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Abstract With its large population and natural resources, Africa needs investors who can sustain its development. At the same time, foreign investors expect returns on their investments. In ...
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In Macau, the effectiveness of traditional classroom learning is questioned as the problem is discovered by the changes in technology advances, social media, and the varieties of learning methods. Learning experiences, interests, discoveries, and creativity development are considered essential to ac...
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In Macau, the effectiveness of traditional classroom learning is questioned as the problem is discovered by the changes in technology advances, social media, and the varieties of learning methods. Learning experiences, interests, discoveries, and creativity development are considered essential to ac...
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A significant number of people infected by COVID19 do not get sick immediately but become carriers of the disease. These patients might have a certain incubation period. However, the classical compartmental model, SEIR, was not originally designed for COVID19. We used the simple, commonly used SEIR model to retrospectively analyse the initial pandemic data from Singapore. Here, the SEIR model was combined with the actual published Singapore pandemic data, and the key parameters were determined by maximizing the nonlinear goodness of fit R2 and minimizing the root mean square error. These parameters served for the fast and directional convergence of the parameters of an improved model. To cover the quarantine and asymptomatic variables, the existing SEIR model was extended to an infectious disease model with a greater number of population compartments, and with parameter values that were tuned adaptively by solving the nonlinear dynamics equations over the available pandemic data, as well as referring to previous experience with SARS. The contribution presented in this paper is a new model called the adaptive SEAIRD model; it considers the new characteristics of COVID19 and is therefore applicable to a population including asymptomatic carriers. The predictive value is enhanced by tuning of the optimal parameters, whose values better reflect the current pandemic.
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Macau, MNA, Opinion | The Macau government recently approved its first reading of a new bill to attract Macau locals to return to Macau to work. Simultaneously, Macau’s Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture was reported as saying that if Macau could create a better environment and conditions, then ‘local talents who are abroad will surely be interested in returning to Macau’.
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Approximately 50 million people are suffering from epilepsy worldwide. Corals have been used for treating epilepsy in traditional Chinese medicine, but the mechanism of this treatment is unknown. In this study, we analyzed the transcriptome of the branching coral Acropora digitifera and obtained its Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), EuKaryotic Orthologous Groups (KOG) and Gene Ontology (GO) annotation. Combined with multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis, we discovered three polypeptides, we named them AdKuz1, AdKuz2 and AdKuz3, from A. digitifera that showed a close relationship to Kunitz-type peptides. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation indicated that AdKuz1 to 3 could interact with GABAA receptor but AdKuz2–GABAA remained more stable than others. The biological experiments showed that AdKuz1 and AdKuz2 exhibited an anti-inflammatory effect by decreasing the aberrant level of nitric oxide (NO), IL-6, TNF-α and IL-1β induced by LPS in BV-2 cells. In addition, the pentylenetetrazol (PTZ)-induced epileptic effect on zebrafish was remarkably suppressed by AdKuz1 and AdKuz2. AdKuz2 particularly showed superior anti-epileptic effects compared to the other two peptides. Furthermore, AdKuz2 significantly decreased the expression of c-fos and npas4a, which were up-regulated by PTZ treatment. In addition, AdKuz2 reduced the synthesis of glutamate and enhanced the biosynthesis of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). In conclusion, the results indicated that AdKuz2 may affect the synthesis of glutamate and GABA and enhance the activity of the GABAA receptor to inhibit the symptoms of epilepsy. We believe, AdKuz2 could be a promising anti-epileptic agent and its mechanism of action should be further investigated.
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It has been proven in numerous research that mindfulness can be helpful to reduce stress and chronic pain (Hall, 2014; Lindström, n.d.; Tong et al., 2015). While interactive mindfulness has been one of the focuses in the recent mobile applications market, usually tackling three essential human senses: audio, visual, and touch, each mobile application has quite some different approaches in terms of interactivity. Some focus on the touch and visual, and some on audio (environmental sounds or instructing meditation). Immersing oneself in virtual reality (VR) creates a constant stream of interactivity. Nonetheless, what are the conditions for an (in)tangible virtual reality to be more effective? Under the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown since the end of 2019, Macao has been facing a social concern that we cannot travel easily to visit our decedents’ graves abroad, let alone the existing concerns of expensive burial services, lack of space, and alternative burial options. Also, taking into consideration that standard funeral service in Macao is often too brief, and getting briefer, thus lacking the opportunity to properly farewell the decedent, this research is proposing a virtual reality 3D model construction of the Chapel of St. Michael, located in St. Michael the Archangel Cemetery in Macao, to be streamed on a 360 virtual tour platform, Kuula. co. By immersing in this virtual reality, the participant is to have a single user experience for mindfulness with the decedent. To ensure valid and reliable results that address the research aims and objectives, a single-user experiment is going to be set up with multiple electronic devices, namely, the smartphone iPhone X with cardboard VR, the tablet iPad Pro, and the Oculus Quest 2. The methodology to collect the data will be using observation and simulation. The experiment will be started with an introduction to the project and conducted with no instruction, allowing users to explore and examine all features in this immersive experience. Along with a post-experience survey (interview + questionnaire), we seek its conditions and impacts on Macao residents in terms of interactive mindfulness and participants’ expectation of testing, for the first time in Macao, a virtual reality grave mourning experience.
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The adoption of computer-aided diagnosis and treatment systems based on different types of artificial neural networks (ANNs) is already a reality in several hospital and ambulatory premises. This chapter aims to present a discussion focused on the challenges and trends of adopting these computerized systems, highlighting solutions based on different types and approaches of ANN, more specifically, feed-forward, recurrent, and deep convolutional architectures. One section is focused on the application of AI/ANN solutions to support cardiology in different applications, such as the classification of the heart structure and functional behavior based on echocardiography images; the automatic analysis of the heart electric activity based on ECG signals; and the diagnosis support of angiogram images during surgical interventions. Finally, a case study is presented based on the application of a deep learning convolutional network together with a recent technique called transfer learning to detect brain tumors using an MRI images data set. According to the findings, the model has a high degree of specificity (precision of 0.93 and recall of 0.94 for images with no brain tumor) and can be used as a screening tool for images that do not contain a brain tumor. The f1-score for images with brain tumor was 0.93. The results achieved are very promising and the proposed solution may be considered to be used as a computer-aided diagnosis tool based on deep learning convolutional neural networks. Future works will consider other techniques and compare them with the one presented here. With the comprehensive approach and overview of multiple applications, it is valid to conclude that computer-aided diagnosis and treatment systems are important tools to be considered today and will be an essential part of the trend of personalized medicine over the coming years.
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The key challenge of Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) for analyzing time series data is to learn domain-invariant representations by capturing complex temporal dependencies. In addition, existing unsupervised domain adaptation methods for time series data are designed to align marginal distribution between source and target domains. However, existing UDA methods (e.g. R-DANN Purushotham et al. (2017), VRADA Purushotham et al. (2017), CoDATS Wilson et al. (2020)) neglect the conditional distribution discrepancy between two domains, leading to misclassification of the target domain. Therefore, to learn domain-invariant representations by capturing the temporal dependencies and to reduce the conditional distribution discrepancy between two domains, a novel Attentive Recurrent Adversarial Domain Adaptation with Top-k time series pseudo-labeling method called ARADA-TK is proposed in this paper. In the experiments, our proposed method was compared with the state-of-the-art UDA methods (R-DANN, VRADA and CoDATS). Experimental results on four benchmark datasets revealed that ARADA-TK achieves superior classification accuracy when it is compared to the competing methods.
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The physiological mechanisms underlying variation in aggression in fish remain poorly understood. One possibly confounding variable is the lack of standardization in the type of stimuli used to elicit aggression. The presentation of controlled stimuli in videos, a.k.a. video playback, can provide better control of the fight components. However, this technique has produced conflicting results in animal behaviour studies and needs to be carefully validated. For this, a similar response to the video and an equivalent live stimulus needs to be demonstrated. Further, different physiological responses may be triggered by live and video stimuli and it is important to demonstrate that video images elicit appropriate physiological reactions. Here, the behavioural and endocrine response of male Siamese fighting fish Betta splendens to a matched for size conspecific fighting behind a one-way mirror, presented live or through video playback, was compared. The video playback and live stimulus elicited a strong and similar aggressive response by the focal fish, with a fight structure that started with stereotypical threat displays and progressed to overt attacks. Post-fight plasma levels of the androgen 11-ketotestosterone were elevated as compared to controls, regardless of the type of stimuli. Cortisol also increased in response to the video images, as previously described for live fights in this species. These results show that the interactive component of a fight, and its resolution, are not needed to trigger an endocrine response to aggression in this species. The study also demonstrates for the first time in a fish a robust endocrine response to video stimuli and supports the use of this technique for researching aggressive behaviour in B. splendens.
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Since the launch of the One Belt and One Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, the internationalisation of China’s tertiary education has entered a new stage. Central to the BRI is investment and strategic planning for talent cultivation, knowledge production, and transmission. This paper explains how the BRI redirects, reinforces, and intensifies China’s strategic planning and actions for internationalising its education. It adopts a policy analysis approach and reviews three key aspects of development and shifting emphasis of internationalisation under the impact of the BRI: international education networks along the Six BRI Economic Corridors, vocational colleges as new players in international education, and promotion of the Chinese language as a new global language. The analysis captures an important moment in which international education processes are being visibly altered through China’s strategies to take the lead in economic globalisation and to compete for a central place in the world via the BRI.
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