Effects of match forms and outcomes on phase-based elite male table tennis match performance

The aim of the study was to explore the service round technical-tactical performance indicators of three phases discriminating the match result and the two match forms. The statistics of 72 professional men’s singles matches of the 2018 international competitions were collected. A chi-square test was used to assess the relationship between match form, match outcome and service round result. Afterwards, a two-way ANOVA was performed to evaluate the effect of match form (SHM: match between players of the same handedness and OHM: match between players of the opposite handedness) and match result on three evaluation indices of thirteen technical-tactical indicators. The results displayed that: (1) there was a weak relationship between the service round outcome and match form for both the winning and losing players (p<0.001, ES=0.12); (2) the winners outperformed the defeated players by a higher technical effectiveness in all three phases with small to moderate effects (p<0.05, ES:0.50-1.00) at both match forms; (3) the usage rate of performance indicators of the first four strokes phase and six strokes above phase distinguished the SHM matches from the OHM matches by small to large effects (p<0.05, ES:0.50-1.26). This study offers insights for practitioners to comprehend the technical-tactical aspects that are deciding for performance when competing against different types of opponents and to make effective training plans and match strategies

Label-Free Liver Tumor Segmentation

We demonstrate that AI models can accurately segment liver tumors without the need for manual annotation by using synthetic tumors in CT scans. Our synthetic tumors have two intriguing advantages: (I) realistic in shape and texture, which even medical professionals can confuse with real tumors; (II) effective for training AI models, which can perform liver tumor segmentation similarly to the model trained on real tumors -- this result is exciting because no existing work, using synthetic tumors only, has thus far reached a similar or even close performance to real tumors. This result also implies that manual efforts for annotating tumors voxel by voxel (which took years to create) can be significantly reduced in the future. Moreover, our synthetic tumors can automatically generate many examples of small (or even tiny) synthetic tumors and have the potential to improve the success rate of detecting small liver tumors, which is critical for detecting the early stages of cancer. In addition to enriching the training data, our synthesizing strategy also enables us to rigorously assess the AI robustness.Comment: CVPR 202

Energy transmission processes in the effectuation chain of solar forcing to the terrestrial atmosphere—a review

The Sun has an obvious quasi-11-year cycle and numerous short-term eruptive activities. There are four processes of energy transmission in the effectuation chain of solar forcing to the climate system: solar energy input into the atmosphere, atmospheric absorption of the input energy, transformation of the absorbed energy into dynamic and thermodynamic responses in the atmosphere, and coupling among all the layers affected by solar forcings. However, the four processes have not been discussed in their entirety. This present paper reviews studies over the last decade on how solar radiation varies during the solar cycle and solar eruptions, and, correspondingly, how the terrestrial atmosphere absorbs the input solar energy

Healthy cities initiative in China: Progress, challenges, and the way forward

Article discusses how China implemented the first phase of its National Healthy Cities pilot program from 2016-20. Authors recommend aligning the Healthy Cities initiative in China with strategic national and global level agendas such as Healthy China 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by providing an integrative governance framework to facilitate a coherent intersectoral program to systemically improve population health

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages

Study of the B−→Λc+Λˉc−K−B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-} decay

The decay $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ is studied in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment. In the $\Lambda_{c}^+ K^{-}$ system, the $\Xi_{c}(2930)^{0}$ state observed at the BaBar and Belle experiments is resolved into two narrower states, $\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}$ and $\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}$, whose masses and widths are measured to be $$m(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = 2924.5 \pm 0.4 \pm 1.1 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ m(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = 2938.5 \pm 0.9 \pm 2.3 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = \phantom{000}4.8 \pm 0.9 \pm 1.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},\\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = \phantom{00}11.0 \pm 1.9 \pm 7.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},$$ where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. The results are consistent with a previous LHCb measurement using a prompt $\Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ sample. Evidence of a new $\Xi_{c}(2880)^{0}$ state is found with a local significance of $3.8\,\sigma$, whose mass and width are measured to be $2881.8 \pm 3.1 \pm 8.5\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and $12.4 \pm 5.3 \pm 5.8 \,\mathrm{MeV}$, respectively. In addition, evidence of a new decay mode $\Xi_{c}(2790)^{0} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ is found with a significance of $3.7\,\sigma$. The relative branching fraction of $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ with respect to the $B^{-} \to D^{+} D^{-} K^{-}$ decay is measured to be $2.36 \pm 0.11 \pm 0.22 \pm 0.25$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third originates from the branching fractions of charm hadron decays.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-028.html (LHCb public pages

Measurement of the ratios of branching fractions R(D∗)\mathcal{R}(D^{*}) and R(D0)\mathcal{R}(D^{0})

The ratios of branching fractions $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})\equiv\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})\equiv\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ are measured, assuming isospin symmetry, using a sample of proton-proton collision data corresponding to 3.0 fb${ }^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded by the LHCb experiment during 2011 and 2012. The tau lepton is identified in the decay mode $\tau^{-}\to\mu^{-}\nu_{\tau}\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$. The measured values are $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})=0.281\pm0.018\pm0.024$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})=0.441\pm0.060\pm0.066$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The correlation between these measurements is $\rho=-0.43$. Results are consistent with the current average of these quantities and are at a combined 1.9 standard deviations from the predictions based on lepton flavor universality in the Standard Model.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-039.html (LHCb public pages

Exploring Determinants of Housing Prices in Beijing: An Enhanced Hedonic Regression With Open Access POI Data

The housing market in Chinese metropolises have become inflated significantly over the last decade. In addition to an economic upturn and housing policies that have potentially fueled the real estate bubble, factors that have contributed to the spatial heterogeneity of housing prices can be dictated by the amenity value in the proximity of communities, such as accessibility to business centers and transportation hubs. In the past, scholars have employed the hedonic pricing model to quantify the amenity value in relation to structural, locational, and environmental variables. These studies, however, are limited by two methodological obstacles that are relatively difficult to overcome. The first pertains to difficulty of data collection in regions where geospatial datasets are strictly controlled and limited. The second refers to the spatial autocorrelation effect inherent in the hedonic analysis. Using Beijing, China as a case study, we addressed these two issues by (1) collecting residential housing and urban amenity data in terms of Points of Interest (POIs) through web-crawling on open access platforms; and (2) eliminating the spatial autocorrelation effect using the Eigenvector Spatial Filtering (ESF) method. The results showed that the effects of nearby amenities on housing prices are mixed. In other words, while proximity to certain amenities, such as convenient parking, was positively correlated with housing prices, other amenity variables, such as supermarkets, showed negative correlations. This mixed finding is further discussed in relation to community planning strategies in Beijing. This paper provides an example of employing open access datasets to analyze the determinants of housing prices. Results derived from the model can offer insights into the reasons for housing segmentation in Chinese cities, eventually helping to formulate effective urban planning strategies and equitable housing policies

Non-local channel aggregation network for single image rain removal

Rain streaks showing in images or videos would severely degrade the performance of computer vision applications. Thus, it is of vital importance to remove rain streaks and facilitate our vision systems. While recent convolutional neural network based methods have shown promising results in single image rain removal (SIRR), they fail to effectively capture long-range location dependencies or aggregate convolutional channel information simultaneously. However, as SIRR is a highly ill-posed problem, these spatial and channel information are very important clues to solve SIRR. First, spatial information could help our model to understand the image context by gathering long-range dependency location information hidden in the image. Second, aggregating channels could help our model to concentrate on channels more related to image background instead of rain streaks. In this paper, we propose a non-local channel aggregation network (NCANet) to address the SIRR problem. NCANet models 2D rainy images as sequences of vectors in three directions, namely vertical direction, transverse direction, and channel direction. Recurrently aggregating information from all three directions enables our model to capture the longrange dependencies in both channels and spatial locations. Extensive experiments on both heavy and light rain image data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed NCANet model. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Exploring Determinants of Housing Prices in Beijing: An Enhanced Hedonic Regression with Open Access POI Data

The housing market in Chinese metropolises have become inflated significantly over the last decade. In addition to an economic upturn and housing policies that have potentially fueled the real estate bubble, factors that have contributed to the spatial heterogeneity of housing prices can be dictated by the amenity value in the proximity of communities, such as accessibility to business centers and transportation hubs. In the past, scholars have employed the hedonic pricing model to quantify the amenity value in relation to structural, locational, and environmental variables. These studies, however, are limited by two methodological obstacles that are relatively difficult to overcome. The first pertains to difficulty of data collection in regions where geospatial datasets are strictly controlled and limited. The second refers to the spatial autocorrelation effect inherent in the hedonic analysis. Using Beijing, China as a case study, we addressed these two issues by (1) collecting residential housing and urban amenity data in terms of Points of Interest (POIs) through web-crawling on open access platforms; and (2) eliminating the spatial autocorrelation effect using the Eigenvector Spatial Filtering (ESF) method. The results showed that the effects of nearby amenities on housing prices are mixed. In other words, while proximity to certain amenities, such as convenient parking, was positively correlated with housing prices, other amenity variables, such as supermarkets, showed negative correlations. This mixed finding is further discussed in relation to community planning strategies in Beijing. This paper provides an example of employing open access datasets to analyze the determinants of housing prices. Results derived from the model can offer insights into the reasons for housing segmentation in Chinese cities, eventually helping to formulate effective urban planning strategies and equitable housing policies