This paper addresses an energy-conscious single machine scheduling problem under time-of-use (TOU) or time-dependent electricity tariffs, in which electricity prices may vary from hour to hour ...throughout a day. The key issue is to assign a set of jobs to available time periods with different electricity prices so as to minimize the total electricity cost required for processing the jobs. The main contribution of this work is two-fold. First, a new continuous-time mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed for the problem. Second, an efficient greedy insertion heuristic is developed. In the proposed heuristic, the jobs are inserted into the available time periods one after another in non-increasing order of their electricity consumption rates and each job is inserted into the time period(s) with minimum electricity cost. A real-life case study from a Chinese company reveals that the total electricity cost can be reduced by about 30% with the proposed algorithm. Computational experiment on randomly generated instances also demonstrates that our algorithm can yield high-quality solutions with low electricity costs within dozens of seconds for large-scale single machine scheduling problems with 5000 jobs. The algorithm can be applied by production managers to scheduling jobs on a single machine under TOU electricity tariffs to save electricity costs.
•Single machine scheduling problem under time-of-use (TOU) electricity tariffs is addressed.•The objective is to minimize the total electricity cost within a given makespan.•A continuous-time mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed.•An efficient greedy insertion heuristic is proposed.•The algorithm is validated by a real-life instance and randomly generated instances.
This research presents the development of a cutting-edge real-time multilingual speech recognition and speaker diarization system that leverages OpenAI's Whisper model. The system specifically ...addresses the challenges of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speaker diarization (SD) in dynamic, multispeaker environments, with a focus on accurately processing Mandarin speech with Taiwanese accents and managing frequent speaker switches. Traditional speech recognition systems often fall short in such complex multilingual and multispeaker contexts, particularly in SD. This study, therefore, integrates advanced speech recognition with speaker diarization techniques optimized for real-time applications. These optimizations include handling model outputs efficiently and incorporating speaker embedding technology. The system was evaluated using data from Taiwanese talk shows and political commentary programs, featuring 46 diverse speakers. The results showed a promising word diarization error rate (WDER) of 2.68% in two-speaker scenarios and 11.65% in three-speaker scenarios, with an overall WDER of 6.96%. This performance is comparable to that of non-real-time baseline models, highlighting the system's ability to adapt to various complex conversational dynamics, a significant advancement in the field of real-time multilingual speech processing.
Background： Nowadays, social media tools such as short message service, Twitter, video, and web-based systems are more and more used in clinical follow-up, making clinical follow-up much more time- ...and cost-effective than ever before. However, as the most popular social media in China, little is known about the utility of smartphone WeChat application in follow-up. In this study, we aimed to investigate the feasibility and superiority of WeChat application in clinical follow-up. Methods： A total of 108 patients diagnosed with head and neck tumor were randomized to WeChat follow-up （WFU） group or telephone follow-up （TFU） group for 6-month follow-up. The follow-ups were delivered by WeChat or telephone at 2 weeks, 1, 2, 3, and 6 months to the patients after being discharged. The study measurements were time consumption for follow-up delivery, total economic cost, lost-to-follow-up rate, and overall satisfaction for the follow-up method. Results： Time consumption in WFU group for each patient （23.36 ± 6.16 min） was significantly shorter than that in TFU group （42.89 ± 7.15 min） （P 〈 0.001 ）; total economic cost in WFU group （RMB 90 Yuan） was much lower than that in TFU group （RMB 196 Yuan）. Lost-to-follow-up rate in the WFU group was 7.02% （4/57） compared with TFU group, 9.80% （5/51 ）, while no significance was observed （95% confidence interval CI： 0.176-2.740; P = 0.732）. The overall satisfaction rate in WFU group was 94.34% （50/53） compared with 80.43% （37/46） in TFU group （95% CI： 0.057-0.067; P = 0.034）. Conclusions： The smartphone WeChat application was found to be a viable option for follow-up in discharged patients with head and neck tumors. WFU was time-effective, cost-effective, and convenient in communication. This doctor-led follow-up model has the potential to establish a good physician-patient relationship by enhancing dynamic communications and providing individual health instructions.
The article presents the design and development of a virtual fretless Chinese stringed instrument App with the Duxianqin as an example, whose performance is expected to be no different from a real ...instrument. The digital simulation of fretless musical instruments is mainly divided into two parts: the simulation of the continuous pitch processing of the strings, and the simulation of the sound produced by plucking strings. The article returns to the theory of mechanics and wave theory and obtains the quantitative relationship between string frequency and its deformation and elongation. The Duxianqin selected in this article is a fretless instrument, which cannot be completely simulated by relying solely on sound source data. Playing and vocalization require real‐time synthesis through pitch processing, which has certain reference significance for the realization of other fretless instruments.
Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a significant health concern in the Asia–Pacific regions for infants and young children in recent years. However, no vaccines or therapeutics are available at ...present. The causative agents for HFMD include human enterovirus 71 (EV71), coxsackievirus A16 (CVA16) and some other viruses. Recently, tremendous progress has been made in the development of monovalent and bivalent vaccines against HFMD. A few neutralizing monoclonal antibodies against EV71 or CVA16 have been identified and characterized. Here, we reviewed some achievements for the development of broadly protective vaccines and neutralizing antibodies against HFMD, and discussed challenges and prospects toward broadly protective multivalent vaccines and therapeutic antibodies against HFMD.
The compressive properties of coal under water-gas coupling were studied based on the water-rock-gas coupling test system. The compressive strength and deformation damage characteristics of the coal ...samples were analyzed, and the macro and fine degradation mechanisms of coal under water-gas coupling were revealed. The compressive strength of the coal samples under the three soaking conditions was reduced compared to that of the dry coal samples. The damage mode of coal samples changed from tensile damage of dry coal samples to mixed shear-tensile damage. Coal samples changed from brittle damage to plastic damage, which increased the range of localization zones and the misalignment of coal samples after soaking. The deterioration effects of coal samples in the three soaking environments were mainly as follows: 1) The intrusion of water and gas led to the decomposition and precipitation of clay minerals inside coal samples; 2) The surface of each group of coal samples showed a deterioration effect after soaking; 3) The deterioration effect of water and gas changed the internal pore structure of coal samples. The destruction of the original supporting structure of the coal samples in the soaked environment reduced the ability of the coal samples to store energy before destruction.
Owing to the development and advancement of artificial intelligence, numerous works have been established in the human facial expression recognition system. Meanwhile, the detection and ...classification of micro-expressions have been attracting attention from various research communities in the recent few years. In this paper, we first review the processes of a conventional optical-flow-based recognition system. Concisely, it comprises four basic steps: facial landmarks annotations (to detect the face and locate the landmark coordinates), optical flow guided images computation (to describe the dynamic changes on the face), feature extraction (to summarize the features encoded) and emotion class categorization (to build a classification model based on the given training data). Secondly, a few approaches have been implemented to improve the feature extraction part, such as exploiting GAN to generate more image samples. Particularly, several variations of optical flow are computed in order to generate optimal images, which lead to high recognition accuracies. Next, GAN, a combination of Generator and Discriminator, is utilized to generate new “fake” images to increase the sample size. Thirdly, a modified state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks is proposed. In brief, multiple optical flow derived components are adopted in the OFF-ApexNet structure to better represent the facial subtle motion changes. From the experiment results obtained, the additional optical flow information computed does not complement the feature extraction stage, and thus leading to poorer recognition performance. On the other hand, the implementation of GAN to the input data improves the performance in SMIC dataset, by achieving the accuracy of 61.80%, 62.20% and 60.98% for AC-GAN, SAGAN and without GAN images, respectively.
Biological age (BA) has been recognized as a more accurate indicator of aging than chronological age (CA). However, the current limitations include: insufficient attention to the incompleteness of ...medical data for constructing BA; Lack of machine learning-based BA (ML-BA) on the Chinese population; Neglect of the influence of model overfitting degree on the stability of the association results. Based on the medical examination data of the Chinese population (45-90 years), we first evaluated the most suitable missing interpolation method, then constructed 14 ML-BAs based on biomarkers, and finally explored the associations between ML-BAs and health statuses (healthy risk indicators and disease). We found that round-robin linear regression interpolation performed best, while AutoEncoder showed the highest interpolation stability. We further illustrated the potential overfitting problem in ML-BAs, which affected the stability of ML-Bas' associations with health statuses. We then proposed a composite ML-BA based on the Stacking method with a simple meta-model (STK-BA), which overcame the overfitting problem, and associated more strongly with CA (r = 0.66, P < 0.001), healthy risk indicators, disease counts, and six types of disease. We provided an improved aging measurement method for middle-aged and elderly groups in China, which can more stably capture aging characteristics other than CA, supporting the emerging application potential of machine learning in aging research.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) can detect lesions hidden in inflammatory regions and find necrosis or areas of severe fibrosis within the lesion. This retrospective study aimed to compare the ...diagnostic accuracy of solid pancreatic lesions using percutaneous ultrasound (US)-guided fine-needle aspiration (FNA) with or without CEUS assessment.
Clinical, imaging, and pathologic data of 181 patients from January 2014 to December 2018 in Pecking Union Medical College Hospital, with solid pancreatic masses who underwent percutaneous US-FNA and ThinPrep cytologic test were retrospectively evaluated. Patients were divided into CEUS and US groups according to whether CEUS was performed before the biopsy. According to FNA cytology diagnoses, we combined non-diagnostic, neoplastic, and negative cases into a negative category. The positive category included malignant, suspicious, and atypical cases. The final diagnosis was confirmed by pathology or clinical and radiological follow-up for at least 12 months. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy of US-FNA were evaluated between the two groups.
This study enrolled 107 male and 74 female patients (average age: 60 years). There were 58 cases in the US group and 123 cases in the CEUS group. No statistically significant differences in age, gender, or lesion size were found between the two groups. The diagnostic accuracy of the CEUS group was 95.1% (117/123), which was higher than the 86.2% (50/58) observed in the US group (P = 0.036). The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV of the CEUS group were increased by 7.5%, 16.7%, 3.4%, and 18.8%, respectively, compared with the US group. However, the differences of the two groups were not statistically significant.
Compared with the conventional US, the use of CEUS could improve the biopsy accuracy and avoid the need for a repeat biopsy, especially for some complicated FNA cases.
Accurate species delimitation is fundamental to biodiversity conservation. The endangered spruce Picea brachytyla (Franch.) E. Pritz. was suggested to be polyphyletic based on a limited number of ...samples in previous studies. To evaluate polyphyly of P. brachytyla, we sampled 139 individuals from 16 populations across most of its distributional range, plus representatives of two related species, Picea likiangensis (Franch.) E. Pritz. and Picea wilsonii Mast. We sequenced 13 nuclear loci and three chloroplast and two mitochondrial loci for the following species delimitation. Phylogenetic analyses of nuclear loci grouped all individuals of P. brachytyla from Sichuan and Chongqing into one distinct lineage and those from Yunnan and Tibet (southern distribution) nested within the P. likiangensis species complex. Structure analyses confirmed this result. Networks of chloroplast DNA haplotypes similarly showed that P. brachytyla from the southern distribution nested within the P. likiangensis species complex, whereas haplotypes for the northern distribution comprised a separate and well‐supported lineage. These results suggest that P. brachytyla from the southern distribution is a part of the P. likiangensis species complex and should be removed from P. brachytyla. Our study highlights the utility of population genetic evidence in delimitating endangered species and understanding the conservation status of such species.
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