LociScan,a tool for screening genetic marker combinations for plant variety discrimination

To reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of plant genetic marker fingerprinting for variety discrimination,it is desirable to identify the optimal marker combinations.We describe a marker combination screening model based on the genetic algorithm(GA)and implemented in a software tool,Loci Scan.Ratio-based variety discrimination power provided the largest optimization space among multiple fitness functions.Among GA parameters,an increase in population size and generation number enlarged optimization depth but also calculation workload.Exhaustive algorithm afforded the same optimization depth as GA but vastly increased calculation time.In comparison with two other software tools,Loci Scan accommodated missing data,reduced calculation time,and offered more fitness functions.In large datasets,the sample size of training data exerted the strongest influence on calculation time,whereas the marker size of training data showed no effect,and target marker number had limited effect on analysis speed.

Discrimination of polysorbate 20 by high-performance liquid chromatography-charged aerosol detection and characterization for components by expanding compound database and library

Analyzing polysorbate 20(PS20)composition and the impact of each component on stability and safety is crucial due to formulation variations and individual tolerance.The similar structures and polarities of PS20 components make accurate separation,identification,and quantification challenging.In this work,a high-resolution quantitative method was developed using single-dimensional high-performance liquid chromatography(HPLC)with charged aerosol detection(CAD)to separate 18 key components with multiple esters.The separated components were characterized by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry(UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS)with an identical gradient as the HPLC-CAD analysis.The polysorbate compound database and library were expanded over 7-time compared to the commercial database.The method investigated differences in PS20 samples from various origins and grades for different dosage forms to evaluate the composition-process relationship.UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS identified 1329 to 1511 compounds in 4 batches of PS20 from different sources.The method observed the impact of 4 degradation conditions on peak components,identifying stable components and their tendencies to change.HPLC-CAD and UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS results provided insights into fingerprint differences,distinguishing quasi products.

The Analysis of the Correlation between SPT and CPT Based on CNN-GA and Liquefaction Discrimination Research

The objective of this study is to investigate themethods for soil liquefaction discrimination. Typically, predicting soilliquefaction potential involves conducting the standard penetration test (SPT), which requires field testing and canbe time-consuming and labor-intensive. In contrast, the cone penetration test (CPT) provides a more convenientmethod and offers detailed and continuous information about soil layers. In this study, the feature matrix based onCPT data is proposed to predict the standard penetration test blow count N. The featurematrix comprises the CPTcharacteristic parameters at specific depths, such as tip resistance qc, sleeve resistance f s, and depth H. To fuse thefeatures on the matrix, the convolutional neural network (CNN) is employed for feature extraction. Additionally,Genetic Algorithm (GA) is utilized to obtain the best combination of convolutional kernels and the number ofneurons. The study evaluated the robustness of the proposed model using multiple engineering field data sets.Results demonstrated that the proposed model outperformed conventional methods in predicting N values forvarious soil categories, including sandy silt, silty sand, and clayey silt. Finally, the proposed model was employedfor liquefaction discrimination. The liquefaction discrimination based on the predicted N values was comparedwith the measured N values, and the results showed that the discrimination results were in 75% agreement. Thestudy has important practical application value for foundation liquefaction engineering. Also, the novel methodadopted in this research provides new ideas and methods for research in related fields, which is of great academicsignificance.

Balancing the minimum error rate and minimum copy consumption in quantum state discrimination

Extracting more information and saving quantum resources are two main aims for quantum measurements.However,the optimization of strategies for these two objectives varies when discriminating between quantum states |ψ_(0)> and |ψ_(1)> through multiple measurements.In this study,we introduce a novel state discrimination model that reveals the intricate relationship between the average error rate and average copy consumption.By integrating these two crucial metrics and minimizing their weighted sum for any given weight value,our research underscores the infeasibility of simultaneously minimizing these metrics through local measurements with one-way communication.Our findings present a compelling trade-off curve,highlighting the advantages of achieving a balance between error rate and copy consumption in quantum discrimination tasks,offering valuable insights into the optimization of quantum resources while ensuring the accuracy of quantum state discrimination.

FPGA implementation of 500-MHz high-count-rate high-time-resolution real-time digital neutron-gamma discrimination for fast liquid detectors

Fast neutron flux measurements with high count rates and high time resolution have important applications in equipment such as tokamaks.In this study,real-time neutron and gamma discrimination was implemented on a self-developed 500-Msps,12-bit digitizer,and the neutron and gamma spectra were calculated directly on an FPGA.A fast neutron flux measurement system with BC-501A and EJ-309 liquid scintillator detectors was developed and a fast neutron measurement experiment was successfully performed on the HL-2 M tokamak at the Southwestern Institute of Physics,China.The experimental results demonstrated that the system obtained the neutron and gamma spectra with a time accuracy of 1 ms.At count rates of up to 1 Mcps,the figure of merit was greater than 1.05 for energies between 50 keV and 2.8 MeV.

The Influence of Price Discrimination from Airports on the Route Development Behavior of Airlines

Given the prominence and magnitude of airport incentive schemes,it is surprising that literature hitherto remains silent as to their effectiveness.In this paper,the relationship between airport incentive schemes and the route development behavior of airlines is analyzed.Because of rare and often controversial findings in the extant literature regarding relevant influencing variables for attracting airlines at an airport,expert interviews are used as a complement to formulate testable hypotheses in this regard.A fixed effects regression model is used to test the hypotheses with a dataset that covers all seat capacity offered at the 22 largest German commercial airports in the week 46 from 2004 to 2011.It is found that incentives from primary choice,as well as secondary choice airports,have a significant influence on Low Cost Carriers.Furthermore,Low Cost Carriers,in general,do not leave any of both types of airports when the incentives cease.In the case of Network Carriers,no case is found where one joins a primary choice airport and receives an incentive.Insufficient data between Network Carriers and secondary choice airports in the time when incentives have ceased means that no statement can be given.

Egg recognition and nestling discrimination in the Crested Myna(Acridotheres cristatellus):Size matters

Most studies exploring abilities of hosts to detect brood parasitism are based on detecting colour and/or pattern differences among parasitic and host eggs or nestlings,while only few were focused on size differences.True recognition and recognition by discordancy are used to explain cognitive mechanisms of host egg recognition;however,only a few studies have found that hosts use recognition by discordancy.This study investigated:1)whether egg and nestling recognitions in the Crested Myna(Acridotheres cristatellus) are based on size cues;2)whether the egg cognitive mechanism is recognition by discordancy based on size cues;and 3) whether the longer the experiment time,the higher the egg recognition rate.Our results showed that the Crested Myna uses egg or nestling size as a recognition cue while the egg and nestling colour and patterning are not associated with egg or nestling rejection,thus the cognitive mechanism of egg recognition in the Crested Myna is recognition by discordancy based on egg size cues.Furthermore,there is a rejection delay in time of egg rejection behaviour of the Crested Myna.Therefore,we suggest that the periodicity of egg rejection experiments could be appropriately extended,especially for species with relatively low egg recognition ability.

Performance of real‑time neutron/gamma discrimination methods

Nuclear security usually requires the simultaneous detection of neutrons and gamma rays.With the development of crystalline materials in recent years,Cs2LiLaBr6(CLLB)dual-readout detectors have attracted extensive attention from researchers,where real-time neutron/gamma pulse discrimination is the critical factor among detector performance parameters.This study investigated the discrimination performance of the charge comparison,amplitude comparison,time comparison,and pulse gradient_(m)ethods and the effects of a Sallen–Key filter on their performance.Experimental results show that the figure of merit(FOM)of all four methods is improved by proper filtering.Among them,the charge comparison method exhibits excellent noise resistance;moreover,it is the most_(s)uitable method of real-time discrimination for CLLB detectors.However,its discrimination performance depends on the parameters t_(s),t_(m),and t_(e).When t_(s)corresponds to the moment at which the pulse is at 10%of its peak value,t_(e)requires a delay of only 640–740 ns compared to t_(s),at which time the potentially optimal FOM of the charge comparison method at 3.1–3.3 MeV is greater than 1.46.The FOM obtained using the t_(m)value calculated by a proposed maximized discrimination difference model(MDDM)and the potentially optimal FOM differ by less than 3.9%,indicating that the model can provide good guidance for parameter selection in the charge comparison method.

Sex effect on growth performance and marker-aided sex discrimination of seedlings of Populus deltoides

Sex has a significant effect on various traits among dioecious plants.In this analysis of the sex effect on the radial growth and wood density of numerous 20-yearold trees of Populus deltoides growing in a common garden,male trees performed better than the females in radial growth,but sex did not significantly affect wood density.Growth rate and wood density were weakly negatively correlated.Sex selection is also critical for controlling seed-hair pollution from P.deltoides plantations.However,because the juvenile period of P.deltoides lasts for years,a reliable technique to determine the sex of juveniles has been needed.Here we developed a marker-aided technique to discriminate the sexes of P.deltoides seedlings.This study provides essential information on target traits and a highly desirable genetic toolkit for accelerate breeding programs for this important tree species.

Multi-Path Attention Inverse Discrimination Network for Offline Signature Verification

Signature verification,which is a method to distinguish the authenticity of signature images,is a biometric verification technique that can effectively reduce the risk of forged signatures in financial,legal,and other business envir-onments.However,compared with ordinary images,signature images have the following characteristics:First,the strokes are slim,i.e.,there is less effective information.Second,the signature changes slightly with the time,place,and mood of the signer,i.e.,it has high intraclass differences.These challenges lead to the low accuracy of the existing methods based on convolutional neural net-works(CNN).This study proposes an end-to-end multi-path attention inverse dis-crimination network that focuses on the signature stroke parts to extract features by reversing the foreground and background of signature images,which effectively solves the problem of little effective information.To solve the problem of high intraclass variability of signature images,we add multi-path attention modules between discriminative streams and inverse streams to enhance the discriminative features of signature images.Moreover,a multi-path discrimination loss function is proposed,which does not require the feature representation of the samples with the same class label to be infinitely close,as long as the gap between inter-class distance and the intra-class distance is bigger than the set classification threshold,which radically resolves the problem of high intra-class difference of signature images.In addition,this loss can also spur the network to explore the detailed infor-mation on the stroke parts,such as the crossing,thickness,and connection of strokes.We respectively tested on CEDAR,BHSig-Bengali,BHSig-Hindi,and GPDS Synthetic datasets with accuracies of 100%,96.24%,93.86%,and 83.72%,which are more accurate than existing signature verification methods.This is more helpful to the task of signature authentication in justice and finance.

Quantitative Method of Classification and Discrimination of a Porous Carbonate Reservoir Integrating K-means Clustering and Bayesian Theory

Reservoir classification is a key link in reservoir evaluation.However,traditional manual means are inefficient,subjective,and classification standards are not uniform.Therefore,taking the Mishrif Formation of the Western Iraq as an example,a new reservoir classification and discrimination method is established by using the K-means clustering method and the Bayesian discrimination method.These methods are applied to non-cored wells to calculate the discrimination accuracy of the reservoir type,and thus the main reasons for low accuracy of reservoir discrimination are clarified.The results show that the discrimination accuracy of reservoir type based on K-means clustering and Bayesian stepwise discrimination is strongly related to the accuracy of the core data.The discrimination accuracy rate of TypeⅠ,TypeⅡ,and TypeⅤreservoirs is found to be significantly higher than that of TypeⅢand TypeⅣreservoirs using the method of combining K-means clustering and Bayesian theory based on logging data.Although the recognition accuracy of the new methodology for the TypeⅣreservoir is low,with average accuracy the new method has reached more than 82%in the entire study area,which lays a good foundation for rapid and accurate discrimination of reservoir types and the fine evaluation of a reservoir.

Discrimination and quantification of scar tissue by Mueller matrix imaging with machine learning

Scarring is one of the biggest areas of unmet need in the long-term success of glaucoma filtration surgery.Quantitative evaluation of the scar tissue and the post-operative structure with micron scale resolution facilitates development of anti-fibrosis techniques.However,the distinguishment of conjunctiva,sclera and the scar tissue in the surgical area still relies on pathologists'experience.Since polarized light imaging is sensitive to anisotropic properties of the media,it is ideal for discrimination of scar in the subconjunctival and episcleral area by characterizing small differences between proportion,organization and the orientation of the fibers.In this paper,we defined the conjunctiva,sclera,and the scar tissue as three target tissues after glaucoma filtration surgery and obtained their polarization characteristics from the tissue sections by a Mueller matrix microscope.Discrimination score based on parameters derived from Mueller matrix and machine learning was calculated and tested as a diagnostic index.As a result,the discrimination score of three target tissues showed significant difference between each other(p<0.001).The visualization of the discrimination results showed significant contrast between target tissues.This study proved that Mueller matrix imaging is effective in ocular scar discrimination and paves the way for its application on other forms of ocular fibrosis as a substitute or supplementary for clinical practice.

Do Chinese Women Face Subtle Discrimination in Job Hiring?

Gender discrimination has long been the problem that exists in the entire world,including China.However,as more and more people are focusing on the general gender discrimination,the group recognized an extension of such discrimination-pregnancy discrimination in job hiring(the discrimination that women who are pregnant or have the inclination to pregnancy receive in hiring).The possible subtle pregnancy discrimination may be one of the main causes that lead to the declining fertility rate in China.The group decided to conduct an experiment to determine whether women are receiving more subtle discrimination in job hiring due to their identity as mother than men with children,men without children,and women without children.Using the form of questionary and resumes,the team found that Chinese women are indeed enduring subtle discrimination in work hiring.The experiment highlights the importance to promote further equality among women.However,there are some confounding variables,like the level of patient of the HR who reads the resume,affecting the ultimate result of the study.Keywords:gender discrimination,women’s career,Chinese job market,pregnancy discrimination,fertility rate in China.

High-Precision Doppler Frequency Estimation Based Positioning Using OTFS Modulations by Red and Blue Frequency Shift Discriminator

Orthogonal Time Frequency and Space(OTFS) modulation is expected to provide high-speed and ultra-reliable communications for emerging mobile applications, including low-orbit satellite communications. Using the Doppler frequency for positioning is a promising research direction on communication and navigation integration. To tackle the high Doppler frequency and low signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) in satellite communication, this paper proposes a Red and Blue Frequency Shift Discriminator(RBFSD) based on the pseudo-noise(PN) sequence.The paper derives that the cross-correlation function on the Doppler domain exhibits the characteristic of a Sinc function. Therefore, it applies modulation onto the Delay-Doppler domain using PN sequence and adjusts Doppler frequency estimation by red-shifting or blue-shifting. Simulation results show that the performance of Doppler frequency estimation is close to the Cramér-Rao Lower Bound when the SNR is greater than -15dB. The proposed algorithm is about 1/D times less complex than the existing PN pilot sequence algorithm, where D is the resolution of the fractional Doppler.

Artificial neural network algorithm for pulse shape discrimination in 2πα and 2πβ particle surface emission rate measurements

To enhance the accuracy of 2πα and 2πβ particle surface emission rate measurements and address the identification issues of nuclides in conventional methods, this study introduces two artificial neural network(ANN) algorithms: back-propagation(BP) and genetic algorithm-based back-propagation(GA-BP). These algorithms classify pulse signals from distinct α and β particles. Their discrimination efficacy is assessed by simulating standard pulse signals and those produced by contaminated sources, mixing α and β particles within the detector. This study initially showcases energy spectrum measurement outcomes, subsequently tests the ANNs on the measurement and validation datasets, and contrasts the pulse shape discrimination efficacy of both algorithms. Experimental findings reveal that the proportional counter's energy resolution is not ideal, thus rendering energy analysis insufficient for distinguishing between 2πα and 2πβ particles. The BP neural network realizes approximately 99% accuracy for 2πα particles and approximately 95% for 2πβ particles, thus surpassing the GA-BP's performance. Additionally, the results suggest enhancing β particle discrimination accuracy by increasing the digital acquisition card's threshold lower limit. This study offers an advanced solution for the 2πα and 2πβ surface emission rate measurement method, presenting superior adaptability and scalability over conventional techniques.

Pulse-shaping method for real-time neutron/gamma discrimination at low sampling rates

The Na I:Tl scintillator is an innovative material for dual-gamma-ray and neutron detection with a low ^(6)Li concentration.To achieve real-time n/γ discrimination,a zero-crossing time comparison algorithm based on trapezoidal pulse shaping was developed.The algorithm can operate efficiently at low sampling rates and was implemented on a single-probe portable digital n/γ discriminator based on a field-programmable gate array.The discriminator and Na I:Tl,^(6)Li detector were tested in a neutron-gamma mixed field produced by an ^(241)Am-Be neutron source to evaluate the performance of the algorithm.The figure of merits was measured as 2.88 at a sampling rate of 50 MHz,indicating that the discriminator with its embedded algorithm has a promising n/γ discrimination capability.Efficient discrimination at sampling rates of 40 and 25 MHz demonstrates that the capability of this method is not limited by low sampling rates.

Biopsychosocial impact of discrimination on cancer risk and outcome: A conceptual review

Discrimination,a major social factor influencing health,can influence both the risk and course of cancer.The medical and psychological mechanisms through which discrimination can impact the onset and spread of cancer are explored in depth in this conceptual evaluation.In addition to investigating the ethical aspects of discrimination in cancer research,it also studies the effects of bias on cancer detection and therapy.In addition,this review provides suggestions for reducing the effect of discrimination on cancer risk and outcomes.Discrimination,in particular,can trigger the growth and spread of cancer via various pathways,including stress,inflammation,and changes in epigenetic patterns.It can also affect the immune system,making the body more vulnerable to the proliferation of cancerous cells.Discrimination can result in hindrances or delays in the process of cancer screening and treatment,and it can influence the quality of care for individuals suffering from cancer.This can contribute to the presence of disparities in terms of cancer vulnerability,occurrence,mortality,and survival rates among different demographic groups.Various measures can be implemented to mitigate the impact of discrimination on cancer vulnerability and outcomes.These measures address the underlying causes of discrimination,ensure that all individuals have access to exceptional cancer care,promote the acquisition of cultural proficiency and anti-bias training by healthcare providers,and develop and implement interventions to reduce discrimination’s impact on cancer vulnerability,screening,and treatment.

Underwater Pulse Waveform Recognition Based on Hash Aggregate Discriminant Network

Underwater pulse waveform recognition is an important method for underwater object detection.Most existing works focus on the application of traditional pattern recognition methods,which ignore the time-and space-varying characteristics in sound propagation channels and cannot easily extract valuable waveform features.Sound propagation channels in seawater are time-and space-varying convolutional channels.In the extraction of the waveform features of underwater acoustic signals,the effect of high-accuracy underwater acoustic signal recognition is identified by eliminating the influence of time-and space-varying convolutional channels to the greatest extent possible.We propose a hash aggregate discriminative network(HADN),which combines hash learning and deep learning to minimize the time-and space-varying effects on convolutional channels and adaptively learns effective underwater waveform features to achieve high-accuracy underwater pulse waveform recognition.In the extraction of the hash features of acoustic signals,a discrete constraint between clusters within a hash feature class is introduced.This constraint can ensure that the influence of convolutional channels on hash features is minimized.In addition,we design a new loss function called aggregate discriminative loss(AD-loss).The use of AD-loss and softmax-loss can increase the discriminativeness of the learned hash features.Experimental results show that on pool and ocean datasets,which were collected in pools and oceans,respectively,by using acoustic collectors,the proposed HADN performs better than other comparative models in terms of accuracy and mAP.

EDU-GAN:Edge Enhancement Generative Adversarial Networks with Dual-Domain Discriminators for Inscription Images Denoising

Recovering high-quality inscription images from unknown and complex inscription noisy images is a challenging research issue.Different fromnatural images,character images pay more attention to stroke information.However,existingmodelsmainly consider pixel-level informationwhile ignoring structural information of the character,such as its edge and glyph,resulting in reconstructed images with mottled local structure and character damage.To solve these problems,we propose a novel generative adversarial network(GAN)framework based on an edge-guided generator and a discriminator constructed by a dual-domain U-Net framework,i.e.,EDU-GAN.Unlike existing frameworks,the generator introduces the edge extractionmodule,guiding it into the denoising process through the attention mechanism,which maintains the edge detail of the restored inscription image.Moreover,a dual-domain U-Net-based discriminator is proposed to learn the global and local discrepancy between the denoised and the label images in both image and morphological domains,which is helpful to blind denoising tasks.The proposed dual-domain discriminator and generator for adversarial training can reduce local artifacts and keep the denoised character structure intact.Due to the lack of a real-inscription image,we built the real-inscription dataset to provide an effective benchmark for studying inscription image denoising.The experimental results show the superiority of our method both in the synthetic and real-inscription datasets.

Bearing Fault Diagnosis Based on Deep Discriminative Adversarial Domain Adaptation Neural Networks

Intelligent diagnosis driven by big data for mechanical fault is an important means to ensure the safe operation ofequipment. In these methods, deep learning-based machinery fault diagnosis approaches have received increasingattention and achieved some results. It might lead to insufficient performance for using transfer learning alone andcause misclassification of target samples for domain bias when building deep models to learn domain-invariantfeatures. To address the above problems, a deep discriminative adversarial domain adaptation neural networkfor the bearing fault diagnosis model is proposed (DDADAN). In this method, the raw vibration data are firstlyconverted into frequency domain data by Fast Fourier Transform, and an improved deep convolutional neuralnetwork with wide first-layer kernels is used as a feature extractor to extract deep fault features. Then, domaininvariant features are learned from the fault data with correlation alignment-based domain adversarial training.Furthermore, to enhance the discriminative property of features, discriminative feature learning is embeddedinto this network to make the features compact, as well as separable between classes within the class. Finally, theperformance and anti-noise capability of the proposedmethod are evaluated using two sets of bearing fault datasets.The results demonstrate that the proposed method is capable of handling domain offset caused by differentworkingconditions and maintaining more than 97.53% accuracy on various transfer tasks. Furthermore, the proposedmethod can achieve high diagnostic accuracy under varying noise levels.