A Two-Stage Choice Experiment Approach to Elicit Consumer Preferences

Another version will replace the current draftchoice experiment, milk, attribute information, Agribusiness, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,

Consumer Demand for Healthy Diet: New Evidence from Healthy Eating Index

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/20/10.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy,

Sharper global existence for the generalized 1D nonhomogeneous Ginzburg–Landau equation

AbstractWe study the following generalized 1D Ginzburg–Landau equation on Ω=(0,∞)×(0,∞): ut=(1+iμ)uxx+(a1+ib1)|u|2ux+(a2+ib2)u2ūx−(1+iν)|u|4u with initial and Dirichlet boundary conditions u(x,0)=h(x), u(0,t)=Q(t). Based on detail analysis, the sharper existence and uniqueness of global solutions are obtained under sufficient conditions

DeepSketch2Face: A Deep Learning Based Sketching System for 3D Face and Caricature Modeling

Face modeling has been paid much attention in the field of visual computing. There exist many scenarios, including cartoon characters, avatars for social media, 3D face caricatures as well as face-related art and design, where low-cost interactive face modeling is a popular approach especially among amateur users. In this paper, we propose a deep learning based sketching system for 3D face and caricature modeling. This system has a labor-efficient sketching interface, that allows the user to draw freehand imprecise yet expressive 2D lines representing the contours of facial features. A novel CNN based deep regression network is designed for inferring 3D face models from 2D sketches. Our network fuses both CNN and shape based features of the input sketch, and has two independent branches of fully connected layers generating independent subsets of coefficients for a bilinear face representation. Our system also supports gesture based interactions for users to further manipulate initial face models. Both user studies and numerical results indicate that our sketching system can help users create face models quickly and effectively. A significantly expanded face database with diverse identities, expressions and levels of exaggeration is constructed to promote further research and evaluation of face modeling techniques.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures, to appear in SIGGRAPH 201

Organically Structured Control of Large-Scale Systems with Expanding Construction Based on State Observation

This paper presents a new method on the problem of organically structured control based on state observation for a class of large-scale systems with expanding construction. This problem is to design a local state feedback controller and an observer for a new subsystem which is added to a large-scale system without changing the decentralized state feedback control laws of the original construction, so that both the new subsystem and the resulting expanded system are robustly connectively stable. Firstly, based on state observers, the mathematical model of a large-scale system with expanding construction is reestablished and analyzed. In addition, the sufficient condition for robust decentralized connective stabilization of the expanded construction of large-scale systems is deduced by taking an LMI approach, which is further relaxed by removing the square matrix condition on the output matrix. This problem is transformed into solving an LMI problem. The new design method of an organically structured controller and observer for the expanded construction is also given. Finally, the simulation examples show the effectiveness of the proposed method

Effects of Insecticides on Pest Populations and Their Natural Enemies in Soybean Field

In the 5-time field experiments and broad demonstrations, effects of volume and application formulae of several pesticides on the population densities of major inset pests and natural enemies in the soybean field were determined. Results from the Ducan’s multiple range test indicated that 300 g/ha of Omethoate (fine granule) and 45 g/ha of Fenvalerate in the seedling stage and 300 g/ha of Chloromethiuron suspensoid in the flowering stage may control pests and protect major natural enemies. Application of these pesticides in the corresponding soybean stages is an effective way that mediates the conflict between chemical and biological controls in the field. There are over 170 species of natural enemies whose hosts are known in the soybean field in China. These natural enemies play important roles in controlling the soybean pests. However, farmers still strongly rely on chemicals to control these pests because natural enemies are not able to timely curb the pest infestations when there is a pest outbreak. Frequent chemical application in a higher volume will ruin the ecological balance. The conflict between biological and chemical controls has become a hot issue in the soybean production worldwide. Our objectives in this study are to decide the effective low concentrations of commonly used pesticides, determine the effect of the third and fourth generations of pesticides on the major insect pests and natural enemies in the soybean field and propose feasible control methods by coordinating control and chemical controls.Originating text in Chinese.Citation: Qi, Yaoxun, Ma, Zhengquan, Shan, De'An, Gao, Xiaohua, Wang, Qisheng. (1987). Effects of Insecticides on Pest Populations and Their Natural Enemies in Soybean Field. Plant Protection (Institute of Plant Protection, CAAS, China), 13, 4-6

ASAG: Building Strong One-Decoder-Layer Sparse Detectors via Adaptive Sparse Anchor Generation

Recent sparse detectors with multiple, e.g. six, decoder layers achieve promising performance but much inference time due to complex heads. Previous works have explored using dense priors as initialization and built one-decoder-layer detectors. Although they gain remarkable acceleration, their performance still lags behind their six-decoder-layer counterparts by a large margin. In this work, we aim to bridge this performance gap while retaining fast speed. We find that the architecture discrepancy between dense and sparse detectors leads to feature conflict, hampering the performance of one-decoder-layer detectors. Thus we propose Adaptive Sparse Anchor Generator (ASAG) which predicts dynamic anchors on patches rather than grids in a sparse way so that it alleviates the feature conflict problem. For each image, ASAG dynamically selects which feature maps and which locations to predict, forming a fully adaptive way to generate image-specific anchors. Further, a simple and effective Query Weighting method eases the training instability from adaptiveness. Extensive experiments show that our method outperforms dense-initialized ones and achieves a better speed-accuracy trade-off. The code is available at \url{https://github.com/iSEE-Laboratory/ASAG}.Comment: Accepted to ICCV 202

Comparative Study on the Choice of Muslim migrants Residence in Xi’an and Lanzhou Cities, China

Residential choice is one of the basic contents of urban adaptation of the floating population and an important aspect in determining the quality of life in the city. This study is for Muslim migrants with three attributes (minority, floating population and religious belief). The purpose is to reveal the commonalities and differences in the choice of living spaces of Muslim Migrants in multi-ethnic cities Lanzhou and Xi’an, to provide guidance for the targeted management of Muslim migrants and promote their urban integration. Based on available research data from 2017-2019, the study adopts spatial analysis and regression analysis to explore the results of the selection of Muslim migrants living space in two cities and its influencing factors. The main conclusions are as follows: 1) The commonality of Muslim migrants living space in the two cities lies in: the distribution pattern of “Living around the mosque and running business nearby the mosque” still exists. The living space of Muslim migrants consists of points (mosques), lines (streets or traffic lines), and faces (inhabited areas), forming a spatial distribution pattern of the “mosque + community” residential circle. Differences: Muslim migrants in Hui’s street, Xi’an, taking the “Mosque-alley system” as an independent social organization, and their living space presents a " mosque-alley Interlaced" distribution. Muslim migrants living in the urban village community on the periphery of Hui’s street take "mosque" and "farm market" as the dual core, showing the “core (mosque/market) + community” inlaid living space situation. The Muslim migrants in Lanzhou generally live around the mosque or close to the streets and roads that lead to mosque. 2). In terms of commonality, the living choices of Muslim migrants in both cities consider the distance from the place of work, the mosque or the Muslim community to the place of residence. In terms of differences, the residential choice of Muslim migrants in Xi’an is mainly influenced by the composition of the living, the income of wages, and the nature of the occupation. The choice is mainly influenced by the rent level, occupational nature and wage income of the house; and the main influencing factors of the choice of Muslim migrants in Lanzhou are the education level and the rent level of the house. The main influencing factors of residential location selection are education level and mobility purpose. The level of education, traditional living customs, and rent levels have become the core factors determining the urban accommodation adaptation of Muslim migrants

Consumer preferences for US beef products: a meta-analysis

By conducting a meta-analysis with 57 observations collected from 20 primary studies, we systematically analyze heterogeneities in consumer preferences for the Country-of-Origin-Labeling (COOL) of US beef products. We find that consumers often prefer their domestic beef products due to patriotism. Consumers in Asian (mainly, Korea and Japan) and European countries (such as France, Germany and UK) are willing to pay significantly lower prices for US beef products compared to their domestic products; while the US consumers are willing to pay more for the domestic products than the imported ones