Mobile Applications in China's Smart Cities

Aligned with the global trend of smartness, China has invested heavily in over 700 smart city projects across over 500 cities. Hundreds of smart city apps, initiated by local authorities, have so emerged in the daily lives of Chinese citizens, but anecdotal evidence showed that these official apps have many problems and deficiencies. This study captures a snapshot of current development and problems of official smart city apps in China. A total of 333 such apps, together with 15754 comments, were collected, reviewed and analyzed. The results showed that China’s smart city apps fall into three application areas, i.e. smart transportation, smart healthcare, and smart livelihood, of which each provides some promising features and services. However, a range of functional, interface, design, usage and service-related problems were found in these apps. This paper concluded that further to the very efforts on infrastructure and hardware, local authorities in China and worldwide need to pay more attention to smart apps, in order to maximize potential return of their smart city investments.

Mobile Applications in China’s Smart Cities

Aligned with the global trend of smartness, China has invested heavily in over 700 smart city projects across over 500 cities. Hundreds of smart city apps, initiated by local authorities, have so emerged in the daily lives of Chinese citizens, but anecdotal evidence showed that these official apps have many problems and deficiencies. This study captures a snapshot of current development and problems of official smart city apps in China. A total of 333 such apps, together with 15754 comments, were collected, reviewed and analyzed. The results showed that China’s smart city apps fall into three application areas, i.e. smart transportation, smart healthcare, and smart livelihood, of which each provides some promising features and services. However, a range of functional, interface, design, usage and service-related problems were found in these apps. This paper concluded that further to the very efforts on infrastructure and hardware, local authorities in China and worldwide need to pay more attention to smart apps, in order to maximize potential return of their smart city investments.

The indolent lambdification of Java

As Java 8 introduced functional interfaces and lambda expressions to the Java programming language, the JDK API was changed to introduce support for lambda expressions, thus allowing consumers to define lambda functions when using Java’s collections. While the JDK API allows for a functional paradigm, for API consumers to be able to completely embrace Java’s new functional features, third-party APIs must also support lambda expressions. To understand the current state of the Java ecosystem, we investigate (i) the extent to which third-party Java APIs have changed their interfaces, (ii) why or why not they introduce functional interface support and (iii) in the case the API has changed its interface how it does so. We also investigate the consumers’ perspective, particularly their ease in using lambda expressions in Java with APIs. We perform our investigation by manually analyzing the top 50 popular Java APIs, conducting in-person and email interviews with 23 API producers, and surveying 110 developers. We find that only a minority of the top 50 APIs support functional interfaces, the rest does not support them, predominantly in the interest of backward compatibility. Java 7 support is still greatly desirable due to enterprise projects not migrating to newer versions of Java. This suggests that the Java ecosystem is stagnant and that the introduction of new language features will not be enough to save it from the advent of new languages such as Kotlin (JVM based) and Rust (non-JVM based).

Role of non-specific interactions in the phase-separation and maturation of macromolecules

Phase separation of biomolecules could be mediated by both specific and non-specific interactions. How the interplay between non-specific and specific interactions along with polymer entropy influences phase separation is an open question. We address this question by simulating self-associating molecules as polymer chains with a short core stretch that forms the specifically interacting functional interface, and longer non-core regions that participate in non-specific/promiscuous interactions. Our results show that the interplay of specific (strength, ϵsp) and non-specific interactions (strength, ϵns) could result in phase separation of polymers and their transition to solid-like aggregates (mature state). In the absence of ϵns, the polymer chains do not dwell long enough in the vicinity of each other to undergo phase separation and transition into a mature state. On the other hand, in the limit of strong ϵns, the assemblies cannot transition into the mature state because they get kinetically trapped, suggesting an optimal range of interactions favoring mature multimers. In the scenario where only a fraction (N frac) of the non-core regions participate in attractive interactions, we find that a slight modification to either ϵns or N_frac can result in a dramatically altered self-assembled state. Using a combination of heterogeneous and homogeneous mix of polymers, we establish how this interplay between interaction energies dictates the propensity of biomolecules to find the correct binding partner at dilute concentrations in crowded environments.

Resection of a large left opercular cavernoma in a child using neuronavigation

The insular lobe is a complex structure constituting anatomic, cytoarchitectonic, and functional interface between the allocortex and the neocortex. This area is a part of a larger system that includes the orbitofrontal, temporopolar, and insular regions, constituting the paralimbic system or mesocortex. For a long time, the issue in studying this entity accounted for the poor understanding of its precise functionality. Because of the technical complexity in approaching and dissecting this region, very few neurosurgeons attempted surgery of the insula. Particularly on the dominant side, the natural history of these lesions must be carefully balanced with the surgical morbidity involved in their resection. Surgical treatment of cavernomas arising around the insula (especially in dominant cerebral hemisphere) is challenging in reason of the proximity to the internal capsule and lenticulostriate arteries. The advent of image guidance systems and intraoperative mapping of the subcortical language pathways has broadened the surgical indications for these lesions. In the case reported here we removed a cavernous angioma of the left dominant operculum in a child with the aid of a neuronavigation system guidance.