Hong Kong Baptist University

About: Hong Kong Baptist University is a education organization based out in Hong Kong, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: China & Population. The organization has 7811 authors who have published 18919 publications receiving 555274 citations. The organization is also known as: Hong Kong Baptist College & HKBU.

The use of virtual reality for creating unusual environmental stimulation to motivate students to explore creative ideas

Abstract: This paper discusses the roles of simulation in creativity education and how to apply immersive virtual environments to enhance students’ learning experiences in university, through the provision of interactive simulations. An empirical study of a simulated virtual reality was carried out in order to investigate the effectiveness of providing virtual simulation to enrich students’ learning experiences. The researchers found that virtual reality can possibly enhance students’ learning experiences by providing them with a heuristic and highly interactive simulated virtual environment. Being explorative and fun are essential parts of students’ learning experiences in virtual reality. This paper suggests that educators create stimulated virtual learning environments, for example game-like environments, to help students develop positive learning behaviors in the learning process.

Energy content at metamorphosis and growth rate of the early juvenile barnacle Balanus amphitrite

Abstract: The energetic cost of metamorphosis in cyprids of the barnacle Balanus amphitrite Darwin was estimated by quantification of lipid, carbohydrate and protein contents. About 38–58% (4–5 mJ individual−1) of cypris energy reserves were used during metamorphosis. Lipids accounted for 55–65%, proteins for 34–44% and carbohydrates for <2% of the energy used. Juveniles obtained from larvae fed 106 cells ml−1 of Chaetoceros gracilis were bigger (carapace length: 560–616 µm) and contained more energy (5.56±0.10 mJ juvenile−1) than their counterparts (carapace length: 420–462 µm; energy content: 2.49±0.20 mJ juvenile−1) obtained from larvae fed 104 cells ml−1. At water temperatures of 30°C and 24°C and food concentrations of 104 and 102 cells ml−1 (3:1 mixture of C. gracilis and Isochrysis galbana) as well as under field conditions (26.9±3.1°C and 2.2±0.8 µg chlorophyll a l−1), juveniles obtained from larvae fed the high food concentration grew faster than juveniles obtained from larvae fed low food concentration until 5 days post-metamorphosis. Laboratory experiments revealed a combined effect of early juvenile energy content, temperature and food concentration on growth until 5 days post-metamorphosis. After 10 days post-metamorphosis, the influence of the early juvenile energy content on growth became negligible. Overall, our results indicate that the energy content at metamorphosis is of critical importance for initial growth of juvenile barnacles and emphasize the dependency of the physiological performance of early juvenile barnacles on the larval exposure to food.

Impacts of weather on public transport ridership: Results from mining data from different sources ☆

Abstract: The existing studies concerning the influence of weather on public transport have mainly focused on the impacts of average weather conditions on the aggregate ridership of public transit. Not much research has examined these impacts at disaggregate levels. This study aims to fill this gap by accounting for intra-day variations in weather as well as public transport ridership and investigating the effect of weather on the travel behavior of individual public transit users. We have collected smart card data for public transit and meteorological records from Shenzhen, China for the entire month of September 2014. The data allow us to establish association between the system-wide public transit ridership and weather condition on not only daily, but also hourly basis and for each metro station. In addition, with the detailed trip records of individual card holders, the travel pattern by public transit are constructed for card holders and this pattern is linked to the weather conditions he/she has experienced. Multivariate modeling approach is applied to analyze the influence of weather on public transit ridership and the travel behavior of regular transit users. Results show that some weather elements have more influence than others on public transportation. Metro stations located in urban areas are more vulnerable to outdoor weather in regard to ridership. Regular transit users are found to be rather resilient to changes in weather conditions. Findings contribute to a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between everyday weather and public transit travels and also provide valuable information for short-term scheduling in transit management.

Activity Spaces and Sociospatial Segregation in Beijing

Abstract: The widespread development of gated communities has generated much concern over urban fragmentation and social segregation. The social division and segregation between residents inside and outside urban enclaves exist not only in their residential spaces, but also in their values, social relations, and daily lives. In this study, it is argued that sociospatial segregation research should pay more attention to individuals' actual usage of urban space in their daily lives. By examining the activity space of the residents from different types of neighborhoods, a spatiotemporal approach to studying sociospatial segregation in Beijing, China is described. Significant differences are found in the usage of time and space between residents inside and outside the so-called privileged enclaves. Their activity spaces are found to vary significantly in terms of extensity, intensity, and exclusivity. The study suggests that the fragmentation of urban space is the result not only of residential segregation, but also of...

Domain Transfer Support Vector Ranking for Person Re-identification without Target Camera Label Information

Abstract: This paper addresses a new person re-identification problem without the label information of persons under non-overlapping target cameras. Given the matched (positive) and unmatched (negative) image pairs from source domain cameras, as well as unmatched (negative) image pairs which can be easily generated from target domain cameras, we propose a Domain Transfer Ranked Support Vector Machines (DTRSVM) method for re-identification under target domain cameras. To overcome the problems introduced due to the absence of matched (positive) image pairs in target domain, we relax the discriminative constraint to a necessary condition only relying on the positive mean in target domain. By estimating the target positive mean using source and target domain data, a new discriminative model with high confidence in target positive mean and low confidence in target negative image pairs is developed. Since the necessary condition may not truly preserve the discriminability, multi-task support vector ranking is proposed to incorporate the training data from source domain with label information. Experimental results show that the proposed DTRSVM outperforms existing methods without using label information in target cameras. And the top 30 rank accuracy can be improved by the proposed method upto 9.40% on publicly available person re-identification datasets.