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.

Occurrence and Partitioning of Bisphenol Analogues in Adults’ Blood from China

Abstract: Widespread human exposure and associated adverse health effects led to regulations on the usage of bisphenol A (BPA). Several bisphenol analogues (BPs) have been introduced as BPA alternatives in various applications. However, these BPs have been shown to exhibit similar or even stronger endocrine-disrupting activities compared with that of BPA. Currently, information on the human exposure to BPA alternatives remains limited. In this study, nine BPs were quantified in 81 pairs of plasma and red blood cell (RBC) samples from Chinese participants. In human plasma, the predominant BPs was BPA, bisphenol S (BPS), and bisphenol AF (BPAF), with the mean concentrations of 0.40, 0.15, and 0.073 ng/mL, respectively. BPA (accounting for 63% of total BPs) and BPS (18%) were the major BPs in the RBC fraction. Mass fractions in plasma (Fp) were found to be highest for BPS (mean, 0.78), followed by BPAF (0.71) and BPA (0.67), indicating strong partitioning to the plasma fraction. However, bisphenol AP was more frequent...

The built environment and travel behavior in urban China: A literature review

Abstract: Interests in studying of the built environment impacts on travel behavior have proliferated from North America to other parts of the world including China. Until very recently, there has been very little research into travel behavior in China. However, during the last decade, there has been a fast growing interest in studying the built environment and travel behavior in Chinese cities, perhaps motivated by China’s unprecedented urbanization and rapid urban transport development. Case studies from China provide new insights into the impacts of built environment on travel behavior that can help to enrich existing scholarship. However, currently there is a generally poor understanding of the role played by Chinese research and how it has enriched the international literature. This paper aims to fill this gap by reviewing studies in and outside China by both Chinese and non-Chinese scholars. The focus is on the contribution of these studies to the international literature. We identify four areas of contribution: how the built environment has been developed and its implications for travel behavior; the importance of housing sources in defining residential built environment and explaining travel behavior; the unique Danwei (or work unit) perspective on jobs-housing relationships and commuting behavior; and the importance of neighborhood types in explaining travel behavior in Chinese cities. The findings from this review should be relevant for researchers interested in developing future studies that will further advance geographic knowledge of the built environment and travel behavior, specifically in China and with broader global contexts.

Geometry-aware Instance-reweighted Adversarial Training

Abstract: In adversarial machine learning, there was a common belief that robustness and accuracy hurt each other. The belief was challenged by recent studies where we can maintain the robustness and improve the accuracy. However, the other direction, whether we can keep the accuracy while improving the robustness, is conceptually and practically more interesting, since robust accuracy should be lower than standard accuracy for any model. In this paper, we show this direction is also promising. Firstly, we find even over-parameterized deep networks may still have insufficient model capacity, because adversarial training has an overwhelming smoothing effect. Secondly, given limited model capacity, we argue adversarial data should have unequal importance: geometrically speaking, a natural data point closer to/farther from the class boundary is less/more robust, and the corresponding adversarial data point should be assigned with larger/smaller weight. Finally, to implement the idea, we propose geometry-aware instance-reweighted adversarial training, where the weights are based on how difficult it is to attack a natural data point. Experiments show that our proposal boosts the robustness of standard adversarial training; combining two directions, we improve both robustness and accuracy of standard adversarial training.

Spiropyran-Based Fluorescent Anion Probe and Its Application for Urinary Pyrophosphate Detection

Abstract: In recent decades, numerous spiropyran derivatives have been designed and utilized for optical sensing of metal ions. However, there is still less research on spiropyran-based anion sensors. In this work, a new spiropyran compound (L) appended with a pendant bis(2-pyridylmethyl)amine was synthesized and used in fluorescent sensing of pyrophosphate ion (PPi) in aqueous solution. The molecular recognition and signal transduction are based on the cooperative ligation interactions and the ligation-induced structural conversion of the spiropyran, which leads to a significant change in the photophysical property of the spiropyran. In an ethanol/water solution (30:70, v/v) at pH 7.4, ligation of L with Zn2+ causes an intense fluorescence emission at 620 nm at the expense of the original fluorescence at 560 nm. Once PPi was introduced, interaction between PPi and the L−Zn2+ complex leads to full quenching of the 620 nm band emission which was concomitant with recovery of the 560 nm band emission, and the fluoresc...

Synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles with immobilized aminophenylboronic acid for selective capture of glycoproteins

Abstract: Aminophenylboronic acid (APBA)-functionalized magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (Fe3O4 MNPs) were synthesized for the selective capture of glycoproteins from unfractionated protein mixtures. The morphology, adsorption, and recognition properties of the resultant particles were investigated and uniform size APBA-coated MNPs with a mean diameter of ∼15 nm and high magnetic saturation value of 30.6 emu g−1 were obtained, which endued the adsorbent with a large surface area and convenience of isolation. The selectivity and binding capacity of APBA-coated MNPs were evaluated by using standard glycoproteins (cellulose and ovalbumin) and nonglycoproteins (bovine hemoglobin, bovine serum albumin and lysozyme) as model samples. Adsorption experiments and SDS-PAGE demonstrated that the APBA-coated MNPs had higher binding capacity and selectivity for glycoproteins compared to nonglycoproteins. In addition, the practicability of the as-prepared MNPs was further assessed by specific capture of ovalbumin from an egg white sample.