318 research outputs found
Bringing Theoretical and Comparative Studies Together
The debate whether power is a kind of resource or an application of resources
shows the complexities of the concept of power. By combining both
perspectives, the authors argue that it is possible to develop a new
categorization of power: soft power, soft hard-power, hard soft-power and hard
power. Compared with the US and the European Union, the authors argue that if
the American power strategy could be seen as “omnidirectional American
primacy” and EU “omnidirectional post-sovereignty”, China’s power strategy at
the moment could be mainly described as an “attraction-defence” one. With
relatively limited tangible and intangible power resources, China relies more
on attraction than coercion, and focuses more on defence rather than shaping.
Finally, the authors propose to improve China’s power strategy by prioritizing
its soft economic hard-power, upgrading soft power, extending soft military
hard-power, moderately developing hard power and hard soft-power, and
expanding its shaping function while maintaining the central defensive role
Linear Convergence of Adaptively Iterative Thresholding Algorithms for Compressed Sensing
This paper studies the convergence of the adaptively iterative thresholding
(AIT) algorithm for compressed sensing. We first introduce a generalized
restricted isometry property (gRIP). Then we prove that the AIT algorithm
converges to the original sparse solution at a linear rate under a certain gRIP
condition in the noise free case. While in the noisy case, its convergence rate
is also linear until attaining a certain error bound. Moreover, as by-products,
we also provide some sufficient conditions for the convergence of the AIT
algorithm based on the two well-known properties, i.e., the coherence property
and the restricted isometry property (RIP), respectively. It should be pointed
out that such two properties are special cases of gRIP. The solid improvements
on the theoretical results are demonstrated and compared with the known
results. Finally, we provide a series of simulations to verify the correctness
of the theoretical assertions as well as the effectiveness of the AIT
algorithm.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
Large-scale Isolated Gesture Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks
This paper proposes three simple, compact yet effective representations of
depth sequences, referred to respectively as Dynamic Depth Images (DDI),
Dynamic Depth Normal Images (DDNI) and Dynamic Depth Motion Normal Images
(DDMNI). These dynamic images are constructed from a sequence of depth maps
using bidirectional rank pooling to effectively capture the spatial-temporal
information. Such image-based representations enable us to fine-tune the
existing ConvNets models trained on image data for classification of depth
sequences, without introducing large parameters to learn. Upon the proposed
representations, a convolutional Neural networks (ConvNets) based method is
developed for gesture recognition and evaluated on the Large-scale Isolated
Gesture Recognition at the ChaLearn Looking at People (LAP) challenge 2016. The
method achieved 55.57\% classification accuracy and ranked place in
this challenge but was very close to the best performance even though we only
used depth data.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1608.0633
Depth Pooling Based Large-scale 3D Action Recognition with Convolutional Neural Networks
This paper proposes three simple, compact yet effective representations of
depth sequences, referred to respectively as Dynamic Depth Images (DDI),
Dynamic Depth Normal Images (DDNI) and Dynamic Depth Motion Normal Images
(DDMNI), for both isolated and continuous action recognition. These dynamic
images are constructed from a segmented sequence of depth maps using
hierarchical bidirectional rank pooling to effectively capture the
spatial-temporal information. Specifically, DDI exploits the dynamics of
postures over time and DDNI and DDMNI exploit the 3D structural information
captured by depth maps. Upon the proposed representations, a ConvNet based
method is developed for action recognition. The image-based representations
enable us to fine-tune the existing Convolutional Neural Network (ConvNet)
models trained on image data without training a large number of parameters from
scratch. The proposed method achieved the state-of-art results on three large
datasets, namely, the Large-scale Continuous Gesture Recognition Dataset (means
Jaccard index 0.4109), the Large-scale Isolated Gesture Recognition Dataset
(59.21%), and the NTU RGB+D Dataset (87.08% cross-subject and 84.22%
cross-view) even though only the depth modality was used.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1701.01814,
arXiv:1608.0633
EVALUATION OF HEAVY METALS AROUND THE MINING OF DECORATIVE STONE ORE IN SUSONG COUNTY LIAOHE RIVER
In order to study the pollution of heavy metals around Liaohe Fender stone mine in Susong County, the soils at six points and the sediment at four points were selected. The effects of heavy metals Cu, Zn, Pb, Cd, Cr , Ni ,Hg and As were measured, the single factor index and the Nemero index method were used to evaluate the heavy metal elements in soil and sediment. The results showed that the values of heavy metal elements in the soil and sediment were less than 1 and the Pintegrated values were less than 0.85,the mine area was not polluted by heavy metals and belonged to the clean area within the grade â…
Caution, Students at Large
A black bundle of fur hurtled through the doorway of Elm Hall and darted down the hallway. Wild-eyed, a coed shrieked her way after the little animal. Screams echoed through the dormitory as other occupants discovered the object of the chase- a tiny skunk
A Study of Apparel Consumer Behaviour in China and Taiwan
To understand consumer behaviour and preferences for apparel shopping in Asia, the current study was undertaken to investigate the following three topics in China and Taiwan: online and offline shopping behaviours, product evaluative criteria and fashion information sources. Data was collected through questionnaire surveys carried out in mainland China and Taiwan. According to the results of this study, both Chinese and Taiwanese women shopped more frequently than men. Chinese consumers shopped more frequently online than did their Taiwanese counterparts. Both Chinese and Taiwanese consumers cited “fit” and “comfort” as the two most important evaluative criteria for clothing, while “brand name’ and “country of origin” were the least important cues. Both Chinese and Taiwanese participants cited “friends” to be their most important fashion information sources, with “siblings” and “parents” being the two least important sources
Thapsigargin at non-cytotoxic levels induces a potent host antiviral response that blocks influenza a virus replication
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Influenza A virus is a major global pathogen of humans, and there is an unmet need for effective antivirals. Current antivirals against influenza A virus directly target the virus and are vulnerable to mutational resistance. Harnessing an effective host antiviral response is an attractive alternative. We show that brief exposure to low, non-toxic doses of thapsigargin (TG), an inhibitor of the sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum (ER) Ca2+ ATPase pump, promptly elicits an extended antiviral state that dramatically blocks influenza A virus production. Crucially, oral administration of TG protected mice against lethal virus infection and reduced virus titres in the lungs of treated mice. TG-induced ER stress unfolded protein response appears as a key driver responsible for activating a spectrum of host antiviral defences that include an enhanced type I/III interferon response. Our findings suggest that TG is potentially a viable host-centric antiviral for the treatment of influenza A virus infection without the inherent problem of drug resistance
Food preference strategy of four sympatric rodents in a temperate forest in northeast China
Rodents are well known as both seed predators and dispersers of various plant species in forest ecosystems, and they play an important role in the regeneration of vegetation. Thus, the research on seed selection and vegetation regeneration by sympatric rodents is an interesting topic. To understand the characteristics of preferences of rodents for different seeds, a semi-natural enclosure experiment was performed with four rodent species (Apodemus peninsulae, Apodemus agrarius, Tscherskia triton, and Clethrionomys rufocanus) and the seeds of seven plant species (Pinus koraiensis, Corylus mandshurica, Quercus mongolica, Juglans mandshurica, Armeniaca sibirica, Prunus salicina, and Cerasus tomentosa) to investigate the differentiation in niches and patterns of resource utilization of sympatric rodents. The results showed that all the rodents had consumed many seeds of Pi. koraiensis, Co. mandshurica, and Q. mongolica but differed significantly in how they selected the different seeds. The rate of utilization (Ri) of Pi. koraiensis, Co. mandshurica, and Q. mongolica exhibited the highest values. The Ei values indicated that the rodents tested exhibited differences in their priorities used to select the seeds from different plant species. All four species of rodents exhibited obvious preferences for certain seeds. Korean field mice preferentially consumed the seeds of Q. mongolica, Co. mandshurica, and Pi. koraiensis. Striped field mice favor the seeds of Co. mandshurica, Q. mongolica, P. koraiensis, and Nanking cherry. Greater long-tailed hamsters prefer to consume the seeds of Pi. koraiensis, Co. mandshurica, Q. mongolica, Pr. salicina, and Ce. tomentosa. Clethrionomys rufocanus likes to eat the seeds of Pi. koraiensis, Q. mongolica, Co. mandshurica, and Ce. tomentosa. The results supported our hypothesis that sympatric rodents overlap in food selection. However, each rodent species has a marked preference for food selection, and different rodent species differ in their food preferences. This reflects the role of distinct food niche differentiation in their coexistence
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