New Constructions of Zero-Correlation Zone Sequences

In this paper, we propose three classes of systematic approaches for constructing zero correlation zone (ZCZ) sequence families. In most cases, these approaches are capable of generating sequence families that achieve the upper bounds on the family size ($K$) and the ZCZ width ($T$) for a given sequence period ($N$). Our approaches can produce various binary and polyphase ZCZ families with desired parameters $(N,K,T)$ and alphabet size. They also provide additional tradeoffs amongst the above four system parameters and are less constrained by the alphabet size. Furthermore, the constructed families have nested-like property that can be either decomposed or combined to constitute smaller or larger ZCZ sequence sets. We make detailed comparisons with related works and present some extended properties. For each approach, we provide examples to numerically illustrate the proposed construction procedure.Comment: 37 pages, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Is Contract Farming More Profitable and Efficient Than Non-Contract Farming-A Survey Study of Rice Farms In Taiwan

Trade liberalization and globalization has modernized the food retail sector in Taiwan, affecting consumers, producers and trade patterns. These changes have placed significant pressures on farmers and processors including more stringent quality control and product varieties. The government has launched a rice production-marketing contract program in 2005 to assist rice farmers and the agro-business sector to work together as partners. The minimum scale for each contract is 50 hectares of adjacent rice paddies with 50 participants including rice farmers, seedling providers, millers and marketing agents. In order to evaluate the outcome of this program, a survey is conducted in the summer of 2005 after the first (spring) crop is harvested. Information of price and value of output and major variable and fixed inputs are collected along with characteristics of the farmers and farms. The survey results show that the average revenue of a contract farm is about 11 percent higher than an average non-contract farm. The per hectare cost of production in a contract farm is about 13 percent lower and as a result the average profit margin under contract is more than 50 percent above those without contract. A swtiching regression profit frontier model is adopted to further investigate their efficiency performance. The result indicates that an average contract farms is 20 percent more efficient than an average non-contract farm in a comparable operating environment. The result also suggests that although contract farming has potential to improve the profit of smallholders, it is not a sufficient condition for such improvement.Land Economics/Use,

Towards understanding the electronic structure of Fe-doped CeO2 nanoparticles with X-ray spectroscopy

[[abstract]]This study reports on the electronic structure of Fe-doped CeO2 nanoparticles (NPs), determined by coupled X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray emission spectroscopy. A comparison of the local electronic structure around the Ce site with that around the Fe site indicates that the Fe substitutes for the Ce. The oxygen K-edge spectra that originated from the hybridization between cerium 4f and oxygen 2p states are sensitive to the oxidation state and depend strongly on the concentration of Fe doping. The Ce M4,5-edges and the Fe L2,3-edges reveal the variations of the charge states of Ce and Fe upon doping, respectively. The band gap is further obtained from the combined absorption–emission spectrum and decreased upon Fe doping, implying Fe doping introduces vacancies. The oxygen vacancies are induced by Fe doping and the spectrum reveals the charge transfer between Fe and Ce. Fe3+ doping has two major effects on the formation of ferromagnetism in CeO2 nanoparticles. The first, at an Fe content of below 5%, is that the formation of Fe3+–Vo–Ce3+ introduces oxygen deficiencies favoring ferromagnetism. The other, at an Fe content of over 5%, is the formation of Fe3+–Vo–Fe3+, which favors antiferromagnetism, reducing the Ms. The defect structures Fe3+–Vo–Ce3+ and Fe3+–Vo–Fe3+ are crucial to the magnetism in these NPs and the change in Ms can be described as the effect of competitive interactions of magnetic polarons and paired ions.[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]紙本[[booktype]]電子

The Association between Virus Prevalence and Intercolonial Aggression Levels in the Yellow Crazy Ant, Anoplolepis Gracilipes (Jerdon).

The recent discovery of multiple viruses in ants, along with the widespread infection of their hosts across geographic ranges, provides an excellent opportunity to test whether viral prevalence in the field is associated with the complexity of social interactions in the ant population. In this study, we examined whether the association exists between the field prevalence of a virus and the intercolonial aggression of its ant host, using the yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) and its natural viral pathogen (TR44839 virus) as a model system. We delimitated the colony boundary and composition of A. gracilipes in a total of 12 study sites in Japan (Okinawa), Taiwan, and Malaysia (Penang), through intercolonial aggression assay. The spatial distribution and prevalence level of the virus was then mapped for each site. The virus occurred at a high prevalence in the surveyed colonies of Okinawa and Taiwan (100% infection rate across all sites), whereas virus prevalence was variable (30%-100%) or none (0%) at the sites in Penang. Coincidentally, colonies in Okinawa and Taiwan displayed a weak intercolonial boundary, as aggression between colonies is generally low or moderate. Contrastingly, sites in Penang were found to harbor a high proportion of mutually aggressive colonies, a pattern potentially indicative of complex colony composition. Our statistical analyses further confirmed the observed correlation, implying that intercolonial interactions likely contribute as one of the effective facilitators of/barriers to virus prevalence in the field population of this ant species

Knowledge Sharing and Business Matching in Advertising and Public Relations Services Using Semantic Peer Technology

We develop semantic peer network aiming at knowledge sharing and business matching for the domain of advertisement and public relations. We top up a knowledge-based layer upon the peer to peer network to make it knowledge base peer. The knowledge base consists of ontology for the application domain and domain instances. We develop user services for resource sharing and business matching based on the knowledge-based layer. A trust management mechanism is built into the knowledge-based layer for making trustable resource sharing and business match making. Also we develop an RDF-based streaming mechanism for automatically pushing newly matched information to appropriate nodes. We made experiment to test the performance of search for the prototype system. The result shows that the addition of knowledge-based layer upon the peer-to-peer network would not result in the decrease of performance. We also investigate future work after the prototype researc