The production of nouns and verbs in young Cantonese- speaking children

Also available in print.A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2005.Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2005.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Tilings of the Sphere by Edge Congruent Pentagons

We study edge-to-edge tilings of the sphere by edge congruent pentagons, under the assumption that there are tiles with all vertices having degree 3. We develop the technique of neighborhood tilings and apply the technique to completely classify edge congruent earth map tilings.Comment: 36 pages, 34 figure

Validation of consumer wearable activity tracker as step measurement in free-living conditions

Different generations of consumer wearable activity trackers are prevalent with the increasing demands in health and physical activity monitor. This pilot study aims to validate one of the consumer wearable activity trackers, the Mi band 2 as a step measurement in free-living conditions. Thirty-one healthy volunteers, aged 23 to 45 with 16 female (52%), wore both Mi band 2 and ActiGraph GT9X Link on their dominant hand’s wrist for seven consecutive days. The validity of the electronic activity devices was assessed objectively by average steps/day using i) Paired sample t-tests; ii) Pearson correlation. In addition, Bland-Altman plots were constructed to visually inspect the data and to assess agreement with the ActiGraph accelerometer. There was a high correlation in steps/day between the reference device, Actigraph accelerometer and Mi Band 2 (r = 0.97, p < 0.001). No significant mean different in steps/ day and no apparent systematic biases in the Bland-Altman plots between step count measurements obtained using the Mi Band 2. Xiaomi Mi Band 2 provided valid step count measurement in the free-living conditions

FTO Biology and Obesity: Why Do a Billion of Us Weigh 3 kg More?

Few would dispute that the current obesity epidemic has been driven by lifestyle and environmental changes. However, it is clear that individuals respond differently to these “obesigenic” changes and this variation in response has a strong genetic element. Genome-wide association studies have revealed that single nucleotide polymorphisms in Fat mass and obesity-associated transcript (FTO) are robustly associated with body mass index and obesity. Although the effect of these risk alleles are modest, with heterozygous and homozygous carriers weighing approximately 1.5 and 3 kg more respectively, there are an estimated one billion homozygous carriers in the world, spanning multiple different ethnicities and populations. Yet despite its broad impact, the biological function of FTO, particularly its role in controlling energy balance, remains unknown. Although the study of severe Mendelian obesity has been invaluable in illuminating critical pathways controlling food intake, the major burden of disease is carried by those of us with “common obesity,” which to date has resisted yielding meaningful biological insights. FTO has at last given us a handle on a huge, worldwide, common problem. In this review, we focus on the available genetic and in vivo evidence to date that implicates FTO in the control of energy balance

Modulation of connective tissue stromal cell plasticity to generate cartilaginous phenotypes

Stem cells are unspecialised cells found in the body which possess the ability to self renew and can be induced to proliferate and differentiate into more specialised cells. MSCs are adult stem cells that are capable of leaving the bone marrow and travelling in the bloodstream to a different site, where they may perform repair or regeneration processes of various mesenchymal tissues such as cartilage, bone and fat. Due to these properties of MSCs, it proves to be a useful source for the repair and regeneration of cartilage. The aims of this study were to: 1) characterise primary bovine MSCs by assessing the gene expression of hyaline cartilage-specific genes (SOX-9, Aggrecan and Collagen type II) and non-specific genes (Collagen type I and type X) 2) investigate the effects of culture medium supplemented with FGF-2 or with the addition of an extra growth factor, TGF-p2, on bovine MSCs in a two dimensional culture system 3) characterise the phenotypes of MSCs tissue grafts produced using MSCs pre-cultured in culture medium supplemented with FGF-2 or with the addition of TGF- p2 in a three dimension culture system (Transwell) seeded at high (6xl06 cells) and low (0.5 × 106 cells) cell density. Our study showed that different bone chamber size and thickness influenced the amount of marrow and cells harvested without interfering with the fibroblastic-shaped cell morphology and their adherence ability. The presence of stem/progenitor cell features is present in undifferentiated P0 BMSCs and PI and P2 BMSCs cultured in FGF-2 or with the addition of TGF-p2. Gene expression analyses on undifferentiated P0 BMSCs and PI and P2 BMSCs cultured in FGF-2 or with the addition of TGF-p2 suggested that the MSCs contain both fibroblastic and chondrogenic features. This implies that the MSCs are not fully committed towards a chondrogenic lineage. We have demonstrated that it is possible to generate a tissue graft using passaged BMSCs in a Transwell culture system but seeding density is important. The ideal seeding cell density is 0.5x106 cells/well using P2 and P3 BMSCs pre-cultured in either FGF-2 or with the addition of TGF-P2. The tissue graft produced has a high expression level of aggrecan, collagens type I and II, which suggested that it has a fibro-cartilage phenotype

Multiple Block-Size Search Algorithm for Fast Block Motion Estimation

Abstract-Although variable block-size motion estimation provides significant video quality and coding efficiency improvement, it requires much higher computational complexity compared with fixed block size motion estimation. The reason is that the current motion estimation algorithms are mainly designed for fixed block size. Current variable block-size motion estimation implementation simply applies these existing motion estimation algorithms independently for different block sizes to find the best block size and the corresponding motion vector. Substantial computation is wasted because distortion data reuse among motion searches of different block sizes is not considered. In this paper, a motion estimation algorithm intrinsically designed for variable block-size video coding is presented. The proposed multiple block-size search (MBSS) algorithm unifies the motion searches for different block sizes into a single searching process instead of independently performing the search for each block size. In this unified search, the suboptimal motion vectors for different block sizes are used to determine the next search steps. Its prediction quality is comparable with that obtained by performing motion search for different block sizes independently while the computational load is substantially reduced. Experimental results show that the prediction quality of MBSS is similar to full search. Block matching, motion estimation, video coding, search pattern, directional search

Walking for transportation in Hong Kong Chinese urban elders: a cross-sectional study on what destinations matter and when

published_or_final_versio