Text mining-based patent analysis of BIM application in construction

As a data tool applicable to the full life-cycle of construction engineering and management, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has great potential for significantly increasing project productivity and performance. Awareness of BIM application hotspots and forecasting its trends can drive innovations in construction field. Using patents as data resources, this study develops an effective framework integrating the citation network analysis and the topic clustering technology to identify BIM application information and forecast its trends. This framework comprises three-step analysis:(1) quantitative characteristic analysis of patent outputs; (2) Social Network Analysis (SNA)-based co-occurrence network analysis; and (3) identification of BIM topics using a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Finally, the case demonstrates the effectiveness of this framework contributing to promote technological development and innovation of BIM. The contributions of this study are threefold: (1) an innovative text mining-based framework for BIM patent analysis in construction is developed; (2) patents that have focused on identifying the application hotspots and development trend of BIM in accordance with our developed framework are reviewed; and (3) a signpost for technological development and innovation of BIM is provided

Regulatory effect of lactulose on intestinal flora and serum metabolites in colitis mice: In vitro and in vivo evaluation

Lactulose is a common component in foods. However, the effect of lactulose on intestinal flora and overall metabolic levels remains unclear. Therefore, this study aims to explore the regulative role of lactulose on intestinal flora and serum metabolites via in vitro simulated colonic fermentation model and in vivo colitis mouse model. The results showed that lactulose significantly enriched beneficial bacteria including Dubosiella and Bifidobacterium, and reduced pathogenic bacteria such as Fusobacterium. Moreover, lactulose significantly inhibited dextran sodium sulfate-induced body weight loss, colon shortening, colonic inflammatory infiltration, and pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-6, TNF-α, IL-17, and IL-1β. Lactulose significantly affected serum metabolome in colitis mice and total 24 metabolites representing a high inter-group difference were obtained. Correlation analysis revealed that the changes in serum metabolites were closely associated with the role of intestinal flora, and thus affected phenotypic indicators. Our study provides a reference for nutritional characteristics and application scenarios of dietary lactulose

Bootstrapping Fitted Q-Evaluation for Off-Policy Inference

Bootstrapping provides a flexible and effective approach for assessing the quality of batch reinforcement learning, yet its theoretical property is less understood. In this paper, we study the use of bootstrapping in off-policy evaluation (OPE), and in particular, we focus on the fitted Q-evaluation (FQE) that is known to be minimax-optimal in the tabular and linear-model cases. We propose a bootstrapping FQE method for inferring the distribution of the policy evaluation error and show that this method is asymptotically efficient and distributionally consistent for off-policy statistical inference. To overcome the computation limit of bootstrapping, we further adapt a subsampling procedure that improves the runtime by an order of magnitude. We numerically evaluate the bootrapping method in classical RL environments for confidence interval estimation, estimating the variance of off-policy evaluator, and estimating the correlation between multiple off-policy evaluators.Comment: Accepted at ICML 202

Comparative Study on the Hardness and Wear Resistance of the Remelted Gradient Layer on Ductile Iron Fabricated by Plasma Transferred Arc

Repairing the worn surfaces of wear-resistant workpieces, such as rollers, is one of the main application fields of surface treatment, but the repairing time is often not considered. In fact, the repairing time is very important, since it affects the repair quality and service life of wear-resistant workpieces. In this paper, a remelted gradient coating was prepared on a ductile iron plate by plasma transferred arc to simulate the repair treatment of wear-resistant workpieces. First, two positions in the remelted gradient coating were defined, i.e., the top of the gradient remelted layer was defined as M1, and the position where the hardness was two-thirds of the top of the remelting layer was defined as M2. Next, the time taken to repair the workpiece when the working surface reached M2 was proposed. Finally this method was verified by a comparative study on the microhardness and wear resistance of the M1 and M2. In this paper, the M2 was located at a ~0.5 mm from the top of the remelted gradient layer. The results show that the microhardness of the position of the M1 was higher than that of the position of the M2. However, the wear resistance of the M1 was worse, as confirmed by the wear rates. At the same time, cracks and fragments were observed on the worn surface of the M1 and M2 positions. Furthermore, the coefficient of friction (COF) of the position of M1 was noted to be first higher and subsequently lower than that of the position of M2, owing to the grinding ball entering the substrate. The abrasion mechanisms of both regions were observed to be complex, including oxidative wear, adhesive wear, delamination wear, and/or fretting wear. The experimental data indicate that it is feasible to determine the repair time according to the microhardness of workpieces

Comparative Study on the Hardness and Wear Resistance of the Remelted Gradient Layer on Ductile Iron Fabricated by Plasma Transferred Arc

Repairing the worn surfaces of wear-resistant workpieces, such as rollers, is one of the main application fields of surface treatment, but the repairing time is often not considered. In fact, the repairing time is very important, since it affects the repair quality and service life of wear-resistant workpieces. In this paper, a remelted gradient coating was prepared on a ductile iron plate by plasma transferred arc to simulate the repair treatment of wear-resistant workpieces. First, two positions in the remelted gradient coating were defined, i.e., the top of the gradient remelted layer was defined as M1, and the position where the hardness was two-thirds of the top of the remelting layer was defined as M2. Next, the time taken to repair the workpiece when the working surface reached M2 was proposed. Finally this method was verified by a comparative study on the microhardness and wear resistance of the M1 and M2. In this paper, the M2 was located at a ~0.5 mm from the top of the remelted gradient layer. The results show that the microhardness of the position of the M1 was higher than that of the position of the M2. However, the wear resistance of the M1 was worse, as confirmed by the wear rates. At the same time, cracks and fragments were observed on the worn surface of the M1 and M2 positions. Furthermore, the coefficient of friction (COF) of the position of M1 was noted to be first higher and subsequently lower than that of the position of M2, owing to the grinding ball entering the substrate. The abrasion mechanisms of both regions were observed to be complex, including oxidative wear, adhesive wear, delamination wear, and/or fretting wear. The experimental data indicate that it is feasible to determine the repair time according to the microhardness of workpieces

Characterization of Distinct T Cell Receptor Repertoires in Tumor and Distant Non-tumor Tissues from Lung Cancer Patients

T cells and T cell receptors (TCRs) play pivotal roles in adaptive immune responses against tumors. The development of next-generation sequencing technologies has enabled the analysis of the TCRβ repertoire usage. Given the scarce investigations on the TCR repertoire in lung cancer tissues, in this study, we analyzed TCRβ repertoires in lung cancer tissues and the matched distant non-tumor lung tissues (normal lung tissues) from 15 lung cancer patients. Based on our results, the general distribution of T cell clones was similar between cancer tissues and normal lung tissues; however, the proportion of highly expanded clones was significantly higher in normal lung tissues than in cancer tissues (0.021% ± 0.002% vs. 0.016% ± 0.001%, P = 0.0054, Wilcoxon signed rank test). In addition, a significantly higher TCR diversity was observed in cancer tissues than in normal lung tissues (431.37 ± 305.96 vs. 166.20 ± 101.58, P = 0.0075, Mann-Whitney U test). Moreover, younger patients had a significantly higher TCR diversity than older patients (640.7 ± 295.3 vs. 291.8 ± 233.6, P = 0.036, Mann-Whitney U test), and the higher TCR diversity in tumors was significantly associated with worse cancer outcomes. Thus, we provided a comprehensive comparison of the TCR repertoires between cancer tissues and matched normal lung tissues and demonstrated the presence of distinct T cell immune microenvironments in lung cancer patients. Keywords: Adaptive immune response, T cell receptor repertoire, Lung cancer, High-throughput sequencing, TCR diversit

Impaired Cognitive Control of Emotional Conflict in Trait Anxiety: A Preliminary Study Based on Clinical and Non-Clinical Individuals

BackgroundIt has been observed that trait anxiety easily leads to conflict maladaptation under conflict circumstances. However, it remains unclear whether the precise neural mechanisms underlying the effects of high trait anxiety (HTA) on cognitive control are consistent in high trait anxious individuals, with and without anxiety disorders.MethodsThe present study recruited 29 healthy volunteers with low trait anxiety (LTA), 37 healthy volunteers with HTA, and 23 patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). All participants completed demographic information and self-report measures of trait anxiety and depression. Then, they performed the emotional flanker task with event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded.ResultsBehavioral data manifested that, relative to LTA individuals, GAD patients displayed prolonged response times and increased error rates, while HTA individuals showed intact response times and accuracies. Event-related potential (ERP) data revealed that HTA individuals exhibited a trend toward more negative N2 amplitudes for conflict detection. By contrast, both HTA and GAD individuals displayed decreased P3 amplitudes for conflict resolution. ERP results indicated that both HTA and GAD individuals exhibited conflict maladaptation on the N2 amplitude. Correlation analyses also showed that the increased anxiety symptoms were associated with longer reaction times, more error rates, lower P3 amplitudes, and more perturbations in conflict adaptation on reaction times and N2 amplitudes.ConclusionOur results demonstrated a severely impaired cognitive control in GAD patients while a moderately impaired cognitive control in HTA individuals. Trait anxiety can indeed serve as a predominant factor at the onset and in the maintenance of GAD. Therefore, the trait anxiety reducing strategies may provide significant therapeutic gains

Comparison of Global and Regional Compliance-Guided Positive End-Expiratory Pressure Titration on Regional Lung Ventilation in Moderate-to-Severe Pediatric Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

PURPOSE: To investigate the difference in the positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) selected with chest electrical impedance tomography (EIT) and with global dynamic respiratory system compliance (C(rs)) in moderate-to-severe pediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome (pARDS). METHODS: Patients with moderate-to-severe pARDS (PaO(2)/FiO(2) < 200 mmHg) were retrospectively included. On the day of pARDS diagnosis, two PEEP levels were determined during the decremental PEEP titration for each individual using the best compliance (PEEP(C)) and EIT-based regional compliance (PEEP(EIT)) methods. The differences of global and regional compliance (for both gravity-dependent and non-dependent regions) under the two PEEP conditions were compared. In addition, the EIT-based global inhomogeneity index (GI), the center of ventilation (CoV), and standard deviation of regional delayed ventilation (RVD(SD)) were also calculated and compared. RESULTS: A total of 12 children with pARDS (5 with severe and 7 with moderate pARDS) were included. PEEP(C) and PEEP(EIT) were identical in 6 patients. In others, the differences were only ± 2 cm H(2)O (one PEEP step). There were no statistical differences in global compliance at PEEP(C) and PEEP(EIT) [28.7 (2.84–33.15) vs. 29.74 (2.84–33.47) ml/cm H(2)O median (IQR), p = 0.028 (the significant level after adjusted for multiple comparison was 0.017)]. Furthermore, no differences were found in regional compliances and other EIT-based parameters measuring spatial and temporal ventilation distributions. CONCLUSION: Although EIT provided information on ventilation distribution, PEEP selected with the best C(rs) might be non-inferior to EIT-guided regional ventilation in moderate-to-severe pARDS. Further study with a large sample size is required to confirm the finding