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AAA domain containing 3A (ATAD3A) is a nucleus-encoded mitochondrial protein with vital function in communication between endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and mitochondria which is participated in cancer metastasis. Here we show that elevated ATAD3A expression is clinically associated with poor 5-year disease-free survival in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC), especially high-risk CRC patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy. Our results indicated ATAD3A is significantly upregulated to reduce chemotherapy-induced cancer cell death. We found that knockdown of ATAD3A leads to dysregulation in protein processing for inducing ER stress by RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). In response to chemotherapy-induced ER stress, ATAD3A interacts with elevated GRP78 protein to assist protein folding and alleviate ER stress for cancer cell survival. This reduction of ER stress leads to reduce the surface exposure of calreticulin, which is the initiator of immunogenic cell death and antitumor immunity. However, silencing of ATAD3A enhances cell death, triggers the feasibility of chemotherapy-induced ER stress for antitumor immunity, increases infiltration of T lymphocytes and delays tumor regrowth in vitro and in vivo. Clinically, CRC patients with less ATAD3A have high density of CD45+ intratumoral infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and memory CD45RO+ TILs. Taken together, our results suggest that pharmacologic targeting to ATAD3A might be a potential therapeutic strategy to enhance antitumor immunity for CRC patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy.

While the popularity of China Wind (zhongguofeng 中國風) music during the 2000s has waned somewhat since its peak, the notion of Chineseness in popular music requires reconfiguration. In the world of popular music, transnational flows of culture, migration, and capital have created various forms of Chineseness with different functions. This article examines two ways in which the perception of Chineseness functions in the music industry, namely as a re-centred Chineseness in the creative industries, and Chineseness as a globalising project, by examining the internationally franchised televised music contest The Voice of China and the recent work of two artists known for their China Wind songs, Jay Chou and Wang Leehom. Through textual analysis of media content and songs, as well interviews with industry practitioners, this article argues that Chineseness in today’s Chinese popular music is often shaped by markets, industrial practices, media censorship, state policy, and cross-industry convergence, and musicians’ artistry increasingly plays a part in forming and authorising the representation of Chineseness in contemporary Chinese popular music.

This study implemented an integrated system of Note Summarization (NoteSum) that merged with multi-users’ notes and searched for relevant information on the Internet and, slides, and textbooks to create a summary for students to learn effectively. The integrated system's framework consists of four different modules: Topic Identification Module, Supporting Material Finding Module, Content Mapping Module and Learning Material Integrating Module. Five experiments were conducted; these resulted in the following findings. First, translating notes with the assistance of topic terms could enhance translation quality. Second, when mapping contents, NoteSum performed better in a discussion-based course rather than in a technical course. Third, the Jensen-Shannon (JS) Divergence was used to assess the generated summary that performed better for the discussion-based course. Fourth, the three attributes—presence of topic terms, number of non-topic words, and ratio of the words with important parts of speech—had different effects on different subjects. Finally, we compared NoteSum with other existing summarization systems. The results indicated that the NoteSum-generated summary was closer to students’ original notes and thus resulted in better performance in readability , informativeness , and completeness. All the results confirm that our proposed NoteSum is an effective note summarization system for student learning.

Propose: The proposed deep learning model with a mask region–based convolutional neural network (Mask R-CNN) can predict choroidal thickness automatically. Changes in choroidal thickness with age can be detected with manual measurements. In this study, we aimed to investigate choroidal thickness in healthy eyes by utilizing the Mask R-CNN model. Methods: A total of 68 eyes from 57 participants without significant ocular disease were recruited. The participants were allocated to one of three groups according to their age and underwent spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) centered on the fovea. Physicians labelled the choroidal contours in all the OCT sequences. We applied the Mask R-CNN model for automatic segmentation. Comparisons of choroidal thicknesses were conducted according to age and prediction accuracy. Results: Older age groups had thinner choroids, according to the automatic segmentation results; the mean choroidal thickness was 253.7 ± 41.9 μm in the youngest group, 206.8 ± 35.4 μm in the middle-aged group, and 152.5 ± 45.7 μm in the oldest group (p < 0.01). Measurements obtained using physician sketches demonstrated similar trends. We observed a significant negative correlation between choroidal thickness and age (p < 0.01). The prediction error was lower and less variable in choroids that were thinner than the cutoff point of 280 μm. Conclusion: The mean choroidal thickness decreased with age in healthy subjects. The Mask R-CNN model can accurately predict choroidal thickness, especially choroids thinner than 280 μm. This model can enable exploring larger and more varied choroid datasets comprehensively, automatically, and conveniently.

Nootkatone is one of the major active ingredients of Alpiniae oxyphyllae, which has been used as both food and medicinal plants for the treatment of diarrhea, ulceration, and enuresis. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether nootkatone treatment ameliorated the progression of chronic kidney diseases (CKD) and clarified its underlying mechanisms in an obstructive nephropathy (unilateral ureteral obstructive, UUO) mouse model. Our results revealed that nootkatone treatment preventively decreased the pathological changes and significantly mitigated the collagen deposition as well as the protein expression of fibrotic markers. Nootkatone could also alleviate oxidative stress-induced injury, inflammatory cell infiltration, and renal cell apoptotic death in the kidneys of UUO mice. These results demonstrated for the first time that nootkatone protected against the progression of CKD in a UUO mouse model. It may serve as a potential therapeutic candidate for CKD intervention.

This paper invested an intelligent Mango glade classification based on AlexNet with GrabCut algorithm. The proposed system integrated four modules: user interface, pre-process of image, object detection and grade classification. A webcam integrated in user interface is for capturing the video and image of the target here. Image pre-process includes object mask and foreground segmentation using GrabCut. For glade classification, an AlexNet was adopted here to provide the output, mango grade. From the observation about experiment results, we can find the proposed approach with good performance and efficient. After implementation, the proposed system was applied in practical scenario and achieved he performance to fit the users’ requirement.

This study presents a SCARA-based robotic system that can complete a six-sided 3D puzzle. The proposed system is composed of a SCARA, a depth camera, a conveyor belt, a computer, and two motors controlled by an Arduino board. The entire algorithm of completing a six-sided puzzle incorporates several main stages, including detecting puzzles, extracting a puzzle cube’s contour through the depth map, analyzing the orientation of a cube, and recognizing the puzzle cube. Finally, every 6-sided puzzle is moved to the target position using vacuum suction.

In this paper, we demonstrated the hybrid silicon photonics platform developed in ITRI. The functions of this platform include full-wafer high speed photonic measurement, active and passive device fabrication, and the photonic packaging technology.

This research presents the design and characterization of the traveling wave Mach Zehnder modulator loaded L-shaped PN junction phase shifter at 72.8 Gbps data-rate. We propose a new structure of phase shifter with low series resistance meanwhile maintaining the FOM with low V π L (0.9 V-cm) and optical absorption.

We present a special design and the characterization of racetrack-coupled Mach_Zehnder interferometer for high speed and high linearity E/O modulation. The static extinction ratio, and full-widthhalf-maximum are analyzed and the photon-life-time-limited bandwidth are evaluated for more than 50 GHz.

Background : Restless legs syndrome (RLS) has been thought to increase the risk of hypertension, cardiovascular events, and all-cause mortality. Periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMS) can be observed in most patients with RLS. Using non-invasive physiologic measurement and analysis, including heart rate variability (HRV) analysis, we aimed to investigate sleep quality and sleep state stability. Method : A total of 53 healthy controls and 15 patients with RLS and PLMS were recruited. Patients with other sleep-related disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and major depressive disorder (MDD) were excluded. Each subject was evaluated using sleep and mood questionnaires and had to undergo polysomnography (PSG). HRV analysis was applied to assess autonomic function and analyze correlations with the severity of periodic leg movements (PLM). The power of different brainwaves was analyzed using electroencephalogram (EEG). Electromyogram (EMG) was also used to explore the temporal correlation between changes in HRV and leg movement events. Results : Compared with healthy controls, PLMS group had not only poorer perceived sleep and mood questionnaires scales but also reductions in parasympathetic-related HRV indices and increases in sympathetic-related HRV parameters. The changes were in proportion to the severity of PLM. Brainwaves and sleep stage which indicate “deep sleep” decreased in the PLMS group. There were no significant temporal correlations between changes in HRV and leg movement events. Conclusions : Our findings suggest that patients with RLS and PLMS have poorer subjective sleep and mood scales. Besides, objective sleep quality including HRV analysis and brainwaves analysis revealed reduced parasympathetic tone, increased sympathetic tone, and sleep disturbance, which reveal the possibility of a higher risk for secondary disease.

The traditional mode of service typically represents a one-way delivery when people receive the service just the way the company distributes it to them. However, customer participation promptly emerges during service delivery as the customer’s willingness to participate in service building increases. The mechanism of service deliveries in the financial service industry has gradually transformed and developed over time. It has shifted from a one-way delivery of services to a situation where customers take part in the service by suggesting their desires. Such participation not only improves the service but also results in the satisfaction of customers toward the service. This study investigated the antecedents of customer participation, including interactional justice, customer education, affective commitment, and company support, and explored if customer participation strengthens customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it considered role identification and perceived benefits as moderators, depicting if these variables enhance customer participation toward customer satisfaction. The proposed model is deemed appropriate for an investment services context in which customers and investment consultants frequently interact with each other and in which customers are willing to engage in customer participation. The study collected data by delivering surveys to customers of financial brokerage companies. A total of 324 entries were considered as valid entries. Results show that customer education, affective commitment, and company support substantially increase the degree of customer participation. Customer participation also has a significant impact on customer satisfaction toward service delivery. Perceived benefits were found to positively moderate the enhancement of customer participation toward customer satisfaction. These results provide insights into how the Taiwanese financial service industry could increase customer participation and further enhance customer satisfaction in service delivery. These findings will also help companies discover ways to promote customer satisfaction given the competitiveness of the financial market. Financial companies will finally be able to develop customer satisfaction with the firm and service by identifying the aspects in their service that may increase customer participation throughout service delivery.

We propose a digital pre-distortion (DPD) compensation method for FMCW LiDAR system and demonstrate that the proposed method can enhance the ranging accuracy more than three times in our FMCW ranging experiment.

This article explores how Chineseness and Taiwaneseness are constructed in Taiwan’s popular music and the ways in which young audiences in Taiwan make sense of the music to which they listen in their everyday lives. Focusing on two songs, Jay Chou’s ‘Blue and White Porcelain’ (a China Wind pop song in Mandarin Chinese) and Fire Ex’s ‘Island’s Sunrise’ (an indie rock song sung in Taiwanese Hokkien), an analysis of the lyrics, styles and settings identifies the textual and contextual characteristics that shape and signify their Chineseness and Taiwaneseness. In-depth interviews with their 18–25-year-old audience and several music industry workers were conducted in Taipei to understand how these young audiences reflect on their experiences and identities in relation to these songs. Arguably, popular music can be implicated in the politics of identity through performing and listening. Constant negotiations of Chineseness and Taiwaneseness are taking place in both the creation and the consumption of music, thereby Taiwaineseness and Chineseness can be seen as a continuum rather than a dichotomy as they are not mutually exclusive in their historical contexts, but rather are two sets of ever-changing narratives. The usefulness of ethnographic methods in this study should be noted as the diverse personal experiences and views voiced in the interviews illustrate clearly how the dichotomy between the two is an over-simplification.

Purpose Despite the evident and dramatic increase in smartphone usage worldwide, some consumers continue to use traditional mobile phones. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the behavioral intentions of these laggard and non-smartphone users. Design/methodology/approach This current study examines the effects of consumer demographics, psychographics, and smartphone characteristics on the intentions of non-smartphone consumers to switch or resist the use of smartphones. Data were collected using a convenience sample of non-smartphone users in Taiwan. The proposed model is tested using the consistent partial least squares (PLSc) path modeling technique. Findings PLSc results indicate that consumer psychographics and smartphone characteristics play more important roles than consumer demographics. Specifically, price consciousness, nostalgia, and perceived ease of use are good predictors of intention to switch, whereas perceived usefulness and ease of use are strong predictors of the intention to resist smartphone adoption. Practical implications The results of this study have implications for mobile phone vendors and mobile manufacturers who target non-smartphone users or laggard adopters. Originality/value This study is among the few that focus on non-smartphone users’ perceptions of smartphones. Hence, this empirical study could contribute to the development and testing of theories related to the smartphone adoption process.

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been widely used to deal with various classification problems for decades. Different algorithms for synthesizing ANNs have been proposed as well. The number of neurons in an ANN usually controls the tradeoff between classification ability and computational efficiency. That is, more neurons tend to yield better results but are less efficient in either the training or recalling phase. Furthermore, if the neurons are implemented by physical devices, the implementation cost can be effectively reduced with fewer number of neurons in an ANN. In this paper, we propose a method to minimize the number of neurons used in an ANN that is built by using Voronoi diagrams without suffering any capability loss. We have conducted experiments on a set of benchmarks. The experimental results show that the resultant ANNs reduce the number of neurons by up to 94 percent.

Concerns regarding the development of renewable energy have increased because of dwindling conventional energy resources and increasing cost of pollution prevention. Despite mounting evidence supporting the advantages of using renewable energy, knowledge of how consumers in a developing country, such as Kazakhstan, perceive this environmental but considerably expensive energy source remains insufficient. This study explores this issue and applies the Bang's model, which is based on theory of reason action, to investigate the consumer knowledge mechanism on the intention to pay more for renewable energy. A partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique is employed for data analysis. Consistent PLS results show that consumers' concerns regarding renewable energy have a positive effect on their attitudes, thereby enhancing their environmental beliefs and increasing their willingness to pay more for renewable energy. Moreover, demographics determine the levels of concern for the environment and willingness to pay more for renewable energy. Implications for public policymakers and electric power company managers are provided in this study.

We successfully establish a silicon photonics device manufacturing and testing platform in 200mm SOI wafer. We integrate modulator and driver chip to show 30Gb/s PAM4 capability. A fully-automatic wafer level characterization process is built up for all optical devices in surface coupling method.

Dysfunctional mitochondria have been shown to enhance cancer cell proliferation, reduce apoptosis, and increase chemoresistance. Chemoresistance develops in nearly all patients with colorectal cancer, leading to a decrease in the therapeutic efficacies of anticancer agents. However, the effect of dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1)-mediated mitochondrial fission on chemoresistance in colorectal cancer is unclear. Here, we found that the release of high-mobility group box 1 protein (HMGB1) in conditioned medium from dying cells by chemotherapeutic drugs and resistant cells, which triggered Drp1 phosphorylation via its receptor for advanced glycation end product (RAGE). RAGE signals ERK1/2 activation to phosphorylate Drp1 at residue S616 triggerring autophagy for chemoresistance and regrowth in the surviving cancer cells. Abolishment of Drp1 phosphorylation by HMGB1 inhibitor and RAGE blocker significantly enhance sensitivity to the chemotherapeutic treatment by suppressing autophagy. Furthermore, patients with high phospho-Drp1Ser616 are associated with high risk on developing tumor relapse, poor 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) and 5-year overall survival (OS) after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (neoCRT) treatment in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). Moreover, patients with RAGE-G82S polymorphism (rs2070600) are associated with high phospho-Drp1Ser616 within tumor microenvironment. These findings suggest that the release of HMGB1 from dying cancer cells enhances chemoresistance and regrowth via RAGE-mediated ERK/Drp1 phosphorylation.

Adjacent-track accidents (ATAs) have been identified as an important hazard on shared-use rail corridors. In these train accidents derailed railroad equipment intrudes on (fouls) an adjacent track, disrupts operations, and potentially causes a collision with trains operating on the fouled tracks. Derailments without intrusion may cause equipment and infrastructure damage, passenger casualties, and disturbances to system operation; however, an intrusion may be even more severe because of the potential involvement of multiple trains. Opportunities for ATAs have increased in recent years because of expanded passenger and transit service on freight railroad trackage, right-of-way, and corridors and because of increased multiple tracks related to capacity expansion projects. This paper presents a probabilistic risk assessment methodology for analyzing ATA risk. An event tree is created to identify scenarios for ATAs, and a fault tree analysis is performed to identify basic events that contribute to such accidents. The quantitative probability of an ATA is derived by using Boolean algebra on the basis of the results of the fault tree analysis.

This research explored how different models of Web-based dynamic assessment in remedial teaching improved junior high school student learning achievement and their misconceptions about the topic of ‘Weather and Climate.’ This research adopted a quasi-experimental design. A total of 58 7th graders participated in this research. Participants were divided into the experiment group (28 participants) and the control group (30 participants). The experiment group took the ‘personalized Web-based dynamic assessment’ while the control group took the ‘non-personalized Web-based dynamic assessment.’ The two groups of students received the same lessons via conventional teaching prior to the experiment, and after the lessons were completed, they both took the pre-tests of the achievement test and the two-tier diagnostic test. After the tests, different models of Web-based dynamic assessment were administered to facilitate student learning. Once the Web-based dynamic assessments were accomplished, the two groups of students took the post-tests of the achievement test and the two-tier diagnostic test. Research findings reveal that students in the experiment group experience significantly better improvement in their learning achievement and misconceptions.

This study aims to apply analytic hierarchy process method by surveying social media network (SMN) users to identify the importance of four major criteria and 16 sub-criteria. This research interviews SMN users who have experienced in using Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The result shows that social-integration plays an important role for Facebook users, whereas self-integration plays critical role for Twitter and Pinterest users. By identifying the most essential criteria, self-integration is the most essential criterion whereas social-interaction is the least important criterion identified for SMN users. The results can be reapplied for future update SMN sites for evaluation to deliver a new market analysis and to gain competitive advantages.

The essentials of the Kerr effect of the polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal (PS-BPLC) are examined using the director model. The Kerr effect describes that the induced birefringence is proportional to the square of the magnitude of the electric field E . The formula should be corrected when E is large. In contrast, the director model can describe the induced birefringence for any magnitude of E . From the director model, it can be found that the birefringence value essentially has a linear relationship with the averaged direction cosine of the directors with respect to the direction of the electric field.

We propose a backlight system for a vertical-field-switching blue phase liquid crystal display. Because the blue phase liquid crystal display needs an oblique incident light source of a backlight system, we designed the backlight system that consisted of a light guide plate and a specially designed prism film. We simulated the backlight system by optical software (TraceProTM) and the performance of the blue phase liquid crystal display by liquid crystal software (TechWiz). The result showed that the contrast ratio of the blue phase liquid crystal display can be over 2000 and the uniformity was 86%. The designed applicable backlight system will be illustrated in the vertical field switching blue phase liquid crystal display.

Spatial surveillance is critical to health systems, manufacturing industries, and in many other domains. For example, determining hotspots of infectious diseases and detecting defect patterns on semiconductor wafers require sensitive spatial analysis tools. The goal of this paper is to detect spatial clusters with mean shifts. Conventional multivariate analysis methods may ignore spatial structure among data and lead to inefficient inspection. Several likelihood ratio-based scan statistics have been designed for spatial surveillance. However, there is no most powerful test when parameters like shift magnitude and coverage are unknown. This paper proposes a spatial exponentially weighted moving average (spatial-EWMA) approach that can detect the existence and locate the potential centers of shift clusters. The test procedure assigns different weights to the data with different radius levels from the investigated shift center. The efficiency of the spatial-EWMA approach is shown by simulation. Lastly, an example of detecting the counties with high incidence of male thyroid cancer in New Mexico is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In high power applications, proper gate control strategy for insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) can increase their efficient and reliability. As to the feed-back control strategy, the key issues are the control speed and control stability. This paper proposed a new feed-back control method integrated in digital gate driver for high power IGBT. It aims for controlling the current and voltage slope suppressing the voltage overshoot and electromagnetic interference (EMI) in switching transient. The digital gate driver for large power IGBT detects the collector current and voltage in real time. Then the detected analog signal is digitally sampled and sent to the digital core on board. An algorithm similar to bang-bang control is deployed in forward control loop to adjust the gate drive resistance. The control stability and robustness can be guaranteed as a result. The whole detection and control process is accomplished in real time with only hundreds of nanoseconds. Thus, the proposed control method can optimized the IGBT switching transient with high reliability and time effectiveness. Experimental results validate the feasibility of the proposed feed-back digital control method.

It's an important topic that how to improve the illumination but decreasing or no increasing the electricity loads. The energy-efficient lighting equipment in the study was T5 lighting fixture combining with High-efficiency Reflector and Low-loss Diffuser Plate. The High-Efficiency Reflector could reflex the luminous energy above 97%. The illuminance could be improved largely through using the High-Efficiency Reflector without additional power. The High-Efficient Equipment illuminated the environment with low glare by the lights through the plate. Saving electricity was 47.5% and the measured illumination was increased more than 2 times in case one. The saving electricity was 30% and the measured illumination was increased about 1.5~2 times in case two. The specific benefits using energy-efficient lighting equipment were saving energy and enhance illumination. Cost of the investment achieved balance about 9.5~13.3 months. The additional value was a lighting environment with uniformity and low-glare. The energy-efficient lighting equipment could be an option of green construction.

Recent studies have discovered that a conventional passive isolation system may suffer from an excessive isolator displacement when subjected to a near-fault earthquake that usually has a long-period velocity pulse waveform. Semi-active isolation using variable friction dampers (VFD), which requires a suitable control law, may provide a solution to this problem. To control the VFD in a semi-active isolation system more efficiently, this paper investigates experimentally the possible use of a control law whose control logic is similar to that of the anti-lock braking systems (ABS) widely used in the automobile industry. This ABS-type controller has the advantages of being simple and easily implemented, because it only requires the measurement of the isolation-layer velocity and does not require system modeling for gain design. Most importantly, it does not interfere with the isolation period, which usually decides the isolation efficiency. In order to verify its feasibility and effectiveness, the ABS-type controller was implemented on a variable-friction isolation system whose slip force is regulated by an embedded piezoelectric actuator, and a seismic simulation test was conducted for this isolation system. The experimental results demonstrate that, as compared to a passive isolation system with various levels of added damping, the semi-active isolation system using the ABS-type controller has the better overall performance when both the far-field and the near-fault earthquakes with different PGA levels are considered.

We propose a bidirectional quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) network protocol with the hyperentanglment in both the spatial-mode ad the polarization degrees of freedom of photon pairs which can in principle be produced with a beta barium borate crystal. The secret message can be encoded on the photon pairs with unitary operations in these two degrees of freedom independently. Compared with other QSDC network protocols, our QSDC network protocol has a higher capacity as each photon pair can carry 4 bits of information. Also, we discuss the security of our QSDC network protocol and its feasibility with current techniques.

The existing evaluation models of enterprise informatization level are mostly static evaluation model. And they can’t meet the need of dynamic evaluation of enterprise informatization level. According to the principle of priority information, this paper proposes a new method to determine time series weights based on matrix norm. By using the driving principle of the difference, this paper gives a determination of index weights. And based on time series weights and determination of index weights, the paper establishes a dynamic evaluation model of enterprise informatization level, and gives the calculation steps. Through the case study, this paper tests the validity of the model.

Rail transport plays a key role in safely and economically moving hazardous materials from production to consumption points. As a result of heightened safety and security concerns, interest in all possible means of reducing the risk of transporting hazardous materials has intensified in recent years. Various approaches to railroad accident prevention— including infrastructure improvements, packaging enhancements, operational changes, and alteration of the route structure—are available. Operations research techniques have been applied to consider each approach individually, but no technique has integrated the approaches into a single model. This study introduced an integrated mathematical model to formally consider a combination of approaches to reduce risk. The framework enabled simultaneous consideration of route choices, tank car safety designs, and track maintenance to determine an optimal strategy that minimized risk and costs. Model formulation was provided in the form of nonlinear and mixed-integer programming. For illustration, a small-scale, hypothetical network flow of a hazardous material was considered. Numerical results showed that the optimal strategy could substantially reduce risk with a marginal increase in costs. The integrated model provided a framework for choosing the most effective risk-mitigation strategy for a particular rail network given various constraints. It could be applied to multiple types of commodities and adapted to address various questions for local, regional, or systemwide planning and decision making to provide the safest transportation possible given constrained resources. The framework would be particularly beneficial to rail carriers interested in how to best allocate safety and engineering resources to maximize safety.

To improve the performance of conventional seismic isolation technology, a semi-active isolation system, named a ‘Piezoelectric Smart Isolation System (PSIS)’, which is composed of a sliding isolation platform and a piezoelectric friction damper (PFD), is introduced and investigated experimentally in this study. Because the friction force of the PFD in the PSIS can be regulated by an embedded piezoelectric actuator through a DC voltage, the PFD is able to provide a controllable damping force for the isolation system. As a result, the seismic response of the PSIS can be effectively controlled and mitigated. In order to verify its feasibility, a prototype PSIS was fabricated and tested dynamically via a shaking table test. The accuracy of the test data has been confirmed by the good consistency between the experimental and theoretical results. The experimental results have demonstrated that, when compared to the uncontrolled counterpart, the PSIS is able to substantially suppress both the displacement and acceleration responses in an earthquake with either near-fault or far-field characteristics. The study has also shown that, although the semi-active PSIS system can only provide a variable passive control force, it is able to achieve the same level of control performance as an actively controlled isolation system, which shares the same optimal feedback gain as that of the PSIS. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Because a conventional seismic isolation system is usually a long-period dynamic system, it may easily incur an excessive seismic response when subjected to near-fault earthquakes, which usually contain strong long-period wave components. In order to alleviate this near-fault isolation problem, this paper investigates the possible use of a fuzzy-controlled semi-active isolation system, called a piezoelectric seismic isolation system (PSIS), whose seismic response is attenuated by a variable friction damper driven by an embedded piezoelectric actuator. The studied PSIS adopts a fuzzy controller whose control logic is similar to that of the anti-lock braking systems (ABS) widely used in the automobile industry. This ABS-type fuzzy controller has the advantages of being simple and easily implemented, because it only requires the measurement of the PSIS sliding velocity. In order to investigate its feasibility and isolation effectiveness, in this work both theoretical and experimental studies were carried out on a prototype PSIS. It is observed that the experimental responses of the PSIS can be well predicted by the theoretical responses simulated by the mathematical model and numerical procedure. Furthermore, both theoretical and experimental results have demonstrated that in either a near-fault or a far-field earthquake, the PSIS with the ABS-type fuzzy controller is very effective in suppressing simultaneously the isolator displacement and the acceleration response of the isolated object.

Background Large ex situ germplasm collections generally harbor a wide range of crop diversity. AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center is holding in trust the world’s second largest mungbean (Vigna radiata) germplasm collection with more than 6,700 accessions. Screening large collections for traits of interest is laborious and expensive. To enhance the access of breeders to the diversity of the crop, mungbean core and mini core collections have been established. Results The core collection of 1,481 entries has been built by random selection of 20% of the accessions after geographical stratification and subsequent cluster analysis of eight phenotypic descriptors in the whole collection. Summary statistics, especially the low differences of means, equal variance of the traits in both the whole and core collection and the visual inspection of quantile-quantile plots comparing the variation of phenotypic traits present in both collections indicated that the core collection well represented the pattern of diversity of the whole collection. The core collection was genotyped with 20 simple sequence repeat markers and a mini core set of 289 accessions was selected, which depicted the allele and genotype diversity of the core collection. Conclusions The mungbean core and mini core collections plus their phenotypic and genotypic data are available for distribution to breeders. It is expected that these collections will enhance the access to biodiverse mungbean germplasm for breeding. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1556-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The on-line measurement of the high-power IGBT collector current is important to the hierarchical control and short-circuit and overcurrent protection of its driver and the sensorless control of the converter. The conventional on-line measurement methods for IGBT collector current are not suitable for engineering measurement such devices as the large-size, high-cost, low-efficiency sensor, current transformer or divider, etc. Based on the gate driver, the paper uses a resistance capacity circuit paralleled with the IGBT power emitter and auxiliary emitter terminals to fulfil the IGBT collector current on-line estimation by measuring the capacity voltage. The theoretical analysis verifies the feasibility of this method. However, the very small resistance of IGBT power emitter leads to the narrow bandwidth of the estimated current. The improved method is adopted to increase the accuracy of current estimation and solve the problem of narrow bandwidth existing in the high-power IGBT steady-state collector current. The simulation and experiment results prove the method to feasible and effective.

From 1989 to 1996, we treated 18 cases (10 males, eight females; average age 48.2 years) of failed ankle arthrodesis by revision of ankle arthrodesis and followed their progress for at least two years. The average time interval between original surgery and revision was 17.3 months. Revisions were needed due to infection in one case, nonunion in 10 cases, and malalignment in seven cases. The salvage operations included debridement in the infected case, refreshed pseudoarthrosis in nonunion cases, and corrective osteotomy in malalignment cases. Sixteen cases were fixed by crossed screws with internal compression, one infected case was fixed by an external fixator, and one case with bone loss was fixed with buttress plate. The average follow-up period was 40.4 months. There was one nonunion and two delayed unions, with an ultimate fusion rate of 94%. The average AOFAS ankle-hindfoot score was 70.9 at final follow up. There was one excellent result (5.6%), five good results (27.8%), 11 fair results (61%), and one poor result (5.6%), and the overall results were poorer compared with our series of primary arthrodesis. The time to fusion also took longer in the revision cases (average 2.7 months in primary cases and 4.8 months in revision cases). Fusion techniques that ensure solid union in a functional position are essential. If an ankle arthrodesis fails, however, revision is a salvage procedure that can achieve an acceptable result.

Safety is a high priority for any rail system, and there are several safety concerns associated with operating passenger and freight trains on shared-use rail corridors. Adjacent track accident (ATA) is one of the most important concerns. ATA refers to train accident scenarios where a derailed equipment intrudes adjacent tracks, causing operation disturbance and potential subsequent train collisions on the adjacent tracks. Other ATA scenarios include collisions between trains on adjacent tracks (raking), turnouts, and railroad crossings. Limited literature is available that addressed the risk of ATA for shared-use rail corridors. The research described in this paper presents a comprehensive risk assessment to identify factors affecting the likelihood and consequence of adjacent track accidents. A discussion on how these factors affect the probability, consequence, and how individual factor relates to each other are provided. A semi-quantitative risk analysis is developed to investigate various factors affecting train accident rate, intrusion rate, and accident consequences. This research intends to depict a high-level overview of adjacent track accidents and provides a basis for future quantitative risk analyses and risk mitigation implementations.Copyright © 2014 by ASME

It is generally accepted that oral cancer arises in the presence of oral precancerous lesions. However, the clinical courses of these lesions are quite unpredictable, and a fundamental enigma remains that when and how these lesions turn to malignant growth. Characterization of these potentially malignant lesions is thus important and could serve as early indicators of this neoplastic transformation process, potentially facilitates the treatment outcome and improves the survival rate. Higher harmonic generation microscope (HGM), providing images with a

This research is aimed to employ a dynamic network perspective in order to understand how firms, which are positioning in a dynamic network, enhance their innovative performance by taking structural movement. Unlike conventional social network articles focusing on the influence of structural effect, this research highlighted the importance of how alters’ attributes have a great effect on the relationship between firms’ network structure and innovative performance. Based on a sample of 117 global high-tech firms, this research first examined how firms’ structural movement in dynamic networks enhances their innovative performance. This paper then tested the moderating effect of network resources on the relationships between network dynamics and innovative performance. Our findings suggested that when firms move into more prominent and strategic position in dynamic networks, their innovative performance will be enhanced. Also, the results suggested that firms with abundant network resources will strengthen the effect of network dynamics on firms’ innovative performance. Key words: Network dynamics, innovative performance, network resources, social capital.

The paper uses factor analysis and grey relational advantage analysis method to analyze the interactive relationship between regional scientific and technological strength and modern service industry development in Nanjing. Based on data of 1998–2008 in Nanjing, this paper calculates integrated development levels and subentry levels of scientific and technological strength and modern service industry. On this basis, the grey advantage analysis method is used to study the intrinsic relevance between scientific and technological strength and modern service industry. The results show that: the development of modern service industry in Nanjing, RD in the upgrading of scientific and technological strength in Nanjing, a good foundation and development potential of modern service industry play a catalytic role, but there is no comparative advantage to play out. Nanjing should continue to strengthen the two-way leading role of scientific and technological strength and modern service industry, and take advantage of the mutual promotion between scientific and technological strength and modern service industry.

The development of Statistical Process Control mostly focuses on temporal data. Those techniques are not sufficient for analyzing the manufacturing information embedded with spatial structure. The monitoring process that treats manufacturing records as purely multivariate data would miss important information of spatial relationship among the records. Thus, this paper proposes a spatial-EWMA test procedure to identify process mean shift in a plane. The goal is to analyze whether there is an outbreak cluster in the investigated area. The proposed method uses relative distances among observations to construct test statistics. The observations which are far away from the outbreak center receive smaller weights since they tend to be less influential. The simulation results show that the detection power of the spatial-EWMA test procedure is preferable to the classical multivariate control chart like T2 chart even in the high dimensional scenarios.

BACKGROUND. The role of elective and therapeutic selective neck dissection in patients with early stage cancer of the oral tongue remains controversial. The purpose was to investigate the role of neck treatment in the management of this condition. METHODS. A total of 380 patients with cT1-2N0 oral tongue cancer were retrospectively reviewed. Patients were staged by means of computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. A total of 324 patients received elective neck dissection (END), whereas 56 participants received observation (OBS). In all, 287 patients received supraomohyoid neck dissection (SOND), whereas 37 patients received modified radical neck dissection (MRND). Overall survival (OS) and neck control rates (NCR) were investigated according to the treatment modality. RESULTS. In the END group the occult metastasis (OM) rates in cervical lymph nodes were 5.2% for cT1 lesions and 14.6% for cT2 lesion (P = .005). The 5-year OS (P = .029) and NCR rates (P = .001) were significantly better in the END group compared with the OBS group. Patients who received MRND had a better 5-year NCR compared with SOND, albeit not significantly (91.4% vs 85.3%, P = .415). Multivariate analysis showed that END and stage were independent predictors of both NCR and OS. CONCLUSIONS. END should be performed routinely in patients with early-stage oral tongue cancer, even in the presence of negative neck by CT scans and MRI. Cancer 2008. © 2008 American Cancer Society

High-kappa HfO2/TiO2/HfO2 multilayer quantum well (MQW) charge storage devices with a large memory window of DeltaVtap8.1 V, an excellent endurance and a good retention (~9% charge loss at 20degC) are reported. Both program and erase speeds of DeltaVt>3 V@100 mus are achieved for memory transistors under channel hot carrier injections. Furthermore, quantum well memory capacitors with high-kappa Al2O3 as a blocking oxide and high work function metal gate show low leakage current density of ~2.4times10-7 A/cm2@Vg=-5 V at 125degC and high program/erase speed of DeltaVFB>2 V@10 mus with a low operation voltage of Vg

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate prognostic factors in advanced-stage oral tongue cancer treated with postoperative adjuvant therapy and to identify indications for adjuvant concomitant chemoradiotherapy (CCRT). Methods and Materials: We retrospectively reviewed the records of 201 patients with advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the oral tongue managed between January 1995 and November 2002. All had undergone wide excision and neck dissection plus adjuvant radiotherapy or CCRT. Based on postoperative staging, 123 (61.2%) patients had Stage IV and 78 (38.8%) had Stage III disease. All patients were followed for at least 18 months after completion of radiotherapy or until death. The median follow-up was 40.4 months for surviving patients. The median dose of radiotherapy was 64.8 Gy (range, 58.8 –72.8 Gy). Cisplatin-based regimens were used for chemotherapy. Results: The 3-year overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) rates were 48% and 50.8%, respectively. Stage, multiple nodal metastases, differentiation, and extracapsular spread (ECS) significantly affected disease-specific survival on univariate analysis. On multivariate analysis, multiple nodal metastases, differentiation, ECS, and CCRT were independent prognostic factors. If ECS was present, only CCRT significantly improved survival (3-year RFS with ECS and with CCRT 48.2% vs. without CCRT 15%, p 0.038). In the presence of other poor prognostic factors, results of the two treatment strategies did not significantly differ. Conclusions: Based on this study, ECS appears to be an absolute indication for adjuvant CCRT. CCRT can not be shown to be statistically better than radiotherapy alone in this retrospective series when ECS is not present. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. Tongue neoplasms, Combined modality therapy, Radiotherapy, Concurrent chemotherapy.

We have treated 56 patients (56 ankles) for symptomatic chronic lateral ankle instability by the surgical reconstruction procedure. The operation included lateral shift of the entire lateral capsule-ligament complex, suture to anterior border of fibula, and reinforcement by an elevated periosteal flap of distal fibula. These patients were reviewed at a mean period of 3.1 years (range, 9 months to 5 years) after the operation. There were 29 males and 27 females with an average age of 29 years (range, 16-49 years). The clinical results were graded according to the AOFAS Ankle-Hindfoot scales. There were 35 patients who were excellent (above 90 points), 16 who were good (between 76 and 90 points), 4 who were fair (between 60 and 75 points), and 1 who was poor (below 60 points). The excellent and good results amounted to 91.1% (51/56). Therefore, we concluded that symptomatic chronic lateral ankle instability could be successfully managed with this easy and effective surgical reconstruction method.

Based on the spin-flip model, the nonlinear dynamics of a 1550 nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (1550 nm-VCSEL) subject to dual-beam optically injection is investigated theoretically. The results show that a slave 1550 nm-VCSEL (S-VCSEL) under the injection of dual-beam output from two master VCSELs (M-VCSELs) can be driven to enter into an injection locking state under suitable injection parameters. In this case, the outputs of both X and Y polarization modes of the S-VCSEL exhibit periodic oscillation whose frequency is equal to the frequency detuning between the two M-VCSELs, and its optical spectrum contains only two main frequency components and possesses a single sideband spectrum structure. As a result, two mutually orthogonal optical millimeter-waves can be obtained based on the periodic oscillation in a VCSEL subject to dual-beam optically injected locking. Through adjusting the frequency detuning between the two M-VCSELs, the frequency of the millimeter-wave can be tuned continuously in a large range, while the power and modulation depth can also be controlled by adjusting the system parameters.

Based on the chaotic synchronization between two response semiconductor lasers (RLs) subjected to incoherent optical injection of common-chaotic-signal from a driven laser (DL), a bidirectional chaos communication scheme is proposed, and the chaotic synchronization characteristics and the effects of intrinsic mismatched parameter on the synchronization performances are numerically investigated. The results show that high-quality chaos synchronization between the two RLs can be achieved while the cross-correlation coefficients between the two RLs and the DL are very low under proper operation condition; the intrinsic parameter mismatching between two RLs will destroy the synchronized quality to a certain extent, but the consequence is not severe. Additionally, the bidirectional transmission performances for two messages with 2Gbit/s and the security of the scheme are also analyzed.

We report a new (to the best of our knowledge) transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layer with a monolayer of closed-pack Al-doped ZnO (AZO) spheres partly embedded in an AZO thin film. The average transmittance and haze ratio in the wavelength range of 380-800 nm achieves 65% and 55%, respectively, when AZO spheres with a diameter of 500 nm are embedded in a thickness of 240 nm AZO thin films. The a-Si thin-film solar cell with a regular p-i-n TCO structure is demonstrated. Under air mass 1.5 global illumination, conversion efficiencies of 5.6%, a fill factor of 0.55, V(oc) of 0.81 V, and a J(sc) of 2.44 mA/cm² are obtained. The Letter helps us to open up potential applications of a new TCO in advanced solar cells and light-emitting diodes.