We analyze similar to 7000 tectonic tremors recorded between 2012 and 2022 across five clusters along Taiwan's mountain belt at depths of 30-50 km, providing new insights into slow fault slip within an active continental collision zone. All clusters occur above the Moho, exhibit thrust-dominant focal mechanisms, and are distinct from crustal seismicity. Tidal sensitivity varies spatially, with Clusters 2-5, located in zones of active collision and subduction termination, showing strong modulation (alpha = 0.53-0.75), while Cluster 1, situated in a post-collisional extensional environment near the Okinawa Trough, exhibits weaker sensitivity (alpha approximate to 0.3). These variations correlate with differences in tidal stress amplitude and tectonic regime. Moment tensor inversions reveal consistent thrusting styles, but principal stress orientations vary with depth, with sigma(1) rotating from vertical in the upper crust to horizontal at tremor depths. This supports a two-layer deformation model shaped by orogenic collapse and lower crustal convergence-parallel shear. Our findings demonstrate that tremor generation in Taiwan reflects evolving stress regimes, fluid-assisted weakening, and structural heterogeneity associated with the interplay of collision, subduction, and back-arc extension. Tremors thus serve as sensitive indicators of deep-seated tectonic processes in dynamically evolving mountain belts.
This study examined reading comprehension and eye movement patterns under silent reading and text-to-speech (TTS) conditions in three groups of junior high school students: those with dyslexia, those with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) who have reading difficulties, and typically developing students (TDS). A 3 × 2 mixed factorial design was employed to compare performance across conditions and groups. Results indicated that TTS significantly improved comprehension for students with ADHD-related reading difficulties, whereas no such benefit was observed for students with dyslexia. For students with dyslexia, however, TTS reduced total reading time and cognitive effort while maintaining comprehension comparable to silent reading. Eye-tracking data revealed that during silent reading, both the dyslexia and ADHD groups exhibited longer total reading times, more fixations, and shorter saccades compared to the typically developing group. Under the TTS condition, these differences were attenuated, suggesting that auditory guidance can regulate visual attention. Notably, students with ADHD showed longer fixation durations under TTS, possibly reflecting increased focus. In contrast, TTS did not benefit TDS, disrupting their natural reading patterns and yielding no comprehension gains. These findings suggest that TTS can enhance reading efficiency and comprehension for students with reading difficulties, but may interfere with normal reading processes for proficient readers. This underscores the need to tailor reading support strategies to individual student needs.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of caffeinated chewing gum on the cognitive tasks, strength and military performance of tier 1 special forces soldiers in Taiwan. Sixteen male serving special forces soldiers (age: 34 ± 7 years; height: 172 ± 4 cm; BMI: 25.4 ± 2.7 kg/m²) completed the caffeinated chewing gum (CAF) trial and the placebo (PL) trial using a randomised crossover experimental design. After chewing the caffeinated chewing gum containing 3 mg·kg− 1 of caffeine (CAF trial) or placebo gum (PL trial), participants completed the cognitive tasks, grip strength, weighted vertical jump and the special forces military performance tests which included rapid-fire test and close-quarters battle (CQB) tests. Before, during, and after the experiment, the heart rate variability and salivary α-amylase were collected. Grip strength (increase 4.4 ± 7.1 kg; P = 0.037), weighted vertical jump height (increase 1.3 ± 2.1 cm; P = 0.032), cognitive tasks (simple response times, stroop task and visual search reaction time in 20 items) (P < 0.05), shooting scored in rapid-fire test (increase 1.0 ± 2.1 points; P = 0.030), the CQB tests (increase 1.1 ± 1.8 points; P = 0.044) and the completion times of CQB tests (increase 9.8 ± 7.2 s; P = 0.015) of the CAF trial were significantly better than those of the PL trial. The values of LF, LF/HF, salivary caffeine and α-Amylase concentration in the CAF trial were significantly higher compared to the PL trial (P < 0.05). Caffeinated chewing gum may improve military performance and cognitive performance by increasing sympathetic nervous system activity, as indicated by heart rate variability and salivary α-amylase concentration in CAF trials. The study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT06638372.
The potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to make a transformative impact in the chemistry research and education field begins with the contributions of university administrators, instructors, and students. As a team of international authors from 9 global regions representing these 3 roles in the university, we use public data to argue for a re-thinking and update to the chemistry curriculum to train the next generation of scientists. To prepare researchers for the future with AI, chemistry education must be designed for new approaches to problem-solving and ways of thinking. Analysis of higher education AI chemistry courses was extracted from publicly available information based on the 2024 QS World University Ranking and separated into two categories: “computational coursework” and “AI/ML coursework”. The data revealed that institutions with existing computational coursework also tend to offer AI/machine learning coursework. The paucity of these courses may reflect different funding priorities or a shortage of faculty trained in AI chemistry. Overall, immediate users such as university teachers can apply the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)-AI framework, originally proposed by Mishra and Koehler (2006) to describe the synergistic intersection of teachers’ technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge, and recently extended to encompass AI (Mishra et al., 2023), for instructional design, inspiring curriculum material and pedagogies to be conducive to learning chemistry. While novel approaches to teaching and learning can face significant implementation challenges due to various cultures, pedagogical innovation must continue to remain a priority to ensure our training remains relevant for future students. In this paper, we encourage the development of normative frameworks within higher education that avoid unequal workloads on academic staff and ensure all stakeholders have a voice in the creation of curriculum and training of our students for the future.
This paper presents a unified framework for constructing smoothing functions tailored to a broad class of widely used regularizers, including the plus function, the pinball function, the ℓ _0 -norm, the ℓ _p -norm for 0 < p ≤ 1 , the MCP, and the SCAD. By transforming nonsmooth regularizers into smooth approximations, the proposed framework facilitates the application of efficient optimization algorithms to sparse optimization problems. The framework is systematically derived from continuous approximations of the step function, offering a principled approach to generating smoothing functions across various regularizers. These approximations are, in turn, constructed using polynomial functions and the Dirac delta function.
