Spatial Evolution of the Effects of Urban Heat Island on Residents\u27 Health

Rising summer temperatures caused by the urban heat island (UHI) has considerable effects on the physical and mental health of urban residents globally. To categorize residents’ health risk areas and evaluate the characteristics of urban spatial evolution, based on data analysis methods, such as ArcGIS, ENVI software, and geostatistical analysis, data from meteorological stations, satellite images, and electronic maps were used to investigate spatial evolution and the process by which UHI affects the respiratory, circulatory, and cardiovascular systems and emotional health of the residents of Tianjin. Results show the UHI significantly increases respiratory, circulatory, and cardiovascular diseases. The emotional health of residents is also significantly affected with the affected level moving from level 1 to level 2-4. Highly concentrated areas in the urban center and patches with high health risks are found to be scattered and fragmented, as indicated by the phased pattern of spatially deteriorating hotspots. Hotspots expansion occurs unidirectionally to the south, surrounding the city center, while shrinking from the inside to the outside. The study identifies urban health space risks and provides theoretical guidance for urban space optimization and healthy urban planning

NJUNLP's Participation for the WMT2023 Quality Estimation Shared Task

We introduce the submissions of the NJUNLP team to the WMT 2023 Quality Estimation (QE) shared task. Our team submitted predictions for the English-German language pair on all two sub-tasks: (i) sentence- and word-level quality prediction; and (ii) fine-grained error span detection. This year, we further explore pseudo data methods for QE based on NJUQE framework (https://github.com/NJUNLP/njuqe). We generate pseudo MQM data using parallel data from the WMT translation task. We pre-train the XLMR large model on pseudo QE data, then fine-tune it on real QE data. At both stages, we jointly learn sentence-level scores and word-level tags. Empirically, we conduct experiments to find the key hyper-parameters that improve the performance. Technically, we propose a simple method that covert the word-level outputs to fine-grained error span results. Overall, our models achieved the best results in English-German for both word-level and fine-grained error span detection sub-tasks by a considerable margin

Four years of multi-modal odometry and mapping on the rail vehicles

Precise, seamless, and efficient train localization as well as long-term railway environment monitoring is the essential property towards reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety (RAMS) engineering for railroad systems. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is right at the core of solving the two problems concurrently. In this end, we propose a high-performance and versatile multi-modal framework in this paper, targeted for the odometry and mapping task for various rail vehicles. Our system is built atop an inertial-centric state estimator that tightly couples light detection and ranging (LiDAR), visual, optionally satellite navigation and map-based localization information with the convenience and extendibility of loosely coupled methods. The inertial sensors IMU and wheel encoder are treated as the primary sensor, which achieves the observations from subsystems to constrain the accelerometer and gyroscope biases. Compared to point-only LiDAR-inertial methods, our approach leverages more geometry information by introducing both track plane and electric power pillars into state estimation. The Visual-inertial subsystem also utilizes the environmental structure information by employing both lines and points. Besides, the method is capable of handling sensor failures by automatic reconfiguration bypassing failure modules. Our proposed method has been extensively tested in the long-during railway environments over four years, including general-speed, high-speed and metro, both passenger and freight traffic are investigated. Further, we aim to share, in an open way, the experience, problems, and successes of our group with the robotics community so that those that work in such environments can avoid these errors. In this view, we open source some of the datasets to benefit the research community

Association Between Stigma Towards HIV and MSM and Intimate Partner Violence Among Newly HIV-Diagnosed Chinese Men Who Have Sex With Men

Background: HIV- and MSM-related stigma are well documented as common for Chinese men who have sex with men (MSM) living with HIV, yet there is sparse literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) and its relationship with stigma in this vulnerable population. To evaluate the association between HIV-stigma and stigma related to homosexuality and IPV among newly HIV-diagnosed MSM in China. Methods: Data were collected in the baseline survey among newly HIV-diagnosed Chinese MSM in a randomized clinical trial via face-to-face interviews. Univariate logistic and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the associations between IPV and HIV- and MSM-related stigma. Results: Of 367 newly HIV-diagnosed Chinese MSM, 23.7% experienced any IPV, including 16.6% physical, 7.4% psychological and 5.2% sexual IPV. Positive associations were found between HIV- and MSM-related stigma and IPV. Men with high HIV-related stigma (score ≥ 27) were 1.67 times as likely to experience any IPV as those with low stigma (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 1.67, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.02-2.76). Men with high MSM-related stigma (score ≥ 6) were 1.99 times as likely to experience any IPV as those with low stigma (AOR: 1.99, 95% CI: 1.18-3.36). Conclusions: HIV- and MSM-related stigmas was positively associated with IPV experiences among newly diagnosed MSM in China. The manner in which stigma may exacerbate IPV, and/or the influence of IPV on worsening stigma should be further evaluated. The high prevalence of IPV and stigma in this population suggests that interventions should be taken to reduce stigma and prevent this risky behavior among MSM

Temperature-dependent exciton-related transition energies mediated by carrier concentrations in unintentionally Al-doped ZnO films

The authors reported on a carrier-concentration mediation of exciton-related radiative transition energies in Al-doped ZnO films utilizing temperature-dependent (TD) photoluminescence and TD Hall-effect characterizations. The transition energies of free and donor bound excitons consistently change with the measured TD carrier concentrations. Such a carrier-concentration mediation effect can be well described from the view of heavy-doping-induced free-carrier screening and band gap renormalization effects. This study gives an important development to the currently known optical properties of ZnO materials.This research is supported by the State Key Program for Basic Research of China under Grant No. 2011CB302003, National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61025020, 60990312, and 61274058), Basic Research Program of Jiangsu Province (BK2011437), and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions

Thermal pretreatment of sapphire substrates prior to ZnO buffer layer growth

The properties of ZnO buffer layers grown via metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on sapphire substrates after various thermal pretreatments are systematically investigated. High-temperature pretreatments lead to significant modifications of the sapphire surface, which result in enhanced growth nucleation and a consequent improvement of the surface morphology and quality of the ZnO layers. The evolution of the surface morphology as seen by atomic force microscopy indicates an obvious growth mode transition from three-dimensional to quasi-two-dimensional as the pretreatment temperature increases. A minimum surface roughness is obtained when the pretreatment temperature reaches 1150 °C, implying that a high-temperature pretreatment at 1150 °C or above may lead to a conversion of the surface polarity from O-face to Zn-face, similar to processes in GaN material growth via MOCVD. By analyzing the evolution of the film properties as a function of pretreatment temperature, the optimal condition has been determined to be at 1150 °C. This study indicates that a high-temperature pretreatment is crucial to grow high-quality ZnO on sapphire substrates by MOCVD.This research was supported by the State Key Program for Basic Research of China under Grant No. 2011CB302003, National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61025020, 60990312, and 61274058), Basic Research Program of Jiangsu Province (BK2011437), and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions

Financial Self-Efficacy and Disposition Effect in Investors: The Mediating Role of Versatile Cognitive Style

The disposition effect refers to the tendency of investors to sell winners too early and hold on to losers too long, which is one of the most documented and robust decision biases. However, few studies have looked beyond demographic and social factors on the disposition effect. The current study investigated the association between financial self-efficacy (FSE) (one’s belief about their personal capability in ultimate financial goals achieving), versatile cognitive style (an individual’s capability in deploying the experiential or rational mode in ways that are contextually appropriate), and the disposition effect. A total of 285 employees from finance-related business completed anonymous questionnaires regarding FSE, rational-experiential inventory, and the disposition effect. Our findings revealed that FSE was significantly and positively associated with versatile cognitive style and the disposition effect. Further, versatile cognitive style partially mediated the relationship between FSE and the disposition effect. Our findings provide valuable guidance for individual investors to make financial decisions based on their characteristics

Association between Stigma and Intimate Partner Violence among Newly HIV-Diagnosed Chinese Men Who Have Sex with Men

Introduction: Men who have sex with men (MSM) are more likely to experience Intimate partner violence (IPV) during their lifetime than heterosexual couples. HIV-status and related HIV stigma may play an important role in IPV within intimate partnerships among MSM. HIV- and MSM-related stigmas are common among Chinese MSM, yet there is sparse literature on IPV and its relationship with stigma in this vulnerable population. We evaluate the prevalence of IPV and its relationship with HIV- and MSM-related stigma among newly diagnosed HIV-infected MSM in Beijing, China. Methods: Data were collected in the baseline survey among newly HIV-diagnosed Chinese MSM in a randomized clinical trial via face-to-face interviews. Simple and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the associations between IPV and HIV- and MSM-related stigma. Results: Of 367 newly HIV-diagnosed Chinese MSM, 23.7% experienced any IPV, including 16.6% physical, 7.4% psychological and 5.2% sexual IPV. Positive associations were found between HIV- and MSM-related stigma and IPV. Men with high HIV-related stigma (score ≥27) were 1.68 times as likely to experience any IPV as those with low stigma (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 1.68, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.03-2.76). Men with high MSM-related stigma (score ≥6) were 1.98 times as likely to experience any IPV as those with low stigma (AOR: 1.98, 95% CI: 1.19-3.31). Men with high HIV- and MSM-related stigma were 2.86 times as likely to experience any IPV as those with low stigma (AOR: 2.86, 95% CI: 1.44-5.69). Conclusion: HIV- and MSM-related stigma was positively associated with IPV experiences among newly diagnosed MSM in China. The manner in which stigma may exacerbate IPV, and/or the influence of IPV on worsening stigma should be further evaluated. The high prevalence of IPV and stigma in this population suggests that interventions should be taken to reduce stigma and prevent this risky behavior among MSM