Search Results (213)

We discuss Markov edge processes $\{Y_e;e\in E\}$ defined on edges of a directed acyclic graph $(V,E)$ with the consistency property ${\mathrm{P}}_{E^{\prime }}(Y_e;e\in E^{\prime })={\mathrm{P}}_E(Y_e;e\in E^{\prime })$ for a large class of subgraphs $(V^{\prime },E^{\prime })$ of $(V,E)$ obtained through a mesh dismantling algorithm. The probability distribution ${\mathrm{P}}_E$ of such edge process is a discrete version of consistent polygonal Markov graphs. The class of Markov edge processes is related to the class of Bayesian networks and may be of interest to causal inference and decision theory. On regular $\nu$-dimensional lattices, consistent Markov edge processes have similar properties to Pickard random fields on ${\mathbb{Z}}^2$, representing a far-reaching extension of the latter class. A particular case of binary consistent edge process on ${\mathbb{Z}}^3$ was disclosed by Arak in a private communication. We prove that the symmetric binary Pickard model generates the Arak model on ${\mathbb{Z}}^2$ as a contour model. Full article

To evaluate the effects of dietary threonine levels on rice field eels (Monopterus albus), six experimental diets were formulated with graded threonine supplementation: 0 g/kg (T1), 3 g/kg (T2), 6 g/kg (T3), 9 g/kg (T4), 12 g/kg (T5), and 15 g/kg (T6). Rice field eels, with an initial body weight of 18.47 ± 0.11 g, were fed for 60 days. The weight gain ratio (WGR), specific growth rate (SGR), and protein efficiency ratio (PER) significantly increased in the T4 group, while feed conversion ratio (FCR) significantly decreased. Broken-line regression analysis determined the optimal dietary threonine requirement to be 7.5–9.0 g/kg. Concomitantly, whole-body crude protein content increased, while lipid content decreased; serum GOT and GPT activities declined, indicating reduced hepatic stress, whereas hepatic CAT and SOD activities markedly increased, enhancing antioxidant capacity. Digestive enzyme capacity was enhanced, as evidenced by elevated lipase and trypsin activities. Muscle texture properties, including cohesiveness, springiness, and chewiness, were significantly improved in the T4 and T5 groups. At the molecular level, MyoG, MyoD1, and MYF5 expression peaked in T4, while MRF4 expression increased progressively. LEfSe analysis of the microbiome, coupled with KEGG functional prediction, revealed that Corynebacterium and Methylocella were positively correlated with growth metrics; these genera likely promote muscle deposition through three enriched metabolic pathways that enhance energy and amino acid availability. Collectively, dietary threonine supplementation at 7.5–9.0 g/kg promotes growth, enhances digestive function, and improves muscle quality in rice field eels. Full article

Broken or loose strands in high-voltage transmission conductors constitute critical defects that jeopardize grid reliability. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inspection has become indispensable for their timely discovery; however, conventional detectors falter in the face of cluttered backgrounds and the conductors’ diminutive pixel footprint, yielding sub-optimal accuracy and throughput. To overcome these limitations, we present PowerStrand-YOLO—an enhanced YOLOv8 derivative tailored for UAV imagery. The method is trained on a purpose-built dataset and integrates three technical contributions. (1) A C2f_DCNv4 module is introduced to strengthen multi-scale feature extraction. (2) An EMA attention mechanism is embedded to suppress background interference and emphasize defect-relevant cues. (3) The original loss function is superseded by Shape-IoU, compelling the network to attend closely to the geometric contours and spatial layout of strand anomalies. Extensive experiments demonstrate 95.4% precision, 96.2% recall, and 250 FPS. Relative to the baseline YOLOv8, PowerStrand-YOLO improves precision by 3% and recall by 6.8% while accelerating inference. Moreover, it also demonstrates competitive performance on the VisDrone2019 dataset. These results establish the improved framework as a more accurate and efficient solution for UAV-based inspection of power transmission lines. Full article

To evaluate the response of broiler breeder hens submitted to different amino acid intakes of methionine+cystine, lysine, and threonine, and to determine the coefficients for egg output and body weight for maintenance. Three studies were performed using 160 broiler breeder hens housed individually in metabolic cages. A summit diet and a nitrogen-free diet were formulated. The levels ranged from 1.79 to 7.13, 2.49 to 8.3, and 2.04 to 6.79 g/kg of methionine+cystine, lysine, and threonine, respectively. The variables measured were feed intake, amino acid intake, rate of lay, egg weight, and egg output. The broken line model was used to evaluate the responses. It was verified that higher values of the rate of lay, egg weight, and egg output were observed for the higher concentrations of amino acids studied. A significant difference was observed for the variables rate of lay, egg weight, egg output, and body weight (p < 0.05) for the three amino acids evaluated. The amount of each amino acid required to produce one gram per egg was estimated at 12.4 mg, 14.5 mg, and 11.2 mg for methionine+cystine, lysine, and threonine, respectively. The values estimated by coefficient b that represent the amino acid for maintenance requirement were methionine+cystine, lysine, and threonine of 30.2, 32.2, and 42.4 mg/kg BW, respectively. The coefficients may be used to design additional models to study requirements nutrition in broiler breeders, allowing a better understanding of how these birds respond to different dietary amino acids. Full article

Power transmission infrastructure requires continuous inspection to prevent failures and ensure grid stability. UAV-based systems, enhanced with deep learning, have emerged as an efficient alternative to traditional, labor-intensive inspection methods. However, most existing approaches rely on separate models for cable segmentation and anomaly detection, leading to increased computational overhead and reduced reliability in real-time applications. To address these limitations, we propose PowerLine-MTYOLO, a lightweight, one-stage, multitask model designed for simultaneous power cable segmentation and broken strand detection from UAV imagery. Built upon the A-YOLOM architecture, and leveraging the YOLOv8 foundation, our model introduces four novel specialized modules—SDPM, HAD, EFR, and the Shape-Aware Wise IoU loss—that improve geometric understanding, structural consistency, and bounding-box precision. We also present the Merged Public Power Cable Dataset (MPCD), a diverse, open-source dataset tailored for multitask training and evaluation. The experimental results show that our model achieves up to +10.68% mAP@50 and +1.7% IoU compared to A-YOLOM, while also outperforming recent YOLO-based detectors in both accuracy and efficiency. These gains are achieved with a smaller model memory footprint and a similar inference speed compared to A-YOLOM. By unifying detection and segmentation into a single framework, PowerLine-MTYOLO offers a promising solution for autonomous aerial inspection and lays the groundwork for future advances in fine-structure monitoring tasks. Full article

Crop row identification and navigation line extraction are essential components for enabling autonomous operations of agricultural machinery. Aiming at the soybean–maize strip intercropping system, this study proposes a LiDAR-based algorithm for crop row detection and navigation line extraction. The proposed method consists of four primary stages: point cloud preprocessing, crop row region identification, feature point clustering, and navigation line extraction. Specifically, a combination of K-means and Euclidean clustering algorithms is employed to extract feature points representing crop rows. The central lines of the crop rows are then fitted using the least squares method, and a stable navigation path is constructed based on angle bisector principles. Field experiments were conducted under three representative scenarios: broken rows with missing plants, low occlusion, and high occlusion. The results demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits strong adaptability and robustness across various environments, achieving over 80% accuracy in navigation line extraction, with up to 90% in low-occlusion settings. The average navigation angle was controlled within 0.28°, with the minimum reaching 0.17°, and the average processing time remained below 75.62 ms. Moreover, lateral deviation tests confirmed the method’s high precision and consistency in path tracking, validating its feasibility and practicality for application in strip intercropping systems. Full article

An 8-week trial was conducted to investigate the effects of choline on the growth of Chinese perch (85.57 ± 0.54 g) with dietary choline supplementation at 0 (P0), 400 (P1), 800 (P2), 1600 (P3), 3200 (P4), and 6400 mg/kg (P5). Protein efficiency ratio and protein retention value (PRV) were higher in the P1–P4 groups than in the P0 group (p < 0.05). Compared to the P0 group, weight gain rate and specific growth rate (SGR) increased in the P2 and P3 groups (p < 0.05). The orexigenic gene agrp expression level rose in the P2–P4 groups (p < 0.05). The expression level of the lipolysis-related gene hsl or pparα was elevated in the P2 and P4 groups (p < 0.05). Proteolysis-related gene (ampd, mafbx, and murf1) expressions decreased in the P1–P4 groups, while tor and gk gene expressions increased in the P2 and P3 groups (p < 0.05). Broken-line analysis indicated that the optimal choline supplementation level for Chinese perch is 788.38 mg/kg based on SGR and 851.04 mg/kg based on PRV. The results demonstrate that moderate dietary choline supplementation enhances growth performance by promoting glucose and lipid catabolism and inhibiting protein catabolism in Chinese perch. Full article

The aim of this study is to establish an accurate calculation method for the deflection caused by the effect of pre-stress in a steel truss web–concrete composite girder bridge based on the energy variational principle, considering the influence of shear deformation and the shear lag effect of the steel truss web member on the accuracy of the deflection calculation. The pre-stress effect is determined by the equivalent load method, and the deflection analytical solution for a composite girder bridge under straight-line, broken-line, and curve pre-stressing tendon arrangements is established. The reliability of the formula is verified using ANSYS 2022 finite element numerical simulation. At the same time, the influence of shear deformation, the shear lag effect, and their combined (dual) effect on the deflection calculation accuracy is analyzed under different linear pre-stressed reinforcement arrangements and comprehensive arrangements of pre-stressed reinforcement. The analysis of the example shows that the analytical solution for the deflection of the steel truss web–concrete composite beam, when considering only the shear deformation and the dual effect, is more consistent with the finite element numerical solution. The shear deformation of the steel truss web member under the eccentric straight-line arrangement alone does not cause additional deflection, and the additional deflection caused by the shear lag effect can be ignored. The influence of shear deformation on deflection is higher than that of the shear lag effect. The contribution ratio of the additional deflection caused by the dual effect is greater than 14%, and the influence of the dual effect on deflection is more obvious under a broken-line arrangement. Under the comprehensive arrangement of pre-stressing tendons, the contribution rate of shear deformation to the total deflection is about 3.5 times that of shear lag. Compared with the deflection value of the primary beam, the mid-span deflection is increased by 3.0%, 11.0%, and 13.9% when only considering the shear lag effect, only considering shear deformation, and considering the dual effect, respectively. Therefore, shear deformation and the shear lag effect should be considered when calculating the camber of a steel truss web–concrete composite girder bridge to improve the calculation accuracy. Full article

While building the steel–concrete composite girder bridge by means of the incremental launching method, the steel box is directly in the sunlight, and the temperature impact should not be neglected. However, the existing specifications fail to offer the temperature gradient pattern applicable to the steel box featuring a significant height–width ratio and straight web. This paper, relying on the Fenshui River Bridge situated in the southwest region of China, carried out a temperature test. By analyzing the experimental data, the rules of temperature changes at the measuring points in various positions of the steel box were studied, and the temperature disparities of the steel box across different seasons were contrasted. Through the analysis of the test data, the rule governing temperature distribution across the height dimension of the cross-section and its change with time were studied, and a model designed to represent the temperature gradient within the steel box was put forward. By utilizing the numerical model, the effect of the temperature gradient on the force acting on the structure in the process of incremental launching was analyzed. The findings indicate that the temperature of the top plate of the steel box is the highest from 14:00 to 16:00. There is a lag phenomenon in the temperature rise in the bottom plate. The greatest temperature disparity between the upper and lower plates of the steel box is not always present in the season when the temperature is comparatively high. The curve of temperature gradient change exhibits nonlinear features, and the variation in temperature is considerable within the scope of 1 m. In this article, a double-broken line temperature gradient model is put forward, with the corresponding temperature gradient of 17.8 °C. The temperature gradient obviously affects the structural stress, changing the stress distribution, and it notably impacts the deformation. The deformation generated on the guide beam due to the temperature gradient makes up 39% of the total deformation. The temperature gradient is not a fixed value. When the steel box girder is under the jacking process, especially while the structure remains in its maximum cantilever condition and is about to cross the pier, the time should be avoided when the temperature gradient is at its highest. Full article

Broken access control vulnerabilities pose significant security risks to the protected web interfaces of IoT devices, enabling adversaries to gain unauthorized access to sensitive configurations and even use them as stepping stones for attacking the intranet. Despite its ranking as the first in the latest OWASP Top 10, there remains a lack of effective methodologies to detect these vulnerabilities systematically. We present ACBreaker, a novel methodology powered by a large language model (LLM), to effectively identify broken access control vulnerabilities in the protected web interfaces of IoT devices. Our methodology consists of three stages. The initial stage transforms firmware code that exceeds the LLM context window into semantically intact code snippets. The second stage involves using an LLM to extract device-specific information from firmware code. The final stage integrates this information into the mutation-based fuzzer to improve fuzzing effectiveness and employ differential analysis to identify vulnerabilities. We evaluated ACBreaker across 11 IoT devices, analyzing 1,274,646 lines of code and discovering 39 previously unknown vulnerabilities. We further analyzed these vulnerabilities, categorizing them into three types that contribute to protected interface evasion, and provided mitigation suggestions. These vulnerabilities were responsibly disclosed to vendors, with CVE IDs assigned to those in six IoT devices. Full article

The rupture of the contact wire (CW) of a railway overhead contact line (OCL or catenary) is expected to be a rare event. However, when it occurs, and a pantograph transits under the already broken section of the CW, this can have catastrophic consequences for the pantograph which in turn can cause a further extension of the damaged portion on the OCL with a consequent disruption in the service and cause there to be a long time before the operating condition can be restored. Therefore, the prevention of such events through effective catenary monitoring is gaining significant attention. The purpose of this work is to investigate the feasibility of a monitoring system that can be installed at each end of an OCL section which is able to detect the occurrence of a broken CW event, sending an alert to the management traffic system, so as to stop the train traffic before the damaged catenary is reached by other trains. A nonlinear dynamic analysis is employed to model the OCL’s response following a simulated CW rupture and identify a set of variables that can be measured at the line’s extremities related to the occurrence of breakage in the CW. Several locations of the rupture of a CW section along the line are simulated to investigate the influence on the time pattern of the measured variables and consequently on the extraction of a signature. Finally, a proposed measurement setup is presented, combining accelerometers and displacement transducers, instead of the direct measurement of the axial load of the OCL conductors. Full article

The paper presents an innovative matrix method for defect analysis in heterogeneous structures with significant differences in stiffness parameters. The proposed approach modifies the finite element method (FEM) by introducing a refined type of finite element capable of handling regions with varying material and geometrical properties. Unlike traditional FEM discretization, which increases computational time calculations due to mesh refinement in stiffness-variable areas, the proposed method maintains a consistent discretization while adjusting shape functions to reflect internal stiffness changes. An original functional for modifying linear shape function distributions is introduced, leading to piecewise broken-line shape functions. This enhancement significantly improves the accuracy of numerical calculations, as verified by computational calculations. The explicit formulation of the stiffness matrix enhances computational efficiency, making the approach particularly useful for periodic structures with inclusions, voids, or localized material defects. The results of numerical tests demonstrate that the proposed method provides solutions closely aligned with conventional FEM results while substantially reducing computational costs. The approach is particularly relevant for structural engineering applications where defect analysis and material heterogeneity play a critical role in design and safety evaluation. Full article

(1) Background: This study aimed to investigate the changes in core temperature of Cyan-shank partridge chickens with continuously increased ambient temperature at different relative humidity (RH) levels. (2) Methods: Thirty birds were selected at the age of 35 days and randomly divided and housed in three artificial climate chambers. Each chamber was set at one of three different RH levels (50%, 65%, and 80%), and the ambient temperature was increased by 1.0 °C per 0.5 h from 24.0 to 34.0 °C. The core temperature was tested at 1.0 h intervals, and the ambient temperature in the chambers was recorded using mini temperature data loggers. Data were collected continuously for three days at the ages of 35, 42, and 49 days. The broken-line model (BLM) was used to calculate the inflection point temperature (IPT) and basal core temperature (constant). (3) Results: Both RH and age had no significant influence on the IPT. With increasing ambient temperature, the average IPT values of birds measured at the three ages were 26.52, 27.02, and 26.71 °C at the RH levels of 50%, 65%, and 80%, respectively. A significant downward trend in basal core temperature was observed as the birds aged from 35 to 42 days (p < 0.05). (4) Conclusions: the core temperature of the chicken gradually decreased as the age increased. During the hot summer months, it is better to keep the ambient temperature less than 26.5 °C to avoid the excessive increase in core temperature in Cyan-shank partridge chicken at the ages from 35 to 49 days. Full article

Given the frequent occurrence of expansive soil slope failures during rainy season, in situ borehole shear tests were conducted to investigate how loading-added modes and rainfall conditions affect the shear strength parameters of expansive soils. The results obtained were used to analyze an actual engineering project under various construction practices and depths of rainfall infiltration, with the goal of elucidating the mechanisms behind expansive soil landslides. The test results indicate that rainfall infiltration leads to a significant reduction in cohesive force, while the internal friction angle decreases slightly. Cohesive force increases linearly with greater preload pressures, whereas the internal friction angle decreases linearly as preload pressure increases. Numerical simulations revealed that rainfall-induced sliding occurs at shallow depths along a broken-line sliding surface. For unprotected expansive soil cut slopes, the safety factor experiences a sharp decline as the depth of rainfall infiltration increases. Timely support measures significantly enhance slope stability; however, the supporting load can mitigate the softening effect only up to a certain extent. Additionally, two methodologies for selecting preload pressures in practical engineering applications have been proposed. Full article

Every year, more than 700,000 people die by suicide worldwide, a quarter of whom are between 15 and 29 years of age. In Spain, suicide has surpassed road traffic accidents as the leading non-natural cause of death in this age group. Although its overall incidence remains low, the number of suicide attempts continues to rise, indicating an upward trend. Despite being recognized as a significant public health issue, the media often refrains from reporting on suicide to prevent the Werther effect, thereby avoiding the potential propagation of suicidal behavior. This is a form of self-censorship in the exercise of freedom of information, a right recognized by the Spanish Constitution, which also undermines the right of citizens to receive such content. The Spanish Constitutional Court has determined that public interest is a mandatory requirement to endorse the legitimacy of a news item in case of a clash with any of the rights that legally limit freedom of information. This article aims to analyze whether, in those exceptional cases in which the rule of silence is broken, the information on suicide in young people is in line with the jurisprudential concept of public interest, above privacy, honor or self-image and, especially, above the protection of children and adolescents. As a research method, this study analyzes a selection of news articles on suicides of minors, published in Spanish digital newspapers and compiled into a self-developed database. These articles are examined through the lens of the Spanish Constitutional Court’s doctrine on freedom of information. The findings indicate that public interest is unequivocally justified when news coverage focuses on aggregated data regarding suicide or suicide attempts among minors. However, when reporting on the suicide of an individual minor, the justification from the perspective of freedom of information depends on the specifics of each case, requiring a careful balance between public interest and the protection of fundamental rights. Full article