HC-COVID

The proliferation of social media has promoted the spread of misinformation that raises many concerns in our society. This paper focuses on a critical problem of explainable COVID-19 misinformation detection that aims to accurately identify and explain misleading COVID-19 claims on social media. Motivated by the lack of COVID-19 relevant knowledge in existing solutions, we construct a novel crowdsource knowledge graph based approach to incorporate the COVID-19 knowledge facts by leveraging the collaborative efforts of expert and non-expert crowd workers. Two important challenges exist in developing our solution: i) how to effectively coordinate the crowd efforts from both expert and non-expert workers to generate the relevant knowledge facts for detecting COVID-19 misinformation; ii) How to leverage the knowledge facts from the constructed knowledge graph to accurately explain the detected COVID-19 misinformation. To address the above challenges, we develop HC-COVID, a hierarchical crowdsource knowledge graph based framework that explicitly models the COVID-19 knowledge facts contributed by crowd workers with different levels of expertise and accurately identifies the related knowledge facts to explain the detection results. We evaluate HC-COVID using two public real-world datasets on social media. Evaluation results demonstrate that HC-COVID significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in terms of the detection accuracy of misleading COVID-19 claims and the quality of the explanations.

Testing of logarithmic-law for the slip with friction boundary condition

Large eddy simulation (LES) seeks to predict the dynamics of the organized structures in the flow, that is, local spatial averages u ̄ $\bar{u}$ of the velocity u of the fluid. Although LES has been extensively used to model turbulent flows, very often, the model has difficulty predicting turbulence generated by interactions of a flow with a boundary. A critical problem in LES is to find appropriate boundary conditions for the flow averages, which depend on the behavior of the unknown flow near the wall. In the light of the works of Navier and Maxwell, we use boundary conditions on the wall. We compute the appropriate friction coefficient β for channel flows and investigate its asymptotic behavior as the averaging radius δ → 0 and as the Reynolds number Re → ∞. No-slip conditions are recovered in the first limit, and free-slip conditions are recovered in the second limit. This study is not intended to develop new theories of the turbulent boundary layer; we use available boundary layer theories to improve numerical boundary conditions for flow averages.

PresB-Net: parametric binarized neural network with learnable activations and shuffled grouped convolution

In this study, we present a novel performance-enhancing binarized neural network model called PresB-Net: Parametric Binarized Neural Network. A binarized neural network (BNN) model can achieve fast output computation with low hardware costs by using binarized weights and features. However, performance degradation is the most critical problem in BNN models. Our PresB-Net combines several state-of-the-art BNN structures including the learnable activation with additional trainable parameters and shuffled grouped convolution. Notably, we propose a new normalization approach, which reduces the imbalance between the shuffled groups occurring in shuffled grouped convolutions. Besides, the proposed normalization approach helps gradient convergence so that the unstableness of the learning can be amortized when applying the learnable activation. Our novel BNN model enhances the classification performance compared with other existing BNN models. Notably, the proposed PresB-Net-18 achieves 73.84% Top-1 inference accuracy for the CIFAR-100 dataset, outperforming other existing counterparts.

THE FRANCISCAN MISSION OF GIOVANNI DA PIAN DEL CARPINE 1245: THE COMPANIONS OF THE PAPAL LEGATE IN BOHEMIA AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO RUS’

The article aims to analyze the participation of Franciscan missionaries from Bohemia in the embassy of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine to the Mongol khan in the context of Rus’-Czech relations in the middle of the XIIIth century. Research methodology. The research methodology is based on a systematic approach to the study of socio-political, military, and socio-economic phenomena in their development and relationships, based on the principles of scientificity, objectivity, systematicity, and historicism. In the study, general scientific and special historical methods were used, namely: comparative-historical, critical, problem-chronological, source-based, and analytical methods. The scientific novelty of the article is that historiography has not yet paid attention to the bohemian origins of the two members of the Carpine mission. In addition, this fact did not fit into the broader background of Rus’-Czech relations at the time. The role of the Pope in resolving the international situation in Central and Eastern Europe is highlighted, as well as how this relates to the policies of the Czech Przemyslids and the Galician-Volynian Romanovychi. Conclusions. It was noted that the factor of the emergence of nomads and their threat to Europe was crucial for the Czech-Rus’ contacts, which became part of the eastern policy of the Apostolic Capital. Since, in the conditions of the Mongol threat, both the Przemyslids and the Romanovychi actively communicated with the Pope, the Czech-Rus’ communication became inevitable. With this in mind, the article draws attention to the following points. First, the amount of knowledge about Rus’ in Bohemia at that time was analyzed. Secondly, the preconditions that contributed to the Czech-Rus’ rapprochement with Rome, despite the unfavorable policy of the German emperor, were highlighted. Third, the Rus’-Czech relations of the middle of the XIIIth century and their manifestation in the form of the Galician-Czech union in the following decades were interpreted in the international context. The events of the war for the inheritance of the Babenbergs in 1246–1278 and the Czech-Rus’ relations in their context should be considered as a continuation of the political line initiated by the Pope and executed by the Franciscans.

Hybrid Convolutional Neural Network-Based Diagnosis System for Intracranial Hemorrhage

Early diagnosis of intracranial hemorrhage significantly reduces mortality. Hemorrhage is diagnosed by using various imaging methods and the most time-efficient one among them is computed tomography (CT). However, it is clear that accurate CT scans requires time, diligence, and experience. Computer-aided design methods are vital for the treatment because they facilitate early diagnosis of intracranial hemorrhage. At this point, deep learning can provide effective outcomes through an automated diagnosis way. However, as different from the known solutions, diagnosis of five different hemorrhage subtypes is a critical problem to be solved.This study focused on deep learning methods and employed cranial computed tomography scans in order to detect intracranial hemorrhage. The diagnosis approach in the study aimed to detect five subtypes of hemorrhage. In detail, EfficientNet-B3 and ResNet-Inception-V2 architectures were used for diagnosis purposes. Eventually, the study also proposed a two-architecture hybrid method for the diagnosis purpose. The obtained findings by the hybrid method were evaluated in terms of a comparative perspective.Results showed that the newly designed hybrid method was quite effective in terms of increasing classification rates of detecting intracranial hemorrhage according to the subtypes. Briefly, an accuracy of 98.5%, which is higher than those of the EfficientNet-B3 and the Inception-ResNet-V2, were obtained thanks to the developed hybrid method.

Electrochemically Driven Cross-Electrophile Coupling of Alkyl Halides

Recent research in medicinal chemistry suggests a correlation between an increase in the fraction of sp3 carbons in drug candidates with their improved success rate in clinical trials. As such, the development of robust and selective methods for the construction of C(sp3)-C(sp3) bonds remains a critical problem in modern organic chemistry. Owing to the broad availability and synthetic accessibility of alkyl halides, their direct cross coupling—commonly known as cross-electrophile coupling (XEC)—provides a promising route toward this objective. However, achieving high selectivity in C(sp3)-C(sp3) XEC remains a largely unmet challenge. Herein, we employ electrochemistry to achieve the differential activation of alkyl halides by exploiting their disparate electronic and steric properties. Specifically, the selective cathodic reduction of a more substituted alkyl halide gives rise to a carbanion, which undergoes preferential coupling with a less substituted alkyl halide via bimolecular nucleophilic substitution (SN2) to forge a new C–C bond. This transition-metal free protocol enables the efficient XEC of a variety of functionalized and unactivated alkyl electrophiles and exhibits substantially improved chemoselectivity versus existing methodologies.

Electrochemically Driven Cross-Electrophile Coupling of Alkyl Halides

Recent research in medicinal chemistry suggests a correlation between an increase in the fraction of sp3 carbons in drug candidates with their improved success rate in clinical trials. As such, the development of robust and selective methods for the construction of C(sp3)-C(sp3) bonds remains a critical problem in modern organic chemistry. Owing to the broad availability and synthetic accessibility of alkyl halides, their direct cross coupling—commonly known as cross-electrophile coupling (XEC)—provides a promising route toward this objective. However, achieving high selectivity in C(sp3)-C(sp3) XEC remains a largely unmet challenge. Herein, we employ electrochemistry to achieve the differential activation of alkyl halides by exploiting their disparate electronic and steric properties. Specifically, the selective cathodic reduction of a more substituted alkyl halide gives rise to a carbanion, which undergoes preferential coupling with a less substituted alkyl halide via bimolecular nucleophilic substitution (SN2) to forge a new C–C bond. This transition-metal free protocol enables the efficient XEC of a variety of functionalized and unactivated alkyl electrophiles and exhibits substantially improved chemoselectivity versus existing methodologies.

A Spatial-Spectral Feature Descriptor for Hyperspectral Image Matching

Hyperspectral Images (HSIs) have been utilized in many fields which contain spatial and spectral features of objects simultaneously. Hyperspectral image matching is a fundamental and critical problem in a wide range of HSI applications. Feature descriptors for grayscale image matching are well studied, but few descriptors are elaborately designed for HSI matching. HSI descriptors, which should have made good use of the spectral feature, are essential in HSI matching tasks. Therefore, this paper presents a descriptor for HSI matching, called HOSG-SIFT, which ensembles spectral features with spatial features of objects. First, we obtain the grayscale image by dimensional reduction from HSI and apply it to extract keypoints and descriptors of spatial features. Second, the descriptors of spectral features are designed based on the histogram of the spectral gradient (HOSG), which effectively preserves the physical significance of the spectral profile. Third, we concatenate the spatial descriptors and spectral descriptors with the same weights into a new descriptor and apply it for HSI matching. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed HOSG-SIFT performs superior against traditional feature descriptors.

E Pluribus Unum

Polarization is a critical problem confronting American politics and society today. The history of the Netherlands serves as both a warning and an opportunity for the United States in its quest to solve pernicious partisanship. The eighteenth-century Dutch Republic demonstrates how continued division without compromise can easily lead to revolution and civil war. In contrast, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the Netherlands show how a pluralist political culture created a society of compromise and tolerance. This article suggests several ways in which the United States can start to create a similar society of E pluribus unum and mitigate some of the effects of polarization in contemporary American politics.