The Relationship between Mainstream and Movement Parties in Taiwan: Case Studies of the New Power Party (NPP) and the Green Party Taiwan-Social Democratic Party Alliance (GPT/SDP)

Since democratization began in the mid-1980s, Taiwan’s party system has been dominated by two parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). However, smaller parties have at times played an important role, bringing diversity into the system, stressing different issues and representing neglected communities. These small parties tended to be those that split off from the mainstream parties, while alternative social movement parties struggled to be electorally relevant. The picture changed recently with the rise of two different types of movement parties, the New Power Party (NPP) and the Green Party Taiwan/Social Democratic Party Alliance (GPT/SDP). In this chapter we examine the relationship of these new players with the mainstream party, DPP, offering some thoughts on how the relationship affected the development of these alternative parties

Exploring the Open-Close Mechanism of Dimorphotheca aurantiaca: Day versus Night and Cold versus Hot Temperatures

In the spring of every year on Pepperdine University’s campus, patches of hills are covered with the South African native flower Dimorphotheca aurantiaca or more commonly known as the African Daisy. An observation of the opening and closing mechanism of the flower triggered an important question: does the flower change its shape based on temperature or the presence of light? At night, the African Daisy closes and then opens up again in the daytime. Because temperature has such strong effects on different species of ectodermic animals and temperature-sensitive plants, we hypothesized that the change in temperature initiates the flower’s morphological change. Six flower pots were placed in warmer temperature and then in colder temperature, both under light and then under darkness for six-hour periods. The infrared thermometer was used to accurately measure what temperature the flowers were detecting. Ultimately, we did not reject the null: The African Daisy responded more significantly to change in light exposure than to change in temperature. This discovery reveals that the flower detects light to maintain its survival

Use of FBG optical sensors for structural health monitoring: Practical application

This paper describes the development of FBG Optical sensors for their practical application on structural health monitoring. The sensors were installed on the Tsing Ma Bridge for a trial run. The results using FBG sensors were in excellent agreement with those acquired by the bridge WASHMS

Redesign of Good Karma Bike’s Facility Layout and Bike Storage Process

Good Karma Bikes is a non-profit organization that services and restores bikes that customers bring into the shop. Good Karma Bikes has plans for a dramatic increase in storage capacity for the next few years. Good Karma Bike’s warehouse area is currently overflowing with bikes due to the large increase in demand. A redesign of the warehouse layout is needed to handle the increase of incoming bikes and to improve product flow through the space. The project team’s objectives are to: Improve accessibility and reduce time it takes to unrack a bike Increase space utilization by improving bike storage capacity Decrease distance traveled during the process of fixing or stripping down bikes The project team will follow a Gantt chart throughout the duration of the project and use various Industrial Engineering tools to identify how much space is required for the increased demand, how each tool, rack, and workstation within the facility should be laid out, and create a new way to store bikes in a more efficient manner. First, the team observed the flow of bikes through the facility, gathering value added and non-value added processes. In addition, the team tracked the motion of the workers by creating a spaghetti diagram. The dimensions and current layout were taken to create a current state facility model using Microsoft Visio. Next, the project team dived into gathering specific dimensions on the current bike racks to determine how many can be stored on the racks and the amount of square footage the racks take up on the shop floor. The team then used Microsoft Visio as well to create a digital design of the new proposed layout and the alternative layouts, using employee feedback, space requirements, and distance traveled to produce a final recommended layout. For the bike racks, the new design was created in Solidworks to visualize the looks of the rack and the dimensions of the parts before the actual build. From the findings, the group found that the proposed layout will help decrease the amount of square footage consumed by the racks and improve the flow of bikes through the warehouse. The proposed bike rack design increases the rack’s capacity from 6 bikes to 9 bikes while shortening the length of the rack. The total cost of implementing this bike rack will be $60 in material cost and free with labor because the design is simple enough for volunteers to build the racks from scratch. This low-cost bike rack is beneficial to the Good Karma Bikes because this prevents the company from purchasing a mezzanine which would have cost them about$11,000. The new layout and bike storage process will shorten the time to unrack and place bikes onto the racks by a minute per bike, decreasing overall cycle time for bike maintenance. The project team highly recommends this new facility layout and bike rack design if Good Karma Bikes hopes to achieve enough capacity for their projected demand

Enhancing Large Language Model Performance To Answer Questions and Extract Information More Accurately

Large Language Models (LLMs) generate responses to questions; however, their effectiveness is often hindered by sub-optimal quality of answers and occasional failures to provide accurate responses to questions. To address these challenges, a fine-tuning process is employed, involving feedback and examples to refine models. The objective is to enhance AI models through continuous feedback loops, utilizing metrics such as cosine similarity, LLM evaluation and Rouge-L scores to evaluate the models. Leveraging LLMs like GPT-3.5, GPT4ALL, and LLaMA2, and Claude, this approach is benchmarked on financial datasets, including the FinanceBench and RAG Instruct Benchmark Tester Dataset, illustrating the necessity of fine-tuning. The results showcase the capability of fine-tuned models to surpass the accuracy of zero-shot LLMs, providing superior question and answering capabilities. Notably, the combination of fine-tuning the LLM with a process known as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) proves to generate responses with improved accuracy

Transcriptome dataset of sago palm in peat soil

Sago palm (Metroxylon sagu Rottb.) is an important agricultural starch-producing palm that contributes to Malaysia's economics, especially in the State of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. In this palm tree, the central part of the plant storage-starch. Under normal condition, sago palm develop its trunk after 4-5 years being planted. However, sago palms planted on deep-peat soil failed to develop their trunk even after 17 years of being planted. This phenomenon is known as ‘non-trunking’, which eliminates the economic value of the palms. Numerous research has been done to address the phenomenon, but the molecular mechanisms of sago palm responding toward the responsible stresses are still lacking. Therefore, in this study, leaf samples were collected from trunking (normal) and non-trunking sago palms planted on peat soil for total RNA extraction, followed by next-generation sequencing using the BGISEQ-500 platform. The raw reads were cleaned, and de novo assembled using TRINITY software package. A total of 40.11 Gb bases were sequenced from the sago palm leaf samples. The assembled sequence produced 102,447 unigenes, with N50 score 1809 bp and GC ratio of 44.34%. The alignment of unigenes with seven functional databases (NR, NT, GO, KOG, KEGG, SwissProt and InterPro) resulted in the annotation of 65,523 (63.96%) unigenes. Functional annotation results in the detection of 46,335 coding DNA sequences by Transdecoder. A total of 30,039 simple-sequence repeats distributed on 21,676 unigenes were detected using Primer3 software, and 2355 transcription factor coding unigenes were predicted using getorf and hmmseach software. This work is registered under NCBI BioProject PRJNA781491. The raw RNA sequencing data are available in Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database with accession numbers SRX13165895, SRX13165896, SRX13165897, SRX13165898, SRX13165899, and SRX13165900. Gene expression and annotation information are accessible in public functional genomics data repository Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) with accession number GSE189085

Sequencing and Characterisation of Complete Mitochondrial DNA Genome for Trigonopoma pauciperforatum (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae: Danioninae) with Phylogenetic Consideration

The Trigonopoma pauciperforatum or the redstripe rasbora is a cyprinid commonly found in marshes and swampy areas with slight acidic tannin-stained water in the tropics. In this study, the complete mitogenome sequence of T. pauciperforatum was first amplified in two parts using two pairs of overlapping primers and then sequenced. The size of the mitogenome is 16,707 bp, encompassing 22 transfer RNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes, two ribosomal RNA genes and a putative control region. Identical gene organisation was detected between this species and other family members. The heavy strand accommodates 28 genes while the light strand houses the remaining nine genes. Most protein-coding genes utilize ATG as start codon except for COI gene which uses GTG instead. The terminal associated sequence (TAS), central conserved sequence block (CSB-F, CSB-D and CSB-E) as well as variable sequence block (CSB-1, CSB-2 and CSB-3) are conserved in the control region. The maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree revealed the divergence of T. pauciperforatum from the basal region of the major clade, where its evolutionary relationships with Boraras maculatus, Rasbora cephalotaenia and R. daniconius are poorly resolved as suggested by the low bootstrap values. This work contributes towards the genetic resource enrichment for peat swamp conservation and comprehensive in-depth comparisons across other phylogenetic researches done on the Rasbora-related genus

Sequencing and characterization of complete mitogenome DNA of Rasbora tornieri (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae: Rasbora) and its evolutionary significance

The yellowtail rasbora (Rasbora tornieri) is a miniature ray-finned fish categorized under the genus Rasbora in the family of Cyprinidae. In this study, a complete mitogenome sequence of R. tornieri was sequenced using four primers targeting two halves of the mitogenome with overlapping flanking regions. The size of mitogenome was 16,573 bp, housing 22 transfer RNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes, two ribosomal RNA genes and a putative control region. Identical gene organization was detected between this species and other members of Rasbora genus. The heavy strand encompassed 28 genes while the light strand accommodated the other nine genes. Most protein-coding genes execute ATG as start codon, excluding COI and ND3 genes, which utilized GTG instead. The central conserved sequence blocks (CSB-E, CSB-F and CSB-D), variable sequence blocks (CSB-1, CSB-3 and CSB-2) as well as the terminal associated sequence (TAS) were conserved within the control region. The maximum likelihood phylogenetic family tree revealed the divergence of R. tornieri from the basal region of the Rasbora clade, where its evolutionary relationships with other Rasbora members are poorly resolved as indicated by the low bootstrap values. This work acts as window for further population genetics and molecular evolution studies of Rasbora genus in future

Sequencing and characterization of complete mitogenome DNA for Rasbora myersi (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae: Rasbora) and its evolutionary significance

The Seluang fish (Rasbora myersi) is a small ray-finned fish categorized under the genus Rasbora in the Cyprinidae family. In this study, the complete mitogenome sequence of R. myersi was sequenced using two primer pairs targeting overlapping regions. The mitogenome is 16,581 bp in length, encompassing 22 transfer RNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes, two ribosomal RNA genes and a putative control region. Identical gene organisation was observed between this species and other genus counterparts. The heavy strand accommodates 28 genes while the light strand houses the other nine genes. Most protein-coding genes utilize ATG as start codon, excluding COI gene, which employs GTG instead. The central conserved sequence blocks (CSB-F, CSB-E and CSB-D), variable sequence blocks (CSB-3, CSB-2 and CSB-1) as well as the terminal associated sequence (TAS) are conserved within the control region. The R. myersi formed a trio with R. borapetensis and R. argyrotaenia in a moderately strong clade with bootstrap value of 86. This work acts as essential gateway towards further molecular evolution and population genetics studies of the Rasbora genus in future

Sequencing and characterisation of complete mitogenome DNA for Rasbora sarawakensis (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae: Rasbora) with phylogenetic consideration

The Blueline Rasbora (Rasbora sarawakensis) is a small ray-finned fish categorized under the genus Rasbora in the Cyprinidae family. In this study, the complete mitogenome sequence of R. sarawakensis was sequenced using four primers targeting overlapping regions. The mitogenome is 16,709 bp in size, accommodating 22 transfer RNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes, two ribosomal RNA genes and a putative control region. Identical gene organisation was detected between this species and other genus counterparts. The heavy strand houses 28 genes while the light strand stores the other nine genes. Most protein-coding genes employ ATG as start codon, excluding COI gene, which utilizes GTG instead. The central conserved sequence blocks (CSB-F, CSB-E and CSB-D), variable sequence blocks (CSB-3, CSB-2 and CSB-1) as well as the terminal associated sequence (TAS) are conserved in the control region. The maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree revealed the divergence of R. sarawakensis from the basal region of the Rasbora clade, where its evolutionary relationships with R. maculatus and R. pauciperforata are poorly resolved as indicated by the low bootstrap values. This work acts as steppingstone towards further molecular evolution and population genetics studies of Rasbora genus in future