Knowledge Based Systems (United States)

Seed quality standards are the essential basis for crop cultivation supervision. With the continuous development of China's standard system, the number of seed quality standard documents has increased dramatically. However, the rapid growth and unstructured nature of standard documents hinder efficient query and semantic association. To address the lack of structured knowledge representation in the seed domain, this study proposes a Knowledge Graph (KG) construction framework for seed quality standards. First, a domain-specific ontology is constructed, defining 7 core classes and 12 relationship types to standardize semantic structure. Second, a hybrid knowledge extraction strategy is implemented: regular expressions are used for semi-structured tabular data, while a BERT-BiLSTM-CRF model is employed for unstructured text. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves an F1-score of 91.61% in Named Entity Recognition (NER), outperforming than other model. Finally, a KG containing 2436 nodes and 3011 relationships is stored in Neo4j, enabling multi-dimensional retrieval and visualization. The proposed framework significantly improves the accuracy of standard information retrieval and provides a digital foundation for intelligent quality management in the plantation industry.S.

Rapid and accurate bacteria identification, particularly Escherichia coli (E. coli), is essential in the monitoring of health, environment, and food safety. E. coli, a prevalent pathogenic bacterium, serves as a key indicator of food and water contamination. Carbon quantum dots (CQDs) have appeared as promising fluorescent probes because of their small size, ease of synthesis, low toxicity, and tunable fluorescence using different carbon-rich precursors. Advances in both bottom-up and top-down synthesis procedures have enabled precise control over CQD properties and surface functionalities, enhancing their capabilities in biosensing. Among the critical factors influencing CQD performance is the strategic selection of precursors, which determines the surface chemistry and recognition potential of the resulting nanodots. The integration with other nanomaterials and the surface modification of CQDs with specific functional groups or recognition elements further improves their sensitivity and selectivity toward E. coli. This review summarizes recent progress in the modification of CQDs for the fluorescent detection of E. coli, highlighting relevant sensing mechanisms and the influence of different precursors, such as antibiotics and sugars, as well as various functionalization and surface modification strategies. The aim is to provide insight into the rational design of efficient, selective, and cost-effective CQD-based biosensors for bacterial detection.

This article investigates an inverse approach to determine the coefficients of the Drucker-Prager model for magnesium powder. The approach involves conducting finite element simulations of the powder compression process within LS-DYNA software, employing the Drucker-Prager material model. The goal is to minimize the disparity between force-displacement outcomes derived from simulations and experimental data using a surrogate optimization method. Experimental data were obtained through a uniaxial compression test and served as a basis for adjusting the Cap model coefficients. A random selection of coefficients was made using the Latin cube method and simulations were performed based on the initial coefficients. The optimization was then performed using the particle swarm algorithm over 20 iterations. The optimized coefficients were validated against experimental data, demonstrating close agreement. By utilizing the extracted coefficients, the relative density of the samples was calculated at three different compaction speeds, i.e., 15.5 m s−1 (using a Hopkinson bar), 8 m s−1 (using a drop weight), and 1 mm min−1 (using an Instron machine). The analysis revealed the highest relative density and stress in the densified sample via the Hopkinson bar method, reaching 99.83% and 1.1 GPa, respectively.

The disjunctive restricted chase is a sound and complete procedure for solving boolean conjunctive query entailment over knowledge bases of disjunctive existential rules. Alas, this procedure does not always terminate and checking if it does is undecidable. However, we can use acyclicity notions (sufficient conditions that imply termination) to effectively apply the chase in many real-world cases. To know if these conditions are as general as possible, we can use cyclicity notions (sufficient conditions that imply non-termination). In this paper, we discuss some issues with previously existing cyclicity notions, propose some novel notions for non-termination by dismantling the original idea, and empirically verify the generality of the new criteria.

This participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran’s (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the "Drake equation" to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., "anomalous effects") or refutes (i.e., "known confounds") the survival hypothesis. But unlike the earlier application, this research included a study-specific estimate of the hypothesized variable of "living agent psi" via a new meta-analysis of empirical studies (N = 17) with exceptional subjects vs participants from the general population. Our updated analysis found that putative psi was a meaningful variable, although it along with other known confounds still did not account for 30.3% of survival-related phenomena that appear to attest directly to human consciousness continuing after physical (biological) death. Thus, the popular conventional variables that we measured here are seemingly insufficient to account for a sizable portion of the purported empirical data that has been interpreted as evidence of survival. Our conclusion is nonetheless tempered by several assumptions and limitations of our speculative exercise, which ultimately does not affirm the existence of an ‘afterlife’ but rather highlights the need for measurements with greater precision and/ or a more comprehensive set of quantifiable variables. Therefore, we discuss how our probabilistic approach provides important heuristics to guide future research in this highly controversial domain that touches both parapsychology and transpersonal psychology.