Existing video object cutout systems can only deal with limited cases. They usually require detailed user interactions to segment real-life videos, which often suffer from both inseparable statistics (similar appearance between foreground and background) and temporal discontinuities (e.g. large movements, newly-exposed regions following disocclusion or topology change).In this paper, we present an efficient video cutout system to meet this challenge. A novel directional classifier is proposed to handle temporal discontinuities robustly, and then multiple classifiers are incorporated to cover a variety of cases. The outputs of these classifiers are integrated via another classifier, which is learnt from real examples. The foreground matte is solved by a coherent matting procedure, and remaining errors can be removed easily by additive spatio-temporal local editing. Experiments demonstrate that our system performs more robustly and more intelligently than existing systems in dealing with various input types, thus saving a lot of user labor and time.

Using a panel data set of 189 countries by employing dynamic models OLS, fixed effect, random effect and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators. The study revisits the relationship between institutional quality and financial development in developing and emerging countries. This study is ever the first comprehensive and wide-ranging that categorizes the countries into developing and emerging countries using multiple dynamic approaches. Experimental findings of the study are based on GMM, which indicates that better institutions are important for financial development, specifically political stability, control of corruption and regulatory quality positively affect financial development in the global panel of the study. Rule of law negatively affects financial development, which reveals that in most of the global countries, the rule of law is very feeble. Control of corruption index is positively effecting financial development in emerging and global panel which indicates that most of the countries have reduced corruption to low level. The current study also found that emerging countries have reduced corruption, but other institutional indicators are found to be insignificant. The overall result concludes that good quality institutions are the main drivers of financial development and it stimulates financial development. The present study suggests that developing and emerging countries should focus to improve the institutional quality by re-examining the rules of law, government effectiveness and voice accountability institutional factors to make it better.

Lithographically defined interconnects with filamentary, serpentine configurations have been widely used in various forms of stretchable electronic devices, owing to the ultra-high stretchability that can be achieved and the relative simple geometry that facilitates the design and fabrication. Theoretical models of serpentine interconnects developed previously for predicting the performance of stretchability were mainly based on the theory of infinitesimal deformation. This assumption, however, does not hold for the interconnects that undergo large levels of deformations before the structural failure. Here, an analytic model of serpentine interconnects is developed starting from the finite deformation theory of planar, curved beams. Finite element analyses (FEA) of the serpentine interconnects with a wide range of geometric parameters were performed to validate the developed model. Comparisons of the predicted stretchability to the estimations of linear models provide quantitative insights into the effect of finite deformation. Both the theoretical and numerical results indicate that a considerable overestimation (e.g., > 50% relatively) of the stretchability can be induced by the linear model for many representative shapes of serpentine interconnects. Furthermore, a simplified analytic solution of the stretchability is obtained by using an approximate model to characterize the nonlinear effect. The developed models can be used to facilitate the designs of serpentine interconnects in future applications.

AimThe aim of this study was to survey the ability of nursing students to obtain, appraise and understand health information and its influencing factors among undergraduate nursing students in a medical university in Chongqing, China.DesignA cross‐sectional survey.MethodThe sample was obtained using stratified sampling methods. We used the internationally validated Health Literacy Questionnaire. Six hundred and fifteen (76.88%) of 800 nursing students completed participated anonymous questionnaires that measured their ability to obtain, appraise and understand health information.ResultsMean scores of nursing students to obtain, appraise and understand health information were 17.13, 13.07 and 17.78 respectively. Academic level, parental educational level and socioeconomic status were significantly associated with scores in obtaining, appraising and understanding health information.