A Distribution Evolutionary Algorithm for Graph Coloring

Graph Coloring Problem (GCP) is a classic combinatorial optimization problem that has a wide application in theoretical research and engineering. To address complicated GCPs efficiently, a distribution evolutionary algorithm based on population of probability models (DEA-PPM) is proposed. Based on a novel representation of probability model, DEA-PPM employs a Gaussian orthogonal search strategy to explore the probability space, by which global exploration can be realized using a small population. With assistance of local exploitation on a small solution population, DEA-PPM strikes a good balance between exploration and exploitation. Numerical results demonstrate that DEA-PPM performs well on selected complicated GCPs, which contributes to its competitiveness to the state-of-the-art metaheuristics

Evaluation of formic acid toxicity to subterranean termite, Reticulitermes chinensis Snyder

This study examined formic acid contact and fumigation toxicity to R. chinensis in the laboratory. In the contact toxicity bioassay, the LD50 values ranged from 267.86 to 287.68 μg adult-1 for workers, 279.09 μg adult-1 for alates (male and female) and 223.08 μg adult-1 for soldiers after 24 h, respectively. In the fumigation bioassays, the LC50 values ranged from 0.84 to 1.08 μg ml-1 for workers, 1.19 μg ml-1 for alates (male and female) and 0.57 μg ml-1 for soldiers after 24 h, respectively. At the concentration of 2.50 μg ml-1, the KT50 value of formic acid ranged from 25.38 to 34.75 min for workers, from 42.21 to 45.62 min for alates (male and female), from 32.18 to 36.37 min for soldiers. Although formic acid was significantly less toxic to subterranean termite than bifenthrin, but higher toxic to many other pest insects. The findings of this study provide important confirmation of formic acid with fumigation toxicity against termite. It may be worth investigating the use of formic acid for managing subterranean termite

Dietary Supplementation of Astaxanthin Improved the Growth Performance, Antioxidant Ability and Immune Response of Juvenile Largemouth Bass (Micropterus salmoides) Fed High-Fat Diet

High-fat diet (HFD) usually induces oxidative stress and astaxanthin is regarded as an excellent anti-oxidant. An 8-week feeding trial was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary astaxanthin supplementation on growth performance, lipid metabolism, antioxidant ability, and immune response of juvenile largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) fed HFD. Four diets were formulated: the control diet (10.87% lipid, C), high-fat diet (18.08% lipid, HF), and HF diet supplemented with 75 and 150 mg kg−1 astaxanthin (HFA1 and HFA2, respectively). Dietary supplementation of astaxanthin improved the growth of fish fed HFD, also decreased hepatosomatic index and intraperitoneal fat ratio of fish fed HFD, while having no effect on body fat. Malondialdehyde content and superoxide dismutase activity were increased in fish fed HFD, astaxanthin supplementation in HFD decreased the oxidative stress of fish. The supplementation of astaxanthin in HFD also reduced the mRNA levels of Caspase 3, Caspase 9, BAD, and IL15. These results suggested that dietary astaxanthin supplementation in HFD improved the growth performance, antioxidant ability and immune response of largemouth bass.publishedVersio

Experimental study on concrete damage location by Computerized tomography and Acoustic Emission technology

In order to solve the technical problem of damage localization in the concrete damage process, the Computerized Tomography (CT) scanning test and Acoustic Emission (AE) damage localization test was carried out under uniaxial compression. In addition to the three-dimensional meso model, the porosity variation law of concrete pore or cracks at different loading stages are obtained. A damage variable is created based on CT images and AE damage points. A damage variable based on CT image and AE damage point is established. The results show that the change of porosity, pore volume and damage variable is consistent with the loading process. The rapid increase of concrete pore volume and damage variable can be the precursor of concrete damage. The whole process of the development and evolution of concrete cracks was observed and analyzed comprehensively by using the three-dimensional reconstruction images and acoustic emission damage location map. A new method for analyzing the evolution and localization of cracks in concrete is presented. &nbsp

Experimental study on concrete damage location by Computerized tomography technology

In order to solve the technical problem of damage localization in the concrete damage process, the Computerized Tomography (CT) scanning damage localization test was carried out under uniaxial compression. In addition to the three-dimensional meso model, the porosity variation law of concrete pore or cracks at different loading stages are obtained. A damage variable is created based on CT images. The results show that the change of porosity, pore volume and damage variable is consistent with the loading process. The rapid increase of concrete pore volume and damage variable can be the precursor of concrete damage. The whole process of the development and evolution of concrete cracks was observed and analyzed comprehensively by using the three-dimensional reconstruction images. A method for prognosist the evolution and localization of cracks in concrete by comprehensively analyze the CT reconstruction images, rapid increase of concrete pore volume and rapid growth of damage variable is presented

Evaluation of Tung Oil (Vernicia fordii (Hemsl.)) for Controlling Termites

In worldwide, the use of chemical pesticides to protect wood has been greatly restricted. In recent years, a large number of researchers devoted to the search for natural, safe and non-polluting bioactive chemical compounds from plants as an alternative to synthetic organic chemical preservative. In Chinese folk, tung oil can be used as paint for wooden furniture to protect them from pests. This study aimed to evaluate the chemical compositions of raw and heated tung oil and their activity against termite. In choice bioassays, weight loss of wood treated with 5% raw or heated tung oil after 4 weeks was significantly less than that of the control group. In no-choice bioassays, there was a significant difference in termite survival and wood weight loss on raw and heated tung oil-treated wood. When tung oil-treatment concentrations increased to 5%, wood weight loss was less than 10%. There was no significant difference in termite survival and wood weight loss between raw and heated tung oil-treated wood. Survival of termites in both tung oil wood treatments was significantly lower than that in the starvation control after 4 weeks. Raw and heated tung oil significantly improved the resistance of pine wood to termites, and have the potential for the development of natural wood preservatives

CSPRD: A Financial Policy Retrieval Dataset for Chinese Stock Market

In recent years, great advances in pre-trained language models (PLMs) have sparked considerable research focus and achieved promising performance on the approach of dense passage retrieval, which aims at retrieving relative passages from massive corpus with given questions. However, most of existing datasets mainly benchmark the models with factoid queries of general commonsense, while specialised fields such as finance and economics remain unexplored due to the deficiency of large-scale and high-quality datasets with expert annotations. In this work, we propose a new task, policy retrieval, by introducing the Chinese Stock Policy Retrieval Dataset (CSPRD), which provides 700+ prospectus passages labeled by experienced experts with relevant articles from 10k+ entries in our collected Chinese policy corpus. Experiments on lexical, embedding and fine-tuned bi-encoder models show the effectiveness of our proposed CSPRD yet also suggests ample potential for improvement. Our best performing baseline achieves 56.1% MRR@10, 28.5% NDCG@10, 37.5% Recall@10 and 80.6% Precision@10 on dev set

Effects of obesity with reduced 25(OH)D levels on bone health in elderly Chinese people: a nationwide cross-sectional study

BackgroundObesity is often accompanied by lower 25(OH)D levels, whereas these two parameters exhibit opposite effects on bone health. It is uncertain what are the effects of lower 25(OH)D levels in obesity on bone health in elderly Chinese people.MethodsA nationally representative cross-sectional analysis of China Community-based Cohort of Osteoporosis (CCCO) was performed from 2016 to 2021, which consisted of 22,081 participants. Demographic data, disease history, Body mass index (BMI), bone mineral density (BMD), the levels of the biomarkers of vitamin D status and those of bone metabolism markers were measured for all participants (N = 22,081). The genes (rs12785878, rs10741657, rs4588, rs7041, rs2282679 and rs6013897) related to 25(OH)D transportation and metabolism were performed in a selected subgroup (N = 6008).ResultsObese subjects exhibited lower 25(OH)D levels (p < 0.05) and higher BMD (p < 0.001) compared with those of normal subjects following adjustment. The genotypes and allele frequency of rs12785878, rs10741657, rs6013897, rs2282679, rs4588 and rs7041 indicated no significant differences among three BMI groups following correction by the Bonferroni’s method (p > 0.05). The levels of total 25(OH)D (ToVD) were significantly different among the GC1F, GC1S and GC2 haplotype groups (p < 0.05). Correlation analysis indicated that ToVD levels were significantly correlated with parathyroid hormone levels, BMD, risk of osteoporosis (OP) and the concentration levels of other bone metabolism markers (p < 0.05). Generalized varying coefficient models demonstrated that the increasing BMI, ToVD levels and their interactions were positively associated with BMD outcomes (p < 0.001), whereas the reduced levels of ToVD and BMI increased the risk of OP, which was noted notably for the subjects with reduced ToVD levels (less than 20.69 ng/ml) combined with decreased BMI (less than 24.05 kg/m2).ConclusionThere was a non-linear interaction of BMI and 25(OH)D. And higher BMI accompanied by decreased 25(OH)D levels is associated with increased BMD and decreased incidence of OP, optimal ranges exist for BMI and 25(OH)D levels. The cutoff value of BMI at approximately 24.05 kg/m2 combined with an approximate value of 25(OH)D at 20.69 ng/ml are beneficial for Chinese elderly subjects