The boundary of holistic processing in the appraisal of facial attractiveness

© 2018 The Authors. Facial attractiveness is often studied on the basis of the internal facial features alone. This study investigated how this exclusion of the external features affects the perception of attractiveness. We studied the effects of two most commonly used methods of exclusion, where the shape of an occluding mask was defined by either the facial outline or an oval. Participants rated attractiveness of the same faces under these conditions. Results showed that faces were consistently rated more attractive when they were masked by an oval shape rather than by their outline (Experiment 1). Attractive faces were more strongly affected by this effect than were less attractive faces when participants were able to control the viewing time. However, unattractive faces benefited more from this effect when the same face stimuli were presented briefly for only 20 ms (Experiment 2). Further manipulation confirmed that the effect was mainly due to the occlusion of a larger area of the external features rather than the regular and symmetrical features of the oval shape (Experiment 3) or lacks contextual cues about the face boundary (Experiment 4). The effect was only relative to masked faces, with no advantage over unmasked faces (Experiment 5), and is likely a result of the interaction between the shape of a mask and the internal features of the face. This holistic effect in the appraisal of facial attractiveness is striking, because the oval shape of the mask is not a part of the face but is the edge of an occluding object

DETERMINANTS OF BANK PROFITABILITY AND RISK-TAKING IN CHINA

By using the ordinary lease squares estimation technique, this paper examines the relationship between bank-specific characteristics together with macroeconomic factors, and profitability in Chinese banking sector. Therefore, to find out the how each factor affects the bank’s profitability. Moreover, this paper also uses three risk measures to analyze the banks’ business condition. The regression analysis is based on a panel data set consisting of 152 observations of 30Chinese banks over a 6-year period from 2011 to 2016.We found that for profitability, capital ratio and GDP growth rate have significant positive impacts and inflation rate has significant negative impact. Other independent variables do not have significant relationship with bank’s profitability. For risk, none of the independent variable has significant impact on Z-score and non-performing ratio; however, total deposits to total assets ratio and bank size have significant impact on non-interest income ratio

Hyperspectral Image Restoration via Multi-mode and Double-weighted Tensor Nuclear Norm Minimization

Tensor nuclear norm (TNN) induced by tensor singular value decomposition plays an important role in hyperspectral image (HSI) restoration tasks. In this letter, we first consider three inconspicuous but crucial phenomenons in TNN. In the Fourier transform domain of HSIs, different frequency components contain different information; different singular values of each frequency component also represent different information. The two physical phenomenons lie not only in the spectral dimension but also in the spatial dimensions. Then, to improve the capability and flexibility of TNN for HSI restoration, we propose a multi-mode and double-weighted TNN based on the above three crucial phenomenons. It can adaptively shrink the frequency components and singular values according to their physical meanings in all modes of HSIs. In the framework of the alternating direction method of multipliers, we design an effective alternating iterative strategy to optimize our proposed model. Restoration experiments on both synthetic and real HSI datasets demonstrate their superiority against related methods

Asymmetry of Left Versus Right Lateral Face in Face Recognition

Prior research has found that the left side of the face is emotionally more expressive than the right side [1]. This was demonstrated in a study where the right and the left halves of a face image were combined with their mirror-reversed duplicates to make composite images. When observers were asked which composite face appeared more emotional, they selected the left-left over the right-right composite more often

The N-terminal domain of Lhcb proteins is critical for recognition of the LHCII kinase

AbstractThe light-harvesting chlorophyll (Chl) a/b complex of photosystem (PS) II (LHCII) plays important roles in the distribution of the excitation energy between the two PSs in the thylakoid membrane during state transitions. In this process, LHCII, homo- or heterotrimers composed of Lhcb1–3, migrate between PSII and PSI depending on the phosphorylation status of Lhcb1 and Lhcb2. We have studied the mechanisms of the substrate recognition of a thylakoid threonine kinase using reconstituted site-directed trimeric Lhcb protein–pigment complex mutants. Mutants lacking the positively charged residues R/K upstream of phosphorylation site (Thr) in the N-terminal domain of Lhcb1 were no longer phosphorylated. Besides, the length of the peptide upstream of the phosphorylated site (Thr) is also crucial for Lhcb phosphorylation in vitro. Furthermore, the two N-terminal residues of Lhcb appear to play a key role in the phosphorylation kinetics because Lhcb with N-terminal RR was phosphorylated much faster than with RK. Therefore, we conclude that the substrate recognition of the LHCII kinase is determined to a large extent by the N-terminal sequence of the Lhcb proteins. The study provides new insights into the interactions of the Lhcb proteins with the LHCII kinase

Microstructure and Magnetic Properties of NdFeB Films through Nd Surface Diffusion Process

Ta/Nd/NdFeB/Nd/Ta films were deposited by magnetron sputtering on Si (100) substrates and subsequently annealed for 30 min at 923 K in vacuum. It was found that the microstructure and magnetic properties of Ta/Nd/NdFeB/Nd/Ta films strongly depend on the NdFeB layer thickness. With NdFeB layer thickness increasing, both the grain size and the strain firstly reduce and then increase. When NdFeB layer thickness is 750 nm, the strain reaches the minimum value. Meanwhile, both the in-plane and perpendicular coercivities firstly drastically increase and then slowly decrease with NdFeB layer thickness increasing. The highest in-plane and perpendicular coercivities can be obtained at NdFeB layer thickness of 750 nm, which are 21.2 kOe and 19.5 kOe, respectively. In addition, the high remanence ratio (remanent magnetization/saturation magnetization) of 0.87 can also be achieved in Ta/Nd/NdFeB (750 nm)/Nd/Ta film

Deep Joint Source-Channel Coding for DNA Image Storage: A Novel Approach with Enhanced Error Resilience and Biological Constraint Optimization

In the current era, DeoxyriboNucleic Acid (DNA) based data storage emerges as an intriguing approach, garnering substantial academic interest and investigation. This paper introduces a novel deep joint source-channel coding (DJSCC) scheme for DNA image storage, designated as DJSCC-DNA. This paradigm distinguishes itself from conventional DNA storage techniques through three key modifications: 1) it employs advanced deep learning methodologies, employing convolutional neural networks for DNA encoding and decoding processes; 2) it seamlessly integrates DNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification into the network architecture, thereby augmenting data recovery precision; and 3) it restructures the loss function by targeting biological constraints for optimization. The performance of the proposed model is demonstrated via numerical results from specific channel testing, suggesting that it surpasses conventional deep learning methodologies in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSIM). Additionally, the model effectively ensures positive constraints on both homopolymer run-length and GC content

The Optimal Portfolio Model Based on Multivariate T Distribution with Fuzzy Mathematics Method

This paper proposed the optimal portfolio model maximizing returns and minimizing the risk expressed as CvaR under the assumption that the portfolio yield subject to multivariate t distribution. With Fuzzy Mathematics, we solve the multi-objectives model, and compare the model results to the case under the assumption of normal distribution yield, based on the portfolio VAR through empirical research. It is showed that our returns and risk are higher than M-V model.Key words: Multivariate t distribution; The optimal portfolio; VAR; CVAR; Multi-objectives programming; Fuzzy mathematic

An experimental study on the effect of salt spray testing on the optical properties of solar selective absorber coatings produced with different manufacturing technologies

Solar selective absorber coating (SSAC) is one of the key components of a solar collector, with its optical properties having a significant impact on the collector’s thermal performance. The key parameters characterizing the optical properties of an SSAC are the solar absorptance (absorptance of solar radiation) and the thermal emittance (emittance for long-wave radiation). However, some of high-performing SSACs suffer from some drawbacks, such as lower durability, lower resistance to corrosion and abrasion, which is particularly harmful for SSACs, as, for example, chlorides in the atmosphere have become a main contributor to corrosion in coastal areas with the increasing trend of global warming. In this paper, salt spray tests have been conducted on the SSACs manufactured by three common manufacturing technologies, i.e., the anode oxidation (AO) technology, the vacuum magnetron sputtering (VMS) technology, and the black chromium plating (BCP) technology, over the testing durations of 12 h, 24 h, 36 h, and 48 h, respectively, to examine the effect of the salt spray testing on the optical properties of SSACs manufactured by different manufacturing technologies. The salt spray testing is an accelerated aging testing method for evaluating the SSAC’s resistance to corrosion when it is under an extended exposure to a saline, or salted, spray (fog). The experimental results show that, in general, the SSACs manufactured by the BCP technology have excellent resistance to salt spray (i.e., to corrosion) and those manufactured by the AO technology have only reasonable resistance to corrosion, whereas the SSACs manufactured by the VMS technology have very poor resistance to corrosion. The results also demonstrate that there are noticeable differences in the optical properties of the SSAC samples even manufactured by the same technology but by different manufacturers, with some having significant differences. The causes for the differences have been further examined through the inspection of the physical appearance of the selected SSAC samples and the experimentally measured distributions of the monochromatic reflectance of solar radiation of the samples over the solar spectrum before and after the salt spray testing over different durations