Effect of Moisture Content on the Drill Resistance Value in Taiwania Plantation Wood

The effect of moisture content (MC) on the drill resistance values during desorption from a watersaturated condition of Taiwania (Taiwania cryptomerioides Hayta) plantation lumber was examined. Results showed that the drill resistance values tended to decrease with the decreasing of MC. Positive significant relationships were found among the MC, bulk density, and drill resistance values. This adjustment of density profiles could help the RESISTOGRAPH® to achieve a better measurement of the drill resistance profile of standing trees

An Investigation of Telecom Mobile Data Billing Plans

In the recent years, mobile operators have provided many billing alternatives such as limited and unlimited billing plans, and shared and non-shared data plans for the users with different needs. A non-shared data plan is designed for a single user with a limited monthly data allowance. On the other hand, the monthly data allowance of a shared data plan is shared by a group of users with multiple devices. The mobile operators often conduct the primary price study to compare their billing plans, which shows the relationship between the prices of the billing plans against the fixed amounts of data usage. Although the primary price study can easily and quickly draw the conclusions, it only provides rough billing plan suggestions. In reality, the amounts of data usage are not fixed, and therefore should be measured from commercial mobile networks to reflect the user behaviors on data usage. This paper proposes an analytical approach by using the measured data of Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (CHT), the largest telecommunications company in Taiwan, to derive the expected payments of various billing plans. The results of the analytical model are more accurate than those of the primary price study, and therefore provide better suggestions for billing plan selection. Other mobile operators can easily use our model to analyze the billing alternatives with their measured data

Ontology-based Fuzzy Markup Language Agent for Student and Robot Co-Learning

An intelligent robot agent based on domain ontology, machine learning mechanism, and Fuzzy Markup Language (FML) for students and robot co-learning is presented in this paper. The machine-human co-learning model is established to help various students learn the mathematical concepts based on their learning ability and performance. Meanwhile, the robot acts as a teacher's assistant to co-learn with children in the class. The FML-based knowledge base and rule base are embedded in the robot so that the teachers can get feedback from the robot on whether students make progress or not. Next, we inferred students' learning performance based on learning content's difficulty and students' ability, concentration level, as well as teamwork sprit in the class. Experimental results show that learning with the robot is helpful for disadvantaged and below-basic children. Moreover, the accuracy of the intelligent FML-based agent for student learning is increased after machine learning mechanism.Comment: This paper is submitted to IEEE WCCI 2018 Conference for revie

PEFT for Speech: Unveiling Optimal Placement, Merging Strategies, and Ensemble Techniques

Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) is increasingly recognized as an effective method in speech processing. However, the optimal approach and the placement of PEFT methods remain inconclusive. Our study conducts extensive experiments to compare different PEFT methods and their layer-wise placement adapting Differentiable Architecture Search (DARTS). We also explore the use of ensemble learning to leverage diverse PEFT strategies. The results reveal that DARTS does not outperform the baseline approach, which involves inserting the same PEFT method into all layers of a Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) model. In contrast, an ensemble learning approach, particularly one employing majority voting, demonstrates superior performance. Our statistical evidence indicates that different PEFT methods learn in varied ways. This variation might explain why the synergistic integration of various PEFT methods through ensemble learning can harness their unique learning capabilities more effectively compared to individual layer-wise optimization.Comment: Accepted to ICASSP 2024 Self-supervision in Audio, Speech and Beyond (SASB) worksho

Antialiasing attention spatial convolution model for skin lesion segmentation with applications in the Medical IoT

This study presents a noninvasive visual sensing enhancing system for skin lesion segmentation. According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, skin cancer kills more than two people every hour in the United States, and one in every five Americans will develop the disease. Skin cancer is becoming more popular, so the need for skin cancer diagnosis is increasing, particularly for melanoma, which has a high metastasis rate. Many traditional algorithms, as well as a computer-aided diagnosis tool, have been implemented in dermoscopic images for skin lesion segmentation to meet this need. However, the accuracy of the model is low, and the prognosis time is lengthy. This paper presents antialiasing attention spatial convolution (AASC) to segment melanoma skin lesions in dermoscopic images. Such a system can enhance the existing Medical IoT (MIoT) applications and provide third-party clues for medical examiners. Empirical results show that the AASC performs well when it is able to overcome dermoscopic limitations such as thick hair, low contrast, or shape and color distortion. The model was evaluated strictly under many statistical evaluation metrics such as the Jaccard index, Recall, Precision, F1 score, and Dice coefficient. The performance of the AASC was trained and tested. Remarkably, the AASC model yielded the highest scores in both three databases compared with the state-of-the-art models across three datasets: ISIC 2016, ISIC 2017, and PH2

The importance of pickup oxygen ion precipitation to the Mars upper atmosphere under extreme solar wind conditions

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/98793/1/grl50415.pd

Pleural Effusion after Percutaneous Radiofrequency Ablation for Hepatic Malignancies

AbstractBackground and AimsRadiofrequency ablation (RFA) can play an important role in the treatment of primary or metastatic liver tumors. Currently, percutaneous RFA is generally regarded as a safe, effective, and minimally invasive procedure. This study aimed to evaluate the presence and course of pleural effusion after monopolar RFA.MethodsFrom October 2008 to July 2013, a total of 54 patients (28 male and 26 female, mean age 65.2) treated with monopolar RFA were included in our study. 47 patients were diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma, 4 patients with hepatic metastasis, and 3 patients had other diagnoses. There were a total of 115 sessions of treatment and 199 liver tumors to be treated (1.73 ± 1.02 tumors treated per session). The tumor size ranged from 0.8 cm to 5.0 cm (mean 2.31 cm, standard deviation 1.04 cm). Thereafter, a follow-up ultrasound was performed within 24 hours subsequent to ablation to evaluate the presence of pleural effusion. The degree of pleural effusion was assessed by chest X-ray.ResultsFifteen (13.0%) treatment sessions in 14 patients showed right-sided pleural effusion after ablations. One patient had a large amount of effusion, while other patients manifested a minimal to small amount of effusion. There were 5 patients that experienced delayed resolution of pleural effusion; one patient (0.87%) had a minimal amount of pleural effusion even after one month. Overall, there was no pneumothorax, or periprocedural morality. Age, gender, tumor numbers, tumor sizes, and complete ablation of target tumors were similar among groups presenting with or without pleural effusion. Tumor locations associated with S78 segments abutting the diaphragm or right lobe of the liver were not associated with development of pleural effusion. Only the duration of ablation time had a marginal trend toward significance (p = 0.051).ConclusionsThe transient appearance of right-sided pleural effusion after percutaneous RFA for hepatic malignancies was not infrequent. However, refractory pleural effusion was rare