Spatio-temporal Fragmentation of Leisure Activities in Information Era： Empirical Evidence from Nanjing, China

Activity fragmentation provides a new approach for understanding the transformation of urban space and function in the information era. Numerous theoretical and empirical studies have been conducted on activity fragmentation, but few studies have focused on the fragmentation of leisure activities. This study was intended to extend the extant literature by: 1) analysing the spatio-temporal fragmentation of physical and virtual leisure activities by using a dataset collected in Nanjing, China, and 2) evaluating the reasons of leisure activity fragmentation, as well as the potential spatial effect of activity fragmentation. The results indicated that virtual leisure activities are more fragmented than physical leisure activities, but the fragmentation of physical and virtual leisure activities varies on weekday and weekend, as well as in various locations and urban districts. In addition, the results suggested that sociodemographic factors and information and communication technology(ICT) variables distinctly affect the fragmentation of leisure activities. Meanwhile, the fragmentation of virtual leisure activities may enhance the transformation of traditional urban space by reallocating leisure activity times and locations.

What Information Gap Activities can Teach Us in TESOL

Starting from presenting and analyzing some information gap activities during the previous teaching experience, this article has inferred the major roles of information gap activities. Some strategies to implement the information gap activities are also recommended together with the functions of the instructors via these activities. What information gap activities can teach us in TESOL （teaching English for speakers of other languages） is that information gap activities contribute to setting up a climate of a mutual autonomous learning style both for the learners and the instructors, and these activities activate a diversity in the learning atmosphere.

ADAPTIVE AND ACTIVE COMPUTING PARADIGM FOR PERSONALIZED INFORMATION SERVICE IN DISTRIBUTED HETERONGEOUS ENVIRONMENT

To solve the problem that traditional pull based information service can’t meet the demand of long term users getting domain information timely and properly, an adaptive and active computing paradigm (AACP) for personalized information service in heterogeneous environment is proposed to provide user centered, push based higsh quality information service timely in a proper way, the motivation of which is generalized as R 4 Service: the right information at the right time in the right way to the right person, upon which formalized algorithms framework of adaptive user profile management, incremental information retrieval, information filtering, and active delivery mechanism are discussed in details. The AACP paradigm serves users in a push based, event driven, interest related, adaptive and active information service mode, which is useful and promising for long term user to gain fresh information instead of polling from kinds of information sources.

Invariance and Noises of Shannon Entropy for Information on Oxidative Activity of DNA in All Living Cells for Medical Diagnostics

We analyze oxidative activity of DNA due to fluorescence of chromosomes inside cells, using flow cytometry method with nanometer spatial resolution. Statistics of fluorescence is presented in histogram as frequency distributions of flashes in the dependence on their intensity and in distributions of Shannon entropy, which was defined on the base of normalized distribution of information in original histogram for frequency of flashes. We show that overall sum of entropy, i.e. total entropy E , for any histogram is invariant and has identical trends of changes all values of E(r) = lnr at reduction of histogram’ rank r. This invariance reflects informational homeostasis of chromosomes activity in multi-scale networks of entropy inside all cells in various samples of blood for DNA inside neutrophils, lymphocytes, inside all leukocytes of human and inside chicken erythrocytes for various dyes, colors and various excitations of fluorescence. Informational homeostasis of oxidative activity of 3D DNA in the full set of chromosomes inside living cells exists for any Shannon-Weaver index of biodiversity of cells, at any state of health different beings. Regulation perturbations in information activity DNA provides informational adaptability and vitality of cells at homeostasis support. Noises of entropy, during regulation of informational homeostasis, depend on the states of health in real time. The main structural reconstructions of chromosomal correlations, corresponding to self-regulation of homeostasis, occur in the most large-scale networks of entropy, for rank r<32. We show that stability of homeostasis is supported by activity of all 46 chromosomes inside cells. Patterns, hidden switching and branching in sequences of averages of H?lder and central moments for noises in regulation of homeostasis define new opportunities in diagnostics of health and immunity. All people and all aerobic beings have one overall homeostatic level for countdown of information activity of DNA inside cells. We noted very bad and dangerous properties of artificial cells with other levels of informational homeostasis for all aerobic beings in foods, medical treatment and in biotechnologies.

APPLICATION OF IMPROVED PRODUCTION ACTIVITY CONTROL ARCHITECTURE FOR SHOP FLOOR INFORMATION SYSTEM IN DIGITAL MANUFACTURING

Shop floor control （SFC） is responsible for the coordination and control of the manufacturing physical and information flow within the shop floor in the manufacturing system. Weaknesses of the production activity control （PAC） architecture of the shop floor are addressed by the Maglica＇s new system architecture. This architecture gives rise to unlimited number of movers and producers thus evolving more complex but decentralized architecture. Beijing Institute of Technology - production activity control （BIT-PAC） architecture introduces an idea of sub-producars and sub-movers thus reducing the complexity of the architecture. All the equipments including sub-producars and sub-movers are considered to be passive in the proposed shop floor information system. The dissemination of information from sub-producers and sub-movers is done manually through a PC. Proposed BIT-PAC SFC architecture facilitates the information flow from shop floor to the other area of the organization. Effective use of interact information services （IIS） and SQL2000 is done along with the ASP.NET technology to implement the application logic. Applicability of the software based on BIT-PAC architecture is checked by running application software on a network PC that supports the dynamic flow of information from sub-producers and sub-movers to the other parts of the organization. Use of software is also shown at the end for BIT training workshop thus supporting the use of SFC architecture for similar kind of environments.

An integrated geospatial information service system for disaster management in China

The Chinese Government and citizens face enormous challenges of disaster management as widespread devastation,economic damages,and loss of human lives caused by increasing natural disasters.Disaster management requires a complicated iterative process that includes disaster monitoring,early detection,forecasting,loss assessment,and efficient analysis of disaster reduction.Each task typically involves the use of technologists and multiple geospatial information resources,including sensors,data sources,models,geo-tools,software packages,and computing resources.However,most existing disaster management systems operate in a typical passive data-centric mode,where resources cannot be fully utilized.This impediment is partially being addressed by the increasingly complex application requirements and the growing availability of diverse resources.In this paper,we summarize and analyze the practical problems experienced by the National Disaster Reduction Application System of China.To address the issues of data-centric,centralized,isolated solutions,we propose a novel Focusing Service Mechanism,which is capable of scheduling and allocating for optimum utilization of multiple resources,to dynamically generate collaborative and on-demand disaster information services.We also demonstrate the design and implementation of the Integrated Disaster Information Service System(IDISS).Through the service strategies of Virtualizing,Wrapping,and Integrating,disasterrelated resources are constructed into services in the IDISS.These services are dynamically aggregated into focusing service chains,for diverse disaster management tasks.Actual applications illustrate that the proposed service system can significantly improve the capability of disaster management in China.

Stimulus discrimination via responses of retinal ganglion cells and dopamine-dependent modulation

Neighboring retinal ganglion cells（RGCs）fire with a high degree of correlation.It has been increasingly realized that visual perception of the environment relies on neuronal population activity to encode and transmit the information contained in stimuli.Understanding how neuronal population activity contributes to visual information processing is essential for understanding the mechanisms of visual coding.Here we simultaneously recorded spike discharges from groups of RGCs in bullfrog retina in response to visual patterns（checkerboard,horizontal grating,and full-field illumination）using a multi-electrode array system.To determine the role of synchronous activity mediated by gap junctions,we measured the correct classification rates of single cells＇firing patterns as well as the synchronization patterns of multiple neurons.We found that,under normal conditions,RGC population activity exhibited distinct response features with exposure to different stimulus patterns and had a higher rate of correct stimulus discrimination than the activity of single cells.Dopamine（1μmol/L）application did not significantly change the performance of single neuron activity,but enhanced the synchronization of the RGC population activity and decreased the rate of correct stimulus pattern discrimination.These findings suggest that the synchronous activity of RGCs plays an important role in the information coding of different types of visual patterns,and a dopamine-induced increase in synchronous activity weakens the population performance in pattern discrimination,indicating the potential role of the dopaminergic pathway in modulating the population coding process.