Breaking the Barriers in Women’s Fencing: Historical Roots, Title IX and Empowerment of Women

Fencing, often referred to as a physical game of chess, is an organized sport involving the use of a sword, épée, foil, or saber for attack and defense according to set movements and rules. Fencing, one of the first nine sports included in the first Olympic Games in 1896, has a long history. This paper has systematically reviewed literature and evaluated the role of fencing in the empowerment of women through a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods including first-hand observation, interviews, archival analysis, and secondary statistical data collection. It has attempted to narrow the empirical gap by exploring the gender perspective of fencing as a sport. It reveals that due to historical, social and cultural bias, financial constraints, as well as a lack of leadership, women’s involvement in fencing had been limited throughout fencing’s history. Since the 2nd half of the 19th century, fencing has witnessed tremendous strides in breaking the barriers influenced by the changing society propelled by a long history of feminist and civil rights activists who took a blend of the consciousness-raising and organizing approach and the pragmatic approach. Women’s fencing shows a history of breaking barriers, and with the enacting of Title IX to eliminate gender discrimination in sports and education it is the most significant turning point. Title IX has not only broadened and deepened the scope and participation of women in fencing but also made fencing an enabler and driver to enhance women’s grit and leadership, leading to the empowerment of women in society. The paper develops a framework to highlight the linkage between Title IX, women’s fencing, and empowerment. The impact of Title IX on women with fencing as an enabler and drivers is far-reaching. It has widened the scope of women in fencing by reaching the general public and deepened the scope of women’s fencing by raising the visibility of this women’s sport in national and international arenas

Research on optimal three-vector model predictive current control of 2 permanent magnet synchronous motor

Aiming at the two-vector model predictive current control(TV-MPCC)strategy of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), in a sampling period, can merely change the amplitude magnitude by adjusting the action time of the zero vector, resulting in the synthesized voltage vector direction can only be fixed in the direction of the six basic voltage vectors and the current fluctuations generated by the problem. This paper proposes an optimized three-vector model predictive current control (OTV-MPCC) method, which first finds the desired voltage vector and then finds the position angle of the desired vector through the inverse derivation of the formula and determines the sector in which it is located. The two fundamental vectors are selected and the zero vector at the boundary of the sector as the three voltage vectors requires for the model predictive control. Moreover, the time of each vector action is calculated by using the dead-beat control method, and the zero vector is selected by the switching frequency and switching minimum principle, which makes the algorithm computation significantly reduced. The simulation experimental results show that the proposed optimized three-vector model based on the predictive current control strategy can effectively decline the straight-axis and cross-axis current pulsations and enhance the stability of the system

Efficiently Solving High-Order and Nonlinear ODEs with Rational Fraction Polynomial: the Ratio Net

Recent advances in solving ordinary differential equations (ODEs) with neural networks have been remarkable. Neural networks excel at serving as trial functions and approximating solutions within functional spaces, aided by gradient backpropagation algorithms. However, challenges remain in solving complex ODEs, including high-order and nonlinear cases, emphasizing the need for improved efficiency and effectiveness. Traditional methods have typically relied on established knowledge integration to improve problem-solving efficiency. In contrast, this study takes a different approach by introducing a new neural network architecture for constructing trial functions, known as ratio net. This architecture draws inspiration from rational fraction polynomial approximation functions, specifically the Pade approximant. Through empirical trials, it demonstrated that the proposed method exhibits higher efficiency compared to existing approaches, including polynomial-based and multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network-based methods. The ratio net holds promise for advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of solving differential equations

Energy Efficient SQRD Processor for LTE-A using a Group-sort Update Scheme

This paper presents an energy-efficient sorted QR decomposition (SQRD) processor for 3GPP LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) systems. The processor adopts a hybrid decomposition scheme to reduce computational complexity and provides a wide-range of performance complexity trade-offs. Based on the energy distribution of spatial channels, it switches between the brute-force SQRD and a low-complexity group-sort QR-update strategy, which is proposed in this work to effectively utilize the LTE-A pilot pattern. As a proof of concept, a run-time reconfigurable vector processor is developed to efficiently implement this adaptive-switching QR decomposition algorithm. In a 65nm CMOS technology, the proposed SQRD processor occupies 0.71 mm2 core area and has a throughput of up to 100MQRD/s. Compared to the brute-force approach, an energy reduction of 5~33% is achieved

Coherence memory and amnesia in a mode-locked laser

Self-organization of temporal modes in mode-locked lasers usually starts from quantum noise. In this process, incoherent spontaneous emission is steered into coherent ultrashort pulses by dissipation and nonlinearity. In this work, we investigated self-organization dynamics in a mode-locked Mamyshev oscillator starting from coherent pulse seeds as opposed to quantum noise. We observed that the coherence of the seed can be remembered or forgotten depending on the initial inverse population. The excessive nonlinearity in the coherence amnesia regime can devastate the seed coherence, causing the oscillator to undergo a chaotic transition lasting hundreds of round trips before regaining coherence. Conversely, the oscillator converges in only a few round trips for the coherence memory regime. A heterodyne technique was developed to record the fast varying optical phase and characterize these two regimes. Dissipative soliton molecules were synthesized from external pulse pair seeds via the coherence memory pathway. In this case, a plateau of the generated pulse spacing independent from seed pulse spacing, i.e., amnesia of the seed spacing, was observed for close spaced seed pulse pairs. Moreover, we show that pulse seeds can be used for laser reconfiguration and pulse pattern control. Our work paves a way to control transient pulse dynamics and steady pulse forms on demand in mode-locked lasers

MV-ROPE: Multi-view Constraints for Robust Category-level Object Pose and Size Estimation

We propose a novel framework for RGB-based category-level 6D object pose and size estimation. Our approach relies on the prediction of normalized object coordinate space (NOCS), which serves as an efficient and effective object canonical representation that can be extracted from RGB images. Unlike previous approaches that heavily relied on additional depth readings as input, our novelty lies in leveraging multi-view information, which is commonly available in practical scenarios where a moving camera continuously observes the environment. By introducing multi-view constraints, we can obtain accurate camera pose and depth estimation from a monocular dense SLAM framework. Additionally, by incorporating constraints on the camera relative pose, we can apply trimming strategies and robust pose averaging on the multi-view object poses, resulting in more accurate and robust estimations of category-level object poses even in the absence of direct depth readings. Furthermore, we introduce a novel NOCS prediction network that significantly improves performance. Our experimental results demonstrate the strong performance of our proposed method, even comparable to state-of-the-art RGB-D methods across public dataset sequences. Additionally, we showcase the generalization ability of our method by evaluating it on self-collected datasets

Neuroprotective Effects of Jitai Tablet, a Traditional Chinese Medicine, on the MPTP-Induced Acute Model of Parkinson’s Disease: Involvement of the Dopamine System

Jitai tablet (JTT) is a traditional Chinese medicine used to treat neuropsychiatric disorders. We previously demonstrated that JTT treatment led to increased level of dopamine transporter (DAT) in the striatum, thus indicating that JTT might have therapeutic potential for Parkinson’s disease (PD), which is characterized by dysregulated dopamine (DA) transmission and decreased striatal DAT expression. The aim of this study was to investigate the neuroprotective effect of JTT on MPTP-induced PD mice. Using locomotor activity test and rotarod test, we evaluated the effects of JTT (0.50, 0.15, or 0.05 g/kg) on MPTP-induced behavioral impairments. Tyrosine hydroxylase TH-positive neurons in the substantia nigra and DAT and dopamine D2 receptor (D2R) levels in the striatum were detected by immunohistochemical staining and/or autoradiography. Levels of DA and its metabolites were determined by HPLC. In MPTP-treated mice, behavioral impairments were alleviated by JTT treatment. Moreover, JTT protected against impairment of TH-positive neurons and attenuated the MPTP-induced decreases in DAT and D2R. Finally, high dose of JTT (0.50 g/kg) inhibited the MPTP-induced increase in DA metabolism rate. Taken together, results from our present study provide evidence that JTT offers neuroprotective effects against the neurotoxicity of MPTP and thus might be a potential treatment for PD

4-Methyl-2-(2-methylanilino)benzoic acid

The title compound, C15H15NO2, was obtained by the reaction of 2-chloro-4-methyl-benzoic acid and o-toluidine using 2-ethoxyethanol as solvent. Crystals of the title compounds were obtained from crystallization in acetone. The molecule in the crystal is twisted with a dihedral angle between the aromatic rings of 50.86 (5)°. In the crystal structure, the molecules associate to form acid–acid hydrogen-bonded dimers linked by pairwise O—H...O hydrogen bonds