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: Population & China. The organization has 7811 authors who have published 18919 publications receiving 555274 citations. The organization is also known as: Hong Kong Baptist College & HKBU.

Empirical likelihood confidence regions in a partially linear single-index model

Abstract: Summary. Empirical-likelihood-based inference for the parameters in a partially linear singleindex model is investigated. Unlike existing empirical likelihood procedures for other simpler models, if there is no bias correction the limit distribution of the empirical likelihood ratio cannot be asymptotically tractable. To attack this difficulty we propose a bias correction to achieve the standard X2-limit. The bias-corrected empirical likelihood ratio shares some of the desired features of the existing least squares method: the estimation of the parameters is not needed; when estimating nonparametric functions in the model, undersmoothing for ensuring In-consistency of the estimator of the parameters is avoided; the bias-corrected empirical likelihood is self-scale invariant and no plug-in estimator for the limiting variance is needed. Furthermore, since the index is of norm 1, we use this constraint as information to increase the accuracy of the confidence regions (smaller regions at the same nominal level). As a by-product, our approach of using bias correction may also shed light on nonparametric estimation in model checking for other semiparametric regression models. A simulation study is carried out to assess the performance of the bias-corrected empirical likelihood. An application to a real data set is illustrated.

Involvement of abscisic acid and cytokinins in the senescence and remobilization of carbon reserves in wheat subjected to water stress during grain filling

Abstract: This study investigated the possibility that abscisic acid (ABA) and cytokinins may mediate the effect of water deficit that enhances plant senescence and remobilization of pre-stored carbon reserves. Two high lodging-resistant wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars were field grown and treated with either a normal or high amount of nitrogen at heading. Well-watered (WW) and water-stressed (WS) treatments were imposed from 9 d post-anthesis until maturity. Chlorophyll (Chl) and photosynthetic rate (Pr) of the flag leaves declined faster in WS plants than in WW plants, indicating that the water deficit enhanced senescence. Water stress facilitated the reduction of non-structural carbohydrate in the stems and promoted the re-allocation of prefixed 14C from the stems to grains, shortened the grain filling period and increased the grain filling rate. Water stress substantially increased ABA but reduced zeatin (Z) + zeatin riboside (ZR) concentrations in the stems and leaves. ABA correlated significantly and negatively, whereas Z + ZR correlated positively, with Pr and Chl of the flag leaves. ABA but not Z + ZR, was positively and significantly correlated with remobilization of pre-stored carbon and grain filling rate. Exogenous ABA reduced Chl in the flag leaves, enhanced the remobilization, and increased grain filling rate. Spraying with kinetin had the opposite effect. The results suggest that both ABA and cytokinins are involved in controlling plant senescence, and an enhanced carbon remobilization and accelerated grain filling rate are attributed to an elevated ABA level in wheat plants when subjected to water stress.

Bi2O2CO3/BiOI Photocatalysts with Heterojunctions Highly Efficient for Visible-Light Treatment of Dye-Containing Wastewater

Abstract: Bi2O2CO3/BiOI composites were fabricated at room temperature for the first time by a facile method. X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectra (UV–vis DRS), and nitrogen adsorption–desorption techniques were employed to characterize the physiochemical properties of the composites. The photocatalytic activities of Bi2O2CO3, BiOI, and Bi2O2CO3/BiOI were evaluated through the photocleaning of wastewater which contained rhodamine-B, methylene blue, crystal violet, or a mixture of them under visible-light irradiation (λ ≥ 420 nm). The photocatalytic activity of Bi2O2CO3/BiOI is much higher than that of its components. Moreover, the composite shows good photostability and recyclability. The excellent catalytic efficiency of the Bi2O2CO3/BiOI composite is deduced closely related to Bi2O2CO3/BiOI heterojunctions whose presence is generally regarded to be a favorable factor for the s...

Feature Selection and Kernel Learning for Local Learning-Based Clustering

Abstract: The performance of the most clustering algorithms highly relies on the representation of data in the input space or the Hilbert space of kernel methods. This paper is to obtain an appropriate data representation through feature selection or kernel learning within the framework of the Local Learning-Based Clustering (LLC) (Wu and Scholkopf 2006) method, which can outperform the global learning-based ones when dealing with the high-dimensional data lying on manifold. Specifically, we associate a weight to each feature or kernel and incorporate it into the built-in regularization of the LLC algorithm to take into account the relevance of each feature or kernel for the clustering. Accordingly, the weights are estimated iteratively in the clustering process. We show that the resulting weighted regularization with an additional constraint on the weights is equivalent to a known sparse-promoting penalty. Hence, the weights of those irrelevant features or kernels can be shrunk toward zero. Extensive experiments show the efficacy of the proposed methods on the benchmark data sets.