Scaling of 1/f noise in tunable break-junctions

We have studied the $1/f$ voltage noise of gold nano-contacts in electromigrated and mechanically controlled break-junctions having resistance values $R$ that can be tuned from 10 $\Omega$ (many channels) to 10 k$\Omega$ (single atom contact). The noise is caused by resistance fluctuations as evidenced by the $S_V\propto V^2$ dependence of the power spectral density $S_V$ on the applied DC voltage $V$. As a function of $R$ the normalized noise $S_V/V^2$ shows a pronounced cross-over from $\propto R^3$ for low-ohmic junctions to $\propto R^{1.5}$ for high-ohmic ones. The measured powers of 3 and 1.5 are in agreement with $1/f$-noise generated in the bulk and reflect the transition from diffusive to ballistic transport

Mechanical deformation mechanism and verification of sections at junctions of light and dark tunnel in a mountain area

Projects involving junctions of light and dark tunnel in mountainous areas are complex engineering problems that combine tunnel structure, slope rock-soil mass and protection projects. Such junctions suffer from a complex and changeable load. The stress and deformation of the junction varies under different conditions. Thus, it is a major source of inconvenience for construction and monitoring operations. In this paper, according to the load conditions at a junction of light and dark tunnel, we divide the junction hole into thrust, compression, and combined thrust-compression types. Three types of structures were simulated by numerical analysis, and we explored the structural deformation and stress of these types of tunnel under different condition. Thus, in any construction process, the mechanical deformation mechanism and the weak point in the structure should be worked out. Based on the weak parts, some monitoring points were installed, and four fields for monitoring were chosen. The monitoring results show that the actual deformation, stress and structural failure location are basically consistent with the numerical simulation results. The deformation mechanism of light and dark tunnel junction obtained can provide the basis for selecting the treatment measures and controlling the structural deformation. Furthermore, the results can also be used as a reference for similar engineering design, construction and site monitoring projects

Towards human-compatible autonomous car: A study of non-verbal Turing test in automated driving with affective transition modelling

Autonomous cars are indispensable when humans go further down the hands-free route. Although existing literature highlights that the acceptance of the autonomous car will increase if it drives in a human-like manner, sparse research offers the naturalistic experience from a passenger's seat perspective to examine the human likeness of current autonomous cars. The present study tested whether the AI driver could create a human-like ride experience for passengers based on 69 participants' feedback in a real-road scenario. We designed a ride experience-based version of the non-verbal Turing test for automated driving. Participants rode in autonomous cars (driven by either human or AI drivers) as a passenger and judged whether the driver was human or AI. The AI driver failed to pass our test because passengers detected the AI driver above chance. In contrast, when the human driver drove the car, the passengers' judgement was around chance. We further investigated how human passengers ascribe humanness in our test. Based on Lewin's field theory, we advanced a computational model combining signal detection theory with pre-trained language models to predict passengers' humanness rating behaviour. We employed affective transition between pre-study baseline emotions and corresponding post-stage emotions as the signal strength of our model. Results showed that the passengers' ascription of humanness would increase with the greater affective transition. Our study suggested an important role of affective transition in passengers' ascription of humanness, which might become a future direction for autonomous driving.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, 3 table

Visualization experiments of a solid cylinder suspended by laminar flow

Acknowledgments The financial supports from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (XK1802-1) is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewedPostprin

Microwave-induced phase escape in a Josephson tunnel junction

This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.77.104531.We perform both theoretical and experimental investigations on the phase escape of a current-biased Josephson tunnel junction under microwave irradiation. The switching current distributions exhibit abundant nonlinear behaviors depending on the power and frequency of the applied microwave. We present a model to describe the behavior of the primary peak in the switching current distribution, which is confirmed by our experimental results. The obtained features can be used to characterize the damping parameter of Josephson junctions

Efficacy and safety of chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy in relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with different HBV status: a retrospective study from a single center

BackgroundChimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy is an effective salvage treatment in relapsed or refractory(r/r) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), but the impact of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection has not been studied.Methods and resultsHere, 51 patients with r/r DLBCL receiving CAR-T therapy were enrolled and analyzed at the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. The overall response rate and the complete remission rate (CR) of CAR-T therapy were 74.5% and 39.2%, respectively. With a median follow-up of 21.1 months after CAR-T, the probabilities of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) at 36 months were 43.4% and 28.7%, respectively. These patients were divided into three cohorts including chronic HBV infection group (n=6), resolved HBV infection group (n=25) and non-HBV infection group (n=20). Bone marrow involvement was significantly higher in the HBV infection group(P<0.001), other basic characteristics before CAR-T therapy were comparable. Subgroup analysis showed that HBV infection status did not affect the efficacy of CAR-T therapy in CR rate, OS or PFS, and there was no significant difference in CAR-T related toxicities between three cohorts. Only one cirrhosis patient with chronic HBV infection experienced HBV reactivation.ConclusionsCAR-T therapy was effective and can be used safely in r/r DLBCL with HBV infection under proper monitoring and antiviral prophylaxis

Probabilistic prediction of wind power based on improved Bayesian neural network

Deterministic wind power prediction can be used for long time-scale optimization of power dispatching systems, but the probability and fluctuation range of prediction results cannot be calculated. A Bayesian LSTM neural network (BNN-LSTM) is constructed based on Bayesian networks by placing a priori distributions on top of the LSTM network layer weight parameters. First, the temporal convolutional neural network (TCNN) is used to process the historical time-series data for wind power prediction, which is used to extract the correlation features of the time-series data and learn the trend changes of the time-series data. Then, the mutual information entropy method is used to analyze the meteorological dataset of wind power, which is used to eliminate the variables with small correlation and reduce the dimension of the meteorological dataset, so as to simplify the overall structure of the prediction model. At the same time, the Embedding structure is used to learn the temporal classification features of wind power. Finally, the time series data processed by TCNN, the meteorological data after dimensionality reduction, and the time classification feature data are fed into the BNN-LSTM prediction model together. Compared with a Bayesian neural network, continuous interval method, and Temporal Fusion Transformer (TFT), which is one of the most advanced time series prediction networks, the improved BNN-LSTM can respond more accurately to wind power fluctuations with better prediction results. The comprehensive index of probability prediction of pinball loss is smaller than those of the other three methods by 53.2%, 24.4%, and 11.3%, and the Winkler index is 3.5 %, 34.6 %, and 8.2 % smaller, respectively

Association of healthy lifestyle with incident cardiovascular diseases among hypertensive and normotensive Chinese adults

Background: Whether lifestyle improvement benefits in reducing cardiovascular diseases (CVD) events extend to hypertensive patients and whether these benefits differ between hypertensive and normotensive individuals is unclear. This study aimed to investigate the associations of an overall healthy lifestyle with the subsequent development of CVD among participants with hypertension and normotension. Methods: Using data from the Suzhou subcohort of the China Kadoorie Biobank study of 51,929 participants, this study defined five healthy lifestyle factors as nonsmoking or quitting for reasons other than illness; nonexcessive alcohol intake; relatively higher physical activity level; a relatively healthy diet; and having a standard waist circumference and body mass index. We estimated the associations of these lifestyle factors with CVD, ischemic heart disease (IHD) and ischemic stroke (IS). Results: During a follow-up of 10.1 years, this study documented 6,151 CVD incidence events, 1,304 IHD incidence events, and 2,243 IS incidence events. Compared to those with 0–1 healthy lifestyle factors, HRs for those with 4–5 healthy factors were 0.71 (95% CI: 0.62, 0.81) for CVD, 0.56 (95% CI: 0.42, 0.75) for IHD, and 0.63 (95% CI: 0.51, 0.79) for IS among hypertensive participants. However, we did not observe this association among normotensive participants. Stratified analyses showed that the association between a healthy lifestyle and IHD risk was stronger among younger participants, and the association with IS risk was stronger among hypertensive individuals with lower household incomes. Conclusion: Adherence to a healthy lifestyle pattern is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases among hypertensive patients, but this benefit is not as pronounced among normotensive patients