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With the growing importance of the logistics industry and the increasing demand for logistics professionals with a bachelor’s degree qualification, the government and industry in China have long been looking for ways to attract more logistics sub-degree students to pursue higher education. This article aims to provide insights into the factors that determine logistics sub-degree students’ intention to pursue a bachelor’s degree. The study extended the theory of reasoned action (TRA) model to include four variables, namely perceived difficulty, job opportunities, job starting salary and genuine interest. The findings from the study involving 361 logistics sub-degree students from three institutions show that logistics sub-degree students’ decision to pursue a bachelor’s degree is determined by attitude, subjective norm, perceived difficulty, job opportunities, job starting salary and genuine interest. Genuine interest is identified as a new precursor of intention. The findings also show that there is a significant difference between students from different types of programmes. Based on the findings, this article proposes some measures for the relevant parties to motivate and attract logistics sub-degree students to further their study at bachelor’s degree level.

The efficacy of high‐definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD‐tDCS) in late‐life depression (LLD) remains unknown due to limited research on its therapeutic effects on the hallmarks of LLD—the depressive and cognitive symptoms. The present open‐label pilot study aimed to examine the effectiveness of HD‐tDCS as an augmentation therapy with antidepressants in improving the depressive and cognitive symptoms for LLD. Significant improvements were hypothesized in the depressive, cognitive, and daily functioning outcomes over time. A total of 15 subjects with LLD (13 females, mean age = 73.27 ± 6.25) received five consecutive daily sessions of 20‐minute active HD‐tDCS interventions weekly for 2 weeks, with a 2 mA anodal stimulation over F3 and cathodal stimulation over FC1, AF3, F7, and FC5. Depressive symptoms and cognitive and daily functioning were assessed across five assessment timepoints. The results revealed that the HD‐tDCS was effective in reducing the depressive severity and the remission rates, with a sustained effect at both the 1‐month and 3‐month follow‐up. Pre‐post improvements were seen in the overall cognitive functioning and in verbal fluency, but not in executive functioning. Our pilot study provides a preliminary result of HD‐tDCS in LLD, which was a safe and effective treatment in alleviating depressive symptoms, with mild cognitive improvements observed. Further larger scale randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm this result.

The rapid development of information technologies brings more convenience to people. Information technologies, especially the Internet, not only save time for consumers and companies but also provide them with more channels and opportunities for interaction and conducting transactions. One business revolution brought by Internet is online shopping – shopping and buying products in online stores or websites. Nowadays, online shopping has become a new consuming model for consumers both in China and around the world. This paper analyses online shopping for fashion in China and investigates the impact of online shopping on logistics industry using the case of “VANCL”.

There have been few studies performed to examine the pathophysiological differences between different types of psychosis, such as between delusional disorder (DD) and schizophrenia (SZ). Notably, despite the different clinical characteristics of DD and schizophrenia (SZ), antipsychotics are deemed equally effective pharmaceutical treatments for both conditions. In this context, dopamine dysregulation may be transdiagnostic of the pathophysiology of psychotic disorders such as DD and SZ. In this study, an examination is made of the dopamine synthesis capacity (DSC) of patients with SZ, DD, other psychotic disorders, and the DSC of healthy subjects. Fifty-four subjects were recruited to the study, comprising 35 subjects with first-episode psychosis (11 DD, 12 SZ, 12 other psychotic disorders) and 19 healthy controls. All received an 18F-DOPA positron emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance (MR) scan to measure DSC (Kocc;30–60 value) within 1 month of starting antipsychotic treatment. Clinical assessments were also made, which included Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) measurements. The mean Kocc;30–60 was significantly greater in the caudate region of subjects in the DD group (ES = 0.83, corrected p = 0.048), the SZ group (ES = 1.40, corrected p = 0.003) and the other psychotic disorder group (ES = 1.34, corrected p = 0.0045), compared to that of the control group. These data indicate that DD, SZ, and other psychotic disorders have similar dysregulated mechanisms of dopamine synthesis, which supports the utility of abnormal dopamine synthesis in transdiagnoses of these psychotic conditions.

Purpose: The authors propose an algorithm that automatically extracts retinal vasculature and provides a simple measure to correct the extraction. The output of the method is a network of salient points, and blood vessels are drawn by connecting the salient points using a centripetal parameterized Catmull–Rom spline. Methods: The algorithm starts by background correction. The corrected image is filtered with a bank of Gabor kernels, and the responses are consolidated to form a maximal image. After that, the maximal image is thinned to get a network of 1-pixel lines, analyzed and pruned to locate forks and form branches. Finally, the Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm is used to determine salient points. When extraction is not satisfactory, the user simply shifts the salient points to edit the segmentation. Results: On average, the authors’ extractions cover 93% of ground truths (on the Drive database). Conclusions: By expressing retinal vasculature as a series of connected points, the proposed algorithm not only provides a means to edit segmentation but also gives knowledge of the shape of the blood vessels and their connections.

The authors propose an algorithm that automatically extracts retinal vasculature and provides a simple measure to correct the extraction. The output of the method is a network of salient points, and blood vessels are drawn by connecting the salient points using a centripetal parameterized Catmull-Rom spline.The algorithm starts by background correction. The corrected image is filtered with a bank of Gabor kernels, and the responses are consolidated to form a maximal image. After that, the maximal image is thinned to get a network of 1-pixel lines, analyzed and pruned to locate forks and form branches. Finally, the Ramer-Douglas-Peucker algorithm is used to determine salient points. When extraction is not satisfactory, the user simply shifts the salient points to edit the segmentation.On average, the authors' extractions cover 93% of ground truths (on the Drive database).By expressing retinal vasculature as a series of connected points, the proposed algorithm not only provides a means to edit segmentation but also gives knowledge of the shape of the blood vessels and their connections.

We present the Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey (ATATS), a multi-epoch (12 visits), 690 deg(2) radio image and catalog at 1.4 GHz. The survey is designed to detect rare, very bright transients as well as to verify the capabilities of the ATA to form large mosaics. The combined image using data from all 12 ATATS epochs has rms noise sigma = 3.94 mJy beam(-1) and dynamic range 180, with a circular beam of 150 '' FWHM. It contains 4408 sources to a limiting sensitivity of 5 sigma = 20 mJy beam(-1). We compare the catalog generated from this 12 epoch combined image to the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), a legacy survey at the same frequency, and find that we can measure source positions to better than similar to 20 ''. For sources above the ATATS completeness limit, the median flux density is 97% of the median value for matched NVSS sources, indicative of an accurate overall flux calibration. We examine the effects of source confusion due to the effects of differing resolution between ATATS and NVSS on our ability to compare flux densities. We detect no transients at flux densities greater than 40 mJy in comparison with NVSS and place a 2 sigma upper limit of 0.004 deg(-2) on the transient rate for such sources. These results suggest that the greater than or similar to 1 Jy transients reported by Matsumara et al. may not be true transients, but rather variable sources at their flux density threshold.

Introduction Computer science education in high schools can be traced back to the 1980s when the procedural programming language Pascal was identified as the language of choice. In the 1990s, when the object-oriented computing paradigm dominated the computing industry, many high schools started teaching the object-oriented programming languages C++ and then Java. A computing paradigm refers to the set of concepts, principles, and methods of expressing computation that allows human command on one hand and allows the computer to efficiently execute on the other hand. The major computing paradigms that have dominated computer science education and software development are: * Imperative computing developed in the 1950s. FORTRAN was the flagship language of this approach, which dominated software development in the 50s and 60s and extended even into 70s. * Procedural computing developed during the 1970s and 80s, which emphasized modular software design. Programming languages Algol, Pascal, and C represent this approach. * Object-Oriented Computing (OOC) developed after the 80s, with an emphasis on abstraction and code reuse. Representative object-oriented programming languages include C++, Java, and C#. * Service-Oriented Computing (SOC), also known as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), started in late 1990s. Java and C# are the two major programming languages on which SOC is built. However, SOC uses existing services to compose applications. The key to enable pervasive code reuse is the standardization of service interfaces leading to platform-independent code reuse. Incorporated with the Internet and search engines, service discovery is vital to SOC (Chen & Tsai, 2008; Eposito, 2004; Heinemann & Rau, 2003; Singh & Huhns, 2005). SOC has been described as a method to build distributed applications more effectively. According to Singh and Huhns (2005), "Many of the key techniques now being applied in building services and service-based applications were developed in the areas of databases, distributed computing, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems. These are generally established bodies of work that can be readily adapted for service composition." Their book on SOC describes, in part, how services can be used to facilitate simpler kinds of composition. SOC allows the user to engage a service so that the relevant computational themes are "peer-to-peer computing, messaging, transactions (traditional, nested, and extended or relaxed), workflow, [and] business processes." These computational themes allow for ready-transfer into a high school or university classroom. Phelps and Busby (2007) define SOC as providing "well-defined business functions as services, which are made available to multiple applications through standard protocols." They claim that SOC is a fundamental shift in the way applications are built. This shift requires a new way of thinking about processes and the subsequent role that applications play. SOC became important around 2000-2001 when all the major computer companies, including BEA, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP agreed on a set of standard interfaces, which make it possible for software developed in any language and on any platform to communicate and cooperate with each other. Furthermore, SOC is component-based and introduces a high-level of abstraction. It has the potential to become the first computing course that shifts the course content from the syntax of programming languages to the problem solving process. In spite of significant progress in SOC applications and its potential being taught as the first computing course, SOC education is currently lagging. Johnson and Liber (2008) discuss a model called Personal Learning Environment (PLE) "as a practical intervention concerning the organization of technology in education. …

The Pi GHz Sky Survey (PiGSS) is a key project of the Allen Telescope Array. PiGSS is a 3.1 GHz survey of radio continuum emission in the extragalactic sky with an emphasis on synoptic observations that measure the static and time-variable properties of the sky. During the 2.5-year campaign, PiGSS will twice observe ~250,000 radio sources in the 10,000 deg^2 region of the sky with b > 30 deg to an rms sensitivity of ~1 mJy. Additionally, sub-regions of the sky will be observed multiple times to characterize variability on time scales of days to years. We present here observations of a 10 deg^2 region in the Bootes constellation overlapping the NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey field. The PiGSS image was constructed from 75 daily observations distributed over a 4-month period and has an rms flux density between 200 and 250 microJy. This represents a deeper image by a factor of 4 to 8 than we will achieve over the entire 10,000 deg^2. We provide flux densities, source sizes, and spectral indices for the 425 sources detected in the image. We identify ~100$ new flat spectrum radio sources; we project that when completed PiGSS will identify 10^4 flat spectrum sources. We identify one source that is a possible transient radio source. This survey provides new limits on faint radio transients and variables with characteristic durations of months., Accepted for publication in ApJ; revision submitted with extraneous figure removed

The first 42 elements of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA-42) are beginning to deliver data at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Northern California. Scientists and engineers are actively exploiting all of the flexibility designed into this innovative instrument for simultaneously conducting panoramic surveys of the astrophysical sky. The fundamental scientific program of this new telescope is varied and exciting; we here discuss some of the first astronomical results.