Hierarchical Domains Research Articles

Modeling Assistance for Hierarchical Planning: An Approach for Correcting Hierarchical Domains with Missing Actions

Modeling Assistance for Hierarchical Planning: An Approach for Correcting Hierarchical Domains with Missing Actions

Using Earley Parser for Verification of Totally Ordered Hierarchical Plans

Hierarchical planning extends classical planning by capturing the hierarchical structure of tasks via decomposition of tasks to subtasks. Hierarchical plan verification is the problem of determining whether a given plan is valid according to that structure. As decomposition trees in totally ordered hierarchical planning domains resemble parsing trees of context-free grammars, one may exploit the techniques for context-free grammars also for hierarchical plans. In this paper, we study how the Earley parser, proposed for checking whether a given word belongs to a language defined by context-free grammar, can be extended to verification of totally ordered hierarchical plans.

Parent-child coregulation as a dynamic system: a commentary on Wass etal. (2024).

In this commentary, I argue that including and operationalizing allostatic processes will become increasingly important in future research on parent-child biobehavioral coregulation. In particular, the conceptualization and modeling of dyadic oscillatory rhythms that align in expected ways with the child's developmental stage and that distinguish typical and atypical development will be useful in future work. Despite the inherent asymmetry characteristic of parent-child relationships, we should not forget to consider the child's effects on the parent within and across time, the additional environmental demands upon parents that shape parent-child coregulation, and variations in parent-child asymmetry by parental risk factors. Studying risk factors that are dyadic in nature, such as child maltreatment, may be particularly informative in gaining a deeper understanding of how parent-child coregulation interfaces with developmental psychopathology. To best model parent-child coregulation as a dynamic system, it will be critical to employ more nonlinear analytic models and better represent the multiple hierarchical domains of coregulation and their interactions, including affect, cognition, behavior, and biology. Finally, in future research, a deeper application of existing dyadic and dynamic theories, as well as the generation of new dyadic developmental theories, will aid us in obtaining a stronger understanding of the developmental function and intervention implications of parent-child biobehavioral coregulation.

Engineering Domain Variants in 0.7Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)-0.3PbTiO3 Single Crystals Using High-Frequency AC Poling.

Single crystals of (001)-oriented 0.7Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)-0.3PbTiO3 (PMN-30PT) with a composition near the morphotropic phase boundary have attracted considerable attention due to their superior dielectric and electromechanical performance. Recently, a new alternating current (electric field) poling approach used for the enhancement of dielectric and piezoelectric properties. However, the microscopic domain variants that govern the performance, especially under high-frequency alternating current (AC) voltages, remain largely unexplored. In this work, the domain microstructure under AC poling reveals the presence of four monoclinic (MA) domain variants using a suite of scanning probe microscopy methods, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) reciprocal space mapping is tuned. It is reported on the emergence of hierarchical fine domains - needle-shaped, and 109° domain walls under applied high-frequency AC poling. Time-resolved Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) reveals the charge dynamics and relaxation behavior of these needle domains and walls. The findings provide new insight and guidance to the domain engineering by high-frequency AC poling for the development of advanced transducer technology.

Comparing the performance of artificial intelligence learning models to medical students in solving histology and embryology multiple choice questions

IntroductionThe appearance of artificial intelligence language models (AI LMs) in the form of chatbots has gained a lot of popularity worldwide, potentially interfering with different aspects of education, including medical education as well. The present study aims to assess the accuracy and consistency of different AI LMs regarding the histology and embryology knowledge obtained during the 1st year of medical studies. MethodsFive different chatbots (ChatGPT, Bing AI, Bard AI, Perplexity AI, and ChatSonic) were given two sets of multiple-choice questions (MCQs). AI LMs test results were compared to the same test results obtained from 1st year medical students. Chatbots were instructed to use revised Bloom’s taxonomy when classifying questions depending on hierarchical cognitive domains. Simultaneously, two histology teachers independently rated the questions applying the same criteria, followed by the comparison between chatbots’ and teachers’ question classification. The consistency of chatbots’ answers was explored by giving the chatbots the same tests two months apart. ResultsAI LMs successfully and correctly solved MCQs regarding histology and embryology material. All five chatbots showed better results than the 1st year medical students on both histology and embryology tests. Chatbots showed poor results when asked to classify the questions according to revised Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy compared to teachers. There was an inverse correlation between the difficulty of questions and their correct classification by the chatbots. Retesting the chatbots after two months showed a lack of consistency concerning both MCQs answers and question classification according to revised Bloom’s taxonomy learning stage. ConclusionDespite the ability of certain chatbots to provide correct answers to the majority of diverse and heterogeneous questions, a lack of consistency in answers over time warrants their careful use as a medical education tool.

A Shape Derivative Approach to Domain Simplification

The objective of this study is to address the difficulty of simplifying the geometric model in which a differential problem is formulated, also called defeaturing, while simultaneously ensuring that the accuracy of the solution is maintained under control. This enables faster and more efficient simulations, without sacrificing accuracy in the regions of interest. More precisely, we consider an isogeometric discretisation of an elliptic model problem defined on a two-dimensional simply connected hierarchical B-spline physical domain with a complex boundary. Starting with an oversimplification of the geometry, we build a goal-oriented adaptive strategy that adaptively reintroduces continuous geometrical features in regions where the analysis suggests a large impact on the quantity of interest. This strategy is driven by an a posteriori estimator of the defeaturing error based on first-order shape sensitivity analysis, and it profits from the local refinement properties of hierarchical B-splines. The adaptive algorithm is described together with a procedure to generate (partially) simplified hierarchical B-spline geometrical domains. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the proposed strategy and its limitations.

Gender Gaps in Mode Usage, Vehicle Ownership, and Spatial Mobility When Entering Parenthood: A Life Course Perspective

Entry into parenthood is a major disruptive event to travel behavior, and gender gaps in mobility choices are often widened during parenthood. The exact timing of gender gap formation and their long-term effects on different subpopulations are less studied in the literature. Leveraging a longitudinal dataset from the 2018 WholeTraveler Study, this paper examines the effects of parenthood on a diverse set of short- to long-term outcomes related to the three hierarchical domains of mobility biography: mode choice, vehicle ownership, spatial mobility, and career decisions. The progress of the effects is evaluated over a sequential set of parenting stages and differentiated across three subpopulations. We find that individuals classified as “Have-it-alls”, who start their careers, partner up, and have children concurrently and early, significantly increase their car uses two years prior to childbirth (“nesting period”), and they then relocate to less transit-accessible areas and consequently reduce their reliance on public transportation while they have children in the household. In contrast, individuals categorized as “Couples”, who start careers and partnerships early but delay parenthood, and “Singles”, who postpone partnership and parenthood, have less pronounced changes in travel behavior throughout the parenting stages. The cohort-level effects are found to be driven primarily by women, whose career development is on average more negatively impacted by parenting events than men, regardless of their life course trajectory. Early career decisions made by women upon entering parenthood contribute to gender gaps in mid- to longer-term mobility decisions, signifying the importance of early intervention.

Constant plane shift model: Structure analysis of martensitic phases in Ni50Mn27Ga22Fe1 beyond non-modulated building blocks

Martensites of Ni-Mn-Ga-based alloys consist of hierarchical twinning domains spanning from micro- to nanoscale. This affects the diffraction pattern and thus can decrease the accuracy of the determination of the crystal structure. We propose a method to obtain different martensitic phases in Ni-Mn-Ga-Fe alloy with simplified variant microstructures and domain sizes of more than 2 micrometers. The use of simplified variant microstructures allows the influence of nanometer-scale domains on diffraction line position to be circumvented and enabls the comparison of the lattice parameters of non-modulated (NM), five-layered modulated (10M), and seven-layered (14M) phases in the same temperature range due to the large hysteresis of the intermartensitic transformations. It is found that the short crystallographic axes in NM, 14M, and 10M martensites at the same temperature have different lengths. As a result, equilibrium NM structure building blocks cannot be used to build the crystal structures of 14M and 10M martensites. Instead, we introduce a constant plane shift model with identical shift values of the nearest planes (110) along [1¯10] or [11¯0] as a replacement for the tetragonal building blocks model. The work demonstrates that plane shift values differ dramatically between martensites, which agrees with ab initio calculations. The application of the constant plane shift and hard sphere models in modulated lattices for atomic-level twinning considerations is discussed.

A hierarchical adversarial multi-target domain adaptation for gear fault diagnosis under variable working condition based on raw acoustic signal

Acoustic-based diagnosis (ABD) relied on air-coupled measurement is received great attention in recent years due to its ability in overcoming the limitation of vibration-based diagnosis on contact measurement. However, most of the ABD approaches are only focus on a stable working condition for analysis and research. Main challenge of ABD task is the unstable working condition including variable load and speed in real-industrial scenarios, which involve variation in amplitude and phase of acoustic signal to cause domain shift problem for fault pattern detection. In this condition, to perform ABD task for meeting the requirement of scalability in dealing with multiple targets under continuously variable working condition, a novel hierarchical adversarial multiple-target domains adaptation (HAMT-DA) learning framework is proposed in this paper. Following the naturally solution idea, a target-compress adversarial adaptation (TCAA) mechanism is developed in the first-level of framework to compress multiple-target domains by minimizing the feature distribution discrepancy over all domains, and narrow the divergence between source and target domains concurrently. Then, domain invariant feature refining (DIFR) strategy is designed to take responsibility for second-level domain adaptation in the intermediate of framework by refining domain invariant attribute and encoding the domain invariant feature into high-level semantic representation space. Subsequently, a class-separate adversarial adaptation (CSAA) method is explored in the roof of the hierarchical framework for the exploration of fault-discriminative property by forming third-level domain adaptation. Thus, the entire HAMT-DA learning framework can be obtained for single source to multiple-target (SSMT) cross-domain ABD task. The experiment result in variable working conditions indicate that the proposed method has more than 94% average diagnosis performance for gear fault patterns in five cross-domain validation tasks and achieve the highest recognition accuracy among four verifications, which is about 7% average improvement than that of the optimal comparison method. It verifies the superiority of our method on robustness and generalization for acoustic-based gear fault diagnosis under SSMT setting.

Preparation of Robust, Room‐Temperature Self‐Healable and Recyclable Polysiloxanes Based on Hierarchical Hard Domains

The contradiction between high mechanical strength and mild healing conditions has long existed in self‐healing materials, which limits the application of self‐healing materials. The preparation of robust materials with excellent healing performance under mild conditions can effectively reduce resource waste and environmental pollution. Herein, self‐healing polysiloxane elastomer materials, APDMS‐MDI‐IPDI‐Bs, based on microphase separation strategy are reported. Through the synergistic effect of the designed urea hydrogen bond and the nitrogen‐coordinated boroxine structure, the materials can maintain high mechanical properties (maximum tensile strength up to 3.35 MPa, elongation at break up to 316%), while maintaining excellent self‐healing and recyclable ability (24 h healing efficiency at room temperature can reach 94.77 ± 3.23%), and the performance can be repeated many times without decay. APDMS‐MDI‐IPDI‐Bs also exhibit unique hydrophobicity, expanding the application scenarios of materials containing boroxine structure.

Truthful Transaction Protocol for E-Commerce Networks Based on Double Auction

With the prosperous development of e-commerce, customized products have gradually become an important part of online transactions, opening up a new promising market for traditional e-commerce. However, mainstream transaction networks do not provide efficient support to transactions of customized products, thus failing to meet the personalized needs of customers, and pricing strategies are usually dominated by sellers, leading to loss of customers' interests. To overcome these problems, we propose an efficient truthful transaction protocol for e-commerce networks, called ETTP. First, we design a screening algorithm to achieve on-demand selection of transaction participants in hierarchical network domains before transaction initiation. This screening algorithm is customer-oriented and offers personalized commodities by preventing unqualified sellers from participating in the transaction. Furthermore, we develop the ETTP-Auction algorithm based on double auction to improve the transaction efficiency. ETTP-Auction inherently ensures the participation of buyers in pricing and protects their interests. Finally, we prove theoretically that ETTP-Auction satisfies the four economic properties (individual rationality, incentive compatibility, budget balance, and computational efficiency) and verify the performance of the proposed method through simulations. Our ETTP protocol achieves significantly higher system performance, reduces communication overhead, and features better scalability compared with benchmark methods.

Deciphering Hierarchical Chromatin Domains and Preference of Genomic Position Forming Boundaries in Single Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells.

The exploration of single-cell 3D genome maps reveals that chromatin domains are indeed physical structures presenting in single cells, and domain boundaries vary from cell to cell. However, systematic analysis of the association between regulatory factor binding and elements and the formation of chromatin domains in single cells has not yet emerged. To this end, a hierarchical chromatin domain structure identification algorithm (named as HiCS) is first developed from individual single-cell Hi-C maps, with superior performance in both accuracy and efficiency. The results suggest that in addition to the known CTCF-cohesin complex, Polycomb, TrxG, pluripotent protein families, and other multiple factors also contribute to shaping chromatin domain boundaries in single embryonic stem cells. Different cooperation patterns of these regulatory factors drive genomic position categories with differential preferences forming boundaries, and the most extensive six types of retrotransposons are differentially distributed in these genomic position categories with preferential localization. The above results suggest that these different retrotransposons within genomic regions interplay with regulatory factors navigating the preference of genomic positions forming boundaries, driving the formation of higher-order chromatin structures, and thus regulating cell functions in single mouse embryonic stem cells.

Superior high-temperature piezoelectric performances in BF-PT-BT ceramics via electric field constructed phase boundary

Owing to the mutual restriction between piezoelectric coefficient (d33) and Curie temperature (Tc), the discovery of high-temperature piezoceramics with large d33 is highly desirable but challenging. Here, BiFeO3-BaTiO3-PbTiO3 (BF-BT-PT) ternary system is redesigned by combining the low lattice distortion of BF-BT perovskites and rhombohedral-tetragonal coexistence of BF-PT phase boundary. As a result, excellent comprehensive piezoelectric properties with a large d33 of ∼380 pC/N and a high Tc of ∼483 °C are obtained in a tetragonal composition close to the triple point. Interestingly, even though a c/a ratio as large as 1.04 can be detected in the virgin sample, hierarchical domains that macrodomains composed of nanosized stripe domains can be found. The tetragonal phase could partly transform into a monoclinic phase under electric field according to in-situ high-energy synchrotron X-ray diffraction measurement, constructing a field-induced morphotropic phase boundary. The large lattice distortion and unstable phase structure simultaneously contribute to the high Tc, and large d33 for the studied BF-BT-PT ceramics, respectively, showing great potential for high-temperature sensors and transducers.

Fabrication of Adsorption-Type Hierarchical Functional Films by Using a Facile Swollen Based Breath Figure Method.

The morphology transition from primary to hierarchical adsorption-type microporous domains of amphiphilic block copolymer (BCP) honeycomb-structured films is demonstrated by a facile swollen based breath figure (BF) method. The characteristic parameters of poly(4-vinylpyridine)-block-polystyrene (P4VP-b-PS) hierarchical micro- and submicroporous films can be controlled by changing the length of segments or subsequent swelling conditions. A plausible mechanism is demonstrated in this research. A typical amphiphilic BCP with very low volume content of hydrophilic blocks (fP4VP ≤ 0.050) can efficiently stabilize water droplets and inherently assist in the formation of morphology transition. This BCP film can be used for Cr(VI) removal from wastewater, which additionally has enormous potential application in the field of novel optical devices, soft lithography, size-selective separation, etc.

TADfit is a multivariate linear regression model for profiling hierarchical chromatin domains on replicate Hi-C data

Topologically associating domains (TADs) are fundamental building blocks of three dimensional genome, and organized into complex hierarchies. Identifying hierarchical TADs on Hi-C data helps to understand the relationship between genome architectures and gene regulation. Herein we propose TADfit, a multivariate linear regression model for profiling hierarchical chromatin domains, which tries to fit the interaction frequencies in Hi-C contact matrix with and without replicates using all-possible hierarchical TADs, and the significant ones can be determined by the regression coefficients obtained with the help of an online learning solver called Follow-The-Regularized-Leader (FTRL). Beyond the existing methods, TADfit has an ability to handle multiple contact matrix replicates and find partially overlapping TADs on them, which helps to find the comprehensive underlying TADs across replicates from different experiments. The comparative results tell that TADfit has better accuracy and reproducibility, and the hierarchical TADs called by it exhibit a reasonable biological relevance.

Automated Multi-Scale and Multivariate Geological Logging from Drill-Core Hyperspectral Data

Hyperspectral drill-core scanning adds value to exploration campaigns by providing continuous, high-resolution mineralogical data over the length of entire boreholes. However, multivariate mineralogical data must be transformed into lithological domains such that it is compatible with interpolation techniques and be usable for geomodeling. Manual interpretation of multivariate drill-core data is a challenging, time-consuming and subjective task, and automated or semi-automated approaches are needed. However, naive machine-learning techniques that ignore the distinct spatial structure and multi-scale nature of geological systems tend to produce geologically unreasonable results. Automated geological logging and multi-scale hierarchical domaining of drill-cores has been previously addressed in several studies by means of scalograms from a wavelet transform and tessellation, albeit exploiting only univariate information. The methodology involves the extraction of the local first principal component at a neighborhood of each observation, and the segmentation of the resulting series of scores with a continuous wavelet transform for boundary detection. In this way, the correlation pattern between the variables is incorporated into the segmentation. The scalogram accurately locates the geological boundaries at depth and yields hierarchical geological domains with mineralogical composition characteristics. The performance of this approach is demonstrated on a synthetic as well as a real multivariate dataset. The real dataset consists of mineral abundances derived from drill-core hyperspectral imaging data acquired in Elvira, a shale-hosted volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit located in the Iberian Pyrite Belt, where 7000 m of drill-core were acquired along 80 boreholes. The extracted domains are sensible from a geological point of view and spatially coherent across the boreholes in cross-sections. The results at relevant scales were qualitatively validated by comparing against the lithological log. This method is fast, is appropriate for multivariate geological data along boreholes, and provides a choice of scales for hierarchical geological domains along boreholes with mineralogical composition characteristics that can be modeled in 3D. Our approach provides an automatic way to transform hyperspectral image-derived mineral maps into vertically coherent geological units that are appropriate inputs for 3D geological modeling workflows. Moreover, the method improves the boundary detection and geological domaining by making use of multivariate information.

Genome-wide maps of nucleolus interactions reveal distinct layers of repressive chromatin domains

Eukaryotic chromosomes are folded into hierarchical domains, forming functional compartments. Nuclear periphery and nucleolus are two nuclear landmarks contributing to repressive chromosome architecture. However, while the role of nuclear lamina (NL) in genome organization has been well documented, the function of the nucleolus remains under-investigated due to the lack of methods for the identification of nucleolar associated domains (NADs). Here we have established DamID- and HiC-based methodologies to generate accurate genome-wide maps of NADs in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and neural progenitor cells (NPCs), revealing layers of genome compartmentalization with distinct, repressive chromatin states based on the interaction with the nucleolus, NL, or both. NADs show higher H3K9me2 and lower H3K27me3 content than regions exclusively interacting with NL. Upon ESC differentiation into NPCs, chromosomes around the nucleolus acquire a more compact, rigid architecture with neural genes moving away from nucleoli and becoming unlocked for later activation. Further, histone modifications and the interaction strength within A and B compartments of NADs and LADs in ESCs set the choice to associate with NL or nucleoli upon dissociation from their respective compartments during differentiation. The methodologies here developed will make possible to include the nucleolar contribution in nuclear space and genome function in diverse biological systems.

Stress Engineering of Perovskite Ceramics for Enhanced Piezoelectricity and Temperature Stability toward Energy Harvesting

Piezoelectric energy harvesting as an available technology for realizing self-powered microsensors has attracted increasing attention. However, the combination of large piezoelectricity and high-temperature stability is a huge challenge in perovskite ceramics for developing piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) toward wide-temperature applications. Herein, a stress engineering strategy was proposed to address this problem by combining lattice stress and heterogeneous interface stress. Based on this concept, (Ni0.9Zn0.1)TiO3-modified Pb[(Zn1/3Nb2/3)0.2(Zr1/2Ti1/2)0.8]O3 ceramic achieves both enhanced piezoelectricity and high-temperature stability (d33 = 485 pC/N ± 20%) over a wide temperature range of 24–250 °C, superior to the pristine counterpart and many state-of-the-art commercial lead zirconate titanate-based ceramics. This benefits from the hierarchical domains with high piezoelectric activity and temperature stability caused by stress engineering. Furthermore, the assembled corresponding PEH not only successfully drives a wireless monitoring and alarm system but also exhibits considerable power generation capacities (e.g., power density of up to 98.8 μW/cm3) even at 250 °C. Our work may provide a pathway for developing high-performance perovskite materials with high piezoelectricity and thermal reliability toward high-temperature piezoelectric energy harvesting.

A healable poly(urethane-urea) elastomer with ultra-high mechanical strength enabled by tailoring multiple relaxation dynamics of hierarchical hard domains

A healable poly(urethane-urea) elastomer with ultra-high mechanical strength enabled by tailoring multiple relaxation dynamics of hierarchical hard domains.

FISH Going Meso-Scale: A Microscopic Search for Chromatin Domains.

The intimate relationships between genome structure and function direct efforts toward deciphering three-dimensional chromatin organization within the interphase nuclei at different genomic length scales. For decades, major insights into chromatin structure at the level of large-scale euchromatin and heterochromatin compartments, chromosome territories, and subchromosomal regions resulted from the evolution of light microscopy and fluorescence in situ hybridization. Studies of nanoscale nucleosomal chromatin organization benefited from a variety of electron microscopy techniques. Recent breakthroughs in the investigation of mesoscale chromatin structures have emerged from chromatin conformation capture methods (C-methods). Chromatin has been found to form hierarchical domains with high frequency of local interactions from loop domains to topologically associating domains and compartments. During the last decade, advances in super-resolution light microscopy made these levels of chromatin folding amenable for microscopic examination. Here we are reviewing recent developments in FISH-based approaches for detection, quantitative measurements, and validation of contact chromatin domains deduced from C-based data. We specifically focus on the design and application of Oligopaint probes, which marked the latest progress in the imaging of chromatin domains. Vivid examples of chromatin domain FISH-visualization by means of conventional, super-resolution light and electron microscopy in different model organisms are provided.