To address the issues of low positioning accuracy and weak robustness of prior visual simultaneous localization and mapping (VSLAM) systems in dynamic environments, a semantic VSLAM (Sem-VSLAM) approach based on deep learning is proposed in this article. The proposed Sem-VSLAM algorithm adds semantic segmentation threads in parallel based on the open-source ORB-SLAM2’s visual odometry. First, while extracting the ORB features from an RGB-D image, the frame image is semantically segmented, and the segmented results are detected and repaired. Then, the feature points of dynamic objects are eliminated by using semantic information and motion consistency detection, and the poses are estimated by using the remaining feature points after the dynamic feature elimination. Finally, a 3D point cloud map is constructed by using tracking information and semantic information. The experiment uses Technical University of Munich public data to show the usefulness of the Sem-VSLAM algorithm. The experimental results show that the Sem-VSLAM algorithm can reduce the absolute trajectory error and relative attitude error of attitude estimation by about 95% compared to the ORB-SLAM2 algorithm and by about 14% compared to the VO-YOLOv5s in a highly dynamic environment and the average time consumption of tracking each frame image reaches 61 ms. It is verified that the Sem-VSLAM algorithm effectively improves the robustness and positioning accuracy in high dynamic environment and owning a satisfying real-time performance. Therefore, the Sem-VSLAM has a better mapping effect in a highly dynamic environment.

Late talkers (LTs) exhibit delayed vocabulary development, which might stem from a lack of a typical word learning strategy to generalise object labels by shape, called the ‘shape bias’. We investigated whether LTs can acquire a shape bias and whether this accelerates vocabulary learning. Fourteen LTs were randomly allocated to either a shape training group (Mage = 2.76 years, 6 males), which was taught that objects similar in shape have the same name, or a control group (Mage = 2.61 years, 4 males), which was taught real words without any focus on object shape. After seven training sessions, children in the shape training group generalised trained labels by shape (d = 1.28), but not unfamiliar labels. Children in the control group extended all labels randomly. Training did not affect expressive vocabulary.

In this paper, we consider blowup of solutions to the Cauchy problem for the following biharmonic nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS),

\begin{equation*}\text{i } \partial_t u=\Delta^2 u-\mu \Delta u-|u|^{2 \sigma} u \quad \text{in} \,\, \mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{R}^d,\end{equation*}

where $d \geq 1$, $\mu \in \mathbb{R}$ and $0 \lt \sigma \lt \infty$ if $1 \leq d \leq 4$ and $0 \lt \sigma \lt 4/(d-4)$ if $d \geq 5$. In the mass critical and supercritical cases, we establish the existence of blowup solutions to the problem for cylindrically symmetric data. The result extends the known ones with respect to blowup of solutions to the problem for radially symmetric data.

Scholars and policymakers warn that with rising affective polarization, politicians will find support from the public and permission from military professionals to use military force to selectively crack down on political opponents. We test these claims by conducting parallel survey experiments among the US public and mid-career military officers. We ask about two hypothetical scenarios of domestic partisan unrest, randomly assigning the partisan identity of protesters. Surprisingly, we find widespread public support for deploying the military and no significant partisanship effects. Meanwhile, military officers were very resistant to deploying the military, with nearly 75 percent opposed in any scenario. In short, there is little evidence that public polarization threatens to escalate domestic disputes, and strong evidence for military opposition.

This study extends the line of linguistic relativity research by assessing the effect of the French grammatical gender system on French speakers' and learners' perception of objects. Four groups of 140 adults (English monolinguals, French monolinguals, English–French bilinguals and French–English bilinguals; N = 35 each) rated 32 selected objects' gender by assigning them a masculine/feminine voice on a slider. We also assessed the participants' second-language (L2) proficiency. Multilevel modelling results revealed that French monolinguals and English–French bilinguals rated objects' gender in line with the French grammatical gender system. The effect of French on perception was not reduced by acquiring English, as French–English bilinguals performed on par with French monolinguals. Moreover, the effect was independent of L2 proficiency. These findings suggest that learning a gendered L2 affects the perception of objects – thus supporting the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

The tombstone of an Italian woman, Caterina Vilioni, in Yangzhou (1342) is a rare and important testimony to Christianity in Yuan China. By exploring the visual language and the multicultural geopolitical context of Caterina's funerary monument, this article sheds light on the dynamic processes behind how cultural and religious barriers were negotiated in the premodern Eurasian world. Despite the increasing scholarly interest in the European import of Asian luxury merchandise along the Silk Roads, movement of objects, persons, and ideas the other way around from Europe to Asia is much less explored. Moreover, the expansion of European networks towards the east was written from the perspective of men: friars, diplomats and merchants. Yet, the Yangzhou tombstone directs attention to the overlooked presence of non-elite Christian women in the cosmopolitan port cities of south-east China well before the era of modern global maritime exchange. While previous scholars traced the tombstone to Buddhist and Christian art, I argue that the visual language intentionally projected cultural ambiguity. By comparing it to the Mongol paiza (safe conduct pass), this article proposes that Caterina's burial marker functioned as an ‘otherworldly passport’, which invoked spiritual protection and facilitated the passage between two realms.

Age-related changes can affect mental health, but aging-focused mental health research is limited. The objective was to identify the top 10 unanswered research questions on aging and mental health according to what matters most to aging Canadians. A steering group of experts-by-experience (e.g., older adults, caregivers, health and social care providers) guided three phases of a modified James Lind Alliance priority-setting partnership: (1) a broad national survey (n = 305) and a rapid literature scan; (2) a follow-up national survey (n = 703); and (3) four online workshops (n = 52) with a nominal group technique. Forty-two unique questions on aging and mental health resulted, of which 18 were determined to be answered by existing evidence. Of the 25 partially and unanswered questions, 10 were ranked as top priority. Findings can be used to prioritize future research, knowledge mobilization, and funding decisions, and to promote and support collaboration between longstanding siloed research and care fields.

As most mathematically justifiable Lagrangian coherent structure detection methods rely on spatial derivatives, their applicability to sparse trajectory data has been limited. For experimental fluid dynamicists and natural scientists working with Lagrangian trajectory data via passive tracers in unsteady flows (e.g. Lagrangian particle tracking or ocean buoys), obtaining material measures of fluid rotation or stretching is an active topic of research. To facilitate frame-indifferent investigations in unsteady and sparsely sampled flows, we present a novel approach to quantify fluid stretching and rotation via relative Lagrangian velocities. This technique provides a formal objective extension of quasi-objective metrics to unsteady flows by accounting for mean flow behaviour. For extremely sparse experimental data, fluid structures may be significantly undersampled and the mean flow behaviour becomes difficult to quantify. We provide a means to maintain the accuracy of our novel sparse flow diagnostics in extremely sparse sampling scenarios, such as ocean buoy data and Lagrangian particle tracking. We use data from multiple numerical and experimental flows to show that our methods can identify structures beyond existing limits of sparse, frame-indifferent diagnostics and exhibit improved interpretability over common frame-dependent diagnostics.

Polarization in American politics has not produced unity among conservative Christians. Drawing from original survey and interview data on Republican pastors in North Carolina, this paper seeks to understand why these pastors are divided on the legitimacy of force defending the “traditional American way of life.” We find (1) that theological fundamentalism has a positive, though weak, influence; (2) Christian nationalism and White grievance are powerful in increasing support for the use of force; and (3) distrust of elections intensifies the effect of these attitudes.

Doctrinal legal scholarship faces persistent challenges from empirical approaches, but such criticism rarely seeks to encounter doctrine on its own terms. In this article, we seek to excavate the theoretical and methodological basis of doctrinal legal scholarship by situating the discipline in a hermeneutic continuum between theory and practice, or law’s engagement with the social world. We first unfold this dynamic as an exercise in methodological interpretivism and ontological hermeneutics and then turn to explicate our analysis with examples drawn from tort law and international criminal law. We ultimately argue that law can never be strictly circumscribed as an empirical object because law cannot be disassociated from an agent’s reasons, which are continuously bound up in a hermeneutic circle, and which the scholar must enter into to achieve legal understanding. Unavoidably, therefore, doctrinal legal scholarship becomes part of the very object it is investigating.

A surge of Mittie Glacier, a 50 km-long tidewater outlet glacier of Manson Icefield, occurred between approximately 1992 and 2007. Velocities increased slowly at first, but then increased rapidly to reach a peak of 4800 m a−1 in early 1996, the highest ever reported for a glacier in the Canadian Arctic. The surge initiated at the terminus and propagated up-glacier, with a maximum terminus advance of 7.3 km between 1994 and 1999. The surge was almost entirely restricted to the lower ~30 km of the glacier, in a region which radio-echo sounding shows to be grounded below sea level. A 3 km-wide crevasse with a 150 m opening occurred at the separation between faster moving ice downstream and slower moving ice upstream. Surge initiation appears to have been triggered by flotation of the lower terminus, caused by long-term thinning of this region during quiescence.

Let Mn and Tn denote the nth Motzkin number and the nth central trinomial coefficient respectively. We prove that for any prime $p\ge 5$,

\begin{equation*}\begin{aligned}\\[-22pt]&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}M_k^2\equiv \left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\left(2-6p\right)\pmod{p^2},\\&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}kM_k^2\equiv \left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\left(9p-1\right)\pmod{p^2},\\&\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}T_kM_k\equiv \frac{4}{3}\left(\frac{p}{3}\right)+\frac{p}{6}\left(1-9\left(\frac{p}{3}\right)\right)\pmod{p^2},\\[-6pt]\end{aligned}\end{equation*}

where $\left(-\right)$ is the Legendre symbol. These results confirm three supercongruences conjectured by Z.-W. Sun in 2010.

This research investigates the wake–foil interactions between two oscillating foils in a tandem configuration undergoing energy harvesting kinematics. Oscillating foils have been shown to extract hydrokinetic energy from free-stream flows through a combination of periodic heave and pitch motions, at relatively higher amplitudes and lower reduced frequency than thrust generating foils. When placed in tandem, the wake–foil interactions can govern the energy harvesting efficiency of the system due to a reduced relative flow velocity in combination with a structured and coherent wake of vortices shed from the high amplitude flapping of upstream foils. This work utilizes simulations of two tandem foils to parameterize and model the energy harvesting performance as a function of array configuration and foil kinematics. Once the wake of the leading foil has been fully parameterized, the placement, phase angle and kinematic stroke of the second foil is utilized to estimate the time-dependent power curve. The algorithm predicts the power of the second foil through the mean and unsteady wake characteristics, including the direct impingement of a vortex with the trailing foil.