A Model-Based Predictive Controller of the Level of Steel in the Mold with Disturbances Using a Repetitive Structure

Keeping the level of steel in the mold of the continuous casting process constant is fundamental for the quality of the steel produced and, consequently, its commercial value. It is challenging, considering the several disturbances that cause undesired variations in the mold level. The aim of this paper is to apply a repetitive structure composed of two controllers, a generalized predictive controller (GPC) and a repetitive GPC (R-GPC) with constraints to mitigate the bulging and clogging/unclogging disturbances and the casting speed variation in the mold level of the process. The R-GPC controller has the same characteristics as the GPC, such as performance, robustness to disturbances, and insertion of constraints, and its advantage is the elimination of periodic disturbances. The repetitive structure will be implemented with a robustness filter and tuned by a genetic algorithm (GA). The controller tests are performed by simulations of a nonlinear mathematical model of the mold level, validated using real data from the steel industry. The proposed controller reduces the bulging disturbance amplitude by 98.5% and at 25% of the frequency of reversions in the valve. Consequently, the proposed controller allows an increase in the valve life span, a reduction in maintenance costs, and quality improvement in the steel slab.

Разновидности Текстовой Динамики В Свете Феномена Признаковости В Повести Ф. М. Достоевского «Двойник» (Статья Первая)

В настоящей статье изучаются поэтические принципы и функции двух типов структурно-семантической логики, влияющей на возникновение текстовой динамики в «Двойнике». Парадоксально, что главная линия развития сводится к структуре высокой повторяемости рекуррентных / рекурсивных фигурирований стабильных нарративных единиц, мотивов, лексических элементов текста. Их постоянное возвращение (см. события, характерные черты персонажа, семантические признаки, компоненты устойчивых фразеологических выражений) создает впечатление модели неизменного мира, в котором не происходит никаких смен. Такой феномен можно условно назвать динамикой рекуррентности под знаком статичности. Транспозиционная динамика, с другой стороны, определяется в качестве второго направления текстового развертывания, формирующего механизм порождения смысла. Транспозиция в данной работе понимается в широком смысле, со специальным сосредоточением на 1) трансфигурации и проек\xD1\x86ии смысла путем сдвига от однородности семантических признаков к наделению означающих или означаемых новыми признаками (проблема референтности); 2) процессах семантической интеграции, касающейся включения мелких смысловых единиц в более крупные формации (семантический признак → мотив → литературный персонаж). Цель статьи состоит в выяснении взаимоотношения (своеобразной интеракции) двух типов динамики. Рассматриваемое смысловое образование, воплощаемое в минимальной единице моторной (моторно-словесной) «экспрессии» Голядкина, обладает двойной ориентацией, основанной на корреляции движения и остановки, которую В. B. Виноградов интерпретировал в своей знаменитой работе. С точки зрения объекта изучения в настоящей статье указанная нарративная и лингвистическая единица подвергается толкованию в качестве рекурсивной пары мотивов, обладающей особенной способностью перевоплощаться путем транспозиции. Применением метода «close reading» в пятой главе повести, где появляется двойник господина Голядкина, подробно продемонстрировано, как транспозиция действует в рамках процесса смысловых интеграций. Значение мотива врага претерпевает сдвиг от смысла человеческого врага к смыслу петербургской погоды и человеческой судьбы как новых субъектов. Они ассоциируются с мифологией и литературной культурой (интертексты), подводящими к толкованию личности Голядкина. Образ главного героя проецируется на его двойника многими семантическими признаками. «Тоскливая побежка» в смысле столкновения Голядкина с самим собой представляет его в качестве прозревающего героя, который как л\xD0\xB8тературный персонаж развивается постепенно, включением в этот процесс и образ двойника как транспозицию фигуры, также представляющей собой динамическое смысловое образование. Соотношение Голядкина и его двойника в аспекте проблемы первичности и вторичности поставлено также в контекст семиотики Пирса. The paper examines the poetic principles and functions of two sorts of structural-semantic logic influencing the emergence of textual dynamics in The Double. Paradoxically, the main developmental line consists in a highly repetitive structure of permanent reiteration of fixed narrative units, motifs, and lexical items in the text. Their constant recurrence (cf. events, character traits, semantic attributes, and elements of stable idiomatic phrases) creates the impression of a static world model in which no changes occur. This may be called recursive dynamics under the sign of a static state. Transpositional dynamics, on the other hand, can be regarded as the second direction of the textual developmental movement, producing the mechanism for meaning-generation. Transposition is interpreted broadly, in the paper, with a special accent on 1) meaning transfigurations and projections through the shift from the uniformity of semantic attributes to the acquiring of new attributes by the signifier or the signified (the problem of reference); 2) processes of semantic integration concerning the inclusion of smaller semantic units into larger ones (semantic attribute → motif → character figure). The purpose of the paper is to clarify the reciprocity (the special interaction) of the two types of dynamics. The semantic formation under scrutiny embodied by the smallest unit of Golyadkin’s motoric-verbal expression has a double orientation based on the correlation of motion and stop interpreted by V. Vinogradov in his famous study. From the perspective of the paper’s research object, this narrative and linguistic unit is examined as a recursive motif pair with a special capacity of transformation through transposition. It is demonstrated in detail, within the close reading of the fift h chapter, where Golyadkin’s double appears, how transposition works through a process of semantic integrations. The meaning of enemy is shift ed from human rivals to Petersburg weather and human fate as new subjects, associated with mythology and literary culture (intertexts), leading up to the interpretation of Golyadkin’s personality. The protagonist’s figure is projected upon his double through many semantic attributes. The “melancholy flight” as his encounter with himself presents him as an awakening hero, who as a character is developed gradually, including his double as his figure-transposition which also embodies a dynamic semantic pattern. The correlation of Golyadkin and his double in the context of firstness and secondness is also put into the context of Peircean semiotics.

Vocal imitations and production learning by Australian musk ducks ( Biziura lobata )

Acquiring vocalizations by learning them from other individuals is only known from a limited number of animal groups. For birds, oscine and some suboscine songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds demonstrate this ability. Here, we provide evidence for vocal learning in a member of a basal clade of the avian phylogeny: the Australian musk duck ( Biziura lobata ). A hand-reared individual imitated a slamming door and a human voice, and a female-reared individual imitated Pacific black duck quacks. These sounds have been described before, but were never analysed in any detail and went so far unnoticed by researchers of vocal learning. The imitations were produced during the males' advertising display. The hand-reared male used at least three different vocalizations in the display context, with each one produced in the same stereotyped and repetitive structure as the normal display sounds. Sounds of different origins could be combined in one vocalization and at least some of the imitations were memorized at an early age, well before they were produced later in life. Together with earlier observations of vocal differences between populations and deviant vocalizations in captive-reared individuals, these observations demonstrate the presence of advanced vocal learning at a level comparable to that of songbirds and parrots. We discuss the rearing conditions that may have given rise to the imitations and suggest that the structure of the duck vocalizations indicates a quite sophisticated and flexible control over the vocal production mechanism. The observations support the hypothesis that vocal learning in birds evolved in several groups independently rather than evolving once with several losses. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.

Global Structure-Aware Drum Transcription Based on Self-Attention Mechanisms

This paper describes an automatic drum transcription (ADT) method that directly estimates a tatum-level drum score from a music signal in contrast to most conventional ADT methods that estimate the frame-level onset probabilities of drums. To estimate a tatum-level score, we propose a deep transcription model that consists of a frame-level encoder for extracting the latent features from a music signal and a tatum-level decoder for estimating a drum score from the latent features pooled at the tatum level. To capture the global repetitive structure of drum scores, which is difficult to learn with a recurrent neural network (RNN), we introduce a self-attention mechanism with tatum-synchronous positional encoding into the decoder. To mitigate the difficulty of training the self-attention-based model from an insufficient amount of paired data and to improve the musical naturalness of the estimated scores, we propose a regularized training method that uses a global structure-aware masked language (score) model with a self-attention mechanism pretrained from an extensive collection of drum scores. The experimental results showed that the proposed regularized model outperformed the conventional RNN-based model in terms of the tatum-level error rate and the frame-level F-measure, even when only a limited amount of paired data was available so that the non-regularized model underperformed the RNN-based model.

A 3D weaving infill pattern for fused filament fabrication

The Fused Filament Fabrication process is the most used additive manufacturing process due to its simplicity and low operating costs. In this process, a thermoplastic filament is led through an extruder, melted, and applied to a building platform by the axial movements of an automated Cartesian system in such a way that a three-dimensional object is created layer by layer. Compared to other additive manufacturing technologies, the components produced have mechanical limitations and are often not suitable for functional applications. To reduce the anisotropy of mechanical strength in fused filament fabrication (FFF), this paper proposes a 3D weaving deposit path planning method that utilizes a 5-layer repetitive structure to achieve interlocking and embedding between neighbor slicing planes to improve the mechanical linkage within the layers. The developed algorithm extends the weaving path as an infill pattern to fill different structures and makes this process feasible on a standard three-axis 3D printer. Compared with 3D weaving printed parts by layer-to-layer deposit, the anisotropy of mechanical properties inside layers is significantly reduced to 10.21% and 0.98%.

Nested Repetitive Structure Techniques in Examination Seating Number Allocation Process at UiTM Pulau Pinang Branch

Preparation of examination seating numbers during the final examination at UiTM Pulau Pinang branch is manually drafted and written by the examination unit staff on the class lists printed through the Student Integrated Managements Systems (SIMs). Process of assigning the seating number for each student takes couple of weeks and this task has become a challenging part for examination unit. Since the students’ enrolments are linearly increasing every semester, the workloads among Examination Unit staffs become very burdensome in assigning the seating number. To automate the process of assigning the seating numbers, an algorithm was designed and constructed using the nested repetitive or looping structure techniques with JAVA programming language. Two tasks were identified in assigning the seating numbers; the first task was to set the examination seating number range with start and end numbers for each group of courses registered by the students and the subsequent task was to assign the seating number for each student accordingly by group seating number range as specified during the prior task without the violation or overlapping of seating numbers. The algorithm was tested using real data enrolments taken from SIMs for two semesters and resulted in positive effect especially on the reduction of stressfulness and zero erroneous allocation of the seating numbers.

An Improved Method of Refining Relative Orientation in Global Structure from Motion with a Focus on Repetitive Structure and Very Short Baselines

Recently, global structure from motion has successfully gained many followers, mainly because of its computational speed. Most of these global methods take the parameters of relative orientation (ROs ) as input and then perform averaging operations. Therefore, eliminating incorrect ROs is of great significance for improving the robustness of global structure from motion. In this article, we propose a method to eliminate wrong ROs which have resulted from repetitive structure and very short baselines. We present two corresponding criteria that indicate the quality of ROs. Repetitive structure is detected based on counts of conjugate points of the various image pairs, while very short baselines are found by inspecting the intersection angles of corresponding image rays. By analyzing these two criteria, we detect and eliminate incorrect ROs. As correct ROs of image pairs with a longer baseline nearly parallel to both viewing directions can be valuable, a method to identify and keep these ROs is also part of our approach. We demonstrate the new method on various data sets, including public benchmarks as well as close-range images and images from unmanned aerial vehicles, by inserting our refined ROs into a global structure-from-motion pipeline. The experiments show that compared to other methods, we can generate the best results.

The eccDNA Replicon: A heritable, extra-nuclear vehicle that enables gene amplification and glyphosate resistance in Amaranthus palmeri

ABSTRACTGene copy number variation is a predominant mechanism by which organisms respond to selective pressures in nature, which often results in unbalanced structural variations that perpetuate as adaptations to sustain life. However, the underlying mechanisms that give rise to gene proliferation are poorly understood. Here, we show a unique result of genomic plasticity in Amaranthus palmeri, a massive, ∼400kb extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA), that harbors the 5-enoylpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) gene and 58 other encoded genes whose functions traverse detoxification, replication, recombination, transposition, tethering, and transport. Gene expression analysis under glyphosate stress showed transcription of 41 of the 59 genes, with high expression of EPSPS, aminotransferase, zinc-finger, and several uncharacterized proteins. The genomic architecture of the eccDNA replicon is comprised of a complex arrangement of repeat sequences and mobile genetic elements interspersed among arrays of clustered palindromes that may be crucial for stability, DNA duplication and tethering, and/or a means of nuclear integration of the adjacent and intervening sequences. Comparative analysis of orthologous genes in grain amaranth (Amaranthus hypochondriacus) and water-hemp (Amaranthus tuberculatus) suggest higher order chromatin interactions contribute to the genomic origins of the Amaranthus palmeri eccDNA replicon structure.One-sentence summaryThe eccDNA replicon is a large extra-nuclear circular DNA that is composed of a sophisticated repetitive structure, harbors the EPSPS and several other genes that are transcribed during glyphosate stress.

Chimerization Enables Gene Synthesis and Lentiviral Delivery of Customizable TALE-Based Effectors

Designer effectors based on the DNA binding domain (DBD) of Xanthomonas transcription activator-like effectors (TALEs) are powerful sequence-specific tools with an excellent reputation for their specificity in editing the genome, transcriptome, and more recently the epigenome in multiple cellular systems. However, the repetitive structure of the TALE arrays composing the DBD impedes their generation as gene synthesis product and prevents the delivery of TALE-based genes using lentiviral vectors (LVs), a widely used system for human gene therapy. To overcome these limitations, we aimed at chimerizing the DNA sequence encoding for the TALE-DBDs by introducing sufficient diversity to facilitate both their gene synthesis and enable their lentiviral delivery. To this end, we replaced three out of 17 Xanthomonas TALE repeats with TALE-like units from the bacterium Burkholderia rhizoxinica. This was combined with extensive codon variation and specific amino acid substitutions throughout the DBD in order to maximize intra- and inter-repeat sequence variability. We demonstrate that chimerized TALEs can be easily generated using conventional Golden Gate cloning strategy or gene synthesis. Moreover, chimerization enabled the delivery of TALE-based designer nucleases, transcriptome and epigenome editors using lentiviral vectors. When delivered as plasmid DNA, chimerized TALEs targeting the CCR5 and CXCR4 loci showed comparable activities in human cells. However, lentiviral delivery of TALE-based transcriptional activators was only successful in the chimerized form. Similarly, delivery of a chimerized CXCR4-specific epigenome editor resulted in rapid silencing of endogenous CXCR4 expression. In conclusion, extensive codon variation and chimerization of TALE-based DBDs enables both the simplified generation and the lentiviral delivery of designer TALEs, and therefore facilitates the clinical application of these tools to precisely edit the genome, transcriptome and epigenome.