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The purpose of this study was to examine the benefits of implementing a rehabilitation program for seniors in a nursing home. A physical activity rehabilitation program study was conducted in a nursing home in Taiwan for eight weeks. Forty senior adults (20 males and 20 females) in a nursing home joined this study as human participants. All the participants were diagnosed by a licensed rehabilitation physician as having a mild physical disability. They were split into control and experimental groups. Both groups included 10 males and 10 females. The participants in the experimental group joined the rehabilitation program while the participants in the control group did not. The range of motion and handgrip strength of all the participants before and after this program was measured. The results showed that the joint range of motion (ROM) of the upper limbs, trunk, and lower limbs of the participants in the experimental group increased significantly after attending the program. The difference between all the ROM values of the participants in the control group did not change significantly during the 8-week period. Similar results were found for the grip strength.

Posterior ischemic optic neuropathy (PION), a relatively rare condition, is diagnosed primarily based on the clinical presentation of sudden visual impairment, an optic nerve-related visual field defect, and an initial normal optic disc that corresponds to its pathology of acute ischemia. Among its etiologies, nonarteritic PION is one of the most common causes. Studies on cases of PION associated with herpes zoster ophthalmicus (HZO) are limited, and the diagnosis was made based on the appearance of visual symptoms shortly following rashes. We describe a 64-year-old Asian woman with sudden painless visual loss in the upper half visual field of the left eye 6 weeks after ipsilateral HZO. Within a week, her left vision progressed to total visual loss. Initial examination revealed a near-total visual defect and a normal appearance of the optic disc in the left eye. Laboratory and imaging studies excluded the compressive, infiltrative, or inflammatory etiologies of the left optic nerve. Considering the temporal relationship between the skin rash and visual loss, HZO was the most likely cause of the nonarteritic PION. The patient was given a short course of oral valaciclovir and aspirin. At 6 weeks after the visual loss, an examination revealed stationary visual acuity and visual field defect in the left eye with a pale optic disc, and a retinal nerve fiber loss in the left eye. Compared with previous studies, our case demonstrated a delayed presentation of nonarteritic PION following HZO and broadened the scope of herpes zoster optic neuropathy.

The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of intervention in the form of physical activity and social support while co-exercising to promote a health-promoting lifestyle in older adults. This study openly recruited 60 healthy male older adults, all of whom wore a wrist-worn Garmin device walker. Experimental group A was monitored by a special person and walked together as a group, experimental group B walked independently outdoors, and the control group went about their daily routine as normal. All participants recorded daily steps and calorie consumption data for eight weeks. The results of the study showed that when walking together in experimental group A, the number of daily walks and calories consumed could be maintained at a high level due to the effect of group and social support. The number of daily walks in experimental group B was inconsistent due to the lack of motivation to walk on their own. The control group consumed the lowest number of calories in their daily routine. The results show that physical activity and social support have positive explanatory power for a health-promoting lifestyle. Finally, physical activity in older adults should be promoted, and social support for interaction with peers can effectively promote a healthy lifestyle and respond to the arrival of the super-aged society in advance.

The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of a physical activity program and high-protein supplementation on body composition and upper and lower extremity muscle strength in male older adults in rural areas. In this study, 60 healthy male older adults (mean age 77.5 ± 4.6 years) from rural areas were recruited and randomly assigned to experimental group A (intervention of the physical activity program and high-protein supplementation), experimental group B (daily routine, with only intervention of high-protein supplementation), or control group C (daily routine). Experimental group A (EGa) carried out a physical activity plan three times a week, with an exercise intensity and calorie consumption of 250 kcal (5METs × ⅔hr × 75) for 3 months and drank a high-protein supplement (1.3 g/kg BW/day) after each exercise; experimental group B (EGb) followed only the intervention of high-protein supplementation. All the participants underwent pre- and post-tests for body composition, waist–hip circumference (WC, HC), handgrip strength (HS), 30 s dominant arm curl, 30 s sit to stand, and 2 min step tests. The results of the study showed that EGa significantly decreased body mass index (BMI), body fat mass (BFM), body fat percentage (BFP), WC, HC, and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and increased basal metabolic rate and muscle mass. Although both EGa and EGb used high-protein supplementation, EGa’s added three-month intervention of a physical activity program made it easier for that group to increase muscle mass and muscle strength. The WHR decreased from 1.015 to 0.931, representing a decrease of 8.28%, and an obvious weight loss effect was achieved. Thus, we concluded that the best way to maintain muscle strength in older adults is through physical activity with resistance and protein supplementation, which can reduce muscle loss in older adults.

The aim of the present study was to understand the effects of a moderate-intensity physical activity program on the changes observed in the body composition, upper and lower extremity muscle strength, as well as balance in elderly female adults in order to evaluate sarcopenia. In this study, 30 healthy elderly females were recruited and were randomly assigned to either the control group or the experimental group. The experimental group engaged in a moderate-intensity physical activity program twice a week for 8 weeks. Using a body composition analyzer, the senior fitness test, and handgrip strength and gait speed tests, all participants were tested in pre- and post-tests. The results of the study revealed changes in the overall body composition in the experimental group, with significant decreases in body mass index, body fat percentage, and body fat mass and substantial increases in the basal metabolic rate and skeletal muscle mass, while the upper and lower extremity muscle strength and balance ability also showed significant improvements. The moderate-intensity physical activity program also increased upper limb handgrip strength and lower limb gait speed, showing that the plan was able to effectively evaluate sarcopenia. The study concluded that using upper limb handgrip strength and lower limb walking speed to evaluate sarcopenia are useful diagnostic tools. Moderate-intensity physical activity is effective for improving muscle strength and reducing sarcopenia.

Ageing is related to changes in physical health, including loss of mobility and muscle function. It can lead to impaired physical capability and reduced quality of life. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a physical activity rehabilitation program (PARP) could improve range of joint motion (ROM), grip strength, and gait speed of older adults with mild disabilities. Forty older adults in a long-term care center in Taiwan joined as human participants and were split into control and experimental groups. The participants in the experimental group joined a PARP for eight weeks. The ROM of bodily joints, grip strength, and gait speed of all participants were measured both before and after the eight-week period. The results showed that all the ROMs, grip strength, and gait speed of the participants in the experimental group increased significantly after attending the program. The improvement of the ROMs for male and female participants in the experimental group ranged from 3.8% to 71% and from 7.8% to 75%, respectively. Male participants had greater improvement on gait speed (50%) than their female counterparts (22.9%). Female participants, on the other hand, had greater improvement on grip strength (25.4%) than their male counterparts (20.3%). The ROM, grip strength, and gait speed of the control group, on the other hand, did not change significantly during the same period. The results showed that the PARP adopted in this study was effective in increasing the ROM, grip strength, and gait speed of those who had joined the PARP. This study shows that an eight-week PARP without the use of gym machines was beneficial in reducing sarcopenia in elderly people with mild disabilities.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the speed, agility, and explosive strength performance of elite basketball players over an 8-week plyometric training program. Fifteen elite male college basketball players in Taiwan (average age 22.16 ± 0.85 years old) were publicly recruited. All participants received 24 plyometric training courses three times per week for 8 weeks, and the courses were implemented pre- and post-test. The speed and agility test items were divided into a 20 m sprint and a T-shaped run. In the explosive strength test, a force plate was used to measure countermovement jump to understand the pre- and post-test differences in all the test indicators, including the rate of force development, time of the rate of force development, ground reaction forces for the moment of jumping, duration of passage, and jump height. It was found that, after the participants underwent the plyometric training program, the body mass index and body fat percentage were significantly reduced, the skeletal muscle mass was significantly increased, and the post-test scores for speed and agility improved significantly. All the participants exhibited a steeper gradient for the rate of force development (r = −0.816~−0.963) and a shorter time for the rate of force development (0.107~0.232 s). The ground reaction forces reached 1509.61~2387.11 Newtons. The duration of passage reached 0.643 s, and the jump height reached 0.624 m. The conclusion was that the plyometric training program can increase muscle volume in the lower limbs and legs, increase the rate of force development, and shorten the jumping time, thereby enhancing explosive strength.

Introduction: Exercise intervention is the easiest and most effective way to promote human health. This study combined technology and exercise to improve the health behavior of the older adults through a physical activity intervention and to enhance a health-promoting lifestyle. Materials and methods: A quasi-experimental research method was used to openly recruit 120 healthy male and female older adults over 65 years old (average age of males: 71.6 ± 1.25 years; average age of females: 72.3 ± 1.28 years), all of whom wore smart bracelets. The participants were monitored by special personnel during the same period of walking every Monday to Friday. All participants recorded their daily steps, distance walked, and calorie consumption data for a period of 8 weeks. Results: After 8 weeks of walking, all participants showed a positive medium–high correlation of various factors between healthy behaviors and the health-promoting lifestyle scales. In the post-tests of each factor of two scales, males had the highest correlation between regular physical activity and physical activity, and females had the highest correlation between regular physical activity and social support. The variabilities in the explanatory power of the health behaviors of males and females on the health-promoting lifestyle were R2 = 70.9% (p < 0.01) and R2 = 74.1% (p < 0.01), indicating that the variables of healthy behaviors have a positive effect on health-promoting lifestyles in male and female older adults. Conclusions: Walking interventions positively affect the health behaviors of older adults and encourage health-promoting lifestyles. The value of this study is in its contribution to health promotion and public health recommendations for older adults.

Cubic mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) with the SBA-1 moiety, functionalized with carboxylic acid ( COOH) groups as well as enlarged mesopores, are successfully synthesized using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and carboxyethylsilanetriol sodium salt (CES) as silica sources, complexes formed by polyacrylic acid (PAA) and hexadecylpyridinium chloride (CPC) as templates, and trimethylbenzene (TMB) as pore expander. The successful incorporation of organic functionalities are confirmed by 13C and 29Si solid-state NMR. The structural properties of cubic mesostructures are characterized by powder XRD, N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms, and TEM measurements. The prepared MSNs exhibit a remarkably high adsorption capacity of 1138 mg g−1 at pH 8.2 when they are used as the supports to immobilize papain. Both factors of the large pore size of the support and the favorable electrostatic attractions between the carboxylate groups on the adsorbent surface and the papain molecules play important roles in reaching such a high adsorption capacity. The immobilized papain possesses better thermal stability, pH tolerance, and heat resistance in comparison to the free papain. The materials are also used for selective adsorption of a single protein (papain) from the binary mixture of two different types of proteins (papain and hemoglobin). Our results demonstrate that proteins such as papain and hemoglobin with different isoelectric points and shapes can be effectively separated from their binary mixture by simply tuning the pH of the buffer.

This paper understands the personality traits and cluster types of physical education (PE) teachers in elementary schools. A total of 393 elementary PE teachers volunteered to participate in this study. The Personality Trait Questionnaire for PE teachers in elementary school was summarized and compiled on the basis of the theory of the Big Five personality traits. The researchers used the discriminant analysis method to analyze and obtain the data. The results show that the Big Five personality traits of PE teachers in elementary schools was agreeableness. Classification of the Big Five personality traits through discriminant analysis revealed a Wilk’s λ value of .199, an eigenvalue of 3.254, and 94.7% of the variance explained. Use of Ward’s minimum variance method indicated that the participants’ personalities were characterized by steady and pioneering type, sensitive and cautious type, and moderate and peaceful type. There were more males than females in the steady and pioneering type, more steady and pioneering type under the age of 30 years old, and more moderate and peaceful type with more than 16 years of work experience. In conclusion, most the personality traits of PE teachers in elementary school were agreeableness, moderate and peaceful type, which shows that most PE teachers have calm emotions, appropriate expressions of emotions, regularity, optimism, and enjoy interacting and collaborating with others.

CrWN coatings were fabricated through a hybrid high-power impulse magnetron sputtering/radio-frequency magnetron sputtering technique. The phase structures, mechanical properties, and tribological characteristics of CrWN coatings prepared with various nitrogen flow ratios (fN2s) were investigated. The results indicated that the CrWN coatings prepared at fN2 levels of 0.1 and 0.2 exhibited a Cr2N phase, whereas the coatings prepared at fN2 levels of 0.3 and 0.4 exhibited a CrN phase. These CrWN coatings exhibited hardness values of 16.7–20.2 GPa and Young’s modulus levels of 268–296 GPa, which indicated higher mechanical properties than those of coatings with similar residual stresses prepared through conventional direct current magnetron sputtering. Face-centered cubic (fcc) Cr51W2N47 coatings with a residual stress of −0.53 GPa exhibited the highest wear and scratch resistance. Furthermore, the diffusion barrier performance of fcc CrWN films on Cu metallization was explored, and they exhibited excellent barrier characteristics up to 650 °C.

Ergotism is a rare cause of peripheral vasoconstriction with varying presentation depending on the affected vessels. Coronary vasospasm is a rare, potentially fatal manifestation of ergotism. Cytochrome P-450 isoenzyme CYP3A metabolizes ergot alkaloids and their derivatives; thus, concomitant use of ergotamine and CYP3A inhibitors significantly increases ergotism risk. The antiretroviral drug darunavir boosted with cobicistat potently inhibits CYP3A. A few deleterious interactions are described in the literature when combining ergotamine with boosted human immunodeficiency virus protease inhibitors. Herein, we describe a patient who presented to the emergency department with profound coronary vasospasm arising from ergotamine’s interaction with darunavir and cobicistat. Emergency coronary angiography revealed no critical atherosclerotic stenosis, but prolonged coronary artery spasm. After prompt cardiopulmonary resuscitation, intravenous vasodilator treatment, and 14-day extracorporeal membrane oxygenation application, the patient fully recovered and was discharged. Concomitant use of ergot alkaloids and their derivatives could be disastrous for patients treated with cobicistat-boosted darunavir.

Counting the number of people is a common and basic computing operation in many applications. Most of the people counting techniques need a sensing device like camera and apply image processing methods to track pedestrians. However, counting people with cameras in private places raises a lot of security and privacy issues. The passive infra-red sensor (PIR) can detect the body temperature of the infrared and thus provides another promising solution. Although a single PIR can easily identify the passing situations (i.e., in or out) of a single person, the signals of a single PIR is not sufficient to identify the complex situations of multiple people. In the paper, we design a people counting device with a PIR array to detect the passing situations and generate data records with higher discriminability. In addition, we apply the machine learning classification methods including the CNN, the RBM+LR, Decision Tree, and NaiveBayes on the collected data records to identify the passing situations. To validate our design, we conduct experiments to study the feasibility and classification performance and explore the impact factors. The experimental results show that the CNN outperforms the other and achieves the best accuracy, i.e., about 92%. Also, the results show that the captured data records of the PIR array contain sufficient characteristics for identifying complex passing situations and the configuration of the PIR array including the sensor direction and the field of view (FOV) of a PIR modified by the metal tape can significantly impact the discriminability of the collected data.

Cubic FDU-12 type mesoporous silicas with enlarged pores and carboxylic acid (–COOH) functionality in the pore channels (denoted as LP-FTC-x) are synthesized using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and carboxyethylsilanetriol sodium salt (CES) as silica sources, Pluronic F127 triblock copolymer as template, and trimethylbenzene (TMB) as pore expander, and utilized them as supports for enzyme immobilization. When the –COOH content is increased from 0 to 30%, the pore size of LP-FTC-x decreases from 23.6 to 11.1 nm, and its particle size decreases from around 2 μm to 600–800 nm. The material exhibits a high papain adsorption capacity (895 mg g−1) with a low leaching rate at pH 8.2 due to the well-defined surface chemistry in the pore channel. The adsorption kinetics and isotherms follow the pseudo-second-order model and the Langmuir isotherm model, respectively. The excellent structural properties of LP-FTC-x are also advantageous for enhancement in stability of enzyme toward the temperature, solution pH, and incubation time variations.

Single-instruction set architecture (ISA) heterogeneous multi-processor architecture is promising for developing multi-processor system-on-chips (MPSoCs). In this architecture, all processors execute the same instruction set, yet with various performance and power behavior, since processors may have various micro-architectures. Therefore, systems with this architecture have the advantages of easy to develop new functions as the homogeneous architecture, and easy to customize the resource allocation to achieve high energy efficiency as the heterogeneous architecture. However, for an MPSoC utilizing the target architecture, a key design issue is how to select the set of processors so that the target system can achieve good performance while the cost of the chip is constrained to the expected value. To solve this, in this paper, we propose a processor allocation method for MPSoCs with single-ISA heterogeneous multi-core architecture. The goal of the proposed method is to automatically synthesize the allocation of cores for the given workload so that the performance is optimized while the resource constraint is met. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that tackles the processor allocation problem for MPSoCs with the target architecture. To bring out the best performance of a hardware configuration, the proposed algorithm also synthesizes the software design of task mapping for a selected hardware configuration. The experimental results show that, compared with the homogeneous architecture with the least cost and lowest performance cores only, even if the number of core is set to the maximum parallelism degree of the target workload, the proposed method achieves up to 8.25% of performance improvement among all the cases we evaluated while the area constraint is met. Compared with the architecture with all high performance but large cores, when the number of cores is also set to the same as the maximum parallelism degree of the target workload, the proposed method has at most 11.5% of performance degradation, while the area cost is reduced by 60.7%.

When deploying two or more well-trained deep-learningmodels on a system, we would hope to unify them into asingle deep model for the execution in the inference stage, sothat the computation time can be increased and the energyconsumption can be saved. This paper presents an effective method to build a single deep neural network that canexecute multiple tasks. Our approach can merge two well-trained feed-forward neural networks of the same architecture into a single one, where the required on-line storageis reduced and the inference speed is enhanced. We evalu-ate our approach by using MobileNets and show that ourapproach can improve both compression ratio and speedup. The experimental results demonstrate the satisfactory per-formance and verify the feasibility of the method.

It is hard to detect on-road objects under various lighting conditions. To improve the quality of the classifier, three techniques are used. We define subclasses to separate daytime and nighttime samples. Then we skip similar samples in the training set to prevent overfitting. With the help of the outside training samples, the detection accuracy is also improved. To detect objects in an edge device, Nvidia Jetson TX2 platform, we exert the lightweight model ResNet-18 FPN as the backbone feature extractor. The FPN (Feature Pyramid Network) generates good features for detecting objects over various scales. With Cascade R-CNN technique, the bounding boxes are iteratively refined for better results., Comment: Accepted at IEEE 21st International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP 2019)

The presence or absence of differences in the perceptions of previous visitors and non-visitors toward a destination is important to tourist theorists and practitioners. Destination familiarity, destination image, and future visit intention are suitable marketing variables for investigations into these two groups. Destination familiarity has been defined in many different ways. Adding to the complexity, related concepts, such as awareness, knowledge, experience, and expertise, have, in one way or another, been used in combination with familiarity. There is also inconsistency in whether familiarity is a unidimensional or multidimensional construct. Considering previous studies, Prentice (2004) provided an interrelated seven-dimension familiarity construct. Taking into account previous familiarity and familiarity-related studies and setting experiential familiarity as a moderator, this study aims to achieve a deeper understanding of familiarity by examining how Prentice's familiarity dimensions are interrelated, as well as to gain insights into the structural relationships among familiarity, destination image, and future visit intention via the comparison of previous visitors and non-visitors. Hong Kong was selected as the tourist destination, and the partial least squares method was applied to analyze 493 surveys collected from residents in Taiwan. The findings provide a range of academic and practical implications. In this light, certain previous findings may have to be reconsidered. The present work indicates the importance of experience as a criterion for segmenting consumers, and it demonstrates the usefulness of a critical examination of non-visitors. This study offers numerous suggestions regarding how destination marketing organizations can formulate effective strategies for both previous visitors and non-visitors.

In this work, we demonstrate that a high density of −COOH groups loading, up to 60 mol% based on silica, is successfully incorporated into SBA-16 via a one-pot synthesis route, which involves co-condensation of carboxyethylsilanetriol sodium salt (CES) and tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) templated by Pluronic F127 and P123 in an acidic medium. A variety of characterization techniques are performed to confirm quantitative incorporation of carboxylic groups into ordered cubic mesostructures. These functionalized materials are used to effectively remove two cationic dyes methylene blue (MB) and phenosafranine (PF) with the maximum adsorption capacities of 561 and 519 mg g(-1), respectively, at pH 9. The zeta potential results reveal that the electrostatic interactions between cationic dye molecule and negatively charged surface of the adsorbent play a crucial role in their high adsorption capacities. For a binary component system consisting of MB and PF, competitive adsorption of these two dyes is observed with adsorption capacity values slightly lower than those of the corresponding single dye systems. The dye adsorbed material can be easily regenerated by simple acid washing and be reused for five times with MB removal efficiency still up to 98.6%, showing its great potentials in environmental remediation.

In this study, the formation of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) with a particle size of about 3 nm was successfully achieved by using the mesoporous channels of carboxylic acid (–COOH) functionalized SBA-15 as the support. When pure silica SBA-15 (without –COOH groups) was employed, the Ag NPs were formed outside of the mesopore and their particle size was significantly larger, up to about 20 nm. The –COO− groups under basic conditions can effectively interact with the Ag+ ions, and thus allowed facile fabrication of Ag NPs. The catalytic activity of these Ag NPs based SBA-15 materials were tested for a model reaction, namely the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol. The results showed that the particle size of the Ag NPs play a key role in determining their catalytic activity. The apparent kinetic constant for the Ag NPs with a particle size of about 3 nm was 1.1 × 10−2 s−1, corresponding to the activity parameters of 12.2 and 4630 s−1 g−1 by considering the total mass of the catalyst used and the Ag NPs alone, respectively, which were remarkably high as compared to other matrices bearing Ag. Moreover, the Ag NP based materials exhibited good recyclability up to 5 cycles.

Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chips (MPSoCs) with 3D-stakced memories frequently work under thermal emergent status due to its high power density. Several thermal-aware task allocation or data placement methods have been proposed for 3D ICs to reduce the number of time-consuming dynamic thermal managements techniques being invoked. However, we observe that, these thermal-aware software designs all consider task allocation or data placement only. Studies show that, with the increasing number of stacked memories and the widening of vertical buses, heat generated by memories is comparable to processors, and synergistically performing thermal control on both processors and memories is a must since vertically aligned modules have the greatest thermal impacts to each other. So, in this paper, we propose the first thermal-aware task and data co-allocation method for MPSoCs with 3D-stacked memories. The proposed method synergistically places data and task considering the heterogeneity of cores and memories to optimize system performance under the given thermal constraint. Among all our test cases, compared to a performance-aware software design, the proposed method has at most 26% performance degradation while the system temperature are kept under the threshold and the performance-aware method has 108.4°C over the threshold. Compared to thermal-aware design that respectively considers data allocation and task allocation only, the proposed method achieves 9.76% of performance improvements on the average.

Enhancement-mode In0.53Ga0.47As n-type metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), with barium zirconate titanate (BZT) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) high-κ materials prepared via the solution–gelation process as gate dielectrics, have been fabricated. The dielectric constants of BZT and TiO2 are 6.67 and 19.3, respectively. The In0.53Ga0.47As MOSFET with TiO2 exhibits better electrical characteristics than the In0.53Ga0.47As MOSFET with BZT. These characteristics include higher maximum drain current density, higher maximum transconductance, and smaller subthreshold swing.

In this research, the Zn(C5H7O2)2·xH2O-based growth of ZnO micro/nanostructures in a low temperature, vapor-trapped chemical vapor deposition system was attempted to optimize structural and optical properties for potential biomedical applications. By trapping in-flow gas molecules and Zinc vapor inside a chamber tube by partially obstructing a chamber outlet, a high pressure condition can be achieved, and this experimental setup has the advantages of ease of synthesis, being a low temperature process, and cost effectiveness. Empirically, the growth process proceeded under a chamber condition of an atmospheric pressure of 730 torr, a controlled volume flow rate of input gas, N2/O2, of 500/500 Standard Cubic Centimeters per Minute (SCCM), and a designated oven temperature of 500 °C. Specifically, the dependence of structural and optical properties of the structures on growth duration and spatially dependent temperature were investigated utilizing scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL), and ultraviolet-visible transmission spectroscopy. The experimental results indicate that the grown thin film observed with hexagonal structures and higher structural uniformity enables more prominent structural and optical signatures. XRD spectra present the dominant peaks along crystal planes of (002) and (101) as the main direction of crystallization. In addition, while the structures excited with laser wavelength of 325 nm emit a signature radiation around 380 nm, an ultraviolet lamp with a wavelength of 254 nm revealed distinctive photoluminescence peaks at 363.96 nm and 403.52 nm, elucidating different degrees of structural correlation as functions of growth duration and the spatial gradient of temperature. Transmittance spectra of the structures illustrate typical variation in the wavelength range of 200 nm to 400 nm, and its structural correlation is less significant when compared with PL.

Traffic behavioral monitoring within urban intersections is an essential issue in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) for a smart city. This paper investigates on gathering traffic information within an urban intersection where accidents frequently occur. In this paper, traffic pattern modeling, trajectory classification and a real-time vehicle tracker within the urban intersection are proposed. Trajectories of vehicles within the intersection are more regular than that of pedestrians; such monotonous trajectories can be classified with Hidden Markov Model (HMM) into various kinds of motion patterns and tracklet prediction can be performed then. So, given an identified prefix trajectory (for a new coming vehicle), the most likely model is determined and the probable template (tracklet) with the highest similarity is selected. This template gives the direction to forecast the next few locations the vehicle may pass through. Besides, tracking all of trajectories in real-time is a computational challenge, on the basis of vehicle movement and tracklet prediction, the proposed method can remove most of the unnecessary particles. The experimental results demonstrate both the computational effectiveness and tracking correctness of the proposed method, and the tracker truly executes in real-time for the intersections of six traffic lanes, say around six vehicles per second on tracking.

Bifunctional SBA-1 mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) with carboxylic acid and amino groups (denoted as CNS-10-10) have been successfully synthesized, characterized, and employed as adsorbents for dye removal. Adsorbent CNS-10-10 shows high affinity towards cationic and anionic dyes in a wide pH range, and exhibits selective dye removal of a two-dye mixture system of cationic methylene blue and anionic eosin Y. By changing the pH of the medium, the selectivity of the adsorption behavior can be easily modulated. For comparison purposes, the counterparts, that is, pure silica SBA-1 MSNs (CS-0) and those with either carboxylic acid or amino functional groups (denoted as CS-10 and NS-10, respectively) were also prepared to evaluate their dye-adsorption behaviors. As revealed by the zeta-potential measurements, the electrostatic interaction between the adsorbent surface and the dye molecule plays an important role in the adsorption mechanism. Adsorbent CNS-10-10 can be easily regenerated and reused, and maintains its adsorption efficiency up to 80 % after four cycles.

The purpose of this study is to enhance the strength of steel by increasing the percentage of martensite microstructure with a high pressure water jet quenching. JIS SS400 carbon steel was chosen as a test sample. The cooling rate of surface and center reached approximately 180oC/sec and 65oC/sec, respectively. After this quenching process, the metallographic analysis showed that the steel turned into martensite structure. Furthermore, the tensile strength of sample increased from 363MPa to 543MPa; the yielding strength increased from 284MPa to 420Mpa. In general, the overall enhancement of mechanical strength was about 140%.

Multi-layered micro/nanostructures enable the fine-tuning of spectral bandwidth induced by coherent interference of multi-scattering and refraction bounded by a motive of Fabry Perot etalon. In this paper a ZnO micro/nanostructured thin film device is grown on a 21 nm silver film-sputtered sapphire substrates (0001) and attempted to be complied as a transmission-mode white-light spectrum tuning device. In details, the growth of the structures as a function of temporal duration and the effects of deposition of a 21 nm silver film atop sapphire substrates to the structural and optical properties of ZnO structures are investigated. Results of SEM imaging reveals that the insertion of the silver film enables synthesis of round ZnO particles at micro or nanoscales depending on the duration of growth time as opposed to the floral pattern associated with plain sapphire substrates. Characterizing material crystallization by XRD spectra found one dominant and two minor peaks along the planes of crystallization (002), and (100) and (101), correspondingly. Also, the characteristic PL peak at 380 nm was confirmed when excited at 325 nm, and the intensity decreases as the duration of growth time increases. Finally, growth duration-dependent modulation of peak wavelength and spectral bandwidth of the continuum laser was demonstrated.

We have developed two nitrogen-bridged pentacyclic donor–acceptor dithienopyrrolobenzothiadiazole (DTPBT) and dithienopyrroloquinoxaline (DTPQX) arenes where the two outer electron-rich thiophene moieties are covalently fastened with the central electron-deficient benzothiadiazole and quinoxaline cores by two nitrogen bridges. These rigid and coplanar DTPBT and DTPQX building blocks were copolymerized with fluorene (F), carbazole (C) and cyclopentadithiophene (CPDT) units via Suzuki or Stille coupling polymerization to afford six new alternating copolymers PFDTPBT, PCDTPBT, PCPDTDTPBT, PFDTPQX, PCDTPQX and PCPDTDTPQX, respectively. The nitrogen bridges not only planarize the structure to induce stronger intermolecular π–π interaction but also play an important role in determining the electronic and photophysical properties of the polymers. The device based on PFDTPQX/PC71BM (1:4, w/w) exhibited a open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.72 V, a short-circuit current (Jsc) of 8.62 mA/cm2 and a FF of 0.55 leading to...

Research on polymer solar cells (PSC) using organic p-type (donor) and n-type (acceptor) semiconductors has attracted tremendous scientific and industrial interest in recent years. The charge generation and charge transport play equally important roles in determining the device efficiency. To dramatically increase the area of the donor–acceptor interface for efficient charge separation, a bulk heterojunction (BHJ) is adopted to form an interpenetrating network of donor and acceptor materials. This configuration decreases the distance that excitons need to travel to reach the heterojunction interface, thus reducing exciton recombination. However, the donor and acceptor are randomly interspersed; pathways for charges to reach the electrodes through the active layer are disordered. Free charges are likely to encounter an opposite charge, resulting in charge recombination and reduced current. 4] Moreover, space charge may be built up if charges are locally trapped on isolated domains. Furthermore, an increase in the thickness of the BHJ layer to enhance absorption is usually accompanied by deteriorated charge collection. Consequently, controlling phase separation toward optimal morphology in BHJ by external treatments, such as thermal or solvent annealing, is an important but challenging task. To provide a direct path for charge transport while maintaining a large interfacial area, the ideal architecture of the donor and acceptor is the periodic, vertically aligned, and interpenetrating ordered bulk heterojunction (OBHJ). The electrons and holes have straight and independent pathways to the electrodes to shorten the carrier transport length and reduce the probability of charge recombination. Several elegant studies have attempted to demonstrate this conceptual architecture, for example by a template-assisted strategy or self-assembly of block copolymer. However, realization of high-performance OBHJ devices has not been successful. We envision that designing a system that combines a BHJ for efficient charge generation with an OBHJ for efficient charge transport and collection would be a more practical strategy. Such a configuration is specifically suitable for solar cells with inverted architecture, because an electron-selective layer is required at the bottom of the active layer for electron extraction and hole blocking. For instance, the upper BHJ active layer of an inverted solar cell is infiltrated into vertically aligned nanorods extending from a bottom layer of an inorganic semiconductor (e.g. ZnO or TiO2). [18–20] However, owing to the poor electrical coherence at the organic/inorganic interface, the improvement in efficiency is moderate (PCE ranges from 2.1 to 2.7%). Recently, we reported a cross-linkable fullerene material, [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric styryl dendron ester (PCBSD). The formation of a cross-linked PCBSD (C-PCBSD, Figure 1a) planar layer allows realization of a multilayer inverted device by all-solution processing. By using indene–C60 bisadduct (ICBA, Figure 1a) with a higher-lying lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy level to serve as the acceptor in the blend, an inverted solar cell device based on the ITO/ZnO/C-PCBSD/ICBA:P3HT/PEDOT:PSS/Ag configuration achieved an enhanced power conversion efficiency

A new class of fullerene bis-adducts—di(4-methylphenyl)methano-C60 bis-adduct (DMPCBA), di(4-fluorophenyl)methano-C60 bis-adduct (DFPCBA), and diphenylmethano-C60 bis-adduct (DPCBA)—were rationally designed and easily synthesized. Compared to the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy level of PC61BM (−3.95 eV), the double functionalization effectively raises the LUMO energy levels of these fullerene materials to ca. −3.85 eV, regardless of the substituent groups (CH3–, F–, and H−) at the para-position of the phenyl rings. This phenomenon suggests that the plane of the phenyl groups is preferentially parallel to the fullerene surface, leading to poor orbital interactions with C60 and negligible electronic effect. Importantly, such geometry sterically protects and shields the core C60 structure from severe intermolecular aggregation, rendering it intrinsically soluble, morphologically amorphous, and thermally stable. The device based on the P3HT:DMPCBA blend exhibited an open-circuit voltage (Vo...

Location management is an important issue for object tracking applications of wireless sensor networks. Since locations obtained by most positioning techniques are inherently imprecise, users may send approximate location queries with precision constraints to trade for energy consumption of sensor nodes. Therefore, we propose an Adaptive Location Management scheme called ALM to process approximate location queries. ALM employs a two-tier storage architecture (i.e., centric storage node and local storage node) to facilitate approximate query resolving and to reduce the energy consumption of sensor nodes. We propose a storage node relocation and replication mechanism, which can create, remove replicas of storage nodes and adjust the positions of storage nodes according to the location queries and updates. As such, the number of forwarding location update and query messages is reduced by the proposed storage node relocation and replication mechanism, thereby conserving more energy. The experimental results show that compared with EASE (Xu et al. (2008) [18]), ALM is able to reduce the number of transmission messages and the energy consumption of sensor network, and prolong the network lifetime.

Background: Hand eczema and other skin diseases have been associated with the exposure of chromium among cement workers. Studies on skin disease and other factors associated with the body burden of chromium are limited. Objective: The present study investigated the role of skin disease and smoking in the association with body burden of chromium among cement workers. Methods: Forty five workers (38 men and 7 women) were recruited for this study and interviewed to obtain information on demographic status, lifestyle, employment history, and affecting factors. Urine samples were collected to measure the urinary chromium concentration to represent the body burden of chromium. Results: The average urinary chromium concentration was approximately 6 times higher in non-smoking workers with hand eczema than in non-smoking workers with no skin disease (45.5 vs. 7.6 μg/L). The average chromium level increase to 87.0 μg/L for smokers with the disease. Compared with workers with no hand eczema, the odds ratio of having urinary chromium concentration exceeding the biological exposure index level significantly increased to 11.6 (95% CI = 1.3–102.2) for non-smoking workers with skin disease, and to 48.0 (95% CI = 4.5–510.8) for smoking workers with skin disease. The multiple regression analysis showed that the use of gloves may reduce significantly the chromium exposure. Conclusions: Inadequate protection and personal behavior increase the internal dose of chromium in cement workers. Total body burden of chromium are higher among cement workers with skin disease and smoking habit. These workers deserve intervention education on personal hygiene to reduce the exposure of chromium.

Perturbation theory in quantum mechanics studies how quantum systems interact with their environmental perturbations. Harmonic perturbation is a rare special case of time-dependent perturbations in which exact analysis exists. Some important technology advances, such as masers, lasers, nuclear magnetic resonance, etc., originated from it. Here we add quantum computation to this list with a theoretical demonstration. Based on harmonic perturbation, a quantum mechanical algorithm is devised to search the ground state of a given Hamiltonian. The intrinsic complexity of the algorithm is continuous and parametric in both time T and energy E. More precisely, the probability of locating a search target of a Hamiltonian in N-dimensional vector space is shown to be 1/(1+ c N E^{-2} T^{-2}) for some constant c. This result is optimal. As harmonic perturbation provides a different computation mechanism, the algorithm may suggest new directions in realizing quantum computers., 6 pages, 4 figures, revtex4

The IEEE 802.11e MAC standard can be used to support the quality of service (QoS) for wireless networks, but the bandwidth resource management is not efficient enough for the wireless multimedia network application. In this paper, a novel cross-layer architecture based on both the bandwidth measurement and queue adaptation is proposed to improve and adjust the video transmission over wireless multimedia networks. In other words, an average bandwidth measurement approach is used to adjust the video delivery immediately. Furthermore, the proposed cross-layer approach uses a dynamic queue adaptation for the current communication protocol of wireless multimedia networks. In addition, it is shown by NS2 simulations that the method of average bandwidth measurement does not consume any network resource, and the proposed method with dynamic queue adaptation can provide a more acceptable service quality by dynamically adapting the transmission rate.

The optical proximity correction (OPC) model and post-OPC verification that takes the developed photoresist (PR) 3D profile into account is needed in the advanced 2Xnm node. The etch process hotspots caused by poor resist profile may not be fully identified during the lithography inspection but will only be observed after the subsequent etch process. A complete mask correction that targets to final etch CD requires not only a lithography R3D profile model but also a etch process compact model. The drawback of existing etch model is to treat the etch CD bias as a function of visibility and pattern density which do not contain the information of resist profile. One important factor to affect the etch CD is the PR lateral erosion during the etch process due to non-vertical PR side wall angle (SWA) and anisotropy of etch plasma source. A simple example is in transferring patterns from PR layer to thin hard mask (HM) layer, which is frequently used in the double pattern (DPT) process. The PR lateral erosion contributes an extra HM etch CD bias which is deviated from PR CD defined by lithography process. This CD bias is found to have a nontrivial dependency on the PR profile and cannot be described by the pattern density or visibility. In this report, we study the etch CD variation to resist SWA under various etch conditions. Physical effects during etch process such as plasma ion reflection and source anisotropy, which modify the local etch rate, are taken into considerations in simulation. The virtual data are generated by Synopsys TCAD tool Sentaurus Topography 3D using Monte Carlo engine. A simple geometry compact model is applied first to explain the behavior of virtual data, however, it works to some extent but lacks accuracy when plasma ion reflection comes into play. A modified version is proposed, for the first time, by including the effects of plasma ion reflection and source anisotropy. The new compact model fits the nonlinear etch CD bias very well for a wide range of resist SWAs from 65 to 90 degrees, which covers the resist profile diversities in most real situations. This result offers a potential application for both resist profile aware and etch process aware mask correction model in the mask synthesis flow.

The Optical Proximity Correction (OPC) model, a key to process yield in the mask synthesis flow, is getting more and more complicated and challenging at advanced technology nodes (1X nm). To achieve accurate critical dimension (CD) prediction and model robustness on varied designed patterns, a rigorously tuned compact model (RTCM) [1] that takes the photoresist chemical effects into considerations is strongly desired. A lithography process consists of three main stages: Exposure, Post-Exposure Bake (PEB), and Photoresist Development. Each stage is characterized by its fundamental physics or chemistry that governs the process of illumination induced photo-acid generation, thermally activated chemical reaction-diffusion, and developer dependent photoresist dissolution, respectively. The final resist profile is determined by the process details of all these stages directly or indirectly. For an ideal resist that the development contrast approaches infinity, resist development is aptly represented by a threshold model applied to the PEB latent image (acid or inhibitor concentration). So the quality of OPC modeling is largely determined by the fidelity of PEB latent image [2,3]. However, for some types of resist and developer used in Negative Tone Development (NTD), the development contrast shows a long tail without a sharp transition. For such low-contrast resist, the developed resist profile is no longer described well by the equilevel surface of PEB latent image. Going beyond the threshold approximation, we start from the fundamental equations of resist development physics and analyze the time evolution of development front that determines the resist profile. In this paper, a new compact model is derived to catch the main physics in resist Development, which is also simple and computationally efficient to suit for OPC applications. Comparison with S-LITHO rigorous solutions and real-wafer experiments with 1D and 2D test patterns have showed that the new compact model, with fewer free parameters, provides better CD prediction than the existing empirical lumped parameter models for low-contrast resists. The new physical compact model offers a more accurate and extendable solution for OPC modeling at the 10nm node and onward.

Pedestrian and motorbike detection are two important areas in obstacle detection on road. Most state-of-the-art detectors are constructed with new features or learning methods on Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG) features. However, few researches focus on analyzing which features are complementary for the aforementioned detection. According to our study of pedestrians and motorbikes, there are three major properties including shape, texture, and self-similarity. We design a Shape, Texture and Self-Similarity (STSS) feature for these properties. The features we have employed here are HOG, Local Oriented Pattern (LOP), Color Self-Similarity (CSS), and Texture Self-Similarity (TSS). The STSS detector which combines Shape, Texture, and Self-Similarty features achieves 31% log-average miss rate. At the same time, 93% detection rate at 10-4 false positives per window on INRIA Person Dataset has also been concluded. Besides, we also have evaluated our detector on Caltech Motorbike Dataset and Caltech Pedestrian Dataset, and found the detector outperforms HOG detector in these datasets. As a result, we have shown that these features are complement to each other and useful in pedestrian and motorbike detection.

Pedestrian detection is an important part of intelligent transportation systems. In the literature, Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) detector for pedestrian detection is known for its good performance, but there are still some false detections appearing in the cases with flat area or clustered background. To deal with these problems, in this research work we develop a new feature which is based on pairing comparison computations, called Comparison of Granules (CoG). The idea of CoG is to encode the textural information of local area describing how different the pixel intensities are distributed within a region. It is shown that the special characteristics of CoG feature are “small” and “efficiency” relative to HOG. By incorporating this new feature, we propose a HOG-CoG detector which through our validation experiment achieves 38% log-average miss rate in full image evaluation and 90% detection rate at 10−4 false positives per window on INRIA Person Dataset. Another contribution of this work is that, we also present a training scheme that can be applied on huge database for training a detector. Such training scheme can reduce the number of hard samples during bootstrap training.

A pentacyclic benzodipyrrolothiophene (BDPT) unit, in which two outer thiophene rings are covalently fastened with the central phenylene ring by nitrogen bridges, was synthesized. The two pyrrole units embedded in BDPT were constructed by using one-pot palladium-catalyzed amination. The coplanar stannylated Sn-BDPT building block was copolymerized with electron-deficient thieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione (TPD), benzothiadiazole (BT), and dithienyl-diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) acceptors by Stille polymerization. The bridging nitrogen atoms make the BDPT motif highly electron-abundant and structurally coplanar, which allows for tailoring the optical and electronic properties of the resultant polymers. Strong photoinduced charge-transfer with significant band-broadening in the solid state and relatively higher oxidation potential are characteristic of the BDPT-based polymers. Poly(benzodipyrrolothiophene-alt-benzothiadiazole) (PBDPTBT) achieved the highest field-effect hole mobility of up to 0.02 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1). The photovoltaic device using the PBDPTBT/PC(71)BM blend (1:3, w/w) exhibited a V(oc) of 0.6 V, a J(sc) of 10.34 mA cm(-2), and a FF of 50%, leading to a decent PCE of 3.08%. Encouragingly, the device incorporating poly(benzodipyrrolothiophene-alt-thienopyrrolodione) (PBDPTTPD)/PC(71)BM (1:3, w/w) composite delivered a highest PCE of 3.72%. The enhanced performance arises from the lower-lying HOMO value of PBDPTTPD to yield a higher V(oc) of 0.72 V.

LiCu2O2 is the first multiferroic cuprate to be reported and its ferroelectricity is induced by complex magnetic ordering in ground state, which is still in controversy today. Herein, we have grown nearly untwinned LiCu2O2 single crystals of high quality and systematically investigated their dielectric and ferroelectric behaviours in external magnetic fields. The highly anisotropic response observed in different magnetic fields apparently contradicts the prevalent bc- or ab- plane cycloidal spin model. Our observations give strong evidence supporting a new helimagnetic picture in which the normal of the spin helix plane is along the diagonal of CuO4 squares which form the quasi-1D spin chains by edge-sharing. Further analysis suggests that the spin helix in the ground state is elliptical and in the intermediate state the present c-axis collinear SDW model is applicable with some appropriate modifications. In addition, our studies show that the dielectric and ferroelectric measurements could be used as probes for the characterization of the complex spin structures in multiferroic materials due to the close tie between their magnetic and electric orderings., Comment: to be published on EPL

New cobalt-containing secondary phosphine oxides [(mu-PPh(2)CH(2)PPh(2))Co(2)(CO)(4){mu,eta-PhC[triple chemical bond]CP(==O)(H)(R)}] (8 a: R=tBu; 8 b: R=Ph) were prepared by reaction of secondary phosphine oxides PhC[triple chemical bond]CP- (==O)(H)(R) (6 a: R=tBu; 6 b: R=Ph) with dppm-bridged dicobalt complex [(mu-PPh(2)CH(2)PPh(2))Co(2)(CO)(6)] (2). The molecular structures of 8 a and 8 b were determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Although palladium-catalyzed Heck reactions employing 8 b as ligand gave satisfying results, 8 a performed poorly in the same reaction. Judging from these results, a tautomeric equilibrium between 8 b and its isomeric form [(mu-PPh(2)CH(2)PPh(2))Co(2)(CO)(4){mu,eta-PhC[triple chemical bond]CP(OH)(Ph)}] 8 b' indeed takes place, but it is unlikely between 8 a and [(mu-PPh(2)CH(2)PPh(2))Co(2)(CO)(4){mu,eta-PhC[triple chemical bond]CP(OH)(tBu)}] (8 a'). The DFT studies demonstrated that reasonable activation energies for the tautomeric conversions can be achieved only via a bimolecular pathway. Since a tBu group is much larger than a Ph group, the conversion is presumably only feasible in the case of 8 bright harpoon over left harpoon8 b', but not in the case of 8 aright harpoon over left harpoon8 a'. Another cobalt-containing phosphine, namely, [(mu-PPh(2)CH(2)PPh(2))Co(2)(CO)(4){mu,eta-PhC[triple chemical bond]CP(NEt(2))(tBu)}] (7 a), and its oxidation product [(mu-PPh(2)CH(2)PPh(2))Co(2)(CO)(4){mu,eta-PhC[triple chemical bond]CP(==O)(NEt(2))(tBu)}] 7 a' were prepared from the reaction of PhC[triple chemical bond]CP(NEt(2))(tBu) (5 a) with 2. The molecular structures of 7 a and 7 a' were determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The phosphorus atom is surrounded by substituents in a tetrahedral environment. A P--N single bond (1.676(3) A) is observed in the molecular structure of 7 a. Heck reactions employing 7 a/Pd(OAc)(2) as catalyst system exhibited efficiency comparable to that of 8 a/Pd(OAc)(2).