Probing the Galactic Halo with RR Lyrae Stars.VI.The Radial Velocity Curve Templates of RRc Stars

We present radial velocity(RV)curve templates of RR Lyrae first-overtone(RRc)stars constructed with the Mg I b triplet and Hαlines using time-domain Medium-Resolution Survey spectra of seven RRc stars from Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope(LAMOST)Data Release 9.Additionally,we derive the relation between the stellar RV curve amplitudes and g-band light curve amplitudes from Zwicky Transient Facility(ZTF)public survey.For those RRc stars without ZTF g-band light curves,we provide the conversions from the light curve amplitudes in ZTF r-and i-bands,Gaia G-band,and V-band from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae to those in ZTF g-band.We validate our RV curve templates using the RRc star SV Scl and find the uncertainties of systemic RV are less than 2.11 km s~(-1)and 6.08 km s~(-1)based on the Mg I b triplet and Hαlines,respectively.We calculate the systemic RVs of 30 RRc stars using the RV curve templates constructed with the Mg I b triplet and Hαlines and find the systemic RVs are comparable with each other.This RV curve template will be particularly useful for obtaining the systemic RV of RRc using the LAMOST spectroscopy.

Analysis of the Effect and Efficiency of Tension- Free Hernia Repair and Traditional Surgery in The Treatment of Hernia

Objective: To analyze the efficiency of tension-free hernia repair and traditional surgery in the treatment of hernia. Methods: A total of 80 patients with hernias were selected and randomly into a control group (traditional hernia repair) and an observation group (tension-free hernia repair), of 40 cases each. The perioperative indicators, pain, physiological stress indicators, complications, and recurrence rates between the two groups were compared. Results: The perioperative indexes of the observation group were better than those of the control group (P < 0.05). The postoperative pain score, postoperative physiological stress index level, incidence of complications, and recurrence rate of the observation group were lower than those of the control group (P < 0.05). Conclusion: In the surgical treatment of hernia, tension-free hernia repair was less traumatic and had a better effect than traditional hernia repair.

The importance of aboveground and belowground interspecific interactions in determining crop growth and advantages of peanut/maize intercropping

Intercropping of maize(Zea mays L.) and peanut(Arachis hypogaea L.) often results in greater yields than the respective sole crops. However, there is limited knowledge of aboveground and belowground interspecific interactions between maize and peanut in field. A two-year field experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of interspecific interactions on plant growth and grain yield for a peanut/maize intercropping system under different nitrogen(N) and phosphorus(P) levels. The method of root separation was employed to differentiate belowground from aboveground interspecific interactions. We observed that the global interspecific interaction effect on the shoot biomass of the intercropping system decreased with the coexistence period, and belowground interaction contributed more than aboveground interaction to advantages of the intercropping in terms of shoot biomass and grain yield. There was a positive effect from aboveground and belowground interspecific interactions on crop plant growth in the intercropping system, except that aboveground interaction had a negative effect on peanut during the late coexistence period. The advantage of intercropping on grain came mainly from increased maize yield(means 95%) due to aboveground interspecific competition for light and belowground interaction(61%–72% vs. 28%–39% in fertilizer treatments). There was a negative effect on grain yield from aboveground interaction for peanut, but belowground interspecific interaction positively affected peanut grain yield.The supply of N, P, or N + P increased grain yield of intercropped maize and the contribution from aboveground interspecific interaction. Our study suggests that the advantages of peanut/maize intercropping for yield mainly comes from aboveground interspecific competition for maize and belowground interspecific facilitation for peanut, and their respective yield can be enhanced by N and P. These findings are important for managing the intercropping system and optimizing the benefits from using this system.

Multi-dimensional visualization for the morphology of lubricant stearic acid particles and their distribution in tablets

The shapes of particles and their distribution in tablets, controlled by pretreatment and tableting process, determine the pharmaceutical performance of excipient like lubricant. This study aims to provide deeper insights to the relationship of the morphology and spatial distribution of stearic acid(SA) with the lubrication efficiency, as well as the resulting tablet property. Unmodified SA particles as flat sheet-like particles were firstly reprocessed by emulsification in hot water to obtain the reprocessed SA particles with spherical morphology. The three-dimensional(3 D) information of SA particles in tablets was detected by a quantitative and non-invasive 3 D structure elucidation technique, namely, synchrotron radiation X-ray micro-computed tomography(SR-μCT). SA particles in glipizide tablets prepared by using unmodified SA(GUT), reprocessed SA(GRT), as well as reference listed drug(RLD) of glipizide tablets were analyzed by SR-μCT. The results showed that the reprocessed SA with better flowability contributed to similarity of breaking forces between that of GRT and RLD. SA particles in GRT were very similar to those in RLD with uniform morphology and particle size, while SA particles in GUT were not evenly distributed. These findings not only demonstrated the feasibility of SR-μCT as a new method in revealing the morphology and spatial distribution of excipient in drug delivery system, but also deepened insights of solid dosage form design into a new scale by powder engineering.

The clinical effects of DC-CIK cells combined with chemotherapy in the treatment of advanced NSCLC

Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate the safety and therapeutic effects of autologous dendritic cells co-cultured with cytokine-induced killer cells (DC-CIK) combined with chemotherapy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Methods: Fifty patients with advanced NSCLC (stages III to IV), who had received therapies in our Center (Department of Biotherapy, Affiliated to Cancer Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China) from August 2008 to January 2010, were treated by DC-CIK + chemotherapy as the combined treatment group; fifty advanced NSCLC patients treated with chemotherapy at the same time served as controls. The immunologic function, short-term therapeutic effects, the 1-year survival rate, the life quality, the chemotherapy side effects were compared between the two groups, the safety and therapeutic effects of DC-CIK cells therapy were observed too. Results: There was no obvious change of subsets of T cells in peripheral blood before and after therapy in DC-CIK + chemotherapy group, and IFN-γ was improved after therapy in this group (P < 0.05); in chemotherapy alone group, the ratios of CD3+CD4+, CD3+CD8+, CD3-CD56+ cells and the secretion of IL-2, TNF-α decreased significantly after therapy (P < 0.05); the ratios of CD3+CD8+, CD3+CD56+ were improved after cell culture (P < 0.05). The disease control rate (DCR) of DC-CIK + chemotherapy group was higher than that in the chemotherapy alone group (78.0% vs 56.0%, P < 0.05); the 1-year survival rates of DC-CIK + chemotherapy group and chemotherapy alone group were 50% and 44% respectively, had no significant difference. Compared with chemotherapy alone group, the occurrence of chemotherapy side effects (including bone marrow suppression, nausea and vomiting, peripheral nerve toxicity) was less in the DC-CIK + chemotherapy group (P < 0.05). The physical and appetite were better in DC-CIK + chemotherapy group after therapy. Conclusion: To compare with simple chemotherapy, DC-CIK + chemotherapy for advanced NSCLC is safe and effective, and it can improve patients' life quality and remission rate, and prolong their survival time.

Rheological behavior of hydrolyzed polyacrylamide solution flowing through a molecular weight adjusting device with porous medium

The separate-layer injection in different interlayers and the injection of the same-molecular-weight polymer so- lution in a layer are necessary in the polymer flooding process because of heterogeneous multilayer sandstone reservoirs in EOR projects. To alleviate the matching problems between the layer permeability and the injected polymer molecular weight, a molecular weight adjusting device with porous medium was designed on the basis of mechanical degradation principle. In terms of four variables （polymer concentration, pore diameter, length of shear component and flow rate ）, the theological behavior of hydrolyzed polyacrylamide （HPAM） solu- tion flowing through the device was investigated in detail. The change of these variables is able to control the shear rate of HPAM solutions through ceramic foam, and achieve the desired degree of shear degradation and the final theological parameters-viscosity loss, viscoelasticity and pressure drop. Therefore, a linear relationship between viscosity loss and shearing rate was established so as to obtain the targeted viscosity easily. Field tests in the Daqing Oil Field showed that the polymer molecular weight could drop 20% to 50%. In a word, the results could guide the industrial application of the novel device and the further study of polymer degradation flowing through the porous medium.

A Novel Data Schema Integration Framework for the Human-Centric Services in Smart City

Human-centric service is an important domain in smart city and includes rich applications that help residents with shopping, dining, transportation, entertainment, and other daily activities. These applications have generated a massive amount of hierarchical data with different schemas. In order to manage and analyze the city-wide and cross-application data in a unified way, data schema integration is necessary. However, data from human-centric services has some distinct characteristics, such as lack of support for semantic, matching, large number of schemas, and incompleteness of schema element labels. These make the schema integra- tion difficult using existing approaches. We propose a novel framework for the data schema integration of the human-centric services in smart city. The framework uses both schema metadata and instance data to do schema matching, and introduces human intervention based on a similarity entropy criteria to balance precision and efficiency. Moreover, the framework works in an incremental manner to reduce computation workload. We conduct an experiment with real-world dataset collected from multiple estate sale application systems. The results show that our approach can produce high-quality mediated schema with relatively less human in- terventions compared to the baseline method.

Development of High Efficient and Low Toxic Oil Spill Dispersants based on Sorbitol Derivants Nonionic Surfactants and Glycolipid Biosurfactants

Dispersants, usually blending with several surfactants and a solvent, are used to enhance oil spill dispersion as small droplets in water column. Although there is growing acceptance of dispersants as a counter measure to marine oil spills around the world, the two major issues with the dispersants are their toxicity to marine life and dispersion effectiveness (DE) for crude-oil, especially for heavy oil. To develop more efficient and less toxic dispersants, two kinds of sorbitol derivant nonionic surfactant (polysorbate 85 and sorbeth-40 tetraoleate), two kinds of glycolipid biosurfactants (rhamnolipid and sophorolipid) and less toxic solvent ethylene glycol butyl ether were chosen in this study, and two dispersant formulations were optimized by uniform design methods. Effects of dispersant-to-oil ratio, temperature, salinity and pH on the performance of the two optimized dispersants were investigated. The two dispersants had high dispersion effectiveness (DE) for heavy crude oil, while both dispersants keep high DE at the dispersant-to-oil ratio below 1:25 and the temperature above 5 ℃. In addition, the two dispersants also performed well in a wide range of salinity and pH values. Finally, toxicity tests revealed that the two dispersants showed low toxicity to two kinds of fish (Danio rerio and Microgobius gulosus).

Adaptive Sparse Group Variable Selection for a Robust Mixture Regression Model Based on Laplace Distribution

The traditional estimation of Gaussian mixture model is sensitive to heavy-tailed errors;thus we propose a robust mixture regression model by assuming that the error terms follow a Laplace distribution in this article. And for the variable selection problem in our new robust mixture regression model, we introduce the adaptive sparse group Lasso penalty to achieve sparsity at both the group-level and within-group-level. As numerical experiments show, compared with other alternative methods, our method has better performances in variable selection and parameter estimation. Finally, we apply our proposed method to analyze NBA salary data during the period from 2018 to 2019.

Detection of a temporal salient object benefits from visual stimulus-specific adaptation in avian midbrain inhibitory nucleus

Food and predators are the most noteworthy objects for the basic survival of wild animals,and both are often deviant in both spatial and temporal domains and quickly attract an animal’s attention.Although stimulus-specific adaptation(SSA)is considered a potential neural basis of salient sound detection in the temporal domain,related research on visual SSA is limited and its relationship with temporal saliency is uncertain.The avian nucleus isthmi pars magnocellularis(Imc),which is central to midbrain selective attention network,is an ideal site to investigate the neural correlate of visual SSA and detection of a salient object in the time domain.Here,the constant order paradigm was applied to explore the visual SSA in the Imc of pigeons.The results showed that the firing rates of Imc neurons gradually decrease with repetitions of motion in the same direction,but recover when a motion in a deviant direction is presented,implying visual SSA to the direction of a moving object.Furthermore,enhanced response for an object moving in other directions that were not presented ever in the paradigm is also observed.To verify the neural mechanism underlying these phenomena,we introduced a neural computation model involving a recoverable synaptic change with a“center-surround”pattern to reproduce the visual SSA and temporal saliency for the moving object.These results suggest that the Imc produces visual SSA to motion direction,allowing temporal salient object detection,which may facilitate the detection of the sudden appearance of a predator.

Microstructural evolution of carbon fiber reinforced SiC-based matrix composites during laser ablation process

In this work, four different carbon fiber reinforced SiC-based matrix composites(C/SiC) were prepared,and microstructure evolution during laser ablation process was characterized. Laser irradiation provided a special high-temperature environment up to 3500℃. For all four composites, different morphologies can be obtained in the transition region due to the oxidation of different matrices. While only needle-shaped carbon fiber and nanolayered carbon without any matrix remained in the central region, indicating that graphitization process occurred in the center, resulting from the high-temperature and low-oxygen environment in the laser process. Therefore, the laser ablation of C/SiC composites is controlled by chemical and physical erosion, and mainly by the physical erosion in the center.

Arthroscopic Patelloplasty and Circumpatellar Denervation for the Treatment of Patellofemoral Osteoarthritis

Background：Patellofemoral osteoarthritis commonly occurs in older people,often resulting in anterior knee pain and severely reduced quality of life.The aim was to examine the effectiveness of arthroscopic patelloplasty and circumpatellar denervation for the treatment of patellofemoral osteoarthritis （PFOA）.Methods：A total of 156 PFOA patients （62 males,94 females; ages 45-81 years,mean 66 years） treated in our department between September 2012 and March 2013 were involved in this study.Clinical manifestations included recurrent swelling and pain in the knee joint and aggravated pain upon ascending/descending stairs,squatting down,or standing up.PFOA was treated with arthroscopic patelloplasty and circumpatellar denervation.The therapeutic effects before and after surgery were statistically evaluated using Lysholm and Kujala scores.The therapeutic effects were graded by classification of the degree of cartilage defect.Results：A total of 149 cases were successfully followed up for 14.8 months,on average.The incisions healed well,and no complications occurred.After surgery,the average Lysholm score improved from 73.29 to 80.93,and the average Kujala score improved from 68.34 to 76.48.This procedure was highly effective for patients with cartilage defects Ⅰ-Ⅲ but not for patients with cartilage defect Ⅳ.Conclusions：For PFOA patients,this procedure is effective for significantly relieving anterior knee pain,improving knee joint function and quality of life,and deferring arthritic progression.

Real-time and generic queue time estimation based on mobile crowdsensing

People often have to queue for a busy service in many places around a city, and knowing the queue time can be helpful for making better activity plans to avoid long queues. Traditional solutions to the queue time monitoring are based on pre-deployed infrastructures, such as cameras and infrared sensors, which are costly and fail to deliver the queue time information to scattered citizens. This paper presents CrowdQTE, a mobile crowdsensing system, which utilizes the sensor-enhanced mobile devices and crowd hu- man intelligence to monitor and provide real-time queue time information for various queuing scenarios. When people are waiting in a line, we utilize the accelerometer sensor data and ambient contexts to automatically detect the queueing behav- ior and calculate the queue time. When people are not waiting in a line, it estimates the queue time based on the information reported manually by participants. We evaluate the perfor- mance of the system with a two-week and 12-person deploy- ment using commercially-available smartphones. The results demonstrate that CrowdQTE is effective in estimating queu- ing status.

True-color real-time imaging and spectroscopy of carbon nanotubes on substrates using enhanced Rayleigh scattering

Single-walled carbon nanotubes （SWCNTs） illuminated by white light should appear colored due to resonance Rayleigh scattering. However, true-color imaging of SWCNTs on substrates has not been reported, because of the extremely low scattering intensity of SWCNTs and the strong substrate scattering. Here we show that Rayleigh scattering can be greatly enhanced by the interface dipole enhancement effect. Consequently colorful SWCNTs on substrates can be directly imaged under an optical microscope by wide field supercontinuum laser illumination, which facilitates high throughput chirality assignment of individual SWCNTs. This approach, termed ＂Rayleigh imaging microscopy＂, is not restricted to SWCNTs, but widely applicable to a variety of nanomaterials, which enables the colorful nanoworld to be explored under optical microscopes.

Adaptabilities of different harvesters to peanut plants after cutting stalks

At present,there are no harvesters specifically adapted to process peanuts after cutting stalks.In particular,methods for harvesting peanuts after cutting stalks have not been reported thus far.Therefore,to utilize peanut stalks as feed when harvesting plastic-film-grown peanuts,and to improve industry benefits,a three-stage harvesting method is proposed herein.In view of the three-stage harvesting method,the peanut stalks are cut before digging,with the remaining peanut plants being shorter,thereby increasing the peanut pod-stalk ratio.To investigate the adaptabilities of existing harvesters in harvesting peanuts after cutting stalks,three types of peanut harvesters-the self-propelled pick-up combine harvester,trailed pick-up combine harvester,and peanut picker were used to conduct a comparative test on harvesting intact peanut plants and plants after cutting stalks.The loss,breakage and impurity rates were used as evaluation indicators.The loss rates of these three harvesters were 14.64%,16.44%and 1.33%;the breakage rates were 21.28%,21.92%and 20.00%,and impurity rates were 4.60%,8.76%and 9.06%.Analysis of variance showed that cutting stalks had a significant impact on the work qualities of the three harvesters(p<0.05).With regard to the loss rate,results revealed that:the two peanut combine harvesters could not be adapted to harvest peanut plants after cutting stalks.The three harvesters had good adaptability to harvest peanut plants after cutting stalks,considering the breakage rate;however,based on the impurity rate,the three harvesters could not be adapted to harvest peanut plants after cutting stalks.The losses of the two combine harvesters consisted mainly of dropped and missed picking,with the sum of the losses accounting for 99.87%and 97.99%of the total losses of the two harvesters,respectively;this suggests that the drum pickup of the combine harvesters could not adapt to harvesting the peanut after cutting stalks.The breakage rates of the three harvesters were considerably reduced,suggesting that the pod picking devices of the three harvesters were suitable for harvesting the peanut after cutting stalks;the impurity rates of the three harvesters were considerably increased,indicating that the pod picking and cleaning devices of the three harvesters were not suitable for harvesting peanut after cutting stalks.To improve the adaptabilities of the harvesters,it is suggested that the speed of pickup elastic tooth,lateral spacing between adjacent elastic teeth,concave screen hole size of pod picking device,the structure and motion parameters of cleaning device should be optimized.The results of this study provide a reference for the development and improvement of peanut harvesters suitable for harvesting peanuts after the cutting of stalks.

Relative discriminant coefficient based multi-cue fusion for robust object tracking

In visual tracking,integrating multiple cues will increase the reliability and robustness of the tracking system in situations where no single cue is reliable.In this paper,a novel multi-cue based tracking method is presented under the particle filter framework.Considering both practical distance and Bhattacharyya distance between particles and the target,a parameter called relative discriminant coefficient(RDC)is designed to measure the tracking ability for different features.Multi-cue fusion is carried out in a reweighing manner based on this parameter.Experimental results demonstrate the high robustness and effectiveness of our method in handling appearance changes,cluttered background,illumination changes and occlusions.

Modelling nitrogen abundances in the massive binary system

Understanding rotation, which has been identified as a very important factor in physics, is necessary in order to under- stand the evolution of massive stars [1,2]. Rotation can drive mixing processes of chemical elements in the stellar interior [3-5]. Nitrogen, a better tracer for rotational mixing during main sequence evolution, is produced in the hot interior layers by carbon conversion via CN-cycling on a very short time scale.

Direct discrimination between semiconducting and metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes with high spatial resolution by SEM

Single-walled carbon nanotube （SWCNT） films with a high density exhibit broad functionality and great potential in nanodevices, as SWCNTs can be either metallic or semiconducting in behavior. The films greatly benefit from characterization technologies that can efficiently identify and group SWCNTs based on metallic or semiconducting natures with high spatial resolution. Here, we developed a facile imaging technique using scanning electron microscopy （SEM） to discriminate between semiconducting and metallic SWCNTs based on black and white colors. The average width of the single-SWCNT image was reduced to -9 nm, -1/5 of previous imaging results. These achievements were attributed to reduced surface charging on the SiOdSi substrate under enhanced accelerating voltages. With this identification technique, a CNT transistor with an on/off ratio of 〉10s was fabricated by identifying and etching out the white metallic SWCNTs. This improved SEM imaging technique can be widely applied in evaluating the selective growth and sorting of SWCNTs.

ORDER DECISION MAKING BASED ON DIFFERENT STATEMENT STRATEGIES UNDER STOCHASTIC MARKET DEMAND

Based on the stochastic market demand, this paper considers the order decision-making strategies of the supply chain by introducing statement strategies. Consequently, the time-variant variance in the demands of the market is incorporated into the model. The retailer simultaneously determines the purchase time （i.e., lead time） and order quantity, and the manufacturer determines the statement strategy and the reserved profit rate. The results show that the no overtime statement strategy can induce the retailer to place more orders in advance by limiting the available order quantity within the available time. Finally, we also adopt numerical examples to support the conclusion of this paper.