Strategies for Preventing Drug Recidivism Cycle in Taiwan

Drug abuse is currently a worldwide problem and Taiwan is no exception. Drug abuse is a disease that must be treated on the basis of evidence (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2007; World Health Organisation 2004). In order to reduce the damage caused by drug abuse to the nation, society and people, the government not only developed two anti-drug strategies - that of supply eradication and demand reduction - but since May 1994, has mobilised relevant government departments to take assertive action. Some of the actions include law enforcement enhancement, anti-drug enforcement and drug rehabilitation utilisation. In 2005, new anti-drug programs, such as the sterile needle exchange program and substitution therapy program, were also introduced. The cities implementing the Harm Reduction Program (HR Program) showed lower HIV infection rates in comparison to others without the HR Program. The income and employment conditions of drug addicted patients receiving Methadone Maintenance Treatment have been improved. The future drug policies in Taiwan will focus on drug rehabilitation (treatment), anti-drug actions (prevention) and law enforcement (punishment). The educational system, community recovery and aftercare for drug addicts will also be indispensable (WHO/UNODC/UNAIDS 2004)

Reconnaissance Observation from May 12 China Earthquake

At 14:28 local time on May 12, 2008, an MS 8.0 earthquake struck the Sichuan Provinces, China. Millions of houses were damaged, leaving approximately 4.5 million people homeless. The government reported around 69,200 dead (18,000 still missing) and 374,000 injured. Right after the earthquake, civil engineers as well as search and rescue team from Taiwan headed for the affected region to provide immediate assistance. The author arrived at the affected region on May 27th to collect information such as structural and geotechnical damages as well as emergency response. Schools, hospitals, residential buildings, lifelines, landslides and bridges were surveyed and thousands of photos were taken to document the destructions this catastrophic earthquake had made. It is sincerely hoped that these reconnaissance information shared herein could help us to establish a better management system for hazard mitigation and to make a safer society in the future.conference pape

Effect of non-lattice oxygen on ZrO2-based resistive switching memory

ZrO2-based resistive switching memory has attracted much attention according to its possible application in the next-generation nonvolatile memory. The Al/ZrO2/Pt resistive switching memory with bipolar resistive switching behavior is revealed in this work. The thickness of the ZrO2 film is only 20 nm. The device yield improved by the non-lattice oxygen existing in the ZrO2 film deposited at room temperature is firstly proposed. The stable resistive switching behavior and the long retention time with a large current ratio are also observed. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the resistive switching mechanism agrees with the formation and rupture of a conductive filament in the ZrO2 film. In addition, the Al/ZrO2/Pt resistive switching memory is also possible for application in flexible electronic equipment because it can be fully fabricated at room temperature

Application Of Early Seismic Loss Estimation (Esle)In Disaster Management

To reduce the damages caused by earthquakes, scenario simulation technologies have been used in the decision-making support system. Developed by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE), Taiwan Earthquake Loss Estimation System (TELES) is designed to integrate research accomplishments on seismic hazard analysis, structural damage assessments and socio-economic impacts in Taiwan. It has been successfully used in preparing disaster mitigation plans and emergency response affairs by governments and cooperative institutions after putting lots of efforts. Furthermore, early seismic loss estimation (ESLE), based on seismic scenario database, is applied on various area including emergency response, transportation, insurance payout, etc for disaster management. In this paper, the methodology of ESLE and its application are described and its high potential on hazards mitigation and disaster management is demonstrated for a better and safer society.conference pape

Structural Health Dignosis/Monitoring Using Neural Networks for Cable-Stayed Bridge Management System

The cable-stayed bridge is generally a highly statically indeterminate structure. The structural performance of the bridge is highly sensitive to the load distribution among major components of the bridge. Therefore, the stayed cables of the cable–stayed bridge should be monitored to prevent bridge damage due to earthquake, strong wind, differential settlement, fatigue/defect of the material or loose of tension within the cables. That makes the structure health monitoring and diagnosis of the cable forces for the optimum structural performance very important in a cable-stayed bridge maintenance procedure. This study proposes a structural health diagnosis/monitoring management system for cable-stayed bridges using Neural Networks and field measurement data. The neural networks were used to 1. Analyze reversely the corresponding axial forces of all the stayed cables using sets of rotation measured from the pylon and 2. Determine the type and degree (scope) of the damaged bridge with ease and efficiency. Based on the cable force evaluated, the structural behavior including the deformation and stress state of the bridge can be traced successfully. Also, the damage state of the cable-stayed bridge can be identified using neural networks through the measured cable forces within stayed-cables. A few cases were studied and the results obtained could be applied for Cable-Stayed Bridge Management System.conference pape

A Study on Reversible Data Hiding Technique Based on Three-Dimensional Prediction-Error Histogram Modification and a Multilayer Perceptron

[[abstract]]In the past few years, with the development of information technology and the focus on information security, many studies have gradually been aimed at data hiding technology. The embedding and extraction algorithms are mainly used by the technology to hide the data that requires secret transmission into a multimedia carrier so that the data transmission cannot be realized to achieve secure communication. Among them, reversible data hiding (RDH) is a technology for the applications that demand the secret data extraction as well as the original carrier recovery without distortion, such as remote medical diagnosis or military secret transmission. In this work, we hypothesize that the RDH performance can be enhanced by a more accurate pixel value predictor. We propose a new RDH scheme of prediction-error expansion (PEE) based on a multilayer perceptron, which is an extensively used artificial neural network in plenty of applications. The scheme utilizes the correlation between image pixel values and their adjacent pixels to obtain a well-trained multilayer perceptron so that we are capable of achieving more accurate pixel prediction results. Our data mapping method based on the three-dimensional prediction-error histogram modification uses all eight octants in the three-dimensional space for secret data embedding. The experimental results of our RDH scheme show that the embedding capacity greatly increases and the image quality is still well maintained.[[sponsorship]]科技部 MOST 110-2221-E-005 -045, MOST 110-2222-E-032-002-MY2,[[notice]]補正完