Topic-specific political stance inference in social networks (SNs) aims at inferring target users' attitudes toward different target topics. Traditional methods mainly used a language model to ...classify sentiments from the postings of the SN users. However, people's stances are not always equal to their sentiments. Some others tried to build separate models toward different target topics. In many cases, though SN users talked about the target topics, the information given was limited; or they only expressed attitudes toward some other issues except the target topics. When information is incomplete, the methods that treat the topics independently fail to work, let alone for users who didn't post any of the topics. To solve the above problems, we introduced a political knowledge graph (PKG) to supplement side information for users and topics and proposed a united Knowledge Graph-aware and Social Network-enhanced framework (KGSN) to capture not only the knowledge connections between topics but also the social connections between users. KGSN utilized two levels of graph convolutional networks, the one at the knowledge graph level generating knowledge-aware representations merging knowledge entities for the users and topics respectively, and the one at the social graph level generating social-enhanced representations merging social neighbors for the target users. Beyond that, the respective topic-specific attention mechanisms were leveraged to emphasize special knowledge entities in the knowledge graph and special neighboring users in the social graph. The advantages of KGSN are that: first, it can infer users' attitudes toward more than one topic in one model; second, it can infer users' implicit attitudes toward the target topics through users' explicit attitudes toward the other issues; last but not least, even for users without any postings, KGSN can infer users' implicit attitudes through their social neighbors. Finally, extensive experiments were conducted to demonstrate the superiority of KGSN over state-of-the-art models and case studies were investigated to testify the effectiveness of the model.
Controversy remains over whether anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) or posterior cervical foraminotomy (PCF) is superior for the treatment of cervical radiculopathy. We therefore ...performed a systematic review including three prospective randomized controlled trails (RCT) and seven retrospective comparative studies (RCoS) by searching PubMed and EMBASE. These studies were assessed on risk of bias according to the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, and the quality of evidence and level of recommendation were evaluated according to the GRADE approach. Clinical outcomes, complications, reoperation rates, radiological parameters, and cost/cost‐utility were evaluated. The mean complication rate was 7% in the ACDF group and 4% in the PCF group, and the mean reoperation rate was 4% in the ACDF group and 6% in the PCF group within 2 years of the initial surgery. There was a strong level of recommendation that no difference existed in clinical outcome, complication rate and reoperation rate between the ACDF and the PCF group. There was conflicting evidence that the ACDF group had better clinical outcomes than the PCF group (one study with weak level of recommendation). PCF could preserve the range of motion (ROM) of the operated segment but did not increase the ROM of the adjacent segment (weak level of recommendation). Meanwhile, the average cost or cost‐utility of the PCF group was significantly lower than that of the ACDF group (weak level of recommendation). In conclusion, the PCF was just as safe and effective as the ACDF in the treatment of cervical radiculopathy. Meanwhile, PCF might have lower medical cost than ACDF and decrease the incidence of adjacent segment disease. Based on the available evidence, PCF appears to be another good surgical approach in the treatment of cervical radiculopathy.
Ground cracks caused by coal mining is a typical man-made geological hazard which severely damages the ecological environment and ground structures (such as buildings, pipelines and bridges, etc.). ...Therefore, it is necessary to study ground crack development law in order to fully understand the mechanism of ground crack formation and to prevent damage. Current research in China is mainly focused on the mining areas in eastern China, but there have been few studies on the law and the mechanism of ground cracks caused by high-intensive mining in western China and aeolian sand areas. Additionally, the western mining areas are in an arid and semi-arid climate zone with a fragile eco-environment, where ground cracks can have a strong and irreversible destructiveness. Therefore, research on mining-induced ground cracks in western China has great practical significance. Using the mining-related ground crack in the 12,406 fully mechanized coal mining working face of the Bulianta Coal Mine in western China as an example case and performing field surveys and analyses, we determined that the dynamic ground cracks caused by high-intensive mining exhibit secondary development characteristics. The cracks have two developmental cycles and two peak values. In another words, the development law is M-shape with double peak values–double cycles, which is different from the conventional research result of “single peak value–single cycle”. In order to identify the internal mechanism of this special development law, we conducted our research from two perspectives of key strata theory and mining subsidence theory by adopting the methods of theoretical analysis and physical/numerical simulation, and then combining the results with the actual survey data of the 12,406 working face. The results indicate that the special phenomenon involving the secondary development of ground cracks meet the following conditions: (1) compound key strata exist in the covering rock (i.e., more than two layers of key strata); (2) the mining range makes the ground surface over-mined, and the flat floor is revealed in the subsidence basin; (3)the mining range achieves breaking of the span of the compound key strata, which then causes the fracture of the compound key strata. The development characteristics of mining-induced ground cracks are related to the periodic breaking of the compound key strata. The compound key strata fractures generate the tensile deformations on the secondary surface, which cause secondary ground cracks, resulting in the cracks exhibiting secondary development characteristics. The results of our study comprehensively display the internal mechanism of ground crack development, which can provide guidance in the areas of accurate ground crack prediction, land environment damage control, and ecological restoration.
The developing advances of microresonator-based Kerr cavity solitons have enabled versatile applications ranging from communication, signal processing to high-precision measurements. Resonator ...dispersion is the key factor determining the Kerr comb dynamics. Near the zero group-velocity-dispersion (GVD) regime, low-noise and broadband microcomb sources are achievable, which is crucial to the application of the Kerr soliton. When the GVD is almost vanished, higher-order dispersion can significantly affect the Kerr comb dynamics. Although many studies have investigated the Kerr comb dynamics near the zero-dispersion regime in microresonator or fiber ring system, limited by dispersion profiles and dispersion perturbations, the near-zero-dispersion soliton structure pumped in the anomalous dispersion side is still elusive so far. Here, we theoretically and experimentally investigate the microcomb dynamics in fiber-based Fabry-Perot microresonator with ultra-small anomalous GVD. We obtain 2/3-octave-spaning microcombs with ~10 GHz spacing, >84 THz span, and >8400 comb lines in the modulational instability (MI) state, without any external nonlinear spectral broadening. Such widely-spanned MI combs are also able to enter the soliton state. Moreover, we report the first observation of anomalous-dispersion based near-zero-dispersion solitons, which exhibits a local repetition rate up to 8.6 THz, an individual pulse duration <100 fs, a span >32 THz and >3200 comb lines. These two distinct comb states have their own advantages. The broadband MI combs possess high conversion efficiency and wide existing range, while the near-zero-dispersion soliton exhibits relatively low phase noise and ultra-high local repetition rate. This work complements the dynamics of Kerr cavity soliton near the zero-dispersion regime, and may stimulate cross-disciplinary inspirations ranging from dispersion-controlled microresonators to broadband coherent comb devices.
Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) play a crucial role in transportation and service tasks at hospitals, contributing to enhanced efficiency and meeting medical demands. This paper investigates the ...optimization problem of scheduling strategies for AMRs at smart hospitals, where the service and travel times of AMRs are stochastic. A stochastic mixed-integer programming model is formulated to minimize the total cost of the hospital by reducing the number of AMRs and travel distance while satisfying constraints such as AMR battery state of charge, AMR capacity, and time windows for medical requests. To address this objective, some properties of the solutions with time window constraints are identified. The variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm is adjusted by incorporating the properties of the AMR scheduling problem to solve the model. Experimental results demonstrate that VNS generates high-quality solutions. Both enhanced efficiency and the meeting of medical demands are achieved through intelligently arranging the driving routes of AMRs for both charging and service requests, resulting in substantial cost reductions for hospitals and enhanced utilization of medical resources.
► Accurate queue time approximation for production systems. ► Quantifying the trade-off between queue time and utilization reliably. ► Decomposing system queue time into bottleneck and non-bottleneck ...parts via intrinsic ratios. ► Theory of system performance is proposed, which can be used to guide productivity improvement. ► Contribution factors are introduced to capture the dependence among workstations in series.
Performance evaluation plays a key role in manufacturing system design and productivity improvement. Characterizing performance objectively is the first step. Inspired by the underlying structure of tandem queues, we have derived an approximate model to characterize the system performance. The model decomposes system queue time and variability into bottleneck and non-bottleneck parts while capturing the dependence among workstations. Compared the new model with prior approaches, the new model not only is more accurate but also requires less information. The property of manufacturing system performance is given based on the insight from the model.
Low phase noise mode-locked fiber laser finds important applications in telecommunication, ultrafast sciences, material science, and biology, etc. In this paper, two types of carbon nano-materials, ...i.e. single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) and graphene oxide (GO), are investigated as efficient saturable absorbers (SAs) to achieve low phase noise mode-locked fiber lasers. Various properties of these wall-paper SAs, such as saturable intensity, optical absorption and degree of purity, are found to be key factors determining the performance of the ultrafast pulses. Reduced-noise femtosecond fiber lasers based on such carbon-based SAs are experimentally demonstrated, for which the phase noise has been reduced by more than 10 dB for SWNT SAs and 8 dB for GO SAs at 10 kHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation on the relationship between different carbon material based SAs and the phase noise of mode-locked lasers. This work paves the way to generate high-quality low phase noise ultrashort pulses in passively mode-locked fiber lasers.
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The recent breakthrough from AlphaFold2 and RoseTTAFold set a profound milestone for solving the protein folding problem, but they were not explicitly trained to predict protein ...foldability, i.e., if a protein can really fold into the predicted 3D structure. We wondered if the computational models from AlphaFold2 and RoseTTAFold might carry protein foldability information. Therefore, we predicted the structural models of 159 circular permutants and 158 alanine insertion mutants of the 159-residue dihydrofolate reductase. Our data showed that although AlphaFold2 and RoseTTAFold cannot directly identify unfoldable proteins, the RMSD values of computational models are correlated with protein foldability, with higher RMSD values indicating lower protein foldability. Furthermore, this correlation is independent of secondary structures, and the RMSD values of computational models are quantitatively correlated with protein foldability but not protein functions. Additionally, using a dataset of 129 de novo designed proteins, we showed that inter-model RMSD values between AlphaFold2 models and RoseTTAFold models are a good indicator of protein foldability. At last, we showed that inter-model RMSD values are also useful for evaluating protein solubility by modeling 1664 natural proteins. Our work could be of great value to the design of novel proteins and the prediction of protein foldability.
The survival benefit of metastasectomy (MSX) in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) remains unclear. A reliable model to predict an individuals' risk of cancer-specific mortality ...(CSM) and to identify optimal candidates for MSX is needed. We identified 2,911 mRCC patients who underwent cytoreductive nephrectomy from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database (2010-2015). Based on the Fine and Gray competing risks analyses, we created a nomogram to predict the survival of mRCC patients. Decision tree analysis was useful for patient stratification. The impact of MSX was assessed among three different subgroups. Overall, 579 (19.9%) cases underwent MSX. In the entire patients, the 1-, 2-, and 3-year cumulative incidence of CSM were 32.8, 47.2, and 57.9%, respectively. MSX was significantly associated with improved survival (hazard ratio HR = 0.875, 95% confidence interval CI 0.773-0.991; P = 0.015). Based on risk scores, patients were divided into three risk groups using decision tree analysis. In the low-risk group, MSX was significantly associated with a 12.8% risk reduction of 3-year CSM (HR = 0.689, 95% CI 0.507-0.938; P = 0.008), while MSX was not associated with survival in intermediate- and high-risk groups. We proposed a novel nomogram and patient stratification approach to identify suitable patients for MSX. The newly identified patient subgroup with a low-risk of CSM might benefit more from aggressive surgery. These results should be further validated and improved by the prospective trials.
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