207 research outputs found
LOWER LIMB STABILIZATION STRATEGIES OF DART ATHLETES AT DIFFERENT LEVELS
The purpose of the study was to understand lower limb stabilization strategies during the acceleration phase of dart throwing in athletes at different levels. Multi-Axis Force Plates and 3D Motion Capture were adopted to collect data. Six male darts athletes, including three elite athletes and three sub elite athletes, throw darts to hit Bull\u27s Eye abiding the rules of the World Darts Federation. The study shows that during acceleration phase, the ground reaction force of elite athletes changes substantially, while the change of ground reaction force of sub elite athletes was relatively small. Significant difference of the change in the front foot ground reaction force (GRF) on a vertical axis is reached (p\u3c0.05). The cause may be because the elite players use greater GRF transition from rear foot and front foot than sub elite players. On the contrast, sub elite athletes are still in the stage of integration, thus lower limb movement is minimized in order to stabilize the throw
Transformer-based Variable-rate Image Compression with Region-of-interest Control
This paper proposes a transformer-based learned image compression system. It
is capable of achieving variable-rate compression with a single model while
supporting the region-of-interest (ROI) functionality. Inspired by prompt
tuning, we introduce prompt generation networks to condition the
transformer-based autoencoder of compression. Our prompt generation networks
generate content-adaptive tokens according to the input image, an ROI mask, and
a rate parameter. The separation of the ROI mask and the rate parameter allows
an intuitive way to achieve variable-rate and ROI coding simultaneously.
Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our proposed method and
confirm its superiority over the other competing methods.Comment: Accepted to IEEE ICIP 202
TransTIC: Transferring Transformer-based Image Compression from Human Visualization to Machine Perception
This work aims for transferring a Transformer-based image compression codec
from human vision to machine perception without fine-tuning the codec. We
propose a transferable Transformer-based image compression framework, termed
TransTIC. Inspired by visual prompt tuning, we propose an instance-specific
prompt generator to inject instance-specific prompts to the encoder and
task-specific prompts to the decoder. Extensive experiments show that our
proposed method is capable of transferring the codec to various machine tasks
and outshining the competing methods significantly. To our best knowledge, this
work is the first attempt to utilize prompting on the low-level image
compression task
Hepatoprotective effect of Coreopsis tinctoria flowers against carbon tetrachloride-induced liver damage in mice
Study of the River Bed Variation after the Baling Check-Dam Failure
The study provides longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of 8 pieces topography data collected from 1980 to 2011 and bed material particle size based on three investigations conducted between 2008 and 2012. The mainstream topography data in December 2007 shows that the head-cutting distance was about 3 kilometers after the dam broke. The topography data since 2008 displays that river the channel is stable as well. The topography data shows that the longitudinal section in the tributary had a head-cutting distance of about 3 kilometers after the dam broke, and the river channel still is showing adjustment behavior. The scour-and-fill analysis result of the mainstream cross-section shows that the transverse adjust changed significantly upstream from the dam location from 2006-2008. The particle size of the bed material has shown a trend from coarsening to fining according to different sampling points. Therefore, the river bed is still adjusting continuously. Finally, this study is based on a debris flow and sediment laden flow numerical model. The simulation result is fit for river-bed changes after dam-break.2007年石門水庫上游的巴陵防砂壩潰壩事件,導致上游河床沖刷約20公尺,下游最大淤積約10公尺。本文蒐集巴陵防砂壩1980至2011年潰壩前後8次地形測量資料與2008-2012年共進行三次河床質粒徑調查以分析潰壩對於河床變動及河床質粒徑變化的影響。結果顯示,巴陵壩潰壩3個月後河床已逐漸趨於動態平衡,河床質粒徑整體有粗化再細化的趨勢。最後,本文以適用於土石流及高含砂水流的數值模式進行潰壩事件模擬,並利用河床測量成果進行比較
Anti-Photoaging Effects of Soy Isoflavone Extract (Aglycone and Acetylglucoside Form) from Soybean Cake
Soy isoflavones, found in soybean and soybean products, have been reported to possess many physiological activities such as antioxidant activity, inhibition of cancer cell proliferation, reduction of cardiovascular risk, prevention of osteoporosis and alleviation of postmenopausal syndrome. In our previous study, soy isoflavone extract ISO-1 (containing 12 soy isoflavones) from soybean cake was demonstrated to prevent skin damage caused by UVB exposure. In this study, soy isoflavone extract from soybean cake was further purified and evaluated for the protective effects on UVB-induced damage. The results revealed that Fraction 3, which contains the aglycone group (daidzein, genistein and glycitein) and acetylglucoside group (acetyldaidzin, acetylgenistin and acetylglycitin) of soy isoflavones, could inhibit UVB-induced death of human keratinocytes and reduce the level of desquamation, transepidermal water loss (TEWL), erythema and epidermal thickness in mouse skin. Furthermore, topical application of Fraction 3 increased the activity of catalase and suppressed cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) expression in mice exposed to UVB. In addition, in comparison with ISO-1 and genistein, the Fraction 3 possessed much greater protective effects on both UVB-induced oxidative stress and keratinocyte death than other fractions. Therefore, the soy isoflavone extract Fraction 3 from soybean cake is a desirable anti-photoaging agent for skin care
Be Stars in the Open Cluster NGC 6830
We report the discovery of 2 new Be stars, and re-identify one known Be star
in the open cluster NGC 6830. Eleven H-alpha emitters were discovered using the
H-alpha imaging photometry of the Palomar Transient Factory Survey. Stellar
membership of the candidates was verified with photometric and kinematic
information using 2MASS data and proper motions. The spectroscopic confirmation
was carried out by using the Shane 3-m telescope at Lick observatory. Based on
their spectral types, three H-alpha emitters were confirmed as Be stars with
H-alpha equivalent widths > -10 Angstrom. Two objects were also observed by the
new spectrograph SED-Machine on the Palomar 60 inch Telescope. The SED-Machine
results show strong H-alpha emission lines, which are consistent with the
results of the Lick observations. The high efficiency of the SED-Machine can
provide rapid observations for Be stars in a comprehensive survey in the
future.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, AJ in pres
Bmi-1 Regulates Snail Expression and Promotes Metastasis Ability in Head and Neck Squamous Cancer-Derived ALDH1 Positive Cells
Recent studies suggest that ALDH1 is a putative marker for HNSCC-derived cancer
stem cells. However, the regulation mechanisms that maintain the stemness and metastatic capability
of HNSCC-ALDH1+ cells remain unclear. Initially, HNSCC-ALDH1+ cells from HNSCC patient showed
cancer stemness properties, and high expression of Bmi1 and Snail. Functionally, tumorigenic properties
of HNSCC-ALDH1+ cells could be downregulated by knockdown of Bmi-1. Overexpression of Bmi-1 altered in
expression property ALDH1− cells to that of ALDH1+ cells. Furthermore, knockdown of Bmi-1 enhanced
the radiosensitivity of radiation-treated HNSCC-ALDH1+ cells. Moreover, overexpression of Bmi-1 in
HNSCC-ALDH1− cells increased tumor volume and number of pulmonary metastatic lesions by xenotransplant
assay. Importantly, knock-down of Bmi1 in HNSCC-ALDH1+ cells significantly decreased distant metastases in
the lungs. Clinically, coexpression of Bmi-1/Snail/ALDH1 predicted the worst prognosis in HNSCC
patients. Collectively, our data suggested that Bmi-1 plays a key role in
regulating Snail expression and cancer stemness properties of HNSCC-ALDH1+ cells
VoiceBank-2023: A Multi-Speaker Mandarin Speech Corpus for Constructing Personalized TTS Systems for the Speech Impaired
Services of personalized TTS systems for the Mandarin-speaking speech
impaired are rarely mentioned. Taiwan started the VoiceBanking project in 2020,
aiming to build a complete set of services to deliver personalized Mandarin TTS
systems to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients. This paper reports the
corpus design, corpus recording, data purging and correction for the corpus,
and evaluations of the developed personalized TTS systems, for the VoiceBanking
project. The developed corpus is named after the VoiceBank-2023 speech corpus
because of its release year. The corpus contains 29.78 hours of utterances with
prompts of short paragraphs and common phrases spoken by 111 native Mandarin
speakers. The corpus is labeled with information about gender, degree of speech
impairment, types of users, transcription, SNRs, and speaking rates. The
VoiceBank-2023 is available by request for non-commercial use and welcomes all
parties to join the VoiceBanking project to improve the services for the speech
impaired.Comment: submitted to 26th International Conference of the ORIENTAL-COCOSD
Maternal Vitamin D Level Is Associated with Viral Toll-Like Receptor Triggered IL-10 Response but Not the Risk of Infectious Diseases in Infancy
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