Basic Unit Research Articles

Pose-Aware Attention Network for Flexible Motion Retargeting by Body Part.

Motion retargeting is a fundamental problem in computer graphics and computer vision. Existing approaches usually have many strict requirements, such as the source-target skeletons needing to have the same number of joints or share the same topology. To tackle this problem, we note that skeletons with different structure may have some common body parts despite the differences in joint numbers. Following this observation, we propose a novel, flexible motion retargeting framework. The key idea of our method is to regard the body part as the basic retargeting unit rather than directly retargeting the whole body motion. To enhance the spatial modeling capability of the motion encoder, we introduce a pose-aware attention network (PAN) in the motion encoding phase. The PAN is pose-aware since it can dynamically predict the joint weights within each body part based on the input pose, and then construct a shared latent space for each body part by feature pooling. Extensive experiments show that our approach can generate better motion retargeting results both qualitatively and quantitatively than state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, we also show that our framework can generate reasonable results even for a more challenging retargeting scenario, like retargeting between bipedal and quadrupedal skeletons because of the body part retargeting strategy and PAN.

Perceiving Actions via Temporal Video Frame Pairs

Video action recognition aims at classifying the action category in given videos. In general, semantic-relevant video frame pairs reflect significant action patterns such as object appearance variation and abstract temporal concepts like speed, rhythm, and so on. However, existing action recognition approaches tend to holistically extract spatiotemporal features. Though effective, there is still a risk of neglecting the crucial action features occurring across frames with a long-term temporal span. Motivated by this, in this article, we propose to perceive actions via frame pairs directly and devise a novel Nest Structure with frame pairs as basic units. Specifically, we decompose a video sequence into all possible frame pairs and hierarchically organize them according to temporal frequency and order, thus transforming the original video sequence into a Nest Structure. Through naturally decomposing actions, the proposed structure can flexibly adapt to diverse action variations such as speed or rhythm changes. Next, we devise a Temporal Pair Analysis module (TPA) to extract discriminative action patterns based on the proposed Nest Structure. The designed TPA module consists of a pair calculation part to calculate the pair features and a pair fusion part to hierarchically fuse the pair features for recognizing actions. The proposed TPA can be flexibly integrated into existing backbones, serving as a side branch to capture various action patterns from multi-level features. Extensive experiments show that the proposed TPA module can achieve consistent improvements over several typical backbones, reaching or updating CNN-based SOTA results on several challenging action recognition benchmarks.

Zipf’s Law for Speech Acts in Spoken English

ABSTRACT We, the Editors and Publisher of the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, have retracted the following article: Zipf’s Law for Speech Acts in Spoken English by Da Qi and Hua Wang (DOI: 10.1080/09296174.2023.2202470). Since publication, concerns have been raised about the fact there is significant overlap in the discussion section and references of this article with the following article, published in Springer’s Psychonomic Bulletin & Review: Zipf’s Law Revisited: Spoken Dialog, Linguistic Units, Parameters, and the Principle of Least Effort, by Guido M. Linders and Max M. Louwerse (DOI: 10.3758/s13423-022-02142-9). This overlap has been verified by the journal Editorial team and as this is a breach of our Editorial Policies, we are retracting the article from the journal. However, given the originality of the authors’ core research idea is not in doubt, we have given the authors the option to submit a revised version of their article. The authors have been informed of this and they have agreed to retract the article. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.

Neuro-Inspired Motion Control of a Soft Myriapod Robot

Centipedes exploit soft structures to move efficiently in complex environments. These abilities have promoted scientists to develop centipede-like robots with soft robot technologies. In this paper, a centipede-like robot constructed by multiple body segments connected in series is designed. Each body segment features a pair of antagonistic artificial muscles and four electro-adhesive feet, which plays the role of the basic motion unit of the centipede-like robot and can be regarded as a soft myriapod robot. To accomplish the desired movement tasks for the soft myriapod robot, this paper proposes a neuro-inspired hierarchical motion control scheme according to the functions of the centipede brain. In the proposed control scheme, a mushroom-body-inspired controller with an error-based learning mechanism is adopted for the soft actuator motion control, and a central-complex-inspired deep reinforcement learning algorithm is designed for the robot motion selection. At last, the effectiveness of the proposed motion control scheme is verified via both numerical studies and experiments.

Effects of Isolation and Social Distancing on the Fragility of Older People and the Physical Activities They Perform

Introduction: The association between reduced physical activity and social isolation has been described in the literature, but the relationship between the level of adherence to protective measures among older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of physical inactivity on frailty remains a significant knowledge gap. Objective: To analyze the effects of social distancing and isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on frailty in the elderly and on their physical activities in primary health care in a basic health unit in Brazil. Materials and methods: A prospective cohort study conducted in households and basic health units. In the first wave, before the pandemic, the sample consisted of non-frail elderly (n = 168). After a mean follow-up of 762 days, a second wave was conducted in which the elderly were classified according to their level of exposure to social distancing and isolation (n = 100) and the outcomes “level of physical activity” and “frailty status” were observed. Sociodemographic and clinical questionnaires, the Mini-Mental State Examination, physical markers of frailty, and level of exposure to social distancing and isolation were used. Descriptive statistics, association, survival curves, and proportional hazards regression were used. Results: Of the elderly, 53% transitioned to pre-frailty and 21% showed a decrease in physical activity. There was a high percentage of low adherence to social distancing and isolation, and there was no association with physical activity and frailty (p = 0.288; p = 0.351, respectively). Women had a higher risk of being classified as pre-frail or frail (2.53; 95% CI, 1.01-6.34) and of having a decrease in physical activity (2.13; 95% CI, 1.06-4.26). Conclusion: There was no association between protective measures of social distancing and isolation, physical activity, and frailty. Older people with reduced levels of physical activity should be encouraged to exercise to remain active and avoid the transition to frailty, functional decline, and dependency.

New Type of SIOP Structure in Serpulidae: Formation and Evolutionary Implications

There is a controversy involved in the models of the formation of serpulid tube microstructures, which either have been formed in similar ways to molluscan structures or in an alternative, unique serpulid way. A scanning electron microscope (SEM) study of the tube microstructure of Crucigera zygophora has been performed. A new serpulid tube microstructure, an aggregative SIOP, has been discovered in C. zygophora, herein termed ASIOP. During the first phase of crystallization, the sparsely located nuclei of the ASIOP structure formed, and in the second phase of crystal growth, the nucleation of spherultic sectors took place on the surface of preformed nuclei. The ASIOP structure differs from SIOP by more sparsely located crystallisation centres (nuclei) and the slower formation (i.e., crystallisation) of basic units. The formation of the ASIOP structure cannot be fully explained by the classical carbonate slurry model. Future comparative studies should show whether molluscan crossed spindle-like structures and serpulid SIOP structures are structural analogues.

Spatial Diversity Changes in Land Use and Land Cover Mix in Central European Capitals and Their Commuting Zones from 2006 to 2018

This article investigates the land use and land cover (LULC) mosaic as a function of distance to the city centre. The research area is four Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) of the capitals of Central European countries: Czechia (Prague), Poland (Warsaw), Slovakia (Bratislava), and Hungary (Budapest). The article presents LULC mix changes in these FUAs in the context of transformations in urban cores and commuting zones of capital city metropolises, which have large populations and prominent positions in the country or region. The study makes use of Urban Atlas LULC data for 2006, 2012, and 2018. LULC change was analysed using a hexagonal tessellation with the hexagon as the basic spatial unit. Spatial entropy (ENT) and Simpson’s Diversity Index (SIDI) were employed. The change in ENT and SIDI were determined as a function of distance to urban cores, as well as changes on the first level of Urban Atlas nomenclature for 2006–2012 and 2012–2018, as well as on the third level of nomenclature for 2012–2018. The research shows that changes from 2006 to 2012 were more considerable than from 2012 to 2018. It also revealed that, if LULC classes are considered on the first level of nomenclature, diversity in urban cores grows and then declines in commuting zones. An analysis of diversity on the third level of nomenclature demonstrated its decline with the growing distance to the urban core. It has also been demonstrated that the mean values of ENT and SIDI are approximately twice as high in urban cores as in commuting zones, indicating a plateau of the mean value of ENT and SIDI over the study period in urban cores compared to an increase in commuting zones around them. The conducted research will be helpful to urban planners and decision-makers in directing the further, inevitable development of metropolitan areas in accordance with sustainable environmental management.

Delineating Neighborhoods: An Approach Combining Urban Morphology with Point and Flow Datasets

Although neighborhoods are a widely used analytical concept in urban geography, they are often proxied using grids or statistical sectors in empirical research. The rationales underlying these proxies are often separated from the theoretical considerations of what makes a neighborhood a neighborhood, casting shadows over their relevance and applicability. In this article, we identify two specific challenges separating empirical operationalizations from theoretical considerations in neighborhood delineations: (1) not incorporating key built environment elements and (2) monodimensional approaches. We develop a method that addresses this double challenge by (1) creating morphological basic spatial units (BSUs) and (2) aggregating them into neighborhoods using multilayer community detection (MLCD) drawing on datasets used in both formal and functional regionalization approaches. We illustrate this method for the case of Leuven, Belgium, by (1) using street blocks as BSUs and (2) focusing on proximity, land use, and social interactions. Through a comparative analysis, we show that our results align with theoretical considerations and perform as well as, and perhaps better, than statistical sectors and grids as neighborhood representations. We therefore argue that this flexible method can bridge formal and functional regionalization approaches making the case for its adoption in neighborhood delineation exercises.

Perspectives of healthcare workers on integrated management of childhood illness in Pakistan: A phenomenological approach.

In 2019, an estimated 5.2 million deaths were reported among children less than 5years of age. At primary healthcare level, healthcare workers (HCWs) mostly rely on history and clinical findings and less on inadequate diagnostic facilities. To enhance case management skills of HCWs, World Health Organization devised an integrated management of childhood illnesses (IMCI) strategy in 1995, modified to distance learning IMCI in 2014. A qualitative phenomenological study was conducted to explore perceptions of HCWs about standard and distance IMCI. Four focus group discussions were conducted with purposively selected 26 HCWs (IMCI trained) from 26 basic health units of Abbottabad district in Pakistan. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics were adopted during the inductive thematic analysis. Five themes that emerged are inexorable health seeking behaviors, IMCI being a comprehensive algorithm for consultation, a tedious protocol, scaling up protocol to specialists and private practitioners, and administrative insufficiency by the department of health. Improvement in case management skills of HCWs was reported as a result of IMCI trainings. It needs administrative support, regulations to control poly-pharmacy and provision of drugs without prescription, and a curb on political and bureaucratic interference.

Textual Consistency and Harmony in the Poetry of Dr. Adel bin Khamees Al-Zahrani (Between Tradition and Renewal)

The theory of Text Linguistics is one of the most important modern theories associated with linguistic heritage. It bears significant benefits as it starts where traditional grammar ends. The traditional approach used to consider the sentence as the basic unit. However, Text Linguistics moves beyond this by recognizing a larger semantic unit, one that encompasses context and related meanings (both before and after), taking into account the circumstances of the receiver. This approach results in a methodology leading to a complete understanding of texts in terms of reference and intent. Nonetheless, it doesn't deviate from traditional grammar. The grammatical heritage and the concepts and rules it contains are the actual foundation for textual trends and a source for many of its ideas and concepts. This study has achieved crucial textual criteria: consistency and cohesion in its various forms and elements, which are built upon it. The poetic texts in this collection have demonstrated that textual consistency and cohesion, according to Text Linguistics theory, have no bounds. The linguistic depth it possesses does not surrender to the limits of modern theory. It has managed to introduce forms beyond its bounds. Some of these include rhetorical questions, imperative style, and various verb forms referring to the future. Additionally, the study has shown that Arabic grammar has defined the distant reference in the demonstrative pronoun. However, this reference remains challenging for text linguists to specify. The study recommends further research into narrative discourse in the collection since it contains a scholarly material that can complement the series of this study.

Cis-Platinum and CXCR4 siRNA Carried with Cellulose Nanopaper Restrain the Biological Effect of Breast Carcinoma Cells

Cellulose nanopaper (CNP) is a kind of flat foldable film material composed of cellulose nanofibers. Cellulose nanopaper is based on nanocellulose (NC) as the basic unit, with excellent mechanical properties, thermal properties, optical properties and other characteristics, is a high-performance new material. This study discusses the mechanism of cis-platinum and CXCR4 siRNA carried with CNP in restraining the biological effect of breast carcinoma cells. CXCR4 siRNA carried with CNP was established and identified. The MCF-7 cells were divided into control set, si-CXCR4 set, cis-platinum set and united set randomly. The proliferative and apoptotic activity, CXCR4 presentation, presentation of EMT, and invasive ability were detected. mRNA and protein expression of CXCR4 was restrained by knockdown of CXCR4 notably. The proliferation was restrained and apoptosis was prompted. Expression of E-cadherin was increased and Zeb1 presentation was reduced. The invasive ability was restrained. The action was more notable in united set. Breast carcinoma cell proliferation was restrained and the apoptosis was prompted by cis-platinum and CXCR4 siRNA carried with CNP. The occurrence of EMT and invasion were therefore restrained. The sensibility of breast carcinoma on drugs was elevated.

Vox-Surf: Voxel-Based Implicit Surface Representation.

Virtual content creation and interaction play an important role in modern 3D applications. Recovering detailed 3D models from real scenes can significantly expand the scope of its applications and has been studied for decades in the computer vision and computer graphics community. In this work, we propose Vox-Surf, a voxel-based implicit surface representation. Our Vox-Surf divides the space into finite sparse voxels, where each voxel is a basic geometry unit that stores geometry and appearance information on its corner vertices. Due to the sparsity inherited from the voxel representation, Vox-Surf is suitable for almost any scene and can be easily trained end-to-end from multiple view images. We utilize a progressive training process to gradually cull out empty voxels and keep only valid voxels for further optimization, which greatly reduces the number of sample points and improves inference speed. Experiments show that our Vox-Surf representation can learn fine surface details and accurate colors with less memory and faster rendering than previous methods. The resulting fine voxels can also be considered as the bounding volumes for collision detection, which is useful in 3D interactions. We also show the potential application of Vox-Surf in scene editing and augmented reality. The source code is publicly available at https://github.com/zju3dv/Vox-Surf.

Literary and Sufi Analysis of Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s Poem “al-Tā’iyyat al-kubrā”: A Philosophical Educational Approach

The present paper offers a new approach to the poetry of the Egyptian Sufi poet ‛Umar Ibn al-Fāriḍ (576-632AH/ 1181-1235AD). This approach is based on the text of Ibn al- Fāriḍ’s Great Sufi Poem, al-Tā’iyyat al-kubrā, in which the poet expresses in full his spiritual experience. First, the basic hermeneutical question is discussed, e.g., what is the way of approaching a literary text in order to understand the experience of the poet? Also, it deals with a Sufi text, its context and the relationship between text and experience. To what extent does the author express his inner world verbally? In the end, there is a distance between the interior experience of a Sufi and his verbal expression. Eventually, this method is applied to the poetry of Ibn al-Fāriḍ. He describes his Sufi experience as a journey through three steps: from separation (farq) to unity (ittiḥād) to universal union (ǧam‛). On such a partition, ten basic units are highlighted, forming the structure of his Sufi poem.

Design and simulation of 30 000 tons per year of cumene plant from natural gas field

Abstract The research considers the design and simulation of 30 000 tons per year of cumene plant using Aspen HYSYS as the simulation tool. The feed (material content) used is the characterized natural gas from Utorogu Gas Field with composition of 0.9019 methane, 0.0694 ethane, 0.0209 propane, 0.00361 n-butane, 0.00414 i-butane, 0.00005 n-pentane and 0.00007 i-pentane. The cumene plant consist of the cryogenic distillation column, de-hydrogenator (Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor), Alkylator (Plug Flow Reactor), storage tanks, separators, pumps, heat exchanger and mixers. The size/design models of basic plant units such as de-hydrogenator, alkylator, separators, storage tanks and distillation column were developed using the principles of mass and energy balance. The result of design or size specifications in terms of equipment diameter of basic plant units obtained from HYSYS simulation are 0.8 m and 0.319 m for the cryogenic and cumene columns; 1.931 m, 2.244 m and 1.366 m for the propane, propene and cumene storage tanks; 1.868 m and 2.076 m for the de-hydrogenator and alkylator; 1.931 m and 2.146 m for propene and cumene separators respectively. The power or capacity of propane and propene pumps configured in the plant are 0.02 kW and 0.005 kW respectively. The result of the reactor and distillation column thickness specification to withstand corrosion, pressure or stress during plant operation in terms of cylindrical shell and ellipsoidal doomed head are 17.36 mm and 4.31 mm respectively. The economic evaluation (overall cost) including the cost of utilities, catalyst, operating, and maintenance for entire plant is $ 3.004 M.

Native Top-Down Mass Spectrometry for Characterizing Sarcomeric Proteins Directly from Cardiac Tissue Lysate.

Native top-down mass spectrometry (nTDMS) has emerged as a powerful structural biology tool that can localize post-translational modifications (PTMs), explore ligand-binding interactions, and elucidate the three-dimensional structure of proteins and protein complexes in the gas-phase. Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) MS offers distinct capabilities for nTDMS, owing to its ultrahigh resolving power, mass accuracy, and robust fragmentation techniques. Previous nTDMS studies using FTICR have mainly been applied to overexpressed recombinant proteins and protein complexes. Here, we report the first nTDMS study that directly analyzes human heart tissue lysate by direct infusion FTICR MS without prior chromatographic separation strategies. We have achieved comprehensive nTDMS characterization of cardiac contractile proteins that play critical roles in heart contraction and relaxation. Specifically, our results reveal structural insights into ventricular myosin light chain 2 (MLC-2v), ventricular myosin light chain 1 (MLC-1v), and alpha-tropomyosin (α-Tpm) in the sarcomere, the basic contractile unit of cardiac muscle. Furthermore, we verified the calcium (Ca2+) binding domain in MLC-2v. In summary, our nTDMS platform extends the application of FTICR MS to directly characterize the structure, PTMs, and metal-binding of endogenous proteins from heart tissue lysate without prior separation methods.

Tensor-Based Sparse Representation for Hyperspectral Image Reconstruction Using RGB Inputs

Hyperspectral image (HSI) reconstruction from RGB input has drawn much attention recently and plays a crucial role in further vision tasks. However, current sparse coding algorithms often take each single pixel as the basic processing unit during the reconstruction process, which ignores the strong similarity and relation between adjacent pixels within an image or scene, leading to an inadequate learning of spectral and spatial features in the target hyperspectral domain. In this paper, a novel tensor-based sparse coding method is proposed to integrate both spectral and spatial information represented in tensor forms, which is capable of taking all the neighboring pixels into account during the spectral super-resolution (SSR) process without breaking the semantic structures, thus improving the accuracy of the final results. Specifically, the proposed method recovers the unknown HSI signals using sparse coding on the learned dictionary pairs. Firstly, the spatial information of pixels is used to constrain the sparse reconstruction process, which effectively improves the spectral reconstruction accuracy of pixels. In addition, the traditional two-dimensional dictionary learning is further extended to the tensor domain, by which the structure of inputs can be processed in a more flexible way, thus enhancing the spatial contextual relations. To this end, a rudimentary HSI estimation acquired in the sparse reconstruction stage is further enhanced by introducing the regression method, aiming to eliminate the spectral distortion to some extent. Abundant experiments are conducted on two public datasets, indicating the considerable availability of the proposed framework.

Research on Microclimate Performance Simulation Application and Scheme Optimization in Traditional Neighborhood Renewal—A Case Study of Donghuali District, Foshan City

With global warming and rapid urbanization, the microclimate in the Lingnan region is prone to health problems, such as pyrexia and infectious diseases, and the average annual number of heatwave-related deaths is rising rapidly. The large-scale regeneration of traditional neighborhoods in Lingnan under high-quality development is underway, which has implications for the thermal comfort of microclimatic environments. This study focused on the impact of different building unit types and spatial patterns on thermal comfort in the Donghuali traditional neighborhood of Foshan City as an example. We extracted eight basic morphological units and designed a prototype block of 400 m × 400 m. In the Rhinoceros & Grasshopper parametric software 6.7, a variety of plug-ins were integrated to establish a platform with parametric modeling, microclimate simulation and evaluation, and optimal design for thermal comfort. Through experiments, the effects of new single-type and new composite building units on thermal comfort were investigated, and the correlation equations between spatial morphology and microclimate comfort in Lingnan traditional neighborhoods were established. Finally, the multi-objective genetic optimization of thermal comfort was carried out as an example of real block renewal, which provides a practical reference for the planning and design of traditional blocks.

Spatial navigation method based on the entorhinal-hippocampal-prefrontal information transmission circuit of rat's brain

Physiological studies have revealed that rats perform spatial localization relying on grid cells and place cells in the entorhinal-hippocampal CA3 structure. The dynamic connection between the entorhinal-hippocampal structure and the prefrontal cortex is crucial for navigation. Based on these findings, this paper proposes a spatial navigation method based on the entorhinal-hippocampal-prefrontal information transmission circuit of the rat's brain, with the aim of endowing the mobile robot with strong spatial navigation capability. Using the hippocampal CA3-prefrontal spatial navigation model as a foundation, this paper constructed a dynamic self-organizing model with the hippocampal CA1 place cells as the basic unit to optimize the navigation path. The path information was then fed back to the impulse neural network via hippocampal CA3 place cells and prefrontal cortex action neurons, improving the convergence speed of the model and helping to establish long-term memory of navigation habits. To verify the validity of the method, two-dimensional simulation experiments and three-dimensional simulation robot experiments were designed in this paper. The experimental results showed that the method presented in this paper not only surpassed other algorithms in terms of navigation efficiency and convergence speed, but also exhibited good adaptability to dynamic navigation tasks. Furthermore, our method can be effectively applied to mobile robots.

Cutting ties with local bureaucrats: How does the environmental vertical management reform affect firm pollution in China?

China's local environmental protection agencies are the basic government units that implement the country's environmental regulations. Initiated decades ago, the vertical environmental management reform was gradually rolled out throughout the country with the aim of enhancing the independence of local environmental enforcement by shifting the control of the agencies' resources from local governments to higher-level environmental protection authorities. This research investigates the effects and influencing channels of this reform on firm pollution behavior in China. Combining manually collected data on the timing of the reform at the county level with a unique firm-level emission dataset, we use a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the effect of the reform. Our results suggest that the reform leads to a significant reduction in firms' pollution, and this reduction is achieved mainly through a scaled-back production and a cleaner production process. A further analysis shows that the reform weakens local bureaucrats' political and economic incentives that could distort environmental enforcement. Our findings highlight the importance of minimizing political interventions in environmental governance in a large country like China to achieve environmental targets.

The Theories of “Differential Optimums” and “Vertical Integration” and Their Implications for China

Abstract Chayanov, outside of his theoretical analysis of how peasant households are distinctive for being at once a production and a consumption unit, and the multiple implications of that fact, has made two other major theoretical contributions, one making clear that peasant economies observe the logic of “differential optimums” rather than the simple logic of economies of scale, the other having to do with the need for co-operatives for “vertical integration” of small peasant economies, in order to preserve for the peasants more of the value of their products in the BIG MARKET. The former can be readily observed in the “new agriculture revolution” of the Chinese economy in the past few decades; the latter can be readily seen in the striking modernization of the “East Asian” (i.e. Japan, South Korea, and the Taiwan area) economies since 1945. China’s annual “Number One Documents” about agriculture of the past two decades have shown how the country first mistakenly tried to imitate the simple scale-economy logic of the United States, and then shifted since 2018 toward a new emphasis on the peasants as the principal agents of agricultural development and of peasant villages as the basic unit for agricultural co-ops. Those have been the basis for new advances as well as for reinterpretations and modifications of Chayanov’s two major theoretical visions.