An improved Siamese network for face sketch recognition

Face sketch recognition identifies the face photo from a large face sketch dataset. Some traditional methods are typically used to reduce the modality gap between face photos and sketches and gain excellent recognition rate based on a pseudo image which is synthesized using the corresponded face photo. However, these methods cannot obtain better high recognition rate for all face sketch datasets, because the use of extracted features cannot lead to the elimination of the effect of different modalities' images. The feature representation of the deep convolutional neural networks as a feasible approach for identification involves wider applications than other methods. It is adapted to extract the features which eliminate the difference between face photos and sketches. The recognition rate is high for neural networks constructed by learning optimal local features, even if the input image shows geometric distortions. However, the case of overfitting leads to the unsatisfactory performance of deep learning methods on face sketch recognition tasks. Also, the sketch images are too simple to be used for extracting effective features. This paper aims to increase the matching rate using the Siamese convolution network architecture. The framework is used to extract useful features from each image pair to reduce the modality gap. Moreover, data augmentation is used to avoid overfitting. We explore the performance of three loss functions and compare the similarity between each image pair. The experimental results show that our framework is adequate for a composite sketch dataset. In addition, it reduces the influence of overfitting by using data augmentation and modifying the network structure

Spillover Effects of International Strategic Alliance in Banking Industry of China: Perspectives from Chinese Firms

This research examines the spillover effects of international strategic alliances in China’s banking industry for Chinese domestic banks. Through adopting spillover effects theory in explaining the positive and negative effects leaking from foreign investors in international strategic alliances, the study enables us to compare the internal and external effects depending on different factors, as Chinese state owned national banks and local banks as well as the country of origin. All of the analyses will be based on four mechanisms of spillover effects including demonstration effects, building domestic linkages, employee turnover and competition effects. Using the case studies of a Chinese state owned national enterprise Bank of Communications (BoCom)’s strategic alliances with a British bank Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Corporation (HSBC) as well as a local bank Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB)’s strategic cooperation with the American firm Citibank, we find that Chinese state owned national bank and local banks performed differently in attracting foreign investment, meanwhile foreign banks from different countries also vary considerably. As for the overall spillovers, the positive effects are leaked from imitating modern commercial banking philosophy, advanced management skills and modern technologies, improving intangible resources through employee turnover and gaining motivations to compete with other banks. However, foreign investors also can bring threats that results in crowed-out effects. In reference to the domestic factors, Chinese state banks and local banks differ in some aspects. Local banks have stronger motivations of learning foreign know-how and building linkages due to the lack of governmental supports and small technology gap while state banks performed better in competing with other banks than local banks. In terms of external factors of country of origin, banks from United Kingdom have different effects on Chinese banks compared with American banks. It is seems that British banks prefer to establish long-term partnerships because of governmental supports while the American incentive policies encourage banks to expand into international markets and compete with other financial institutes

JMJ704 positively regulates rice defense response against Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae infection via reducing H3K4me2/3 associated with negative disease resistance regulators

A schematic representation showing the genomic regions of the three genes for ChIP-PCR assay. White box indicates untranslated region, black box indicates coding sequence, line through the box indicates intron region of the genes, lines and numbers above the gene indicate the regions and positions used for ChIP-PCR assay. (TIF 2795 kb

Media Literasi: Upaya Bijak Menyikapi Terpaan Tayangan Televisi

The television media have transformed into industry. Tight competition among TV stations demands the media people to provide programs based on the market taste. Therefore, mostly TV stations design and produce their programs based on share and rating numbers, instead of quality. On the other side, TV stations have important roles in constructing social and cultural development. Currently, TV programs are merely produced based on the business orientation so that the quality of the TV programs is often ignored. Audience must be wise and smart to protect themselves from poor-quality TV programs exposure. This can be achieved by improving their Media Literacy. In the end, Audience is no longer treated as passive object, but actively takes control on the content selection

Assessing r2SCAN meta-GGA functional for structural parameters, cohesive energy, mechanical modulus and thermophysical properties of 3d, 4d and 5d transition metals

The recent development of the accurate and efficient semilocal density functionals on the third rung of Jacob's ladder of density functional theory such as the revised regularized strongly constrained and appropriately normed (r2SCAN) density functional could enable the rapid and highly reliable prediction of the elasticity and temperature dependence of thermophysical parameters of refractory elements and their intermetallic compounds using quasi-harmonic approximation (QHA). Here, we present a comparative evaluation of the equilibrium cell volumes, cohesive energy, mechanical moduli, and thermophysical properties (Debye temperature and thermal expansion coefficient) for 22 transition metals using semilocal density functionals, including local density approximation (LDA), the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) and PBEsol generalized gradient approximations (GGA), and the r2SCAN meta-GGA. PBEsol and r2SCAN deliver the same level of accuracies for structural, mechanical and thermophysical properties. Otherwise, PBE and r2SCAN perform better than LDA and PBEsol for calculating cohesive energies of transition metals. Among the tested density functionals, r2SCAN provides an overall well-balanced performance for reliably computing the cell volumes, cohesive energies, mechanical properties, and thermophysical properties of various 3d, 4d, and 5d transition metals using QHA. Therefore, we recommend that r2SCAN could be employed as a workhorse method to evaluate the thermophysical properties of transition metal compounds and alloys in the high throughput workflows