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Multimodal therapies have been regarded as promising strategies for cancer treatment as compared to conventional drug delivery systems that have various drawbacks in either low loading content, uncontrolled release, non-targeting or biotoxicity. We have developed a multifunctional three-dimensional tumor-targeting drug delivery system, Fe3O4@UIO-66-NH2/graphdiyne (FUGY), based on the hybridization of a novel two-dimensional material, graphdiyne (GDY), with a metal organic framework (MOFs) structure, Fe3O4@UIO-66-NH2 (FU). The FU MOF structure has superior ability for magnetic targeting, and was constructed by an in situ growth method in which it was surface-installed with GDY via amide bonds, as a carrier of anticancer drugs. The anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded onto FUGY and served as both an anticancer drug to treat the tumor and a fluorescence probe to ascertain the location of FUGY. The results show that FUGY exhibits a high drug loading content of 43.8% and an effective drug release around the tumor cells at pH 5.0. In particular, fluorescence imaging demonstrates that FUGY can deliver more anticancer drugs to tumor tissue than conventional drug delivery systems. Furthermore, FUGY exhibits superior therapeutic efficiencies with negligible side effects as compared to the direct administration of free DOX, both in vitro and in vivo. The obtained FUGY drug delivery system possesses ideal biocompatibility, sustained drug release, effective chemotherapeutic efficacy, and specific targeting abilities. Such a multimodal therapeutic system can facilitate new possibilities for multifunctional drug delivery systems.

C-type lectins (CTLs) recognize various glycoconjugates through carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs) and they play important roles in immune responses. In this study, comparative genomic analysis of CTLs were performed in 7 holometabolous species. CTL-S1 to S8 and CTL-X1 to X4 orthologous groups existed in the 7 species, while CTL-X5 group with dual-CRD, CTL-S11 group with triple-CRD, CTL-S9 group with a long C-terminus and Lepidopteran specific CTL-S10 group were not conserved. SliCTL-S12 to S14 cluster was only present in Spodoptera litura, and CTL-S genes were expanded on chromosomes 2 L and 2 R in Drosophila melanogaster. Most IMLs were clustered into three groups and the numbers of IMLs vary among species due to gene duplications. D. melanogaster specific CTLs and Lepidopteran IMLs within each of the three groups evolved more rapidly with higher dN/dS ratios. Two CRDs in IMLs clustered into two clades, with conserved Cys4-Cys5 and Cys1-Cys2 bonds in the first and second CRDs, respectively. The CTL-S and CTL-X family members in S. litura were mainly expressed in the fat body of 5th but not 6th instar larvae, and responded differently to S. litura nucleopolyhedrovirus (SpltNPV) and Nomuraea rileyi infection. The transcription levels of SliCTLs that expressed in fat body but not highly expressed in hemocytes were decreased at the middle and late stages of SpltNPV infection, and the mRNA levels of SliCTLs highly or specifically expressed in hemocytes were mainly decreased by SpltlNPV, N. rileyi and Bacillus thuringiensis infection. These results provide valuable information for further exploration of CTL functions in host-pathogen interaction.

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in China was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31, 2019, and the first cases were officially identified around December 8, 2019. Although the origin of COVID-19 has not been confirmed, approximately half of the early cases were linked to a seafood market in Wuhan. However, the first two documented patients did not visit the seafood market. News reports, social media, and informal sources may provide information about outbreaks prior to formal notification. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify early signals of pneumonia or severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) in China prior to official recognition of the COVID-19 outbreak in December 2019 using open-source data. METHODS To capture early reports, we searched an open source epidemic observatory, EpiWatch, for SARI or pneumonia-related illnesses in China from October 1, 2019. The searches were conducted using Google and the Chinese search engine Baidu. RESULTS There was an increase in reports following the official notification of COVID-19 to the WHO on December 31, 2019, and a report that appeared on December 26, 2019 was retracted. A report of severe pneumonia on November 22, 2019, in Xiangyang was identified, and a potential index patient was retrospectively identified on November 17. CONCLUSIONS The lack of reports of SARI outbreaks prior to December 31, 2019, with a retracted report on December 26, suggests media censorship, given that formal reports indicate that cases began appearing on December 8. However, the findings also support a relatively recent origin of COVID-19 in November 2019. The case reported on November 22 was transferred to Wuhan approximately one incubation period before the first identified cases on December 8; this case should be further investigated, as only half of the early cases were exposed to the seafood market in Wuhan. Another case of COVID-19 has since been retrospectively identified in Hubei on November 17, 2019, suggesting that the infection was present prior to December.

Knowledge of the adsorption reactions between serine and minerals is critical to understanding the geochemical processes of amino acids (i.e., mobility, bioavailability, and degradation) in the environment. Attenuated total reflectance Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) flow-cell measurements were used to distinguish the inner- and outer-sphere complexation and reveal the dynamic adsorption and desorption processes of each surface complex at the molecular level. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were applied to determine the structures of the surface complexes and to justify the peak assignments of the serine dissolved in solution and adsorbed on TiO2. The structures of interfacial serine were governed by pH conditions but were not affected by the changes in adsorption time and serine concentration. The ATR-FTIR spectra and the results of DFT calculations resolved two different bidentate inner-sphere coordination, involving the COO− group of the serine zwitterion at pH 4–8 and the serine anion at pH 10. The dynamic adsorption processes of these two surface complexes conformed to the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The stable inner-sphere complexation could not be entirely removed from the TiO2 surface upon serine desorption. In addition to reducing the migration rate in the environment, the bidentate inner-sphere coordination contributes to the potential degradation of the serine NH3+ and NH2 groups. Our research provides new insights into serine adsorption and desorption, facilitating further understanding of the fate and transport of amino acids in the environment.

As a novel two-dimensional material consisting of sp- and sp2-hybridized carbon atoms, graphdiyne (GD) shows great potentials in the field of electric and material science. In particular, the performance is reported to be significantly improved for GD-involved optoelectronic devices due to its excellent electronic properties. Herein, to facilitate the charge transfer process and further improve the photo-to-electricity conversion efficiency (PCE) for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), for the first time we introduced GD in the TiO2(P25)-based photoanodes of DSSCs, resulting in GD-doped TiO2 photoanodes. It was shown that the overall performance of the GD-doped cell is significantly enhanced due to the higher dye adsorption amount, faster electron transfer and lower recombination, compared to that of the undoped DSSC. Furthermore, the optimum GD doping amount (weight percent, wt%) was determined. Thus, the DSSC involving P25-0.6 wt% GD photoanode achieved the best PCE of 8.03%, which increased by 26.5% comparing with that of pure P25 film-based cell.

A BODIPY-based mitochondria-targeted fluorescent probe (BODIPY-DMTC) was synthesized for selective determination of hypochlorite (ClO−) over other reactive oxygen species (ROS) or reactive nitrogen species (RNS). The phenolic hydroxyl protecting group dimethylthiocarbamates (DMTC) was introduced to BODIPY framework, specifically recognizing exogenous and endogenous ClO− by the “deprotection” of hydroxyl group. The response process was monitored in real-time by titration assays of mass spectra and 1H NMR. The emission response of probe to ClO− presented a good linear relationship in 0–100 μM concentration range, and the detection limit of 95 nM was observed. Also, the current probe was used to successfully visualize endogenous ClO− in zebrafish embryos.

In this study, graphdiyne (GD)-hybridized nitrogen-doped TiO2 nanosheets with exposed (001) facets (GD-NTNS) have been prepared via a hydrothermal reaction and utilized as photocatalyst for the photodegradation of rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light illumination. The resultant GD-NTNS composites exhibit superior visible light photocatalytic activity than that of the bare TiO2 nanosheets (TNS) and nitrogen-doped TiO2 nanosheets (NTNS). The enhanced photoactivity can be attributed to the synergistic effects of GD and nitrogen doping with efficient electron transfer and strong visible light absorption. It has been revealed that ·O2− and h+ are the major species for the enhanced photoactivity under visible light. Our work will facilitate the potential for future design of hybrid materials for practical applications beyond photocatalysts.

Fishery-dependent catch per unit effort (CPUE) data have been used as an abundance index (AI) in fish stock assessments. However, fishery-dependent CPUE data are influenced not only by changes in fish abundance but also by other factors, such as the choice or restrictions of fishing grounds to operate. Accordingly, bias may arise in AIs due to a lack of data from unfished or rarely fished areas. To improve the accuracy of AI estimates, spatially arranged CPUE datasets from both trawl fisheries and research vessel surveys in the East China Sea were concurrently analyzed in the present study using a multivariate autoregressive state-space (MARSS) model. Survey datasets complemented information on stock status in the fishing areas where fishery-dependent datasets were limited. As a result, the combined use of datasets from both sources effectively improved the accuracy of estimates of AIs and the spatial distribution of the population density of each fish species.

SiO2 has attracted considerable attention for the application of next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) because of its evident merits, such as large capacity, high natural abundance and low price. Nevertheless, the huge volume inflation and inferior electronic conductivity lead to material degradation and hamper its extensive use. To resolve these challenges, a series of SiO2-M-C (M = Fe, Ni, Cu, C = acetylene black) composites are prepared via a straightforward high energy mechanical milling (HEMM) method. Herein, the M nanoparticles can boost the electronic conductivity and ameliorate electrochemical activity of SiO2 through the catalytic effect of M in breaking Si-O and Li-O bonds, while C can offer a highly conducting assistance to effectively deter agglomeration and pulverization of SiO2 nanoparticles. Superiorly, SiO2-Fe-C reveals exceptional performances with a high initial Coulombic efficiency (CE) of 70.4% at 0.2 A g−1 and long cycle stability under different high current densities (335.6 mAh g−1 at 2 A g−1, 2000 cycles; 212 mAh g−1 at 5 A g−1, 5000 cycles, respectively), which surpasses the reported SiO2-based materials. Considering the convenient preparation and outstanding properties, SiO2-Fe-C can be of visible significance for practical application in next-generation LIBs.

Previous studies have reported plant phenological changes along horizontal belts in North China, however, little is known about elevation effects on mountain phenophases in China, such as how vegetation phenophases shift across elevation on mountains, and how they change under background of global change. In this context, by application of remote sensing data, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), changes of spring phenophases across elevation on 6 typical mountains in North China, namely Wuling, Xiaowutai, Guandi, Migang, Huashan and Taibai Moutians, and the effects of elevation on phenophases along altitudinal gradients, were studied in current work. Preliminary results showed that, similar to our fi ndings of phenological changes in plain area in North China, the onset of vegetation phenophases in spring advanced on these mountains, while the ending time for autumn phenophases delayed in the past two decades. Trends for advanced spring phenophase increased signifi cantly with altitude in some mountain regions, and spring phenophase sensitivities to altitude are stronger in lower latitude than in higher latitude regions. Similar to foreign studies, it is reported for the fi rst time that global warming has led to a more uniform spring phenology across elevation in North China mountains in recent years. Findings will not only benefi t policy making for the government in the fi eld of ecological constructions, but also will be helpful to evaluate future climate change on vegetation in such areas.

The abundance index (AI) is a representative indicator used to assess the state of fishery resources. Conventional AI is generally calculated by summing the catch per unit of effort (CPUE) weighted by the size of each fishing area. However, CPUE data has many missing values owing to annual changes in operational fishing areas, and this can lead to a considerable bias in the estimated AI. To obtain an unbiased AI, a multivariate auto-regressive state-space (MARSS) model was used to estimate and interpolate missing values in a spatially arranged, long-term bottom-trawl CPUE dataset for yellow seabream Dentex hypselosomus and largehead hairtail Trichiurus japonicus in the East China Sea. As expected, increasing the number of analyzed fishing grids improved interpolation accuracy, but remarkably increased the time required for the analysis. Reducing the maximum number of expectation–maximization (EM) iterations in the maximum likelihood procedure was an effective way to practically reduce analysis time, while keeping the accuracy of the estimation. Thus, this EM-reduction MARSS model was applied to the entire CPUE datasets of yellow seabream and largehead hairtail to address the annual shifts in their AIs and their seasonal migration.

Accurate estimation of reverberation time T_60 proved to have a positive effect on the automatic speech recognition (ASR) used in the voice-controlled devices and the reconstruction of the acoustic field. Recently, researchers have proposed some algorithms to estimate T_60. However, few of them directly use the spatial information about the acoustic environment contained in the speech for accurate T_60 estimation. We propose a deep learning approach as a regression problem to use binaural reverberant speech generated by the clean speech convolved with simulated Room Impulse Response (RIR) to estimate T_60. Adaptive cIRM estimator firstly estimates the complex Ideal Ratio Mask (cIRM), which is strongly correlated with T_60, and then a CNN-based T_60 estimator is used to estimate T_60 with cIRM. The experimental results show that our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art method of T_60 estimation.

The content of Sio 2 in rocks is an important indicator of magmatic rock classification, and quartz vein is the main indicator of field prospecting. In this paper, 60 rock samples from USGS (U.S. Geological Survey), JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and JHU (Johns Hopkins University) are used to resample the thermal infrared band to the ASTER thermal infrared band to study the emissivity characteristics relationship with Sio 2 content in the thermal infrared band (8-15μm). Correlation analysis shows that the maximum negative relationship between the Sio 2 content and the logarithmic transformation ln(bl3/bl2) spectrum of the ASTER band is -0.873, and the maximum positive correlation coefficient between Sio 2 content and logarithmic transformation ln(bl3)/ln(bl2) of ASTER band is 0.793, which indicates that the correlation between Sio 2 content and ASTER thermal infrared band emission spectrum is better. Five regression equations were established by multivariate stepwise regression method and partial least squares regression method. The inversion of Sio 2 content in surface rocks in Lin xi area of Inner Mongolia was carried out by ASTER thermal infrared band. This study has important reference significance for the application of thermal infrared remote sensing to extract Sio 2 content in surface rocks and to divide lithology and prospecting.

Based on Delaunay triangulation, point clouds from laser-scanning, computer vision, procedural modeling are input and organized into multi-resolution alpha-shape series. An algorithm for examining singular points on the alpha-shape is proposed on the basis of the tetrahedral facet-adjacency connection from the Delaunay. A final iterative singular point reduction is performed to guarantee the 2-manifold of the alpha-shape, which generates 3D printable models.

State-of-the-art piecewise logarithmic converters employ nonuniform segments to reduce the variance of relative errors, particularly for small inputs. However, it is difficult to have an optimized algorithm to accurately choose the nonuniform segments for a required approximation error. In this brief, we present a relative error equal distribution (REED) algorithm that performs the nonuniform piecewise linear interpolation of logarithm. It is able to precisely set the nonuniform piecewise points so that the relative error of each segment is within an upper bound, and finally produce a flat relative error distribution. It can be applied to any number of segments, even if the number is not the power of 2. Experimental results show that our REED algorithm achieves over 70% reduction of average relative errors for the benchmark graphics application, compared to both the state-of-the-art uniform and nonuniform methods. Synthesis results show that our hardware resources are comparable to that of the state-of-the-art nonuniform methods.

Nowadays, in machine learning based intrusion detection systems, ensemble learning is a commonly adopted method to improve the detection accuracy. Unfortunately, the existing works have not considered the accumulation and reuse of historical knowledge, as well as the sensitivity of the detection model to different types of attacks, which leads to a low detection accuracy. To address the issue, this article proposes a model based on sustainable ensemble learning. In the model training stage, by taking the individual classifiers probability output and classification confidence as the training data, we build multi-class regression models such that ensemble learning adapts to different attacks. Besides, in the updating stage, an iterative updating method is presented, where the parameters and decision results of the historical model are added to the training process of the new ensemble model to realize the incremental learning. Experiment results show that the proposed model significantly outperforms the existing solutions in terms of detection accuracy, false alarm, stability and robustness.

Since critical segments on a transportation network vary over time and are determined by the nature of traffic systems, the identification of critical segments is the basis for realizing area-wide traffic coordination control and regional traffic state optimization. For decades, the identification of critical segments of dynamic traffic flow networks has attracted wide attention. In recent years, some important advances have been made in the related research on the identification of critical segments using the theory of percolation which validates the impact of critical segments by increasing the speed value of critical segments. However, most of them failed to take into account highly correlated characteristics between adjacent segments, which causes identification results cannot be validated effectively and efficiently. In this paper, we improve the existing critical segments identification methods by considering the highly correlated characteristics. A verification method based on ego-networks is proposed that improves the ego-networks speed of critical segments to verify the accuracy of identification results. The experiment shows the method can verify the validity of critical segments recognition results more accurately.

In this paper, we propose an end to end model for keyword spotting(KWS) with densely connected convolutional network(DenseNet) and the integration of Short Time Fourier Transform(STFT) which aims to extract utterances from raw waveform directly. Furthermore, we investigate the efficiency of adaptive and trainable window function in the task of keywords spotting. Using the recently-released Google Speech Commands Dataset as our benchmark. Our DenseNet implementation significantly outperforms previous neural networks based KWS system in terms of accuracy.

Voice activity detection (VAD) is a very challenging problem in adverse acoustic environments (e.g. far-field and conditions with different types of noise). In this paper, we proposed a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) for log-energy distribution of noise and (noisy) speech, where the distribution of these two components can be self-adapting in non-stationary circumstances. An adaptive threshold based on the GMM parameters of these two components represents a reasonable bound between noise and speech, which can lead to an accurate VAD in various noise conditions. To further improve speech hit rate (SHR) and non-speech hit rate (NHR), some constraints are introduced to this proposed GMM for reliability. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method yields remarkable performance for SHR and NHR.

Hierarchy is a fundamental characteristic of many complex systems. The methods of structural information have been taken as a prospective way for quantifying dynamical network complexity. This paper based on the study of the high-dimensional natural structural information entropy in networks. And then propose a new similarity District Structural Information (DSI) index, which takes the characteristics of network districts into consideration, to analyze the complexity of dynamical network districts. Based on the method, this paper apply the district structural information to explain the equilibrium problem in real-world networks. And take the Beijing traffic network and its districts to complete experiments that demonstrate the DSI index can reflect the equilibrium of the network and the districts effectively.

The vast expanses of rangeland on the Tibetan Plateau, which support the livelihood of c. 9.8 million local inhabitants, have experienced rapid climate warming over the past 50 years. At the same time, precipitation has increased in large parts of the Plateau but decreased in other parts, particularly in the northwest. These trends are predicted to continue into the future. However, their potential effects on rangeland quality remain unclear. We conducted a two‐factor field experiment in which we manipulated temperature (control or warming by 1.5–1.8°C) and precipitation (control or 50% reduction or increase in rainfall) in an alpine grassland on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, starting in 2011. From 2014 to 2016, we measured forage production and community composition, and in 2015 forage quality (crude protein, cell‐soluble contents, hemicellulose, cellulose, lignin and digestibility) was represented by seven abundant species. Overall, warming did not change total forage production at plant community level, but increased legume production and decreased non‐legume forb production. Increased and reduced precipitation enhanced and decreased forage production by 18.2% and 12.9% respectively. Increased precipitation in particular increased grass and sedge production, but not legume production. Forage quality showed species‐specific responses to the simulated climate changes. At community level, warming and reduced precipitation improved forage quality, which were mainly caused by a shift in community composition towards more legumes, rather than the direct effects of simulated climate changes. Meanwhile, increased precipitation did not reduce forage quality, despite the precipitation‐induced increase in forage production. Integrating forage production and quality into nutrient production as a measure of rangeland quality, we found that warming and increased precipitation additively improved rangeland quality, while reduced precipitation decreased it. Synthesis and applications. Rangeland quality, an important ecosystem provisioning service, will benefit from a warmer climate on the Tibetan Plateau in the regions with a predicted increase in precipitation, but not in those regions where precipitation might be reduced in the future. We suggest management strategies, including reseeding native legumes, establishing sustainable pastures and assisting the exchange of harvested forage, to cope with the challenges posed by these different climate change scenarios.

We propose an end-to-end speaker verification system based on the neural network and trained by a loss function with less computational complexity. The end-to-end speaker verification system in this paper consists of a ResNet architecture to extract features from utterance, then produces utterance-level speaker embeddings, and train using the large-margin Gaussian Mixture loss function. Influenced by the large-margin and likelihood regularization, large-margin Gaussian Mixture loss function benefits the speaker verification performance. Experimental results demonstrate that the Residual CNN with large-margin Gaussian Mixture loss outperforms DNN-based i-vector baseline by more than 10% improvement in accuracy rate., Comment: 5 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1803.02988, arXiv:1705.02304, arXiv:1706.08612 by other authors

International audience; The standard approaches of road traffic flow measurement as a part of advanced traffic management system relies on data acquisition from inductive loops or visual detectors. Due to their high cost and a number of operational limitations, this study was to elaborate a new concept of traffic flow estimation based on data from acoustic sensors. The experimental study has been conducted on a roadside of Paris ring-road (peripherique boulevard) during 11.5 days. The obtained data has been processed with help of Support Vector Regression method. The performances of the proposed solution have been assessed against standard traffic flow measurements. Obtained result show that this approach is promising and has potential of usage as independent measurement system and as auxiliary unit for existing systems.

This paper addresses the extraction of frequency, amplitude, and phase of sinusoidal components directly from modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) domain, which is broadly used in many digital audio applications. An efficient method is proposed for portable device based on the approximation of MDCT expression and the simple combinations of local maximum MDCT coefficients. By extracting the frequency and amplitude of a stationary sinusoid, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm produces accurate results with low computational complexity.

Sound rendering are frequently used to enhance the sense of immersion in virtual environments and multimedia applications. For this purpose, this paper proposes a ray tracing method based on equal-area distribution to simulate room impulse response (RIR). It is efficient and accurate to get the direction of arrival of the direct sound and early reflections. An equal-area distribution was adopted in the process of the sound source emitting. In order to optimize the sound source directivity, the direct sound and early reflections of RIR were mainly concerned. In our experiment, the RIR produced by ROOMSIM was set a reference. In addition, Monte Carlo method of equal-angle distribution was also presented as a comparison. Our proposed equal-area ray tracing (EART) can get a better result for early reflection and later reverberation.

This paper proposes an improved structural similarity method for audio quality assessment, which is Structural Similarity Analysis of Modulation (SSAM). Different from original structural similarity index measure, we introduce the analysis of structural similarity of modulation together with Computational Auditory Signal-processing and Perception (CASP) model. Audio features from CASP are extended to three dimensions: time, frequency and modulation spectrum. The combined architecture of ITU-R BS.1387-1 and proposed SSAM is given in this paper. Our proposed estimation system not only shows highly correlated with subjective results but also overcomes the shortage of ITU-R BS.1387-1 that only suitable for small impaired audio.

In this paper, we present a 3D sound rendering system with octree to simulate the virtual sound of virtual environments. Our system uses ray tracing method for sound propagation from a source to a listener, but just for specular reflections now. In order to accelerate our system, we use an octree to simplify the scene objects before the sound propagation. This can decrease the intersection times in the sound propagation. According to compare different accelerate algorithms for ray tracing with the render time, the total number of ray-triangles tests, ray-triangle intersections and ray-volumes tests, it is proved that octree can have a short rendering time. Finally we use the octree in our system to render a 3D sound of virtual environment.

With the requirement of auditory and rendering in virtual environments, the sound field reproduction of room acoustics is significantly in demand. In this paper, we propose a geometrical ray tracing method in frequency to simulate combined head and room impulse response (CHRIR) as an alternative to simulate room impulse (RIR) and head-related transfer function (HRTF) separately. We adopt KEMAR mannequin with approximate size to simulate CHRIR in an enclosure room. And we implement the simulation of CHRIR in Unity 3D which takes charge of constructing or loading the designed model and performing the CHRIR simulations. Finally, auralization in room acoustics is created by the convolution of an anechoic audio signal with the simulated CHRIR.

A psychoacoustic listening test is conducted to explore the influence of varying degrees of realism on binaural spatial-audio music perception. The specific factors that are varied in combination are: (1) whether or not head-tracking is used; (2) whether or not individualized Head-Related Impulse Response filters are used; (3) the number of sound-track channels: mono, stereo, and 5.2 surround; and (4) whether or not reverberation is used. Experiments are repeated a number of times with listeners requested to make judgement comparisons regarding: externalization, quality of the frontal image, timbre, and preference. Open headphones (AKG 1000) are used so that listeners can compare the various binaural spatial-audio rendering conditions with standard non-binaural headphone presentation and also loudspeaker presentation. The results indicate the impact of varying degreesof realism on various aspects of binaural spatial-audio music perception.

Frequent Itemsets are the sets that most likely occurring together. This paper propose a high efficient implementation for frequent itemsets generation and Support calculation based on a systolic array architecture through only one scan of the database. A parallel item-delivering method is introduced to accelerate the generation procedure. Analysis of simulation results illustrates that our method is much more efficient than the software algorithm and other hardware implementations.

Measurement of audio quality is of fundamental importance for numerous speech and audio processing applications, where the goal of quality assessment algorithms is to evaluate the quality in agreement with human's subjective feelings of audio quality. This paper includes a brief summary of the development of intrusive and non-intrusive audio quality assessment algorithms and outlines recent advancements, especially some new topics to be investigated presently. Moreover, according to the existing problems in this field, discussion of the future trend and challenges is also given.

In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm to piecewise linear approximation of logarithm for the possible application to graphics physics simulation. Compared to the traditional approximation of logarithm methods, our algorithm produce a maximum relative error flatten distribution in all intervals, the maximum relative error can be set according to our difference accuracy needs. Simulations of our methods have been conducted in Matlab to verify correctness. Besides, we further present the hardware implement. Comparison simulation showed that our algorithm is superior to state-of-art logarithm conversion for stimulation accuracy.

3D graphics hardware acceleration has become more and more important in mobile devices. In the paper, we review some triangle rasterization algorithm previously. On that basis, we propose a novel triangle rasterization algorithm — midpoint traversal, which reduce the number of traversal points and improve the efficiency of graphic acceleration. At last, we use FPGA to implement the algorithm, drawing a conclusion: in the equality resource, compared with others triangle rasterization algorithm based edge function, the midpoint traversal can improve the efficiency.

This paper propose a high performance algorithm for logarithm approximation. A piecewise linear interpolation with non-uniform partition is introduced to produce a flatten error distribution. Base on error flatten algorithm our method can produce greatly more accurate results than state-of-art logarithm approximation. Our proposed logarithm conversion is further optimized for hardware implementation. Analysis of simulation results in Matlab and hardware resources in FPGA illustrate that our method are superior or comparable to state-of-art logarithm conversion for graphics hardware.

This paper proposed an improved audio quality metric via circular and flexible overlap. Based on the Power Spectrum Estimation via circular overlap, we use a novel circular overlap sub-frame to assess highly impaired audio. The relationship between the fraction of overlap and the metric of audio quality is also examined, and it has been proven that the accuracy of audio quality assessment increased with the fraction of overlap. By integrating circular and flexible overlap into ITU-R BS.1387, which is also known as Perceptual Evaluation of Audio Quality, our method can be applied to the quality assessment of highly impaired audio.

With the widely used of mobile devices, such as cellular phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), mobile navigator, personal multimedia player (PMP), 3D graphics are becoming key to mobile device experience. 3D graphics hardware acceleration has become more and more important in mobile devices. In the paper, we review some triangle rasterization algorithm previously. On that basis, we propose a novel triangle rasterization algorithm - midpoint traversal, which reduces the number of traversal points and improves the efficiency of graphic acceleration. At last, we use FPGA to implement the algorithm, drawing a conclusion: in the equality resource, the midpoint traversal can improve the efficiency.

In this paper, the author modifies the triangle rasterizationa and texture coordinate interpolation algorithm. The new algorithms reduce the time of triangle rasterization and texture coordinate interpolation. The proposed triangle rasterization based on edge function, and improved the efficiency with equal hardware resource. The proposed texture coordinate interpolation algorithm based the characteristics of lookup table. Compared with the previous texture coordinate interpolation algorithm, the proposed algorithm can reduce the execution time, and implement more easily. (4 pages)

The rasterization stage, which is an important part of a graphics processing unit, always requires huge operations and is the bottleneck of the performance, especially for mobile devices. In this paper, the authors research the rasterization algorithm and optimize some rasterization algorithm. In the last, the authors implement a simple rasterization engine with small hardware resource of FPGA.

With the widely development of consumer electronics, 3D graphics have been in high demand and become a very important module in mobile devices. One of the most successful algorithms that bring realism to the world of 3D image generation is the Illumination shading. But in mobile devices, power is supplied by battery, so it is very important to reduce the power consume of chip. In our paper, a special arithmetic unit is proposed to perform division, multiplication, reciprocal-square-root and power efficiently in Illumination shading.

Real-time rendering of large scale terrain has always been a hot research topic in the field of computer graphics, virtual reality and simulation research. With scenes becoming more complex and real-time rendering limited, a large number of LOD algorithms have been applied to terrain rendering. In this paper, we review some traditional terrain rendering algorithms, then we show an effective LOD terrain rendering algorithm, and implement it by GPU. At last, we compare those algorithms according to some criterions to show advantages of the algorithm based on GPU.

With the development of computer graphics, the requirement of using assistant hardware to enhance the efficiency of GPU becomes more and more popular. In this paper, we present a low area algorithm to implement a dual-path clipping engine, which is placed in geometry module. It has a lower area compared with previous algorithms by adapting the calculation interpolation unit. Ultimately, we evaluate this algorithm on Xilinx virtex2 FPGA platform.

In this paper, we improve the application of the structural similarity measure, which was originally designed for image quality assessment, to the problem of audio quality estimate. Specifically, we consider a new way to implement of structural similarity index. We use the improved structural similarity to fixed frames of an audio sequence in FFT domains. We compare the accuracy of correlation of the structural similarity measure in FFT domain, temporal domain and the Perceptual Evaluation of Audio Quality (PEAQ) MOVs with respect to subjective test results. The results show that the structural similarity measure in FFT domain is highly correlated with subjective test results and performs better than temporal SSIM and PEAQ MOVs.