Automatic Suppression Method for Water Surface Glints Using a Division of Focal Plane Visible Polarimeter.

To address the problem of water surface detection imaging equipment being susceptible to water surface glints, this study demonstrates a method called De-Glints for suppressing glints and obtaining clear underwater images using a division of focal plane (DoFP) polarimeter. Based on the principle of polarization imaging, the best polarization angle and the image corresponding to the minimal average gray level of each pixel are calculated. To evaluate the improvement in image quality, the index E was designed. The results of indoor and outdoor experiments show that the error of the angle calculation of this method is within 10%, and the minimum error is only 3%. The E index is positively improved and can be relatively improved by 8.00 under the interference of strong outdoor glints, and the method proposed in this paper shows a good adaptive ability to the dynamic scene.

Perceived teacher autonomy support for adolescents' reading achievement: The mediation roles of control-value appraisals and emotions.

Analyzing students' internal cognitive-motivational appraisals and achievement emotions is of pivotal importance for educational outcomes and student individual wellbeing, yet little is shown about their associations with teacher autonomy support. This study investigates the relationship between perceived teacher autonomy support and reading achievement by addressing mediating influences of control and value-related constructs, i.e., reading self-efficacy, meaning in life, and reading enjoyment. Multiple mediation modeling was adopted to test the proposed model with carrying out a total of 12,058 students from 361 schools in China in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 reading database. The results elucidated that student-perceived teacher autonomy support is significantly positively related to adolescents' reading outcomes by fostering internal control and value appraisals and academic enjoyment. These current findings confirm the positive correlation between teacher autonomy support and adolescents' motivational and emotional factors, providing significant practical implications for educators to adopt various teaching strategies to enhance adolescents' self-efficacy, intrinsic values, and positive emotions.

Residual Interpolation Integrated Pixel-by-Pixel Adaptive Iterative Process for Division of Focal Plane Polarimeters.

Residual interpolations are effective methods to reduce the instantaneous field-of-view error of division of focal plane (DoFP) polarimeters. However, their guide-image selection strategies are improper, and do not consider the DoFP polarimeters' spatial sampling modes. Thus, we propose a residual interpolation method with a new guide-image selection strategy based on the spatial layout of the pixeled polarizer array to improve the sampling rate of the guide image. The interpolation performance is also improved by the proposed pixel-by-pixel, adaptive iterative process and the weighted average fusion of the results of the minimized residual and minimized Laplacian energy guide filters. Visual and objective evaluations demonstrate the proposed method's superiority to the existing state-of-the-art methods. The proposed method proves that considering the spatial layout of the pixeled polarizer array on the physical level is vital to improving the performance of interpolation methods for DoFP polarimeters.

Not-in-My-Backyard: Legislation Requirements and Economic Analysis for Developing Underground Wastewater Treatment Plant in China.

Underground wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have achieved fast development in China in recent years. Due to the remarkable differences between underground and conventional aboveground construction mode, legislation including technical specifications and regulations for underground WWTPs, which was revealed in vacancy, should be issued in time to promote its development. It is also expected to avoid not-in-my-backyard sentiment by decreasing negative effects of WWTPs via construction in sealed underground space. This research took Beijing city as case study to investigate the impacts of WWTPs on nearby community from the perspective of housing price quantitatively. Differences-in-Difference (DID) model result indicates that WWTPs inhibited nearby housing price increases, leading to huge financial losses. The closer are the houses and WWTPs, the severer were the inhibition effects, indicating the relationship between environmental quality and property price. During 2016⁻2017, the deteriorated estate value surrounding the investigated WWTPs in Beijing was estimated as high as 32.53 billion RMB, much higher than their construction cost of about 4.38 billion RMB. Transformation from grey to green by underground construction was expected to avoid these huge value distortions, while providing alternative to enhance WWTPs with various social functions for public services. This research demonstrates the high social requirements in highly developed cities to promote fast development of underground WWTPs in China.

Experience in fractionated stereotactic body radiation therapy boost for newly diagnosed nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

PURPOSE: Radiotherapy is the most effective treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of fractionated stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) boost for NPC. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Sixty-four patients with newly diagnosed, nonmetastatic NPC were treated with conventional radiotherapy 64.8-68.4 Gy followed by fractionated SBRT boost 12-15 Gy between January 2002 and July 2004. Most patients (72%) presented with Stage III-IV disease. Fifty-two patients also received cisplatin-based concurrent (38) or neoadjuvant (14) chemotherapy. The major endpoints were local control, overall survival, and complications. RESULTS: All patients finished the planned dose of radiotherapy. After a median follow-up of 31 months (range, 22-54), 15 patients developed tumor recurrences--3 in the nasopharynx, 4 in the neck, 5 in distant sites, 1 in both nasopharynx and neck, 2 in the neck and a distant site. The 3-year actuarial rate of local control was 93.1%, regional control 91.4%, freedom from distant metastasis 90.3%, and overall survival 84.9%, respectively. There were no Grade 4 acute or chronic radiation-related complications. CONCLUSIONS: Fractionated SBRT boost for NPC is technically feasible and provides good local control without any severe complications.