201 research outputs found
COMPARISON OF MOVEMENT CHARACTERISTIC AND MUSCLE ACTIVATION BETWEEN DIFFERENT FITNESS HOOPS
Purpose: To compare the movement characteristics and muscle activation between Hula Hoop (HL) and Mini Hoop (MH). Methods: Sixteen healthy females randomly used HL and MH three minutes, respectively. Motion Analysis System and Noraxon wireless surface electromyography (EMG) were used to measure the movement characteristics and muscle activation. The paired t-test was used to test the difference between MH and HL. Results: The HL had larger in range of hip motion and root mean square of EMG in spinal erectors than MH (p < .05); the MH had higher in movement frequency (cycles per second) and median frequency of EMG in spinal erectors than HL (p < .05). Conclusion: Two fitness hoops have different movement characteristics and muscle action due to the different equipment design
Counting Crowds in Bad Weather
Crowd counting has recently attracted significant attention in the field of
computer vision due to its wide applications to image understanding. Numerous
methods have been proposed and achieved state-of-the-art performance for
real-world tasks. However, existing approaches do not perform well under
adverse weather such as haze, rain, and snow since the visual appearances of
crowds in such scenes are drastically different from those images in clear
weather of typical datasets. In this paper, we propose a method for robust
crowd counting in adverse weather scenarios. Instead of using a two-stage
approach that involves image restoration and crowd counting modules, our model
learns effective features and adaptive queries to account for large appearance
variations. With these weather queries, the proposed model can learn the
weather information according to the degradation of the input image and
optimize with the crowd counting module simultaneously. Experimental results
show that the proposed algorithm is effective in counting crowds under
different weather types on benchmark datasets. The source code and trained
models will be made available to the public.Comment: including supplemental materia
Study on the Correlation between Objective Evaluations and Subjective Speech Quality and Intelligibility
Subjective tests are the gold standard for evaluating speech quality and
intelligibility, but they are time-consuming and expensive. Thus, objective
measures that align with human perceptions are crucial. This study evaluates
the correlation between commonly used objective measures and subjective speech
quality and intelligibility using a Chinese speech dataset. Moreover, new
objective measures are proposed combining current objective measures using deep
learning techniques to predict subjective quality and intelligibility. The
proposed deep learning model reduces the amount of training data without
significantly impacting prediction performance. We interpret the deep learning
model to understand how objective measures reflect subjective quality and
intelligibility. We also explore the impact of including subjective speech
quality ratings on speech intelligibility prediction. Our findings offer
valuable insights into the relationship between objective measures and human
perceptions
Virtual Guidance as a Mid-level Representation for Navigation
In the context of autonomous navigation, effectively conveying abstract
navigational cues to agents in dynamic environments poses challenges,
particularly when the navigation information is multimodal. To address this
issue, the paper introduces a novel technique termed "Virtual Guidance," which
is designed to visually represent non-visual instructional signals. These
visual cues, rendered as colored paths or spheres, are overlaid onto the
agent's camera view, serving as easily comprehensible navigational
instructions. We evaluate our proposed method through experiments in both
simulated and real-world settings. In the simulated environments, our virtual
guidance outperforms baseline hybrid approaches in several metrics, including
adherence to planned routes and obstacle avoidance. Furthermore, we extend the
concept of virtual guidance to transform text-prompt-based instructions into a
visually intuitive format for real-world experiments. Our results validate the
adaptability of virtual guidance and its efficacy in enabling policy transfer
from simulated scenarios to real-world ones.Comment: Tsung-Chih Chiang, Ting-Ru Liu, Chun-Wei Huang, and Jou-Min Liu
contributed equally to this work; This work has been submitted to the IEEE
for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after
which this version may no longer be accessibl
ATP-Binding Cassette Transporter VcaM from Vibrio cholerae is Dependent on the Outer Membrane Factor Family for Its Function.
Vibrio cholerae ATP-binding cassette transporter VcaM (V. cholerae ABC multidrug resistance pump) has previously been shown to confer resistance to a variety of medically important drugs. In this study, we set to analyse its properties both in vitro in detergent-solubilised state and in vivo to differentiate its dependency on auxiliary proteins for its function. We report the first detailed kinetic parameters of purified VcaM and the rate of phosphate (Pi) production. To determine the possible functional dependencies of VcaM on the tripartite efflux pumps we then utilized different E. coli strains lacking the principal secondary transporter AcrB (Acriflavine resistance protein), as well as cells lacking the outer membrane factor (OMF) TolC (Tolerance to colicins). Consistent with the ATPase function of VcaM we found it to be susceptible to sodium orthovanadate (NaOV), however, we also found a clear dependency of VcaM function on TolC. Inhibitors targeting secondary active transporters had no effects on either VcaM-conferred resistance or Hoechst 33342 accumulation, suggesting that VcaM might be capable of engaging with the TolC-channel without periplasmic mediation by additional transporters. Our findings are indicative of VcaM being capable of a one-step substrate translocation from cytosol to extracellular space utilising the TolC-channel, making it the only multidrug ABC-transporter outside of the MacB-family with demonstrable TolC-dependency
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
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