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In the new media era, the creation and development of Chinese pipa music faces new challenges and opportunities. This paper analyses the characteristics of pipa music and explores its innovative path and development trend in the contemporary environment through technical means. Music signal preprocessing, feature extraction and other methods are adopted to provide an in-depth characterization of pipa music. In the study, the pipa music was classified concerning pitch, loudness, timbre and rhythm, and the musical features were extracted using techniques such as MFCC and LPC. The experimental data contained 300 pieces of pipa music of different styles, and a series of specific numerical results were derived from the Characterization of this music. For example, in the MFCC feature retrieval experiment, the retrieval accuracy of a 30-second music clip was improved by 0.024 compared to a 10-second clip. In addition, by analyzing the timbre features of 12 pipas, and using MATLAB to process the data, a quantitative judgement of the goodness of the timbre was derived. The possibility of combining pipa music with electronic music was explored with new media technology. The artistic expression of pipa music can be effectively analyzed and enhanced through scientific methods, providing fresh ideas for the innovative development of pipa music.

This study summarizes the direction of innovation in contemporary pipa performance techniques through theoretical analysis of pipa history, performance techniques, form, and production materials. The independent variable of string vibration during pipa performance is set, and the string vibration equation of pipa performance is deduced based on the actual vibration situation. Afterward, we collected and pre-processed the sound signals of the pipa performance and selected simulation experiments to analyze the string vibration and acoustic signals during the pipa performance. The results show that when the plucking force of 1 string is 0.8N, 1.6N, 2.4N, and 3.2N, the corresponding Y-direction displacements are 2.95mm, 6.37mm, 8.85mm, and 12.48mm, with the ratio of 1:2.16:3:4.23, and the maximum Y-direction displacements are monotonically and linearly positively correlated with the plucking force. In addition, the sound power of the two pipas gradually increased with the increase in frequency, which led to a dynamic range of more than 18.53 Hz when the frequency exceeded 8000 Hz. In this study, through the simulation of string vibration and acoustic signals of the pipa playing innovative techniques, the laws and characteristics of the pipa art can be recognized so as to strengthen the awareness of innovation and development of pipa playing and to make the art of pipa better developed and inherited.

In many Brazilian Marine Protected Areas tourism occurs without planning, such as in the Tibau do Sul Coastal Wildlife Reserve (REFAUTS). At REFAUTS, tourists use the area of two small bays to carry out different activities and share these areas with dolphins. Therefore, the aim of this study was to characterize tourist flow at REFAUTS and identify which areas tourists most commonly use. The tourist flow in REFAUTS was measured via a survey conducted between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm and the areas most used by tourists were identified. REFAUTS receives over 1400 visitors per day, mostly between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm, which corresponds to the dolphin’s active time in the bays. Different activities such as surfing, kayaking, standup paddleboarding, bathing and dolphin watching are practiced in the same area; this overlapping can cause socio-environmental conflicts and negative effects on dolphins. A zoning plan is recommended to determine which areas should be used by tourists and establish areas exclusively for dolphins. En muchas áreas marinas protegidas de Brasil, el turismo ocurre sin planificación, como en la Reserva de Fauna Costera de Tibau do Sul (REFAUTS). En REFAUTS, los turistas utilizan el área de dos pequeñas bahías para realizar diferentes actividades y compartir espacio con delfines. Por lo tanto, el objetivo de este estudio fue caracterizar el flujo turístico en REFAUTS e identificar cuáles áreas son las más frecuentadas por los turistas. Se midió el flujo turístico en REFAUTS por medio de una encuesta realizada entre las 9:00 a. m. y las 4:00 p. m., y se identificaron las zonas más utilizadas por los turistas. REFAUTS recibe a más de 1.400 visitantes por día, la mayoría entre las 11:00 a. m. y las 3:00 p. m., lo que corresponde al tiempo activo del delfín en las bahías. En una misma zona se practican diferentes actividades, como surf, kayak, stand-up paddle, baño y avistamiento de delfines; esta superposición puede generar conflictos socioambientales y efectos negativos sobre los delfines. Se recomienda un plan de zonificación para determinar cuáles áreas deben ser utilizadas por los turistas y establecer áreas exclusivas para delfines.

Pipa playing is an artistic and comprehensive performance, which requires students to actively dabble in many aspects of knowledge, especially to strengthen the research and exploration of aesthetics and literature. Therefore, in the process of pipa playing, students need dual emotional experience guidance and emotional expression. The practice shows that it is an important condition for the success of pipa performance to have standardized, generous and stretched pipa playing movements. This paper expounds in detail the skills of pipa playing, and strengthens the embodiment of students' emotional expression by using various teaching methods, in order to improve students' playing literacy in an all-round way.

The musical signal produced by plucked instruments often exhibits non-stationarity due to variations in the pitch and amplitude, making pitch estimation a challenge. In this paper, we assess different transcription processes and algorithms applied to signals captured by optical sensors mounted on a pipa—a traditional Chinese plucked instrument—played using a range of techniques. The captured signal demonstrates a distinctive arched feature during plucking. This facilitates onset detection to avoid the impact of the spurious energy peaks within vibration areas that arise from pitch-shift playing techniques. Subsequently, we developed a novel time–frequency feature, known as continuous time-period mapping (CTPM), which contains pitch curves. The proposed process can also be applied to playing techniques that mix pitch shifts and tremolo. When evaluated on four renowned pipa music pieces of varying difficulty levels, our fully time-domain-based onset detectors outperformed four short-time methods, particularly during tremolo. Our zero-crossing-based pitch estimator achieved a performance comparable to short-time methods with a far better computational efficiency, demonstrating its suitability for use in a lightweight algorithm in future work.

In this paper we focus on the governance, in particular evaluation and monitoring, of the growing number of transdisciplinary collaborations (TDC’s). Researchers and a variety of stakeholders collaborate in such TDC’s, the purpose of which is to address societal challenges, like renewable energy, healthy aging or better language teaching in schools. Commonly used practices for evaluation of scientific research (accountability, rankings and benchmarking, dedicated to scientific excellence) do not fit the goals of TDC’s. A bottom up or stakeholder oriented approach is better suited; one that stimulates mutual learning as well as the development of socially robust knowledge. We introduce the participatory impact pathways analysis (PIPA), as a method that suits the requirements. It has been developed in the context of development research. Two crucial features are the involvement of stakeholders from the start, and the joint development of a theory of change. This narrates what one wants to achieve and how that will be achieved. From this, stakeholders construct a logical frame that serves as a source for indicators. These indicators enable monitoring ex durante, during the TDC. We present evidence of the use of PIPA for a TDC. From this empirical evidence a number of issues with regard to evaluation, monitoring and indicators can be identified that require attention. Most prominent is the change of function of indicators. Instead of looking back and a focus on past performance, indicators look forward, in the short, intermediate and more distant future.

Person recognition in photo collections is a critical yet challenging task in computer vision. Previous studies have used social relationships within photo collections to address this issue. However, these methods often fail when performing single-person-in-photos recognition in photo collections, as they cannot rely on social connections for recognition. In this work, we discard social relationships and instead measure the relationships between photos to solve this problem. We designed a new model that includes a multi-parameter attention network for adaptively fusing visual features and a unified formula for measuring photo intimacy. This model effectively recognizes individuals in single photo within the collection. Due to outdated annotations and missing photos in the existing PIPA (Person in Photo Album) dataset, we manually re-annotated it and added approximately ten thousand photos of Asian individuals to address the underrepresentation issue. Our results on the re-annotated PIPA dataset are superior to previous studies in most cases, and experiments on the supplemented dataset further demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. We have made the PIPA dataset publicly available on Zenodo, with the DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.12508096 (accessed on 15 October 2025).

Pipa fretting and pitch measurement are crucial aspects of playing. In this paper, Pipa’s string vibration is simplified to bounded string vibration, and a simplified structural model of Pipa is built. Transverse free vibration is used to establish the vibration equations of Pipa strings, and differential analysis is used to analyze the standing waves. Meanwhile, the vibration of the resonance panel of the Pipa was abstracted into a dynamic model, and the modal analysis was performed using coordinate transformation. In the actual test, the sound signal generated by the vibration was also processed with the help of the Fourier transform, and the pitch of the Pipa was measured by analyzing the time and frequency domains. The vibration of the Pipa panel is complex but regular, with the vibration pitch line at 32.5 hz being a central axis and the vibration pitch line at the frequency of 85 hz being on the upper side, while the vibration corresponding to the frequencies of 32.5 hz and 85 hz can be regarded as a synthesis of the vibration corresponding to the frequency of 175.5 hz. Under the viewpoint of vibration modal analysis, the performance effect of the Pipa has a more refined expression.

In the Grande da Pipa river basin, north of Lisbon, 64 % of the total number of landslides inventoried is totally or partially included in a lithological unit composed by marl, clay, and sandstone intercalation complex that is present in 58 % of the study area. The Persistent Scatterer synthetic aperture radar interferometry technique is applied to a data set of TerraSAR-X SAR images, from April of 2010 to March of 2011, firstly to the Laje-Salema test site and further exported to the Grande da Pipa river basin. This work’s specific objectives are the following: (i) to assess the potential of the Persistent Scatterer displacement maps to the identification of new landslides/unstable areas and in the redefinition of landslide limits, (ii) to update the landslide state of activity, and (iii) to evaluate the capacity of the Persistent Scatterer deformation maps in assessing landslide susceptibility at the regional scale. Based on this approach, it was possible to increment the number of landslides and to redefine the landslide limits in the test site in 3.8 %. For 39 landslides, it was possible to update the landslide state of activity, in particular from dormant to reactivated or dormant-reactivated (23 landslides) or from stabilized to reactivated (5 landslides). Landslide susceptibility map based in Persistent Scatterer deformation rates, independently validated with a deep rotational slide map, obtained the best value of area under the curve (0.668).

This study explores the direct effects of amphibian skin secretions on human cells involved in joint diseases, aiming to identify species with potential for inflammatory modulation. Secretions were obtained from sixteen species distributed across Brazilian biomes and one European species. Following biochemical characterization, human chondrocytes, synoviocytes, and macrophages were treated with secretions for 24 h. The cytotoxicity and modulation of the IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, and IL-1β release were assessed. Synoviocytes showed the greatest resistance to cytotoxic effects, though sensitivity varied by species. Secretions from Trachycephalus mesophaeus, Pipa carvalhoi, and Phyllomedusa bahiana exhibited the highest cytotoxicity. At non-cytotoxic concentrations, P. carvalhoi and Leptodactylus fuscus strongly induced IL-6 and IL-8 in chondrocytes and synoviocytes, with P. carvalhoi also stimulating IL-1β and TNF-α release in macrophages. Among Bufonidae species, particularly Rhinella jimi and Bufo bufo, were potent inducers of TNF-α and IL-1β in macrophages. Secretions lacking pro-inflammatory effects were further tested for anti-inflammatory activity. P. bahiana reduced TNF-α production in stimulated macrophages and IL-6 in synoviocytes, while Siphonops annulatus and T. mesophaeus reduced LPS-induced TNF-α in macrophages. Our data underscore the rich biodiversity of amphibians, supporting the bioprospecting of their cutaneous secretions. These data reveal substantial potential for uncovering bioactive compounds with pharmacological applications.