Zhang Jinqiu\u27s Museums in Xi\u27an: Interpreting the City\u27s National and Cultural Identity Through the Design of Contemporary Museum Architecture

It took extra time for Xi’an to arrange and build its subway system, as it was interrupted by numbers of ancient sites and tombs underground. The government typically replaced the old with the new. It was not easy to commodify a ruined palace from the Han dynasty, rather than a brand-new building. Contradictorily, under the fast transitioning of architecture, those new creations barely embrace the soft power that is imperative for the city. Nevertheless, the best remediation is to build a museum that holds the relics, represents history, and has a stylish look. Additionally, the museum plays a crucial role in soft power, that complements a national identity and evokes citizen’s patriotism through the artifacts and architecture itself, and further communicates to the world as a diplomatic agent

In Between Intimacy

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College. In Between Intimacy Zijiao Li (Luci) It is a space in between private relations. Come in, people, you can feel it; come in first. I set up a domestic space, starting from the outside to the inside, where the LED light framed “door” welcomes people in and the slowly changing sky with moving clouds embraces and greets my guests. Passing by a short hallway, seven paired up abstract paintings, and self-made tables wait quietly and loudly. Each pair suggests a specific room in a house, such as a living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and a balcony. The placement of paintings and tables is distorted, plenty of spaces are left in between since I could not give more meaning to them: everywhere may seem ordinary but may have a unique meaning to certain individuals. I have personal links to all of them, but those are my secret feelings, and I don’t reveal them in my work. I hope everyone can find their own from here and keep them well. These non-direct and unspecific emotions are so vague and intimate, that makes them the most beautiful treasure of human sensation that illuminates the rooms with a humanistic glow. It feels even brighter than the LED strip light from the entrance door. Many traces and clues thread through this show. The color green is ubiquitous - the LED lights, the stenciled title, borders of paintings, things on the tables, and the invitation card. It brings the vital breath of life and energy when the atmosphere of the exhibition may become too heavy. Likewise, the black line exists in every painting, in which it indicates a gestural expression and more importantly, resembles the style of Chinese calligraphy that speaks to my own culture

Extending the concept of the morphological frame: a case study of Tangshan old military airport

[EN] The concept of the morphological frame is important in urban morphology, but it has been discussed much less than other critical concepts, such as the fringe belt and the fixation line. Passing its features on as inherited outlines, the morphological frame contains not only the linear fixation line, but also ground plan and three-dimensional aspects. In this research, the linear, ground plan, and three-dimensional morphological frame of Tangshan old military airport during the expansion of the city after the removal of the airport is identified. The former boundary roads of the airport exert obvious influences on the division of plots. The former arterial roads also function as a linear morphological frame. In relation to the ground plan, property rights and plots containing important buildings have an impact on the consequent town plan. The distinct feature of the morphological frame of the airport is its three-dimensional constraint, i.e. the vertical clearance requirement, which restricted the height of surrounding buildings. The impact of this institutional limit can last a very long time owing to the high cost of demolishing the old surrounding buildings or adding extra storeys even if the limit ceased to exist with the removal of the airport. Based on this case study, this paper refines and extends the connotation of the concept of the morphological frame and further discusses the relationship between function and form.Peng, R.; Zhang, Z.; Li, Y.; Song, F. (2018). Extending the concept of the morphological frame: a case study of Tangshan old military airport. En 24th ISUF International Conference. Book of Papers. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 265-272. https://doi.org/10.4995/ISUF2017.2017.5686OCS26527

Determination of Optimal Opening Scheme for Electromagnetic Loop Networks Based on Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process

Studying optimization and decision for opening electromagnetic loop networks plays an important role in planning and operation of power grids. First, the basic principle of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is introduced, and then an improved FAHP-based scheme evaluation method is proposed for decoupling electromagnetic loop networks based on a set of indicators reflecting the performance of the candidate schemes. The proposed method combines the advantages of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation. On the one hand, AHP effectively combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to ensure the rationality of the evaluation model; on the other hand, the judgment matrix and qualitative indicators are expressed with trapezoidal fuzzy numbers to make decision-making more realistic. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by the application results on the real power system of Liaoning province of China

Contrast, Attend and Diffuse to Decode High-Resolution Images from Brain Activities

Decoding visual stimuli from neural responses recorded by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) presents an intriguing intersection between cognitive neuroscience and machine learning, promising advancements in understanding human visual perception and building non-invasive brain-machine interfaces. However, the task is challenging due to the noisy nature of fMRI signals and the intricate pattern of brain visual representations. To mitigate these challenges, we introduce a two-phase fMRI representation learning framework. The first phase pre-trains an fMRI feature learner with a proposed Double-contrastive Mask Auto-encoder to learn denoised representations. The second phase tunes the feature learner to attend to neural activation patterns most informative for visual reconstruction with guidance from an image auto-encoder. The optimized fMRI feature learner then conditions a latent diffusion model to reconstruct image stimuli from brain activities. Experimental results demonstrate our model's superiority in generating high-resolution and semantically accurate images, substantially exceeding previous state-of-the-art methods by 39.34% in the 50-way-top-1 semantic classification accuracy. Our research invites further exploration of the decoding task's potential and contributes to the development of non-invasive brain-machine interfaces.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, conferenc

Comparative genomics and DNA methylation analysis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolate PA3 by single-molecule real-time sequencing reveals new targets for antimicrobials

IntroductionPseudomonas aeruginosa (P.aeruginosa) is an important opportunistic pathogen with broad environmental adaptability and complex drug resistance. Single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing technique has longer read-length sequences, more accuracy, and the ability to identify epigenetic DNA alterations.MethodsThis study applied SMRT technology to sequence a clinical strain P. aeruginosa PA3 to obtain its genome sequence and methylation modification information. Genomic, comparative, pan-genomic, and epigenetic analyses of PA3 were conducted.ResultsGeneral genome annotations of PA3 were discovered, as well as information about virulence factors, regulatory proteins (RPs), secreted proteins, type II toxin-antitoxin (TA) pairs, and genomic islands. A genome-wide comparison revealed that PA3 was comparable to other P. aeruginosa strains in terms of identity, but varied in areas of horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Phylogenetic analysis showed that PA3 was closely related to P. aeruginosa 60503 and P. aeruginosa 8380. P. aeruginosa's pan-genome consists of a core genome of roughly 4,300 genes and an accessory genome of at least 5,500 genes. The results of the epigenetic analysis identified one main methylation sites, N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and 1 motif (CATNNNNNNNTCCT/AGGANNNNNNNATG). 16 meaningful methylated sites were picked. Among these, purH, phaZ, and lexA are of great significance playing an important role in the drug resistance and biological environment adaptability of PA3, and the targeting of these genes may benefit further antibacterial studies.DisucssionThis study provided a detailed visualization and DNA methylation information of the PA3 genome and set a foundation for subsequent research into the molecular mechanism of DNA methyltransferase-controlled P. aeruginosa pathogenicity

Research on the optimal planning method of hydrogen-storage units in wind–hydrogen energy system considering hydrogen energy source

Utilizing wind power (WP) for hydrogen production can alleviate wind curtailment and improve wind energy utilization. The optimal planning of hydrogen-storage units(HSUs) in wind–hydrogen energy system(W-HES) will affect its economic operation. This paper proposes a W-HES model comprising WP, HSUs, and loads. We then utilize clustering algorithm-based WP and power load scenario division method. And taking the minimum investment, operation, and maintenance cost of W-HES as the objective function, use the particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm to optimize the planning of HSUs of W-HES. Finally, we investigate the impact of diverse hydrogen energy sources and daily hydrogen load variations on the optimal planning outcomes of HSUs. It will provide a valuable insights for the planning and configuration of HSUs in W-HES