A piecewise linear transverse shear transfer model for bolted side-plated beams

Ling-Zhi Li,Chang-Jiu Jiang,Ray Kai-Leung Su,Sai-Huen Lo 국제구조공학회 2017 Structural Engineering and Mechanics, An Int'l Jou Vol.62 No.4

The performance of bolted side-plated (BSP) beams is affected by the degree of transverse partial interaction, which is a result of the interfacial slip caused by transverse shear transfer between the bolted steel plates and the reinforced concrete beams. However, explicit formulae for the transverse shear transfer profile have yet to be derived. In this paper, a simplified piecewise linear shear transfer model was proposed based on force superposition principle and simplification of shear transfer profiles derived from a previous numerical study. The magnitude of shear transfer was determined by force equilibrium and displacement compatibility condition. A set of design formulae for BSP beams under several basic load cases was also derived. Then the model was verified by test results. A worked example was also provided to illustrate the application of the proposed design formulae. This paper sheds some light on the shear force transfer mechanism of anchor bolts in BSP beams, and offers a practical method to evaluate the influence of transverse partial interaction in strengthening design.

Risk factors for child physical abuse and neglect among Chinese young mothers

Lo, Camilla K.M.,Tung, Keith T.S.,Chan, Ko Ling,Yip, Paul S.F.,Lau, Joseph T.F.,Wong, Wilfred H.S.,Wong, Rosa S.,Tsang, Anita M.C.,Tsang, Hannah Y.H.,Tso, Winnie W.Y.,Ip, Patrick Elsevier 2017 Child abuse & neglect Vol.67 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>Although studies have reported a linkage between young pregnancy and child maltreatment risk, it is still unclear about what factors place young mothers at greater risk of maltreating their child in Chinese context. Based on the socio-ecological model, risk factors in 4 domains: family background/structure, maternal stressors, mother-child interaction, and child behavioral issue in relation to physical assault, neglect, both physical assault and neglect, and either physical assault or neglect among Chinese young mothers in Hong Kong were assessed. 392 young mothers were recruited from an integrated supportive program for young mothers. The mean age of mothers at delivery was 21.8 (SD=3.0) and 52.3% were married. Individual risk factors and cumulative risk domains related to different child maltreatment groups were examined. Our results show both overlapping and unique risk factors across the domains associated with physical assault and neglect. Further, young families exposed to higher number of risk domains show higher rates for physical assault and neglect, co-occurrence of physical assault and neglect, and either form of maltreatment. In addition, various risk domains were found to be particularly important for different forms of maltreatment: family background/structure domain was found to be an important risk domain for neglect; mother-child interaction domain for both physical assault and neglect; family background/structure and maternal stressors domains for either physical assault or neglect. Closer examination of a subgroup of adolescent mothers aged 18 and below shows that family background/structure was an important risk domain for this group.</P>

Comparison of Ganoderma boninense Isolate’s Aggressiveness Using Infected Oil Palm Seedlings

Lo Mei Lieng,Thanh Tu Anh Vu,Midot Frazer,Lau Sharon Yu Ling,Wong Wei Chee,Tung Hun Jiat,Jee Mui Sie,Chin Mei-Yee,Melling Lulie 한국미생물학회 2023 The journal of microbiology Vol.61 No.4

Basal stem rot incidence caused by a white-rot fungus, Ganoderma boninense, is the major disease of oil palm in Southeast Asia. The rate of disease transmission and host damage are affected by variations in pathogen aggressiveness. Several other studies have used the disease severity index (DSI) to determine G. boninense aggressiveness levels while verifying disease using a culture-based method, which might not provide accurate results or be feasible in all cases. To differentiate G. boninense aggressiveness, we employed the DSI and vegetative growth measurement of infected oil palm seedlings. Disease confirmation was performed through scanning electron microscopy and molecular identification of fungal DNA from both infected tissue and fungi isolated from Ganoderma selective medium. Two-month-old oil palm seedlings were artificially inoculated with G. boninense isolates (2, 4A, 5A, 5B, and 7A) sampled from Miri (Lambir) and Mukah (Sungai Meris and Sungai Liuk), Sarawak. The isolates were categorized into three groups: highly aggressive (4A and 5B), moderately aggressive (5A and 7A), and less aggressive (2). Isolate 5B was identified as the most aggressive, and it was the only one to result in seedling mortality. Out of the five vegetative growth parameters measured, only the bole size between treatments was not affected. The integration of both conventional and molecular approaches in disease confirmation allows for precise detection.

Quasi-two-dimensional superconductivity in wurtzited-structured InN film

D.C. Ling,J.H. Cheng,Y.Y. Lo,C.H. Du,A.P. Chiu,C.A. Chang,P.H. Chang 한국자기학회 2007 한국자기학회 학술연구발표회 논문개요집 Vol.- No.-

Valuation of Insurers' Contingent Capital with Counterparty Risk and Price Endogeneity

Jin-Ping Lee,Chien-Ling Lo,Min-Teh Yu 한국재무학회 2012 한국재무학회 학술대회 Vol.2012 No.09

This study develops a structural framework to value insurers' contingent capital with counterparty risk (CR) and overcomes the problem of price endogeneity (PE) in the valuation model. Our results on the focal contingent capital instrument - catastro- phe equity put option (CatEPut) - indicate that prices can easily be overestimated by 110 basis points without considering CR and be underestimated by 17{34 basis points without considering PE. This study also examines how CatEPuts aect the buyer's probability of default (PD). Our results show that buying CatEPut lowers the buyer's PD; however, if we ignore the new equity eect due to share issuance, the result is not true in some scenarios. Without taking CR and PE into account, one may signicantly overestimate the credit enhancement provided by the CatEPuts.

Effect of Place of Incorporation, Chinese Culture, and Business Practices on Corporate Fraud: Evidence from Hong Kong Listed Companies

Simon Ming-sum Lo,Josephine Chui-ling Pang 한국증권학회 2017 Asia-Pacific Journal of Financial Studies Vol.46 No.2

Mainland Chinese companies make up more than 50% of the Hong Kong securities market in terms of number of listings and market capitalization. Our empirical results indicate that Chinese companies have a higher incidence of corporate fraud and greater fraud severity than other listed counterparts, even after controlling for state versus private ownership, internal corporate governance, financial standing, firm characteristics, and time factors. Further investigation reveals that incorporation in China and Chinese culture and business practices are two distinct and major driving factors in corporate fraud. Conventional explanatory variables for corporate fraud other than board tenure, firm size, listing year, and year of fraud detection do not have explanatory power in the Hong Kong context.

The adaptive computer-aided diagnosis system based on tumor sizes for the classification of breast tumors detected at screening ultrasound

Moon, Woo Kyung,Chen, I-Ling,Chang, Jung Min,Shin, Sung Ui,Lo, Chung-Ming,Chang, Ruey-Feng Elsevier 2017 Ultrasonics Vol.76 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>Screening ultrasound (US) is increasingly used as a supplement to mammography in women with dense breasts, and more than 80% of cancers detected by US alone are 1cm or smaller. An adaptive computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system based on tumor size was proposed to classify breast tumors detected at screening US images using quantitative morphological and textural features. In the present study, a database containing 156 tumors (78 benign and 78 malignant) was separated into two subsets of different tumor sizes ( < 1cm and ⩾ 1cm) to explore the improvement in the performance of the CAD system. After adaptation, the accuracies, sensitivities, specificities and <I>Az</I> values of the CAD for the entire database increased from 73.1% (114/156), 73.1% (57/78), 73.1% (57/78), and 0.790 to 81.4% (127/156), 83.3% (65/78), 79.5% (62/78), and 0.852, respectively. In the data subset of tumors larger than 1cm, the performance improved from 66.2% (51/77), 68.3% (28/41), 63.9% (23/36), and 0.703 to 81.8% (63/77), 85.4% (35/41), 77.8% (28/36), and 0.855, respectively. The proposed CAD system can be helpful to classify breast tumors detected at screening US.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> An adaptive filtering is introduced into a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system to highlight the characteristic of breast tumors detected in screening ultrasound (US). </LI> <LI> The adaptive filtering enhances the CAD system to emphasize the meaningfulness of tumor size, allows a new regularization technique to be embedded, and increasing the classification accuracy. </LI> <LI> For the classification between malignant and benign tumors with two kinds of tumor size ( < 1cm and ⩾ 1cm), especially in the tumors larger or equal to 1cm, the proposed CAD was more robust than conventional CAD. </LI> <LI> The CAD system using various quantitative US features would provide a promising diagnostic suggestion for classifying the breast tumors detected at screening US images. </LI> </UL> </P>

Development of a Modified SPWM Control Inverter for Tidal Current Generation System

Jia-You Lee,Kuo-Yuan Lo,Chien-Tzu Ko,Chia-Ling Fan 전력전자학회 2019 ICPE(ISPE)논문집 Vol.2019 No.5

This paper proposes a modified sinusoidal pulsewidth modulation (SPWM) control single-phase inverters for the tidal current generation system. In general, a two-stage configuration is used to convert the generating AC power from the tidal current generator to DC power by a rectifier and transfer the DC power into AC power by an inverter to provide a stable voltage source. It is noticed that a small size capacitor of the rectifier is possible and the discontinuous current can be improved. However, a small size capacitor implies the higher voltage ripple and results in a lots of low-order voltage harmonics of the inverter with traditional SPWM control. Therefore, a modified modulation control strategy is developed in this paper. The proposed inverter has lower total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output voltage with high input voltage ripple. The low-order harmonics of output voltage can be reduced effectively and the THD is less than 2.5% in the experiments.

Financial S tress in t he A sian C hristian Immigrant Community During COVID-19

Jinhee Park,Roy K. Chen,Chu-Ling Lo,Heekyung Lee 한국상담학회 2023 Journal of Asia Pacific counseling Vol.13 No.2

The purpose of the current study was to examine how individual, economic, and psychological factors contributed to the financial concerns of Asian Christian immigrants in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., the impact of COVID-19 on employment status and income change, intolerance of uncertainty, hope, and personal meaning in life). The sample consisted of 103 immigrants from three East Asian countries affiliated with Christian churches. A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to observe how the aforementioned variables predicted the participants’ financial worries. The results showed that intolerance of uncertainty accounted for a significant amount of variance in financial worries among the participants, but the impact of COVID-19, hope, and meaning in life did not predict significant variance. Implications for practice and future research were discussed.

(Semi)ladder-Type Bithiophene Imide-Based All-Acceptor Semiconductors: Synthesis, Structure-Property Correlations, and Unipolar n-Type Transistor Performance

Wang, Yingfeng,Guo, Han,Harbuzaru, Alexandra,Uddin, Mohammad Afsar,Arrechea-Marcos, Iratxe,Ling, Shaohua,Yu, Jianwei,Tang, Yumin,Sun, Huiliang,Ló,pez Navarrete, Juan Teodomiro,Ortiz, Rocio Ponce American Chemical Society 2018 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY - Vol.140 No.19

<P>Development of high-performance unipolar n-type organic semiconductors still remains as a great challenge. In this work, all-acceptor bithiophene imide-based ladder-type small molecules BTI<I>n</I> and semiladder-type homopolymers PBTI<I>n</I> (<I>n</I> = 1-5) were synthesized, and their structure-property correlations were studied in depth. It was found that Pd-catalyzed Stille coupling is superior to Ni-mediated Yamamoto coupling to produce polymers with higher molecular weight and improved polymer quality, thus leading to greatly increased electron mobility (μ<SUB>e</SUB>). Due to their all-acceptor backbone, these polymers all exhibit unipolar n-type transport in organic thin-film transistors, accompanied by low off-currents (10<SUP>-10</SUP>-10<SUP>-9</SUP> A), large on/off current ratios (10<SUP>6</SUP>), and small threshold voltages (∼15-25 V). The highest μ<SUB>e</SUB>, up to 3.71 cm<SUP>2</SUP> V<SUP>-1</SUP> s<SUP>-1</SUP>, is attained from PBTI1 with the shortest monomer unit. As the monomer size is extended, the μ<SUB>e</SUB> drops by 2 orders to 0.014 cm<SUP>2</SUP> V<SUP>-1</SUP> s<SUP>-1</SUP> for PBTI5. This monotonic decrease of μ<SUB>e</SUB> was also observed in their homologous BTI<I>n</I> small molecules. This trend of mobility decrease is in good agreement with the evolvement of disordered phases within the film, as revealed by Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements. The extension of the ladder-type building blocks appears to have a large impact on the motion freedom of the building blocks and the polymer chains during film formation, thus negatively affecting film morphology and charge carrier mobility. The result indicates that synthesizing building blocks with more extended ladder-type backbone does not necessarily lead to improved mobilities. This study marks a significant advance in the performance of all-acceptor-type polymers as unipolar electron transporting materials and provides useful guidelines for further development of (semi)ladder-type molecular and polymeric semiconductors for applications in organic electronics.</P> [FIG OMISSION]</BR>