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Real-world datasets commonly exhibit noisy labels and class imbalance, such as long-tailed distributions. While previous research addresses this issue by differentiating noisy and clean samples, reliance on information from predictions based on noisy long-tailed data introduces potential errors. To overcome the limitations of prior works, we introduce an effective two-stage approach by combining soft-label refurbishing with multi-expert ensemble learning. In the first stage of robust soft label refurbishing, we acquire unbiased features through contrastive learning, making preliminary predictions using a classifier trained with a carefully designed BAlanced Noise-tolerant Cross-entropy (BANC) loss. In the second stage, our label refurbishment method is applied to obtain soft labels for multi-expert ensemble learning, providing a principled solution to the long-tail noisy label problem. Experiments conducted across multiple benchmarks validate the superiority of our approach, Label Refurbishment considering Label Rarity (LR^2), achieving remarkable accuracies of 94.19% and 77.05% on simulated noisy CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 long-tail datasets, as well as 77.74% and 81.40% on real-noise long-tail datasets, Food-101N and Animal-10N, surpassing existing state-of-the-art methods.

Multivariate time series (MTS) data, when sampled irregularly and asynchronously, often present extensive missing values. Conventional methodologies for MTS analysis tend to rely on temporal embeddings based on timestamps that necessitate subsequent imputations, yet these imputed values frequently deviate substantially from their actual counterparts, thereby compromising prediction accuracy. Furthermore, these methods typically fail to provide robust initial embeddings for values infrequently observed or even absent within the training set, posing significant challenges to model generalizability. In response to these challenges, we propose SCAlable Numerical Embedding (SCANE), a novel framework that treats each feature value as an independent token, effectively bypassing the need for imputation. SCANE regularizes the traits of distinct feature embeddings and enhances representational learning through a scalable embedding mechanism. Coupling SCANE with the Transformer Encoder architecture, we develop the Scalable nUMerical eMbeddIng Transformer (SUMMIT), which is engineered to deliver precise predictive outputs for MTS characterized by prevalent missing entries. Our experimental validation, conducted across three disparate electronic health record (EHR) datasets marked by elevated missing value frequencies, confirms the superior performance of SUMMIT over contemporary state-of-the-art approaches addressing similar challenges. These results substantiate the efficacy of SCANE and SUMMIT, underscoring their potential applicability across a broad spectrum of MTS data analytical tasks.

Mohsen Saffari,1,2,* I-Hua Chen,3,* Po-Ching Huang,4 Kerry S O’Brien,5 Yi-Ping Hsieh,6 Ji-Kang Chen,7 Yun-Hsuan Chang,8– 11 Xingyong Jiang,12 Nadia Bevan,5 Yen-Ling Chang,13 Jung-Sheng Chen,14 Ching-Chung Tsai,15,16 Mark D Griffiths,17 Chung-Ying Lin4,18– 20 1Health Research Center, Life Style Institute, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 2Health Education Department, Faculty of Health, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 3Chinese Academy of Education Big Data, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, People’s Republic of China; 4Institute of Allied Health Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; 5School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; 6Department of Social Work, College of Nursing and Professional Disciplines, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA; 7Department of Social Work, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong; 8Institute of Gerontology, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; 9Institute of Behavioral Medicine, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; 10Department of Psychology, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; 11Institute of Genomics and Bioinformatics, College of Life Sciences, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan; 12Yangan Primary School of Qionglai City, Qionglai, People’s Republic of China; 13Department of Family Medicine, Cardinal Tien Hospital, New Taipei, Taiwan; 14Department of Medical Research, E-Da Hospital, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; 15Department of Pediatrics, E-Da Hospital, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; 16School of Medicine, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; 17International Gaming Research Unit, Psychology Department, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK; 18Department of Occupational Therapy, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; 19Depart

Traditional crowd counting networks suffer from information loss when feature maps are downsized through pooling layers, leading to inaccuracies in counting crowds at a distance. Existing methods often assume correct annotations during training, disregarding the impact of noisy annotations, especially in crowded scenes. Furthermore, the use of a fixed Gaussian kernel fails to account for the varying pixel distribution with respect to the camera distance. To overcome these challenges, we propose a Scale-Aware Crowd Counting Network (SACC-Net) that introduces a ``scale-aware'' architecture with error-correcting capabilities of noisy annotations. For the first time, we {\bf simultaneously} model labeling errors (mean) and scale variations (variance) by spatially-varying Gaussian distributions to produce fine-grained heat maps for crowd counting. Furthermore, the proposed adaptive Gaussian kernel variance enables the model to learn dynamically with a low-rank approximation, leading to improved convergence efficiency with comparable accuracy. The performance of SACC-Net is extensively evaluated on four public datasets: UCF-QNRF, UCF CC 50, NWPU, and ShanghaiTech A-B. Experimental results demonstrate that SACC-Net outperforms all state-of-the-art methods, validating its effectiveness in achieving superior crowd counting accuracy., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figues. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2211.06835

In this study, we introduce JarviX, a sophisticated data analytics framework. JarviX is designed to employ Large Language Models (LLMs) to facilitate an automated guide and execute high-precision data analyzes on tabular datasets. This framework emphasizes the significance of varying column types, capitalizing on state-of-the-art LLMs to generate concise data insight summaries, propose relevant analysis inquiries, visualize data effectively, and provide comprehensive explanations for results drawn from an extensive data analysis pipeline. Moreover, JarviX incorporates an automated machine learning (AutoML) pipeline for predictive modeling. This integration forms a comprehensive and automated optimization cycle, which proves particularly advantageous for optimizing machine configuration. The efficacy and adaptability of JarviX are substantiated through a series of practical use case studies.

Change detection (CD) aims to find the difference between two images at different times and outputs a change map to represent whether the region has changed or not. To achieve a better result in generating the change map, many State-of-The-Art (SoTA) methods design a deep learning model that has a powerful discriminative ability. However, these methods still get lower performance because they ignore spatial information and scaling changes between objects, giving rise to blurry or wrong boundaries. In addition to these, they also neglect the interactive information of two different images. To alleviate these problems, we propose our network, the Scale and Relation-Aware Siamese Network (SARAS-Net) to deal with this issue. In this paper, three modules are proposed that include relation-aware, scale-aware, and cross-transformer to tackle the problem of scene change detection more effectively. To verify our model, we tested three public datasets, including LEVIR-CD, WHU-CD, and DSFIN, and obtained SoTA accuracy. Our code is available at https://github.com/f64051041/SARAS-Net.

We develop a Synthetic Fusion Pyramid Network (SPF-Net) with a scale-aware loss function design for accurate crowd counting. Existing crowd-counting methods assume that the training annotation points were accurate and thus ignore the fact that noisy annotations can lead to large model-learning bias and counting error, especially for counting highly dense crowds that appear far away. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to properly handle such noise at multiple scales in end-to-end loss design and thus push the crowd counting state-of-the-art. We model the noise of crowd annotation points as a Gaussian and derive the crowd probability density map from the input image. We then approximate the joint distribution of crowd density maps with the full covariance of multiple scales and derive a low-rank approximation for tractability and efficient implementation. The derived scale-aware loss function is used to train the SPF-Net. We show that it outperforms various loss functions on four public datasets: UCF-QNRF, UCF CC 50, NWPU and ShanghaiTech A-B datasets. The proposed SPF-Net can accurately predict the locations of people in the crowd, despite training on noisy training annotations., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables

Chi-Fen Huang,1,2,* Yu-Siou Lin,1 Yen-Nan Chiu,3 Susan Shur-Fen Gau,3 Vincent Chin-Hung Chen,4,5 Chiao-Fan Lin,5,6 Yi-Hsuan Hsieh,5,6 Wen-Sheng Liu,7– 11 Hsiang-Lin Chan,5,6,* Yu-Yu Wu1 1Department of Psychiatry, YuNing Psychiatric Clinic, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Department of Psychiatry, Saint Paul’s Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 3Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital and College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Department of Psychiatry, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan; 5Department of Psychiatry, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 6Department of Child Psychiatry, Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 7Faculty of Medicine, School of Medicine, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan; 8College of Science and Engineering, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 9Institute of Food Safety and Health Risk Assessment, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan; 10Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Taipei City Hospital, Zhongxing Branch, Taipei, Taiwan; 11Department of Special Education, University of Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Yu-Yu Wu, Department of Psychiatry, YuNing Psychiatric Clinic, 3F., No. 6, Sec. 2, Fuxing S. Road, Taipei, 10664, Taiwan, Tel +886-2-27080706, Fax +886-2-27080987, Email ruthyuyuwu@gmail.comBackground: The Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) is an essential semi-structured diagnostic tool for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study aims to validate the Chinese version of the ADI-R in Taiwan.Methods: The Chinese version of the ADI-R was translated and back-translated by professional translators and was approved by the original authors. A group of child psychiatrists and psychologists corrected medical terminology for the final version. Then, a total of 74 participants with ASD (male, 59, 79.73%) and 33 control participants without ASD (male, 16, 4

Background: Inappropriate and excessive use of gadgets can cause addiction and interfere with physical, psychological, and emotional health, increase social isolation, and negatively affect development, especially in children. The resulting impact will be greatly influenced by the role of parents, family and the environment. Purpose: This study aims to understand what education can be provided to parents of children with gadget addiction, along with how parents can choose toys and alternative games for children to reduce this gadget addiction. Methods: The design used in this article was a narrative review that involved collecting and analyzing journals using the keywords "addiction", "children", "education", "parent" and "gadget"; this obtained 10 journal articles from PubMed, two journal articles from ScienceDirect, 14 journal articles from Google Scholar published between 2015–2020, three books, and one collection of survey data from the web. Results: There were several strategies that could be applied in managing the use of gadgets by children. The authoritative type of parenting style, good parent-child relationships, parent-child attachment and family environment conditions could also affect the use of gadgets and its impact on children. Parents could additionally provide toys and alternative games suitable for the children’s age, developmental ability and safety needs. Conclusion: Parents are expected to understand how to manage children with gadget addiction and how they can choose toys and alternative games for children to reduce gadget addiction.

Background: Inappropriate and excessive use of gadgets can cause addiction and interfere with physical, psychological, and emotional health, increase social isolation, and negatively affect development, especially in children. The resulting impact will be greatly influenced by the role of parents, family and the environment. Purpose: This study aims to understand what education can be provided to parents of children with gadget addiction, along with how parents can choose toys and alternative games for children to reduce this gadget addiction. Methods: The design used in this article was a narrative review that involved collecting and analyzing journals using the keywords "addiction", "children", "education", "parent" and "gadget"; this obtained 10 journal articles from PubMed, two journal articles from ScienceDirect, 14 journal articles from Google Scholar published between 2015–2020, three books, and one collection of survey data from the web. Results: There were several strategies that could be applied in managing the use of gadgets by children. The authoritative type of parenting style, good parent-child relationships, parent-child attachment and family environment conditions could also affect the use of gadgets and its impact on children. Parents could additionally provide toys and alternative games suitable for the children’s age, developmental ability and safety needs. Conclusion: Parents are expected to understand how to manage children with gadget addiction and how they can choose toys and alternative games for children to reduce gadget addiction.

Efficient acceleration of relativistic electrons at Landau resonance with obliquely propagating whistler-mode chorus emissions is confirmed by theory, simulation, and observation. The acceleration is due to the perpendicular component of the wave electric field. We first review theoretical analysis of nonlinear motion of resonant electrons interacting with obliquely propagating whistler-mode chorus. We have derived formulae of inhomogeneity factors for Landau and cyclotron resonances to analyze nonlinear wave trapping of energetic electrons by an obliquely propagating chorus element. We performed test particle simulations to confirm that nonlinear wave trapping by both Landau and cyclotron resonances can take place for a wide range of energies. For an element of large amplitude chorus waves observed by the Van Allen Probes, we have performed detailed analyses of the wave form data based on theoretical framework of nonlinear trapping of resonant electrons. We compare the efficiencies of accelerations by cyclotron and Landau resonances. We find significant acceleration can take place both in Landau and cyclotron resonances. What controls the dynamics of relativistic electrons in the Landau resonance is the perpendicular field components rather than the parallel electric field of the oblique chorus wave. In evaluating the efficiency of nonlinear trapping, we have taken into account variation of the wave trapping potential structure controlled by the inhomogeneity factors., National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Background: Inappropriate and excessive use of gadgets can cause addiction and interfere with physical, psychological, and emotional health, increase social isolation, and negatively affect development, especially in children. The resulting impact will be greatly influenced by the role of parents, family and the environment. Purpose: This study aims to understand what education can be provided to parents of children with gadget addiction, along with how parents can choose toys and alternative games for children to reduce this gadget addiction. Methods: The design used in this article was a narrative review that involved collecting and analyzing journals using the keywords "addiction", "children", "education", "parent" and "gadget"; this obtained 10 journal articles from PubMed, two journal articles from ScienceDirect, 14 journal articles from Google Scholar published between 2015–2020, three books, and one collection of survey data from the web. Results: There were several strategies that could be applied in managing the use of gadgets by children. The authoritative type of parenting style, good parent-child relationships, parent-child attachment and family environment conditions could also affect the use of gadgets and its impact on children. Parents could additionally provide toys and alternative games suitable for the children’s age, developmental ability and safety needs. Conclusion: Parents are expected to understand how to manage children with gadget addiction and how they can choose toys and alternative games for children to reduce gadget addiction.

Background: Inappropriate and excessive use of gadgets can cause addiction and interfere with physical, psychological, and emotional health, increase social isolation, and negatively affect development, especially in children. The resulting impact will be greatly influenced by the role of parents, family and the environment. Purpose: This study aims to understand what education can be provided to parents of children with gadget addiction, along with how parents can choose toys and alternative games for children to reduce this gadget addiction. Methods: The design used in this article was a narrative review that involved collecting and analyzing journals using the keywords "addiction", "children", "education", "parent" and "gadget"; this obtained 10 journal articles from PubMed, two journal articles from ScienceDirect, 14 journal articles from Google Scholar published between 2015–2020, three books, and one collection of survey data from the web. Results: There were several strategies that could be applied in managing the use of gadgets by children. The authoritative type of parenting style, good parent-child relationships, parent-child attachment and family environment conditions could also affect the use of gadgets and its impact on children. Parents could additionally provide toys and alternative games suitable for the children’s age, developmental ability and safety needs. Conclusion: Parents are expected to understand how to manage children with gadget addiction and how they can choose toys and alternative games for children to reduce gadget addiction.

Robot programming typically makes use of a set of mechanical skills that is acquired by machine learning. Because there is in general no guarantee that machine learning produces robot programs that are free of surprising behavior, the safe execution of a robot program must utilize monitoring modules that take sensor data as inputs in real time to ensure the correctness of the skill execution. Owing to the fact that sensors and monitoring algorithms are usually subject to physical restrictions and that effective robot programming is sensitive to the selection of skill parameters, these considerations may lead to different sensor input qualities such as the view coverage of a vision system that determines whether a skill can be successfully deployed in performing a task. Choosing improper skill parameters may cause the monitoring modules to delay or miss the detection of important events such as a mechanical failure. These failures may reduce the throughput in robotic manufacturing and could even cause a destructive system crash. To address above issues, we propose a sensing quality-aware robot programming system that automatically computes the sensing qualities as a function of the robot's environment and uses the information to guide non-expert users to select proper skill parameters in the programming phase. We demonstrate our system framework on a 6DOF robot arm for an object pick-up task., Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, 1 table; accepted for presentation in IEEE ICRA 2021(IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation)

Yu-Li Su,1,2 Ca Tung Ng,3 Yi-Hua Jan,3 Yi-Lin Hsieh,3 Chia-Ling Wu,3 Kien Thiam Tan3 1Division of Hematology Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University, College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; 2Clinical Trial Center, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; 3ACT Genomics Co., Ltd, Taipei City, TaiwanCorrespondence: Yu-Li SuDivision of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University, College of Medicine, Taiwan No. 123, Dapi Road, Niaosong Dist., Kaohsiung City, 833, TaiwanTel +886-7-7317123 ext. 8303Fax +886-7-7322402Email yolisu@mac.comAbstract: Combined hepatocellular cholangiocarcinoma (cHCC-CC) is a rare subtype of primary liver malignancy characterized by aggressive behavior and poor prognosis. Radial surgical resection is the standard curative treatment. However, effective therapeutic options for recurrent or metastatic cHCC-CC are still lacking, mainly because of an insufficient understanding of the molecular and genomic alterations of cHCC-CC, preventing the discovery of specialized targeting therapy. Here, we present the case of a patient with metastatic cHCC-CC on first-line treatment of gemcitabine, cisplatin, and nab-paclitaxel. A comprehensive genomic profile revealed four clinically relevant single nucleotide variants (BRCA2, PIK3C2G, RET, and TP53), two amplified genomic regions (CRKL and MAPK1), and 11 heterozygous genomic deletions (BAP1, CDKN2A, PTCH1, TSC1, BRCA2, RB1, RAD51, PALB2, TSC2, SMAD4, and STK11). The patient underwent olaparib treatment and achieved a remarkable and sustained tumor response. Our experience indicates that BRCA2 mutations could be a potential therapeutic target for patients with cHCC-CC.Keywords: combined hepatocellular cholangiocarcinoma, BRCA2 mutation, olaparib, comprehensive genomic panel, precision oncology

In comparison with PWM converters, resonant converters are gaining increasing popularity for cases in which efficiency and power density are at a premium. However, the lack of an accurate small-signal model has become an impediment to performance optimization. Many modeling attempts have been made to date. Besides the discrete time-domain modeling, most continuous-time modeling approaches are based on fundamental approximation, and are thus unable to provide sufficient accuracy for practical use. An equivalent circuit model was proposed by Yang, which works well for series resonant converters (SRCs) with high Q (quality factor), but which is inadequate for LLC resonant converters. Furthermore, the model is rather complicated, with system orders that are as high as five and seven for the SRC and LLC converter, respectively. The crux of the modeling difficulty is due to the underlying assumption based on the use of a band-pass filter for the resonant tank in conjunction with a low-pass output filter, which is not the case for most practical applications. The matter is further complicated by the presence of a rectifier, which is a nonlinearity that mixes and matches the original modulation frequency. Thus, the modulation signal becomes intractable when using a frequency-domain modeling approach. This dissertation proposes an extended describing function modeling that is based on a Fourier analysis on the continuous-time-domain waveforms. Therefore, all important contributions from harmonics are taken into account. This modeling approach is demonstrated on the frequency-controlled SRC and LLC converters. The modeling is further extended to, with great accuracy, a charge-controlled LLC converter. In the case of frequency control, a simple third-order equivalent circuit model is provided with high accuracy up to half of the switching frequency. The simplified low-frequency model consists of a double pole and a pair of right-half-plane (RHP) zeros. The double pole, when op

Deep learning-based models have greatly advanced the performance of speech enhancement (SE) systems. However, two problems remain unsolved, which are closely related to model generalizability to noisy conditions: (1) mismatched noisy condition during testing, i.e., the performance is generally sub-optimal when models are tested with unseen noise types that are not involved in the training data; (2) local focus on specific noisy conditions, i.e., models trained using multiple types of noises cannot optimally remove a specific noise type even though the noise type has been involved in the training data. These problems are common in real applications. In this paper, we propose a novel denoising autoencoder with a multi-branched encoder (termed DAEME) model to deal with these two problems. In the DAEME model, two stages are involved: training and testing. In the training stage, we build multiple component models to form a multi-branched encoder based on a decision tree (DSDT). The DSDT is built based on prior knowledge of speech and noisy conditions (the speaker, environment, and signal factors are considered in this paper), where each component of the multi-branched encoder performs a particular mapping from noisy to clean speech along the branch in the DSDT. Finally, a decoder is trained on top of the multi-branched encoder. In the testing stage, noisy speech is first processed by each component model. The multiple outputs from these models are then integrated into the decoder to determine the final enhanced speech. Experimental results show that DAEME is superior to several baseline models in terms of objective evaluation metrics, automatic speech recognition results, and quality in subjective human listening tests.

Recently research on cyberbullying has been extensive, but mostly in Western societies. Cyberbullying is a new and unique form of bullying behaviour, which is affected by several protective and risk factors as well as is associated with behavioural, psychological and health outcomes. This introduction provides a background of cyberbullying in the Asia-Pacific context, summarises seven studies included in this special issue, and suggests a direction for cyberbullying prevention and the youngs well-being.

A fiber-coupled photoconductive antenna (PCA) is a powerful tool for portable terahertz (THz) systems using a compact 1550-nm mode-locked Er:fiber laser with a fiber output port. However, a low-temperature-grown GaAs (LTG-GaAs) PCA could not be used for this purpose due to the need for wavelength conversion of the 1550-nm light, regardless of the good characteristics for PCA. In this article, we achieved the fiber coupling of the 1550-nm mode-locked fiber laser light on a bowtie-shaped LTG-GaAs PCA detector without the need for wavelength conversion. While the two-step photo-absorption mediated by midgap states in the LTG-GaAs PCA makes it possible to use the 1550-nm light, the similarity of the size between the PCA gap spacing and the fiber core diameter enables the direct contact coupling between the fiber output tip and the PCA gap without any optical components. The developed lens-less fiber-coupled LTG-GaAs PCA detector was effectively applied for the absolute frequency measurement of continuous-wave THz radiation based on the photo-carrier THz frequency comb. The combination of the lens-less fiber-coupled LTG-GaAs PCA with the compact 1550-nm fiber laser will be useful for the portable apparatus for the absolute frequency measurement of practical CW-THz sources and other applications.

Aspects of capacitor voltage ripple reduction in modular multilevel converters are described herein. In one embodiment, a power converter system includes a modular multilevel converter (MMC) electrically coupled and configured to convert power between two different power systems. The MMC includes one or more phase legs having a cascade arrangement of switching submodules, where the switching submodules include an arrangement of switching power transistors and capacitors. The MMC further includes a control loop including a differential mode control loop and a common mode control loop. The differential control loop is configured to generate a differential control signal based on a target modulation index to reduce fundamental components of voltage ripple on the capacitors, and the common mode control loop is configured to inject 2nd order harmonic current into a common mode control signal to reduce 2nd order harmonic components of the voltage ripple on the capacitors.

Confocal laser microscopy (CLM) is a powerful tool in life science research and industrial inspection because it offers two-dimensional optical sectioning or three-dimensional imaging capability with micrometer depth selectivity. Furthermore, scan-less imaging modality enables rapid image acquisition and high robustness against surrounding external disturbances in CLM. However, the objects to be measured must be reflective, absorptive, scattering, or fluorescent because the image contrast is given by the optical intensity. If a new image contrast can be provided by the optical phase, scan-less CLMcan be further applied for transparent non-fluorescent objects or reflective objects with nanometer unevenness by providing information on refractive index, optical thickness, or geometrical shape. Here, we report scan-less confocal dual-comb microscopy offering a phase image in addition to an amplitude image with depth selectivity by using an optical frequency comb as an optical carrier of amplitude and phase with discrete ultra-multichannels. Our technique encodes confocal amplitude and phase images of a sample onto a series of discrete modes in the optical frequency comb with well-defined amplitude and phase to establish a one-to-one correspondence between image pixels and comb modes. The technique then decodes these images from comb modes with amplitude and phase. We demonstrate confocal phase imaging with milliradian phase resolution under micrometer depth selectivity on the millisecond timescale. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate the quantitative phase imaging of standing culture fixed cells and the surface topography of nanometer-scale step structures. Our technique for confocal phase imaging will find applications in three-dimensional visualization of stacked living cells in culture and nanometer surface topography of semiconductor objects.

Meng-Ju Tsai,1 Yi-Ting Hsieh,1,2 Yi-Jie Peng1 1Department of Ophthalmology, Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei, Taiwan; 2Department of Ophthalmology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan Aim: To compare the efficacy and safety between posterior sub-tenon injection of triamcinolone acetonide (PSTA) and intravitreal injection of bevacizumab (Avastin) (IVIA) in the treatment of macular edema secondary to retinal vein occlusion. Patients and methods: A total of 45 eyes were retrospectively enrolled (23 eyes with intravitreal bevacizumab and 22 eyes with posterior sub-tenon triamcinolone acetonide). Main endpoints included logMAR of best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), central macular thickness (CMT), and intraocular pressure (IOP) before and after treatment at 6 months. Results: The mean logMAR improved from 0.78 to 0.56 at 6 months for intravitreal bevacizumab (p=0.001), and from 0.91 to 0.79 and 0.87 at 3 and 6 months (p=0.038 and 0.13), respectively, for sub-tenon triamcinolone acetonide. At 6 months, the BCVA was significantly better in the bevacizumab group (p=0.02). Both groups’ mean CMT significantly improved, from 478 µm at baseline to 295 µm at 6 months in IVIA group (p<0.001) and from 419 µm at baseline to 350 µm in PSTA group (p=0.012); however, this was not different between the groups at 6 months (p=0.065). Recurrence of macular edema was not different between the groups either (p=0.08). Poorer final vision was associated with poorer baseline BCVA and diagnosis of central retinal vein occlusion after adjustment for age and sex (p<0.001 and 0.012, respectively). Significant elevation of IOP was noted at 3 months in the PSTA group, but declined at 6 months compared with baseline (p=0.002 and 0.41, respectively). Conclusion: Intravitreal bevacizumab seemed to achieve better visual acuity compared with posterior sub-tenon injections of triamcinol

Chiao-Fan Lin,1,2,* Hsiang-Lin Chan,1,2 Yi-Hsuan Hsieh,1,2 Hsin-Yi Liang,1,2 Wei-Che Chiu,3,4,* Yena Lee,5 Roger S McIntyre,5,6 Vincent Chin-Hung Chen2,7,81Department of Child Psychiatry, Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 2Department of Psychiatry, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 3Department of Psychiatry, Cathay General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; 4School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei, Taiwan; 5Mood Disorders Psychopharmacology Unit, Brain and Cognition Discovery Foundation, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 6Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 7Medical Research Department, Health Information and Epidemiology Laboratory, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan; 8Department of Psychiatry, Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan*These authors contributed equally to this work Background: The association between antidepressant exposure and nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) has not been previously explored. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between antidepressant prescription, including novel antidepressants, and the risk of NPC in a population-based study.Materials and methods: Data for the analysis were derived from National Health Insurance Research Database. We identified 16,957 cases with a diagnosis of NPC and 83,231 matched controls by using a nested case–control design. A conditional logistic regression model was used, with adjustments for potentially confounding variables (eg, comorbid physical diseases, comorbid psychiatric diseases, and other medications).Results: We report no association between NPC incidence and antidepressant prescription. For all classes of antidepressants, antidepressant exposure, regardless of cumulative dose, had no significant effect on NPC incidence (adjusted odds ratio of cumulative selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor exposure ≥336 defined daily dose was 1.18 [95% CI: 0.

Spectroscopic ellipsometry is a means of investigating optical and dielectric material responses. Conventional spectroscopic ellipsometry is subject to trade-offs between spectral accuracy, resolution, and measurement time. Polarization modulation has afforded poor performance because of its sensitivity to mechanical vibrational noise, thermal instability, and polarization-wavelength dependency. We combine spectroscopic ellipsometry with dual-comb spectroscopy, namely, dual-comb spectroscopic ellipsometry. Dual-comb spectroscopic ellipsometry (DCSE). DCSE directly and simultaneously obtains the ellipsometric parameters of the amplitude ratio and phase difference between s-polarized and p-polarized light signals with ultra-high spectral resolution and no polarization modulation, beyond the conventional limit. Ellipsometric evaluation without polarization modulation also enhances the stability and robustness of the system. In this study, we construct a polarization-modulation-free DCSE system with a spectral resolution of up to 1.2 × 10−5 nm throughout the spectral range of 1514–1595 nm and achieved an accuracy of 38.4 nm and a precision of 3.3 nm in the measurement of thin-film samples.

The prevention of domestic violence (DV) have aroused serious concerns in Taiwan because of the disparity between the increasing amount of reported DV cases that doubled over the past decade and the scarcity of social workers. Additionally, a large amount of data was collected when social workers use the predominant case management approach to document case reports information. However, these data were not properly stored or organized. To improve the efficiency of DV prevention and risk management, we worked with Taipei City Government and utilized the 2015 data from its DV database to perform a spatial pattern analysis of the reports of DV cases to build a DV risk map. However, during our map building process, the issue of confounding bias arose because we were not able to verify if reported cases truly reflected real violence occurrence or were simply false reports from potential victim's neighbors. Therefore, we used the random forest method to build a repeat victimization risk prediction model. The accuracy and F1-measure of our model were 96.3% and 62.8%. This model helped social workers differentiate the risk level of new cases, which further reduced their major workload significantly. To our knowledge, this is the first project that utilized machine learning in DV prevention. The research approach and results of this project not only can improve DV prevention process, but also be applied to other social work or criminal prevention areas., Comment: Presented at the Data For Good Exchange 2017

Background The paired homeobox protein Pax6 is essential for proliferation and pluripotency of retinal progenitors. However, temporal changes in Pax6 protein expression associated with the generation of various retinal neurons have not been characterized with regard to the cell cycle. Here, we examine the dynamic changes of Pax6 expression among chicken retinal progenitors as they progress through the neurogenic cell cycle, and determine the effects of altered Pax6 levels on retinogenesis. Results We provide evidence that during the preneurogenic to neurogenic transition, Pax6 protein levels in proliferating progenitor cells are down-regulated. Neurogenic retinal progenitors retain a relatively low level of Pax6 protein, whereas postmitotic neurons either elevate or extinguish Pax6 expression in a cell type-specific manner. Cell imaging and cell cycle analyses show that neurogenic progenitors in the S phase of the cell cycle contain low levels of Pax6 protein, whereas a subset of progenitors exhibits divergent levels of Pax6 protein upon entering the G2 phase of the cell cycle. We also show that M phase cells contain varied levels of Pax6, and some correlate with the onset of early neuronal marker expression, forecasting cell cycle exit and cell fate commitment. Furthermore, either elevating or knocking down Pax6 attenuates cell proliferation and results in increased cell death. Reducing Pax6 decreases retinal ganglion cell genesis and enhances cone photoreceptor and amacrine interneuron production, whereas elevating Pax6 suppresses cone photoreceptor and amacrine cell fates. Conclusion These studies demonstrate for the first time quantitative changes in Pax6 protein expression during the preneurogenic to neurogenic transition and during the neurogenic cell cycle. The results indicate that Pax6 protein levels are stringently controlled in proliferating progenitors. Maintaining a relatively low Pax6 protein level is necessary for S phase re-entry, whereas ra

Background The paired homeobox protein Pax6 is essential for proliferation and pluripotency of retinal progenitors. However, temporal changes in Pax6 protein expression associated with the generation of various retinal neurons have not been characterized with regard to the cell cycle. Here, we examine the dynamic changes of Pax6 expression among chicken retinal progenitors as they progress through the neurogenic cell cycle, and determine the effects of altered Pax6 levels on retinogenesis. Results We provide evidence that during the preneurogenic to neurogenic transition, Pax6 protein levels in proliferating progenitor cells are down-regulated. Neurogenic retinal progenitors retain a relatively low level of Pax6 protein, whereas postmitotic neurons either elevate or extinguish Pax6 expression in a cell type-specific manner. Cell imaging and cell cycle analyses show that neurogenic progenitors in the S phase of the cell cycle contain low levels of Pax6 protein, whereas a subset of progenitors exhibits divergent levels of Pax6 protein upon entering the G2 phase of the cell cycle. We also show that M phase cells contain varied levels of Pax6, and some correlate with the onset of early neuronal marker expression, forecasting cell cycle exit and cell fate commitment. Furthermore, either elevating or knocking down Pax6 attenuates cell proliferation and results in increased cell death. Reducing Pax6 decreases retinal ganglion cell genesis and enhances cone photoreceptor and amacrine interneuron production, whereas elevating Pax6 suppresses cone photoreceptor and amacrine cell fates. Conclusion These studies demonstrate for the first time quantitative changes in Pax6 protein expression during the preneurogenic to neurogenic transition and during the neurogenic cell cycle. The results indicate that Pax6 protein levels are stringently controlled in proliferating progenitors. Maintaining a relatively low Pax6 protein level is necessary for S phase re-entry, whereas ra

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Education and Professional Studies, Arts, Education and Law, Since the modern Refugee and Humanitarian Programme began in 1977, around 14,000 refugees have been granted residency in Australia every year, with Muslim communities now representing more than 50 per cent of the intake. Most of these refugees entering Australia speak little, if any, English, have little or no education in their first language, and most do not possess employment skills or qualifications valued in the Australian workplace. The Federal Government thus offers them English language training within the Adult Migrant English Programme (AMEP) and the Skills for Education and Employment (SEE) programme. These programmes aim to provide refugee migrants with enough English proficiency to gain employment in Australia, and to successfully participate socially and economically in Australian society. However, there has been only limited research specifically centred on these Federal English training programmes. In particular, there have been no in-depth studies centred on the opinions of the actual refugee clients attending these programmes. The research in this thesis thus investigates the perspectives of a group of eight male Muslim refugees on the effectiveness of the Federal English Language Training Programmes in facilitating their settlement and employment in Australia. Male Muslim refugees were chosen as participants as they represent a particularly disadvantaged, but under-researched, minority social group in Australian society. A qualitative research design and methodology was adopted for this research, framed within a socio-critical (transformative) research paradigm. Data was collected using in-depth, semi- structured interviews, and then analysed and described using the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of field, capital and habitus. The findings from this research suggest that there may be a number of key problems with the language training programmes. Most of the refugees in the study failed to find consistent employment, a

Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy is a promising method for analysing polar gas molecules mixed with unwanted aerosols due to its ability to obtain spectral fingerprints of rotational transition and immunity to aerosol scattering. In this article, dynamic THz spectroscopy of acetonitrile (CH3CN) gas was performed in the presence of smoke under the atmospheric pressure using a fibre-based, asynchronous-optical-sampling THz time-domain spectrometer. To match THz spectral signatures of gas molecules at atmospheric pressure, the spectral resolution was optimized to 1 GHz with a measurement rate of 1 Hz. The spectral overlapping of closely packed absorption lines significantly boosted the detection limit to 200 ppm when considering all the spectral contributions of the numerous absorption lines from 0.2 THz to 1 THz. Temporal changes of the CH3CN gas concentration were monitored under the smoky condition at the atmospheric pressure during volatilization of CH3CN droplets and the following diffusion of the volatilized CH3CN gas without the influence of scattering or absorption by the smoke. This system will be a powerful tool for real-time monitoring of target gases in practical applications of gas analysis in the atmospheric pressure, such as combustion processes or fire accident.

Since the modern Refugee and Humanitarian Programme began in 1977, around 14,000 refugees have been granted residency in Australia every year, with Muslim communities now representing more than 50 per cent of the intake. Most of these refugees entering Australia speak little, if any, English, have little or no education in their first language, and most do not possess employment skills or qualifications valued in the Australian workplace. The Federal Government thus offers them English language training within the Adult Migrant English Programme (AMEP) and the Skills for Education and Employment (SEE) programme. These programmes aim to provide refugee migrants with enough English proficiency to gain employment in Australia, and to successfully participate socially and economically in Australian society. However, there has been only limited research specifically centred on these Federal English training programmes. In particular, there have been no in-depth studies centred on the opinions of the actual refugee clients attending these programmes. The research in this thesis thus investigates the perspectives of a group of eight male Muslim refugees on the effectiveness of the Federal English Language Training Programmes in facilitating their settlement and employment in Australia. Male Muslim refugees were chosen as participants as they represent a particularly disadvantaged, but under-researched, minority social group in Australian society. A qualitative research design and methodology was adopted for this research, framed within a socio-critical (transformative) research paradigm. Data was collected using in-depth, semi- structured interviews, and then analysed and described using the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of field, capital and habitus. The findings from this research suggest that there may be a number of key problems with the language training programmes. Most of the refugees in the study failed to find consistent employment, a, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Education and Professional Studies, Arts, Education and Law, Full Text

Hsiang-Lin Chan,1,2,* Wen-Sheng Liu,3–6,* Yi-Hsuan Hsieh,1,2 Chiao-Fan Lin,1,2 Tiing-Soon Ling,2,7 Yu-Shu Huang1,2 1Department of Child Psychiatry, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, 2College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, 3Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Taipei City Hospital, Zhong-Xing Branch, Taipei, Taiwan; 4School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 5Institute of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 6College of Science and Engineering, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan; 7Department of Family Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan, Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Objectives: This study aimed to estimate the percentages of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Taiwanese aboriginal preschool children. Child development level was compared between the two groups. Methods: Teachers completed screening questionnaires for ADHD, ASD, and development level for 36- to 72-month-old children in kindergartens in Taiwan. The questionnaire results were compared between the aboriginal and nonaboriginal children. One child psychiatrist then interviewed the aboriginal preschool children to determine if they had ADHD and/or ASD. Results: We collected 93 questionnaires from the aboriginal group and 60 from the nonaboriginal group. In the aboriginal group, 5.37% of the children were identified to have ADHD, while 1.08% were identified to have ASD. Significantly fewer aboriginal children had developmental delays for situation comprehension and personal–social development (P=0.012 and 0.002, respectively) than nonaboriginal children. Conclusion: Aboriginal children in Taiwan had typical percentages of ADHD and ASD compared to those published in the literature. Aboriginal children showed relative strengths in situation com

Humans perceive a stable average intensity image without flicker artifacts when a television or monitor updates at a sufficiently fast rate. This rate, known as the critical flicker fusion rate, has been studied for both spatially uniform lights, and spatio-temporal displays. These studies have included both stabilized and unstablized retinal images, and report the maximum observable rate as 50-90 Hz. A separate line of research has reported that fast eye movements known as saccades allow simple modulated LEDs to be observed at very high rates. Here we show that humans perceive visual flicker artifacts at rates over 500 Hz when a display includes high frequency spatial edges. This rate is many times higher than previously reported. As a result, modern display designs which use complex spatio-temporal coding need to update much faster than conventional TVs, which traditionally presented a simple sequence of natural images.

Humans perceive a stable average intensity image without flicker artifacts when a television or monitor updates at a sufficiently fast rate. This rate, known as the critical flicker fusion rate, has been studied for both spatially uniform lights, and spatio-temporal displays. These studies have included both stabilized and unstablized retinal images, and report the maximum observable rate as 50-90 Hz. A separate line of research has reported that fast eye movements known as saccades allow simple modulated LEDs to be observed at very high rates. Here we show that humans perceive visual flicker artifacts at rates over 500 Hz when a display includes high frequency spatial edges. This rate is many times higher than previously reported. As a result, modern display designs which use complex spatio-temporal coding need to update much faster than conventional TVs, which traditionally presented a simple sequence of natural images.

Terahertz (THz) dual comb spectroscopy (DCS) is a promising method for high-accuracy, high-resolution, broadband THz spectroscopy because the mode-resolved THz comb spectrum includes both broadband THz radiation and narrow-line CW-THz radiation characteristics. In addition, all frequency modes of a THz comb can be phase-locked to a microwave frequency standard, providing excellent traceability. However, the need for stabilization of dual femtosecond lasers has often hindered its wide use. To overcome this limitation, here we have demonstrated adaptive-sampling THz-DCS, allowing the use of free-running femtosecond lasers. To correct the fluctuation of the time and frequency scales caused by the laser timing jitter, an adaptive sampling clock is generated by dual THz-comb-referenced spectrum analysers and is used for a timing clock signal in a data acquisition board. The results not only indicated the successful implementation of THz-DCS with free-running lasers but also showed that this configuration outperforms standard THz-DCS with stabilized lasers due to the slight jitter remained in the stabilized lasers.

The Thirteenth East Asia-Pacific Conference on Structural Engineering and Construction (EASEC-13), September 11-13, 2013, Sapporo, Japan.

This is a project-based thesis work initiated by Nokia Research Center. The goal of this project is to investigate deformable user interfaces (DUIs) on mobile devices. Following background studies and identification of the research questions, various design methodologies were developed to encounter the new interaction style. An exploratory experiment was designed to study the role of form in DUI design. The purpose is to find insights from people’s instinct and tactile sense and to study dimensional properties on flexible materials. Another workshop was arranged so that experts in design and engineering experienced a whole design process for bridging form factors and applications with interaction. During the workshop, the context which is the detaching of touch interface users with the immediate environment was studied. Through these two activities, a set of design cues for deformable mobile devices was thus derived. The method of research through design has been the backbone of this thesis work. Numerous prototypes were implemented as physical representation of the hypotheses in each stage. At last, a working prototype was constructed. Consisting of a flexible mobile device and an information system, the prototype enables deformable interaction with information distributed in the space. A set of user test was conducted accordingly. Through these design activities, the role of form factors in mobile DUIs was examined. Moreover, it can be concluded that physical deformation in DUIs results in more engaging experiences than touch interfaces.

We evaluated the predictive ability of a one-dimensional coupled hydrodynamic-biogeochemical model across multiple temporal scales using wavelet analysis and traditional goodness-of-fit metrics. High-frequency in situ automated sensor data and long-term manual observational data from Lake Mendota, Wisconsin, USA, were used to parameterize, calibrate, and evaluate model predictions. We focused specifically on short-term predictions of temperature, dissolved oxygen, and phytoplankton biomass over one season. Traditional goodness-of-fit metrics indicated more accurate prediction of physics than chemical or biological variables in the time domain. This was confirmed by wavelet analysis in both the time and frequency domains. For temperature, predicted and observed global wavelet spectra were closely related, while observed dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll fluorescence spectral characteristics were not reproduced by the model for key time scales, indicating that processes not modeled may be important drivers of the observed signal. Although the magnitude and timing of physical and biological changes were simulated adequately at the seasonal time scale through calibration, time scale-specific dynamics, for example short-term cycles, were difficult to reproduce, and were relatively insensitive to the effects of varying parameters. The use of wavelet analysis is novel to aquatic ecosystem modeling, is complementary to traditional goodness-of-fit metrics, and allows for assessment of variability at specific temporal scales. In this way, the effect of processes operating at distinct temporal scales can be isolated and better understood, both in situ and in silico. Wavelet transforms are particularly well suited for assessment of temporal and spatial heterogeneity when coupled to high-frequency data from automated in situ or remote sensing platforms.