Around the Table of the Golden Triangle: Food Connections and Community Networking from Burma to Taiwan

AbstractThis paper examines how exotic cuisines become the mechanism glue different ethnic groups together and enhanced the quality of community life in the so-called Golden Triangle in the Longgang area of Taoyuan, Taiwan. The Golden Triangle Longgang has been famous for its cultural diversities, especially the numbers of the exotic restaurants, including Burma cuisines, Hakka cuisines, Taiwanese cuisines, Chinese Mainlanders’ cuisines, Islamic cuisines and so on. In this paper, the research particularly investigates the relationships between the Burma cuisines and the quality of community life within the Burma-Chinese ethnic groups

Social Designing Edible Community Networks: Longtan, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Based on action research methods in between peri-urban and rural communities of Longtan region in Taoyuan Taiwan, the object of our paper is to investigate how to reconnect lives and landscapes to revitalize small towns and shrinking rural villages by cultivating edible community networks. We define edible community networks as social designing local food to connect three major domains: autonomous processes, environmental friendly economies, and cross-cultural landscape identities. The findings of our research suggest that food imbody social relationships as well as economic connections. Rural revitalizations could be established via integrating food connections among urban consumers, farmers, and community groups.

MiR 206 inhibits reorganization of the cytoskeleton in melanoma cells by targeting DDX5

Purpose: To investigate the role and mechanism of microRNA-206 (miR-206) in cytoskeleton reorganization in melanoma cells. Methods: MiR-206 and RNA helicase p68 (DDX5) expression levels were measured in A375, A875, and HEM-M cells by quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). A DDX5 overexpression cell line was constructed, and DDX5 overexpression, A375, and A875 cells were transfected with miR-206 mimic or DDX5 small interfering RNA (siRNA). Transwell assay was used to assess cell migration and invasion of A375 and A875 cells, while Luciferase reporter assay was used to determine the putative target of miR-206. DDX5, miR-206, vinculin, coronin3, and ezrin expression levels were evaluated by qRT-PCR. Protein expressions of DDX5, vinculin, coronin3, and ezrin were evaluated by western blot analysis. Results: DDX5 expression was higher and miR-206 expression lower in A375 and A875 cells when compared to HEM-M cells (p < 0.05). Knockdown of DDX5 and overexpression of miR-206 repressed invasion and migration, and inhibited expression of vinculin, coronin3, and ezrin in A375 and A875 cells (p < 0.05). However, overexpression of DDX5 reversed the effect of miR-206 on cytoskeletal protein expression. Luciferase reporter assay data confirmed that DDX5 is a direct target of miR-206 (p < 0.05). Conclusion: MiR-206 suppresses reorganization of the cytoskeleton in melanoma cells by targeting DDX5, and is thus, a promising target for the treatment of melanoma

Generative Modeling in Structural-Hankel Domain for Color Image Inpainting

In recent years, some researchers focused on using a single image to obtain a large number of samples through multi-scale features. This study intends to a brand-new idea that requires only ten or even fewer samples to construct the low-rank structural-Hankel matrices-assisted score-based generative model (SHGM) for color image inpainting task. During the prior learning process, a certain amount of internal-middle patches are firstly extracted from several images and then the structural-Hankel matrices are constructed from these patches. To better apply the score-based generative model to learn the internal statistical distribution within patches, the large-scale Hankel matrices are finally folded into the higher dimensional tensors for prior learning. During the iterative inpainting process, SHGM views the inpainting problem as a conditional generation procedure in low-rank environment. As a result, the intermediate restored image is acquired by alternatively performing the stochastic differential equation solver, alternating direction method of multipliers, and data consistency steps. Experimental results demonstrated the remarkable performance and diversity of SHGM.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Food Connection for Golden Triangle, Taiwan

This paper examines how exotic cuisines become the mechanism glue different ethnic groups together and enhanced the quality of community life in the so-called Golden Triangle in the Longgang area of Taoyuan, Taiwan. The Golden Triangle Longgang has been famous for its cultural diversities, especially the numbers of the exotic restaurants, including Burma cuisines, Hakka cuisines, Taiwanese cuisines, Chinese Mainlanders’ cuisines, Islamic cuisines and so on. In this paper, the research particularly investigates the relationships between the Burma cuisines and the quality of community life within the Burma-Chinese ethnic groups.Keywords: food;ethnic food;diaspora; IdentityeISSN: 2398-4279 © 2017. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia

Heterogeneous ice nucleation correlates with bulk-like interfacial water

Establishing a direct correlation between interfacial water and heterogeneous ice nucleation (HIN) is essential for understanding the mechanism of ice nucleation. Here, we study the HIN efficiency of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) surfaces with different densities of hydroxyl groups. We find that the HIN efficiency increases with the decrease of the hydroxyl group density. By explicitly considering that interfacial water molecules of PVA films consist of ‘tightly bound water’, ‘bound water’ and ‘bulk-like water’, we reveal that ‘bulk-like water’ can be correlated directly to the HIN efficiency of surfaces. As the density of hydroxyl groups decreases, ‘bulk-like water’ molecules can rearrange themselves with a reduced energy barrier into ice due to the diminishing constraint by the hydroxyl groups on the PVA surface. Our study not only provides a new strategy on experimentally controlling HIN efficiency but also gives another perspective in understanding the mechanism of ice nucleation, i.e., the phase change efficiency of ‘bulk-like’ interfacial water of a film is a predictor for the HIN efficiency of that film

Research on transformer and long short-term memory neural network car-following model considering data loss

There is limited research on the loss and reconstruction of car-following features. To delve into car-following's characteristics, we propose a car-following model based on LSTM-Transformer. By fully leveraging the advantages of long short-term memory (LSTM) and transformer models, this study focuses on reconstructing the input car-following features. Training and testing were conducted using 700 car-following segments extracted from a natural driving dataset and the Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) dataset, and the proposed model was compared with an LSTM model and an intelligent driver model. The results demonstrate that the model performs exceptionally well in feature reconstruction. Moreover, compared to the other two models, it effectively captures the car-following features and accurately predicts the position and speed of the following car when features are lost. Additionally, the LSTM-Transformer model accurately reproduces traffic phenomena, such as asymmetric driving behavior, traffic oscillations and lag, by reconstructing the lost features. Therefore, the LSTM-Transformer car-following model proposed in this study exhibits advantages in feature reconstruction and reproducing traffic phenomena compared to other models

Cortical Gray Matter Loss, Augmented Vulnerability to Speech-on-Speech Masking, and Delusion in People With Schizophrenia

People with schizophrenia exhibit impairments in target-speech recognition (TSR) against multiple-talker-induced informational speech masking. Up to date, the underlying neural mechanisms and its relationships with psychotic symptoms remain largely unknown. This study aimed to investigate whether the schizophrenia-associated TSR impairment contribute to certain psychotic symptoms by sharing underlying alternations in cortical gray-matter volume (GMV) with the psychotic symptoms. Participants with schizophrenia (N = 34) and their matched healthy controls (N = 29) were tested for TSR against a two-talker-speech masker. Psychotic symptoms of participants with schizophrenia were evaluated using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. The regional GMV across various cortical regions was assessed using the voxel-based morphometry. The results of partial-correlation and mediation analyses showed that in participants with schizophrenia, the TSR was negatively correlated with the delusion severity, but positively with the GMV in the bilateral superior/middle temporal cortex, bilateral insular, left medial orbital frontal gyrus, left Rolandic operculum, left mid-cingulate cortex, left posterior fusiform, and left cerebellum. Moreover, the association between GMV and delusion was based on the mediating role played by the TSR performance. Thus, in people with schizophrenia, both delusions and the augmented vulnerability of TSR to informational masking are associated with each other and share the underlying cortical GMV reduction, suggesting that the origin of delusion in schizophrenia may be related to disorganized or limited informational processing (e.g., the incapability of adequately filtering information from multiple sources at the perceptual level). The TSR impairment can be a potential marker for predicting delusion severity

Psychological symptoms in Chinese nurses may be associated with predisposition to chronic disease: A cross-sectional study of suboptimal health status

© 2020, The Author(s). Background: Suboptimal health status (SHS) is a reversible state between ideal health and illness and it can be effectively reversed by risk prediction, disease prevention, and personalized medicine under the global background of predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine (PPPM) concepts. More and more Chinese nurses have been troubled by psychological symptoms (PS). The correlation between PS and SHS is unclear in nurses. The purpose of current study is to investigate the prevalence of SHS and PS in Chinese nurses and the relationship between SHS and PS along with predisposing factors as well as to discuss the feasibility of improving health status and preventing diseases according to PPPM concepts in Chinese nurses. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with the cluster sampling method among 9793 registered nurses in Foshan city, China. SHS was evaluated with the Suboptimal Health Status Questionnaire-25 (SHSQ-25). Meanwhile, the PS of depression and anxiety were evaluated with Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) self-assessment questionnaires. The relationship between PS and SHS in Chinese nurses was subsequently analyzed. Results: Among the 9793 participants, 6107 nurses were included in the final analysis. The prevalence of SHS in the participants was 74.21% (4532/6107) while the symptoms of depression and anxiety were 47.62% (2908/6107) and 24.59% (1502/6107) respectively. The prevalence of SHS in the participants with depression and anxiety was significantly higher than those without the symptoms of depression (83.3% vs 16.7%, P \u3c 0.001) and anxiety (94.2% vs 5.8%, P \u3c 0.0001). The ratio of exercise habit was significantly lower than that of non-exercise habit (68.8% vs 78.4%, P \u3c 0.001) in SHS group. Conclusions: There is a high prevalence of SHS and PS in Chinese nurses. PS in Chinese nurses are associated with SHS. Physical exercise is a protective factor for SHS and PS so that the exercise should be strongly recommended as a valuable preventive measure well in the agreement with PPPM philosophy. Along with SDS and SAS, SHSQ-25 should also be highly recommended and applied as a novel predictive/preventive tool for the health measures from the perspectives of PPPM in view of susceptible population and individual screening, the predisposition to chronic disease preventing, personalization of intervention, and the ideal health state restoring