Empowering the Frontline Police Officers to Cope with Police Social Service Role Strain in China

Provision of social service is one of the most significant roles of the police. A review of the related literature in policing seems to reveal that empowerment holds significance for frontline officers who are largely responsible for social service delivery. This study examines the possible relationships between police social service structural empowerment (PSSSE), police social service psychological empowerment (PSSPE) and police social service role strain (PSSRS) among frontline police officers in China. This study adopts a two-phase (quantitative and qualitative approaches) sequential explanatory design. In the first phase, a questionnaire is used to collect data from a sample of two hundred frontline community patrol officers in Shenzhen Public Security Bureau, China. After conducting the quantitative analysis, the author uses in-depth interviews to explore the nature of PSSRS, PSSSE, PSSPE from twelve selected interviewees' insights. According to the results of the survey and in-depth interviews, the participants report a comparatively high level of PSSRS and low levels of PSSSE and PSSPE. It has been found that there are significantly negative correlations between PSSSE, PSSPE and PSSRS in the Chinese police organization. The Chinese police force is suggested to provide effective interventions for individual experience of psychological empowerment and reorganize the current paramilitary-bureaucratic model by changing the management practices for structural empowerment in response to the PSSRS among frontline police officers

Slurry Trench Stability Analysis – Constructing Cement-Bentonite Slurry Trench Adjacent to Existing Soil-Bentonite Backfill

Vertical containment walls have been used as barriers to cut off hazardous fluid and chemical flow in the ground at contaminated sites. An application of this technique in South Carolina is to construct a 1.6-mile long containment wall along a dike using cement-bentonite slurry, which features low permeability and high compressive strength. However, concerns about the stability of the cement-bentonite slurry trench have been raised because an existing soil-bentonite wall will be in very close proximity to the alignment of the cement-bentonite slurry trench; and the shear strength of the existing soil bentonite backfill is considered to be low. Excessive overbreak of the new trench sidewalls is anticipated during construction. Utilizing the data obtained from the geotechnical borings drilled on the dike and CPT results, a parametric study was carried out in order to establish the minimum distance between the cement-bentonite slurry trench and the existing soil-bentonite backfill. Different cases were analyzed according to the strength parameters of the soil-bentonite backfill and the water level of the pond. In this paper the authors present the method and results of the stability analyses of the cement-bentonite slurry trench against wall collapsing. The calculated factor of safety with varying soil-bentonite backfill friction angles is plotted as function of the distance to the proposed trench. The results are discussed and recommendations are given to minimize the probability of trench overbreak. As a means to monitor the stability of the dike, inclinometers were installed prior to trench excavation. With the new trench being advanced, the measurements from the inclinometers show the movement of the dike due to trenching. These data are also discussed in the paper

The androgen receptor plays different roles in macrophage-induced proliferation in prostate stromal cells between transitional and peripheral zones of benign prostatic hypertrophy

Macrophages play a critical role in the process of excessive stromal proliferation of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). In our previous study, we used a BPH mouse model to elucidate a potential mechanism whereby macrophage infiltration promotes stromal cell proliferation in the prostate via the androgen receptor (AR)/inflammatory cytokine CCL3-dependent pathway. In our present study, we used the co-culture system of human macrophages and various prostatic zone stromal cells to further demonstrate that infiltrating macrophages promote prostatic stromal cell proliferation through stromal AR-dependent pathways, and we show that the stroma of TZ and PZ respond to macrophages differently because of differences in stromal AR signaling; this could possibly be one of the key pathways for stromal expansion during BPH development and progression. We hypothesize that AR and different downstream inflammatory mediators between TZ and PZ could serve as potential targets for the future design of therapeutic agents for BPH and our results provide significant insights into the search for targeted therapeutic approaches to battle BPH

Un marco de aprendizaje mutuo para redes podadas y cuantificadas

Model compression is an important topic in deep learning research. It can be mainly divided into two directions: model pruning and model quantization. However, both methods will more or less affect the original accuracy of the model. In this paper, we propose a mutual learning framework for pruned and quantized networks. We regard the pruned network and the quantized network as two sets of features that are not parallel. The purpose of our mutual learning framework is to better integrate the two sets of features and achieve complementary advantages, which we call feature augmentation. To verify the effectiveness of our framework, we select a pairwise combination of 3 state-of-the-art pruning algorithms and 3 state-of-theart quantization algorithms. Extensive experiments on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and Tiny-imagenet show the benefits of our framework: through the mutual learning of the two networks, we obtain a pruned network and a quantization network with higher accuracy than traditional approaches.La compresión de modelos es un tema importante en la investigación del aprendizaje profundo. Se puede dividir principalmente en dos direcciones: poda de modelos y cuantización de modelos. Sin embargo, ambos métodos afectarán más o menos la precisión original del modelo. En este artículo, proponemos un marco de aprendizaje mutuo para redes podadas y cuantificadas. Consideramos la red podada y la red quantized como dos conjuntos de características que no son paralelas. El propósito de nuestro marco de aprendizaje mutuo es integrar mejor los dos conjuntos de funciones y lograr ventajas complementarias, lo que llamamos aumento de funciones. Para verificar la efectividad de nuestro marco, seleccionamos una combinación por pares de 3 algoritmos de poda de última generación y 3 algoritmos de cuantificación de última generación. Extensos experimentos en CIFAR- 10, CIFAR-100 y Tiny-imagenet muestran los beneficios de nuestro marco: a través del aprendizaje mutuo de las dos redes, obtenemos una red pruned y una red de cuantificación con mayor precisión que los enfoques tradicionales.Facultad de Informátic

The Treatment of Refractory Pituitary Adenomas

Refractory pituitary adenomas (PAs) are defined as aggressive-invasive PAs characterized by a high Ki-67 index, rapid growth, frequent recurrence, and resistance to conventional treatments. It is notoriously difficult to manage refractory PAs because the efficacy of current therapeutic options is limited. The purpose of this review is to address currently employed and promising therapeutic strategies for the treatment of refractory PAs. Except for prolactinomas, neurosurgery is the first-line option, but most refractory PAs often recur or re-grow after initial surgery and require further treatments. Medical therapy, radiotherapy and re-operation are explored when surgery has failed to completely resect tumors; however, refractory PAs are usually resistant to these treatments. As a salvage treatment, temozolomide (TMZ) has shown promising results and is currently used for all types of refractory PAs. However, not all refractory PAs are responsive to TMZ treatment, and some of these PAs are resistant to TMZ. Although targeted therapies such as vascular endothelial growth factor, epidermal growth factor and mTOR inhibitors have also been used to treat refractory PAs, the effectiveness of these targeted therapies is still not known due to a lack of data from randomized prospective trials. As a novel therapeutic method, cancer immunotherapy is a promising strategy for the treatment of refractory PAs, but further preclinical research and clinical trials are needed to assess the efficacy of this new approach. In summary, early identification and a multidisciplinary approach are required to treat refractory PAs

Development of a Raspberry PI-Controlled VEX Robot for a Robotics Technology Course

This paper describes the development of a Raspberry PI-controlled VEX robot for an undergraduate robotic course. The Raspberry PI controls the mobile base built using the VEX robotics kit without using the Cortex micro-controller that comes with the kit. The aim is to create a physical robot that is manageable, easily replicable, and capable of performing advanced robotic control tasks such as vision-based control. The constructed robot adopts the great features of the PI and the VEX hardware. Firstly, the VEX hardware consists of various sensors and actuators for students to practice the construction and assembly of an autonomous robot. Secondly, the Raspberry PI provides a Linux environment for programming and implementing advanced algorithms. As a result, the robot can assist effective teaching of many STEM subjects involving robotics, image processing, and artificial intelligence. It can also facilitate undergraduate research outside of the classroom. The paper describes the development of the PI-controlled VEX robot, providing details of its construction, electronics wiring, low-level motion control, onboard image processing, and closed-loop vision-based control

Introducing ROS-Projects to Undergraduate Robotic Curriculum

This paper describes three MATLAB-ROS-based simulation projects developed for an undergraduate robotics course. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is an open-source framework that helps researchers and developers build and reuse code between robotics applications. Adoption of ROS in the undergraduate curricula is still rare due to its demanding requirements of C++/Python/Java programming skills and familiarity with Linux. Recently, MathWorks released its ROS Toolbox, making it easier to interact with simulators like the Gazebo and ROS-supported physical robots. The MATLAB-ROS-Gazebo simulation platform allows students to utilize other MATLAB Toolboxes, such as Image Processing, Computer Vision, Visualization, and Navigation Toolboxes, for fast algorithm development and testing. The paper presents three projects for autonomous mobile robots on the MATLAB-ROS-Gazebo simulation platform. The first project is on sensing and perception of laser scan data and its post-processing of model-based fitting. The second project is on the path planning of an autonomous mobile robot implementing the Wavefront algorithm. The third project obtains closed-loop control of the robot\u27s behavior based on visual hints. These three projects cover the fundamental components of controlling an autonomous mobile robot, including sensing, perception, decision-making, and low-level motion control. We believe these projects will help other educators develop ROS-based simulation projects as part of a course or a stand-alone course for teaching robotics