The Awakening of Insects

Title from PDF of title page viewed June 9, 2020Thesis advisor: Chen YiVitaThesis (M.M.)--UMKC Conservatory. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2020The Awakening of Insects is the third of the twenty-four solar terms in the traditional Chinese calendars. In China, people believe that during this solar term, thunderstorms will wake up the hibernating insects, indicating warmer weather is coming and chilly winter will soon pass. In 2020, human society faces challenges caused by the COVID-19 virus. I apply the third solar term as the title of my piece because I wish people all around the world could overcome difficulties and challenges together, just like what this title implies. This piece was built around seven chords. I inputted them into Open Music and generated an interpolation patch. Thus, extra interpolated chords with microtones could be calculated among seven initial chords, causing a smoother harmonic progression throughout the entire piece. There are two major motives in the music. Motive A, appearing first in the clarinet part, is a contour-based motive. While specific pitch content was not my primary concern, the ascending motion created by Motive A was what I desired. Motive B, on the other hand, decreases its melodic function. Occurring firstly in string sections, it contains a repeating rhythm. Structurally, this piece is divided into three sections. The first two sections are dominated by different motives, and the last one is a quiet coda where all major musical motions reappear. The first section, following the thunder of an orchestral tutti at the beginning, focuses on melodic motives. Although Motive B occurs in strings, it serves as a background to support the pitch-based motive. By contrast, the second part of the music focuses on a rhythmic motive, which firstly appear on bassoons. Motive A, by reversing its direction and applying with micro-counterpoint, is slowly introduced as a textural background.Abstract -- Instrumentation -- Scor

Starry Sky, a Concerto for Dizi and Orchestra

Title from PDF of title page, viewed February 9, 2023Dissertation advisor: Chen YiVitaDissertation (D.M.A.)--UMKC Conservatory. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2022Inspired by the sky and the universe, this composition is a concerto for the traditional Chinese instrument, the bamboo flute (Dizi in Chinese pronunciation), with the Western orchestra. As a United States-based Chinese composer living in places where Western and Eastern cultures blend, I am deeply influenced by the five thousand years of fine traditions of Chinese civilization and the independent way of thinking from Western philosophies. Hence, I have composed a work that forges connections between traditional Chinese and Western elements for the last work of my student career. The inspiration for the composition derives from the existence of the universe. The starry sky is vast, mysterious, and unpredictable. I have loved looking up at the sky since I was a child and was curious about it. Since ancient times, human civilizations have never stopped thinking about and exploring the universe. The desire for space exploration resonates strongly with me, reminding me of my work to seek truth in the ocean of knowledge. This work is structured in four sections with three major thematic motives. The beginning of my music, starting with a series of blasts of chordal succession, not only serves as the introduction to the composition by presenting melodic lines in a fragmented manner but also demonstrates all motives. Music in the latter parts is the extension and continuation of materials from the first section. From rehearsal marks E to H, the full melodic theme is gradually introduced in the Dizi solo part, which imitates the recitative of the ancient Chinese poem, “Questions to Heaven,” because this poem presents the earliest work that presents curiosities about the universe and outer space. From rehearsal marks H to M, the music is set in a fast tempo, gradually building up energy for the upcoming climax at rehearsal L, which reprises the beginning of the piece with the theme of chordal succession. Followed by a solo cadenza, the music ends in a tranquil, but more flowing mood, indicating the peace and stillness of the universe.Instrumentation -- Scor

Fuzzy Knowledge Distillation from High-Order TSK to Low-Order TSK

High-order Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) fuzzy classifiers possess powerful classification performance yet have fewer fuzzy rules, but always be impaired by its exponential growth training time and poorer interpretability owing to High-order polynomial used in consequent part of fuzzy rule, while Low-order TSK fuzzy classifiers run quickly with high interpretability, however they usually require more fuzzy rules and perform relatively not very well. Address this issue, a novel TSK fuzzy classifier embeded with knowledge distillation in deep learning called HTSK-LLM-DKD is proposed in this study. HTSK-LLM-DKD achieves the following distinctive characteristics: 1) It takes High-order TSK classifier as teacher model and Low-order TSK fuzzy classifier as student model, and leverages the proposed LLM-DKD (Least Learning Machine based Decoupling Knowledge Distillation) to distill the fuzzy dark knowledge from High-order TSK fuzzy classifier to Low-order TSK fuzzy classifier, which resulting in Low-order TSK fuzzy classifier endowed with enhanced performance surpassing or at least comparable to High-order TSK classifier, as well as high interpretability; specifically 2) The Negative Euclidean distance between the output of teacher model and each class is employed to obtain the teacher logits, and then it compute teacher/student soft labels by the softmax function with distillating temperature parameter; 3) By reformulating the Kullback-Leibler divergence, it decouples fuzzy dark knowledge into target class knowledge and non-target class knowledge, and transfers them to student model. The advantages of HTSK-LLM-DKD are verified on the benchmarking UCI datasets and a real dataset Cleveland heart disease, in terms of classification performance and model interpretability

Controlling electron motion with attosecond precision by shaped femtosecond intense laser pulse

We propose the scheme of temporal double-slit interferometer to precisely measure the electric field of shaped intense femtosecond laser pulse directly, and apply it to control the electron tunneling wave packets in attosecond precision. By manipulating the spectra phase of the input femtosecond pulse in frequency domain, one single pulse is split into two sub-pulses whose waveform can be precisely controlled by adjusting the spectra phase. When the shaped pulse interacts with atoms, the two sub-pulses are analogous to the Young's double-slit in time domain. The interference pattern in the photoelectron momentum distribution can be used to precisely retrieve the peak electric field and the time delay between two sub-pulses. Based on the precise characterization of the shaped pulse, we demonstrate that the sub-cycle dynamics of electron can be controlled with attosecond precision. The above scheme is proved to be feasible by both quantum-trajectory Monte Carlo simulations and numerical solutions of three-dimensional time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation.Comment: 10 pages,4 figure

Field aging declines the regulatory effects of biochar on cadmium uptake by pepper in the soil

Biochar application is not only being widely promoted as an ideal strategy to mitigate global climate warming, but it also has the advantage of reducing heavy metal bioavailability and migration in the soil. However, studies on the effects of field aging on biochar to reduce heavy metals from the soil are still limited. The present study aimed to explore the effects and mechanisms of aged biochar added to the soil planted with pepper plants on cadmium (Cd) uptake. To achieve this, un-amended soil (control), soil amended with fresh biochar, and aged biochar (biochar recovered from a long-term field trial after 9 years) were used to investigate the effects of field aging on biochar adsorption efficiency. The results revealed that the amount of Cd in the plant planted in control soil, amended with fresh and aged biochar, accounted for 40 ± 6.10, 17.18 ± 1.19, and 18.68 ± 0.79, respectively. There was a significant difference (P < 0.05) in the amount of Cd that was uptaken by plants among all treatments. However, soil amended with fresh biochar significantly (P < 0.05) decreased the amount of Cd in plants compared with soil amended with aged biochar. This indicates that field aging declines the potential of biochar to lower heavy metal bioavailability and retention in the soil. This study demonstrates that long-term burial lessens the ability of biochar to interact with Cd and suggests that biochar amendment can lower Cd in the soil, depending on the freshness and aging of biochar

The potential impacts of climate change factors on freshwater eutrophication: Implications for research and countermeasures of water management in China

Water eutrophication has become one of the most serious aquatic environmental problems around the world. More and more research has indicated climate change as a major natural factor that will lead to the acceleration of eutrophication in rivers and lakes. However, understanding the mechanism of climate change's effect on water eutrophication is difficult due to the uncertainties caused by its complex, non-linear process. There is considerable uncertainty about the magnitude of future temperature changes, and how these will drive eutrophication in water bodies at regional scales under the effect of human activities. This review collects the existing international and domestic literature from the last 10 years, discussing the most sensitive factors of climate change (i.e., temperature, precipitation, wind, and solar radiation) and analyzing their interaction with water eutrophication. Case studies of serious eutrophication and algal bloom problems in China are discussed to further demonstrate the conclusion. Finally, adaptation countermeasures and related implications are proposed in order to foster the development of sustainability strategies for water management in China

Precise Measurements of Branching Fractions for Ds+D_s^+ Meson Decays to Two Pseudoscalar Mesons

We measure the branching fractions for seven $D_{s}^{+}$ two-body decays to pseudo-scalar mesons, by analyzing data collected at $\sqrt{s}=4.178\sim4.226$ GeV with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider. The branching fractions are determined to be $\mathcal{B}(D_s^+\to K^+\eta^{\prime})=(2.68\pm0.17\pm0.17\pm0.08)\times10^{-3}$, $\mathcal{B}(D_s^+\to\eta^{\prime}\pi^+)=(37.8\pm0.4\pm2.1\pm1.2)\times10^{-3}$, $\mathcal{B}(D_s^+\to K^+\eta)=(1.62\pm0.10\pm0.03\pm0.05)\times10^{-3}$, $\mathcal{B}(D_s^+\to\eta\pi^+)=(17.41\pm0.18\pm0.27\pm0.54)\times10^{-3}$, $\mathcal{B}(D_s^+\to K^+K_S^0)=(15.02\pm0.10\pm0.27\pm0.47)\times10^{-3}$, $\mathcal{B}(D_s^+\to K_S^0\pi^+)=(1.109\pm0.034\pm0.023\pm0.035)\times10^{-3}$, $\mathcal{B}(D_s^+\to K^+\pi^0)=(0.748\pm0.049\pm0.018\pm0.023)\times10^{-3}$, where the first uncertainties are statistical, the second are systematic, and the third are from external input branching fraction of the normalization mode $D_s^+\to K^+K^-\pi^+$. Precision of our measurements is significantly improved compared with that of the current world average values

Winner

Winner is an animated 3D graduate thesis film. The entire film, including the credits, is 4 minutes 34 seconds long. The production phase went from August 2020 to December 2021. The story is about an old man who wants to profit from a robot he invented, but finally paid for his selfishness in the end. The man is a robot inventor. He uses a chip to control the robot and uses it to participate in the robot fighting competition. His robot won one championship after another, and he was rewarded with bags after bags of money. He became richer and richer, but his greed did not diminish. He fantasized about drinking champagne on the beach with sunshine and beauty. However, at this time his robot has become scarred due to damage from the battle. The man did not give up his ambition and fixed the robot to prepare for the next fighting competition. However, the robot was eventually defeated by a powerful opponent. The chip in his body was punched out, and was swallowed by the old man dramatically. Finally, on the beach that the old man had imagined, his robot lay comfortably on a beach chair wearing sunglasses, and used the remote control to control the old man to serve it. It turns out that the robot is the real winner. The software used to make this film mainly include: Autodesk Maya and Zbrush for modeling and animation, Adobe Photoshop and Substance Painter for texture map, TVPaint for animatic, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere for editing and compositing. The final output format was 1080HD with a high-quality stereophonic track. This paper will retrace the production process of the film, the difficulties encountered and the solutions

MICROFABRICATION OF MAGNETIC MICRO-GRIPPERS AND THEIR NAVIGATION USING MRI SYSTEM

In the recent decades, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become one of the most important technologies in medical science that can provide a safe, convenient and high-quality imaging of the human body. By exploiting the imaging and magnetic navigation features of the MRI system, researchers have come up with a large number of magnetic robots which were designed to apply in the human body. However, the existing magnetic robots were either too large for practical use, or small but with limited functionality. In this thesis, a submillimeter-scale, functionalized magnetic robot, named micro-gripper is described. We successfully moved a nickel micro-gripper in an agarose phantom, but the performance was not able to reach our anticipation. Several improvements were hence incorporated in the existing design of micro-grippers. Instead of using nickel, we have used iron as the magnetic layer since iron has almost 2 times higher saturation magnetization than nickel. A geometric optimization of the magnetic layer area on the micro-gripper was carried out and the micro-gripper was redesigned. The micro-gripper was also embedded in a layer of paraffin wax to minimize the friction with the surroundings. With the mobility-enhanced new magnetic micro-gripper, we could successfully accomplish navigation on ex-vivo pig esophagus using gradient magnetic fields in an MRI system