Monmouth University

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) patrol inspection has become an efficient method to ensure the operation condition of transmission lines. The detection of key components with defects in transmission lines is a critical task in maintaining a power system’s stability. However, the complex inspection environment and the imbalance between the number of normal component samples and that of defect samples significantly affect the detection accuracy. In this article, we present a novel method for defect detection in UAV patrol images, based on a hierarchical convolutional vision transformer (HC-ViT) and a simple contrastive masked autoencoder (SC-MAE). The HC-ViT backbone integrates the advantages of vision transformer and convolution, while the SC-MAE is a self-supervised learning method that extracts useful features from normal samples. By introducing the normal features into the backbone, we enhance the performance of the defect detection task. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through experiments, and show that it can leverage a large amount of unlabeled normal images, reducing the need for manual annotation. Our method offers a new way to exploit the potential features of patrol inspection images.

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has demonstrated significant potential in industrial manufacturing domains such as workshop scheduling and energy system management. However, due to the model's inherent uncertainty, rigorous validation is requisite for its application in real-world tasks. Specific tests may reveal inadequacies in the performance of pre-trained DRL models, while the “black-box” nature of DRL poses a challenge for testing model behavior. We propose a novel performance improvement framework based on probabilistic automata, which aims to proactively identify and correct critical vulnerabilities of DRL systems, so that the performance of DRL models in real tasks can be improved with minimal model modifications. First, a probabilistic automaton is constructed from the historical trajectory of the DRL system by abstracting the state to generate probabilistic decision-making units (PDMUs), and a reverse breadth-first search (BFS) method is used to identify the key PDMU-action pairs that have the greatest impact on adverse outcomes. This process relies only on the state-action sequence and final result of each trajectory. Then, under the key PDMU, we search for the new action that has the greatest impact on favorable results. Finally, the key PDMU, undesirable action and new action are encapsulated as monitors to guide the DRL system to obtain more favorable results through real-time monitoring and correction mechanisms. Evaluations in two standard reinforcement learning environments and three actual job scheduling scenarios confirmed the effectiveness of the method, providing certain guarantees for the deployment of DRL models in real-world applications.

Dear Editor, This letter presents a new transfer learning framework for the deep multi-agent reinforcement learning (DMARL) to reduce the convergence difficulty and training time when applying DMARL to a new scenario [1], [2]. The proposed transfer learning framework includes the design of neural network architecture, curriculum transfer learning (CTL) and strategy distillation. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework enables DMARL models to converge faster while improving the final performance.

Recent theory and data suggest that inaccurate ( poor-pitch or poor) singing may be based on impoverished sensorimotor mapping between auditory perceptual representations and motor plans. One of the symptoms of poor singing is a restriction of vocal pitch range during pitch matching tasks that is not reducible to physical vocal limitations. We here test the hypothesis that remediation of poor singing may be best achieved by incorporating a wide pitch range during training. Two treatment groups underwent singing training using a procedure found to be effective in recent research. One group matched pitches from a wider range of one octave, whereas the other matched pitches from a narrower range of seven semitones (a perfect fifth). A third group completed visual imagery tasks for the same period of time and served as a control group. All three groups completed the Seattle Singing Accuracy Protocol (SSAP) before and after training, with all phases completed in a single session. The only significant improvement was found in the wide-range training group, for matching of single pitches from the SSAP, rather than four-note melodies. Results thus offer partial support for the hypothesis and suggest that successful remediation of singing accuracy may benefit from adopting a wide range of pitches.

This paper introduces the African Bison Optimization (ABO) algorithm, which is based on biological population. ABO is inspired by the survival behaviors of the African bison, including foraging, bathing, jousting, mating, and eliminating. The foraging behavior prompts the bison to seek a richer food source for survival. When bison find a food source, they stick around for a while by bathing behavior. The jousting behavior makes bison stand out in the population, then the winner gets the chance to produce offspring in the mating behavior. The eliminating behavior causes the old or injured bison to be weeded out from the herd, thus maintaining the excellent individuals. The above behaviors are translated into ABO by mathematical modeling. To assess the reliability and performance of ABO, it is evaluated on a diverse set of 23 benchmark functions and applied to solve five practical engineering problems with constraints. The findings from the simulation demonstrate that ABO exhibits superior and more competitive performance by effectively managing the trade-off between exploration and exploitation when compared with the other nine popular metaheuristics algorithms.

Drawing on archival data and oral histories, this paper examines the history of the Eastern Economic Association from its beginnings in 1974 to its 50th anniversary in 2024. It sheds light on the ideological, social, and political motivations behind the EEA’s founding, focusing on its commitment to addressing the narrowness of the economics profession and the marginalization of women and underrepresented minorities. It also documents some of the problems that the Eastern Economic Association and the Eastern Economic Journal faced over time and how they have resolved these problems. Based on this history and analysis, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the EEA’s enduring impact on the field of economics and its continuing relevance in fostering a more inclusive and pluralistic academic community.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate outcome in 60 dogs with cystine urolithiasis treated with surgical removal with and without castration and postoperative therapeutic diet to determine frequency of recurrence and urolith-free duration. METHODS Patient records were reviewed for dogs with documented cystine urolithiasis from September 2010 to December 2020. Medical records, client interviews, and referring veterinarians were contacted to document the absence of clinical signs associated with subsequent urolith formation and to evaluate risk factors for urolith reoccurrence. RESULTS 80 patients were identified with cystine uroliths, with 60 qualifying for inclusion in the study. Seven dogs were neutered prior to surgery, and 25 dogs were neutered at the time of the first surgery. Recurrence occurred in 20 dogs; 17 of those patients were intact (85%) at the time of recurrent urinary signs. Of the 20 dogs with recurrence, 50% (10 of 20) were being treated with dietary modifications. CONCLUSIONS The risk of recurrence among neutered pets was 23% versus 47% for intact pets, but this difference was not statistically significant; however, neutered pets had a longer urolithiasis-free duration. There was no statistically significant difference in risk of recurrence and urolith-free duration between pets with and without therapeutic diet management, (30% vs 32.5%) respectively. Multivariant analysis showed no significant interaction between surgical intervention with therapeutic diet, with nonsignificant hazard ratios (HRs) for neuter status (HR = 0.503), diet (HR = 1.056), and their interaction (HR = 4.32 to 9). CLINICAL RELEVANCE Sexually intact (vs castrated) male dogs should be monitored more closely for recurrence of surgical cystine urolithiasis.

Waste recycling is an important part of resource reuse and environmental protection. The study of disassembly lines deals with the process of recycling and remanufacturing end-of-life products. The performance of a disassembly line is affected by many factors, especially the operation cost of workstations, the precedence relationships among disassembly tasks, the skill level of workers, and their learning speed. This study considers the learning effect of disassembly workers, establish a mixed integer programming model of the disassembly balancing problem, and explores the search for optimal solution. It allocates tasks and multiskilled workers on workstations to maximize disassembly profits in the disassembly process. To solve it, an improved fruit fly optimization algorithm is proposed, and three methods are designed for the smell search. At the same time, the visual search is also designed to avoid the problem of falling into local optimum. The validity and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm are verified with experiments that compare the results with CPLEX, a well-known IBM optimizer, and some popular peer algorithms.

Developmental psychologists have studied how toys shape gender schemas but have not focused exclusively on sport toys. Given persistent gender gaps in sport participation, it is important to understand how gendered meanings about sport are communicated and perceived through all kinds of play. This mixed methods research examined such meanings attached to sport toys using a content analysis and a survey. In Study 1, a content and descriptive analysis of toy listings (N = 107) on retail websites revealed that most toy names lacked explicit gender labels. However, toys were more likely to display masculine color schemes and boys outnumbered girls 2-to-1 in photographs of children playing with the toys. Boys were also depicted as more actively engaged, especially with highly physical sports. In Study 2, a correlational analysis of survey responses from 530 participants indicated that adults primarily viewed sport toys as masculine, though they saw dolls, aesthetic toys, and pink toys as appropriate for girls. Aggressive sport toys were linked to boys even when they were pink, indicating limits to the impact of implicit gender markers. Together, both studies show that sports toys are still viewed as (mostly) for boys and suggest that these messages may communicate gender stereotypes about sport. Evidence-based recommendations for toy sellers regarding toy color and gender representation are included, as is advice for toy purchasers who want to encourage gender inclusive play and flexible gender schemas.

Maintenance of power transmission lines is essential for the safe and reliable operation of the power grid. The use of deep learning‐based networks to improve the performance of power line defect detection faces significant challenges, such as small target sizes, shape similarities, and occlusion issues. In response to these challenges, a transformer‐based end‐to‐end power line detection network called Power‐DETR is introduced. Initially, building upon Deformable DETR, a large pre‐trained model (Swin‐large) is utilized to increase the number of multi‐scale features, and activation checkpoint technology is applied to ensure effective training within limited memory capacity. Subsequently, a contrastive denoising training strategy is integrated to combat ambiguity and instability of the Hungarian matching algorithm during training, aiming to expedite model convergence. Additionally, a hybrid label assignment strategy combining OHEM and cost‐based ATSS is proposed to provide the model with high‐quality queries, ensuring adequate training for the decoder and enhancing encoder supervision. Experimental results substantiate the efficacy of the proposed Power‐DETR model as a novel end‐to‐end detection paradigm, surpassing both one‐stage and two‐stage detection models. Furthermore, the model demonstrates a significant 15.7% enhancement in mAP0.5 compared to the baseline.

Target marketing leverages many human characteristics to persuade a specific consumer group best. These characteristics may include demographic, geographic, psychographic, and lifestyle traits. The psychographic factors considered in target marketing most commonly include an understanding of consumer values and behavior, not personality type. Few studies have analyzed how personality type, more specifically introversion and extraversion, might shape the outcome of a campaign. Introversion and extraversion have proven to have a pivotal role in other areas of business, such as the workplace, sales forces, and customer engagement. Drawing on that connection, this research hypothesized that these personality types might also impact consumer responses to a marketing campaign, particularly the promotional element. To answer these queries, multiple theories of personality were analyzed, including Jung’s Theory of Personality, and applied to previous research to introversion and extraversion in target marketing. Results reflected that there is considerable merit behind the pursuit of tailored advertisement campaigns that target introverts and extroverts respectively. Such strategies might increase metrics and create a more predictable and direct campaign. Subsequent research is suggested to further corroborate this conclusion.

This work investigates a multi-product parallel disassembly line balancing problem considering multi-skilled workers. A mathematical model for the parallel disassembly line is established to achieve maximized disassembly profit and minimized workstation cycle time. Based on a product’s AND/OR graph, matrices for task-skill, worker-skill, precedence relationships, and disassembly correlations are developed. A multi-objective discrete chemical reaction optimization algorithm is designed. To enhance solution diversity, improvements are made to four reactions: decomposition, synthesis, intermolecular ineffective collision, and wall invalid collision reaction, completing the evolution of molecular individuals. The established model and improved algorithm are applied to ball pen, flashlight, washing machine, and radio combinations, respectively. Introducing a Collaborative Resource Allocation (CRA) strategy based on a Decomposition-Based Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm, the experimental results are compared with four classical algorithms: MOEA/D, MOEAD-CRA, Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm III (NSGA-III). This validates the feasibility and superiority of the proposed algorithm in parallel disassembly production lines.

Baboon studies suggest early hominin foundations for social relationships between women, including the shift from single level to multilevel societies. Females in baboon troops can form enduring relationships in dyads and in networks. Relationships between females can persist in multilevel baboon societies. Despite coercive transfer and control by males in hamadryas society, females find ways to affiliate with their female kin. Guinea baboon females have more freedom than females in hamadryas society, which contributes to an alternative model for multilevel society in early hominins. Relationships between females in all baboon societies involve competition as well as affiliation. Patterns of female competition in baboon troops are likely analogies for early hominins. Contested resources include food and/or access to preferred males. Potential benefits from males include mating, protection, and care for offspring. In hamadryas baboons, females compete for access to the OMU leader. Competitive tactics include the establishment of dominance and some physical aggression.

In some circumstances, perspectives from baboon ecology and behavior can augment the interpretation of paleoanthropological data. The baboon information can also suggest hypotheses about early hominins where direct evidence is meager or lacking. This is particularly true for early periods of hominin evolution where fossils are sparse and there is no archeological record. Environment is the most direct and strongest reason for comparing hominins with baboons. Both taxa expanded across a wide geographic distribution and survived in similarly diverse habitats. They also experienced long-term aridification in large parts of Africa. Early hominins were comparable to baboons in having arboreal capabilities, but both taxa evolved to spend most of their daylight time on the ground. Though somewhat larger than extant baboons, hominins were broadly similar to them in being medium-sized mammals with a significant degree of sexual dimorphism. These physical features had both ecological and social consequences. These points of comparison make baboons more relevant to understanding early hominins than almost any other primate. Only chimpanzees may be more valuable than baboons for that purpose, and there are some categories of behavior in which baboons are more analogous to early hominins than are chimpanzees.

Conceptual frameworks for organizing and interpreting hominin-baboon comparisons include models, analogies, and scenarios. These concepts are described in general terms, variations are considered, and efficacy is discussed. The concept of models is problematic because it has been defined in so many different ways. Scenarios are very subjective, though useful if constructed carefully. Analogies, especially those adhering to strict rules, are most consistently useful. The use of baboons to reconstruct early hominin adaptations has been rejected by some scientists and other interested parties. Objections can be classified as absolutist (baboons are irrelevant) or relativist (other comparisons are better). Absolutist arguments are faulty and/or have been resolved by ongoing research. In some cases, the determination to dismiss baboons is so strong that it can be termed Papiophobia. Some relativist arguments were also faulty, but many offered constructive criticism and/or worthwhile hypotheses. Among primates that are useful for reconstruction of early hominin behavior, only chimpanzees stand out to the same extent as baboons. Chimpanzees provide possible homologies with hominins, but baboons are a stronger referent with regard to the variety of environments ultimately experienced by early hominins—from forest to dry savanna. Baboons reinforce some chimpanzee perspectives on hominins and provide alternative hypotheses in other cases.

In baboons as in humans, females and males have important individualized relationships with each other. The relationships in various baboon species provide several analogies for the evolutionary origins of the human family in early hominins. Two relevant features in baboons occur in both troops and multilevel societies. First, there are long-term associations between particular males and females that persist when female partners are not sexually available. Second, these associations exist in the context of communities, that is, multi-male/multi-female societies, that are comparable to those of extant humans. The latter feature differentiates humans and baboons from “pair-bonded” primates such as gibbons. Male–female relationships involve conflict as well as affiliation. The most drastic is infanticide as a male strategy to hasten the return of a newly “acquired” female to sexual availability. More common is coercion: persistent aggressive behavior toward a female that intimidates her into not resisting the aggressor when she ovulates. Copulation resulting from direct application of force seems not to occur in baboons. Sexual aggression seems to be absent from male–female relations in Kinda baboons and Guinea baboons. First reports on the troops of Kinda baboons indicated that males strive to establish grooming relationships with females rather than trying to coerce them. In the multilevel society of Guinea baboons, well-studied in one population, females choose and change their unimale affiliations without interference. This contrasts with the multilevel societies of hamadryas baboons, in which males form and expand unimale groups with aggressive behavior toward females. The Kinda-Guinea baboon axis may offer a distinctive model for early hominin male–female relations, a model in which females exercise choice of mates and are subject to little or no coercion of any kind.

Early hominins lived among numerous and diverse predators, including carnivorans (mammals of the order Carnivora), raptors, crocodiles, and snakes. Baboon analogies, combined with the fossil record, indicate which predators were the most dangerous to hominins. Raptors were probably dangerous only to young hominins and might be repelled by adult aggression. Crocodiles were a danger to all and avoidance was the only defense. Predation by snakes may have been rare. Carnivorans, especially leopards and similar felids, were probably the greatest danger. They could ambush hominins in woodlands and from clumps of vegetation scattered across savannas. Baboon analogies show that hominins could have responded with avoidance through tactical movement and by association with species that intimidated predators or warned of their approach. When baboons flee from attack, they take refuge in trees or on cliff faces; early hominins, having retained some ancestral climbing ability, probably did the same. Baboons also threaten and fight carnivorans; hominins might also have done so, perhaps (as suggested by chimpanzee evidence) aided by simple weapons from a very early date. A key factor was and is the body mass of predators and prey. Danger from carnivorans is a primary factor causing baboons to sleep in trees or on cliff faces and early hominins probably did the same.