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Jhan, H.-T.; Chiang, H.-T.; Lin, Y.-F.; Liu, W.-H., and Ting, K.-H., 2018. Trade-off analysis for marine recreation activities management along the Tainan Gold Coast. In: Wang, D. and Guido-Aldana, P.A. (eds.), Select Proceedings from the 3rd International Conference on Water Resource and Environment (WRE2017). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 84, pp. 144–148. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.Marine recreation activities have been flourishing in Taiwan recently. “Gold Coast” with a beautiful and long gold beach in Tainan City has excellent natural environmental conditions for marine recreation activities. However, how marine recreation activities coexist with offshore oyster farming becomes an important issue. This study explored the trade-off analysis of Tainan Gold Coast recreation activities with stakeholders' perspective, in order to make various sea uses coexist and develop. The approach of trade-off analysis adopts a framework of Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) to organize information and facilitate evaluation of the options and their impacts. This study developed 3 scenarios of “Gold Coast” sea use. The areas of oyster farming and marine recreation activities (with power and with non-power) along the “Gold Coast” were presented with different use proportions. The values of 3 scenarios based on social, economical and ecological criteria and their 6 indicators were derived with the contingent valuation method and official statistical data. Finally, this study used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to gain the weights of 3 criteria and 6 indicators from stakeholders including oyster farmers, water recreation enthusiasts, local residents and officers in Tainan City. The findings indicate that the scenario C that oyster farming and marine recreation activities use the proportion of the waters area along “Gold Coast” as 3:7 over the conflicting zone is the optimum solution.

Taiwan has advantages in the development of offshore wind power, as it has abundant wind energy resources at the seas. The local government has developed a series of measures to promote the development of wind power generation industry. The development of offshore wind farm in Taiwan, however, has to solve the problems that offshore wind farms are overlapping with some traditional fishing grounds and are unable to reach consensus with relevant stakeholders. This paper starts from the great potential of offshore wind power in Taiwan and the active promotion of the government, and analyses the impact and possible opportunities brought by offshore wind farm development to local fisheries, from the perspective of Zhanghua Area, a key area of development of offshore wind farm in Taiwan. This paper proposes that the local government in Taiwan should use marine spatial planning as a tool, through the comprehensive participation of government, developers, fishermen and other bodies, seeking the coexistence and prosperity of offshore wind farm and fisheries. Avoidance, compensation, and feedback, as well as communication and collaboration will be an important strategy to solve the conflicts of multiple use of the sea and to promote the development of marine renewable energy.

Background The study aims to investigate the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after earthquakes among the elderly. Methods Data from cross-sectional studies focusing on the prevalence of PTSD after earthquakes among the elderly were collected from PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure in December 2019. The search terms included post-traumatic stress disorder, earthquake, and elderly. This study used Review Manager 5.0 to evaluate the impact of the results. In addition, forest plots, sensitivity analysis, and bias analysis were carried out on the included articles. The combined estimate of the risk ratio and the standard deviation of the 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were measurements of the size of the effect. Results There were 4,834 patients included from 10 eligible studies. The sample sizes of PTSD group and non-PTSD group were 1,277 and 3,557, respectively. The meta-analysis showed that the overall occurrence of PTSD after earthquakes among the elderly was 0.25; the occurrence in females was higher than that in males, and the occurrence in the same province indicated little difference (Wenchuan city 0.25 and Ya'an city 0.24). Conclusions After earthquakes, the occurrence of PTSD is higher among the elderly than among other age groups, and higher among the females than among the males, while there is little difference among different areas within the same province. This indicated that prioritized specific psychological interventions should be provided to the aged and the females.

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text, Background: Epidemiology studies suggested that shift work or night work may be linked to prostate cancer (PCa); the relationship, however, remains controversy. Methods: PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Embase (Ovid) databases were searched before (started from the building of the databases) February 4, 2017 for eligible cohort studies. We pooled the evidence included by a random- or fixed-effect model, according to the heterogeneity. A predefined subgroup analysis was conducted to see the potential discrepancy between groups. Sensitivity analysis was used to test whether our results were stale. Results: Nine cohort studies were eligible for meta-analysis with 2,570,790 male subjects. Our meta-analysis showed that, under the fixed-effect model, the pooled relevant risk (RR) of PCa was 1.05 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.00, 1.11; P = .06; I2 = 24.00%) for men who had ever engaged in night shift work; and under the random-effect model, the pooled RR was 1.08 (0.99, 1.17; P = .08; I2 = 24.00%). Subgroup analysis showed the RR of PCa among males in western countries was 1.05 (95% CI: 0.99, 1.11; P = .09; I2 = 0.00%), while among Asian countries it was 2.45 (95% CI: 1.19, 5.04; P = .02; I2 = 0.00%); and the RR was 1.04 (95% CI: 0.95, 1.14; P = .40; I2 = 29.20%) for the high-quality group compared with 1.21 (95% CI: 1.03, 1.41; P = .02; I2 = 0.00%) for the moderate/low-quality group. Sensitivity analysis showed robust results. Conclusions: Based on the current evidence of cohort studies, we found no obvious association between night shift work and PCa. However, our subgroup analysis suggests that night shift work may increase the risk of PCa in Asian men. Some evidence of a small study effect was observed in this meta-analysis.

Sensor positioning is a fundamental block in various location-dependent applications of wireless sensor networks. In order to improve the positioning accuracy without increasing the complex and cost of sensor nodes, an improve sensor positioning method is proposed for wireless sensor networks. In the method, after receiving the broadcasting message of the neighboring anchor nodes, the sensor nodes calculate a modifying factor of the change of the signal strength. And they modify the distances between themselves and neighboring anchor nodes with the modifying factor. Simulation results show that the proposed method can obtain a high positioning accuracy.

The wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are usually deployed among widely area for environmental monitoring, data collection and other applications. In order to reduce the energy consumption and extend the lifetime of WSNs, as well as receive the data quickly, a source-based data aggregation algorithm (SBDA) for clustering wireless sensor networks is proposed. The method aggregated the data from sensor nodes and marked different transmission priority for the data. Simulation results show that, compared to existing protocols, the proposed method achieves a longer life time, and a lower packet drop ratio.

With the growth of population and rapid development of economy in Taiwan, problems including the reduced number of marine habitats and increased sea pollution have continued to harm marine bio-resources and diversity. Although the Taiwanese government has established several kind of marine protected areas (MPAs) but the management performance is dissatisfactory. Therefore, the management arrangements of MPAs in Taiwan are discussed in this study, based on 3 institutional arrangement elements: governmental organization, legal basis, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A questionnaire survey was administered to 4 groups (industrial, governmental, scholar, and NGO) to understand how these groups perceive the institutional arrangements of the management of MPAs in Taiwan. Finally, the institutional arrangements of the management of the MPAs discussed. The research findings showed that most survey participants believed that governmental organizations most required improvement, particularly in “monitoring standard” and “financial budget allotment.” Other than “stability,” the participants disapproved of the legal basis in the institutional arrangements of the management of MPAs. Among the 4 participating groups, only NGOs agreed that NGOs should be involved in the institutional arrangements of the management for MPAs in Taiwan. All 4 groups approved the institutional arrangements regarding “participation and cooperation,” and none of the 4 groups approved the institutional arrangements regarding “more responsible behavior.”

Automatic quasi-synchronization device is an important device for power plants, which directly affect the safety and life of the generator as well as energy savings. Adverse devices and network with the same period a manual generator are killers and it has an affect the operation of the power system. There are still a large number of power plants and networks using manual mode, although most plants have automatic synchronizing device, but most are in the disabled state. Technology development path suited to phase out production which is old and bad and replace them with the more advanced new products. Therefore, the development of advanced computer automatic synchronizing device can greatly prevent the occurrence of the closing asynchronous generator. This paper introduces the development status automatic synchronizing device, discusses the hardware design of DSP-based automatic synchronizing device and automatic synchronization process simulation.

Agent oriented software engineering is a novel software paradigm that is considered as an important approach to supporting the development of complex software systems based on agent technology. Many attentions had been paid by researchers in academic; literature and practitioners in industry literature. In the past ten years, great progresses of agent oriented software engineering has been made. However, there are still a great number of problems that should be solved before it moves to industry application and its potentials should be exploited extensively. After investigating the background and characteristics of agent oriented software engineering, the paper presented the state of agent oriented software design engineering

As the rapid development of social informatization, software reliability and security are highly required. Only applying high-quality software products can increase work efficiency. Quality is the life of software. How to enhance the quality of software products and how to use effective quality management method is an urgent need. This paper discuss the key point of software engineering and software quality management, and this is the basis of software quality ensurance model.

Due to population growth, rapid economic development and inadequate marine control, the use of ocean and coastal regions in Taiwan has become more frequent and intense in recent years. However, the lack of comprehensive marine and coastal planning in this island nation has led to many conflicts over space and resources and limited its ability to prepare for and respond to environmental hazards, thus threatening national security as well as the safety and property of its citizens. This study proposes a marine zoning scheme for southern Taiwan. The results show that many important habitats in the southern sea areas have not been properly protected due to the extremely small size of the marine protected area. Furthermore, the majority of the conflicts derive from the exclusive fishing right vs. other uses such as marine conservation. Therefore, it is crucial to establish the marine spatial planning (MSP) for the Southern Taiwan to deal with the conflicts of use seas and uncertainties associated with complex, heterogeneous, and dynamic marine system.

Failure mode judgment software is widely used in the security control system, it always has higher safety critical level than other softwares. Therefore the testing standards for such software must also be improved. In order to solve the problem of the black box testing for such software, this paper establishment the software fault tree based on the software fault analysis, and use the software fault tree as a test case design tree, then design the test case after obtained the minimal cut sets. Meanwhile, this paper establish the test case design tree for the failure mode misjudgment, and use it as the basis in designing the failure mode misjudgment test cases. We developed the test case assisted design tool based on these methods, and successfully use it in the software testing of the escape software.

This study examines the Taiwanese institutional arrangements for ocean and coastal management to explore the development of ocean and coastal management in Taiwan 20 years after the “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.” First, we employed purposive sampling to distribute questionnaires among industry personnel, government officials and personnel, scholars, and personnel of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) involved in institutional arrangements for ocean and coastal management. We recovered 159 effective copies of the 323 distributed questionnaires, for an effective recovery rate of 49.2%. Subsequently, we used descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Scheffe's method for post hoc tests to analyze whether the four groups of participants had differing perspectives or cognition levels of the three dimensions and multiple criteria of the institutional arrangements. The results show that (1) for state organizational arrangements, the four groups all disagreed with the Taiwanese g...

Marine environmental governance (MEG)—incompletely defined, variably understood, evolving in its theory, and growing in practice at international to local scales—is emerging as an increasingly acce...

The continuous casting process is used for the solidification of molten steel into semi-finished shapes. To improve billet quality and the trackability and stability of secondary cooling water during continuous casting, the tundish temperature was introduced into the water distribution for secondary cooling to design the relevant control system, based on the water distribution model, tundish temperature, surface temperature and fuzzy self-adaptive PID. The solidification model calculated the prime water distribution according to procedure parameters. And the other two control strategies adjusted it on line. The control system has been applied on some caster and the effect is obvious, which indicates that the dynamic control system is better than the conventional open-loop system.

The present study aims to investigate the effect of a trans-disciplinary design of curricula, deemed a powerful tool for teaching and research on complex environmental problems, with a goal to help solve the real problems that climate change has brought to the coastal environment in Taiwan. Three major real-life problems in southern Taiwan—declining mullet fisheries, flooding, and coral bleaching—were integrated into four courses. Adopting a qualitative case study method, the researchers investigated the student perceptions of the trans-disciplinary learning experiences, their attitudes toward marine and coastal environmental protection, and their capability of solving the problems related to marine and coastal environments. The researchers employed various methods to analyze the student reflection reports, student self-evaluation forms, and the tape-recorded class meetings. The findings suggest the following: the trans-disciplinary curriculum stands to be an innovative yet indispensable design for coastal management education; such a curriculum benefits students by equipping them with essential knowledge and skills to succeed in future marine conservation; action learning for marine and coastal sustainability serves as the final goal of trans-disciplinary learning project; a trans-disciplinary case study on the design of curricula provides effective knowledge integration of marine and coastal sustainability.

The main aim of the research presented in this paper was to investigate ‘how to reduce the bluetooth discovery time in collaborative middleware based collaborative working environment (CWE), to enhance the communications of mobile users. The high level collaborative middleware is a research and technology development (RTD) challenge and one of most desirable medium to long term research outputs for CWEs. This research activity outlines a collaborative middleware module that has been developed on Smartphone technology and enables to reduce the discovery time of a multi-user collaborative working environment via a Bluetooth wireless communications network. To achieve this aim, it started with discussing the key design parameters, and then the design of collaborative middleware module with collaborative functionality; finally it is a comparison test to evaluate the impact of middleware. The result of the evaluation concludes the Bluetooth enabled collaborative middleware can reduce the discovery time in CWE.

The fracture failure research on a drilling jar’s top joint was carried out on basis of correlative theories and tests. Macroscopic analysis, dimension measurement and nondestructive testing were done for failure joint. The material’s chemical and physical properties were tested. The drilling strings assembly was analyzed specially and the bending strength ratio between top joint and adapter joint was calculated detailedly. The results showed that the drilling jar’s joint was broken because of fatigue induced by irrational drilling strings assembly and improper matching between top joint and adapter joint. The joint’s fatigue life was reduced further because material’s impact toughness is less than standard value.

Most people in the East Asian region live in coastal zones, competing for limited space and marine resources in order to gain economic development. Conflicts between stakeholders and depredation of the ecosystem are frequent. Therefore, effective marine and coastal management (MCM) is necessary in this region. This study comparatively analyses institutional and legal basis of the MCM in Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan within the areas of state organisations, non-state organisations and legal basis using 12 performance indicators. The study show that there is a trend towards establishing specific high-level marine affairs committees presided by the prime minister or his deputy supported by human and financial resources will enable MCM plans to be implemented more effectively. In addition, a co-management approach in MCM has been advocated in recent years in all the countries analysed, with the exception of China. The management approach for ocean governance has gradually transformed from a total top-down approach to a dual-directional (both top-down and bottom-up). Finally, the importance of the collective consideration of the legal basis, state organisations and non-organisations because of their interactive functional dynamics, has been emphasised.

API external upset (EU) tubing connection was applied extensively, which could ensure the enough joint strength. The end upsetting of EU tubing was the complex forming process containing upsetting, expanding and extruding, which played the important role in the EU tubing manufacture process. In this paper, the numerical simulation of end upsetting process of EU tubing was performed, which was helpful for optimization of technical process and mould.

Dropout may be happen to round thread connection by main reasons of design and process of product, material’s property, make-up torque or make-up position, field operation problems etc.. Casing’s property has get a high improvement with the development over the past decade in China. But the number of connection dropout accident didn’t declined obviously. These lead to great economy loss and safety hazard had taken place. Research on a round thread connection pullout case was carried out combining relative theorys with tests. Macroscopic analysis and dimension measurement and material’s physical and chemical properties were checked for casings and couplings. Thread inspection and full-scale tests were done for casing simples that are same lot with dropout. Comprehensive analysis was carried out on these results. The results showed that dropout failure was ascribe to two main causes. One is make-up location cann’t reach standard location at field end, and the other is incorrect holding position on coupling in the course of making up.

The buttress thread connection was used in deep well or ultra-deep well widely because of its high joint efficiency. Pullout failure scarcely happen on buttress premium thread connection with great joint strength and good sealing property. Direct evidences about connection dropout couldn’t get in most cases by reason of casing string had fallen into well or casing string had been concreted in formation by cement. Now the difficulty of analysis on pullout is higher and higher. A buttress premium thread casing joint had pulled out at mill end of coupling in a straight well and dropout casing string couldn’t get out of the well. Research on this pullout case was carried out combining relative theories with tests. Macroscopic analysis and dimension measurement were done for dropout coupling. The material’s physical and chemical properties were checked. Thread inspection and full-scale tests were done for two casing simples that are same lot with pullout. Metallograph analysis was carried out on load flank and guide flank in box thread of pullout coupling and same lot new coupling. The results showed that dropout failure was ascribe to inadequate make-up torque at mill end of pullout coupling and complex downhole condition and improper handling in the oil field. On the other hand joint’s strength decline on the effect of unsuitable heat treatment to coupling and greatly uneven black crested pin thread around circumference. The pertinence measures were laid down at the end of this passage.

The expansion evaluation device for solid expandable tubular (SET) was researched and designed considering some questions of too little expansion force to flareout SET for a great many other simple expansion devices, too little expansion speed, improper expansion process that don’t match the truth and etc.. The SET can be checked and evaluated through expansion test simulating oil field fact on the expansion evaluation device. Using this device the expansion test can be carried out by only mechanical stretching force or only hydraulic pressure or the combination of mechanical tensile force and hydraulic power. Practice shows that the evaluation devic is characterized by low cost, economic and pragmatic and high reliability. On the other hand some other roles can be get by making use of evaluation device, for example research on deformation law for steel pipe, choice and development of SET’s material, optimization design of expansion cone, study on expansion technology and etc.. The expansion evaluation device will make a great role on promoting SET quality and advance the localization process of chinese SET industry.

To explore the association of Chinese medicine constitution susceptibility to diabetic nephropathy (DN) and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 (T869C) gene polymorphism.TGF-β1 gene polymorphism detected with polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) was screened for 180 DN cases and 180 type 2 diabetic mellitus (T2DM) cases without combined DN. Patients with DN were surveyed epidemiologically with constitution in the Chinese medicine questionnaire (CCMQ). Binary logistic regression analysis was utilized to study the correlation between nine types of Chinese medicine constitution and TGF-β1 (T869C) gene polymorphisms.The DN group has a higher frequency of TGF-β1 (T869C) gene polymorphism than the T2DM group, and CC/CT genotypes than the T2DM group [CC, CT, TT (DN group): 88, 87, 5 (cases) versus (T2DM group) 71, 73, 36 (cases), P0.05]. The phlegm-dampness constitution, damp-heat constitution, and blood stasis constitution have correlations with TGF-β1 (T869C) gene polymorphism.Chinese medicine constitutions were associated with TGF-β1 (T869C) gene polymorphism, a potential predictor of susceptibility to DN in T2DM patients.

In continuous casting, it is very important to predict and detect the internal cracks of billet in time for ensuring continuous production, improving product quality and reducing production costs. In this paper, Clustering analysis method is adopted to do feature extraction and classification for on-site data, by which ladder parameter tables of processing parameters and defect grades of internal cracks are got. Fault tree analysis (FTA) method is adopted to analyze the effects of processing parameters on internal cracks. The solidification speed of billet is calculated by solidification heat-transfer model. Quality prediction model of internal cracks in continuous casting billet is established by quality prediction function, based on clustering analysis model of on-site data, FTA model and solidification heat-transfer model. Some samples of Steel Grade 1008 are selected for testing the quality prediction model. The percentage of accuracy for the quality prediction is 80 percent, which provides the foundation for industry application.

The main teaching objectives of Shanghai Dianji University are technology and application. Aiming at the orientation and basing on the cultivation of the major of electronic and information engineering, this paper analyzed the effect of specialized English teaching in students foreign language abilities, presented the teaching objective and approaches of specialized English teaching, and explored the relevant reform measures in specialized English teaching. These researches put forward the specialized English teaching in Shanghai Dianji University, improved students’ the level and ability of the major of electronic and information engineering.

As a result of population growth and economic development, there has been a rapid increase in sea use around the island of Taiwan. Such increased use is placing pressure on the marine environment and its resources. Three draft territory laws (the Draft National Territory Planning Act, the Land Re-conservation Draft Bill, and the Draft Coastal Act) and the Local Government Act are neither consistent nor sufficiently comprehensive. Consequently, local Governments (municipalities and counties) experience difficulties in planning and managing their inshore waters. This paper will discuss the role local Governments plays in marine spatial planning and management. Local Government officials working in specialist marine affairs units from Kaohsiung and Keelung cities were surveyed to elicit their views with regards to management authority, management capacity and resources, officials’ commitment, and intergovernmental coordination/collaboration with respect to inshore waters. In-depth interviews were also conducted with local directors of specialist marine affairs units along with experts, to identify the causes of problems brought to light through the survey and to propose potential solutions to these problems. The study findings indicated that it is necessary to specify the marine spatial planning and management authority, as well as the scope of local Governments, in both the Coastal Act and Local Government Act. In order to sustainably develop Taiwan’s marine and coastal areas, it is important that the following four primary factors (management authority, management capacity and resources, officials’ commitment, and intergovernmental coordination/collaboration) be improved.

To sustain fishery development and ensure the supply of fish, the role that a sustainable development indicator system plays in the evaluation of fishery management performance is becoming increasingly important. A sustainable indicator system based on the Pressure–State–Response (PSR) framework was developed for local fisheries in Gungliau, Taiwan, between 1995 and 2003. Factor analysis and canonical correlation analysis were also applied to aggregate indicators and analyse the linkage of indicators. The most serious problem facing fishery system in Gungliau is conflicting local and higher levels of enforcement that result in the problems of effort, harvest and fleet age composition related to the pressure component. Fishery resources and the state of ecosystem were also affected by marine environmental change, especially by El Nino. Consequently, fishermen adjusted their effort and investment to the variation of Fishery resources, leading Gungliau fisheries to unsustainability.

The continuous casting process is used for solidifying molten steel into semi-finished steel. The technology of secondary cooling is extremely important for output of the casting machine and billet quality. A dynamic water model was introduced, including solidification model in the secondary cooling, feedforward control strategy based on continuous temperature measurement in tundish, and feedback control strategy based on surface temperature measurement. The mathematical model of solidification process was developed according to the principle of solidification, and the solidification model was validated by measuring billet shell thickness through shooting nail and sulfur print. Primary water distribution was calculated by the solidification model according to procedure parameters, and it was adjusted by the other two control strategies online. The model was applied on some caster and billet quality was obviously improved, indicating that the dynamic water model is better than conventional ones.

This paper comparatively analyzes the systems in Australia and Canada from the perspective of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries No. 8. The results show that the key factors in the success of the Australian system are public participation, selecting an indicator with its objectives and improving management performance by the evaluation of the system. Further, the boundaries of the SFDIS should be the same as the boundaries of the management units and fisheries should be examined independently. The framework chosen by the Canadian system is more all-round, and can be combined with the PSR framework to maximize the management effects. Finally, techniques and specialist software such as fuzzy AHP etc. are ‘well-suited to measuring weights and have the potential to be applied elsewhere’. Visual presentation is the best way to promote communication with the public. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's kite diagram and the Sustainable Development Committee's dashboard of sustainability are two excellent visualizations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Background Abnormal expression of serum TGF-β1 was found in patients with diabetic nephropathy. However, the association of TGF-β1 with the risk of diabetic nephropathy remains unknown. The present study was undertaken to investigate whether such an association exists. Methods We searched the Chinese VIP, Wangfang, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, PubMed, Embase, and Google Scholar databases for relevant studies and extracted all eligible data. Stata12 software was used for statistical analysis. Results Nine reports met our criteria and were used for data extraction. There were 264 patients and 227 healthy controls from qualified reports in this meta-analysis. The results suggested that serum TGF-β1 levels were significantly up-regulated in patients with diabetic nephropathy; the instrumental variable was 3.94 (95% confidence interval 3.20–4.68, p

Sustainable fishery development indicator system (SFDIS) is a good reference that reflects fishery variations at different times and locations. It keeps the industry abreast of the latest developments and allows for timely revision of management policies and structures that could lead to its sustainable development. This study uses the Gungliau area in Taiwan as an example to evaluate the development of the SFDIS. This is the first time Factor Analysis is applied practically on the indicator aggregation. Results show that this indicator system reflects the time variation of each indicator and indicates sustainable trend at each developmental stage.

Medical image fusion is a process by which two different models of images are combined into a single image, in order to provide doctors with accurate diagnoses, and take right action. This paper proposes an image fusion method based on sparse representation with KSVD. Firstly, all source images are combined into a joint-matrix, which can be represented with sparse coefficients using an overcomplete dictionary trained by KSVD algorithm. Secondly, the coefficients which are considered as image features are combined with the choose-max fusion rule. Finally, the fused image is reconstructed from the concatenated coefficients and the overcomplete dictionary. Compared with three state-ofthe- art algorithms, the proposed method has better fusion performance.

Effectiveness and adequacy of test case design is the important part of the research in the field of software testing. In this paper, we analysis the software failure which may occur, based on software-related documentation and data, to establishment the software fault tree and get the minimal cut sets. We use the equivalence class methods for test case design, based on the Minimal cut sets model. Based on the set of test cases Obtained by this method, we can use the minimum test cases to cover all the test requirements. Keywordssoftware testing; test case;fault tree;equivalence class

The impact of climate change on the coastal zones of Taiwan not only affects the marine environment, ecology, and human communities whose economies rely heavily on marine activities, but also the sustainable development of national economics. The southwest coast is known as the area most vulnerable to climate change; therefore, this study aims to develop indicators to assess social vulnerability in this area of Taiwan using the three dimensions of susceptibility, resistance, and resilience. The modified Delphi method was used to develop nine criteria and 26 indexes in the evaluation, and the analytic hierarchy process method was employed to evaluate the weight of each indicator based on the perspectives of experts collected through questionnaire surveys. The results provide important information pertaining to the vulnerability of the most susceptive regions, the lowest-resistance areas, and the least resilient townships on the southwest coast. The most socially vulnerable areas are plotted based on the present analysis. Experts can consider the vulnerability map provided here when developing adaptation policies. It should be kept in mind that improving the capacities of resistance and resilience is more important than reducing susceptibility in Taiwan.

To explore the relationship between Chinese medicine (CM) constitutive susceptibility and syndrome diversity in diabetic nephropathy (DN).Epidemiologic investigation on constitution adopting the "Constitution in Chinese Medicine Questionnaire" (CCMQ), and survey on syndrome type by CM syndrome scale (preliminary) were carried out in 180 DN patients. Cluster analysis on symptom items was used to determine the syndrome type, and canonical correlation analysis was used to analyze the relationship between patients' constitution and syndrome.Baseline levels in all enrolled patients were not different statistically. Cluster analysis showed 8 syndromes existed in DN patients, namely: I, qi-yin deficiency with qi-stagnancy type; II, yin-yang deficiency with heat-water-blood stasis type; III, qi-yin deficiency with dampness-heat type; IV, yin-yang deficiency with blood-stasis and heat type; V, qi-yin deficiency with stagnant heat type; VI, yin-yang deficiency with inner dampness-heat stagnancy type; VII, yin deficiency with heat stagnancy type; and VIII, Kidney (Shen)-Spleen (Pi) deficiency with stagnant heat type. Correlation analysis on the 8 syndromes and the 9 constitutions showed statistical significant correlations between syndrome III and dampness-heat constitution (P=0.0001); syndrome IV and blood-stasis constitution (P=0.0001); and syndrome VII and yin-deficiency constitution (P=0.0180).Certain relationship revealed between CM constitutions and syndrome types; constitution decides the disease genesis, its syndrome type and prognosis, as well as the change of syndromes.

To investigate the prevalence of eight common rheumatic diseases in a large Chinese population.A population-based epidemiological investigation of the prevalence of eight common rheumatic diseases in a suburb of Beijing was conducted in 14 642 individuals. A community-based survey was carried out using a screening questionnaire. Positive responders were included in a clinical and laboratory examination. Diagnosis was based on the criteria of ACR or those used widely in literature.A total of 10 556 inhabitants were interviewed. Forty-three cases of RA were identified with an age-adjusted prevalence of 0.28% (95% CI 0.19%, 0.41%). Gout was diagnosed with a crude prevalence of 0.09% (95% CI 0.05%, 0.17%). Psoriasis was reported in 28 individuals with a prevalence of 0.27% (95% CI 0.18%, 0.38%). This included two cases diagnosed with PsA, resulting in a prevalence of 7.14% (95% CI 0.88%, 23.5%) in psoriasis patients and 0.02% (95% CI 0%, 0.07%) in the general population. Three individuals were identified with SLE, with a prevalence of 0.03% (95% CI 0%, 0.06%). One individual was identified with SSc and the calculated prevalence was 0.01% (95% CI 0%, 0.05%). One case of Behçet's disease was identified, giving a prevalence of 0.01% (95% CI 0%, 0.05%).This large-scale epidemiological survey provides an estimate of the burden of rheumatic diseases in China.

JIAN YANG, Ph.D. Student, ZHI XIE and JING NING, Professors, are with the College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University at Shenyang, Liaoning, P.R. China 110819. Contact e-mail: neuyangjian@163.com WENHONG LIU, Associate Professor, is with State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries, Northeastern University at Shenyang, Liaoning, P.R. China 110819. ZHENPING JI, Professor, is with the College of Information Science and Engineering, Shenyang Ligong University at Shenyang, P.R. China 110159. The online version of the original article can be found under doi: 10.1007/s11663-014-0079-y. Article published online October 16, 2014.