Search

Recent years have witnessed notable advancements in medical image segmentation through deep convolutional neural networks. However, a notable limitation lies in the local operation of convolution, which hinders the ability to fully exploit global semantic information. To overcome the challenges prevalent in medical image segmentation, the feature ensemble network with multi‐scale atrous transformer is proposed. At the core of the approach lies the multi‐scale contextual integration module, which is based on the multi‐scale atrous transformer and facilitates contextual integration of multi‐level features. To extract discriminative fine‐grained features of the target region, a hybrid attention mechanism that synergistically combines spatial and channel attention, thereby sharpening the model's focus on crucial target information within high‐level features, is incorporated. Additionally, the channel‐aware feature reconstruction module is introduced as an innovative component engineered to tackle feature similarity issues across different categories. This module performs feature reconstruction based on channel perception, effectively widening the feature gap between categories and enhancing the segmentation capability. It is worth mentioning that our approach surpasses the state‐of‐the‐art method using three benchmark datasets in medical image segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, "cultural tightness–looseness" refers to the strength of social norms and tolerance for deviant behaviors perceived by individuals in society, and team cultural tightness applied at the organizational level represents the strength of team norms. According to the cultural tightness–looseness theory, this study explores the influence of team cultural tightness on employee creative behavior, as well as the moderating role of transformational leadership and the mediating role of work engagement. A questionnaire method was used to survey five enterprise organizations in China through three stages, and 288 paired questionnaires were finally obtained from leaders and employees. The results found that team cultural tightness has a significant negative effect on employee creative behavior through the mediating effect of work engagement. In other words, the more the team culture in the workplace tends to be loose, the more it stimulates employee work engagement, which in turn promotes employee creative behavior. In addition, transformational leadership played a significant positive moderating role in the model. Under the influence of transformational leadership style, the negative impact of team cultural tightness on employee work engagement and creative behavior can be mitigated. The study enriches the understanding of the influence and action mechanism of the cultural tightness–looseness theory on employee creative behavior. In future research, the action mechanism of team cultural tightness interacting with different leadership styles to influence employee creative behavior will be explored more deeply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focused on the structural behavior of double barrel precast concrete (PC) box culverts where the width of each barrel may vary from that of the other. In lieu of using the elastic foundation beam method, current design codes specify use of reaction method to evaluate the internal force distribution between the two culvert segments. On the basis of a parametric study, a modification of reaction method was proposed to consider the effects of foundation stiffness and structural configuration. The proposed method predicted well the structural behavior of the structure on ground. Further, the structural integrity of each PC segment and between the segments is significantly affected by the sectional layout of posttensioning bars because the cross‐sectional area of the culvert is large. Significant stress concentration and nonuniform stress distribution also affects waterproofing performance of elastic sealing rubber strips at joint interfaces. To evaluate this, numerical analysis was performed with various sectional layouts of posttensioning bars. The distribution and average value of stresses were significantly affected by the posttensioning bar layout. Results of this study can be used as reference for design methods associated with double barrel PC box culverts where width of each barrel may vary from that of the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]