Progressive Pattern Matching Approach Using Discrete Cosine Transform

Abstract-The discrete cosine transform (DCT) i

A Statistical Mask-Matching Approach for Recognizing Handwritten Characters in Chinese Paleography *

Abstract

Using the Norm Activation Model to Predict the Pro-Environmental Behaviors of Public Servants at the Central and Local Governments in Taiwan

An understanding of the environmental value-action gap between public servants at the central and local governments is essential for the effective implementation of environmental policies, which is limited in the extant literature. This study has adopted the norm activation model to explore the pro-environmental behaviors of public servants at the central and local governments in Taiwan. A total of 7567 valid questionnaires were collected, and significant differences were evident between public servants at the central (n = 3400) and local (n = 4167) governments in personal norms, awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and pro-environmental behaviors. Findings revealed that personal norms were the key factors predicting pro-environmental behaviors of public servants at both the central and local governments. Results also indicated that the awareness of consequences by public servants at the central government had a direct effect on their pro-environmental behaviors, which in turn had a significant effect on their ascription of responsibility. In contrast, awareness of consequences by public servants at the local government had no significant direct effect on their pro-environmental behaviors and had only a weak positive effect on their ascription of responsibility

Determinants of pro-environmental behavior among excessive smartphone usage children and moderate smartphone usage children in Taiwan

Introduction Although there is evidence linking the relationships between smartphone usage with health, stress, and academic performance, there is still inadequate knowledge about the influence on pro-environmental behaviors. This study seeks to bridge this gap by adapting the theory of attribution framework to examine the effects of personal norms, social norms, perceived behavioral control on pro-environmental behavior of smartphone usage in children. Methods A total of 225 children aged between 11 to 12 from eight selected public primary schools at the Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park in Taiwan were surveyed. Two distinct groups (excessive versus moderate usage) were purposefully selected for comparison, of which 96 participants were excessive smartphone users while the remaining 129 were moderate smartphone users. Results Findings revealed significant differences between excessive and moderate smartphone usage children groups in personal norms (p  0.05), as well as social norms and pro-environmental behavior for moderate smartphone usage children (β = 0.181, t = 1.924, p > 0.05), but such a relationship could be developed through the mediating effect of perceived behavioral control (β = 0.497, t = 4.471***, p < 0.001). Discussion The results suggested that excessive smartphone usage children lack positive perceived behavioral control, and their pro-environmental behavior could only be predicted through explicit social norms, whereas pro-environmental behavior of moderate smartphone usage children was implicitly influenced by personal norms through perceived behavioral control

Applying a Comprehensive Action Determination Model to Examine the Recycling Behavior of Taipei City Residents

With the occurrence of rapid global economic growth concerns about waste and its related effects on the environment are on the rise. There has been an increasing focus towards sustainable development and waste recycling as part of environmental sustainability strategies, and the encouraging of recycling behavior has received considerable attention from various environmental stakeholders. While numerous studies have used grounded theories such as the theory of planned behaviors and the norm activation model to examine environmental behaviors, a lack of consideration of other important variables in these studies has been revealed. This study aimed to address this gap by adopting the comprehensive action determination model, which comprises a wider group of influencing variables related to norms, intentions, situations, and habits. This model was tested using structural equation modelling with a sample of 386 valid questionnaires collected from Taipei City residents in the domain of recycling behaviors. Results indicated that awareness had a positive influence on personal norms towards recycling behaviors; social norms had a positive influence on personal norms towards recycling behaviors; attitudes had a positive influence on recycling intentions; social norms had a positive influence on recycling intentions; personal norms had a positive influence on recycling intentions; perceived behavior control had a positive influence on recycling intentions; recycling intentions had a positive influence on recycling behavior; and recycling habits had a positive influence on recycling behavior. However, findings did not support the positive impact of perceived behavioral control on recycling behavior

Technology-Enhanced Learning for Graduate Students: Exploring the Correlation of Media Richness and Creativity of Computer-Mediated Communication and Face-to-Face Communication

The objective of the research was to explore and compare the differences in potential creative thinking that media richness had on learners in creativity training through two different types of communication formats; computer-mediated communication, and face-to-face communication. The results indicated that the computer-mediated communication format performed better than the face-to-face in terms of the fluency, flexibility, and originality dimensions of creative thinking. The computer-mediated communication format also had a greater level of media richness perception (i.e., use of multiple cues, language diversity, and personal focus of the medium) than the face-to-face format. In terms of the combined effectiveness of computer-mediated communication, and face-to-face formats, the use of multiple cues, language variety of perception of media richness had direct effects on the fluency of creativity. There was also a positive correlation between the elaboration of creativity and the use of multiple cues, language variety, and personal focus of the medium in the perception of media richness. Furthermore, language variety was correlated with creativity and flexibility. The research findings highlighted the importance of the availability of immediate feedback on media richness, whereas creativity cognition should focus on the breadth and depth of the information, which contributes to enhancing the creativity of individuals or a group of employees

AMiBA: scaling relations between the integrated Compton-y and X-ray derived temperature, mass, and luminosity

We investigate the scaling relations between the X-ray and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect (SZE) properties of clusters of galaxies, using data taken during 2007 by the Y.T. Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA) at 94 GHz for the six clusters A1689, A1995, A2142, A2163, A2261, and A2390. The scaling relations relate the integrated Compton-y parameter Y_{2500} to the X-ray derived gas temperature T_{e}, total mass M_{2500}, and bolometric luminosity L_X within r_{2500}. Our results for the power-law index and normalization are both consistent with the self-similar model and other studies in the literature except for the Y_{2500}-L_X relation, for which a physical explanation is given though further investigation may be still needed. Our results not only provide confidence for the AMiBA project but also support our understanding of galaxy clusters.Comment: Accepted by ApJ; 8 pages, 3 figures, 5 table

A Single-Cell Level and Connectome-Derived Computational Model of the Drosophila Brain

Computer simulations play an important role in testing hypotheses, integrating knowledge, and providing predictions of neural circuit functions. While considerable effort has been dedicated into simulating primate or rodent brains, the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) is becoming a promising model animal in computational neuroscience for its small brain size, complex cognitive behavior, and abundancy of data available from genes to circuits. Moreover, several Drosophila connectome projects have generated a large number of neuronal images that account for a significant portion of the brain, making a systematic investigation of the whole brain circuit possible. Supported by FlyCircuit (http://www.flycircuit.tw), one of the largest Drosophila neuron image databases, we began a long-term project with the goal to construct a whole-brain spiking network model of the Drosophila brain. In this paper, we report the outcome of the first phase of the project. We developed the Flysim platform, which (1) identifies the polarity of each neuron arbor, (2) predicts connections between neurons, (3) translates morphology data from the database into physiology parameters for computational modeling, (4) reconstructs a brain-wide network model, which consists of 20,089 neurons and 1,044,020 synapses, and (5) performs computer simulations of the resting state. We compared the reconstructed brain network with a randomized brain network by shuffling the connections of each neuron. We found that the reconstructed brain can be easily stabilized by implementing synaptic short-term depression, while the randomized one exhibited seizure-like firing activity under the same treatment. Furthermore, the reconstructed Drosophila brain was structurally and dynamically more diverse than the randomized one and exhibited both Poisson-like and patterned firing activities. Despite being at its early stage of development, this single-cell level brain model allows us to study some of the fundamental properties of neural networks including network balance, critical behavior, long-term stability, and plasticity

Biodistribution and pharmacokinetics of 188Re-liposomes and their comparative therapeutic efficacy with 5-fluorouracil in C26 colonic peritoneal carcinomatosis mice

Chia-Che Tsai1, Chih-Hsien Chang1, Liang-Cheng Chen1, Ya-Jen Chang1, Keng-Li Lan2, Yu-Hsien Wu1, Chin-Wei Hsu1, I-Hsiang Liu1, Chung-Li Ho1, Wan-Chi Lee1, Hsiao-Chiang Ni1, Tsui-Jung Chang1, Gann Ting3, Te-Wei Lee11Institute of Nuclear Energy Research, Taoyuan, 2Cancer Center, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, 3National Health Research Institutes, Taipei, Taiwan, ROCBackground: Nanoliposomes are designed as carriers capable of packaging drugs through passive targeting tumor sites by enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effects. In the present study the biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, micro single-photon emission computed tomography (micro-SPECT/CT) image, dosimetry, and therapeutic efficacy of 188Re-labeled nanoliposomes (188Re-liposomes) in a C26 colonic peritoneal carcinomatosis mouse model were evaluated.Methods: Colon carcinoma peritoneal metastatic BALB/c mice were intravenously administered 188Re-liposomes. Biodistribution and micro-SPECT/CT imaging were performed to determine the drug profile and targeting efficiency of 188Re-liposomes. Pharmacokinetics study was described by a noncompartmental model. The OLINDA|EXM&amp;reg; computer program was used for the dosimetry evaluation. For therapeutic efficacy, the survival, tumor, and ascites inhibition of mice after treatment with 188Re-liposomes and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), respectively, were evaluated and compared.Results: In biodistribution, the highest uptake of 188Re-liposomes in tumor tissues (7.91% &amp;plusmn; 2.02% of the injected dose per gram of tissue [%ID/g]) and a high tumor to muscle ratio (25.8 &amp;plusmn; 6.1) were observed at 24 hours after intravenous administration. The pharmacokinetics of 188Re-liposomes showed high circulation time and high bioavailability (mean residence time [MRT] = 19.2 hours, area under the curve [AUC] = 820.4%ID/g*h). Micro-SPECT/CT imaging of 188Re-liposomes showed a high uptake and targeting in ascites, liver, spleen, and tumor. The results were correlated with images from autoradiography and biodistribution data. Dosimetry study revealed that the 188Re-liposomes did not cause high absorbed doses in normal tissue but did in small tumors. Radiotherapeutics with 188Re-liposomes provided better survival time (increased by 34.6% of life span; P &amp;lt; 0.05), tumor and ascites inhibition (decreased by 63.4% and 83.3% at 7 days after treatment; P &amp;lt; 0.05) in mice compared with chemotherapeutics of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU).Conclusion: The use of 188Re-liposomes for passively targeted tumor therapy had greater therapeutic effect than the currently clinically applied chemotherapeutics drug 5-FU in a colonic peritoneal carcinomatosis mouse model. This result suggests that 188Re-liposomes have potential benefit and are safe in treating peritoneal carcinomatasis of colon cancer.Keywords: biodistribution, dosimetry, 5-fluorouracil, micro-SPECT/CT, 188Re-liposome

AMiBA: Broadband Heterodyne CMB Interferometry

The Y. T. Lee Array for Microwave Background (AMiBA) has reported the first science results on the detection of galaxy clusters via the Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect. The science objectives required small reflectors in order to sample large scale structures (20') while interferometry provided modest resolutions (2'). With these constraints, we designed for the best sensitivity by utilizing the maximum possible continuum bandwidth matched to the atmospheric window at 86-102GHz, with dual polarizations. A novel wide-band analog correlator was designed that is easily expandable for more interferometer elements. MMIC technology was used throughout as much as possible in order to miniaturize the components and to enhance mass production. These designs will find application in other upcoming astronomy projects. AMiBA is now in operations since 2006, and we are in the process to expand the array from 7 to 13 elements.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, ApJ in press; a version with high resolution figures available at http://www.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/~keiichi/upfiles/AMiBA7/mtc_highreso.pd