A Search Strategy of Level-Based Flooding for the Internet of Things

This paper deals with the query problem in the Internet of Things (IoT). Flooding is an important query strategy. However, original flooding is prone to cause heavy network loads. To address this problem, we propose a variant of flooding, called Level-Based Flooding (LBF). With LBF, the whole network is divided into several levels according to the distances (i.e., hops) between the sensor nodes and the sink node. The sink node knows the level information of each node. Query packets are broadcast in the network according to the levels of nodes. Upon receiving a query packet, sensor nodes decide how to process it according to the percentage of neighbors that have processed it. When the target node receives the query packet, it sends its data back to the sink node via random walk. We show by extensive simulations that the performance of LBF in terms of cost and latency is much better than that of original flooding, and LBF can be used in IoT of different scales

Costly Signaling and China's Strategic Engagement in Arctic Regional Governance

In recent years, China has become an increasingly important actor in Arctic regional governance. While Beijing consistently frames its engagement in the region as a strategy of mutually-beneficial cooperation, some Arctic countries have raised significant concerns about its growing economic presence, warning that China may leverage its geopolitical influence to change the existing norms and rules in the polar region. Facing the mounting “China threat” skepticism, what are Beijing's coping strategies to belie concerns? Based on a review of the existing research and government documents, particularly Chinese-language scholarly works and official reports, this article specifically identifies two types of costly signaling approaches employed by China to reduce Arctic countries' distrust. First, China has started to curtail its Arctic investment in oil, gas, and mining while engaging more in sectors that chime well with Western societies' global environmental values, including clean and renewable energy, ecological research that addresses further climatic change associated with global warming, and other environmentally sustainable industries. Second, Beijing has increasingly involved in regional international organizations, such as the Arctic Council, to signal its willingness to exercise state power under institutional constraints. These approaches aim to send a series of costly signals to conventional Arctic states, reassuring them that China is not a revisionist power that pursues hegemony in the region. Taken together, our findings have both scholarly and policymaking implications to understand China's participation in Arctic regional governance

Revival and development of classical photography in contemporary perspective

Photography technology after 180 years of baptism, today’s photography technology has been monopolized by digital images, this monopoly can be described as a subversion of the traditional silver salt image, just like the painting art a hundred years ago and nowadays the photography art is in the process of change. In this ever-changing era, people are increasingly pursuing personalization and art, and photography is no exception. However, the detail of the most representative contemporary works of photographic art will unexpectedly promote the development of the classical craft of photography and be presented in a quiet way in today’s art market, which has aroused a warm response. The modern application of classical photography techniques not only opens us up to a new field, but also shows us the great potential of photography technology in the new era

The Application of Intercultural Communication Context Theory in Oral English Teaching

The fostering of intercultural communicative awareness, that is, full comprehension and mastering of the target culture background, values, customs and life styles on the basis of acquired language skills, is necessary in oral English teaching. A framework of intercultural communication context-based oral English teaching is designed. Two classes are involved in the study:one as the experimental class instructed with the intercultural communication context-based oral English teaching method; the other as the control class taught with the traditional teaching method.The results of the independent T-test indicate that intercultural communication context-based oral English teaching method can improve students’ oral proficiency. Moreover, the results of the questionnaire survey indicate that intercultural communication context-based oral English teaching method can increase students’ interest in oral English learning, promote their active learning and improve their intercultural communicative ability

Inequalities and Duality in Gene Coexpression Networks of HIV-1 Infection Revealed by the Combination of the Double-Connectivity Approach and the Gini's Method

The symbiosis (Sym) and pathogenesis (Pat) is a duality problem of microbial infection, including HIV/AIDS. Statistical analysis of inequalities and duality in gene coexpression networks (GCNs) of HIV-1 infection may gain novel insights into AIDS. In this study, we focused on analysis of GCNs of uninfected subjects and HIV-1-infected patients at three different stages of viral infection based on data deposited in the GEO database of NCBI. The inequalities and duality in these GCNs were analyzed by the combination of the double-connectivity (DC) approach and the Gini's method. DC analysis reveals that there are significant differences between positive and negative connectivity in HIV-1 stage-specific GCNs. The inequality measures of negative connectivity and edge weight are changed more significantly than those of positive connectivity and edge weight in GCNs from the HIV-1 uninfected to the AIDS stages. With the permutation test method, we identified a set of genes with significant changes in the inequality and duality measure of edge weight. Functional analysis shows that these genes are highly enriched for the immune system, which plays an essential role in the Sym-Pat duality (SPD) of microbial infections. Understanding of the SPD problems of HIV-1 infection may provide novel intervention strategies for AIDS

INFLUENCE OF RARE-EARTH DOPING ON THE ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF HIGH VOLTAGE GRADIENT ZnO VARISTORS

The influence of rare-earth doping on the electrical properties of ZnO varistors was investigated. In a lower doping region, the electrical properties were greatly improved with the increase of rare-earth contents. The highest voltage gradient value of 1968.0 V/mm was obtained with a rare-earth concentration of 0.06 mol. %. The microstructure of samples with different amounts of rare-earth oxides was examined and the notable decrease of grain size was identified as the origin for the increased voltage gradient. The doped rare-earth oxides dissolved at the grain boundaries and the excessive doping reduced the voltage across the single grain/grain boundary from 2.72 V to 0.91 V. The poor electrical properties in a higher doping region resulted from the degeneration of grain boundaries and the decrease of block density

Gender Difference of Unconscious Attentional Bias in High Trait Anxiety Individuals

By combining binocular suppression technique and a probe detection paradigm, we investigated attentional bias to invisible stimuli and its gender difference in both high trait anxiety (HTA) and low trait anxiety (LTA) individuals. As an attentional cue, happy or fearful face pictures were presented to HTAs and LTAs for 800 ms either consciously or unconsciously (through binocular suppression). Participants were asked to judge the orientation of a gabor patch following the face pictures. Their performance was used to measure attentional effect induced by the cue. We found gender differences of attentional effect only in the unconscious condition with HTAs. Female HTAs exhibited difficulty in disengaging attention from the location where fearful faces were presented, while male HTAs showed attentional avoidance of it. Our results suggested that the failure to find attentional avoidance of threatening stimuli in many previous studies might be attributed to consciously presented stimuli and data analysis regardless of participants' gender. These findings also contributed to our understanding of gender difference in anxiety disorder