Strategic Plan for the Lakeland Queen and its entry into the China FIT market (2017-2020)

Abstract: With a maximum capacity of 240 customers on both decks, Lakeland Queen is the largest vessel on Lake Rotorua. Nowadays, it provides one-hour cruises including breakfast, lunch, and dinner cruise every day. Also, well equipped with buffet and bar on both decks, it is also capable of catering for many special events and parties. The past few years has seen a rapid growth in the number of Chinese visitors, who became the most important market for Lakeland Queen. However, behind the growing numbers of Chinese visitors every year, there is an undergoing trend from tour groups to Free Independent Travellers (FIT). The aim of the research is to develop a strategic plan for Lakeland Queen and its entry into the Chinese FIT market. A combination of quantitative research and qualitative research has been used. The target market for Lakeland Queen among the FIT visitors has been identified. And the customer awareness among the Chinse FIT visitors for Lakeland Queen are very low. Most importantly, the travel planning preferences of the Chinese FIT visitors have been found out. It would be recommended that the Lakeland Queen should clarify its target market first, based on which they can develop new products and cruise options for the FIT customers. Also, family discounts and combo activities would be effective ways to attract more independent travellers. Also, a digital development plan would be recommended primarily for Lakeland Queen

A Comparative Study between Full-Parameter and LoRA-based Fine-Tuning on Chinese Instruction Data for Instruction Following Large Language Model

Recently, the instruction-tuning of large language models is a crucial area of research in the field of natural language processing. Due to resource and cost limitations, several researchers have employed parameter-efficient tuning techniques, such as LoRA, for instruction tuning, and have obtained encouraging results In comparison to full-parameter fine-tuning, LoRA-based tuning demonstrates salient benefits in terms of training costs. In this study, we undertook experimental comparisons between full-parameter fine-tuning and LoRA-based tuning methods, utilizing LLaMA as the base model. The experimental results show that the selection of the foundational model, training dataset scale, learnable parameter quantity, and model training cost are all important factors. We hope that the experimental conclusions of this paper can provide inspiration for training large language models, especially in the field of Chinese, and help researchers find a better trade-off strategy between training cost and model performance. To facilitate the reproduction of the paper's results, the dataset, model and code will be released

A side‐by‐side comparison of the solidification dynamics of quasicrystalline and approximant phases in the Al–Co–Ni system

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148264/1/aya2gv5001.pd

Azlactone-Functionalized Polymers as Reactive Templates for Parallel Polymer Synthesis: Synthesis and Screening of a Small Library of Cationic Polymers in the Context of DNA Delivery

Azlactone-functionalized polymers are used as reactive templates for the synthesis of a library of amine-functionalized polymers of interest in the context of DNA delivery and other applications

ChatHome: Development and Evaluation of a Domain-Specific Language Model for Home Renovation

This paper presents the development and evaluation of ChatHome, a domain-specific language model (DSLM) designed for the intricate field of home renovation. Considering the proven competencies of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 and the escalating fascination with home renovation, this study endeavors to reconcile these aspects by generating a dedicated model that can yield high-fidelity, precise outputs relevant to the home renovation arena. ChatHome's novelty rests on its methodology, fusing domain-adaptive pretraining and instruction-tuning over an extensive dataset. This dataset includes professional articles, standard documents, and web content pertinent to home renovation. This dual-pronged strategy is designed to ensure that our model can assimilate comprehensive domain knowledge and effectively address user inquiries. Via thorough experimentation on diverse datasets, both universal and domain-specific, including the freshly introduced "EvalHome" domain dataset, we substantiate that ChatHome not only amplifies domain-specific functionalities but also preserves its versatility.Comment: ChatHome,DSLM for home renovatio

BEIKE NLP at SemEval-2022 Task 4: Prompt-Based Paragraph Classification for Patronizing and Condescending Language Detection

PCL detection task is aimed at identifying and categorizing language that is patronizing or condescending towards vulnerable communities in the general media.Compared to other NLP tasks of paragraph classification, the negative language presented in the PCL detection task is usually more implicit and subtle to be recognized, making the performance of common text-classification approaches disappointed. Targeting the PCL detection problem in SemEval-2022 Task 4, in this paper, we give an introduction to our team's solution, which exploits the power of prompt-based learning on paragraph classification. We reformulate the task as an appropriate cloze prompt and use pre-trained Masked Language Models to fill the cloze slot. For the two subtasks, binary classification and multi-label classification, DeBERTa model is adopted and fine-tuned to predict masked label words of task-specific prompts. On the evaluation dataset, for binary classification, our approach achieves an F1-score of 0.6406; for multi-label classification, our approach achieves an macro-F1-score of 0.4689 and ranks first in the leaderboard

Experimental assessment of fracture of individual sand particles at different loading rates

Failure mechanisms in individual sand particles under compressive loading at different loading rates were -investigated using X-ray imaging. High speed X-ray phase contrast imaging was utilized to study the damage mechanisms in dry and wet sand under dynamic compressive loading. A modified Kolsky bar setup was used to apply controlled dynamic compression on two contacting sand particles. One of the particles was observed to pulverize, whereas other particle remained intact for dry sand particles with average failure load of 34.344 N. In wet conditions, one of the particles was observed to break into large subparticles which pulverized upon further loading. Other particle was observed to stay intact. The failure load was observed to increase to 65.466 N for wet particles. 3D X-ray tomography was used to assess the failure of dry sand particles under static compressive loading. One particle broke into large subparticles which subsequently pulverized under static compressive loading. Even under static loading, second particle did not fail until first particle was completely pulverized. The pulverization load under static compressive loading was observed to be 42 N. The order of pulverization for the particles was observed to be random in all experiments

Characterization of Shewanella sp. Isolated from Cultured Loach Misgurnus anguillicaudatus

Shewanella infection of fish has become a significant problem in aquaculture. In September 2014, a disease was seen in cultured loach (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus) in Xuzhou, central China. A gram-negative bacillus was isolated from the diseased loaches and was tentatively named strain MS1, which was then identified as Shewanella sp. by physiological and biochemical characteristics analysis. The strain MS1 showed highest 16S rRNA sequence identities (98.93%, 98.87%) with the latest two species listed (Shewanella sp. MR7, Shewanella sp. MR4). The phylogenetic tree constructed on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequences strongly indicated that the strain MS1 is most closely related to the new Shewanella strains MR7 and MR4. The isolate MS1 was confirmed as the pathogen of the infected loaches by experimental reinoculation. The strain was susceptible to most antimicrobial agents tested, but resistant to glycopeptides (vancomycin, teicoplanin) and lincosamide (lincomycin, clindamycin). This is the second report on Shewanella sp. isolated from the diseased loach

Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy due to GMPPB mutations: A case report and comprehensive literature review

Mutations in the guanosine diphosphate mannose (GDP-mannose) pyrophosphorylase B (GMPPB) gene are rare. To date, 72 cases with GMPPB gene mutations have been reported. Herein, we reported a case of a 29-year-old Chinese male presenting with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) who was found to have two heterozygous GMPPB mutations. The patient had a progressive limb weakness for 19 years. His parents and elder brother were normal. On examination he had a waddling gait, and absent tendon reflexes in all four limbs. Electromyography showed myogenic damage. Muscle magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed fatty degeneration in the bilateral medial thigh muscles. High throughput gene panel sequencing revealed that the patient carried compound heterozygous mutations in the GMPPB gene, c.553C>T (p.R185C, maternal inheritance) and c.346C>T (p.P116S, paternal inheritance). This case provides additional information regarding the phenotypic spectrum of GMPPB mutations in the Chinese population