Search results

The purpose of this paper is to develop a dress design knowledge base (DDKB), which is expected to be further applied to a personalized dress recommendation system.

Dress design knowledge can be expressed as the relationship between designer's fashion perceptions of different dress elements. In order to extract dress design knowledge, a dress shape ontology (DSO) is firstly developed, which can be further used to form a dress element matrix (DEM). A perceptual descriptive space of the dress (DPDS) is developed for the description of the designer's fashion perception of dress. Through a standard sensory evaluation procedure performed by experienced experts (designers), the expected relationship can be obtained. This relationship is then mathematically simulated by fuzzy logic tools for the expected DDKB.

In this paper, a DDKB has been developed. The established knowledge base has been validated, and it can be further applied to dress recommendation system for a specific consumer.

This study introduces the concept of knowledge base to the area of dress individualized design. The knowledge-based design process based on sensory evaluation and fuzzy logic can efficiently solve the individualization of dress design in traditional design processes, which can provide a novel way to dress design individualization.

Like other nations in Asia, mainland China has undergone continuous reforms in its economic, political and social institutions over the past two decades. These changes are also reflected in its education system, which has been both the target of government reforms and an agent for social change. In this context, China's Ministry of Education has cast school principals as key actors in leading and managing change in schools at the local level throughout the country. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Chinese school leaders successfully respond to the implementation of educational reform.

In this paper the authors explore how school leaders in one city in South China perceive their roles and actions in fostering successful change. The study employed extensive literature review with qualitative interviews of five school principals who had demonstrated success at leading change in their schools.

The findings of both the literature review and interview study unexpectedly found more similarities than differences between how leaders contribute to successful change in China as compared with the Western literature.

The research findings are limited by two main features. First, the sources analyzed in the literature review were of highly varying quality. Moreover, relatively few employed replicable analytical methods capable of generalization. These limitations of the literature mean that the results of the review can only be interpreted as suggestive rather than conclusive. Second, the interview study was framed as an effort to further explore the trends of the literature review. Although the findings from the small-scale interview study were consistent with the broader Chinese literature, the research design suffers form the same limitations as the general literature. Therefore, these findings must also be treated as emergent rather than explanatory.

The paper identifies directions for future research and discusses implications for school leaders in implementing educational change in China.

The originality of this study lies in its attempt to synthesize a previously inaccessible literature on change leadership in Chinese schools. Despite China's rising role as a global leader, the literature in educational leadership and management remains sparse and largely unknown to Western scholars. Therefore, the study's limitations are balanced by the need to provide better descriptions of current practices employed by leaders as they attempt to improve China's schools.

Laser absolute distance measurement has the characteristics of high precision, wide range and non-contact. In laser ranging system, tracking and aiming measurement point is the precondition of automatic measurement. To solve this problem, this paper aims to propose a novel method.

For the central point of the hollow angle coupled mirror, this paper proposes a method based on correlation filtering and ellipse fitting. For non-cooperative target points, this paper proposes an extraction method based on correlation filtering and feature matching. Finally, a visual tracking and aiming system was constructed by combining the two-axis turntable, and experiments were carried out.

The target tracking algorithm has an accuracy of 91.15% and a speed of 19.5 frames per second. The algorithm can adapt to the change of target scale and short-term occlusion. The mean error and standard deviation of the center point extraction of the hollow Angle coupling mirror are 0.20 and 0.09 mm. The mean error and standard deviation of feature points matching for non-cooperative target were 0.06 mm and 0.16 mm. The visual tracking and aiming system can track a target running at a speed of 0.7 m/s, aiming error mean is 1.74 pixels and standard deviation is 0.67 pixel.

The results show that this method can achieve fast and high precision target tracking and aiming and has great application value in laser ranging.

This study aims to investigate the fabrication of hydrogen gas sensor based on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) microstructure. The palladium nanoparticles (PdNPs) as gate metal have been deposited on the oxide film using spin coating.

The PdNPs and the surface of oxide film were analyzed using Transmission electron microscopy. The capacitance-voltage (C-V) curves for the MOS sensor in 1, 2 and 4 per cent hydrogen concentration and in 100 KHz frequency at the room temperature were reported.

The response times for 1, 2 and 4 per cent hydrogen concentration were 2.5 s, 1.5 s and 1 s, respectively. The responses (R per cent) of MOS sensor to 1, 2 and 4 per cent hydrogen concentration were 42.8, 47.3 and 52.6 per cent, respectively.

The experimental results demonstrate that the MOS hydrogen gas sensor based on the PdNPs gate, shows the fast response and recovery compared to other hydrogen gas sensors based on the Pd.

The purpose of this paper is to examine music teachers' perceptions of teaching cultural and national values (also defined as national cultural values) to explore the tensions facing school music education in the choice of music types to be delivered in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

With specific regard to music teachers' perceptions of “values,” “music cultures” and “nationalism,” data were drawn from a survey questionnaire given to 343 music teachers (155 preservice and 188 in-service music teachers) and semistructured interviews with 36 of these respondents.

The findings of the study showed that though many respondents in Hong Kong and Taiwan felt comfortable teaching traditional Chinese music, they did not want to teach contemporary Mainland Chinese music and other political or patriotic forms in the school music curriculum. The data also demonstrated some shortcomings in introducing a balance of music types into the curriculum, as well as limitations in promoting national education in response to the respective sociopolitical situations in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

This study was subject to limitations regarding the potential generalizability of the findings on school music teachers' perceptions in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The implications for teachers and student teachers regarding the development of cultural and national values related to the political processes in Hong Kong and Taiwan are complicated, because of not only their relationship with Mainland China and its education based on nationalism but also the extent of teachers' professional training to help create an enabling environment for national and cultural development.

The findings of this study revealed that there are fundamental gaps in the overt and operational curricula in Hong Kong and Taiwan concerning the sociopolitical function of values in school music education in response to their respective sociopolitical situations.

Because of the advantages of high deposition efficiency and low manufacturing cost compared with other additive technologies, robotic wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) technology has been widely applied for fabricating medium- to large-scale metallic components. The additive manufacturing (AM) method is a relatively complex process, which involves the workpiece modeling, conversion of the model file, slicing, path planning and so on. Then the structure is formed by the accumulated weld bead. However, the poor forming accuracy of WAAM usually leads to severe dimensional deviation between the as-built and the predesigned structures. This paper aims to propose a visual sensing technology and deep learning–assisted WAAM method for fabricating metallic structure, to simplify the complex WAAM process and improve the forming accuracy.

Instead of slicing of the workpiece modeling and generating all the welding torch paths in advance of the fabricating process, this method is carried out by adding the feature point regression branch into the Yolov5 algorithm, to detect the feature point from the images of the as-built structure. The coordinates of the feature points of each deposition layer can be calculated automatically. Then the welding torch trajectory for the next deposition layer is generated based on the position of feature point.

The mean average precision score of modified YOLOv5 detector is 99.5%. Two types of overhanging structures have been fabricated by the proposed method. The center contour error between the actual and theoretical is 0.56 and 0.27 mm in width direction, and 0.43 and 0.23 mm in height direction, respectively.

The fabrication of circular overhanging structures without using the complicate slicing strategy, turning table or other extra support verified the possibility of the robotic WAAM system with deep learning technology.

This study aims to examine the characteristics of financial analysts’ earnings forecasts after COVID-19 outbroke in the USA. Specifically, the authors examine how financial analysts tradeoff between accuracy and responsiveness under investors’ heightened information demand when there is market-wide uncertainty. In addition, the authors investigate how COVID-19 may affect analysts’ cognitive bias.

The research uses a sample of US-listed firms from March 2019 to February 2021, the period surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak in the USA.

The empirical analyses reveal that analysts issue timelier, more frequent, but less accurate forecasts after the COVID-19 outbreak, indicating that analysts become more responsive to investors’ intensified demand for information during the pandemic. Yet, the high uncertainty caused by COVID-19 increases forecasting difficulty. There is no systematic difference regarding the forecast accuracy between high- and low-ability analysts. Meanwhile, high-quality audit can improve forecast accuracy. Contrary to prior findings that analysts tend to underreact to bad news, the empirical evidence suggests that analysts, shaped by the salience bias, overestimate the negative impact of the pandemic. Analysts first issue pessimistic forecasts at the start of the outbreak and then revise forecasts upward steadily as the fiscal year-end approaches.

The study contributes to the literature by adding novel evidence on how COVID-19-induced uncertainty affects analyst forecast characteristics. It also provides additional evidence on how high-quality audit is associated with improved analyst forecast accuracy even under heightened uncertainty of COVID-19.

Epoxy resin (EP) is a kind of thermosetting resin, and its application is usually limited by poor toughness. In this case, a type of new flexible chain blocking hyperbranched polyester (HBP) was designed and synthesized. The purpose of this study is to enhance the toughness and dielectric properties of EP.

P-toluene sulfonic acid was used as the catalyst, with dimethy propionic acid as the branch unit and pentaerythritol as the core in the experiment. Then, n-hexanoic acid and n-caprylic acid were, respectively, put to gain HBP with a n-hexanoic acid and n-caprylic acid capped structure. The microstructure, mechanical properties, insulation properties and dielectric properties of the composite were characterized for the purpose of finding the appropriate proportion of HBP.

HBP enhanced the toughness of epoxy-cured products by interpenetrating polymer network structure between the flexible chain of HBP and the EP molecular chain. Meanwhile, HBP reduced the ε and tgδ of the epoxy anhydride-cured product by reducing the number of polar groups per unit volume of the EP through free volumes.

Yet EP is a kind of thermosetting resin, which is widely used in coating, aerospace, electronics, polymer composites and military fields, but it is usually limited by poor toughness. In a word, it is an urgent priority to develop new EP with better toughness and mechanical properties.

At present, HBP has been applied as a new kind of toughening strategy and as a modifier for EP. According to the toughening mechanism of HBP modified EP, the free volume of HBP creates a space for the EP molecule to move around when loaded. Moreover, the free volume could cause the dielectric constant of EP to diminish by reducing the content of polarizable groups. Meanwhile, the addition of HBP with flexible chains grafted to the EP could develop an interpenetrating network structure, thus further enhancing the toughness of EP

Thermopile infrared (IR) detectors are one of the most important IR devices. Considering that the surface area of conventional four-end-beam (FEB)-based thermopile devices cannot be effectively used and the performance of this type of devices is relatively low, this paper aims to present a double-end-beam (DEB)-based thermopile device with high duty cycle and performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Numerical analysis was conducted to show the advantages of the DEB-based thermopile devices.

Structural size of the DEB-based thermopiles may be further scaled down and maintain relatively higher responsivity and detectivity when compared with the FEB-based thermopiles. The authors characterized the thermoelectric properties of the device proposed in this paper, which achieves a responsivity of 1,151.14 V/W, a detectivity of 4.15 × 108 cm Hz1/2/W and a response time of 14.46 ms sensor based on DEB structure.

The paper proposed a micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) thermopile infrared sensor based on double-end-beam structure.

This study aims to develop a sports bra with cosmetic microcapsules that supports the breasts and provides an aesthetically upright and lifted posture by using 28 days period.

A fitting process was carried out on provided seamless sports bras to determine the criteria that have to be improved considering the desired properties. The new sports bras were produced after the pattern design was developed; cosmetic microcapsules were applied to some of the bras and some were used as a control group to compare the real cosmetic effects. Female subjects tried the newly developed sports bras in a 28-day wear trial. Measurements were taken at certain periods during the wear trials, and the obtained data were analyzed statistically.

The findings of this study determined that the product provides a decrease in breast girth and increases skin moisture and nipple height after 28 days of regular use due to the effect of cosmetic ingredients released from microcapsules. A great majority of subjects found the breast lifting and supporting property of the sports bra successful and were satisfied with the new shape of the subjects' breasts.

Fitting studies were carried out directly on the female body, and the designed and developed encapsulating type sports bra has been transformed into a cosmetic textile product that gains also cosmetic properties. The cosmetic effects of the bra were investigated with wear trials. On the other hand, the nipple height measure term was defined for the first time and added to the literature within the scope of the study.