D-base: interactive digital fashion catalogue

There is no doubt development of digital media has had a great impact on the way that people create and view art. Some of the most innovative advances in digital media and graphic design have been developed for advertising and sales through the Internet. The exponential growth in availability of broadband cable Internet access for private residences is providing an opportunity to attract consumers in new and engaging ways. This fact combined with a general perception of a scarcity of free time and a desire to purchase unique goods that may not be readily available in ones local area has made shopping online more popular than ever before. Many retailers have attempted to target this growing audience by providing online shopping features to consumers but most have failed to provide an engaging user-friendly online store. I made an attempt to address what I see as a deficiency in interactivity and creativity in online fashion websites by developing a site that is uniquely navigated and fun to view. The motivation for developing an Interactive Digital Fashion Catalogue originates from my long-time passion for both fashion design and interior design. I used my computer graphic design skills as a spring board to allow me explore and develop my interests in these different fields of design. Pop-up books have always fascinated me and I sought to develop some of these complex geometrical art form attributes into my digital catalog. By employing current design software Digital Media Artists are able to create new and innovative ways for people to experience art. In developing my site I employed several programs, Adobe Flash CS3, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Autodesk Maya 2008, were employed to achieve the desired results. The site was developed primarily with Adobe Flash and the 3D objects and animations were created with Autodesk Maya

Effectiveness of Instructional Strategies Emphasizing Cooperative Learning in the Acquisition of English by Taiwanese University Students

The primary purpose of this study was to explore and analyze Taiwanese university students in the effectiveness of cooperative learning strategies in the acquisition of English. This study employed the Theory of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Cooperative Learning (CL) as the framework to explain the interrelationship among second language learner factors, cooperative learning strategies, and English language proficiency (ELP). This nonexperimental, correlational study used convenience sampling. Participants from Taiwan received e-mail invitations and voluntarily completed the online survey questionnaires. The survey was administered to a sample of undergraduate students who had attended the daytime Fortune Institute of Technology of Kaohsiung in Taiwan and had studied English as a foreign language. There were 396 online questionnaires applicable for data analysis. There were three significant variables in this research, including language learner factors, cooperative learning strategies, and English language proficiency. The independent variables were language learner factors and cooperative learning strategies. The dependent variable was English language proficiency. Language learner factors were measured by Taiwanese university students\u27 perceptions of learning English and included six dimensions: motivational intensity, language classroom anxiety, language aptitude, classroom social distance, frequency of participation in cooperative learning, and English language proficiency. The content of the online survey included two parts. The first part contained socio-demographic characteristics of gender, age, education category and years of experience learning English. The second part inquired about language learner factors, cooperative learning strategies, and English language proficiency. The data analysis employed the statistical software of SPSS to conduct descriptive analysis, multiple regression analysis, reliability analysis, and validity analysis. Findings indicated that learner factors of motivation, anxiety, language aptitude, social distance, and learning strategies had a strong positive and significant relationship with English language proficiency. In addition, frequency of participation in cooperative learning strategies had a moderately strong relationship with English language acquisition proficiency. Findings also indicated age and gender of learner factors rarely appear to affect English language proficiency, but these may be fundamental requirements for English language acquisition proficiency. The practical implications, limitations, and recommendations for future study are further discussed

Impact of Sucrose Addition on the Physiochemical Properties and Volatile Compounds of “Shuangyou” Red Wines

“Shuangyou,” a Vitis amurensis Rupr. variety, is widely cultivated in northeastern and western China. Its berries have high acidity and low sugar content. In this study, different proportions of sucrose were added to the must samples during fermentation to investigate the effect of sugar on the physicochemical properties and volatile compounds of “Shuangyou” wines. The addition of sucrose significantly improved yeast growth and alcohol production, altered the color qualities, and slightly decreased titratable acidity during fermentation. The highest tested proportion of added sucrose resulted in the highest maximum yeast counts and final ethanol concentrations. Moreover, 37 volatile compounds (esters, alcohols, fatty acids, ketones, and aldehydes) were identified and quantified by solid-phase microextraction with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The concentrations of these compounds were correlated with the addition of sucrose. Furthermore, the addition of 100 g/L sucrose was sufficient for improving the concentrations of the aromatic compounds. The increase in ester, alcohol, and fatty acid concentration led to a positive OAVs impact (odor activity value > 1) at the end of fermentation

Essays on the Determination of Equilibrium Real Exchange Rate for Taiwan, 1981-1993

Taiwan is one of the four smaller Asian economies. Before 1960, Taiwan pursued industrialization policies by limiting imports of manufactured goods, gradually adopting an open and outward-oriented economic policy, believing it would expend exports and yield gained ground. With this increasingly open and outward-oriented economic policy as the background, we will study the real exchange rate (RER) misalignment in Taiwan over the period 1981-93. The RER plays a critical role in maintaining external competitiveness. Hence, from the policy point of view, this rate should not be allowed to deviate much from its equilibrium level. Since the equilibrium real exchange rate (ERER) is unobservable, it is very important that the concept be based on sound economic reasoning and its measurement should be done as correctly as possible. It is generally agreed that misalignment in the RER has a negative effect on the economic performance of a country. This dissertation is divided into two essays. The first essay deals with the estimation of ERER by using the Edwards and the Elbadawi approaches and the measurement of the RER misalignment from two different approaches. The second essay investigates the empirical importance of the distinction between the permanent and temporary components of the determinants of the ERER. By using the same reduced form equation from the first essay and reestimating the ERER by employing the techniques of a modern time-series analysis, which is introduced by Steven Beveridge and Charles Nelson, an empirical analysis is presented of the RER behavior

Identifying Key Factors of Consumer Behaviour in an Online Environment: a Study of Taiwan Online Consumers

Consumer behaviour in an online environment has been drawn much attention in different perspectives and different countries. However, there is little research conducted culture differences, so it is doubtful that the uniform market strategy is applicable in Taiwan online market. This project considers the implication of variables in consumer behaviour and focuses on CDP model which can be used as a good start point to investigate consumer behaviour. Reports of key factors already carried out in Taiwan are examined and the most important findings are highlighted. With regard to key variables influence decision process, it is concluded that consumers consider more quality, brand, and the design of the cyberspace which affect their intention toward online purchasing rather than price issue. This may be of interest to marketers, especially in Chinese online market which tend to upgrade or apply electronic commerce

Early Functional and Cognitive Declines Measured by Auditory-Evoked Cortical Potentials in Mice With Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by a progressive loss of memory and cognitive decline. However, the assessment of AD-associated functional and cognitive changes is still a big challenge. Auditory-evoked cortical potential (AECP) is an event-related potential reflecting not only neural activation in the auditory cortex (AC) but also cognitive activity in the brain. In this study, we used the subdermal needle electrodes with the same electrode setting as the auditory brainstem response (ABR) recording and recorded AECP in normal aging CBA/CaJ mice and APP/PS1 AD mice. AECP in mice usually appeared as three positive peaks, i.e., P1, P2, and P3, and three corresponding negative peaks, i.e., N1, N2, and N3. In normal aging CBA mice, the early sensory peaks P1, N1, and P2 were reduced as age increased, whereas the later cognitive peaks N2, P3, and N3 were increased or had no changes with aging. Moreover, the latency of the P1 peak was increased as age increased, although the latencies of later peaks had a significant reduction with aging. In AD mice, peak P1 was significantly reduced in comparison with wild-type (WT) littermates at young ages, proceeding AD phenotype presentation. In particular, the later cognitive peak P3 was diminished after 3 months old, different from the normal aging effect. However, the latencies of AECP peaks in AD mice generally had no significant delay or changes with aging. Finally, consistent with AECP changes, the accumulation of amyloid precursor protein (APP) at the AC was visible in AD mice as early as 2 months old. These data suggest that AECP could serve as an early, non-invasive, and objective biomarker for detecting AD and AD-related dementia (ADRD)

Staphylococcal Cassette Chromosome mec in MRSA, Taiwan

To determine the predominant staphylococcal cassette chromosome (SCC) mec element in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, we typed 190 isolates from a hospital in Taiwan. We found a shift from type IV to type III SCCmec element during 1992–2003, perhaps caused by selective pressure from indiscriminate use of antimicrobial drugs

Synthesis, Optical Characterization, and Thermal Decomposition of Complexes Based on Biuret Ligand

Four complexes were synthesized in methanol solution using nickel acetate or nickel chloride, manganese acetate, manganese chloride, and biuret as raw materials. The complexes were characterized by elemental analyses, UV, FTIR, Raman spectra, X-ray powder diffraction, and thermogravimetric analysis. The compositions of the complexes were [Ni(bi)2(H2O)2](Ac)2·H2O (1), [Ni(bi)2Cl2] (2), [Mn(bi)2(Ac)2]·1.5H2O (3), and [Mn(bi)2Cl2] (4) (bi = NH2CONHCONH2), respectively. In the complexes, every metal ion was coordinated by oxygen atoms or chlorine ions and even both. The nickel and manganese ions were all hexacoordinated. The thermal decomposition processes of the complexes under air included the loss of water molecule, the pyrolysis of ligands, and the decomposition of inorganic salts, and the final residues were nickel oxide and manganese oxide, respectively

Dual-Octave Convolution for Accelerated Parallel MR Image Reconstruction

Magnetic resonance (MR) image acquisition is an inherently prolonged process, whose acceleration by obtaining multiple undersampled images simultaneously through parallel imaging has always been the subject of research. In this paper, we propose the Dual-Octave Convolution (Dual-OctConv), which is capable of learning multi-scale spatial-frequency features from both real and imaginary components, for fast parallel MR image reconstruction. By reformulating the complex operations using octave convolutions, our model shows a strong ability to capture richer representations of MR images, while at the same time greatly reducing the spatial redundancy. More specifically, the input feature maps and convolutional kernels are first split into two components (i.e., real and imaginary), which are then divided into four groups according to their spatial frequencies. Then, our Dual-OctConv conducts intra-group information updating and inter-group information exchange to aggregate the contextual information across different groups. Our framework provides two appealing benefits: (i) it encourages interactions between real and imaginary components at various spatial frequencies to achieve richer representational capacity, and (ii) it enlarges the receptive field by learning multiple spatial-frequency features of both the real and imaginary components. We evaluate the performance of the proposed model on the acceleration of multi-coil MR image reconstruction. Extensive experiments are conducted on an {in vivo} knee dataset under different undersampling patterns and acceleration factors. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our model in accelerated parallel MR image reconstruction. Our code is available at: github.com/chunmeifeng/Dual-OctConv.Comment: Proceedings of the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 202