Sequential Operations Research Articles

Speaker Recognition Assessment in a Continuous System for Speaker Identification

This research article presented and focused on recognizing speakers through multi-speaker speeches. The participation of several speakers includes every conference, talk or discussion. This type of talk has different problems as well as stages of processing. Challenges include the unique impurity of the surroundings, the involvement of speakers, speaker distance, microphone equipment etc. In addition to addressing these hurdles in real time, there are also problems in the treatment of the multi-speaker speech. Identifying speech segments, separating the speaking segments, constructing clusters of similar segments and finally recognizing the speaker using these segments are the common sequential operations in the context of multi-speaker speech recognition. All linked phases of speech recognition processes are discussed with relevant methodologies in this article. This entire article will examine the common metrics, methods and conduct. This paper examined the algorithm of speech recognition system at different stages. The voice recognition systems are built through many phases such as voice filter, speaker segmentation, speaker idolization and the recognition of the speaker by 20 speakers.

Modeling of electrochemical pH swing extraction reveals economic potential for closed-loop bio-succinic acid production

Resource-efficient separation processes are a vital technology for the success of renewable chemicals. Electrochemical pH swing separation has the potential to overcome the unsustainable consumption of acid and base and eventual salt-waste production, which was found a major hurdle in the industrialization of bio-succinic acid production. It furthermore enables the in situ product recovery by reactive extraction and the recycling of an alkaline stream into the fermentation for pH control. A dynamic model of a bio-succinic acid fermentation and electrochemical recovery process is developed. The fermentation is fed with waste glycerol and carbon dioxide, the co-products of biodiesel and bioethanol plants, respectively. Succinic acid is separated by an electrochemically induced pH shift reactive extraction. The model-based investigation of this electrochemical extraction apparatus analyzes kinetic phenomena, operative boundaries, and sensitivities towards changes in the cell geometry. The potential for closed-loop operation of bio-succinic acid fermentation and electrochemical pH swing extraction for product recovery and base regeneration is examined. In contrast to a sequential operation of fermentation and extraction, the in situ product removal of succinic acid allows for utilization of feedstocks with substrate concentrations of up to 99 wt% without the need for an additional diluting water feed. The concentrated feedstock and the electrochemical in situ separation of succinic acid cause a rise in downstream process yield by 26.2% and process productivity by 35.6%. The consumption of pH control agent is reduced by 88.7% compared to the sequential operation.

A coordinated control method of aggregate AC load for auxiliary frequency regulation service

Large-scale fixed frequency air-conditioners (FFAC) and inverter air-conditioners (IAC) are high-quality flexible load resources in the power system. This paper proposes a coordinated control method of aggregate air-conditioner (AC) load for auxiliary frequency regulation services. Firstly, a new method for evaluating the frequency regulation potential (FRP) of aggregate AC is proposed. This method can rapidly evaluate the FFAC and IAC’s potential of providing frequency regulation at all stages. Then the day-ahead frequency regulation capacity (FRC) of aggregate AC at each time period is determined based on the frequency and unit commitment constraints. Afterwards, a coordinated control method considering users’ comfort level is developed to ensure the sequential operation of each AC and support the frequency regulation of the power grid. Finally, a simulation is conducted to demonstrate that the proposed method can realize the coordinated control of FFAC and IAC and improve the frequency stability of the power system.

A groundbreaking biorefinery loop for the valorization of cigarette butts into fermentable sugars and bioethanol

Cigarette Butts are one of the most diffused and toxic waste in urban contexts. They are composed by a cellulose acetate filter, used to retain toxic compounds during the smoking of cigarette, and eventual tobacco's residues. This work had the ambitious to exploit cigarette butts in a biorefinery scheme to produce fermentable sugars and bioethanol. Cigarette butts followed different sequential operations. Deacetylation of cellulose acetate was optimized by a lipase treatment, which played an important role in the biological degradation and deacetylation of cellulose acetate. The following cellulase addition allowed the conversion of the deacetylated cellulose into fermentable sugars. In particular, the best performances were obtained with a cellulase addition of 10% of the cigarette butts, which led to a final fermentable sugars' concentration of about 12 g/L, corresponding to a cigarette butts' conversion of about 70% w/w. Then, the fermentable sugars were used as substrates for bioethanol production by three different yeasts: Metschnikowia pulcherrima MALV5, Lachancea fermentati LS16 and Saccharomyces cerevisiae EC1118. Metschnikowia pulcherrima MALV5, Lachancea fermentati LS16 achieved similar results with a bioethanol production of 2.14 and 2.44 g/L, respectively, corresponding to a fermentable sugars conversion of about 20% w/w.

Self-phase modulation and inter-polarization cross-phase modulation mitigation in single-channel DP-16QAM coherent PON employing 4D clustering

Digital coherent reception has emerged as a potential solution for 100 Gbps passive optical networks (PONs). In this paper, we propose and analyze the simultaneous clustering of both polarizations in dual-polarization 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-16QAM) to tackle the effects of the intra-polarization self-phase modulation and inter-polarization cross-phase modulation. Simulation results reveal that by processing the two polarizations, the performance of the nonlinear compensation is significantly enhanced. Thus, the proposed 4D clustering leads to range extensions of 13.6 km and 9 km for target bit error ratios of 10−3 and 10−2, respectively. Such range extension requires a block of around 8000 symbols and 5632 operations, which can be parallelized, requiring just 19 sequential operations.

Impaired executive functioning mediates the association between aging and deterministic sequence learning

ABSTRACT Sensitivity to the fixed ordering of actions and events, or deterministic sequence learning, is an important skill throughout adulthood. Yet, it remains unclear whether age deficits in sequencing exist, and we lack a firm understanding of which factors might contribute to age-related impairments when they arise. Though debated, executive functioning, governed by the frontal lobe, may underlie age-related sequence learning deficits in older adults. The present study asked if age predicts errors in deterministic sequence learning across the older adult lifespan (ages 55–89), and whether executive functioning accounts for any age-related declines. Healthy older adults completed a comprehensive measure of frontal-based executive abilities as well as a deterministic sequence learning task that required the step-by-step acquisition of associations through trial-and-error feedback. Among those who met a performance-based criterion, increasing age was positively correlated with higher sequencing errors; however, this relationship was no longer significant after controlling for executive functioning. Moreover, frontal-based executive abilities mediated the relationship between age and sequence learning performance. These findings suggest that executive or frontal functioning may underlie age deficits in learning judgment-based, deterministic serial operations.

Research of “one key sequence control” test method based on panoramic digital simulation technology

Aiming at the problem that the current “one key sequence control” system cannot effectively carry out the test work after being deployed in a substation project, a “one key sequential control” test method based on panoramic digital simulation technology is proposed. The actual primary and secondary equipment is replaced by digital analog simulation, the instanced sequential control operation ticket is completed based on professional atlas theory, and the full logic test of the “one key sequence control” equipment status configuration library, operation ticket configuration library, operation process, error prevention logic, dual criteria, etc., is completed so as to realize the visual test of all configurations of the “one key sequence control” system. It provides an efficient and reliable technical method for the testing and acceptance of the “one key sequential control” system.

Frailty in middle cranial fossa approach for encephalocele or cerebrospinal fluid leak repair.

The modified 5-item frailty index (mFI-5) is a concise, comorbidity-based risk stratification tool that can predict adverse outcomes after surgery. The goal of this study was to understand the frailty of patients undergoing surgery for temporal encephalocele or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak and the utility of mFI-5 for predicting increased post-operative outcomes. A retrospective review of adults with temporal encephalocele or CSF leak who underwent middle cranial fossa (MCF) approach craniotomies with or without mastoidectomy from January 2015 through August 2021 at a tertiary care academic medical center was performed. Patients who underwent additional surgeries or extended surgical approaches were excluded. The mFI-5 was calculated for all patients. Demographic and clinical data were obtained from the medical record. Thirty-six patients underwent 40 MCF approach craniotomies for temporal encephalocele or CSF leak, including three revision cases and one patient with sequential bilateral operations. Mean age was 54.1 ± 10.8 years, and 66.7% were female. In the univariable regression analysis, mFI-5 score, age, and procedure time use were significantly associated with increased hospital length of stay (LOS) but not increased intensive care unit (ICU) LOS. Anesthesia time and lumbar drain were significantly associated with increased hospital LOS and ICU LOS, and they remained significantly associated with increased hospital LOS in the multivariable model. Frailty is associated with increased hospital LOS stay among patients undergoing MCF approach for CSF leak or encephalocele. Reducing anesthesia time and avoiding lumbar drain use are potentially modifiable risk factors that can reduce the LOS and associated costs. 4.

ON THE THEORY OF SYNTHESIS OF MINIMAL SCHEMES OF SYSTEMS CONTROL OF HYDRAULIC AND PNEUMATIC DRIVES

Showed the strict compliance of the scientific direction "Synthesis of minimum control schemes of hydraulic and pneumatic drive systems" developed by the author with the point of view of general algebra, algebra of logic, graph theory and automata theory. The synthesis of the minimum graph of operations, which is a mathematical model of the control system, has been proved. The legitimacy of the methods of undivided decomposition of equations describing the scheme of the control system has been proved. The control system is considered as a cyclic Moore finite automaton. By a cyclic automaton (CA) we will understand the mathematical model of a device designed to control cyclic processes, which are a set of technological operations performed in a certain sequence. In this regard, the automaton at each clock necessarily passes into some new state, and for a finite number of cycles the target reaches any state, and its graph contains a contour, covering all states. In general, the CA may contain several circuits, so that each circuit is interpreted either as one of the possible sequences of technological operations due to the corresponding mode of operation, or as an independent and simultaneous execution of a number of sets of technological operations. A sequential decomposition of the CA is presented in order to represent it by the sequential operation of automata with one internal state. Such a consideration of the function of transitions will naturally lead to a decrease in the number of elements in the implementation of the CA. The study will be subjected to the CA, the graph of which consists of a single circuit, since the results obtained are easily generalized to multi-circuit CA. Obtaining a breakdown of the states of a cyclic automaton in the manner indicated above is performed directly according to any automaton description without any additional calculations, tables and other constructions.

Application of bilateral simultaneous sequential single-incision video-assisted thoracic surgery in multiple nodules both lungs: a single-center experience of 10 cases

ObjectiveTo discuss the application of bilateral simultaneous sequential single-incision video-assisted thoracic surgery in multiple nodules in both lungs.MethodsA retrospective analysis of 10 patients in Zhengzhou People’s Hospital who underwent single-incision thoracoscopic surgery to treat multiple nodules in both lungs at the same time from September 2019 to January 2021, and analyze the perioperative indicators (general condition, smoking history, family history, follow-up time of pulmonary nodules, size, location, height and weight, pulmonary function, intraoperative blood loss, operation time, color and volume of drainage fluid, catheterization time, perioperative complications, length of stay, pathology, patient satisfaction, etc.).ResultsAll 10 patients used single-incision thoracoscopy to complete bilateral simultaneous sequential operations, aged 32 to 70 years, 8 female patients, 2 male patients, preoperative follow-up time ranging from 1 day to 2 years, a total of 23 lung nodules were removed except for the benign lesions in one nodule in the 2 patients, the other nodules were tumorous lesions (91.3%). The average total hospital stay was 10.5 days (8–14 days), and the average operation time was 194.5 min (145–292 min). The blood loss ranged from 10 to 280 ml, all patients had no serious complications during the perioperative period, and they recovered well and were discharged smoothly, and the satisfaction reached 100%.ConclusionSingle-incision bilateral simultaneous sequential thoracoscopy have certain advantages in the treatment of patients with multiple nodules in both lungs, conforms to the concept of rapid recovery, and is a feasible choice in the shared decision making of doctors and patients.

Integrating diminished quality of life with virtual reality for occupational health and safety training

Safety training using Virtual Reality (VR) can be widely found in many industries. They are majorly focused on educating sequential operations, standard working procedures, and short-term safety risk assessment. Occupational health and safety (OHS) issues at the workplace contain both short-term safety incidents and long-term health issues. Comparing to short-term safety training, long-term health training is little discussed in the existing literature. One of the reasons is that the health issues are more complex than safety, as the biological outcomes may take time to develop, affected by multiple resources, and the injuries may be cumulative. The key contribution of the current paper is the development of a solid training method based on the integration of diminished quality of life (DQL) risk assessment and VR, namely DQL-VR. The use of DQL-VR would assist in delivering OHS knowledge to trainees with a special focus on chronic health components. The use of DQL increases the ability of trainees to determine long-term health hazards and perceive long-term health risks. The use of VR improves the learning efficacy and users’ acceptance of the safety training. A pilot test is investigated to examine the efficacy of DQL-VR comparing with traditional safety training. The result shows that DQL-VR has great positive efforts in teaching hazard identification and risk perception, especially for long-term health aspects. The findings also indicate that the use of DQL-VR would benefit trainees’ recall of knowledge. The development of DQL-VR also offers opportunities for trainees to foresee the hazards and experience the harmful consequences in a safe environment.

Tailored ion beam for precise colour centre creation.

We present an invariant-based quantum control scheme leading to a highly monochromatic ion beam from a Paul trap. Our protocol is implementable by supplying the segmented electrodes in the trap with voltages of the order of volts. This mitigates the impact of fluctuations in previous designs and leads to a low-dispersion beam of ions. Moreover, our proposal does not rely on sympathetically cooling ions, which bypasses the need of loading different species in the trap-namely, the propelled ion and, e.g. a [Formula: see text] to exert sympathetic cooling-significantly incrementing the repetition rate of the launching procedure. Our scheme is based on an invariant operator linear in position and momentum, which enables us to control the average extraction energy and the outgoing momentum spread. In addition, we propose a sequential operation to tailor the transversal properties of the beam before the ejection to minimize the impact spot and to increase the lateral resolution of the implantation. This article is part of the theme issue 'Shortcuts to adiabaticity: theoretical, experimental and interdisciplinary perspectives'.

GPU implementations of deflate encoding and decoding

SummaryDeflate coding is a very popular lossless data compression method used in zlib, gzip (GNU zip), and zip, which performs the LZSS compression algorithm with Huffman coding. Deflate encoding and decoding involve sequential operations and their parallel acceleration using a GPU is quite hard. The main purpose of this paper is to present GPU implementations for encoding and decoding of Deflate coding. For efficient GPU implementations of Deflate coding, we have used multiple small hash tables for finding matching subsequences in the dictionary by multiple threads in parallel and applied the Single Kernel Soft Synchronization (SKSS) technique to fully utilize GPU computing resources. We have also adopted Huffman coding with gap arrays to accelerate parallel Huffman decoding. We have evaluated the performance of our GPU implementations using an NVIDIA A100 GPU and compared them with parallel/sequential Deflate encoding and decoding on the Intel X86 multicore CPUs using multiple threads/a single thread. Our GPU implementation of Deflate decoding is 1.66x–8.33x faster than the multiple thread implementation and 4.13x–36.56x faster than the single thread implementation.

Analysis of electro-chemical RAM synaptic array for energy-efficient weight update

While electro-chemical RAM (ECRAM)-based cross-point synaptic arrays are considered to be promising candidates for energy-efficient neural network computational hardware, array-level analyses to achieve energy-efficient update operations have not yet been performed. In this work, we fabricated CuOx/HfOx/WOx ECRAM arrays and demonstrated linear and symmetrical weight update capabilities in both fully parallel and sequential update operations. Based on the experimental measurements, we showed that the source-drain leakage current (ISD) through the unselected ECRAM cells and resultant energy consumption—which had been neglected thus far—contributed a large portion to the total update energy. We showed that both device engineering to reduce ISD and the selection of an update scheme—for example, column-by-column—that avoided ISD intervention via unselected cells were key to enable energy-efficient neuromorphic computing.

Pilot-scale study of biomethanation in biological trickle bed reactors converting impure CO2 from a Full-scale biogas plant

Research within biological methanation has been a great development using biotrickling filters (BTF), as a power-to-x solution, but research within up scaling is missing. This study investigates the commercial potential of biomethanation in BTF by operating two 1 m3 reactors which was implemented into a full-scale biogas plant. Several areas were investigated, such as enrichment and start-up, long-term steady state operation, serial operation, and intermittent feed. A methane productivity of 9.44 NmCH43 mR-3 day-1 with a product gas of 95.7 % CH4 was obtained for parallel operation, whereas during serial operation a methane productivity of 10.6 NmCH43 mR-3 day-1 at 97.4 % CH4 was achieved. The flexibility of the biomethanation was demonstrated with unintentional loss of H2 feed in periods of 12 to 72 h, where initial performance was regained within 6 to 12 h. The results from this study demonstrate the potential for commercial use of biomethanation in BTF for future Power-to-X solutions.

Biodegradation of 2-4-6 trichlorophenol by sequencing batch reactors (SBR) equipped with a rotating biological bed and operated in an anaerobic-aerobic condition

2-4-6 Trichlorophenol (TCP) is toxic, carcinogenic, and resistant to biodegradation. In this study, a rotating biological bed (RBB) was used to improve the efficiency of Sequencing batch reactors (SBR), and it was operated in sequential anaerobic and aerobic conditions. Biofilm growth on media of rotating biological bed was also confirmed using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). In this study, the effect of 2-4-6 trichlorophenol concentration (5–430 mg/L), hydraulic retention time (HRT) (12–30 h), the number of operating cycles per day (6–12 cycles/d), the type of combination of anaerobic and aerobic processes and the presence of a rotating biological bed and its rotation were studied. SBR equipped with a rotating biological bed (SBR-RBB) with the sequential anaerobic-aerobic operation in optimal operating conditions (TCP: 430 mg/L, cycles/d: 8, and HRT: 6 h) can remove nearly 100% of TCP and more than 95% of TP and COD. The role of the presence of an RBB in removing TCP, TP, and COD was 7, 20, and 23%, respectively. The role of rotation of RBB also was 23%, 10, 21, and 62%, respectively. So, SBR-RBB, with the sequential anaerobic-aerobic operation, was able to remove higher concentrations of TCP (430 mg/L) in a shorter HRT (6 h) with higher efficiency (nearly 100%) compared to previous studies. Therefore, for the first time in this study, the biological treatment of 430 mg/L of TCP is reported by a biological process.

Application of systemic treatment in conversion therapy options for liver cancer.

Radical hepatectomy is the main treatment method to improve the prognosis of patients with intermediate and early-stage liver cancer. Most liver cancer patients in China are in the advanced stage at the initial diagnosis, losing the opportunity for surgical treatment. Therefore, it is essential to down-stage unresectable liver cancer to resectable liver cancer clinically, which is an important way to improve patients’ survival and a hotspot of current clinical research. In recent years, with the increase in effective treatment methods for liver cancer, the resection rate of conversion surgery for unresectable advanced liver cancer has been significantly improved, and a growing number of patients benefit from conversion therapy. This article mainly reviews the connotation of conversion therapy for liver cancer, the patient selection, the selection of conversion strategy, the timing of sequential operations, the scheme and safety, etc.

Optically Controlled Thermochromic Switching for Multi‐Input Molecular Logic

AbstractLeuco dye‐based thermochromic materials offer enormous potential for visible molecular logic due to the appealing reversible color‐changing effect. The stable color state is uncontrollable as it depends only on the spontaneous protonation of the leuco dye and color developer. There is still a challenge to propose an effective approach to control bistable color function at required temperature. A family of azobenzenes with various alkyl chains (AZO(n)) is designed for protonation competition with leuco dye. The hydrogen bond and Van der Waals forces are formed between color developer and AZO(n). The color developer can be locked to provide the proton for the leuco dye by Z‐AZO(n), while it can be released upon Z‐to‐E photoisomerization. The locked state can be lasted for more than 16 hours. This optically controlled leuco dye‐based system demonstrates a visible sequential logic operation with four‐input signals, and provides a new type of protonation‐based optical control.

Optically Controlled Thermochromic Switching for Multi-Input Molecular Logic.

Leuco dye-based thermochromic materials offer enormous potential for visible molecular logic due to the appealing reversible color-changing effect. The stable color state is uncontrollable as it depends only on the spontaneous protonation of the leuco dye and color developer. There is still a challenge to propose an effective approach to control bistable color function at required temperature. A family of azobenzenes with various alkyl chains (AZO(n)) is designed for protonation competition with leuco dye. The hydrogen bond and Van der Waals forces are formed between color developer and AZO(n). The color developer can be locked to provide the proton for the leuco dye by Z-AZO(n), while it can be released upon Z-to-E photoisomerization. The locked state can be lasted for more than 16 hours. This optically controlled leuco dye-based system demonstrates a visible sequential logic operation with four-input signals, and provides a new type of protonation-based optical control.

Rapid Microchip Electrophoretic Separation of Novel Transcriptomic Body Fluid Markers for Forensic Fluid Profiling.

Initial screening of criminal evidence often involves serological testing of stains of unknown composition and/or origin discovered at a crime scene to determine the tissue of origin. This testing is presumptive but critical for contextualizing the scene. Here, we describe a microfluidic approach for body fluid profiling via fluorescent electrophoretic separation of a published mRNA panel that provides unparalleled specificity and sensitivity. This centrifugal microfluidic approach expedites and automates the electrophoresis process by allowing for simple, rotationally driven flow and polymer loading through a 5 cm separation channel; with each disc containing three identical domains, multi-sample analysis is possible with a single disc and multi-sample detection per disc. The centrifugal platform enables a series of sequential unit operations (metering, mixing, aliquoting, heating, storage) to execute automated electrophoretic separation. Results show on-disc fluorescent detection and sizing of amplicons to perform comparably with a commercial ‘gold standard’ benchtop instrument and permitted sensitive, empirical discrimination between five distinct body fluids in less than 10 min. Notably, our microfluidic platform represents a faster, simpler method for separation of a transcriptomic panel to be used for forensically relevant body fluid identification.