DARK-EARTH MANUAL: APPROACHING AN INK-BASED ART PRACTICE

This document examines a number of conceptual approaches to an ink-based art practice associated with the tradition of Chinese shuimo. The paper seeks meaningful ways to engage an art practice focused on ink’s tactility and materiality. It begins by mapping out a direction to develop a conceptually sound basis for such a practice. This is followed by an exploration of ink’s manufacturing history in the Chinese context. The methods of ink’s production reveal a materially destructive aspect that ultimately leads to a process of transformation. The burning of natural resources to make ink prompts an investigation into ink’s material, Shingly” character. A section of Martin Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art is discussed in the third chapter in relation to my seeking of a renewed approach to ink practice. Concrete, ink-related examples are provided in the fourth and fifth chapters to demonstrate the applicability of the concepts explore

Air Quality Management in Macao – assessment, development of an operational forecast, and future perspectives

A combination of assessment, operational forecast, and future perspective was thoroughly explored to provide an overview of the existing air quality problems in Macao. The levels of air pollution in Macao often exceed those recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). In order for the population to take precautionary measures and avoid further health risks during high pollution episodes, it is important to develop a reliable air quality forecast. Statistical models based on linear multiple regression (MLR) and classification and regression trees (CART) analysis were successfully developed for Macao, to predict the next day concentrations of NO2, PM10, PM2.5, and O3. Meteorological variables were selected from an extensive list of possible variables, including geopotential height, relative humidity, atmospheric stability, and air temperature at different vertical levels. Air quality variables translate the resilience of the recent past concentrations of each pollutant and usually are maximum and/or the average of latest 24-hour levels. The models were applied in forecasting the next day average daily concentrations for NO2 and PM and maximum hourly O3 levels for five air quality monitoring stations. The results are expected to support an operational air quality forecast for Macao. The work involved two phases. On a first phase, the models utilized meteorological and air quality variables based on five years of historical data, from 2013 to 2017. Data from 2013 to 2016 were used to develop the statistical models and data from 2017 was used for validation purposes. All the developed models were statistically significantly valid with a 95% confidence level with high coefficients of determination (from 0.78 to 0.93) for all pollutants. On a second phase, these models were used with 2019 validation data, while a new set of models based on a more extended historical data series, from 2013 to 2018, were also validated with 2019 data. There were no significant differences in the coefficients of determination (R2 ) and minor improvements in root mean square errors (RMSE), mean absolute errors (MAE) and biases (BIAS) between the 2013 to 2016 and the 2013 to 2018 data models. In addition, for one air quality monitoring station (Taipa Ambient), the 2013 to 2018 model was applied for two days ahead (D2) forecast and the coefficient of determination (R2 ) was considerably less accurate to the one day ahead (D1) forecast, but still able to provide a reliable air quality forecast for Macao. To understand if the prediction model was robust to extreme variations in pollutants concentration, a test was performed under the circumstances of a high pollution episode for PM2.5 and O3 during 2019, and a low pollution episode during 2020. Regarding the high pollution episode, the period of the Chinese National Holiday of 2019 was selected, in which high concentration levels were identified for PM2.5 and O3, with peaks of daily concentration for PM2.5 levels exceeding 55 μg/m3 and the maximum hourly concentration for O3 levels exceeding 400 μg/m3 . For the low pollution episode, the 2020 period of implementation of the preventive measures for COVID-19 pandemic was selected, with a low record of daily concentration for PM2.5 levels at 2 μg/m3 and maximum hourly concentration for O3 levels at 50 μg/m3 . The 2013 to 2018 model successfully predicted the high pollution episode with high coefficients of determination (0.92 for PM2.5 and 0.82 for O3). Likewise, the low pollution episode was also correctly predicted with high coefficients of determination (0.86 and 0.84 for PM2.5 and O3, respectively). Overall, the results demonstrate that the statistical forecast model is robust and able to correctly reproduce extreme air pollution events of both high and low concentration levels. Machine learning methods maybe adopted to provide significant improvements in combination of multiple linear regression (MLR) and classification and regression tree (CART) to further improve the accuracy of the statistical forecast. The developed air pollution forecasting model may be combined with other measures to mitigate the impact of air pollution in Macao. These may include the establishment of low emission zones (LEZ), as enforced in some European cities, license plate restrictions and lottery policy, as used in some Asian, tax exemptions on electric vehicles (EVs) and exclusive corridors for public transportations

Liberalization of China-US air transport market: assessing the impacts of the 2004 and 2007 protocols

This paper examines China's considerations in reaching the 2004 and 2007 Air Service Agreement Protocols with the United States (US) and the impacts of such policy on the China–US market from the perspective of China. Analysis shows that the 2004 and 2007 protocols have profound impacts on the China–US market. The two protocols have been associated with phenomenal traffic growth and intensified competition. Passengers also benefit from much more choice in terms of both airlines and routing. Over time, Chinese carriers' operating performance and financial performance have gradually improved after the liberalization expressed in the protocols. However, the industry's hub-building initiatives are still seriously challenged by competing hubs in Seoul and Tokyo which have diverted substantial number of passengers moving between the China and US markets. Such issues have to be addressed in order to create a win–win outcome for both countries

Nonadiabatic noncyclic geometric quantum computation in Rydberg atoms

Nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation (NGQC) has been developed to realize fast and robust geometric gate. However, the conventional NGQC is that all of the gates are performed with exactly the sameamount of time, whether the geometric rotation angle is large or small, due to the limitation of cyclic condition. Here, we propose an unconventional scheme, called nonadiabatic noncyclic geometric quantum computation(NNGQC), that arbitrary single- and two-qubit geometric gate can be constructed via noncyclic non-Abeliangeometric phase. Consequently, this scheme makes it possible to accelerate the implemented geometric gatesagainst the effects from the environmental decoherence. Furthermore, this extensible scheme can be applied invarious quantum platforms, such as superconducting qubit and Rydberg atoms. Specifically, for single-qubit gate,we make simulations with practical parameters in neutral atom system to show the robustness of NNGQC and also compare with NGQC using the recent experimental parameters to show that the NNGQC can significantly suppress the decoherence error. In addition, we also demonstrate that nontrivial two-qubit geometric gate can berealized via unconventional Rydberg blockade regime within current experimental technologies. Therefore, ourscheme provides a promising way for fast and robust neutral-atom-based quantum computation.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Published visio

2011 German Escherichia coli outbreak: Alignment-free whole-genome phylogeny by feature frequency profiles

Accuracy of SNP-based whole-genome phylogeny reconstruction relies heavily on quality of sequence alignment which is particularly hindered by poorly assembled genomes. Alignment-free methods might provide additional insights. Here, we constructed a whole-genome phylogeny of 9 E.coli isolates from the 2011 German outbreak against existing E. coli genomes using the alignment-free feature frequency profile method. In addition, we looked for gene elements that distinguish the outbreak group from the other E. coli strains and possibly accounted for the emergence of the outbreak isolates using the distinguishing feature analysis

Krein-Feller operators on Riemannian manifolds and a compact embedding theorem

For a bounded open set Omega in a complete oriented Riemannian n-manifold and a positive finite Borel measure mu with support contained in the closure of Omega, we define an associated Dirichlet Laplacian Delta_mu by assuming the Poincare inequality. We obtain sufficient conditions for the Laplacian to have compact resolvent and in this case, we prove the Hodge theorem for functions, which states that there exists an orthonormal basis of L^2(Omega,mu) consisting of eigenfunctions of Delta_mu, the eigenspaces are finite-dimensional, and the eigenvalues of -Delta_mu are real, countable, and increasing to infinity. One of these sufficient conditions is that the L^infty-dimension of mu is greater than n-2. The main tools we use are Toponogov's and Rauch's comparison theorems. We prove that the above results also hold for measures without compact support, provided the Riemannian manifold is of bounded geometry. We study the condition the L^infty-dimension of mu is greater than n-2 for self-similar and self-conformal measures. Results in this paper extend analogous ones by Hu et al., which are established for measures on R^n

Hodge Theorem for Krein-Feller operators on compact Riemannian manifolds

For an open set in a compact smooth oriented Riemannian n-manifold and a positive finite Borel measure with support contained in the closure of the open set, we define an associated Krein-Feller operator on k-forms by assuming the Poincare inequality. Krein-Feller operators on Euclidean space have been studied extensively in fractal geometry. Using results established by the authors, we obtain sufficient conditions for Krein-Feller operator to have compact resolvent. Under these conditions, we prove the Hodge theorem for forms, which states that there exists an orthonormal basis of L2 consisting of eigenforms of Krein-Feller operator, the eigenspaces are finite-dimensional, and the eigenvalues of Krein-Feller operator are real, countable, and increasing to infinity. One of these sufficient conditions is that the dimension of the measure is greater than n-2. Our result extends the classical Hodge theorem to Krein-Feller operators.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2301.0643