Recent Results on Balanced Symmetric Boolean Functions

In this paper we prove all balanced symmetric Boolean functions of fixed degree are trivial when the number of variables grows large enough. We also present the nonexistence of trivial balanced elementary symmetric Boolean functions except for $n=l\cdot2^{t+1}-1$ and $d=2^t$, where $t$ and $l$ are any positive integers, which shows Cusick\u27s conjecture for balanced elementary symmetric Boolean functions is exactly the conjecture that all balanced elementary symmetric Boolean functions are trivial balanced. In additional, we obtain an integer $n_0$, which depends only on $d$, that Cusick\u27s conjecture holds for any $n>n_0$

Development of village doctors in China: financial compensation and health system support.

BACKGROUND: Since 1968, China has trained about 1.5 million barefoot doctors in a few years' time to provide basic health services to 0.8 billion rural population. China's Ministry of Health stopped using the term of barefoot doctor in 1985, and changed policy to develop village doctors. Since then, village doctors have kept on playing an irreplaceable role in China's rural health, even though the number of village doctors has fluctuated over the years and they face serious challenges. United Nations declared Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. Under this context, development of Community Health workers (CHWs) has become an emerging policy priority in many resource-poor developing countries. China's experiences and lessons learnt in developing and maintaining village doctors may be useful for these developing countries. METHODS: This paper aims to synthesis lessons learnt from the Chinese CHW experiences. It summarizes China's experiences in exploring and using strategic partnership between the community and the formal health system to develop CHWs in the two stages, the barefoot doctor stage (1968 -1985) and the village doctor stage (1985-now). Chinese and English literature were searched from PubMed, CNKI and Wanfang. The information extracted from the selected articles were synthesized according to the four partnership strategies for communities and health system to support CHW development, namely 1) joint ownership and design of CHW programmes; 2) collaborative supervision and constructive feedback; 3) a balanced package of incentives, both financial and non-financial; and 4) a practical monitoring system incorporating data from the health system and community. RESULTS: The study found that the townships and villages provided an institutional basis for barefoot doctor policy, while the formal health system, including urban hospitals, county health schools, township health centers, and mobile medical teams provided training to the barefoot doctors. But After 1985, the formal health system played a more dominant role in the CHW system including both selection and training of village doctors. China applied various mechanisms to compensate village doctors in different stages. During 1960s and 1970s, the main income source of barefoot doctors was from their villages' collective economy. After 1985 when the rural collective economy collapsed and barefoot doctors were transformed to village doctors, they depended on user fees, especially from drug sale revenues. In the new century, especially after the new round of health system reform in 2009, government subsidy has become an increasing source of village doctors' income. CONCLUSION: The barefoot doctor policy has played a significant role in providing basic human resources for health and basic health services to rural populations when rural area had great shortages of health resources. The key experiences for this great achievement are the intersection between the community and the formal health system, and sustained and stable financial compensation to the community health workers

Genetic architecture of lodging resistance revealed by genome- wide association study in maize (Zea mays L)

Lodging is one of key factors influencing biomass yield, restricting planting density and reducing mechanical harvesting productivity in maize. Targeted cultivating lodging resistance varieties with screened lines is an eco- nomical and effective approach to improve ability of maize lodging resistance. To accomplish this objective, we performed phenotypic assessment of seven lodging-related traits in a diverse maize population consisting of 290 inbred lines and conducted a genome-wide association study with 201 SSR markers to detected marker-trait as- sociations. Seven lodging-related traits all showed broad phenotypic variations. Through evaluation of stalk push- ing resistance in the field for two years, a number of 32 inbred lines featured with strong lodging resistance were selected out. Correlation analysis indicated that stalk pushing resistance had a significantly positive correlation with third internode diameter and fourth internode diameter and a significantly negative correlation with ear height. Furthermore, a total of 27 and 13 significant associations for lodging-related traits were identified in year 2012 and 2013, respectively. Interestingly, three associations on chromosome 4, 5, and 6 were discovered in both years. Thus, this study provides useful information for understanding genetic architecture of lodging resistance in maize and will benefit maize marker-assistant breeding program with improving lodging resistance

Nutritional Interventions Improved Rumen Functions and Promoted Compensatory Growth of Growth-Retarded Yaks as Revealed by Integrated Transcripts and Microbiome Analyses

Growth retardation reduces the incomes of livestock farming. However, effective nutritional interventions to promote compensatory growth and the mechanisms involving digestive tract microbiomes and transcripts have yet to be elucidated. In this study, Qinghai plateau yaks, which frequently suffer from growth retardation due to malnutrition, were used as an experimental model. Young growth-retarded yaks were pastured (GRP), fed basal ration (GRB), fed basal ration addition cysteamine hydrochloride (CSH; GRBC) or active dry yeast (ADY; GRBY). Another group of growth normal yak was pastured as a positive control (GNP). After 60-day nutritional interventions, the results showed that the average daily gain (ADG) of GRB was similar to the level of GNP, and the growth rates of GRBC and GRBY were significantly higher than the level of GNP (P < 0.05). Basal rations addition of CSH or ADY either improved the serum biochemical indexes, decreased serum LPS concentration, facilitated ruminal epithelium development and volatile fatty acids (VFA) fermentation of growth-retarded yaks. Comparative transcriptome in rumen epithelium between growth-retarded and normal yaks identified the differentially expressed genes mainly enriched in immune system, digestive system, extracellular matrix and cell adhesion pathways. CSH addition and ADY addition in basal rations upregulated ruminal VFA absorption (SLC26A3, PAT1, MCT1) and cell junction (CLDN1, CDH1, OCLN) gene expression, and downregulated complement system (C2, C7) gene expression in the growth-retarded yaks. 16S rDNA results showed that CSH addition and ADY addition in basal rations increased the rumen beneficial bacterial populations (Prevotella_1, Butyrivibrio_2, Fibrobacter) of growth-retarded yaks. The correlation analysis identified that ruminal VFAs and beneficial bacteria abundance were significantly positively correlated with cell junction and VFA absorption gene expressions and negatively correlated with complement system gene expressions on the ruminal epithelium. Therefore, CSH addition and ADY addition in basal rations promoted rumen health and body growth of growth-retarded yaks, of which basal ration addition of ADY had the optimal growth-promoting effects. These results suggested that improving nutrition and probiotics addition is a more effective method to improve growth retardation caused by gastrointestinal function deficiencies

Formal Verification of Fractional-Order PID Control Systems Using Higher-Order Logic

Fractional-order PID control is a landmark in the development of fractional-order control theory. It can improve the control precision and accuracy of systems and achieve more robust control results. As a theorem-proving formal verification method, it can be applied to an arbitrary system represented by a mathematical model. It is the ideal verification method because it is not subject to limits on state numbers. This paper presents the higher-order logic (HOL) formal verification and modeling of fractional-order PID controller systems. Firstly, a fractional-order PID controller was designed. The accuracy of fractional-order PID control can be supported by simulation, comparing integral-order PID controls. Secondly, the superior property of fractional-order PID control is validated via higher-order logic theorem proofs. An important basic property, the relationship between fractional-order differential calculus and integral-order differential calculus, was analyzed via a higher-order logic theorem proof. Then, the relations between the fractional-order PID controller and integral-order PID controller were verified based on the fractional-order Grünwald–Letnikov definition for higher-order logic theorem proofs. Formalization models of the fractional-order PID controller and the fractional-order closed-loop control system were established. Finally, the stability of the fractional-order control systems was verified based on established formal models and theorems. The results show that the fractional-order PID controllers can be conducive to the control performance of control systems, and the higher-order logic formal verification method can ensure the reliability and security of fractional-order control systems

Multivariate Time Series Deep Spatiotemporal Forecasting with Graph Neural Network

Multivariate time series forecasting has long been a subject of great concern. For example, there are many valuable applications in forecasting electricity consumption, solar power generation, traffic congestion, finance, and so on. Accurately forecasting periodic data such as electricity can greatly improve the reliability of forecasting tasks in engineering applications. Time series forecasting problems are often modeled using deep learning methods. However, the deep information of sequences and dependencies among multiple variables are not fully utilized in existing methods. Therefore, a multivariate time series deep spatiotemporal forecasting model with a graph neural network (MDST-GNN) is proposed to solve the existing shortcomings and improve the accuracy of periodic data prediction in this paper. This model integrates a graph neural network and deep spatiotemporal information. It comprises four modules: graph learning, temporal convolution, graph convolution, and down-sampling convolution. The graph learning module extracts dependencies between variables. The temporal convolution module abstracts the time information of each variable sequence. The graph convolution is used for the fusion of the graph structure and the information of the temporal convolution module. An attention mechanism is presented to filter information in the graph convolution module. The down-sampling convolution module extracts deep spatiotemporal information with different sparsities. To verify the effectiveness of the model, experiments are carried out on four datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the current state-of-the-art baseline methods. The effectiveness of the module for solving the problem of dependencies and deep information is verified by ablation experiments