260 research outputs found
Battlefield of global ranking : how do power rivalries shape soft power index building?
International competition over soft power has largely transformed from image promotion and cultural diplomacy to benchmark setting. Benchmarks breed discourses and discourses embody power. The article argues that the soft power index building has turned into a battlefield where different values, norms and development models struggle for legitimacy through quasi-scientific validations. By critically examining the methods employed by two soft power indexes, Portland Soft Power 30 Index and China National Image Global Survey, this article unpacks the mechanisms by which institutions from western and emerging (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS)) states embed political values, interests and agendas in the selection of data, indicators and treatments of data. The article finds that while the soft power indexes originating from Western organizations largely normalized liberal values and the current international hierarchy, the Chinese national image survey provides a more self-reflective approach to soft power measurement
The significance of M1 macrophage should be highlighted in peripheral nerve regeneration
Macrophage influences peripheral nerve regeneration. According to the classical M1/M2 paradigm, the M1 macrophage is an inhibitor of regeneration, while the M2 macrophage is a promoter. However, several studies have shown that M1 macrophages are indispensable for peripheral nerve repair and facilitate many critical processes in axonal regeneration. In this review, we summarized the information on macrophage polarization and focused on the activities of M1 macrophages in regeneration. We also provided some examples where the macrophage phenotypes were regulated to help regeneration. We argued that the coordination of both macrophage phenotypes might be effective in peripheral nerve repair, and a more comprehensive view of macrophages might contribute to macrophage-based immunomodulatory therapies
Exploiting Image Local And Nonlocal Consistency For Mixed Gaussian-Impulse Noise Removal
Most existing image denoising algorithms can only deal with a single type of
noise, which violates the fact that the noisy observed images in practice are
often suffered from more than one type of noise during the process of
acquisition and transmission. In this paper, we propose a new variational
algorithm for mixed Gaussian-impulse noise removal by exploiting image local
consistency and nonlocal consistency simultaneously. Specifically, the local
consistency is measured by a hyper-Laplace prior, enforcing the local
smoothness of images, while the nonlocal consistency is measured by
three-dimensional sparsity of similar blocks, enforcing the nonlocal
self-similarity of natural images. Moreover, a Split-Bregman based technique is
developed to solve the above optimization problem efficiently. Extensive
experiments for mixed Gaussian plus impulse noise show that significant
performance improvements over the current state-of-the-art schemes have been
achieved, which substantiates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, to be published at IEEE Int. Conf. on
Multimedia & Expo (ICME) 201
Metallization of hydrogen by intercalating ammonium ions in metal fcc lattices at low pressure
Metallic hydrogen is capable of showing room temperature superconductivity,
but its experimental syntheses are extremely hard. Therefore, it is desirable
to reduce the synthesis pressure of metallic hydrogen by adding other chemical
elements. However, for most hydrides, the metallization of hydrogen by
"chemical precompression" to achieve high-temperature superconductivity still
requires relatively high pressure, making experimental synthesis difficult. How
to achieve high-temperature superconductivity in the low-pressure range (0-50
GPa) is a key issue for realizing practical applications of superconducting
materials. Toward this end, this work proposes a strategy for inserting
ammonium ions in the fcc crystal of metals. High-throughput calculations of the
periodic table reveal 12 elements which can form kinetically stable and
superconducting hydrides at low pressures, where the highest superconducting
transition temperatures of AlN2H8, MgN2H8 and GaN2H8 can reach up to 118.40,
105.09 and 104.39 K. Pressure-induced bond length changes and charge transfer
reveal the physical mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity, where the
H atom continuously gains electrons leading to the transition of H+ ions to
atomic H, facilitating metallization of hydrogen under mild pressure. Our
results also reveal two strong linear scalar relationships, one is the H-atom
charge versus superconducting transition temperature and the other is the first
ionization energy versus the highest superconducting transition temperature.
Besides, ZnN2H8, CdN2H8, and HgN2H8 were found to be superconductors at ambient
pressure, and the presence of interstitial electrons suggests that they are
also electrides, whose relatively low work functions (3.03, 2.78, and 3.05 eV)
imply that they can be used as catalysts for nitrogen reduction reactions as
well
Image Restoration Using Joint Statistical Modeling in Space-Transform Domain
This paper presents a novel strategy for high-fidelity image restoration by
characterizing both local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity of natural
images in a unified statistical manner. The main contributions are three-folds.
First, from the perspective of image statistics, a joint statistical modeling
(JSM) in an adaptive hybrid space-transform domain is established, which offers
a powerful mechanism of combining local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity
simultaneously to ensure a more reliable and robust estimation. Second, a new
form of minimization functional for solving image inverse problem is formulated
using JSM under regularization-based framework. Finally, in order to make JSM
tractable and robust, a new Split-Bregman based algorithm is developed to
efficiently solve the above severely underdetermined inverse problem associated
with theoretical proof of convergence. Extensive experiments on image
inpainting, image deblurring and mixed Gaussian plus salt-and-pepper noise
removal applications verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figures, 7 Tables, to be published in IEEE Transactions
on Circuits System and Video Technology (TCSVT). High resolution pdf version
and Code can be found at: http://idm.pku.edu.cn/staff/zhangjian/IRJSM
Image Super-Resolution via Dual-Dictionary Learning And Sparse Representation
Learning-based image super-resolution aims to reconstruct high-frequency (HF)
details from the prior model trained by a set of high- and low-resolution image
patches. In this paper, HF to be estimated is considered as a combination of
two components: main high-frequency (MHF) and residual high-frequency (RHF),
and we propose a novel image super-resolution method via dual-dictionary
learning and sparse representation, which consists of the main dictionary
learning and the residual dictionary learning, to recover MHF and RHF
respectively. Extensive experimental results on test images validate that by
employing the proposed two-layer progressive scheme, more image details can be
recovered and much better results can be achieved than the state-of-the-art
algorithms in terms of both PSNR and visual perception.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, to be published at IEEE Int. Symposium
of Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) 201
Improved Total Variation based Image Compressive Sensing Recovery by Nonlocal Regularization
Recently, total variation (TV) based minimization algorithms have achieved
great success in compressive sensing (CS) recovery for natural images due to
its virtue of preserving edges. However, the use of TV is not able to recover
the fine details and textures, and often suffers from undesirable staircase
artifact. To reduce these effects, this letter presents an improved TV based
image CS recovery algorithm by introducing a new nonlocal regularization
constraint into CS optimization problem. The nonlocal regularization is built
on the well known nonlocal means (NLM) filtering and takes advantage of
self-similarity in images, which helps to suppress the staircase effect and
restore the fine details. Furthermore, an efficient augmented Lagrangian based
algorithm is developed to solve the above combined TV and nonlocal
regularization constrained problem. Experimental results demonstrate that the
proposed algorithm achieves significant performance improvements over the
state-of-the-art TV based algorithm in both PSNR and visual perception.Comment: 4 Pages, 1 figures, 3 tables, to be published at IEEE Int. Symposium
of Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) 201
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