Semi-steppe rangelands are a complex, highly dynamic and often multi-layered mosaic of grassland, shrubland, and intermediate communities. A few recent studies have explicitly or implicitly developed synthetic hypotheses about how interactive effects of human made disturbances initiate dynamic changes in plant community composition to cause a shifting mosaic of vegetation pattern across the lan...

Semi-steppe rangelands are a complex, highly dynamic and often multi-layered mosaic of grassland, shrubland, and intermediate communities. A few recent studies have explicitly or implicitly developed synthetic hypotheses about how interactive effects of human made disturbances initiate dynamic changes in plant community composition to cause a shifting mosaic of vegetation pattern across the lan...

Automatic analysis of human facial expressions is one of the challenging problems in machine vision systems. It has many applications in human-computer interactions such as, social signal processing, social robots, deceit detection, interactive video and behavior monitoring. In this paper, we develop a new method for automatic facial expression recognition based on facial muscle anatomy and hum...

With the global village approaching a new era of aesthetic economy powered by culture creative, every country is actively seeking inspirational resources for culturally creative product design. Chinese traditional poetry, full of expression created with poets’ fascinating words and still highly appreciated today, carries not only our predecessors’ wisdom but also principles which correspond to ...

The study of intercultural communication has tried to answer the question, “How do people understand one another when they do not share a common cultural experience?” Just a few decades ago, this question was one faced mainly by diplomats, expatriates, and the occasional international traveler. Today, living in multicultural societies within a global village, we all face the question every day....

We prove two existence theorems for the integrodifferential equation of mixed type: x′(t) = f (t,x(t), t0k1(t,s)g(s,x(s))ds, ∫ a 0k2(t,s)h(s,x(s))ds), x(0) = x0, where in the first part of this paper f , g, h, x are functions with values in a Banach space E and integrals are taken in the sense of Henstock-Kurzweil (HK). In the second part f , g, h, x are weakly-weakly sequentially continuous fu...

Closed-form solutions were developed to optimize kinematics design of a 2-degree-of-freedom (2DOF) planar parallel manipulator. The optimum design based on the workspace was presented. Meanwhile, a global, comprehensive conditioning index was introduced to evaluate the kinematic designs. The optimal parallel manipulator is incorporated into a 5-DOF hybrid machine tool which includes a 2-DOF rot...

BACKGROUND Assessing the clinical effectiveness of measuring grip strength as a prognostic tool in recovering ambulation in bed-confined frail elderly patients. METHODS A prospective study was carried out with 50 elderly inpatients (mean age: 81.6 years old). Manual muscle test was used for checking strength of hip flexor muscles, hip abductor muscles and knee extensor muscles. Grip strength ...

This article argues that rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming is elaborative encoding for episodic memories. Elaborative encoding in REM can, at least partially, be understood through ancient art of memory (AAOM) principles: visualization, bizarre association, organization, narration, embodiment, and location. These principles render recent memories more distinctive through novel and meaningful as...