ENVIRONMENTAL SURROUNDINGS AND PERSONAL WELL-BEING IN URBAN CHINA

We examine the relationship between atmospheric pollution, water pollution, traffic congestion, access to parkland and personal well-being using a survey administered across six Chinese cities in 2007. In contrast to existing studies of the determinants of well-being by economists, which have typically employed single item indicators to measure well-being, we use the Personal Well-Being Index (PWI). We also employ the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) to measure job satisfaction, which is one of the variables for which we control when examining the relationship between environmental surroundings and personal well-being. Previous research by psychologists has shown the PWI and JSS to have good psychometric properties in western and Chinese samples. A robust finding is that in cities with higher levels of atmospheric pollution and traffic congestion, respondents report lower levels of personal well-being ceteris paribus. Specifically, we find that a one standard deviation increase in suspended particles or sulphur dioxide emissions is roughly equivalent to a 12-13 per cent reduction in average monthly income in the six cities.China, Environment, Pollution, Personal Well-Being.

Exploring Siamese network to estimate sea state bias of synthetic aperture radar altimeter

Sea state bias (SSB) is a crucial error of satellite radar altimetry over the ocean surface. For operational nonparametric SSB (NPSSB) models, such as two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) NPSSB, the solution process becomes increasingly complex and the construction of their regression functions pose challenges as the dimensionality of relevant variables increases. And most current SSB correction models for altimeters still follow those of traditional nadir radar altimeters, which limits their applicability to Synthetic Aperture Radar altimeters. Therefore, to improve this situation, this study has explored the influence of multi-dimensional SSB models on Synthetic Aperture Radar altimeters. This paper proposes a deep learning-based SSB estimation model called SNSSB, which employs a Siamese network framework, takes various multi-dimensional variables related to sea state as inputs, and uses the difference in sea surface height (SSH) at self-crossover points as the label. Experiments were conducted using Sentinel-6 self-crossover data from 2021 to 2023, and the model is evaluated using three main metrics: the variance of the SSH difference, the explained variance, and the SSH difference variance index (SVDI). The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed SNSSB model can further improve the accuracy of SSB estimation. On a global scale, compared to the traditional NPSSB, the multi-dimensional SNSSB not only decreases the variance of the SSH difference by over 11%, but also improves the explained variance by 5-10 cm2 in mid- and low-latitude regions. And the regional SNSSB also performs well, reducing the variance of the SSH difference by over 10% compared to the NPSSB. Additionally, the SNSSB model improves the computational efficiency by approximately 100 times. The favorable results highlight the potential of the multi-dimensional SNSSB in constructing SSB models, particularly the five-dimensional (5D) SNSSB, representing a breakthrough in overcoming the limitations of traditional NPSSB for constructing high-dimensional models. This study provides a novel approach to exploring the multiple influencing factors of SSB

Age-Related Alterations in Electroencephalography Connectivity and Network Topology During n-Back Working Memory Task

The study of the healthy brain in elders, especially age-associated alterations in cognition, is important to understand the deficits created by Alzheimer's disease (AD), which imposes a tremendous burden on individuals, families, and society. Although, the changes in synaptic connectivity and reorganization of brain networks that accompany aging are gradually becoming understood, little is known about how normal aging affects brain inter-regional synchronization and functional networks when items are held in working memory (WM). According to the classic Sternberg WM paradigm, we recorded multichannel electroencephalography (EEG) from healthy adults (young and senior) in three different conditions, i.e., the resting state, 0-back (control) task, and 2-back task. The phase lag index (PLI) between EEG channels was computed and then weighted and undirected network was constructed based on the PLI matrix. The effects of aging on network topology were examined using a brain connectivity toolbox. The results showed that age-related alteration was more prominent when the 2-back task was engaged, especially in the theta band. For the younger adults, the WM task evoked a significant increase in the clustering coefficient of the beta-band functional connectivity network, which was absent in the older adults. Furthermore, significant correlations were observed between the behavioral performance of WM and EEG metrics in the theta and gamma bands, suggesting the potential use of those measures as biomarkers for the evaluation of cognitive training, for instance. Taken together, our findings shed further light on the underlying mechanism of WM in physiological aging and suggest that different EEG frequencies appear to have distinct functional correlates in cognitive aging. Analysis of inter-regional synchronization and topological characteristics based on graph theory is thus an appropriate way to explore natural age-related changes in the human brain

FusionFormer: A Multi-sensory Fusion in Bird's-Eye-View and Temporal Consistent Transformer for 3D Objection

Multi-sensor modal fusion has demonstrated strong advantages in 3D object detection tasks. However, existing methods that fuse multi-modal features through a simple channel concatenation require transformation features into bird's eye view space and may lose the information on Z-axis thus leads to inferior performance. To this end, we propose FusionFormer, an end-to-end multi-modal fusion framework that leverages transformers to fuse multi-modal features and obtain fused BEV features. And based on the flexible adaptability of FusionFormer to the input modality representation, we propose a depth prediction branch that can be added to the framework to improve detection performance in camera-based detection tasks. In addition, we propose a plug-and-play temporal fusion module based on transformers that can fuse historical frame BEV features for more stable and reliable detection results. We evaluate our method on the nuScenes dataset and achieve 72.6% mAP and 75.1% NDS for 3D object detection tasks, outperforming state-of-the-art methods

Comparison of outcomes between immediate implant-based and autologous reconstruction: 15-year, single-center experience in a propensity score-matched Chinese cohort

Objective: The number of immediate breast reconstruction (IBR) procedures has been increasing in China. This study aimed to investigate the oncological safety of IBR, and to compare the survival and surgical outcomes between implant-based and autologous reconstruction. Methods: Data from patients diagnosed with invasive breast cancer who underwent immediate total breast reconstruction between 2001 and 2016 were retrospectively reviewed. Long-term breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS), disease-free survival (DFS), and locoregional recurrence-free survival (LRFS) were evaluated. Patient satisfaction with the breast was compared between the implant-based and autologous groups. BCSS, DFS, and LRFS were compared between groups after propensity score matching (PSM). Results: A total of 784 IBR procedures were identified, of which 584 were performed on patients with invasive breast cancer (implant-based, n = 288; autologous, n = 296). With a median follow-up of 71.3 months, the 10-year estimates of BCSS, DFS, and LRFS were 88.9% [95% confidence interval (CI) (85.1%–93.0%)], 79.6% [95% CI (74.7%–84.8%)], and 94.0% [95% CI (90.3%–97.8%)], respectively. A total of 124 patients completed the Breast-Q questionnaire, and no statistically significant differences were noted between groups (P = 0.823). After PSM with 27 variables, no statistically significant differences in BCSS, DFS, and LRFS were found between the implant-based (n = 177) and autologous (n = 177) groups. Further stratification according to staging, histological grade, lymph node status, and lymph-venous invasion status revealed no significant survival differences between groups. Conclusions: Both immediate implant-based and autologous reconstruction were reasonable choices with similar long-term oncological outcomes and patient-reported satisfaction among patients with invasive breast cancer in China

IPC02-27155 DEVELOPMENT OF LARGE DIAMETER X70 HIGH TOUGHNESS HSAW LINEPIPE FOR GAS TRANSMMISION

ABSTRACT X70 large diameter linepipe with helical seam SAW were developed, with1016mm OD and 14.6mm WT. Acicular ferrite type linepipe steel is adopted for the base material, which was found having high toughness and low yield strength loss after pipe forming. The very stringent requirements for toughness, i.e. 190J/140J for average/minimum for pipe body and 120J/90J for average/minimum for weld and HAZ were meet successfully. The yield strength loss due to Bauschinger effect was found lower than 20 MPa, which benefited

Concept Design of the “Guanlan” Science Mission: China’s Novel Contribution to Space Oceanography

Among the various challenges that spaceborne radar observations of the ocean face, the following two issues are probably of a higher priority: inadequate dynamic resolution, and ineffective vertical penetration. It is therefore the vision of the National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology of China that two highly anticipated breakthroughs in the coming decade are likely to be associated with radar interferometry and ocean lidar (OL) technology, which are expected to make a substantial contribution to a submesoscale-resolving and depth-resolving observation of the ocean. As an expanded follow-up of SWOT and an oceanic counterpart of CALIPSO, the planned “Guanlan” science mission comprises a dual-frequency (Ku and Ka) interferometric altimetry (IA), and a near-nadir pointing OL. Such an unprecedented combination of sensor systems has at least three prominent advantages. (i) The dual-frequency IA ensures a wider swath and a shorter repeat cycle which leads to a significantly improved temporal and spatial resolution up to days and kilometers. (ii) The first spaceborne active OL ensures a deeper penetration depth and an all-time detection which leads to a layered characterization of the optical properties of the subsurface ocean, while also serving as a near-nadir altimeter measuring vertical velocities associated with the divergence, and convergence of geostrophic eddy motions in the mixed layer. (iii) The simultaneous functioning of the IA/OL system allows for an enhanced correction of the contamination effects of the atmosphere and the air-sea interface, which in turn considerably reduces the error budgets of the two sensors. As a result, the integrated IA/OL payload is expected to resolve the ocean variability at submeso and sub-week scales with a centimeter-level accuracy, while also partially revealing marine life systems and ecosystems with a 10-m vertical interval in the euphotic layer, moving a significant step forward toward a “transparent ocean” down to the vicinity of the thermocline, both dynamically and bio-optically

The Role of Eye Gaze in Security and Privacy Applications: Survey and Future HCI Research Directions

For the past 20 years, researchers have investigated the use of eye tracking in security applications. We present a holistic view on gaze-based security applications. In particular, we canvassed the literature and classify the utility of gaze in security applications into a) authentication, b) privacy protection, and c) gaze monitoring during security critical tasks. This allows us to chart several research directions, most importantly 1) conducting field studies of implicit and explicit gaze-based authentication due to recent advances in eye tracking, 2) research on gaze-based privacy protection and gaze monitoring in security critical tasks which are under-investigated yet very promising areas, and 3) understanding the privacy implications of pervasive eye tracking. We discuss the most promising opportunities and most pressing challenges of eye tracking for security that will shape research in gaze-based security applications for the next decade