisely at the center of gravity of the satellite to avoid measurement disturbances caused by angular acceleration and gradient. Due to installation and measurement errors, fuel consumption during in-flight phase, and other factors, the offset between the test-mass center and the center-of-mass (COM) of the satellite can be significant, degrading the measurement accuracy of the accelerometer. Therefore, the offset needs to be estimated and controlled within the required range by the center-of-mass adjustment mechanism during the satellite's lifetime. In this paper, we present a novel method, the Extended Kalman Filter combined with Rauch-Tung-Striebel Smoother, to estimate the offset, while utilizing the chi-square test to eliminate outliers. Additionally, the nonlinear Least Squares estimation algorithm is employed as a crosscheck to estimate the offset of COM. The two methods are shown to give consistent results, with the offset estimated to be $dx \approx$$-$$0.19$ mm, $dy \approx 0.64$ mm, and $dz \approx$$-$$0.82$ mm. The results indicate a significant improvement on the noise level of GRS after the COM calibration, which will be of great help for the future Taiji program.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF VALVE STRUCTURE OF HIGH POWER MARINE ENGINE

Valve as an important part of the gas distribution mechanism, is an crucial part of the engine. When the engine works, the valve is subjected to high temperature, high impact, frictional wear and corrosion and other harsh working conditions, and the reliable and durable valve has an important impact on the safety and reliability of the engine. In this paper, a model of four-stroke marine diesel engine valve is used as the research object, and the intake valve set and exhaust valve set models are established respectively. Heat transfer simulation and failure analysis of inlet and exhaust valves of different structures and materials under different operating conditions were carried out using finite element analysis. The results show that the different valve structures and manufacturing materials have different effects on the reliability of the valves; Changing the valve structures and choosing different valve manufacturing materials have a greater impact on the heat transfer and deformation, thus affecting the overall reliability of the valves

Manoeuvring prediction based on CFD generated derivatives

This paper presents numerical predictions of ship manoeuvring motions with the help of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques. A program applying the modular concept proposed by the Japanese ship manoeuvring mathematical modelling group (MMG) to simulate the standard manoeuvring motions of ships has been initially developed for 3 degrees of freedom manoeu- vring motions in deep water with regression formulae to derive the hydrodynamic derivatives of the vessels. For higher accuracy, several CFD generated derivatives had been substituted to replace the empirical ones. This allows for the prediction of the maneuve- rability of a vessel in a variety of scenarios such as shallow water with expected good results in practice, which may be significantly more time-consuming if performed using a fully CFD approach. The MOERI KVLCC2 tanker vessel was selected as the sample ship for prediction. Model scale aligned and oblique resistance and Planar Motion Mechanism (PMM) simulations were carried out using the commercial CFD software StarCCM+. The PMM simulations included pure sway and pure yaw to obtain the linear manoeuvring derivatives required by the computational model of the program. Simulations of the standard free running manoeuvers were carried out on the vessel in deep water and compared with published results available for validation. Finally, simulations in shallow water were also presented based on the CFD results from existing publications and compared with model test results. The challenges of using a coupled CFD approach in this manner are outlined and discussed

Tissue Segmentation of Thick-Slice Fetal Brain MR Scans with Guidance from High-Quality Isotropic Volumes

Accurate tissue segmentation of thick-slice fetal brain magnetic resonance (MR) scans is crucial for both reconstruction of isotropic brain MR volumes and the quantification of fetal brain development. However, this task is challenging due to the use of thick-slice scans in clinically-acquired fetal brain data. To address this issue, we propose to leverage high-quality isotropic fetal brain MR volumes (and also their corresponding annotations) as guidance for segmentation of thick-slice scans. Due to existence of significant domain gap between high-quality isotropic volume (i.e., source data) and thick-slice scans (i.e., target data), we employ a domain adaptation technique to achieve the associated knowledge transfer (from high-quality volumes to thick-slice scans). Specifically, we first register the available high-quality isotropic fetal brain MR volumes across different gestational weeks to construct longitudinally-complete source data. To capture domain-invariant information, we then perform Fourier decomposition to extract image content and style codes. Finally, we propose a novel Cycle-Consistent Domain Adaptation Network (C2DA-Net) to efficiently transfer the knowledge learned from high-quality isotropic volumes for accurate tissue segmentation of thick-slice scans. Our C2DA-Net can fully utilize a small set of annotated isotropic volumes to guide tissue segmentation on unannotated thick-slice scans. Extensive experiments on a large-scale dataset of 372 clinically acquired thick-slice MR scans demonstrate that our C2DA-Net achieves much better performance than cutting-edge methods quantitatively and qualitatively.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, Fetal MRI, Brain tissue segmentation, Unsupervised domain adaptation, Cycle-consistenc

Two distinct modes of nucleosome modulation associated with different degrees of dependence of nucleosome positioning on the underlying DNA sequence

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The nucleosome is the fundamental unit of eukaryotic genomes. Its positioning plays a central role in diverse cellular processes that rely on access to genomic DNA. Experimental evidence suggests that the genomic DNA sequence is one important determinant of nucleosome positioning. Yet it is less clear whether the role of the underlying DNA sequence in nucleosome positioning varies across different promoters. Whether different determinants of nucleosome positioning have characteristic influences on nucleosome modulation also remains to be elucidated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We identified two typical promoter classes in yeast associated with high or low dependence of nucleosome positioning on the underlying DNA sequence, respectively. Importantly, the two classes have low or high intrinsic sequence preferences for nucleosomes, respectively. The two classes are further distinguished by multiple promoter features, including nucleosome occupancy, nucleosome fuzziness, H2A.Z occupancy, changes in nucleosome positions before and after transcriptional perturbation, and gene activity. Both classes have significantly high turnover rates of histone H3, but employ distinct modes of nucleosome modulation: The first class is characterized by hyperacetylation, whereas the second class is highly regulated by ATP-dependent chromatin remodelling.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results, coupled with the known features of nucleosome modulation, suggest that the two distinct modes of nucleosome modulation selectively employed by different genes are linked with the intrinsic sequence preferences for nucleosomes. The difference in modes of nucleosome modulation can account for the difference in the contribution of DNA sequence to nucleosome positioning between both promoter classes.</p

Metabolomics in retinal diseases: an update

Retinal diseases are a leading cause of visual loss and blindness, affecting a significant proportion of the population worldwide and having a detrimental impact on quality of life, with consequent economic burden. The retina is highly metabolically active, and a number of retinal diseases are associated with metabolic dysfunction. To better understand the pathogenesis underlying such retinopathies, new technology has been developed to elucidate the mechanism behind retinal diseases. Metabolomics is a relatively new “omics” technology, which has developed subsequent to genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. This new technology can provide qualitative and quantitative information about low-molecular-weight metabolites (M.W. < 1500 Da) in a given biological system, which shed light on the physiological or pathological state of a cell or tissue sample at a particular time point. In this article we provide an extensive review of the application of metabolomics to retinal diseases, with focus on age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR), retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), glaucoma, and retinitis pigmentosa (RP)