Changes in brain functional network connectivity after stroke

Studies have shown that functional network connection models can be used to study brain net- work changes in patients with schizophrenia. In this study, we inferred that these models could also be used to explore functional network connectivity changes in stroke patients. We used independent component analysis to find the motor areas of stroke patients, which is a novel way to determine these areas. In this study, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets from healthy controls and right-handed stroke patients following their first ever stroke. Using independent component analysis, six spatially independent components highly correlat- ed to the experimental paradigm were extracted. Then, the functional network connectivity of both patients and controls was established to observe the differences between them. The results showed that there were 11 connections in the model in the stroke patients, while there were only four connections in the healthy controls. Further analysis found that some damaged connections may be compensated for by new indirect connections or circuits produced after stroke. These connections may have a direct correlation with the degree of stroke rehabilitation. Our findings suggest that functional network connectivity in stroke patients is more complex than that in hea- lthy controls, and that there is a compensation loop in the functional network following stroke. This implies that functional network reorganization plays a very important role in the process of rehabilitation after stroke.

Change of stream network connectivity and its impact on flood control

AbstUrbanization can alter the hydrogeomorphology of streams and rivers,change stream network structures,and reduce stream network connectivity,which leads to a decrease in the storage capacity of stream networks and aggravates flood damage.Therefore,investigation of the ways in which stream network connectivity impacts flood storage capacity and flood control in urbanized watersheds can provide significant benefits.This study developed a framework to assess stream network connectivity and its impact on flood control.First,a few connectivity indices were adopted to assess longitudinal stream network connectivity.Afterward,the static and dynamic storage capacities of stream networks were evaluated using storage capacity indices and a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model.Finally,the impact of stream network connectivity change on flood control was assessed by investigating the changes in stream network connectivity and storage capacity.This framework was applied to the Qinhuai River Basin,China,where intensive urbanization has occurred in the last few decades.The results show that stream network storage capacity is affected by stream network connectivity.Increasing stream network connectivity enhances stream network storage capacity.©2020 Hohai University.Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Global Functional Network Connectivity Disturbances in Parkinson’s Disease with Mild Cognitive Impairment by Resting-State Functional MRI

Examining the spontaneous BOLD activity to understand the neural mechanism of Parkinson’s disease(PD)with mild cognitive impairment(MCI)is a focus in resting-state functional MRI(rs-fMRI)studies.This study aimed to investigate the alteration of brain functional connectivity in PD with MCI in a systematical way at two levels:functional connectivity analysis within resting state networks(RSNs)and functional network connectivity(FNC)analysis.Using group independent component analysis(ICA)on rs-fMRI data acquired from 30 participants(14 healthy controls and 16 PD patients with MCI),16 RSNs were identified,and functional connectivity analysis within the RSNs and FNC analysis were carried out between groups.Compared to controls,patients with PD showed decreased functional connectivity within putamen network,thalamus network,cerebellar network,attention network,and self-referential network,and increased functional connectivity within execution network.Globally disturbed,mostly increased functional connectivity of FNC was observed in PD group,and insular network and execution network were the dominant network with extensively increased functional connectivity with other RSNs.Cerebellar network showed decreased functional connectivity with caudate network,insular network,and self-referential network.In general,decreased functional connectivity within RSNs and globally disturbed,mostly increased functional connectivity of FNC may be characteristics of PD.Increased functional connectivity within execution network may be an early marker of PD.The multi-perspective study based on RSNs may be a valuable means to assess functional changes corresponding to specific RSN,contributing to the understanding of the neural mechanism of PD.

Antidepressant Effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy Unrelated to the Brain＇s Functional Network Connectivity alterations at an Individual Level

Background： Electroconvulsive therapy （ECT） can alleviate the symptoms of treatment-resistant depression （TRD）. Functional network connectivity （FNC） is a newly developed method to investigate the brain＇s functional connectivity patterns. The first aim of this study was to investigate FNC alterations between TRD patients and healthy controls. The second aim was to explore the relationship between the ECT treatment response and pre-ECT treatment FNC alterations in individual TRD patients. Methods： This study included 82 TRD patients and 41 controls. Patients were screened at baseline and after 2 weeks of treatment with a combination of ECT and antidepressants. Group information guided-independent component analysis （G1G-ICA） was used to compute subject-specific functional networks （FNs）. Grassmann maniibld and step-wise forward component selection using support vector machines were adopted to perform the FNC measure and extract the functional networks＇ connectivity patterns （FCP）. Pearson＇s correlation analysis was used to calculate the correlations between the FCP and ECT response. Results： A total of 82 TRD patients in the ECT group were successfully treated. On an average, 8.50 ~ 2.00 ECT sessions were conducted. After ECT treatment, only 42 TRD patients had an improved response to ECT （the Hamilton scores reduction rate was more than 50%）, response rate 51%. 8 FNs （anterior and posterior default mode network, bilateral frontoparietal network, audio network, visual network, dorsal attention network, and sensorimotor network） were obtained using GIG-ICA. We did not found that FCPs were significantly different between TRD patients and healthy controls. Moreover, the baseline FCP was unrelated to the ECT treatment response. Conclusions： The FNC was not significantly different between the TRD patients and healthy controls, and the baseline FCP was unrelated to the ECT treatment response. These findings will necessitate that we modify the experimental scheme to explore the mechanisms underlying ECT＇s effects on depression and explore the specific predictors of the effects of ECT based on the pre-ECT treatment magnetic resonance imaging.

Relay movement control for maintaining connectivity in aeronautical ad hoc networks

As a new sort of mobile ad hoc network(MANET), aeronautical ad hoc network(AANET) has fleet-moving airborne nodes(ANs) and suffers from frequent network partitioning due to the rapid-changing topology. In this work, the additional relay nodes(RNs) is employed to repair the network and maintain connectivity in AANET. As ANs move, RNs need to move as well in order to re-establish the topology as quickly as possible. The network model and problem definition are firstly given, and then an online approach for RNs' movement control is presented to make ANs achieve certain connectivity requirement during run time. By defining the minimum cost feasible moving matrix(MCFM), a fast algorithm is proposed for RNs' movement control problem. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other control approaches in the highly-dynamic environment and is of great potential to be applied in AANET.

Second-Order Consensus of Multiple Agents with Bounded Control Inputs and Preserved Network Connectivity

This paper investigates second-order consensus of multi-agent systems with a virtual leader of varying velocity while preserving network connectivity.We propose a novel second-order consensus algorithm with bounded control inputs.Under the condition that the initial network is connected,the network will be connected all the time and all agents and the virtual leader can attain the same position and move with the same velocity.A simulation example is proposed to illustrate the effective of the proposed algorithm.

An Efficient Connectivity Restoration Technique(ECRT)for Wireless Sensor Network

Node failure in Wireless Sensor Networks(WSNs)is a fundamental problem because WSNs operate in hostile environments.The failure of nodes leads to network partitioning that may compromise the basic operation of the sensor network.To deal with such situations,a rapid recovery mechanism is required for restoring inter-node connectivity.Due to the immense importance and need for a recovery mechanism,several different approaches are proposed in the literature.However,the proposed approaches have shortcomings because they do not focus on energy-efficient operation and coverage-aware mechanisms while performing connectivity restoration.Moreover,most of these approaches rely on the excessive mobility of nodes for restoration connectivity that affects both coverage and energy consumption.This paper proposes a novel technique called ECRT(Efficient Connectivity Restoration Technique).This technique is capable of restoring connectivity due to single and multiple node failures.ECRT achieves energy efficiency by transmitting a minimal number of control packets.It is also coverage-aware as it relocates minimal nodes while trying to restore connectivity.With the help of extensive simulations,it is proven that ECRT is effective in connectivity restoration for single and multiple node failures.Results also show that ECRT exchanges a much smaller number of packets than other techniques.Moreover,it also yields the least reduction in field coverage,proving its versatility for connectivity restoration.

Numerical evaluation of the effect of fracture network connectivity in naturally fractured shale based on FSD model

In this paper, the effect of pre-existing discrete fracture network(DFN) connectivity on hydraulic fracturing is numerically investigated in a rock mass subjected to in-situ stress. The simulation results show that DFN connectivity has a significant influence on the hydraulic fracture(HF) & DFN interaction and hydraulic fracturing effectiveness, which can be characterized by the total interaction area, stimulated DFN length, stimulated HF length, leak-off ratio, and stimulated total length. In addition, even at the same fluid injection rate, simulation models exhibit different responses that are strongly affected by the DFN connectivity. At a low injection rate, total interaction area decreases with increasing DFN connectivity; at a high injection rate, total interaction area increases with the increase of DFN connectivity. However, for any injection rate, the stimulated DFN length increases and stimulated HF length decreases with the increase of connectivity. Generally, this work shows that the DFN connectivity plays a crucial role in the interaction between hydraulic fractures, the pre-existing natural fractures and hydraulic fracturing effectiveness; in return, these three factors affect treating pressure, created microseismicity and corresponding stimulated volume. This work strongly relates to the production technology and the evaluation of hydraulic fracturing effectiveness. It is helpful for the optimization of hydraulic fracturing simulations in naturally fractured formations.

Robust Virtual Network Embedding Based on Component Connectivity in Large-Scale Network

Virtual network embedding problem which is NP-hard is a key issue for implementing software-defined network which is brought about by network virtualization. Compared with other studies which focus on designing heuristic algorithms to reduce the hardness of the NP-hard problem we propose a robust VNE algorithm based on component connectivity in large-scale network. We distinguish the different components and embed VN requests onto them respectively. And k-core is applied to identify different VN topologies so that the VN request can be embedded onto its corresponding component. On the other hand, load balancing is also considered in this paper. It could avoid blocked or bottlenecked area of substrate network. Simulation experiments show that compared with other algorithms in large-scale network, acceptance ratio, average revenue and robustness can be obviously improved by our algorithm and average cost can be reduced. It also shows the relationship between the component connectivity including giant component and small components and the performance metrics.

MSADCN:Multi-Scale Attentional Densely Connected Network for Automated Bone Age Assessment

Bone age assessment(BAA)helps doctors determine how a child’s bones grow and develop in clinical medicine.Traditional BAA methods rely on clinician expertise,leading to time-consuming predictions and inaccurate results.Most deep learning-based BAA methods feed the extracted critical points of images into the network by providing additional annotations.This operation is costly and subjective.To address these problems,we propose a multi-scale attentional densely connected network(MSADCN)in this paper.MSADCN constructs a multi-scale dense connectivity mechanism,which can avoid overfitting,obtain the local features effectively and prevent gradient vanishing even in limited training data.First,MSADCN designs multi-scale structures in the densely connected network to extract fine-grained features at different scales.Then,coordinate attention is embedded to focus on critical features and automatically locate the regions of interest(ROI)without additional annotation.In addition,to improve the model’s generalization,transfer learning is applied to train the proposed MSADCN on the public dataset IMDB-WIKI,and the obtained pre-trained weights are loaded onto the Radiological Society of North America(RSNA)dataset.Finally,label distribution learning(LDL)and expectation regression techniques are introduced into our model to exploit the correlation between hand bone images of different ages,which can obtain stable age estimates.Extensive experiments confirm that our model can converge more efficiently and obtain a mean absolute error(MAE)of 4.64 months,outperforming some state-of-the-art BAA methods.

Intelligent Network-Connected New Energy Vehicle Technology and Application Under the Dual-Carbon Strategy

In responding to the“dual carbon”strategy,intelligent networked new energy vehicle technology plays a crucial role.This type of vehicle combines the advantages of new energy technology and intelligent network technology,effectively reduces carbon emissions in the transportation sector,improves energy utilization efficiency,and contributes to the green transportation system through intelligent transportation management and collaborative work between vehicles,making significant contributions.This article aims to explore the development of intelligent network-connected new energy vehicle technology and applications under the dual-carbon strategy and lay the foundation for the future development direction of the automotive industry.

An Empirical Study on Chinese City Network Pattern Based on Producer Services

Globalization and informatization have accelerated city networking process over the world, which makes research on city network a hot topic in the fields of urban geography and economic geography. With Chinese economic structure adjustment and city economic growth, producer services have begun to play an increasingly important role in city-region networking. This paper employs the methodology of world city network to analyze and explain the spatial development characteristics of China's urban network system based on the data of nationwide producer services enterprise network. The research result indicated that the distribution of producer services network has a positive effect on the development of Chinese city networks. City network connectivity is closely related to the significance of city in producer services development, and the former will gradually decline with the drop of the latter. Accordingly, the 64 cities can be divided into the national central cities, regional central cities, sub-regional central cities and local central cities in accordance with their position and role in the nationwide producer services network. It is concluded that high-grade cities with quality producer services dominate the pattern of Chinese city networks and there emerges three spatial agglomerations of producer services enterprises in Changjiang (Yangtze) River Delta, Zhujiang (Pearl) River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan Economical Region. Moreover, the distribution of different producer services industry varies from city to city, which also affects the characteristics of network development.

Survivability modeling and analysis on 3D mobile ad-hoc networks

Most existing work on survivability in mobile ad-hoc networks(MANETs) focuses on two dimensional(2D) networks.However,many real applications run in three dimensional(3D) networks,e.g.,climate and ocean monitoring,and air defense systems.The impact on network survivability due to node behaviors was presented,and a quantitative analysis method on survivability was developed in 3D MANETs by modeling node behaviors and analyzing 3D network connectivity.Node behaviors were modeled by using a semi-Markov process.The node minimum degree of 3D MANETs was discussed.An effective approach to derive the survivability of k-connected networks was proposed through analyzing the connectivity of 3D MANETs caused by node misbehaviors,based on the model of node isolation.The quantitative analysis of node misbehaviors on the survivability in 3D MANETs is obtained through mathematical description,and the effectiveness and rationality of the proposed approach are verified through numerical analysis.The analytical results show that the effect from black and gray attack on network survivability is much severer than other misbehaviors.

Network Structure and Chemical Durability of Non-alkali Aluminoborosilicate Glasses Containing ZnO

The structure and chemical durability of non-alkali aluminoborosilicate glasses with various contents of ZnO were investigated.As the replacement of MgO by ZnO increases from 0 to 3.2mol%,the average number of bridge oxygen per tetrahedron (BO/T) as a measure of network connectivity increases from 2.84 to 3.04,and the chemical durability improved.The weight loss ratio (WLR) of glass etched in 10vol% HF (20 ℃,20 min) solution decreased from 4.809 to 4.509,and in 5wt% NaOH (95 ℃,6 h) solution decreased from 1.201 to 0.994.The replacement of MgO by ZnO further increased to 6.4mol%,the value of BO/T decreased to 3.04 instead,and thus the chemical durability deteriorated.The WLR of HF-acid and NaOH-alkali corrosion increased to 6.683 and 1.994,respectively.The chemical durability shows strongly dependent on the network connectivity and exhibits mixed intermediate effects during the replacement of MgO by ZnO.

Quantitative characterization of irregular microfracture network and its effect on the permeability of porous media

Based on the comprehensive understanding on microfractures and matrix pores in reservoir rocks,numerical algorithms are used to construct fractured porous media and fracture-pore media models.Connectivity coefficient and strike factor are introduced into the models to quantitatively characterize the connectivity and strike of fracture network,respectively.The influences of fracture aperture,fracture strike and fracture connectivity on the permeability of porous media are studied by using multi-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann model to simulate fluid flow in them.The greater the strike factor and the smaller the tortuosity of the fractured porous media,the greater the permeability of the fractured porous media.The greater the connectivity coefficient of the fracture network is,the greater the permeability of the fracture-pore media is,and the more likely dominant channel effect occurs.The fracture network connectivity has stronger influence on seepage ability of fracture-pore media than fracture aperture and fracture strike.The tortuosity and strike factor of fracture network in fractured porous media are in polynomial relation,while the permeability and fracture network connectivity coefficient of the fracture-pore media meet an exponential relation.

A new approach for effectively determining fracture network connec- tions in fractured rocks using R tree indexing

Determinations of fracture network connections would help the investigators remove those ＂meaningless＂ no-flow-passing fractures, providing an updated and more effective fracture network that could considerably improve the computation efficiency in the pertinent numerical simulations of fluid flow and solute transport. The effective algorithms with higher computational efficiency are needed to accomplish this task in large-scale fractured rock masses. A new approach using R tree indexing was proposed for determining fracture connection in 3D stochastically distributed fracture network. By com- paring with the traditional exhaustion algorithm, it was observed that from the simulation results, this approach was much more effective; and the more the fractures were investigated, the more obvious the advantages of the approach were. Furthermore, it was indicated that the runtime used for creating the R tree indexing has a major part in the total of the runtime used for calculating Minimum Bounding Rectangles （MBRs）, creating the R tree indexing, precisely finding out fracture intersections, and identifying flow paths, which are four important steps to determine fracture connections. This proposed approach for the determination of fracture connections in three-dimensional fractured rocks are expected to provide efficient preprocessing and critical database for practically accomplishing numerical computation of fluid flow and solute transport in large-scale fractured rock masses.

Artificial neural network-based subgrid-scale models for LES of compressible turbulent channel flow

Fully connected neural networks(FCNNs)have been developed for the closure of subgrid-scale(SGS)stress and SGS heat flux in large-eddy simulations of compressible turbulent channel flow.The FCNNbased SGS model trained using data with Mach number Ma=3.0 and Reynolds number Re=3000 was applied to situations with different Mach numbers and Reynolds numbers.The input variables of the neural network model were the filtered velocity gradients and temperature gradients at a single spatial grid point.The a priori test showed that the FCNN model had a correlation coefficient larger than 0.91 and a relative error smaller than 0.43,with much better reconstructions of SGS unclosed terms than the dynamic Smagorinsky model(DSM).In a posteriori test,the behavior of the FCNN model was marginally better than that of the DSM in predicting the mean velocity profiles,mean temperature profiles,turbulent intensities,total Reynolds stress,total Reynolds heat flux,and mean SGS flux of kinetic energy,and outperformed the Smagorinsky model.

Fully Connected Feedforward Neural Networks Based CSI Feedback Algorithm

In modern wireless communication systems,the accurate acquisition of channel state information(CSI)is critical to the performance of beamforming,non-orthogonal multiple access(NOMA),etc.However,with the application of massive MIMO in 5G,the number of antennas increases by hundreds or even thousands times,which leads to excessive feedback overhead and poses a huge challenge to the conventional channel state information feedback scheme.In this paper,by using deep learning technology,we develop a system framework for CSI feedback based on fully connected feedforward neural networks(FCFNN),named CF-FCFNN.Through learning the training set composed of CSI,CF-FCFNN is able to recover the original CSI from the compressed CSI more accurately compared with the existing method based on deep learning without increasing the algorithm complexity.

Acquisition of Network Connection Status Information from Physical Memory on Windows Vista Operating System

A method to extract information of network connection status information from physical memory on Windows Vista operating system is proposed. Using this method, a forensic examiner can extract accurately the information of current TCP/ IP network connection information, including IDs of processes which established connections, establishing time, local address, local port, remote address, remote port, etc., from a physical memory on Windows Xflsta operating system. This method is reliable and efficient. It is verified on Windows Vista, Windows Vista SP1, Windows Vista SP2.

Attention-based neural network for end-to-end music separation

The end-to-end separation algorithm with superior performance in the field of speech separation has not been effectively used in music separation.Moreover,since music signals are often dual channel data with a high sampling rate,how to model longsequence data and make rational use of the relevant information between channels is also an urgent problem to be solved.In order to solve the above problems,the performance of the end-to-end music separation algorithm is enhanced by improving the network structure.Our main contributions include the following:(1)A more reasonable densely connected U-Net is designed to capture the long-term characteristics of music,such as main melody,tone and so on.(2)On this basis,the multi-head attention and dualpath transformer are introduced in the separation module.Channel attention units are applied recursively on the feature map of each layer of the network,enabling the network to perform long-sequence separation.Experimental results show that after the introduction of the channel attention,the performance of the proposed algorithm has a stable improvement compared with the baseline system.On the MUSDB18 dataset,the average score of the separated audio exceeds that of the current best-performing music separation algorithm based on the time-frequency domain(T-F domain).