6,670 research outputs found
Raising students' awareness of cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric in English writing via an e-learning course
This study investigated the potential impact of e-learning on raising overseas students' cultural awareness and explored the possibility of creating an interactive learning environment for them to improve their English academic writing. The study was based on a comparison of Chinese and English rhetoric in academic writing, including a comparison of Chinese students' writings in Chinese with native English speakers' writings in English and Chinese students' writings in English with the help of an e-course and Chinese students' writings in English without the help of an e-course. Five features of contrastive rhetoric were used as criteria for the comparison. The experimental results show that the group using the e-course was successful in learning about defined aspects of English rhetoric in academic writing, reaching a level of performance that equalled that of native English speakers. Data analysis also revealed that e-learning resources helped students to compare rhetorical styles across cultures and that the interactive learning environment was effective in improving overseas students' English academic writing
Reflectance Intensity Assisted Automatic and Accurate Extrinsic Calibration of 3D LiDAR and Panoramic Camera Using a Printed Chessboard
This paper presents a novel method for fully automatic and convenient
extrinsic calibration of a 3D LiDAR and a panoramic camera with a normally
printed chessboard. The proposed method is based on the 3D corner estimation of
the chessboard from the sparse point cloud generated by one frame scan of the
LiDAR. To estimate the corners, we formulate a full-scale model of the
chessboard and fit it to the segmented 3D points of the chessboard. The model
is fitted by optimizing the cost function under constraints of correlation
between the reflectance intensity of laser and the color of the chessboard's
patterns. Powell's method is introduced for resolving the discontinuity problem
in optimization. The corners of the fitted model are considered as the 3D
corners of the chessboard. Once the corners of the chessboard in the 3D point
cloud are estimated, the extrinsic calibration of the two sensors is converted
to a 3D-2D matching problem. The corresponding 3D-2D points are used to
calculate the absolute pose of the two sensors with Unified Perspective-n-Point
(UPnP). Further, the calculated parameters are regarded as initial values and
are refined using the Levenberg-Marquardt method. The performance of the
proposed corner detection method from the 3D point cloud is evaluated using
simulations. The results of experiments, conducted on a Velodyne HDL-32e LiDAR
and a Ladybug3 camera under the proposed re-projection error metric,
qualitatively and quantitatively demonstrate the accuracy and stability of the
final extrinsic calibration parameters.Comment: 20 pages, submitted to the journal of Remote Sensin
Mechanisms linking plant diversity to large herbivore performance
There is established concern that loss of biodiversity will affect ecosystem productivity, nutrient cycling, carbon storage, stability and other properties^1,2^. Interactions between trophic levels are thought to link changes to biodiversity and ecosystem processes^3-6^. However, there is a lack of empirical studies linking plant diversity with altered trophic levels^7,8^, especially for large herbivores, the important but often neglected, controlling trophic level in terrestrial systems. Here we examine responses in performance of the large generalist herbivore to changes in plant diversity, using an indoor cafeteria trial and a field experiment. Our results show that increased plant diversity improves herbivore performance but it is depressed at highest plant diversity levels. We propose the Disturbance Selection Hypothesis for explaining plant diversity effects on primary consumers. Increasing the number of plant species in grassland, increases consumption and enhances nutrient intake (presumably improving animal fitness) by modifying nutrient balance, toxin dilution and taste modulation. High plant diversity simultaneously intensifies animal diet switching frequency, and weakens the herbivore's ability to select food, thereby increasing foraging cost and disturbing the herbivore's selection of forage. Thus, the consequence of plant diversity for large herbivore performance depends on the trade-off between the positive and negative effects. At highest plant diversity the positive effects weaken and negative effects strengthen. We suggest knowledge of the mechanisms is the means for understanding relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and the management of large herbivores on rangelands used for conservation and grazing
Noise suppression using optimum filtering of OCs generated by a multiport encoder/decoder
We propose a novel receiver configuration using an extreme narrow band-optical band pass filter (ENB-OBPF) to reduce the multiple access interference (MAI) and beat noises in an optical code division multiplexing (OCDM) transmission. We numerically and experimentally demonstrate an enhancement of the code detectability, that allows us to increase the number of users in a passive optical network (PON) from 4 to 8 without any forward error correction (FEC)
New class of 3D topological insulator in double perovskite
We predict a new class of three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) in
which the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) can more effectively generate a large band
gap at point. The band gap of conventional TI such as BiSe is
mainly limited by two factors, the strength of SOC and, from electronic
structure perspective, the band gap when SOC is absent. While the former is an
atomic property, we find that the latter can be minimized in a generic
rock-salt lattice model in which a stable crossing of bands {\it at} the Fermi
level along with band character inversion occurs for a range of parameters in
the absence of SOC. Thus, large-gap TI's or TI's comprised of lighter elements
can be expected. In fact, we find by performing first-principle calculations
that the model applies to a class of double perovskites ABiXO (A = Ca,
Sr, Ba; X = Br, I) and the band gap is predicted up to 0.55 eV. Besides, more
detailed calculations considering realistic surface structure indicate that the
Dirac cones are robust against the presence of dangling bond at the boundary
with a specific termination.Comment: submitted; title changed and new references added; see DOI for
published versio
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