Location Choice of the Micro-Creative Enterprises (MCEs): Case Study of Local Creative Clusters in Shanghai, China

As the creative industries have become some of the fastest-growing sectors in the post-industrial era, their location choice has been focused by both academics and policymakers. Empirical research state that creative enterprises express clustering in particular places (known as creative clusters), such as declining industrial areas, old towns and places close to universities. Micro-creative enterprises (MCEs) occupy a significant proportion of the whole creative industries, but the former’s location choice has received comparatively less attention in the existing literature. In comparison with the general creative enterprises, MCEs’ location behavior appears to be impacted by more complicated factors due to the latter’s rather small scale. Using Shanghai as a case study, this research aims to understand the motivations of MCEs concerning their location choice as well as the weights of various location determinants at Shanghai’s neighborhood level. Notably, two local creative clusters, M50 and The Bridge 8, are selected for comparative analysis. This research employs the qualitative analysis method to analyze the data collected from the field observation, questionnaires and interviews. The researcher develops a location choice model derived from economic, institutional and creative aspects based on extensive location theories. The results give preliminary insights into how the market, local authority and the creative class impact the development of local creative clusters respectively. Furthermore, it discusses how different development patterns have reshaped urban forms and how the perceived attributes of the places attract MCEs. The research demonstrates that MCEs’ location choice is dominantly influenced by traditional economic factors, including industrial agglomeration effects, low rent cost and geographical proximity to labor market (in this case, creative talents). Meanwhile, the institutional and creative factors are also taken into considerations by many MCEs to various extent. The results also reveal an apparent differentiation between sub-sectors of creative industries regarding their reliance on location determinants. Therefore, the location choice of MCEs cannot be explained by blanket approaches but depends on industrial characteristics, enterprise development stage and many behavioral factors. Last, key improvement strategies toward local creative clusters are discussed, including improving public engagement, cultivating creative milieu and strengthening cooperation and linkage

Full-range Gate-controlled Terahertz Phase Modulations with Graphene Metasurfaces

Local phase control of electromagnetic wave, the basis of a diverse set of applications such as hologram imaging, polarization and wave-front manipulation, is of fundamental importance in photonic research. However, the bulky, passive phase modulators currently available remain a hurdle for photonic integration. Here we demonstrate full-range active phase modulations in the Tera-Hertz (THz) regime, realized by gate-tuned ultra-thin reflective metasurfaces based on graphene. A one-port resonator model, backed by our full-wave simulations, reveals the underlying mechanism of our extreme phase modulations, and points to general strategies for the design of tunable photonic devices. As a particular example, we demonstrate a gate-tunable THz polarization modulator based on our graphene metasurface. Our findings pave the road towards exciting photonic applications based on active phase manipulations

DeepE: a deep neural network for knowledge graph embedding

Recently, neural network based methods have shown their power in learning more expressive features on the task of knowledge graph embedding (KGE). However, the performance of deep methods often falls behind the shallow ones on simple graphs. One possible reason is that deep models are difficult to train, while shallow models might suffice for accurately representing the structure of the simple KGs. In this paper, we propose a neural network based model, named DeepE, to address the problem, which stacks multiple building blocks to predict the tail entity based on the head entity and the relation. Each building block is an addition of a linear and a non-linear function. The stacked building blocks are equivalent to a group of learning functions with different non-linear depth. Hence, DeepE allows deep functions to learn deep features, and shallow functions to learn shallow features. Through extensive experiments, we find DeepE outperforms other state-of-the-art baseline methods. A major advantage of DeepE is the robustness. DeepE achieves a Mean Rank (MR) score that is 6%, 30%, 65% lower than the best baseline methods on FB15k-237, WN18RR and YAGO3-10. Our design makes it possible to train much deeper networks on KGE, e.g. 40 layers on FB15k-237, and without scarifying precision on simple relations.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 7 table

Correlation of lifestyle behaviors during pregnancy with postpartum depression status of puerpera in the rural areas of South China

BackgroundPostpartum depression (PPD) is among the most common postpartum complications. Its prevalence is associated with strong regional variability. Women in rural areas of China have a high risk of PPD. The aim of this study was to investigate the PPD status of women in rural South China and explore the effects of modifiable lifestyle behaviors during pregnancy on their PPD status, thereby providing a scientific basis for the prevention and intervention of PPD in rural China.MethodsA cohort study was conducted on 261 women from four maternal health institutions situated in rural areas of Guangdong Province and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region from October 2021 to December 2022. The questionnaires were administered to these women to obtain data about sociodemographic characteristics, health literacy, physical activity during pregnancy, and sleep and dietary status during pregnancy, as well as depression status on the 42nd day after delivery. The lifestyle behaviors during pregnancy and the PPD status of the study population were analyzed. Multiple linear regression models were used to determine the correlation between lifestyle behaviors and PPD status. Path analysis was performed to explore the interaction between various lifestyle behaviors.ResultsA total of 14.6% of women had a PPD status. Women who continued to work during pregnancy had an Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale (EPDS) score of 1.386 points higher than that of women who did not (В = 1.386, β = 0.141, p = 0.029). For every 1-point increase in the infant feeding-related knowledge score and pregnancy diet diversity score, the EPDS score decreased by 0.188 and 0.484 points, respectively, and for every 1-point increase in the Pittsburgh sleep quality index score, the EPDS score increased by 0.288 points. Age was related to infant feeding-related knowledge (indirect path coefficient = 0.023). During pregnancy, sedentary time was correlated with sleep quality (indirect path coefficient = 0.031) and employment status (indirect path coefficient = 0.043).ConclusionEmployment status, infant feeding-related knowledge, sleep quality, and diet diversity during pregnancy directly influenced the PPD status, while age and sedentary time during pregnancy indirectly influenced the PPD status. Promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors, including reducing sedentary time, improving sleep quality, and increasing dietary diversity, may be effective in reducing PPD occurrence

LLMs as Workers in Human-Computational Algorithms? Replicating Crowdsourcing Pipelines with LLMs

LLMs have shown promise in replicating human-like behavior in crowdsourcing tasks that were previously thought to be exclusive to human abilities. However, current efforts focus mainly on simple atomic tasks. We explore whether LLMs can replicate more complex crowdsourcing pipelines. We find that modern LLMs can simulate some of crowdworkers' abilities in these "human computation algorithms," but the level of success is variable and influenced by requesters' understanding of LLM capabilities, the specific skills required for sub-tasks, and the optimal interaction modality for performing these sub-tasks. We reflect on human and LLMs' different sensitivities to instructions, stress the importance of enabling human-facing safeguards for LLMs, and discuss the potential of training humans and LLMs with complementary skill sets. Crucially, we show that replicating crowdsourcing pipelines offers a valuable platform to investigate (1) the relative strengths of LLMs on different tasks (by cross-comparing their performances on sub-tasks) and (2) LLMs' potential in complex tasks, where they can complete part of the tasks while leaving others to humans

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Correlation between Spatial-Temporal Variation in Landscape Patterns and Surface Water Quality: A Case Study in the Yi River Watershed, China

The evidence for a correlation between landscape patterns and surface water quality is still weak. We chose the Yi River watershed in China as a study area. We selected and determined the chemical oxygen demand, ammonia nitrogen, total phosphorus, dissolved oxygen, and electric conductivity to represent the surface water quality. We analyzed the spatial distribution of the surface water quality. Buffer zones with five different radii were built around each sampling site to analyze landscape patterns on different scales. A correlation analysis was completed to examine the influencing rules and the response mechanisms between landscape patterns and surface water quality indicators. The results show that: (1) Different landscape composition types impact the surface water quality differently and increasing the area of forest land can effectively reduce non-point source pollution, (2) an increase in urban area may threaten the surface water quality, and (3) landscape compositional change has a greater influence on surface water quality compared to landscape configurational change. This study provides a scientific foundation for the spatial development of watersheds and outlines a strategy for improving the sustainability of surface water quality and the surrounding environment

Properties of Mortar Containing Recycled Fine Aggregate Modified by Microbial Mineralization

Microbial-induced mineralization deposition was used to improve the quality of the recycled fine aggregate (RFA) in this paper. In order to obtain a better improvement effect, the microbial mineralization conditions were first optimized. The effect of the pH value, temperature, bacterial concentration and calcium ion concentration on the mineralization ability of bacteria were investigated. The optimal microbial mineralization conditions were selected for the treatment of RFA and the microbial mineralization modification effect of RFA was evaluated based on the water absorption and crushing index. In addition, the natural fine aggregate (NFA), unmodified RFA and modified RFA were made into ordinary mortar, recycled mortar and modified recycled mortar, respectively. The workability, mechanical properties and chloride ion penetration resistance of mortars was investigated. Meanwhile, the precipitations formed by microbial mineralization were characterized using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The pore structure of mortars was analyzed using the mercury intrusion porosimeter (MIP). The results showed that the bioprecipitations were mainly calcite calcium carbonate and the quality of the RFA was improved by microbial-induced calcium carbonate deposition. The water absorption and crushing index of the modified RFA decreased by 25.7% and 4.2%, respectively. Compared with the crushing index, the water absorption of the RFA was improved more obviously. The workability, mechanical performance, chloride ion penetration resistance and pore structure of the modified recycled mortar was improved. Compared with the recycled mortar, the fluidity of the modified recycled mortar was 7.3% higher, the compressive strength of 28 d was 7.0% higher and the 6 h electric flux was 18.8% lower. The porosity of the ordinary mortar, recycled mortar and modified recycled mortar was 16.49%, 20.83% and 20.27%, respectively. The strengthening of the modified recycled mortar performance may be attributed to the improvement of the mortar microstructure due to the enhancement of the RFA quality after the biotreatment

Three-dimensional surface inspection for semiconductor components with fringe projection profilometry

With the increasing integration level of components in modern electronic devices, three-dimensional automated optical inspection has been widely used in the manufacturing process of electronic and communication industries to improve the product quality. In this paper, we develop a three-dimensional inspection and metrology system for semiconductor components with fringe projection profilometry, which is composed of industry camera, telecentric lens and projection module. This system is used to measure the height, flatness, volume, shape, coplanarity for quality checking. To detect the discontinuous parts in the internal surface of semiconductor components, we employ the fringes with multiple spatial frequencies to avoid the measurement ambiguity. The complete three-dimensional information of semiconductor component is obtained by fusing the absolute phase maps from different views. The practical inspection results show that the depth resolution of our system reaches 10 μm. This system can be further embedded for the online inspection of various electronic and communication products