381 research outputs found
Tumor-specific activity of cellular regulatory elements is down-regulated upon insertion into the herpes simplex virus genome
No full textTranscriptional targeting of viral genes is a promising strategy to achieve tumor-specific replication of oncolytic viruses. Due to its natural tropism, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) may be an ideal tool for oncolytic therapy of brain tumors such as malignant glioblastoma. To study whether glioma-specific gene expression can be accomplished within the HSV-1 genome, four cellular regulatory elements were exemplarily studied. Whereas the human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and survivin promoters and the nestin and vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) enhancers displayed pronounced glioma specificity after plasmid transfection, only the nestin enhancer conferred a certain selectivity for glioma cells and notable activity when transferred into the viral genome. The nestin enhancer was also found to be highly useful for tumor cell-specific expression of a therapeutically relevant gene (interleukin-2) when tested in combination with the hTERT or simian virus 40 (SV40) early promoter in the HSV-1 genome. Because activity of the chosen promoter in a tumor is a prerequisite for the successful application of an oncolytic virus, we examined whether the activity of a promoter can be deduced from the amounts of cellular mRNA or protein expressed under its control. We found little correlation between promoter activity and mRNA levels of the corresponding gene, whereas protein expression was more closely related to promoter activity. We conclude that the cellular elements are differently regulated in the viral and cellular genomes. Mechanistic insight into the differential regulation is required to improve and refine the design of transcriptionally targeted HSV vectors. Journal of NeuroVirology (2008) 14, 522-535
Binge drinking
No full textRuntime 1:30 minutesThis resource is provided for informational purposes only and may not reflect current scientific knowledge or medical recommendations.Welcome to Public Health Moment from the University of Minnesota. Binge drinking is common among active-duty military personnel, according to a new study released by the University of Minnesota and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the study, involving more than 16,000 military personnel, binge drinking was reported by 43 percent of military personnel during the past month. How does one define binge drinking? Lead author of the study, Mandy Stahre, a University of Minnesota Ph.D. student, explains. Stahre says the study shows that binge drinking is a significant public health problem. With another Public Health Moment, I’m John Finnegan.Finnegan, John; Mandy Stahre. (2009). Binge drinking. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/257616
Spoken language understanding in a nutrition dialogue system
No full textThesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2015.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 105-111).Existing approaches for the prevention and treatment of obesity are hampered by the lack of accurate, low-burden methods for self-assessment of food intake, especially for hard-to-reach, low-literate populations. For this reason, we propose a novel approach to diet tracking that utilizes speech understanding and dialogue technology in order to enable efficient self-assessment of energy and nutrient consumption. We are interested in studying whether speech can lower user workload compared to existing self-assessment methods, whether spoken language descriptions of meals can accurately quantify caloric and nutrient absorption, and whether dialogue can efficiently and effectively be used to ascertain and clarify food properties, perhaps in conjunction with other modalities. In this thesis, we explore the core innovation of our nutrition system: the language understanding component which relies on machine learning methods to automatically detect food concepts in a user's spoken meal description. In particular, we investigate the performance of conditional random field (CRF) models for semantic labeling and segmentation of spoken meal descriptions. On a corpus of 10,000 meal descriptions, we achieve an average F1 test score of 90.7 for semantic tagging and 86.3 for associating foods with properties. In a study of users interacting with an initial prototype of the system, semantic tagging achieved an accuracy of 83%, which was sufficiently high to satisfy users.by Mandy B. Korpusik.S.M
The Human Leader: Leading from Weakness
No full textHow might human limitations empower rather than impede our leadership? Mandy Smith, author of The Vulnerable Pastor, will explore themes related to vulnerability and weakness in leadership and ministry. Interspersing teaching with guided roundtable discussion, this seminar will empower you to lead out of your deep humanity
Changes in science content knowledge and attitudes toward science teaching of educators attending a zoo-based neuroscience professional development
No full textInformal learning environments often host teachers for learning opportunities, but little is known about the impact of these experiences on teacher professional development (PD). This article describes a unique collaborative PD experience between zoological park personnel and university faculty, examining the impact on teacher content knowledge, attitudes, and classroom lessons. Our findings suggest that the PD improved science content, but made no impact on already high attitudes toward science. In light of the high level of self-reported satisfaction and high frequency of teacher lesson plan use, we propose that the PD had other positive outcomes such as pedagogical knowledge and authentic learning experiences.John L. Pecore, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education, College of
Professional Studies at the University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL. Mandy L.
Kirchgessner is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum, Instruction and Technology in
Education at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. Laura L. Carruth, PhD, is an
Associate Professor at the Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA.John L. Pecore , Mandy L. Kirchgessner & Laura L. Carruth (2013) Changes in Science Content Knowledge
and Attitudes toward Science Teaching of Educators Attending a Zoo-based Neuroscience Professional Development, The
Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 86:6, 238-245Journal Articl
Deep learning for spoken dialogue systems : application to nutrition
No full textThesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2019Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-221).Personal digital assistants such as Siri, Cortana, and Alexa must translate a user's natural language query into a semantic representation that the back-end can then use to retrieve information from relevant data sources. For example, answering a user's question about the number of calories in a food requires querying a database with nutrition facts for various foods. In this thesis, we demonstrate deep learning techniques for performing a semantic mapping from raw, unstructured, human natural language directly to a structured, relational database, without any intermediate pre-processing steps or string matching heuristics. Specifically, we show that a novel, weakly supervised convolutional neural architecture learns a shared latent space, where vector representations of natural language queries lie close to embeddings of database entries that have semantically similar meanings. The first instantiation of this technology is in the nutrition domain, with the goal of reducing the burden on individuals monitoring their food intake to support healthy eating or manage their weight. To train the models, we collected 31,712 written and 2,962 spoken meal descriptions that were weakly annotated with only information about which database foods were described in the meal, but not explicitly where they were mentioned. Our best deep learning models achieve 95.8% average semantic tagging F1 score on a held-out test set of spoken meal descriptions, and 97.1% top-5 food database recall in a fully deployed iOS application. We also observed a significant correlation between data logged by our system and that recorded during a 24-hour dietary recall conducted by expert nutritionists in a pilot study with 14 participants. Finally, we show that our approach generalizes beyond nutrition and database mapping to other tasks such as dialogue state tracking.by Mandy Barrett Korpusik.Ph. D.Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Scienc
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Zeolite-type and nepheline crystals in glass-ceramics
No full textZeolites are hydrated alumino-silicates. They crystallize in framework structures. Zeolites are used in the catalysis, adsorption, drying and separation teehnologies. Glass-ceramies are polycrystalline solids prepared by controlled crystallization of glasses, with interesting properties. A new field of application can be opened by combination of the properties of zeolites and glass-ceramics. For example, material surfaces can be functionalized (membranes, foams) or special geometries for catalysis can be stabilized. It is possible to design glass-ceramics with a zeolite as crystal phase. In this study further investigations of the phase distribution and the interface between the crystal phases will be presented. Glasses with a composition similar to the stoichiometric composition of a zeolite were melted with partial subtitution of NaF for Na2CO3. Samples of these glasses were crystallized at various temperatures. The zeolitic phase Na6[AlSiO4]6 and the nepheline were precipitated in two of the glass compositions at all crystallization temperatures. Na6[AlSiO4]6 is a zeolite of the sodalite type. The interface between the zeolite and the nepheline will be shown. The nepheline seems to grow radially (epitaxially) on the zeolite. The obtained zeolite does not correspond to the synthesis compositions of the glasses
MathPen: identifying and solving the problems of online collaborative learning for mathematics
No full textCombining the interactive communication power of Web 2.0 and social-constructivist theory in education research, online collaborative learning (OCL) has now become an area of intensive research and has generated many favourable results. Yet, the term online collaborative learning, or any other related terms, are seldom seen in mathematics education journals. This paper will, after a brief overview of OCL theory, describe the problems associated with OCL in mathematics education and offer MathPen (an online handwriting recognition system) as a potential solution
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Glass-ceramics with a zeolite phase
No full textZeolites are hydrated alumino-silicates. They crystallize in framework structures. Zeolites are used in the catalysis, adsorption, drying and separation technologies. Glass-ceramics are polycrystalline solid materials. They also have interesting properties. A new field of application can be opened by combination of the properties of zeolites and glass-ceramics. For example, material surfaces can be functionalized (membranes, foams) or special geometries for catalysis can be stabilized. The goal of the work was to design glassceramics with zeolite(s) as crystal phase(s). The glasses with zeolite compositions were melted from raw materials with partial substitution of NaF for Na2CO3. Samples of the glasses were crystallized at various temperatures. The zeolitic phase Na6[AlSiO4]6 was precipitated in K 1 1/2 samples at all temperatures. Na6[AlSiO4]6 is a zeolite of the sodalite type. The obtained zeolite does not correspond to the synthesis compositions of the glasses. It is remarkable that the zeolite itself is OH- and/or F- -free, although the presence of these anions is necessary for the zeolite formation
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