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Chinese dialects discrimination is a challenging natural language processing task due to scarce annotation resource. In this article, we develop a novel Chinese dialects discrimination framework with transfer learning and data augmentation (CDDTLDA) in order to overcome the shortage of resources. To be more specific, we first use a relatively larger Chinese dialects corpus to train a source-side automatic speech recognition (ASR) model. Then, we adopt a simple but effective data augmentation method (i.e., speed, pitch, and noise disturbance) to augment the target-side low-resource Chinese dialects, and fine-tune another target ASR model based on the previous source-side ASR model. Meanwhile, the potential common semantic features between source-side and target-side ASR models can be captured by using self-attention mechanism. Finally, we extract the hidden semantic representation in the target ASR model to conduct Chinese dialects discrimination. Our extensive experimental results demonstrate that our model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods on two benchmark Chinese dialects corpora.

The rapid development of the cosmetics industry and the high competition in the cosmetics market in Indonesia impact consumers. The market has many available choices of cosmetics products, and this situation causes many consumers to switch brands. The research aimed to analyze the suitability of Sharia about cosmetics products from Nu Skin and the factors that influenced the brand switching of the cosmetics product with multi-level marketing. The research applied a quantitative and descriptive approach. Data collection from respondents was carried out with a structured questionnaire. The respondents were consumers who had bought and used Nu Skin products. Around 150 respondents were selected through the purposive sampling method. Then, the researchers used the LISREL software. The connection between the variables was investigated by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings indicate that Word of Mouth (WOM) and marketing mix significantly influence the brand image of the cosmetics products. Similarly, religiosity and marketing mix have a significant influence on brand attitude. Then, brand image and brand attitude have a significant effect on brand switching. However, religiosity has no significant effect on brand switching. For marketing practitioners, the results can be considered in terms of marketing strategy in consumers’ habits of accessing social media to read product reviews from their friends who have used Nu Skin products before. The more people review and recommend the products to others, the higher the consumers’ interest is in buying Nu Skin products, and the smaller the intensity is involved in brand switching behavior. The research offers a new insight regarding the influencing factors of brand switching of halal cosmetics products through multi-level marketing.

Due to the rising health issues and changes in people's daily routines, people became more health conscious over the past few decades. As a result, along with the rapid growth in mobile phones and emerging activity tracking devices, lots of mobile applications were introduced to track and encourage people's daily exercise routines. Among these applications, Global Position System (GPS) technology-based applications facilitate users to visualize their jogging/running trail in a 2-dimensional view on a google map and share it with friends. This paper suggests a methodology to enhance the visualization from 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional and more realistic visual interpretation by developing a Hyperlapse video using Google Street View Images.

Esophageal cancer (EC) is one of the most aggressive cancer and ranks the sixth leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, approximately 70% of global esophageal carcinoma cases occur in China and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the most frequent histological subtype of EC. Lacking of reliable early diagnostic markers and efficient medical and surgical treatment approaches, the five-year survival rate of ESCC is only about 4.4%.Therefore exploration of the genetic basis and the affiliated molecular mechanisms in ESCC could be beneficial to improve the diagnosis, therapy, and prevention of this disease. As an important telomere binding protein, TPP1 protects the ends of telomeres and maintains the genomic stability and integrity of chromosomes in eukaryotes. Previous investigation discovered that TPP1 might play an important role in the carcinogenesis and progression of some cancers. However, whether and/or how TPP1 participates in ESCC remains unclear. Here TPP1 was studied in 65 ESCC patients’ specimens including tumor tissue, the adjacent tissue, and the peripheral blood leukocytes, also the ESCC cell lines were employed to further explore the molecular mechanisms of TPP1 involved in the tumorigenesis of ESCC. In this study, TPP1 mRNA and protein were measured in the ESCC tissue specimens, peripheral blood leukocytes and also in ESCC cell lines using real time RT-PCR and Western Blot. The results showed that TPP1 mRNA level was significantly higher in ESCC tumor tissues compared with the adjacent tissues (P To further explore the potential biological function of TPP1 in ESCC, stably- transfecting shRNA-TPP1 (sh-TPP1) and shRNA-Negative Control (sh-NC) expression constructs in ESCC cell lines were performed to study TPP1’s roles in ESCC. The colongenic assay showed that depletion of TPP1 decreased ESCC cells proliferation and cell growth, and the wound healing experiment and cell invasion transwell chamber test demonstrated that down-regulation of TPP1 suppressed the cell migration and invasion capabilities in vitro. Taken together, our findings revealed that TPP1 might play crucial roles in the pathogenesis of ESCC and targeting TPP1 could be a valuable potential for ESCC early diagnosis, intervention and therapeutics. Note: This abstract was not presented at the meeting. Citation Format: Lihua Yao, Jiang Zou, Ru Sun, Jiajing Cai, Guangcheng Huang, Qiang Ma, Lei Xu, Mayong Fu, Xiaolan Guo. Study on telomere shelterin component TPP1 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5745. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-5745

In order to improve the thawing efficiency of the high voltage electrostatic field (HVEF) formed by a wire electrode, the author investigated the effects of various physical factors on the thawing rate of HVEF. By changing the voltage, electrode spacing and the distance between the two neighboring wires, the factors related to the thawing rate and thawing energy consumption were quantitatively studied. The results indicate the HVEF can improve the thawing rate significantly, with 45 kV, the thawing rate of the ice is almost 3.5 times as much as that of control at the same temperature. When the supplied voltage is not changed, the thawing rate of the ice is changed with the distance between the two neighboring wires, and, when the distance between the two neighboring wires is constant, the thawing rate of the ice is changed with the electrode spacing. When electrode spacing is 10 cm and the distance between the two neighboring wires is 8 cm, the thawing rate is the largest.