Uncertainty quantification of coal seam gas production prediction using Polynomial Chaos

A surrogate model approximates a computationally expensive solver. Polynomial Chaos is a method to construct surrogate models by summing combinations of carefully chosen polynomials. The polynomials are chosen to respect the probability distributions of the uncertain input variables (parameters); this allows for both uncertainty quantification and global sensitivity analysis. In this paper we apply these techniques to a commercial solver for the estimation of peak gas rate and cumulative gas extraction from a coal seam gas well. The polynomial expansion is shown to honour the underlying geophysics with low error when compared to a much more complex and computationally slower commercial solver. We make use of advanced numerical integration techniques to achieve this accuracy using relatively small amounts of training data

Engineering Music to Slow Breathing and Invite Relaxed Physiology

We engineered an interactive music system that influences a user's breathing rate to induce a relaxation response. This system generates ambient music containing periodic shifts in loudness that are determined by the user's own breathing patterns. We evaluated the efficacy of this music intervention for participants who were engaged in an attention-demanding task, and thus explicitly not focusing on their breathing or on listening to the music. We measured breathing patterns in addition to multiple peripheral and cortical indicators of physiological arousal while users experienced three different interaction designs: (1) a "Fixed Tempo" amplitude modulation rate at six beats per minute; (2) a "Personalized Tempo" modulation rate fixed at 75\% of each individual's breathing rate baseline, and (3) a "Personalized Envelope" design in which the amplitude modulation matches each individual's breathing pattern in real-time. Our results revealed that each interactive music design slowed down breathing rates, with the "Personalized Tempo" design having the largest effect, one that was more significant than the non-personalized design. The physiological arousal indicators (electrodermal activity, heart rate, and slow cortical potentials measured in EEG) showed concomitant reductions, suggesting that slowing users' breathing rates shifted them towards a more calmed state. These results suggest that interactive music incorporating biometric data may have greater effects on physiology than traditional recorded music.Comment: Accepted at 2019 8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII

AviationGPT: A Large Language Model for the Aviation Domain

The advent of ChatGPT and GPT-4 has captivated the world with large language models (LLMs), demonstrating exceptional performance in question-answering, summarization, and content generation. The aviation industry is characterized by an abundance of complex, unstructured text data, replete with technical jargon and specialized terminology. Moreover, labeled data for model building are scarce in this domain, resulting in low usage of aviation text data. The emergence of LLMs presents an opportunity to transform this situation, but there is a lack of LLMs specifically designed for the aviation domain. To address this gap, we propose AviationGPT, which is built on open-source LLaMA-2 and Mistral architectures and continuously trained on a wealth of carefully curated aviation datasets. Experimental results reveal that AviationGPT offers users multiple advantages, including the versatility to tackle diverse natural language processing (NLP) problems (e.g., question-answering, summarization, document writing, information extraction, report querying, data cleaning, and interactive data exploration). It also provides accurate and contextually relevant responses within the aviation domain and significantly improves performance (e.g., over a 40% performance gain in tested cases). With AviationGPT, the aviation industry is better equipped to address more complex research problems and enhance the efficiency and safety of National Airspace System (NAS) operations

CoxPhLb: An R Package for Analyzing Length Biased Data under Cox Model

Data subject to length-biased sampling are frequently encountered in various applications including prevalent cohort studies and are considered as a special case of left-truncated data under the stationarity assumption. Many semiparametric regression methods have been proposed for lengthbiased data to model the association between covariates and the survival outcome of interest. In this paper, we present a brief review of the statistical methodologies established for the analysis of length-biased data under the Cox model, which is the most commonly adopted semiparametric model, and introduce an R package CoxPhLb that implements these methods. Specifically, the package includes features such as fitting the Cox model to explore covariate effects on survival times and checking the proportional hazards model assumptions and the stationarity assumption. We illustrate usage of the package with a simulated data example and a real dataset, the Channing House data, which are publicly available

Influence of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) on in vitro growth of Plasmodium falciparum

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>During pregnancy, women are more susceptible to <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>infections and frequently have a higher parasitaemia than non-pregnant women. Several mechanisms are responsible for their increased susceptibility, including down-modulation of immune responses that aid in parasite clearance and sequestration of infected erythrocytes in the placenta. Early in pregnancy, a third mechanism may contribute to higher parasitaemia, since it has been reported that addition of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) to <it>in vitro </it>cultures of the NF54-strain of <it>P. falciparum </it>results in increased parasite growth rates. The goal of this study was to further examine the effect of hCG on <it>P. falciparum </it>growth.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The NF54-3D7, FVO and 7G8 strains of <it>P. falciparum </it>were cultured <it>in vitro </it>with various physiological concentrations of hCG purchased from three sources. Infected erythrocytes were also co-cultured with a human cell line that naturally secretes hCG.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Results from 14 experiments using different combinations of parasite strains and concentrations of hCG from different sources, as well as the co-culture studies, failed to provide convincing evidence that hCG enhances parasite growth <it>in vitro</it>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Based on these data, it seems unlikely that hCG has a direct effect on the rate of parasite growth early in pregnancy.</p

Fossilized skin reveals coevolution with feathers and metabolism in feathered dinosaurs and early birds

Feathers are remarkable evolutionary innovations that are associated with complex adaptations of the skin in modern birds. Fossilised feathers in non-avian dinosaurs and basal birds provide insights into feather evolution, but how associated integumentary adaptations evolved is unclear. Here we report the discovery of fossil skin, preserved with remarkable nanoscale fidelity, in three non-avian maniraptoran dinosaurs and a basal bird from the Cretaceous Jehol biota (China). The skin comprises patches of desquamating epidermal corneocytes that preserve a cytoskeletal array of helically coiled α-keratin tonofibrils. This structure confirms that basal birds and non-avian dinosaurs shed small epidermal flakes as in modern mammals and birds, but structural differences imply that these Cretaceous taxa had lower body heat production than modern birds. Feathered epidermis acquired many, but not all, anatomically modern attributes close to the base of the Maniraptora by the Middle Jurassic

Combined use of herbivore-induced plant volatiles and sex pheromones for mate location in braconid parasitoids

Herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) are important cues for female parasitic wasps to find hosts. Here, we investigated the possibility that HIPVs may also serve parasitoids as cues to locate mates. To test this, the odour preferences of four braconid wasps – the gregarious parasitoid Cotesia glomerata (L.) and the solitary parasitoids Cotesia marginiventris (Cresson), Microplitis rufiventris Kokujev and Microplitis mediator (Haliday) – were studied in olfactometers. Each species showed attraction to pheromones but in somewhat different ways.Males of the two Cotesia species were attracted to virgin females, whereas females of M. rufiventriswere attracted to virginmales. Male and female M.mediator exhibited attraction to both sexes. Importantly, female and male wasps of all four species were strongly attracted by HIPVs, independent of mating status. In most cases, male wasps were also attracted to intact plants. The wasps preferred the combination of HIPVs and pheromones over plant odours alone, except M.mediator, which appears to mainly use HIPVs for mate location. We discuss the ecological contexts in which the combined use of pheromones and HIPVs by parasitoids can be expected. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that braconid parasitoids use HIPVs and pheromones in combination to locate mates

Preventing corneal calcification associated with xylazine for longitudinal optical coherence tomography in young rodents

PURPOSE. Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) is widely used in clinical ophthalmology and recently gained popularity in laboratory research involving small rodents. Its noninvasive nature allows repeated measurements, thereby decreasing the number of animals required. However, when used at a conventional dosage, xylazine (an a2- adrenoceptor) can cause irreversible corneal calcification, especially among young rodents. In the present study, we test whether corneal calcification associated with xylazine is mediated by the a2-adrenoceptor. METHODS. Our study tested Sprague-Dawley rats, Long-Evans rats, and CD-1 mice (postnatal day [P]14). Retinal images were captured by SD-OCT. Quantitative PCR (qPCR) was used to study gene expression, whereas receptor localization was examined by immunofluorescent staining followed by confocal microscopy. Calcium deposits were detected via von Kossa staining. RESULTS. When used at dosages appropriate for adult animals, ketamine-xylazine anesthetics led to a high rate of respiratory failure, increased apoptotic activity in the corneal epithelium, and irreversible corneal calcification in P14 rat pups. Meanwhile, OCT image quality decreased drastically as a result of corneal calcification among animals recovering from anesthesia. a2-Adrenoceptor subtypes were highly expressed on P14, in line with rodents’ age-specific sensitivity to xylazine. Clonidine, a potent a2-adrenoceptor agonist, dosedependently induced corneal calcification, which could be prevented by an a2-adrenoceptor antagonist. CONCLUSIONS. These data suggest that a2-adrenoceptors contribute to corneal calcification in young rodents. Therefore, we developed a suitable OCT imaging protocol for this cohort, including a carefully tailored ketamine-xylazine dosage (60 mg/kg and 2.5 kg/mg, respectively)

Ablation of Cypher, a PDZ-LIM domain Z-line protein, causes a severe form of congenital myopathy

Cypher is a member of a recently emerging family of proteins containing a PDZ domain at their NH2 terminus and one or three LIM domains at their COOH terminus. Cypher knockout mice display a severe form of congenital myopathy and die postnatally from functional failure in multiple striated muscles. Examination of striated muscle from the mutants revealed that Cypher is not required for sarcomerogenesis or Z-line assembly, but rather is required for maintenance of the Z-line during muscle function. In vitro studies demonstrated that individual domains within Cypher localize independently to the Z-line via interactions with α-actinin or other Z-line components. These results suggest that Cypher functions as a linker-strut to maintain cytoskeletal structure during contraction