A Study on Indoor Natural Ventilation in High Rise Housing from the Perspective of Carbon Reduction, Shanghai, China.

D.Arch. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Over-Confidence and Cycles in Real Estate Markets: Cases in Hong Kong and Asia

Studies on the calibration of subjective probabilities find that people tend to over-estimate the precision of their knowledge. In this paper we develop a semi-rational model and apply it to the real estate markets in Hong Kong and other Asian countries. The key point is that a person is rational about her/his private information until her/his private information is confirmed by a clearly defined market signal. Using a pre-sale as a mechanism of updating a developer's beliefs, this paper analyzes the impact of over-confidence on overbuilding and cycles in real estate markets. Our finding indicates that a pre-sale activity will increase the magnitude of over-building and over-confidence will increase the volatility in real estate markets. Our model also has implications to the well-established literature dealing with the issue of over-capacity in many industrial sectors.

Self-Healing Control Framework Against Actuator Fault of Single-Rotor Unmanned Helicopters

Unmanned helicopters (UHs) develop quickly because of their ability to hover and low speed flight. Facing different work conditions, UHs require the ability to safely operate under both external environment constraints, such as obstacles, and their own dynamic limits, especially after faults occurrence. To guarantee the postfault UH system safety and maximum ability, a self‐healing control (SHC) framework is presented in this chapter which is composed of fault detection and diagnosis (FDD), fault‐tolerant control (FTC), trajectory (re‐)planning, and evaluation strategy. More specifically, actuator faults and saturation constraints are considered at the same time. Because of the existence of actuator constraints, usable actuator efficiency would be reduced after actuator fault occurrence. Thus, the performance of the postfault UH system should be evaluated to judge whether the original trajectory and reference is reachable, and the SHC would plan a new trajectory to guarantee the safety of the postfault system under environment constraints. At last, the effectiveness of proposed SHC framework is illustrated by numerical simulations

Product Search Algorithm Based on Improved Ant Colony Optimization in a Distributed Network

The crowd intelligence-based e-commerce transaction network (CIeTN) is a distributed and unstructured network structure. Smart individuals, such as buyers, sellers, and third-party organizations, can store information in local nodes and connect and share information via moments. The purpose of this study is to design a product search algorithm on the basis of ant colony optimization (ACO) to achieve an efficient and accurate search for the product demand of a node in the network. We introduce the improved ideas of maximum and minimum ants to design a set of heuristic search algorithms on the basis of ACO. To reduce search blindness, additional relevant heuristic factors are selected to define the heuristic calculation equation. The pheromone update mechanism integrating into the product matching factor and forwarding probability is used to design the network search rules among nodes in the search algorithm. Finally, the search algorithm is facilitated by Java language programming and PeerSim software. Experimental results show that the algorithm has significant advantages over the flooding method and the random walk method in terms of search success rate, search time, product matching, search network consumption, and scalability. The search algorithm introduces the idea of improving the maximum and minimum ant colony system and proposes new ideas in the design of heuristic factors in the heuristic equation and the pheromone update strategy. The search algorithm can search for product information effectively

The characteristics of emotional response of Post-traumatic stress Disorder and Post-traumatic growth among chinese adults exposed to an explosion incident

Purpose: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and post-traumatic growth (PTG) are two different outcomes that may occur after experiencing traumatic events. Meanwhile, the traumatic exposure level and emotion response played an important role in the process. The present study first evaluated the relationship between PTSD, PTG, and traumatic exposure level and then compared the characteristics of emotional response through response time of the affective priming paradigm. Methods: For the purpose of evaluating the relationship between PTSD, PTG, and trauma exposure level, a sample of 2,395 participants completed measures of posttraumatic stress disorder Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C), Post-traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) and a trauma exposure-related survey, and Pearson&rsquo;s correlation analysis for the scales were conducted. In order to compare the characteristics of emotional response between PTSD and PTG, we randomly selected 90 participants and divided them into groups of PTSD, PTG, and control according the scores of PCL-C and PTGI, then the 90 participants were asked to do the affective priming task and the response time was recorded, at last analysis of variance was employed to analyze the data. Results: The results indicated that PTSD was not correlated with PTG. It was positively correlated with the traumatic exposure level, but PTG was not observed in this phenomenon. Finally, the data of response time showed that PTSD required more time to do the priming task and PTG demonstrated no difference compared to the control group. Conclusion: Combined with previous research findings, the relationship between PTSD and PTG may depend on the type and severity of the trauma, the exposure level, and other such parameters. In terms of positive outcome of trauma PTG displayed no changes of emotional performance from the perspective of behavior. The preliminary results suggested that PTG was more related to a self-reported or self-experienced state.</p

Design, Implementation and Modeling of Flooding Disaster-Oriented USV

Although there exist some unmanned surface platforms, and parts of them have been applied in flooding disaster relief, the autonomy of these platforms is still so weak that most of them can only work under the control of operators. The primary reason is the difficulty of obtaining a dynamical model that is sufficient rich for model-based control and sufficient simple for model parameters identification. This makes them difficult to be used to achieve some high-performance autonomous control, such as robust control with respect to disturbances and unknown dynamics and trajectory tracking control in complicated and dynamical surroundings. In this chapter, a flooding disaster-oriented unmanned surface vehicle (USV) designed and implemented by Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIA, CAS) is introduced first, including the hardware and software structures. Then, we propose a quasi-linear parameter varying (qLPV) model to approach the dynamics of the USV system. We first apply this to solve a structured modeling problem and then introduce model error to solve an unstructured modeling problem. Subsequently, the qLPV model identification results are analyzed and the superiority compared to two linear models is demonstrated. At last, extensive application experiments, including rescuing rope throwing using an automatic pneumatic and water sampling in a 2.5 m radius circle, are described in detail to show the performance of course keeping control and GPS point tracking control based on the proposed model

Chinese Herbal Formula Xiao Yao San for Treatment of Depression: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials

Objectives. To assess the beneficial and adverse effects of Xiaoyaosan for depression. Search Strategy. Electronic databases were searched until December 2009. Inclusion Criteria. We included randomized clinical trials testing Xiaoyaosan against placebo, antidepressants, or combined with antidepressants against antidepressants alone. Data Extraction and Analyses. Study selection, data extraction, quality assessment, and data analyses were conducted according to the Cochrane standards. Results. 26 randomized trials (involving 1837 patients) were included and the methodological quality was evaluated as generally low. The pooled results showed that Xiaoyaosan combined with antidepressants was more effective in comprehensive effect, the score of HAMD and the score of SDS compared with antidepressants alone. Xiaoyaosan was superior to antidepressants for the score of HAMD. However, Xiaoyaosan was not different from placebo for the score of SDS. There was no adverse effects reported in the trials from Xiaoyaosan. Conclusions. Xiaoyaosan appears to be effective on improving symptoms in patients with depression. However, due to poor methodological quality in the majority of included trials, the potential benefit from Xiaoyaosan need to be confirmed in rigorous trials and the design and reporting of trials should follow international standards