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Despite extensive literature documenting emotion-related social-cognitive deficits in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder (BD), the factors contributing to these deficits have not been definitively established. To address this gap, the present study aimed to examine the association between peripheral insulin resistance (IR) and emotion-related social-cognitive abilities in BD patients and controls. Sixty-five BD patients and 38 non-psychiatric controls were recruited, and their social cognitive ability and IR were measured using the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) and the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), respectively. The study found that the BD patients scored significantly lower than the non-psychiatric controls in the task of emotional management. The BD patients had a higher mean HOMA-IR value as compared with the controls but this result was not statistically significant (p = 0.051). The interaction between BD diagnosis and HOMA-IR value was significant on the MSCEIT Facilitating emotions branch and Facilitation subscale (p = 0.024, p = 0.010), and post-hoc analyses revealed that the BD patients in the higher HOMA-IR group had significantly lower scores than BD patients in the lower HOMA-IR group and the non-psychiatric controls in the higher HOMA-IR group on both the MSCEIT Facilitating emotion branch and Facilitation subscale. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the study, causality could not be inferred. The study did not examine potential mediators or moderators between IR and social cognition. The results suggested that BD patients with IR experience additional impairment in specific domains of social cognition. • Bipolar disorder patients scored significantly lower on the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test subscales. • Insulin resistance may interact with bipolar disorder to impact social cognition. • Enhancing insulin sensitivity might be a potential therapeutic target for bipolar disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the computational characterization of electrochemical C-C bond formation through the CO and CHO coupling process utilizing a dioxo-coordinated Cu single atom site ([CuO2]*) supported on a Pd(111) surface. The stable intermediate, [CuO2]*(CO)2, was identified as a tetradentate-and-tetrahedral species formed upon exposure to CO gaseous molecules. Electrochemically, the hydrogenation of the carbonyl group to CHO was found to be 0.87 eV, conceivably lower than the corresponding step for conventional Cu surfaces. This study observed a considerable charge transfer effect from the top layer of Pd atoms to the adsorbate moiety, especially at the TS structure. This phenomenon resulted in an accessible C-C bond formation barrier at 0.67 eV. Furthermore, the reaction energy of C-C bond formation was found to be exothermic at −0.21 eV, indicating a favorable chemical equilibrium condition. Considering the temperature effect and pressure of the gaseous molecules (CO, CO2, O2), the [CuO2]*(CO)2 intermediate was substantially populated at room temperature and was found to be chemically resilient under dry ambient conditions, as suggested by the kinetic modeling results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While the treatment guidelines have been established for pure urothelial carcinoma (pUC), patients with variant type urothelial carcinoma (vUC) face limited effective treatment options. The effectiveness of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) in patients with vUC remains uncertain and necessitates additional research. Method: We conducted a retrospective, multicenter study to explore the effectiveness of ICI in patients with pUC or vUC in Taiwan. We evaluated the overall response rate (ORR) through univariate logistic regression analysis and examined the overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) using Kaplan-Meier analysis. Additionally, we employed univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards models to analyze the data. Result: A total of 142 patients (116 pUC, 26 vUC) were included in our final analysis. The ORR was marginally higher in patients with pUC compared to those with vUC (34.5% vs. 23.1%, p = 0.26). Among all patients, 12.9% with pUC achieved a complete response (CR) after ICI treatment, while no vUC cases achieved CR (p = 0.05). There were no significant differences in PFS (median 3.6 months vs. 4.1 months, p = 0.34) or OS (median 16.3 months vs. 11.0 months, p = 0.24) when comparing patients with pUC or vUC. In the subgroup analysis, patients with pUC who underwent first-line ICI treatment exhibited significantly improved OS compared to those with vUC (24.6 months vs. 9.1 months, p = 0.004). Conclusion: The use of ICI as monotherapy is a feasible and effective treatment approach for patients with metastatic vUC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mineral identification is the first step in gemstone characterization, which is the foundation for maintaining transparency in gemstone trading. Current techniques have complex protocols and require expensive instrumentation, severely restricting their use to trained experts or large gemological laboratories and limiting the processing speed. A simple and inexpensive automatic identification instrument can fulfill the needs of the Gemology Society. Hence, we propose a portable setup for the automatic mineral identification of gemstones based on a custom‐built 405 nm Raman spectroscopy probe system. This device enables the noninvasive mineral identification of commonly encountered loose or mounted gemstone materials in the market and generates the results in seconds. It is mechanically designed to allow safe operation under normal office conditions, and the pre‐aligned sample stage significantly simplifies the sample alignment process. Fifty‐seven types of gemstone materials in the trading market were tested with the device to prove the usability of the system. The primary purpose of this device is to automatically identify the types of minerals in the gemstones. It can also be extended to identify lab‐grown gemstones in the selected mineral species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the semantic segmentation task, spatial information and the receptive field are indispensable. For semantic segmentation to be practically applicable, it must have real-time inference speed. However, most of today's methods almost choose to compromise the spatial resolution and low-level detail information, which leads to a significant decrease in accuracy. In this paper, we propose a new architecture based on Bilateral Segmentation Network (BiSeNet) called BiSeNet V3. It introduces a new feature refinement module to optimize the feature map and a feature fusion module to combine the features efficiently. An attention mechanism is introduced to assist the model in capturing contextual information. We also use edge detection to enhance features for boundaries. Extensive experiments on the Cityscapes dataset show that our proposed approach achieves an excellent performance between segmentation accuracy and inference speed. Specifically, for a 768 × 1536 input, BiSeNet V3 achieved 79.0% mIoU on the Cityscapes test set with a speed of 93.8 FPS on an NVIDIA GTX 1080Ti. For a 720 × 960 input, BiSeNet V3 achieved 76.6% mIoU on the CamVid dataset with a speed of 147.6 FPS on an NVIDIA GTX 1080Ti. The result is significantly better than the other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the outbreak of COVID-19, epidemic prevention has become a way to prevent the spread of epidemics. Many public places, such as hospitals, schools, and office places, require disinfection and temperature measurement. To implement epidemic prevention systems and reduce the risk of infection, it is a recent trend to measure body temperature through non-contact sensing systems with thermal imaging cameras. Compared to fingerprints and irises, face recognition is accurate and does not require close contact, which significantly reduces the risk of infection. However, masks block most facial features, resulting in the low accuracy of face recognition systems. This work combines masked face recognition with a thermal imaging camera for use as an automated attendance system. It can record body temperature and recognize the person at the same time. Through the designed UI system, we can search the attendance information of each person. We not only provide the design method based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), but also provide the complete embedded system as a real demonstration and achieve a 94.1% accuracy rate of masked face recognition in the real world. With the face recognition system combined with a thermal imaging camera, the purpose of screening body temperature when checking in at work can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on photoluminescence spectroscopy on Cr-doped gem materials has demonstrated great success regarding the identification of gemstones in terms of building rapid test systems. In this study, 405 nm photoluminescence spectroscopy was used to measure the luminescence decay profiles of dozens of natural and lab-grown spinel (including heated spinel) and alexandrite. Spinel and alexandrite are both capable of producing photoluminescence with a long lifetime: spinel between 9 and 23 microseconds and alexandrite from 25 to 53 microseconds. The photoluminescence lifetime and exponential parameters of the half-life demonstrated notable differences in the ranges of decay times between natural, heated, and lab-grown versions of these materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional procedure for measuring political knowledge is treating nonresponses such as "don't know" as incorrect responses and counting the number of "correct" responses. In recent times, increasing attention has been paid to partial knowledge hidden within incorrect and nonresponses. This article explores partial knowledge indicated by incorrect and nonresponses and considers nonresponses as nonignorable missingness. We propose a model that combines the shared-parameter approach presented in the literature on missing data mechanisms and the methods of item response theory. We show that the proposed model can determine whether the people with nonresponses should be treated as more or less knowledgeable and detect whether it is appropriate to pool nonresponses and incorrect responses into the same category. Furthermore, we find partial knowledge hidden within women's nonresponses, which confirms the possibility of the exaggeration of the gender gap in political knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the huge demand for wire in today's society, the quality of the wire is especially required. To control the quality of the produced wire, the industry has a great desire for automated optical inspection technology. This technology is a high-speed and highly accurate optical image inspection system that uses mechanical sensing equipment to replace the human eye as the inspection method and simulates manual operation by means of a robotic arm. In this paper, a high-performance algorithm for the automated optical inspection of wire color sequence is proposed. This paper focuses on the design of a high-speed wire color sequence detection that can automatically adapt to different kinds of wires and recognition situations, such as a single wire with only one color, and one or two wires covered with aluminum foil. To be further able to successfully inspect even if the wire is short in the screen and the two wires are close to each other, we calculate the horizontal gradient of the wires by edge detection and morphological calculation and identify the types and color sequences of the wires in the screen by a series of discriminative mechanisms. Experimental results show that this method can achieve good accuracy while maintaining a good computation speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hand segmentation aims to segment the hand profile however the biggest challenge is the segmentation hand over the face or skin-related environments. To solve these problems, many previous papers rely on a very deep neural network or collect new large-scale datasets on real-life scenes to increase the diversity and complexity. To perform it on a standard GPU, the training and inference time is still long, and always requires a large amount of GPU memory. In this paper, we propose a new hand segmentation technique, Refined U-Net, based on the original U-Net [1]. The main objective of Refined U-Net is to perform with few parameters and increasing the inference speed while achieving high accuracy during the hand segmentation process. We substantially improve its performance by refining the segmentation results and reducing the gap of feature vectors. In inference time, our Refined U-Net can prune the refinement block to increase the speed and reduce the number of parameters. We also eliminate the disadvantages of the popular dataset and propose a reliable way to create the virtual dataset. Our Refined U-Net can achieve 200 frames per second (FPS) on the GPU (RTX 2080Ti) and outperforms in accuracy for the state-of-the-art designs in Egohands [2] and GTEA [3] datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A practical deep learning face recognition system can be divided into several tasks. These tasks can be time‐consuming if each task is executed with the original image as the input data. And the feature extractors used by different tasks may duplicate its function. In this paper, a multi‐task training method based on feature pyramid and triplet loss to train a single‐stage face detection and face recognition deep neural network is proposed. As a single‐stage work, every task's data is passed through the same backbone network to avoid duplicate computation by sharing the weights and computation. The whole network is established using feature pyramid and anchor boxes to localise the face position, using triplet loss to establish the feature extractor, and finally matching the feature through a simple math function. The benefits of the approach are faster computation speed and less memory usage. On an Nvidia 2080Ti GPU accelerator, this system can achieve 212 FPS for a 640 × 640 resolution input and maintains 92.4% accuracy on the LFW data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the design and implementation of low power and high-efficiency filterbank for MPEG-2/4 AAC system is presented. Since filterbank represents the most computation-intensive kernel of AAC codec, we design it with algorithm and architecture aspects. We supply the dedicated algorithm for filterbank. The derived algorithm and the hardware shared engine (HSE) we proposed for AAC can reduce the computation power and implement as a codec used in encoder and decoder. We also optimize the performance, hardware resources, and power consumption thoroughly. It is designed as an intellectual property (IP) to construct the overall decoder in an embedded system. The hardware cost is with 16.1 k logic gates, 2 k-word local memory, and 1 K-word coefficient ROM. The proposed design has a real-time operation at only 1.25 MHz with a sampling rate of 48 kHz. It can achieve 0.70 mW power consumption in TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Furthermore, we use a programmable chip (SOPC) platform which includes the software and hardware engine. Throughout the computation analysis, the bitstream parser and lower complexity part are performed by a software solution, and the higher complexity part is computed by a hardware solution. Several design techniques are needed including the wrapper design, embedded CPU, and IP to construct the system. Based on this co-design approach, a whole AAC audio decoder is also established. • This paper presents the algorithm and hardware design for MPEG-2/4 AAC. • Real demonstration is constructed in the embedded system. • VLSI design of the proposed chip is performed with various power-saving techniques. • The proposed design outperforms other designs on gate-count usage and power consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a fast time-frequency mask technique that relies on the sparseness of source signals for blind source separation (BSS) to separate a mixture of two input sounds in a single signal automatically. Due to the sparseness of source signals, the signal can be distinguished when it is transformed into the time-frequency domain. Most previous methods did not mention the effect of different angles on accuracy. To overcome such problems, we first define two features which are normalized level-ratio and phase-difference. Next, we use our method to decrease the variance of Direction of Arrival (DOA). This can reduce the variance of features so that it can reduce the iterations of k -means. Finally, a mask is generated according to the clustered features. Our method does not require any prior information or parameter estimation. The motivation of the proposed design is to incorporate the BSS system with some smart voice appliances. In the application scenario, all the non-human voices may appear and regard as interference. We use Signal to Distortion Ratio (SDR) and Signal to Interference Ratio (SIR) to make some comparison. Based on the proposed system, then we present a hardware design. We use the TSMC 90-nm CMOS process. As a cost-effective result, it consumes about 120 K gates and executes with a frequency of 10 MHz. The power consumption is only 2.92 mW with low power design considerations. • This paper presents the algorithm and hardware design for blind source separation. • The experimental results with various mixtures are simulated in real environments to verify the effectiveness. • Real demonstration is constructed in the embedded system. • VLSI design of the proposed chip is performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Brazil's legislative process, political exchanges between the government and legislature is an essential feature. This article focuses on the role of the president and political parties in Brazil's national legislative process. Because nonideological factors influence voting, roll calls do not suffice for estimation of legislators' policy preferences. In this article, we derive a spatial model of voting in which voting behavior is induced by both ideological motivations and coalition dynamics and develop a multilevel ideal-point model implied by the spatial voting model. After the proposed model is applied to the analysis of roll-call votes in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies between 2003 and 2006, coalition dynamics is found to influence the voting behavior of legislators. We also confirm the finding in previous studies that the ideological alignment of political parties in the legislature contrasts with the perceived positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although the literature documents low executive functions and sleep deficits in individuals with autism spectrum disorder or subclinical autistic traits, no study has simultaneously examined their relationships in the general child population. This study aimed to examine whether autistic traits impacted real-world executive functions through insufficient sleep in a nationally representative sample of children. Methods: This was a national survey of 6832 primary and secondary school students, aged 8–14 years old, with equal sex distribution (3479 boys, 50.8%). Parents reported their child's nocturnal sleep duration and the need for sleep to maintain their daytime function and the Social Responsiveness Scale and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) for their children's autistic traits and real-world executive functions, respectively. Results: We found that autistic traits exerted indirect effects on real-world executive functions through sleep deficits, independent of sex, and age. Moreover, such an indirect effect was observed only from restricted and repetitive behaviors to executive functions through sleep deficits, but not in the other components of autistic traits (i.e. social communication and interaction). Conclusions: Our novel findings underscore the importance of sleep and autistic traits in executive functions and suggest potential mechanisms that may underlie the observed correlational structure among autistic behaviors, sleep deficits, and low executive function performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capability of recognizing and tracking a specific human is considered a key technique for serving mobile robots. This paper proposes a real‐time tracker that uses a stereo camera to track specific people in different environments. A tracker has been designed to detect the selected target from multiple people by use of block matching algorithm, human detection, and colour histogram comparison. Considering the similar colour of the objects, the predictor of the Kalman filter determines the position of the object. Finally, the mobile robot is moved according to the tracking results with a relative distance between the robot and the target. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by experiments on many video sequences and real environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the semiconductor industry, the testing section has always played an important role. The testing section often requires engineers to judge the defect, which wastes a lot of time and cost. The accurate classification can provide useful information for engineers through neural networks. In this paper, we present a method for wafer map data augmentation and defect classification. Data augmentation is based on CNN encoder-decoder and the classification is based on depthwise separable convolutions. There are two datasets used, one is open dataset WM-811K and the other is built with a Taiwan company. We train two models with mobilenetV1 and V2 for the different datasets. The light-weight deep convolution can reduce model parameters and calculations, which is very efficient for the testing house with large production volumes. On two different data sets, our proposed method can reduce the number of parameters by 30% and 95%, and reduce the amount of calculation by 75% and 25%, respectively. The test accuracy of the first dataset is 93.95%. The second dataset test accuracy is 87.04%. After the data augmentation, accuracy is increased to 97.01% and 95.09%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine how antipartyism influences the public's preferences for the tools of presidential power by focusing on the case of Taiwan, which is a president-parliamentary system. We distinguish two types of antipartyism: general antipartyism and reactive antipartyism. The former refers to the general perception of political parties, whereas the latter involves the functions of parties in modern democracy. According to the analysis results, we find that general antipartyism is positively associated with support for the president's power to unilaterally appoint judges. In contrast, reactive antipartyism leads to less support for executive privilege, unilateral judicial appointments, and the authority to direct agency implementation of policies passed by the legislature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indoor positioning techniques have become very important in recent years. Due to the wide deployment of surveillance cameras, it has become feasible to use the videos for indoor positioning. The success of using this approach can also reduce the load of security persons of watching the monitors all the time. In this study, the authors propose a vision‐based indoor positioning system. The proposed method uses a frame processing technique and applies the Gaussian mixture learning for video background model. The foreground object can be extracted by using the background subtraction. Based on the foreground object, the objects can be tracked and used in the direct linear transform, and generate a bird's‐eye map with camera information. A real‐time demonstration has been also provided. It shows the tracing of the moving objects and the bird's‐eye view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Previous studies of public attitudes toward immigration have been set in economically developed areas such as the United States and the countries of Western Europe, implicitly applying the term "immigrants" solely to blue‐collar laborers. In this article, we extend the discussion to Taiwan, a newly democratic and nearly developed country in East Asia. Methods: Our study investigates public attitudes toward immigrants with different occupations and test predictions derived from both economic and cultural approaches. Results: From an analysis of the survey data, we find different economic factors for pro‐immigration attitudes toward foreign professionals and laborers. Conclusions: Specifically, people who have higher incomes are more likely to allow foreign professionals to become citizens, and people with positive assessments of national and individual economic conditions are more likely to favor the inflow of foreign workers. Furthermore, cultural tolerance and a high level of education are correlated to pro‐migration attitudes toward both foreign professionals and laborers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel method for 2D-to-3D video conversion, based on boundary information to automatically generate the depth map. First, we use the Gaussian model to detect foreground objects and then separate the foreground and background. Second, we employ the superpixel algorithm to find the edge information. According to the superpixels, we will assign corresponding hierarchical depth value to initial depth map. From the result of depth value assignment, we detect the edges by Sobel edge detection with two thresholds to strengthen edge information. To identify the boundary pixels, we use a thinning algorithm to modify edge detection. Following these results, we assign the depth value of foreground to refine it. We use four kinds of scanning path for the entire image to create a more accurate depth map. After that, we have the final depth map. Finally, we utilize depth image-based rendering (DIBR) to synthesize left and right view images. After combining the depth map and the original 2D video, a vivid 3D video is produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixed-member systems are usually defined as electoral systems that combine SMDP and CLPR, both of which are more likely to induce party reputation-seeking. Building on the literature of electoral institutions, this article provides an explanation of how mixed-member systems structure voter behavior and achieve a balance between candidate- and party-centric representation. Using Taiwan as a case of MMS, this article tests hypotheses against survey data and investigates the determinants of voting decisions for the two ballots. By employing a Bayesian bivariate probit model, this article shows that, first, partisan factors affect voter behavior in both nominal and list ballots. However, it is affective rather than rational considerations for political parties that play the major role. Second, personal reputation influences voters' choices of the nominal and list vote, but only negative elements matter for the list vote. Finally, there is a moderately positive correlation between the two ballots, which potentially results from affective, partisan considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] A systematic assessment is demonstrated for the explicitly modeling electrochemical CO dimerization on Cu(1 1 1) surface. The solvation configurations were sampling at room temperature with the presence of adsorbates and Cu surface. The energetics and work functions along the CO dimerization pathway were characterized with the inclusion of plate-type electric force fields. The activation barriers and reactions energies of CO dimerization process appear to be independent of the external electrostatic perturbations around 0.95 eV and 0.35 eV, respectively, with using the constant-potential correction. This observation based upon the current explicit simulations reaffirms the characteristics of CO dimerization as a thermal-driven process. The use of electric force fields ranging from + 0.2 V/Å to −0.2 V/Å could introduce the effective electrochemical potential from + 1.766 to −0.565 V vs standard hydrogen electrode at pH = 7 condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recently demonstrated semiconductor grafting approach allows one to create an abrupt, low interface-trap-density heterojunction between a high-quality p-type single-crystalline semiconductor (non-nitrides) with n-type GaN. However, due to the surface band-bending from GaN polarization, an energy barrier exists at the grafted heterojunction, which can impact the vertical charge carrier transport. Reducing the energy barrier height is essential for some advanced device development. In this work, we employed UV/O3 and O2 plasma to treat a Ga-polar GaN surface with/without an ultrathin (∼2 nm) ALD-Al2O3 coating and studied the effects of the treatments on surface band-bending. Through XPS measurements, it was found that the treatments can suppress the upward band-bending of the Ga-polar GaN by 0.11–0.39 eV. The XPS results also showed that UV/O3 treatment is an effective surface cleaning method with little surface modification, while O2 plasma causes a strong oxidation process that occurs inside the top layer GaN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Materials which selectively transport molecules along defined paths offer new opportunities for concentrating, processing and sensing chemical and biological agents. Here, we present the use of traveling ionic waves to drive molecular transport and concentration of hydrophilic molecules entrained within a hydrogel. The traveling ionic wave is triggered by the spatially localized introduction of ions, which through a dissipative ion exchange process, converts quaternary ammonium groups in the hydrogel from hydrophilic to hydrophobic. Through a reaction-diffusion process, the hydrophobic region expands with a sharp transition at the leading edge; it is this sharp gradient in hydrophilicity that drives the transport of hydrophilic molecules dispersed within the film. The traveling wave moved up to 450 μm within 30 min, while the gradient length remained 20 μm over this time. As an example of the potential of molecular concentration using this approach, a 70-fold concentration of a hydrophilic dye was demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Materials which selectively transport molecules along defined paths offer new opportunities for concentrating, processing and sensing chemical and biological agents. Here, we present the use of traveling ionic waves to drive molecular transport and concentration of hydrophilic molecules entrained within a hydrogel. The traveling ionic wave is triggered by the spatially localized introduction of ions, which through a dissipative ion exchange process, converts quaternary ammonium groups in the hydrogel from hydrophilic to hydrophobic. Through a reaction-diffusion process, the hydrophobic region expands with a sharp transition at the leading edge; it is this sharp gradient in hydrophilicity that drives the transport of hydrophilic molecules dispersed within the film. The traveling wave moved up to 450 μm within 30 min, while the gradient length remained 20 μm over this time. As an example of the potential of molecular concentration using this approach, a 70-fold concentration of a hydrophilic dye was demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the demand of 3D visualization and lack of 3D video content, a method converting the 2D to 3D video plays an important role. In this paper, a low-cost and high efficiency post processing method is presented to enjoy the vivid 3D video. We present two semi-automatic depth map extraction methods for stereo video conversion. For the static background video sequence, we proposed a method which combined the foreground segmentation with vanishing line technology. According to the separated foreground and background results from foreground segmentation algorithm, the viewer can use their acquired visual experience to initiate this operation with some depth information of background. Moreover, we proposed another conversion method for the dynamic background video sequence. Foreground segmentation was replaced by the relative velocity estimation based on the motion estimation and motion compensation. Combining the depth map from this work and the original 2D video, a vivid 3D video is produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motion-compensated frame rate up-conversion (FRUC) is a method for providing better video image quality than non-motion-based methods. However, incorrect motion vector (MV) prediction can lead to continued induction of debris and artifacts. In this paper, a motion compensated FRUC algorithm is proposed, which is able to acquire more accurate MVs by referencing neighboring frames with hierarchical motion filed construction block size and an MV mapping stage. The block size of hierarchical MV filed construction has been enlarged in order to acquire more motion information, and the size of the MV mapping and image interpolation stage has been reduced to obtain a more accurate interpolated result. In order to smooth the MV, a median filter is considered with sum of absolute difference value and constructed with an adaptive MV smoothing method. For the purpose of suppressing the debris, a noise removal filter is applied after the interpolation operation. According to the experimental result, the proposed approach is able to improve visual quality performance by 0.82 dB on average. Subjective analysis shows that annoying artifacts are significantly reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Owing to the rapid progress of semiconductor industry, the vision of digital home is getting more real. For this reason, many high speed transmission standards have been proposed. For digital home, multimedia sources come from various media players. Display media are also with this diversity. At present, the corresponding transmission standards are dedicated for some media players. This will be a bottleneck for integration of various multimedia systems. This paper proposes a wireless high speed video transmission system compatible for various digital media player and display media. This project can support various display resolutions from high-definition television (HDTV) (1280×720) to Blu-ray Disc (1920×1080). The core technology can be classified into two categories: (1). embedded compression techniques, (2). wireless transmission techniques. With the high integration on multimedia and communication technique, the proposed design exploits the realization on wireless high data-rate transmission in a digital home environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topological properties have become a popular and important area of focus for studies that analyze interconnections between networks. The hypercube is one of the most widely discussed topological structures for interconnections between networks and is usually covered in introductions to the basic principles and methods for network design. The exchanged hypercube \textrm EH(s,t) is a new variant of the hypercube that has slightly more than half as many edges and retains several valuable and desirable properties of the hypercube. In this paper, we propose an approach for shortest path routing algorithms from the source vertex to the destination vertex in \textrm EH(s,t) with time complexity $O(n)$ , where n=s+t+1$ and 1\le s\le t$ . We focus on edge congestion, which is an important indicator for cost analyses and performance measurements in interconnection networks. Based on our shortest path routing algorithm, we show that the edge congestion of \textrm EH(s,t) is . In addition, we prove that our shortest path routing algorithm is an optimal routing strategy with respect to the edge congestion of \textrm EH(s,t) . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated experimentally the plasmon-enhanced photoluminescence of the amorphous silicon quantum dots (a-Si QDs) light-emitting devices (LEDs) with the Ag/SiOx:a-Si QDs/Ag sandwich nanostructures, through the coupling between the a-Si QDs and localized surface plasmons polaritons (LSPPs) mode, by tuning a one-dimensional (1D) Ag grating on the top. The coupling of surface plasmons at the top and bottom Ag/SiOx:a-Si QDs interfaces resulted in the localized surface plasmon polaritons (LSPPs) confined underneath the Ag lines, which exhibit the Fabry-Pérot resonance. From the Raman spectrum, it proves the existence of a-Si QDs embedded in Si-rich SiOx film (SiOx:a-Si QDs) at a low annealing temperature (300°C) to prevent the possible diffusion of Ag atoms from Ag film. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra of a-Si QDs can be precisely tuned by a 1D Ag grating with different pitches and Ag line widths were investigated. An optimized Ag grating structure, with 500 nm pitch and 125 nm Ag line width, was found to achieve up to 4.8-fold PL enhancement at 526 nm and 2.46-fold PL integrated intensity compared to the a-Si QDs LEDs without Ag grating structure, due to the strong a-Si QDs-LSPPs coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Random copolymers of isoprene and4-vinylbenzyl chloride (VBCl)with varying compositions were synthesized via nitroxide-mediatedpolymerization. Subsequent quaternization afforded solvent processableand cross-linkable ionomers with a wide range of ion exchange capacities(IECs). Solution cast membranes were thermally cross-linked to formanion exchange membranes. Cross-linking was achieved by taking advantageof the unsaturations on the polyisoprene backbone, without added cross-linkers.A strong correlation was found between water uptake and ion conductivityof the membranes: conductivities of the membranes with IECs beyonda critical value were found to be constant related to their high waterabsorption. Environmentally controlled small-angle X-ray scatteringexperiments revealed a correlation between the average distance betweenionic clusters and the ion conductivity, indicating that a well-connectednetwork of ion clusters is necessary for efficient ion conductionand high ion conductivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The n-dimensional hypercube is one of the most popular topological structure for interconnection networks in parallel computing and communication systems. The exchanged hypercube \EH(s,t), a variant of the hypercube, retains several valuable and desirable properties of the hypercube such as a small diameter, bipancyclicity, and super connectivity. In this paper, we construct s+1 (or t+1) internally vertex-disjoint paths between any two vertices for parallel routes in the exchanged hypercube \EH(s,t) for 3\le s\le t. We also show that both the (s+1)-wide diameter and s -fault diameter of the exchanged hypercube \EH(s,t) are s+t+3 for 3\le s\le t. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines E. M. Forster's ‘Revolution at Bayreuth’ (1954). It proposes that this deceptively apolitical broadcast talk reflected and commented on the aesthetics and politics of staging Wagner's work specifically, and on democracy, culture and postwar Anglo-German relations more broadly. The article highlights the talk's original transmission on the radio, exploring the implications and significance of Forster sharing his experience at the New Bayreuth through this particular medium. It considers Forster's critiques of the Wagner grandsons' stage innovations, teasing out the nuances of Forster's doubt about experimentalism and preoccupation with ‘tradition’. Arguing that the broadcast talk is more than just a personal account, the article looks into the details of Forster's belated trip to Bayreuth and uncovers the social, cultural and political underpinnings of his postwar Wagnerism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Upon injury, the direct damage and the subsequent secondary injury in the brain often result in chronic neurological disorders. Due to multifactorial nature of secondary injury and subsequent complex cellular responses, much of the underlying mechanisms are unclear. This study used an adult zebrafish cerebellum injury model to investigate the phenotypes and the secondary injury responses for recovery mechanisms of injured brain. Using the time course microarray analysis, a candidate protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was refined as cerebellar wound healing PPI network by dynamic modeling and big data mining. Pathway enrichment and ontological analysis were incorporated into the refined network to highlight the main molecular scheme of cerebellar wound healing. Several significant pathways, including chemokine, Phosphatidylinositide 3-kinases, and axon guidance signaling pathway and their cross-talks through PI3K, PAK2, and PLXNA3 were identified to coordinate for neurogenesis and angiogenesis, which are essential for the restoration of the injured brain. Our finding provides an insight into the molecular restoration mechanisms after traumatic brain injury, and open up new opportunity to devise the treatment for traumatic brain injury in human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Block copolymers of polystyrene- b-poly(vinyl benzyl trimethylammonium tetrafluoroborate) (PS- b-[PVBTMA][BF4]) were synthesized by sequential monomer addition using atom transfer radical polymerization. Membranes of the block copolymers were prepared by drop casting from dimethylformamide. Initial evaluation of the microphase separation in these PS- b-[PVBTMA][BF4] materials via SAXS revealed the formation of spherical, cylindrical, and lamellar morphologies. Block copolymers of polystyrene- b-poly(vinyl benzyl trimethylammonium hydroxide) (PS- b-[PVBTMA][OH]) were prepared as polymeric alkaline anion exchange membranes materials by ion exchange from PS- b-[PVBTMA][BF4] with hydroxide in order to investigate the relationship between morphology and ionic conductivity. Studies of humidity [relative humidity (RH)]-dependent conductivity at 80 °C showed that the conductivity increases with increasing humidity. Moreover, the investigation of the temperature-dependent conductivity at RH = 50, 70, and 90% showed a significant effect of grain boundaries in the membranes against the formation of continuous conductive channels, which is an important requirement for achieving high ion conductivity. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2013, 51, 1751-1760, 2013 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which serve as receivers of high visual quality video, suffer from motion blur issues. One of the methods in terminating motion blur is motion compensated frame rate upconversion, which is widely adopted in LCDs. In the previous work, i.e., particle-based frame rate upconversion, the computation complexity is high while repeated operations and some improper cost evaluation setup are observed. Therefore, in this paper, hybrid frame rate upconversion is proposed with two features. First, the cost evaluation for particle-based motion trajectory calibration is modified based on the possible noise sources and video resolution variations. Second, repeated operations in particle-based motion trajectory calibration are observed. Therefore, original particle-based motion trajectory calibration is replaced by initial motion vector assignment and subsequent motion vector mapping to achieve computation complexity reduction, while the effective search range is relatively expanded. According to the experiment results, the visual quality is enhanced by 1.87 dB on average, compared with state-of-the-art unidirectional-based frame rate upconversion approaches. On the other hand, the computation complexity of the proposed design is reduced by 25–90% based on target video resolution, concluding a high visual quality and low computation complexity frame rate upconversion design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Content-based video copy detection has grabbed an increasing attention in the video search community due to the rapid proliferation of video copies over the Internet. Most existing techniques of video copy detection focus on spatial-based video transformations such as brightness enhancement and caption superimposition. It can be accomplished efficiently by the clip-level matching technique, which summarizes the full content of a video clip as a single signature. However, temporal-based transformations involving random insertion and deletion operations pose a great challenge to clip-level matching. Although some studies employ the frame-level matching technique to deal with temporal-based transformations, the high computation complexity might make them impractical in real applications. In this paper, we present a novel search method to address the above-mentioned problems. For a given query video clip, it is partitioned into short segments, then each of which linearly scans over the video clips in a dataset. Rather than exhaustive search, we derive the similarity upper bounds of these query segments as a filter to skip unnecessary matching. In addition, we present a min-hash-based inverted indexing mechanism to find candidate clips from the dataset. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is robust and efficient to deal with temporal-based video copies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the field of intelligent visual surveillance, the topic of tolerating background motions while detecting foreground motions in dynamic scene is widely explored by the recent foreground detection literatures. Applying the sophisticated background modeling method is a common solution for such dynamic background problem. However, the sophisticated background modeling method is computation intensive and involves huge memory bandwidth on data access. Realizing such approach on a multicamera surveillance system for real-time application can dramatically increase the hardware cost. This paper presents a hardware-oriented foreground detection that is based on human–machine interaction in object level (HMIiOL) scheme. The HMIiOL can vary the conditions for a moving object been regarded as a foreground object. The conditions are depending on background environment and are derived from the information from human–machine interaction. By the HMIiOL scheme, adopting a simple background modeling method can achieve well foreground detection with significant background motions. A processor based on system-on-chip design is presented for the HMIiOL-based foreground detection. The presented processor consists of accelerators to increase throughput of the computationally intensive tasks in the algorithm, and a reduced instruction set computing unit to handle the interaction task and the noncomputation-intensive tasks. Pipelining and parallelism techniques are used to increase the throughput. The detecting capability of the processor reaches HD720 at 30 Hz. The maximum throughput can be up to 32.707 Mpixels/s. Performance evaluation and comparison with existed foreground detection hardware show the improvement of our design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To smooth the video content caused by handheld devices, this paper designs a hardware-oriented engine for efficient video stabilization. This engine is realized based on the motion energy computation. Maximum a posteriori estimation derives the global motion. Significantly, the motion energy smoothing accomplishes video stabilization. The global motion is smoothed by calculating the continuous and curve energy of successive frames. In addition, to achieve real-time video stabilization, efficient hardware architecture is proposed. The novel data reuse scheme is designed for enhancing the speed of corner point detection. The estimation skip technique is manipulated for lowering the computation of local motion estimation. Double buffering and pipeline running is designed for efficiently deriving the global motion. With these approaches, the corresponding hardware architecture has the characteristics of high efficiency and high throughput. The experimental results show that the proposed video stabilization engine can produce well-smooth videos and have high precision. The proposed hardware architecture enhances the performance of video stabilization with real-time and large resolution-processing ability. The objective comparison also demonstrates our good performance on video stabilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motion estimation (ME) in the MPEG-4 AVC/JVT/H.264 video coding standard employs seven permitted block sizes to improve the rate-distortion performance. This novel feature achieves significant coding gain over coding a macroblock using the fixed block size. However, ME is computationally intensive with the complexity increasing linearly with the number of the allowed block sizes. This paper presents an architecture for a combined fast ME algorithm with the predict hexagon search (PHS) and the edge information mode decision (EIMD). The EIMD algorithm utilizes edge information to predict the best block size quickly and precisely. The PHS algorithm searches the best motion vector efficiently. The analytical results reveal that the EIMD+PHS algorithm is 2.4–25 times faster than other popular fast ME algorithms. Additionally, the EIMD+PHS algorithm is 600–2000 times faster than JM10.2, and the peak signal-to-noise ratio degradation is less than 0.15 dB. The proposed architecture applies a large search range and low operation frequency as compared with other popular ME architectures. The proposed architecture only needs 19.4 MHz operating frequency to achieve real-time execution for the general specification of the standard-definition television (720\,\times\,480) used with four reference frames and the search range of 256\,\times\,256. The proposed architecture only requires 116.6 MHz operating frequency to achieve real-time execution for the ultrahigh specification of the quad full high definition (3840\,\times\,2160) used with one reference frame and the search range of 256\,\times\,256. The gate count of the proposed architecture is 300 K, and the memory usage is 12.6 kB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A graph is -ordered if for any sequence of distinct vertices of there exists a cycle in containing these vertices in the specified order. In 1997, Ng and Schultz posed the question of the existence of 4-ordered 3-regular graphs other than the complete graph and the complete bipartite graph . In 2008, Meszaros solved the question by proving that the Petersen graph and the Heawood graph are 4-ordered 3-regular graphs. Moreover, the generalized Honeycomb torus is 4-ordered for any even integer with . Up to now, all the known 4-ordered 3-regular graphs are vertex transitive. Among these graphs, there are only two non-bipartite graphs, namely the complete graph and the Petersen graph. In this paper, we prove that there exists a bipartite non-vertex-transitive 4-ordered 3-regular graph of order for any sufficiently large even integer . Moreover, there exists a non-bipartite non-vertex-transitive 4-ordered 3-regular graph of order for any sufficiently large even integer . [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper proposes a novel algorithm and its very large scale integration design for context-based adaptive variable length code (CAVLC) decoding. In order to improve throughput of CAVLC decoder, we propose two new methods, which are multiple level decoding (MLD) and nonzero skipping for run_before decoding (NZS). By performing parallel operations on the level decoder, MLD can decode two levels in one cycle at most situations, and NZS can produce several values of run_before in the same cycle. These two methods have the advantages of low complexity and regularity. The proposed architecture needs 141 cycles/macroblock. Moreover, the proposed CAVLC decoder can run at 33.5 MHz to meet the real time requirement for 1920\,\times\,1088 resolution. The power consumption for the 1920\,\times\,1088 resolution is about 1.83 mW. The operation frequency can be reduced about 29.1% to 71.5% compared with other architectures. With an aid on a lower operation frequency, it is suitable for many low power applications. The synthesis result shows that the gate count is 13175 gates, and the maximum frequency can archive 160 MHz. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The embedded compression (EC) technique is applied to reduce the memory bandwidth and capacity in a display system. In this paper, the high-speed EC algorithm is proposed for advanced-HD specification. It mainly comprises three features: 1) the associated geometric-based probability model is developed to construct context-modeling mechanism without context-table; 2) develop content-adaptive Golomb-Rice code and geometric-based binary code as the entropy coding with minor order of context; and 3) provide the rate control mechanism to guarantee the saving ratio of memory bandwidth and capacity. With competitive coding efficiency, the computation-efficiency of the proposed EC algorithm is about 44% and 40% of FELICS and JPEG-LS. The proposed very-large-scale integration architecture of entire codec is implemented in TSMC 0.18-\mum 1P6M CMOS technology. Based on pixel-based parallelism and segment-based parallelism techniques, the encoding/decoding capability reaches Quad Full-high definition (QFHD) (3840\,\times\,2160) at 30 Hz. The maximum throughput is as high as 6.4 Gbit/s. Furthermore, with multi-level parallelism, the performance can be extended to QHD (2560\,\times\,1440) at 120 Hz and QFHD at 120 Hz for the double frame rate technique. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: A hydrogen sensor based on a metamorphic high electron mobility transistor (MHEMT) is fabricated and investigated. It is found that the applied gate–source voltage plays an important role in sensor performance. A highest sensing response is found to be 68% at the applied gate–source voltage of −0.6V under exposing to a 1% H2/air. While the applied gate–source voltage is fixed at 0V, the large magnitude of drain current variation of 1.8mA is observed. However, the higher current variation accompanies higher power consumption. Thus, a trade-off between the sensor performance and power consumption should be considered. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A Pd/oxide/InAlAs metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) type metamorphic high electron mobility transistor (MHEMT)-based hydrogen sensor is fabricated and investigated. In comparison with the conventional HEMT-based sensors, the MOS MHEMT-based sensor exhibits significantly high sensitivity to the hydrogen. The found hydrogen sensing response is as high as 300%. Using the thermodynamic analysis to estimate the enthalpy value of hydrogen adsorption, the value for the proposed sensor is much lower than that for the other reported HEMT-based sensors. The MHEMT-based sensors are demonstrated to have a relatively fast response as comparing to other HEMT-based ones. The response time of the device is approximately 10 s under exposure to a 1% H2/air gas. Consequently, the performance of the studied sensors shows the promise characteristics for practical applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study investigates the mixing phenomena between ferro-nanofluid (a water solution with suspended Fe3O4 nanoparticles) and water in a Y-type semi-active micromixer. A permanent magnet with a magnetic strength of 2200G was installed directly under the mixer at a location behind the junction of the Y-type micromixer to improve the mixing between ferro-nanofluid and water. The permanent magnet is 9.6mm long, 9.6mm wide and 1.6mm thick. Equal volumetric flow rates for both ferro-nanofluid and water were tested in two different channel widths, 300μm and 500μm. Three different volumetric flow rates of 3μL/min, 6μL/min, and 10μL/min were analyzed to determine the effect of flow rate on the mixing of fluids in the micromixer. Since Fe3O4 nanoparticles in the ferro-nanofluid are strongly affected by a relatively uniform magnetic field from the permanent magnet, measured results show that a rapid mixing between ferro-nanofluid and water can be achieved immediately downstream of the permanent magnet for all volumetric flow rates and all channel widths tested in this study. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Downscaling between various video sizes is an important field in transcoding, especially in the era of communication and consumer electronics. Architectures are proposed to offer the best strategy in downscaling. We combine an intra refresh mechanism with a partial encode architecture. A new intra refresh decision mechanism is then proposed based on visual quality constraint. Not only does the work improve transcoded video quality, but overall complexity is also kept low. The experiment results show that the proposed work achieves a 0.5 to 2.5-dB advance in quality, compared with intra refresh in the open loop and partial encode architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]