Political Efficacy and the Use of Local and National News Media among Undecided Voters in a Swing State: A Study of General Population Voters and First-time College Student Voters

News media play a crucial role in democracy by serving as the watchdog of government and a distributor of political information and campaign messages to the general public. In the U.S., commercial media dominate the market, and they receive monetary support during the electoral campaign season via political advertising. In the 2012 presidential campaign, U.S. television media received 75% of the $1.1 billion dedicated to campaign advertising (Wilner, 2012). So much money is spent because the votes of undecided citizens in swing states are crucial to winning presidential elections. Most recently, the Democratic Party successfully targeted and won key swing states during the 2012 campaign, and helped Barack Obama secure a second term as president (The United States Study Center, 2012). This study examined the role of national and local news media in political decision-making and participation among undecided voters

Efficacy of Intra-arterial Norcantharidin in Suppressing Tumour 14C-labelled Glucose Oxidative Metabolism in rat Morris Hepatoma

Norcantharidin is the demethylated form of Cantharidin, which is the active ingredient of the blister beetle, Mylabris, a long used Chinese traditional medicine. Though not well publicised outside China, Norcantharidin is known to possess significant anti-hepatoma activity, and is relatively free from side effects. In the present study, glucose oxidation in tumour and liver tissue slices harvested from hepatomabearing animals was quantified by measuring the radioactivity of 14C-labelled CO released from 14C-glucose in oxygen-enriched incubation medium. Results were expressed asa tumour/liver ratio. For comparison, treatments with Norcantharidin, Adriamycin and with hepatic artery ligation were studied. The mean tumour/liver ratio was 4.2+2.2 in untreated controls, but dropped significantly to 2.3+0.5 (p<0.05) with intra-arterial Norcantharidin (0.5 mg/kg) and to 2.3+0.7 (p<0.05) with intra-arterial Adriamycin (2.4 mg/kg), and to 2.2+0.7 (p<0.05) with hepatic artery ligation. However, with intravenous Adriamycin at 2.4 mg/kg, the mean tumour/liver ratio was reduced to only 3.5+2.0 and was not significantly different from untreated controls. It is concluded that intra-arterial Norcantharidin is as effective as intraarterial Adriamycin and hepatic artery ligation in suppressing tumour glucose oxidative metabolism. These results imply that Norcantharidin may have a role to play in the chemotherapy ofprimary livercancer

High-Performance Multi-Mode Ptychography Reconstruction on Distributed GPUs

Ptychography is an emerging imaging technique that is able to provide wavelength-limited spatial resolution from specimen with extended lateral dimensions. As a scanning microscopy method, a typical two-dimensional image requires a number of data frames. As a diffraction-based imaging technique, the real-space image has to be recovered through iterative reconstruction algorithms. Due to these two inherent aspects, a ptychographic reconstruction is generally a computation-intensive and time-consuming process, which limits the throughput of this method. We report an accelerated version of the multi-mode difference map algorithm for ptychography reconstruction using multiple distributed GPUs. This approach leverages available scientific computing packages in Python, including mpi4py and PyCUDA, with the core computation functions implemented in CUDA C. We find that interestingly even with MPI collective communications, the weak scaling in the number of GPU nodes can still remain nearly constant. Most importantly, for realistic diffraction measurements, we observe a speedup ranging from a factor of $10$ to $10^3$ depending on the data size, which reduces the reconstruction time remarkably from hours to typically about 1 minute and is thus critical for real-time data processing and visualization.Comment: work presented in NYSDS 201

Multi-Step Look-Ahead Trajectory Planning in SLAM: Possibility and Necessity

In this paper, the possibility and necessity of multistep trajectory planning in Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) based SLAM is investigated. The objective of the trajectory planning here is to minimize the estimation error of the robot and landmark locations subject to a given time horizon. We show that the problem can be regarded as an optimization problem for a gradually identified model. A numerical method is proposed for trajectory planning using a variant of the nonlinear Model Predictive Control (MPC). The proposed method is optimal in the sense that the control action is computed using all the information available at the time of decision making. Simulation results are included to compare the results from the one-step look-ahead trajectory planning and the proposed multi-step lookahead techniqu

Simultaneous image color correction and enhancement using particle swarm optimization

Color images captured under various environments are often not ready to deliver the desired quality due to adverse effects caused by uncontrollable illumination settings. In particular, when the illuminate color is not known a priori, the colors of the objects may not be faithfully reproduced and thus impose difficulties in subsequent image processing operations. Color correction thus becomes a very important pre-processing procedure where the goal is to produce an image as if it is captured under uniform chromatic illumination. On the other hand, conventional color correction algorithms using linear gain adjustments focus only on color manipulations and may not convey the maximum information contained in the image. This challenge can be posed as a multi-objective optimization problem that simultaneously corrects the undesirable effect of illumination color cast while recovering the information conveyed from the scene. A variation of the particle swarm optimization algorithm is further developed in the multi-objective optimization perspective that results in a solution achieving a desirable color balance and an adequate delivery of information. Experiments are conducted using a collection of color images of natural objects that were captured under different lighting conditions. Results have shown that the proposed method is capable of delivering images with higher quality. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Highly Quantum-Confined InAs Nanoscale Membranes

Nanoscale size-effects drastically alter the fundamental properties of semiconductors. Here, we investigate the dominant role of quantum confinement in the field-effect device properties of free-standing InAs nanomembranes with varied thicknesses of 5-50 nm. First, optical absorption studies are performed by transferring InAs "quantum membranes" (QMs) onto transparent substrates, from which the quantized sub-bands are directly visualized. These sub-bands determine the contact resistance of the system with the experimental values consistent with the expected number of quantum transport modes available for a given thickness. Finally, the effective electron mobility of InAs QMs is shown to exhibit anomalous field- and thickness-dependences that are in distinct contrast to the conventional MOSFET models, arising from the strong quantum confinement of carriers. The results provide an important advance towards establishing the fundamental device physics of 2-D semiconductors

A survey of multi-access edge computing in 5G and beyond : fundamentals, technology integration, and state-of-the-art

Driven by the emergence of new compute-intensive applications and the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is foreseen that the emerging 5G network will face an unprecedented increase in traffic volume and computation demands. However, end users mostly have limited storage capacities and finite processing capabilities, thus how to run compute-intensive applications on resource-constrained users has recently become a natural concern. Mobile edge computing (MEC), a key technology in the emerging fifth generation (5G) network, can optimize mobile resources by hosting compute-intensive applications, process large data before sending to the cloud, provide the cloud-computing capabilities within the radio access network (RAN) in close proximity to mobile users, and offer context-aware services with the help of RAN information. Therefore, MEC enables a wide variety of applications, where the real-time response is strictly required, e.g., driverless vehicles, augmented reality, robotics, and immerse media. Indeed, the paradigm shift from 4G to 5G could become a reality with the advent of new technological concepts. The successful realization of MEC in the 5G network is still in its infancy and demands for constant efforts from both academic and industry communities. In this survey, we first provide a holistic overview of MEC technology and its potential use cases and applications. Then, we outline up-to-date researches on the integration of MEC with the new technologies that will be deployed in 5G and beyond. We also summarize testbeds and experimental evaluations, and open source activities, for edge computing. We further summarize lessons learned from state-of-the-art research works as well as discuss challenges and potential future directions for MEC research

Wigner crystal model of counterion induced bundle formation of rod-like polyelectrolytes

A simple electrostatic theory of condensation of rod-like polyelectrolytes under influence of polyvalent ions is proposed. It is based on the idea that Manning condensation of ions results in formation of the Wigner crystal on a background of a bundle of rods. It is shown that, depending on a single dimensionless parameter, this can be the densely packed three-dimensional Wigner crystal or the two-dimensional crystal on the rod surfaces. For DNA the location of charge on the spiral results in a model of the one-dimensional Wigner crystal. It is also argued that the Wigner crystal idea can be applied to self-assembly of other polyelectrolytes, for example, colloids and DNA-lipid complexes.Comment: 4 pages; typos corrected, references adde