Adding time-series data to enhance performance of naural language processing tasks

In the past few decades, with the explosion of information, a large number of computer scientists have devoted themselves to analyzing collected data and applying these findings to many disciplines. Natural language processing (NLP) has been one of the most popular areas for data analysis and pattern recognition. A significantly large amount of data is obtained in text format due to the ease of access nowadays. Most modern techniques focus on exploring large sets of textual data to build forecasting models; they tend to ignore the importance of temporal information which is often the main ingredient to determine the performance of analysis, especially in the public policy view. The contribution of this paper is three-fold. First, a dataset called COVID-News is collected from three news agencies, which consists of article segments related to wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, we propose a long-short term memory (LSTM)-based learning model to predict the attitude of the articles from the three news agencies towards wearing a mask with both temporal and textural information. Then we added the BERT model to further improve and enhance the performance of the proposed model. Experimental results on the COVIDNews dataset show the effectiveness of the proposed LSTM-based algorithm

Quantum NETwork: from theory to practice

The quantum internet is envisioned as the ultimate stage of the quantum revolution, which surpasses its classical counterpart in various aspects, such as the efficiency of data transmission, the security of network services, and the capability of information processing. Given its disruptive impact on the national security and the digital economy, a global race to build scalable quantum networks has already begun. With the joint effort of national governments, industrial participants and research institutes, the development of quantum networks has advanced rapidly in recent years, bringing the first primitive quantum networks within reach. In this work, we aim to provide an up-to-date review of the field of quantum networks from both theoretical and experimental perspectives, contributing to a better understanding of the building blocks required for the establishment of a global quantum internet. We also introduce a newly developed quantum network toolkit to facilitate the exploration and evaluation of innovative ideas. Particularly, it provides dual quantum computing engines, supporting simulations in both the quantum circuit and measurement-based models. It also includes a compilation scheme for mapping quantum network protocols onto quantum circuits, enabling their emulations on real-world quantum hardware devices. We showcase the power of this toolkit with several featured demonstrations, including a simulation of the Micius quantum satellite experiment, a testing of a four-layer quantum network architecture with resource management, and a quantum emulation of the CHSH game. We hope this work can give a better understanding of the state-of-the-art development of quantum networks and provide the necessary tools to make further contributions along the way.Comment: 36 pages, 33 figures; comments are welcom

MUI-TARE: Multi-Agent Cooperative Exploration with Unknown Initial Position

Multi-agent exploration of a bounded 3D environment with unknown initial positions of agents is a challenging problem. It requires quickly exploring the environments as well as robustly merging the sub-maps built by the agents. We take the view that the existing approaches are either aggressive or conservative: Aggressive strategies merge two sub-maps built by different agents together when overlap is detected, which can lead to incorrect merging due to the false-positive detection of the overlap and is thus not robust. Conservative strategies direct one agent to revisit an excessive amount of the historical trajectory of another agent for verification before merging, which can lower the exploration efficiency due to the repeated exploration of the same space. To intelligently balance the robustness of sub-map merging and exploration efficiency, we develop a new approach for lidar-based multi-agent exploration, which can direct one agent to repeat another agent's trajectory in an \emph{adaptive} manner based on the quality indicator of the sub-map merging process. Additionally, our approach extends the recent single-agent hierarchical exploration strategy to multiple agents in a \emph{cooperative} manner by planning for agents with merged sub-maps together to further improve exploration efficiency. Our experiments show that our approach is up to 50\% more efficient than the baselines on average while merging sub-maps robustly.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to IEEE RA

Spent lithium manganate batteries for sustainable recycling: A review

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) account for the majority of energy storage devices due to their long service life, high energy density, environmentally friendly, and other characteristics. Although the cathode materials of LIB led by LiFePO4 (LFP), LiCoO2 (LCO), and LiNixCoyMn1-x-yO2 (NCM) occupy the majority of the market share at present, the demand of LiMn2O4 (LMO) cathode battery is also increasing year by year in recent years. With the rising price of various raw materials of LIBs and the need of environmental protection, the efficient recycling of spent LIBs has become a hot research topic. At present, the recycling of spent LIBs mainly focuses on LFP, LCO, and NCM batteries. However, with the continuous improvement of people’s safety of LIBs, LiMnxFe1-xPO4 (LMFP) batteries show better potential, which also improves the recycling value of LMO batteries. Therefore, this paper reviews current methods of spent LMO recovery, focusing on the characteristics of the recovery and separation process, which can serve as a reference for subsequent research on LMO recovery, increasing environmentally friendly recovery routes. Finally, the future development direction of LIBs recycling is prospected. Overall, this review is helpful to understand the current progress of LMO battery recycling

A multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex

ABSTRACT We report the generation of a multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex (MOp or M1) as the initial product of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN). This was achieved by coordinated large-scale analyses of single-cell transcriptomes, chromatin accessibility, DNA methylomes, spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomes, morphological and electrophysiological properties, and cellular resolution input-output mapping, integrated through cross-modal computational analysis. Together, our results advance the collective knowledge and understanding of brain cell type organization: First, our study reveals a unified molecular genetic landscape of cortical cell types that congruently integrates their transcriptome, open chromatin and DNA methylation maps. Second, cross-species analysis achieves a unified taxonomy of transcriptomic types and their hierarchical organization that are conserved from mouse to marmoset and human. Third, cross-modal analysis provides compelling evidence for the epigenomic, transcriptomic, and gene regulatory basis of neuronal phenotypes such as their physiological and anatomical properties, demonstrating the biological validity and genomic underpinning of neuron types and subtypes. Fourth, in situ single-cell transcriptomics provides a spatially-resolved cell type atlas of the motor cortex. Fifth, integrated transcriptomic, epigenomic and anatomical analyses reveal the correspondence between neural circuits and transcriptomic cell types. We further present an extensive genetic toolset for targeting and fate mapping glutamatergic projection neuron types toward linking their developmental trajectory to their circuit function. Together, our results establish a unified and mechanistic framework of neuronal cell type organization that integrates multi-layered molecular genetic and spatial information with multi-faceted phenotypic properties

The cryosphere change will intensify the summer drought in Qilian Mountains, northeastern of the Tibetan plateau

Study region: This study focuses on the upper reaches of Shule river (URSLH) and Heihe river (URHH) basins and Taolai river (URTLH) basin in Qilian Mountains. Study focus: The impact of the cryosphere changes on runoff components in basins with different cryosphere ratios. New hydrological insights for the region: Total runoff (TR) increased in URSLH and URHH and decreased in URTLH, snowmelt runoff (SR) decreased in each basin, glacier runoff (GR) increased in URSLH and URTLH but decreased in URHH during 1980–2015. In the future, GR will increase under SSP585 and slightly decrease under SSP126 in 2040–2060 in URSLH and decrease in URHH and URSLH. The peak time of SR will advance by a month in each basin. In the future, GR (The ratio of the coefficient of variation (cv) of TR to cv of non-glacial runoff) will decrease, indicating hydrological regulation of glaciers will be weakened in these basins. SR and Rs (The ratio of summer runoff to spring runoff) will show downward trends, the processes of TR increase will be smoother. Rr (The ratio of maximum to minimum monthly runoff) will show downward trends under SSPs. TR will become smoother in each basin. Furthermore, the change of each runoff components will make TR tends to be smoother in the future and reduce TR especially in summer

MAS-Based Decentralized Coordinated Control Strategy in a Micro-Grid with Multiple Microsources

In this paper, a decentralized coordinated control method based on multi-agent system is proposed to improve the voltage stability of micro-grid. In lower-level agents, the decentralized control is designed as double-loop controllers for the inverter of each distributed energy resource, including an outer-loop power controller based on droop control and an inner-loop voltage/current controller based on fractional order proportion-integral-derivative (PID). In upper-level agents, the distributed coordinated control is designed to make voltage consensus and proportional power sharing of all distributed energy resources. Since each distributed coordinated control only requires its own and neighboring information, the communication bandwidth can be saved. The simulation results have verified the effectiveness in terms of power sharing, voltage stability, and suppressing circulation current

Surgical treatment of benign osteolytic lesions in the femoral head and neck: a systematic review

Abstract Background and objectives Treatment of benign osteolytic lesions in the femoral head and neck can be extremely challenging, particularly in children with open physis or for aggressive tumors with pathological fracture. There remains the difficult management decision as to whether to perform complete excision of the involved area or only curettage. Moreover, there is no agreed consensus on the optimal approach to lesion access when performing curettage, which included the transcervical, open and direct approach. The current systematic review aims to provide guidance for selection of surgical methods in clinical practice by comparing the advantages and drawbacks of different procedures. Methods A comprehensive literature search of PubMed, Embase and Web of Science databases were executed for human studies restricted to the English language. The search was filtered to include studies published from January 1980 to January 2020. Results A total of 33 articles including 274 patients were enrolled in the final analysis. The most common diagnosis was chondroblastoma (CBT) (104, 38.0%), followed by giant cell tumor (GCT) (56, 20.4%). There were 57 (20.8%) patients with pathological fracture. Intralesional curettage was performed in 257 (93.8%) patients with the local recurrence of 12.5% at the mean follow-up of 51.5 months. The patients who were presented with open physis or curetted via transcervical approach developed higher local recurrence in patients with CBT (P < 0.001). The local recurrence rate of GCT is 33.3% after curettage, while 8 of 9 (88.9%) patients with fracture were treated successfully with joint preservation. Two of 45 (4.4%) patients developed avascular necrosis (AVN) of femoral head after surgical hip dislocation. The reported Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS) Score was comparable among patients with different approaches to curettage. Conclusion The majority of benign osteolytic lesions in the femoral head and neck can be treated with intralesional curettage with acceptable local tumor control and satisfactory function. The incidence of local recurrence might be decreased dramatically for lesion access under direct visualization. The native joint maintenance could be achieved even in patients with aggressive lesions presenting pathological fracture