A Hybrid Meta-heuristic for the Container Loading Problem

It is very common in an enterprise daily operation to solve Container Loading Problem (CLP). Especially, it is an important issue in the logistic management. The problem aims to determine the arrangement of objects with the best utilization ratio in a container. It belongs to the combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, a two-phased method focusing on the improvement of the efficiency and on the reducing of the problem size is proposed. In the first phase, a constructive method incorporated with a decision rule borrowing from ant colony optimization is used to construct tower set. The pheromone updating mechanism is useful in choosing proper object while constructing tower using decision rule. In the second phase, an improvement method based on genetic algorithm is used. First, the method sorts the towers by the utilization ratio and then assigns a number to each tower accordingly. The chromosome is a sequence of tower numbers which represents the arrangement of towers in the container’s bottom plane. The fitness function is defined as the utilization ratio. A new structure to store the pheromone is proposed which can help the ant in choosing the appropriate object while constructing tower. In this way, the efficiency of the method and the utilization of the container are improved

National identity (re)construction and negotiation and cosmopolitanism in the intercultural study-abroad context: Student sojourners from Taiwan in the UK

This exploratory study investigates how national identity is possibly (re)constructed, negotiated, and expanded during sojourners’ study-abroad experience, focusing on the student sojourners from Taiwan in the United Kingdom. Situated within the framework of social constructionism, the study is based on an interdisciplinary foundation which draws on the fields of identities, nationalism, intercultural communication, study-abroad, education and cosmopolitanism. It involves 20 international students from Taiwan in qualitative interviews and thematic analysis guides the data analysis process. The findings revealed a number of important points. First, the factors of homeland Taiwan and its cultures, schooling, family education, family history and the study-abroad experience are found to be integral to the national identities (i.e., Taiwanese and Chinese, ROC, identities) of the sojourners from Taiwan. Secondly, in terms of identity conflict management, especially with the mainland Chinese (PRC) peers, the dominating style as a way of defending the self-face and Taiwanese identity, and the avoiding tendency (i.e., avoiding arguments over the Taiwan-China political dispute) have been reported. Overall, the boundaries of being Taiwanese are drawn and re-drawn in accordance with the on-going process of communication with Chinese (PRC) and non-Chinese (PRC) in the study-abroad context in the UK. Last, whereas Taiwanese identity becomes particularly salient, cosmopolitan belonging is also found to be strong among many participants due to the cultural diversity of the study-abroad environment, although it is also contested for some. The study contributes to the study-abroad literature in its discussion of national identities. Also, the findings offer insights for international educators to better understand the experience of students from Taiwan in the UK and for educators in Taiwan who handle pre-sojourn courses and/or training

The 3D-tomography of the nano-clusters formed by Fe-coating and annealing of diamond films for enhancing their surface electron field emitters

[[abstract]]The Fe-coating and H2-annealed processes markedly increased the conductivity and enhanced the surface electron field emission (s-EFE) properties for the diamondfilms. The enhancement on the s-EFE properties for the diamondfilms is presumably owing to the formation of nano-graphite clusters on the surface of the films via the Fe-to-diamond interaction. However, the extent of enhancement varied with the granular structure of the diamondfilms. For the microcrystalline (MCD)films, the s-EFE process can be turned on at (E0)MCD = 1.9 V/μm, achieving a large s-EFE current density of (Je)MCD = 315 μA/cm2 at an applied field of 8.8 V/μm. These s-EFE properties are markedly better than those for Fe-coated/annealed ultrananocrystalline diamond(UNCD)films with (E0)UNCD = 2.0 V/μm and (Je)UNCD = 120 μA/cm2. The transmission electron microscopy showed that the nano-graphite clusters formed an interconnected network for MCDfilms that facilitated the electron transport more markedly, as compared with the isolated nano-graphitic clusters formed at the surface of the UNCDfilms. Therefore, the Fe-coating/annealing processes improved the s-EFE properties for the MCDfilms more markedly than that for the UNCDfilms. The understanding on the distribution of the nano-clusters is of critical importance in elucidating the authentic factor that influences the s-EFE properties of the diamondfilms. Such an understanding is possible only through the 3D-tomographic investigations.[[journaltype]]國外[[ispeerreviewed]]Y[[booktype]]電子版[[countrycodes]]US

The potential application of ultra-nanocrystalline diamond films for heavy ion irradiation detection

[[abstract]]The potential of utilizing the ultra-nanocrystalline (UNCD) films for detecting the Au-ion irradiation was investigated. When the fluence for Au-ion irradiation is lower than the critical value (fc = 5.0 × 1012 ions/cm2) the turn-on field for electron field emission (EFE) process of the UNCD films decreased systematically with the increase in fluence that is correlated with the increase in sp2-bonded phase (π*-band in EELS) due to the Au-ion irradiation. The EFE properties changed irregularly, when the fluence for Au-ion irradiation exceeds this critical value. The transmission electron microscopic microstructural examinations, in conjunction with EELS spectroscopic studies, reveal that the structural change preferentially occurred in the diamond-to-Si interface for the samples experienced over critical fluence of Au-ion irradiation, viz. the crystalline SiC phase was induced in the interfacial region and the thickness of the interface decreased. These observations implied that the UNCD films could be used as irradiation detectors when the fluence for Au-ion irradiation does not exceed such a critical value.[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]電子

Predicting effects of blood flow rate and size of vessels in a vasculature on hyperthermia treatments using computer simulation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Pennes Bio Heat Transfer Equation (PBHTE) has been widely used to approximate the overall temperature distribution in tissue using a perfusion parameter term in the equation during hyperthermia treatment. In the similar modeling, effective thermal conductivity (K_eff) model uses thermal conductivity as a parameter to predict temperatures. However the equations do not describe the thermal contribution of blood vessels. A countercurrent vascular network model which represents a more fundamental approach to modeling temperatures in tissue than do the generally used approximate equations such as the Pennes BHTE or effective thermal conductivity equations was presented in 1996. This type of model is capable of calculating the blood temperature in vessels and describing a vasculature in the tissue regions.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this paper, a countercurrent blood vessel network (CBVN) model for calculating tissue temperatures has been developed for studying hyperthermia cancer treatment. We use a systematic approach to reveal the impact of a vasculature of blood vessels against a single vessel which most studies have presented. A vasculature illustrates branching vessels at the periphery of the tumor volume. The general trends present in this vascular model are similar to those shown for physiological systems in Green and Whitmore. The 3-D temperature distributions are obtained by solving the conduction equation in the tissue and the convective energy equation with specified Nusselt number in the vessels.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>This paper investigates effects of size of blood vessels in the CBVN model on total absorbed power in the treated region and blood flow rates (or perfusion rate) in the CBVN on temperature distributions during hyperthermia cancer treatment. Also, the same optimized power distribution during hyperthermia treatment is used to illustrate the differences between PBHTE and CBVN models. K_eff(effective thermal conductivity model) delivers the same difference as compared to the CBVN model. The optimization used here is adjusting power based on the local temperature in the treated region in an attempt to reach the ideal therapeutic temperature of 43°C. The scheme can be used (or adapted) in a non-invasive power supply application such as high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU). Results show that, for low perfusion rates in CBVN model vessels, impacts on tissue temperature becomes insignificant. Uniform temperature in the treated region is obtained.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Therefore, any method that could decrease or prevent blood flow rates into the tumorous region is recommended as a pre-process to hyperthermia cancer treatment. Second, the size of vessels in vasculatures does not significantly affect on total power consumption during hyperthermia therapy when the total blood flow rate is constant. It is about 0.8% decreasing in total optimized absorbed power in the heated region as γ (the ratio of diameters of successive vessel generations) increases from 0.6 to 0.7, or from 0.7 to 0.8, or from 0.8 to 0.9. Last, in hyperthermia treatments, when the heated region consists of thermally significant vessels, much of absorbed power is required to heat the region and (provided that finer spatial power deposition exists) to heat vessels which could lead to higher blood temperatures than tissue temperatures when modeled them using PBHTE.</p

A powerful and efficient multivariate approach for voxel-level connectome-wide association studies

We describe an approach to multivariate analysis, termed structured kernel principal component regression (sKPCR), to identify associations in voxel-level connectomes using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) data. This powerful and computationally efficient multivariate method can identify voxel-phenotype associations based on the whole-brain connectivity pattern of voxels, and it can detect linear and non-linear signals in both volume-based and surface-based rsfMRI data. For each voxel, sKPCR first extracts low-dimensional signals from the spatially smoothed connectivities by structured kernel principal component analysis, and then tests the voxel-phenotype associations by an adaptive regression model. The method's power is derived from appropriately modelling the spatial structure of the data when performing dimension reduction, and then adaptively choosing an optimal dimension for association testing using the adaptive regression strategy. Simulations based on real connectome data have shown that sKPCR can accurately control the false-positive rate and that it is more powerful than many state-of-the-art approaches, such as the connectivity-wise generalized linear model (GLM) approach, multivariate distance matrix regression (MDMR), adaptive sum of powered score (aSPU) test, and least-square kernel machine (LSKM). Moreover, since sKPCR can reduce the computational cost of non-parametric permutation tests, its computation speed is much faster. To demonstrate the utility of sKPCR for real data analysis, we have also compared sKPCR with the above methods based on the identification of voxel-wise differences between schizophrenic patients and healthy controls in four independent rsfMRI datasets. The results showed that sKPCR had better between-sites reproducibility and a larger proportion of overlap with existing schizophrenia meta-analysis findings. Code for our approach can be downloaded from https://github.com/weikanggong/sKPCR. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Die Verwendung multimedialer Hilfsmittel im DaF-Unterricht an taiwanesischen Universitäten

Zum Verbessern der deutschen Erkenntnisse der allgemeinen fremdsprachlichen Bildung in weiterführenden Schulen und Hochschulen in Taiwan, wurde mein Projekt im WS 2007/08 und im SS 2008 am IfAD in der NKFUST in Taiwan eingeführt. Meine Hypothese war, wie das multimedial unterstütze Training von Sprachfertigkeiten sich dabei ausschließlich auf das im Unterricht verwendete Lernmaterial stützt. Messbar ist dieses Lernziel und seine Variablen: Begreifen, Behalten und Benutzen von Sprachregeln z. B. durch eine quantitative Erhebung. Mit Hilfe der sprachlichen Analyse, wie Profilanalyse, ließen sich so die erhaltenen Ergebnisse auswerten und im Anschluss daran eine Tendenz herausarbeiten, welche Unterrichtsgestaltung die besseren Lernergebnisse zur Folge hat. Darzulegen, wie und in welchem Umfang die Verwendung oder der Verzicht von multimedialen Hilfsmitteln an taiwanesischen Universitäten auf den Spracherwerb von DaF-Studierenden Einfluss nimmt, ist Ziel meiner Arbeit. The use of multimedia-based training of language skills to improve German foreign language teaching strategies in secondary schools and colleges of Taiwan was explored. The effectiveness of using multimedia learning materials exclusively in classrooms was conducted during the WS 2007/08 and SS 2008 at the IfAD in the NKFUST in Taiwan. The outcome and variables such as comprehension, acquirement and application of language rules, were quantified through the use of quantitative survey, for example. The idea tested in this research focus was to assemble the language tests of beginner German students in Taiwanese university classes after a determined period. With the help of linguistic analysis, such as Profilanalyse, the evaluated results could be obtained and performance trends can be analyzed to determine which instructional design had better learning outcomes. The aim of this dissertation is to explain how and to what extent the use or exclusion of multimedia tools would influence the language acquisition of German students in Taiwan.</p

Morphological and Molecular Defects in Human Three-Dimensional Retinal Organoid Model of X-Linked Juvenile Retinoschisis

X-linked juvenile retinoschisis (XLRS), linked to mutations in the RS1 gene, is a degenerative retinopathy with a retinal splitting phenotype. We generated human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from patients to study XLRS in a 3D retinal organoid in vitro differentiation system. This model recapitulates key features of XLRS including retinal splitting, defective retinoschisin production, outer-segment defects, abnormal paxillin turnover, and impaired ER-Golgi transportation. RS1 mutation also affects the development of photoreceptor sensory cilia and results in altered expression of other retinopathy-associated genes. CRISPR/Cas9 correction of the disease-associated C625T mutation normalizes the splitting phenotype, outer-segment defects, paxillin dynamics, ciliary marker expression, and transcriptome profiles. Likewise, mutating RS1 in control hiPSCs produces the disease-associated phenotypes. Finally, we show that the C625T mutation can be repaired precisely and efficiently using a base-editing approach. Taken together, our data establish 3D organoids as a valid disease model