Overnight momentum, informational shocks, and late informed trading in China

Based on high-frequency firm-level data, this paper uncovers new empirical patterns on intraday momentum in China. First, there exists a strong intraday momentum effect at the firm level. Second, the intraday predictability stems mainly from the overnight component rather than the opening half-hour component, which is consistent with the microstructure features of the Chinese market. Third, the intraday predictability attenuates (strengthens) following large positive (negative) informational shocks, implying a striking asymmetric reaction by market participants. Finally, we document that late-informed traders are relatively less experienced or skilful. Overall, the empirical results lend support to the model of late-informed trading

A Novel Uni-Acupoint Electroacupuncture Stimulation Method for Pain Relief

Electroacupuncture stimulation (EAS) has been demonstrated effective for pain relief and treating other various diseases. However, the conventional way of EAS, the bi-acupoint method, is not suitable for basis study of acupoint specificity. Moreover, its operations are inconvenient and difficult to be persevered, especially for long-term, continuous and even imperative treatments. These disadvantages motivate designs of new EAS methods. We present a novel uni-acupoint electrical stimulation method, which is applied at a single acupoint and quite meets the needs of basis study and simpler clinical application. Its pain relief effect has been evaluated by animal tests of Wistar rats. During the experiments, rats were given 30 min 2/100 Hz uni- and bi-acupoint EAS and their nociceptive thresholds before and after EAS were attained by hot-plate test. The analgesic effect was defined as the change of nociceptive threshold and used to evaluate the effectiveness of uni-acupoint EAS for pain relief. The hot-plate test results indicated that analgesic effect of uni-acupoint group was significantly higher than that of the control group and there was no significant difference of analgesic effects between uni- and bi-acupoint EAS. The results suggested that uni-acupoint method was an effective EAS method and had comparable pain relief effect with bi-acupoint method

A Keypoint Based Enhancement Method for Audio Driven Free View Talking Head Synthesis

Audio driven talking head synthesis is a challenging task that attracts increasing attention in recent years. Although existing methods based on 2D landmarks or 3D face models can synthesize accurate lip synchronization and rhythmic head pose for arbitrary identity, they still have limitations, such as the cut feeling in the mouth mapping and the lack of skin highlights. The morphed region is blurry compared to the surrounding face. A Keypoint Based Enhancement (KPBE) method is proposed for audio driven free view talking head synthesis to improve the naturalness of the generated video. Firstly, existing methods were used as the backend to synthesize intermediate results. Then we used keypoint decomposition to extract video synthesis controlling parameters from the backend output and the source image. After that, the controlling parameters were composited to the source keypoints and the driving keypoints. A motion field based method was used to generate the final image from the keypoint representation. With keypoint representation, we overcame the cut feeling in the mouth mapping and the lack of skin highlights. Experiments show that our proposed enhancement method improved the quality of talking-head videos in terms of mean opinion score

A Case Study for Exploring Dental Patients’ Preferred Roles in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to explore the dental patients’ preferred roles in Taiwan. A convenience sample of 66 patients, 26 recruited from one dental clinic, and 40 from one medical center, were interviewed and their preferences for participation in treatment decision making were established using a measurement tool designed to elicit decision-making preferences. Patients’ preferences for participation in treatment decision making were established using Control Preference Scale (CPS) tool. In addition, Unfolding theory provided a means of analyzing the data so that the degree of control preferred by each patient could be established. This study found that nearly 70% clinic patients perceived passive role in treatment decision making whereas 50% patients in medical centre. Further, the collaborative role was most commonly preferred, but an active role was more commonly perceived in clinics than in medical centre. Finally, the implications of the results for patient participation are discussed

catena-Poly[[[aqua­(pyrazino[2,3-f][1,10]phenanthroline)cadium(II)]-μ-4,4′-ethyl­enedibenzoato] N,N-dimethyl­formamide hemisolvate]

In the title compound, [Cd(C16H10O4)(C14H8N4)(H2O)]·0.5C3H7NO, the CdII atom is six-coordinated by two N atoms from one pyrazino[2,3-f][1,10]phenanthroline ligand, three carboxyl­ate O atoms from two different 4,4′-ethyl­enedibenzoate ligands, and one water mol­ecule in a distorted octa­hedral environment. The two 4,4′-ethyl­enedibenzoate dianions are located on inversion centres bridging two neighboring CdII centres. O—H⋯O hydrogen-bonding inter­actions further stabilize the crystal structure. The DMF molecule is equally disordered about a center of inversion