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Owing to the aging of built environment, many cities are facing the increasing of disasters impact and risk. Reinforcing the existing buildings is one common strategy. This study aims to provide a reference for the reinforcement plan of private buildings through life cycle cost and benefit analysis from the perspective of the society as a whole. First, the seismic reinforcement strategies in different countries are reviewed for identifying suitable target buildings. The total annual earthquake loss related to the characteristics of building is assessed through the capacity spectrum method, fragility curves, and probabilistic seismic hazard analysis. The construction cost and reinforcement cost are estimated by historical data, and then the equivalent uniform annual cost method is used to analyze the life cycle cost of a certain reinforcement strategy. The privately owned buildings in Taipei City, Taiwan were analyzed to demonstrate the proposed method. The priority of reinforcement was determined by different vulnerability and risk measures of each building, and four different reinforcement strategies were compared in the case study. The results show that the proposed method can provide an objective reference for arranging the reinforcement order and economic-effectively reducing the impact of earthquakes on the whole community.

Both uniform quarantine and isolation measures, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have brought forth unprecedented and severe socio-economic impacts. For the global post-COVID economic recovery, it is of great significance to explore scientific ways to reopen the borders with consideration of both risk and efficiency. With the development of international travel health certificate or digital travel pass, differentiated inspection and quarantine measures can be implemented to accelerate the recovery of international travel. In this paper, we study a multi-tier inspection queueing system with finite capacity based on a differentiated level of risk classification. A queueing analysis is conducted for the stochastic process of inspecting cross-border travelers under differentiated service for inspection and quarantine. Besides, we develop a computing method to determine the steady-state probability and several performance indices of the proposed queueing system, and an illustrative example is also set to introduce a step-by-step process for the method. Furthermore, we figure out the relationship between the model parameters and system performance of interest by means of a series of numerical experiments. In the data analysis, we also illustrate the monotonic and concave effects on the system performance, which can provide a visualized understanding of the trade-off between safety and efficiency in the studied multi-server queueing system with hierarchical inspection channels and finite capacity. Our findings can reveal some managerial insight into the border control problems, which could reconcile the efficiency with safety in the current epidemic prevention and control tasks.

It has become a strategic consensus of the international community for accelerating the deployment of 5G network. This paper presents an approach for the deployment of 5G base stations under the considerations of both the cost and the signal coverage. We formulate an optimization problem for the site selection and location of 5G macro and micro base stations. An implementation procedure is proposed in the paper for the cooperative operation and deployment scheme of optimizing the location of 5G heterogeneous base stations, which aims to optimally reduce the setup cost and strengthen the signal coverage while deploying 5G base stations. A series of numerical examples are solved in the paper to demonstrate the proposed approach, and a cost-benefit analysis is also conducted to determine the optimal deployment plan for the number of macro and micro base stations. In the conclusion, a balanced executable solution is presented to make the signal strength of all demand points in the studied 5G network reach the strongest under the budget constraint.

The current fusion-based methods transform LiDAR data into bird’s eye view (BEV) representations or 3D voxel, leading to information loss and heavy computation cost of 3D convolution. In contrast, we directly consume raw point clouds and perform fusion between two modalities. We employ the concept of region proposal network to generate proposals from two streams, respectively. In order to make two sensors compensate the weakness of each other, we utilize the calibration parameters to project proposals from one stream onto the other. With the proposed multi-scale feature aggregation module, we are able to combine the extracted regionof-interest-level (RoI-level) features of RGB stream from different receptive fields, resulting in fertilizing feature richness. Experiments on KITTI dataset show that our proposed network outperforms other fusion-based methods with meaningful improvements as compared to 3D object detection methods under challenging setting.

Although baculovirus has been used as a safe and convenient gene delivery vector in mammalian cells, baculovirus-mediated transgene expression is less effective in various mammalian cell lines. Identification of the negative regulators in host cells is necessary to improve baculovirus-based expression systems. Here, we performed high-throughput shRNA library screening, targeting 176 antiviral innate immune genes, and identified 43 host restriction factor genes in a human A549 lung carcinoma cell line. Among them, suppression of receptor interaction protein kinase 1 (RIP1, also known as RIPK1) significantly increased baculoviral transgene expression without resulting in significant cell death. Silencing of RIP1 did not affect viral entry or cell viability, but it did inhibit nuclear translocation of the IRF3 and NF-κB transcription factors. Also, activation of downstream signaling mediators (such as TBK1 and IRF7) was affected, and subsequent interferon and cytokine gene expression levels were abolished. Further, Necrostatin-1 (Nec-1)—an inhibitor of RIP1 kinase activity—dramatically increased baculoviral transgene expression in RIP1-silenced cells. Using baculovirus as a model system, this study presents an initial investigation of large numbers of human cell antiviral innate immune response factors against a “nonadaptive virus.” In addition, our study has made baculovirus a more efficient gene transfer vector for some of the most frequently used mammalian cell systems.

N-glycosylation on IgG modulates Fc conformation and effector functions. An IgG-Fc contains a human sialo-complex type (hSCT) glycan of biantennary structure with two α2,6-sialylations and without core-fucosylation is an optimized glycoform developed to enhance the antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC). hSCT modification not only enhances the binding affinity to Fc receptors in the presence of antigen but also in some cases provides gain-of-function effector activity. We used enzymatic glyco-engineering to prepare an IgG-Fc with homogeneous hSCT attached to each CH2 domain and solved its crystal structure. A compact form and an open form were observed in an asymmetric unit in the crystal. In the compact structure, the double glycan latches from the two hSCT chains stabilize the CH2 domains in a closed conformation. In the open structure, the terminal sialic acid (N-acetylneuraminic acid or NeuNAc) residue interacts through water-mediated hydrogen bonds with the D249-L251 helix, to modulate the pivot region of the CH2-CH3 interface. The double glycan latches and the sialic acid modulation may be mutually exclusive. This is the first crystal structure of glyco-engineered Fc with enhanced effector activities. This work provides insights into the relationship between the structural stability and effector functions affected by hSCT modification and the development of better antibodies for therapeutic applications.

In recent years, the High-Speed Rail (HSR) in China has continued to thrive rapidly with the development of China’s booming economy, and it has become the preferred mode of transportation for many travelers. This paper investigates the stochastic process of security inspection for passengers in the high-speed rail station. A queuing model is developed for studying the proposed security-check system via computer simulation. In the numerical experiments, we illustrate the influence of varying model parameters on the average waiting time and safety level of the queuing system. The sensitivity analysis of our simulation model could contribute to improve the service level and efficiency on security check before implementing operation plans for high-speed rail stations.

the significant increasing of terrorist attacks, the homeland security has become more and more important, but the enhanced security-check process has caused serious impacts on the transportation delay and inconvenience for passengers. This paper studies two types of inspection channels in a security-check system, which is formulated as a queueing model with a state-dependent Quasi-Birth-and-Death (QBD) process. A matrix-analytic method is proposed in the paper to determine the steady-state probability for the studied security-check queueing system. We also develop a solving algorithm for computing the average queue length and waiting time by applying the embedded Markov chain. The presented computing method and queueing analysis could be applied in evaluating the system performance of security checkpoints.

In the past decades, with the increase of universities enrollment in China, how to relieve the pressure of the employment of college graduates has become a hot issue for the whole society. Since then, entrepreneurship education has been adopted and popularized by more and more colleges and universities. However, there is not a very unified understanding of the definition and the way in which entrepreneurship education is carried out. Bases on the current employment situation and the development of entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities in China, this paper proposes some rational thinking on the development of university students' entrepreneurship education in China and reiterates the connotation and implementation of entrepreneurship education.

Market trends have been one of the highly debated phenomena in the financial industries and academia. Prior works show the profitability in exploiting transactions via market trend quantification; on the other hand, traders' behaviors and effects on the market trends can be better understood by market trend studies. In general, the trading strategies on the market trend include trend following strategies and contrarian strategies. Following the trend, trading strategies exploit the momentum effects. The momentum strategies profit in a long position with the rising market prices, as well as in a short position with the decreasing market prices. On the contrary, the view of contrarian trading strategy is based on the mean-reversion property, i.e., a long position is taken when the price moves down and a short position is taken when the price moves up. In this paper, we apply the stop-loss and stop-profit mechanisms to verify the market trends based on two new simple strategies, i.e., the BuyOp. strategy and the BuyHi.SellLo. strategy. We back-test these two strategies on the Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index Futures (TAIEX Futures) during the period from May 25, 2010 to August 19, 2015. We compare the numerical results of its profits and losses through various stop-loss thresholds and stop-profit thresholds, and verify the existence of the momentum effect via applying these two new trading strategies. Besides, we analyze the market trends through the repeated simulations of random trades with the stop-loss and stop-profit mechanisms. Our numerical results reveal that there exist momentum effects in TAIEX Futures, which verifies the market inefficiency and the market profitability in exploiting the market inefficiency. In addition, the techniques of random trades are also applied to the other commodities, such as AAPL in NASDAQ, IBM, GOOG in NYSE, and, TSMC in TPE, and so on. Surprisingly, not all the stocks have the momentum effects. Our experimental results show that some stocks or markets are more suitable for the mean-reverse strategy. Finally, we propose a technique to quantify the momentum effect of a financial market by using Jensen---Shannon divergence.

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has a small particle size, which allows it to directly enter the respiratory mucosa and reach the alveoli and even the blood. Many countries are already aware of the adverse effects of PM2.5, and determination of the sources of PM2.5 is a critical step in reducing its concentration to protect public health. This study monitored PM2.5 in the summer (during the southwest monsoon season) of 2017. Three online monitoring systems were used to continuously collect hourly concentrations of key chemical components of PM2.5, including anions, cations, carbon, heavy metals, and precursor gases, for 24 h per day. The sum of the concentrations of each compound obtained from the online monitoring systems is similar to the actual PM2.5 concentration (98.75%). This result suggests that the on-line monitoring system of this study covers relatively complete chemical compounds. Positive matrix factorization (PMF) was adopted to explore and examine the proportion of each source that contributed to the total PM2.5 concentration. According to the source contribution analysis, 55% of PM2.5 can be attributed to local pollutant sources, and the remaining 45% can be attributed to pollutants emitted outside Taipei City. During the high-PM2.5-concentration (episode) period, the pollutant conversion rates were higher than usual due to the occurrence of vigorous photochemical reactions. Moreover, once pollutants are emitted by external stationary pollutant sources, they move with pollution air masses and undergo photochemical reactions, resulting in increases in the secondary pollutant concentrations of PM2.5. The vertical monitoring data indicate that there is a significant increase in PM2.5 concentration at high altitudes. High-altitude PM2.5 will descend to the ground and thereby affect the ground-level PM2.5 concentration.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) ranks as the third-leading cause of cancer-associated mortalities in Taiwan. The expression of ribonucleotide reductase M2 (RRM2) and p53R2 is associated with tumoral malignancy and progression in several types of cancer. The aim of the present study was to determine the association of p53R2/RRM2 with the upstream expression of microRNA (miR)-211 and the association of expression levels of p53, APC and k-ras with clinical outcomes in patients with CRC. The study consisted of 192 tumor tissue samples obtained from patients with CRC. Immunohistochemistry and direct sequencing of DNA were performed to analyze p53R2/RRM2 protein expression and p53/APC/k-ras gene mutations in these samples. The expression level of miR-211 was detected by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The results showed that the expression of p53R2 was lower and that of RRM2 was higher in patients with lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and late-stage CRC compared with patients without lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis and early-stage CRC. A high expression of RRM2 in patients had a negative effect on overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in CRC. Positive expression of RRM2 was detected in tumor tissues, and expression associated with the presence of k-ras gene mutation. Furthermore, it was detected that the upstream miR-211 expression was negatively associated with RRM2 expression in tumor tissues of patients with CRC. miR-211 expression was associated with survival and tumoral recurrence in patients with k-ras mutations. The present authors suggest that the downregulation of miR-211 and overexpression of RRM2 in tumor tissues of patients with CRC could be used to predict metastases and disease prognosis, particularly in patients with k-ras gene mutations.

As the main force for national teachers’ cultivation, higher normal universities shoulder the task of cultivating qualified teachers for all levels of schools. Their teaching level will not only affect the quality of teachers’ cultivation and the full implementation of quality-oriented education, but also plays an important role in the accomplishment of all-round development concept ultimately. Therefore, based on the teaching reform in higher normal universities under the background of quality-oriented education, this research aims to figure out some improvements to promote the quality of teaching and training for teachers with high quality requirements of the new era comprehensively. In this paper, the author illustrates that strengthening teachers’ profession as cultivation goal, and comprehensive schooling as the direction, higher normal universities should demand their teachers to focus on improving the quality of classroom teaching, pay attention to fostering students' ability of practice, adopt various different teaching methods, promote the formation of a variety of learning methods.

The theory of multiple intelligences proposed by Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard University in the United States, is the analysis of the theory of human intelligence. The multiple intelligences evaluation is a kind of comprehensive and objective assessment which aims to promote the development of students’ intellectual potentials, improve their ability of solving problems and ultimately enhance their overall quality. The structure and properties of multiple intelligences evaluation is to promote the evaluation for students' all-round development. Thus, the theory of multiple intelligences evaluation plays an important role not only in evaluation concept, but in the reform of evaluation content and methods for current college students. In recent years, the implementation of education evaluation reform in China is greatly influenced by the theory of multiple intelligences. Therefore, starting from the background of quality-oriented education promotion in China, the author attempts to analyze and discuss the significance and influence of multiple intelligences evaluation on college students' evaluation reform.