Building Footprint Generation Using Improved Generative Adversarial Networks

Building footprint information is an essential ingredient for 3-D reconstruction of urban models. The automatic generation of building footprints from satellite images presents a considerable challenge due to the complexity of building shapes. In this work, we have proposed improved generative adversarial networks (GANs) for the automatic generation of building footprints from satellite images. We used a conditional GAN with a cost function derived from the Wasserstein distance and added a gradient penalty term. The achieved results indicated that the proposed method can significantly improve the quality of building footprint generation compared to conditional generative adversarial networks, the U-Net, and other networks. In addition, our method nearly removes all hyperparameters tuning.Comment: 5 page

Hypercrosslinked Polymer Supported Sulfonic Acids For Esterification of Carboxylic Acids

This work focused on the catalytic performance of hypercrosslinked sulfonic acid for esterification of carboxylic acids. The commercially available hyercrosslinked poly(styrene-divinylbenzine)sulfonic acids, Purolite D5081 and D5082 were found to be active than macroporous Amberlyst 35 for esterification of long-chained carboxylic acid with ethanol. The high activities have been attributed to the high accessibility of the acid sites in the catalysts. However, a relationship between the deactivation od D5081 and D5082 and acid site leaching was observed, and the acid sites were found to leach out only in polar liquids. Further investigation revealed that the leachable acid sites are mainly sulphuric acid trapped in the polymer. Based on these findings, a series of solid sulfonic acids on the hypercrosslinked poly (St-DVB)MN 200 were prepared, with the trapped sulphuric acid thoroughly removed. The surface areas and porosities were measured, and the structures were characterised by solid-state NMR. The home-made catalysts were used for catalysing esterification of acetic acid with ethanol, and the catalyst that showed no site leaching was used for kinetic modelling of the reaction. It was shown that the Eley-Rideal(single site) model best fits acetic acid esterification catalysed by the chosen hypercrosslinked sulfonic acid. The home-made catalyst which was highly active and reusable in esterification of pure oleic acid was tested in esterification of oleic acid esterification blended with rapeseed oil in biodiesel synthesis. The catalytic synthesis was compared with that of macroporous Amberlyst 35 and gel-type C100X4. The effect of reaction parameters on the reaction kinetics was evaluated for the oil-blended esterification over the hypercrosslinked sulfonic acid catalysis, and the reaction conditions were optimised. Finally, the reusability of the hypercrosslinked sulfonic acid was studied. This home-made hypercrosslinked catalyst in this reaction suffered from deactivation which is due to pore blocking and the loss of functional acid groups. The latter is caused by both sulfonic acid leaching and cation exchange with metal ions in the acidic oil

Regional unemployment and house price determination

This paper investigates the effect of unemployment on house prices in the UK property market to give an indication of the nature of their relationship. By evaluating housing research, including unemployment variables, this paper gives an overview of the uses of the unemployment variable and show the lack of a specific focus on unemployment in house price research. Theories of unemployment are presented as being a component of housing demand. A composite model of house prices against supply and demand variables used in other research is constructed. Using regional UK panel data of a fixed effects panel regression at the national level, the resulting coefficient for unemployment is compared with similar findings from other studies, resulting in unemployment being shown to be statistically significantly negatively related to house prices. Then, using OLS, no real relationship was found in regional house price sensitivity to unemployment, and how relatively rich or poor a region is. This result was possibly caused by problems with the regression as previous research had indicated that relatively richer regions do have a greater sensitivity of house prices to unemployment

Regional unemployment and house price determination

This paper investigates the effect of unemployment on house prices in the UK property market to give an indication of the nature of their relationship. By evaluating housing research, including unemployment variables, this paper gives an overview of the uses of the unemployment variable and show the lack of a specific focus on unemployment in house price research. Theories of unemployment are presented as being a component of housing demand. A composite model of house prices against supply and demand variables used in other research is constructed. Using regional UK panel data of a fixed effects panel regression at the national level, the resulting coefficient for unemployment is compared with similar findings from other studies, resulting in unemployment being shown to be statistically significantly negatively related to house prices. Then, using OLS, no real relationship was found in regional house price sensitivity to unemployment, and how relatively rich or poor a region is. This result was possibly caused by problems with the regression as previous research had indicated that relatively richer regions do have a greater sensitivity of house prices to unemployment

The influence of parameters of consecutive speed control humps ...

This paper is aimed at analyzing the chaotic vibration of a vehicle passing the consecutive speed control humps (SCHs) on a highway. A consecutive SCHs-speed coupling excitation function is presented. The chaotic vibration of nonlinear vehicle is studied by numerical simulation under a 2-DOF nonlinear vehicle suspension model. The chaotic vibration excited by the consecutive SCHs with different parameters is analyzed. Simulation results demonstrate that the chaotic motion may occur as the vehicle moves over a series of the consecutive SCHs. Furthermore, chaotic motion can be inhibited reasonably and effectively by proper adjustment of parameters of the consecutive SCHs

Environmental impact of the tourism industry in China: analyses based on multiple environmental factors using novel Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag model

This study examines the impact of tourism on China’s environmental quality under the framework of the Environment Kuznets Curve. In this study, tourism is measured by the number of tourist arrival and environmental pollution is measured by three proxies: carbon emissions, atmospheric particulate matter, and greenhouse gases. The study additionally controls trade openness effects using annual data from 1995 to 2018. Based on the asymmetric behavior of environmental variables, the study applies the Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag model that helps to integrate both dynamic trends and non-linearity. The findings confirmed the validity of Environment Kuznets in the long run and unveiled that tourist arrivals reduce carbon emissions, atmospheric particulate matter, and greenhouse gases in the long run, but in short-run dynamics, tourist arrivals only reduce carbon emissions. Similarly, trade openness increases carbon emissions, atmospheric particulate matter, and greenhouse gases at initial quantiles in the long run. In contrast, in the case of the short run, trade openness reduces atmospheric particulate matter and greenhouse gases. These results imply that the emissions mitigating (contributing) effects of tourism and trade varied across lower and higher quantiles. In conclusion, the findings reveal that the government should take effective measures to implement appropriate strategies required to sustain tourism and trade in China

Interaction of influenza virus NS1 protein with growth arrest-specific protein 8

NS1 protein is the only non-structural protein encoded by the influenza A virus, and it contributes significantly to disease pathogenesis by modulating many virus and host cell processes. A two-hybrid screen for proteins that interact with NS1 from influenza A yielded growth arrest-specific protein 8. Gas8 associated with NS1 in vitro and in vivo. Deletion analysis revealed that the N-terminal 260 amino acids of Gas8 were able to interact with NS1, and neither the RNA-binding domain nor the effector domain of NS1 was sufficient for the NS1 interaction. We also found that actin, myosin, and drebrin interact with Gas8. NS1 and β-actin proteins could be co-immunoprecipitated from extracts of transfected cells. Furthermore, actin and Gas8 co-localized at the plasma membrane. These results are discussed in relation to the possible functions of Gas8 protein and their relevance in influenza virus release

A duplex real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assay for detecting western equine and eastern equine encephalitis viruses

In order to establish an accurate, ready-to-use assay for simultaneous detection of Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) and Western equine encephalitis virus (WEEV), we developed one duplex TaqMan real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay, which can be used in human and vector surveillance. First, we selected the primers and FAM-labeled TaqMan-probe specific for WEEV from the consensus sequence of NSP3 and the primers and HEX-labeled TaqMan-probe specific for EEEV from the consensus sequence of E3, respectively. Then we constructed and optimized the duplex real-time RT-PCR assay by adjusting the concentrations of primers and probes. Using a series of dilutions of transcripts containing target genes as template, we showed that the sensitivity of the assay reached 1 copy/reaction for EEEV and WEEV, and the performance was linear within the range of at least 10(6 )transcript copies. Moreover, we evaluated the specificity of the duplex system using other encephalitis virus RNA as template, and found no cross-reactivity. Compared with virus isolation, the gold standard, the duplex real time RT-PCR assay we developed was 10-fold more sensitive for both WEEV and EEEV detection

Virulence of H5N1 virus in mice attenuates after in vitro serial passages

The virulence of A/Vietnam/1194/2004 (VN1194) in mice attenuated after serial passages in MDCK cells and chicken embryos, because the enriched large-plaque variants of the virus had significantly reduced virulence. In contrast, the small-plaque variants of the virus and the variants isolated from the brain of mice that were infected with the parental virus VN1194 had much higher virulence in mice. The virulence attenuation of serially propagated virus may be caused by the reduced neurotropism in mice. Our whole genome sequence analysis revealed substitutions of a total of two amino acids in PB1, three in PB2, two in PA common for virulence attenuated variants, all or part of which may be correlated with the virulence attenuation and reduced neurotropism of the serially propagated VN1194 in mice. Our study indicates that serial passages of VN1194 in vitro lead to adaptation and selection of variants that have markedly decreased virulence and neurotropism, which emphasizes the importance of direct analysis of original or less propagated virus samples