An Investigation of Translator Cyril Birch’s Habitus in Translating Mistress and Maid (Jiaohongji)

As a kind of social practice, translation is greatly influenced by various social elements. Habitus is one of the key elements to analyze a translator’s translation activities, which could be reflected through one’s preference on works in the source language, translation principles, and selection of translation strategies. This study investigated translator Cyril Birch’s habitus based on Pierre Bourdieu theory of social practice and Daniel Simeoni’ s concept on translator’s habitus by analyzing one of his representative translated works--Mistress and Maid (Jiaohongji). The methods employed by this study involve case study, literature analysis, and textual analysis. The findings revealed that Cyril Birch owns a relatively fixed habitus on translating Chinese operas. The habitus of Cyril Birch was based on his ardent love of Chinese literature works, great familiarization and accumulation of Chinese culture. His translation principles were embodied in his pursuit of rhythm equivalence, preference on using annotations to interpret allusions, metaphors etc. This study could deepen the understanding of socio-translatology in the field of translation studies and help explain the translation activities in both macro and micro facets. Additionally, by analyzing this successful translator, the study will offer some references for the improvement of translators’ professional qualities

Local Binary Fitting Segmentation by Cooperative Quantum Particle Optimization

Recently, sophisticated segmentation techniques, such as level set method, which using valid numerical calculation methods to process the evolution of the curve by solving linear or nonlinear elliptic equations to divide the image availably, has become being more popular and effective. In Local Binary Fitting (LBF) algorithm, a simple contour is initialized in an image and then the steepest-descent algorithm is employed to constrain it to minimize the fitting energy functional. Hence, the initial position of the contour is difficult or impossible to be well chosen for the final performance. To overcoming this drawback, this work treats the energy fitting problem as a meta-heuristic optimization algorithm and imports a varietal particle swarm optimization (PSO) method into the inner optimization process. The experimental results of segmentations on medical images show that the proposed method is not only effective to both simple and complex medical images with adequate stochastic effects, but also shows the accuracy and high efficiency

Learn to Grasp via Intention Discovery and its Application to Challenging Clutter

Humans excel in grasping objects through diverse and robust policies, many of which are so probabilistically rare that exploration-based learning methods hardly observe and learn. Inspired by the human learning process, we propose a method to extract and exploit latent intents from demonstrations, and then learn diverse and robust grasping policies through self-exploration. The resulting policy can grasp challenging objects in various environments with an off-the-shelf parallel gripper. The key component is a learned intention estimator, which maps gripper pose and visual sensory to a set of sub-intents covering important phases of the grasping movement. Sub-intents can be used to build an intrinsic reward to guide policy learning. The learned policy demonstrates remarkable zero-shot generalization from simulation to the real world while retaining its robustness against states that have never been encountered during training, novel objects such as protractors and user manuals, and environments such as the cluttered conveyor.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L

Flipbot: Learning Continuous Paper Flipping via Coarse-to-Fine Exteroceptive-Proprioceptive Exploration

This paper tackles the task of singulating and grasping paper-like deformable objects. We refer to such tasks as paper-flipping. In contrast to manipulating deformable objects that lack compression strength (such as shirts and ropes), minor variations in the physical properties of the paper-like deformable objects significantly impact the results, making manipulation highly challenging. Here, we present Flipbot, a novel solution for flipping paper-like deformable objects. Flipbot allows the robot to capture object physical properties by integrating exteroceptive and proprioceptive perceptions that are indispensable for manipulating deformable objects. Furthermore, by incorporating a proposed coarse-to-fine exploration process, the system is capable of learning the optimal control parameters for effective paper-flipping through proprioceptive and exteroceptive inputs. We deploy our method on a real-world robot with a soft gripper and learn in a self-supervised manner. The resulting policy demonstrates the effectiveness of Flipbot on paper-flipping tasks with various settings beyond the reach of prior studies, including but not limited to flipping pages throughout a book and emptying paper sheets in a box.Comment: Accepted to International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 202

ERRA: An Embodied Representation and Reasoning Architecture for Long-horizon Language-conditioned Manipulation Tasks

This letter introduces ERRA, an embodied learning architecture that enables robots to jointly obtain three fundamental capabilities (reasoning, planning, and interaction) for solving long-horizon language-conditioned manipulation tasks. ERRA is based on tightly-coupled probabilistic inferences at two granularity levels. Coarse-resolution inference is formulated as sequence generation through a large language model, which infers action language from natural language instruction and environment state. The robot then zooms to the fine-resolution inference part to perform the concrete action corresponding to the action language. Fine-resolution inference is constructed as a Markov decision process, which takes action language and environmental sensing as observations and outputs the action. The results of action execution in environments provide feedback for subsequent coarse-resolution reasoning. Such coarse-to-fine inference allows the robot to decompose and achieve long-horizon tasks interactively. In extensive experiments, we show that ERRA can complete various long-horizon manipulation tasks specified by abstract language instructions. We also demonstrate successful generalization to the novel but similar natural language instructions.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L

Proposal for Unambiguous Electrical Detection of Spin-Charge Conversion in Lateral Spin Valves

Efficient detection of spin-charge conversion is crucial for advancing our understanding of emergent phenomena in spin-orbit-coupled nanostructures. Here, we provide a proof of principle of an electrical detection scheme of spin-charge conversion that enables full disentanglement of competing spin-orbit coupling (SOC) transport phenomena in diffusive lateral channels, i.e., the inverse spin Hall effect and the spin galvanic effect. A suitable geometry in an applied oblique magnetic field is shown to provide direct access to SOC transport coefficients through a symmetry analysis of the output nonlocal resistance. The scheme is robust against tilting of the spin-injector magnetization, disorder, and spurious non-spin-related contributions to the nonlocal signal and can be used to probe spin-charge conversion effects in both spin- valve and hybrid optospintronic devices

Knowledge, attitude, and practice toward pediatric vitamin D deficiency among parents

ObjectiveTo investigate the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) towards pediatric vitamin D deficiency (VitD) among parents and explore the risk factors of their knowledge, attitude, and practice.MethodsThis cross-sectional study enrolled parents in our Hospital between November 2022 and January 2023.ResultsA total of 621 valid questionnaires were collected in this study. The knowledge, attitude, and practice scores were 6.13 ± 3.07 (theoretical score range: 0–13), 31.13 ± 6.20 (theoretical score range: 9–45), and 27.47 ± 4.21 (theoretical score range: 9–45), respectively; the mean knowledge score was <60%, indicating poor knowledge. Commercial and service industry workers and a monthly income ≥5,000 CNY were independently associated with sufficient knowledge (all P < 0.05). The knowledge score, ethnic minorities, divorced/widows, and spouses with a master's degree or above were independently associated with positive attitudes (all P < 0.05). The attitude score, female, non-urban, undergraduate education, commercial and service industry worker, and office worker were independently associated with proactive practice (all P < 0.05). Those characteristics could help design future KAP interventions on vitD deficiency.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated poor knowledge, positive attitude, and proactive practice regarding pediatric VitD deficiency among parents. Targeted interventions and educational programs should be developed to improve parental knowledge

Factors influencing the quality of consecutive interpretation from the perspective of interpreter

This study examines the factors influencing the quality of consecutive interpretation based on an interview of a skilled interpreter. The data for this research is mainly collected from a semi-structured interview. This study is a descriptive qualitative study, aiming to have an in-depth analysis of interpretation. The analysis of the data is under the framework proposed by Andrew Gillies (2019). The findings revealed several factors that influence the quality of interpretation, such as techniques on taking note, quick response, culture elements & theoretical foundation. In order to respond quickly, the interpreters should make enough preparation, make quick decisions on word choice, practice more and keep constant learning. The findings have implications on the understanding of consecutive interpretation, which could offer some practical guidance for the prospective interpreters. Moreover, the findings of the study in consecutive interpretation will help enhance business negotiations and promote cross-culture communication

The Effect of Vinpocetine on Human Cytochrome P450 Isoenzymes by Using a Cocktail Method

Vinpocetine is a derivative of the alkaloid vincamine, which had been prescribed for chronic cerebral vascular ischemia and acute ischemic stroke or used as a dietary supplement for its several different mechanisms of biological activities. However, information on the cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzyme-mediated drug metabolism has not been previously studied. The present study was performed to investigate the effects of vinpocetine on CYPs activity, and cocktail method was used, respectively. To evaluate the effects of vinpocetine on the activity of human CYP3A4, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, and CYP2E1, human liver microsomes were utilized to incubate with the mixed CYPs probe substrates and the target components. The results indicate that vinpocetine exhibited weak inhibitory effect on the CYP2C9, where the IC50 value is 68.96 μM, whereas the IC50 values for CYP3A4, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, and CYP2E1 were all over range of 100 μM, which showed that vinpocetine had no apparent inhibitory effects on these CYPs. In conclusion, the results indicated that drugs metabolized by CYP2C9 coadministrated with vinpocetine may require attention or dose adjustment