763 research outputs found
Using system dynamics in business simulation training games
No full textThesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-58).by Jennifer Ching-Wen Han.M.Eng
Distributed human computation framework for linked data co-reference resolution
No full textDistributed Human Computation (DHC) is a technique used to solve computational problems by incorporating the collaborative effort of a large number of humans. It is also a solution to AI-complete problems such as natural language processing. The Semantic Web with its root in AI is envisioned to be a decentralised world-wide information space for sharing machine-readable data with minimal integration costs. There are many research problems in the Semantic Web that are considered as AI-complete problems. An example is co-reference resolution, which involves determining whether different URIs refer to the same entity. This is considered to be a significant hurdle to overcome in the realisation of large-scale Semantic Web applications. In this paper, we propose a framework for building a DHC system on top of the Linked Data Cloud to solve various computational problems. To demonstrate the concept, we are focusing on handling the co-reference resolution in the Semantic Web when integrating distributed datasets. The traditional way to solve this problem is to design machine-learning algorithms. However, they are often computationally expensive, error-prone and do not scale. We designed a DHC system named iamResearcher, which solves the scientific publication author identity co-reference problem when integrating distributed bibliographic datasets. In our system, we aggregated 6 million bibliographic data from various publication repositories. Users can sign up to the system to audit and align their own publications, thus solving the co-reference problem in a distributed manner. The aggregated results are published to the Linked Data Cloud
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Improving Food Safety Education in Tourism and Hospitality Programs in U.S. Colleges: Empirical Insights from Practitioners
No full textHan Wen, Ph.D., is is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Hospitality & Tourism Management at the University of North Texas. Dr. Wen’s research interests include foodservice management, food safety and food allergy in restaurants, food safety risk communication, and hospitality education.
Bingjie “Becky” Liu-Lastres, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Tourism, Event, and Sport Management. Her main research agenda aims to promote safe travel and to ensure the health and well-being of tourists, organizations, and other key stakeholders within the tourism and hospitality industry.
Le Bich Ngoc (Jennifer) Vo, is a graduate student majored in Hospitality & Tourism Management at the University of North Texas. Jennifer's research interests include operational issues in hospitality and tourism management and hospitality education.Food safety education is an essential component in tourism and hospitality programs in U.S. colleges. The importance of food safety has been even highlighted during times of a global pandemic. Guided by a design-thinking approach, this study interviewed 20 managers in the tourism hospitality industry. The results showed that their food safety training practices are influenced by organizational size and type. Additionally, the participants all expected that new employees with a tourism and hospitality management degree are equipped with basic food safety knowledge and awareness of the issue's significance. Lastly, this study provided theoretical and practical implications on improving food safety training in tourism and hospitality programs in U.S. colleges
Intercellular calcium signaling in a gap junction-coupled cell network establishes asymmetric neuronal fates in C. elegans
No full textCo-author Jennifer Pirri is a doctoral student in the Neuroscience program in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) at UMass Medical School.The C. elegans left and right AWC olfactory neurons specify asymmetric subtypes, one default AWC(OFF) and one induced AWC(ON), through a stochastic, coordinated cell signaling event. Intercellular communication between AWCs and non-AWC neurons via a NSY-5 gap junction network coordinates AWC asymmetry. However, the nature of intercellular signaling across the network and how individual non-AWC cells in the network influence AWC asymmetry is not known. Here, we demonstrate that intercellular calcium signaling through the NSY-5 gap junction neural network coordinates a precise 1AWC(ON)/1AWC(OFF) decision. We show that NSY-5 gap junctions in C. elegans cells mediate small molecule passage. We expressed vertebrate calcium-buffer proteins in groups of cells in the network to reduce intracellular calcium levels, thereby disrupting intercellular communication. We find that calcium in non-AWC cells of the network promotes the AWC(ON) fate, in contrast to the autonomous role of calcium in AWCs to promote the AWC(OFF) fate. In addition, calcium in specific non-AWCs promotes AWC(ON) side biases through NSY-5 gap junctions. Our results suggest a novel model in which calcium has dual roles within the NSY-5 network: autonomously promoting AWC(OFF) and non-autonomously promoting AWC(ON).Neuroscienc
Binaral Rivalry in the Presence of Visual Perceptual and Semantic Influences
No full textWhen two different odorants are presented simultaneously to the two nostrils, we experience alternations in olfactory percepts, a phenomenon called binaral rivalry. Little is known about the nature of such alternations. Here we investigate this issue by subjecting unstable and stable olfactory percepts to the influences of visual perceptual or semantic cues as participants engage in simultaneous samplings of either two different odorants (binaral) or a single odorant and water (mononaral), one to each nostril. We show that alternations of olfactory percepts in the binaral setting persist in the presence of visual perceptual and semantic modulations. We also show that perceptual cues have a stronger effect than semantic cues in the binaral case, whereas their effects are comparable in the mononaral setting. Our findings provide evidence that an inherent, stimulus-driven process underlies binaral rivalry despite its general susceptibility to top-down influences
Feeling the disconnect : tension between author’s content and novel’s form in Super Sad True Love Story.
No full textIn our current era of digital literacy, consumerism, and youth-worship, how have the status of the author and the novel been revised? This paper examines how Gary Shteyngart attempts to negotiate this twenty-first century hegemony in his novel Super Sad True Love Story, written in 2010. In the novel, the use of digital lingo and email narratives to examine twenty-first century concerns such as the decline of America as a superpower suggests that Shteyngart crafts a new literary genre for a new zeitgeist. Yet, the novel locates itself in older, established genres and forms, such as the epistolary novel and science fiction. Hence, Shteyngart as author does not innovate for the twenty-first century; rather, it is social controls such as digital and youth culture which drive the narrative. This paper further explores how literary genres, basic definitions of words, and the role of the author and novel are revised in Super Sad True Love Story by twenty-first century hegemony. Although Shteyngart argues against the changes wrought by digital and youth culture through the content of the novel, its reinvented form undermines his efforts to assert authorial power. As such, Super Sad True Love Story reveals a problematic tension; a disconnect between an author’s content and novel’s form.Bachelor of Art
Renewable energy/mains power integration controller and switching module
No full textThis Masters research proposes a new system which deals with the management of renewable energy sources in a domestic/commercial small scale environment. The aim of the project is to develop an intelligent system which will monitor current in individual circuit loads in a domestic/commercial environment and establish whether the load can be powered from mains supply or be switched to an alternative energy supply in a dynamic way. The alternative energy can be solar energy from photovoltaic panels, wind generators or hydro generation. The switching between supplies is decided by monitoring load currents using a microcontroller and the switching action is taken only at specic allowed instants. The CAN (Controller Area Network)communication system is a two-wire differential serial bus system, developed by Bosch for automotive applications in the early 1980s. Its reliability and robustness in communication between nodes within the control system are the reasons for its popularity. The CAN system is implemented in the Eco Energy Controller. The prototype of the Eco Energy Controller is operational and has been tested with 6 resistive load, 24mH inductive load, and three 25W incandescent light bulbs. Experimental measurements and waveforms indicate that the prototype is successful in switching between two supplies to each of the loads without causing high current peaks during turn on
Nostril-Specific Olfactory Modulation of Visual Perception in Binocular Rivalry
No full textIt is known that olfaction and vision can work in tandem to represent object identities. What is yet unclear is the stage of the sensory processing hierarchy at which the two types of inputs converge. Here we study this issue through a well established visual phenomenon termed binocular rivalry. We show that smelling an odor from one nostril significantly enhances the dominance time of the congruent visual image in the contralateral visual field, relative to that in the ipsilateral visual field. Moreover, such lateralization-based enhancement extends to category selective regions so that when two images of words and human body, respectively, are engaged in rivalry in the central visual field, smelling natural human body odor from the right nostril increases the dominance time of the body image compared with smelling it from the left nostril. Semantic congruency alone failed to produce this effect in a similar setting. These results, taking advantage of the anatomical and functional lateralizations in the olfactory and visual systems, highlight the functional dissociation of the two nostrils and provide strong evidence for an object-based early convergence of olfactory and visual inputs in sensory representations
Agile Construction and Evolution of Product-Line Architectures
No full textSoftware Product Line Engineering (SPLE) has proved to have significant advantages in family-based software development, but also implies the up¬front design of a product-line architecture (PLA) from which individual product applications can be engineered. The big upfront design associated with PLAs is in conflict with the current need of "being open to change". However, the turbulence of the current business climate makes change inevitable in order to stay competitive, and requires PLAs to be open to change even late in the development. The trend of "being open to change" is manifested in the Agile Software Development (ASD) paradigm, but it is spreading to the domain of SPLE. To reduce the big upfront design of PLAs as currently practiced in SPLE, new paradigms are being created, one being Agile Product Line Engineering (APLE). APLE aims to make the development of product-lines more flexible and adaptable to changes as promoted in ASD. To put APLE into practice it is necessary to make mechanisms available to assist and guide the agile construction and evolution of PLAs while complying with the "be open to change" agile principle. This thesis defines a process for "the agile construction and evolution of product-line architectures", which we refer to as Agile Product-Line Archi-tecting (APLA). The APLA process provides agile architects with a set of models for describing, documenting and tracing PLAs, as well as an algorithm to analyze change impact. Both the models and the change impact analysis offer the following capabilities: Flexibility & adaptability at the time of defining software architectures, enabling change during the incremental and iterative design of PLAs (anticipated or planned changes) and their evolution (unanticipated or unforeseen changes). Assistance in checking architectural integrity through change impact analysis in terms of architectural concerns, such as dependencies on earlier design decisions, rationale, constraints, and risks, etc.Guidance in the change decision-making process through change im¬pact analysis in terms of architectural components and connections. Therefore, APLA provides the mechanisms required to construct and evolve PLAs that can easily be refined iteration after iteration during the APLE development process. These mechanisms are provided in a modeling frame¬work called FPLA. The contributions of this thesis have been validated through the conduction of a project regarding a metering management system in electrical power networks. This case study took place in an i-smart software factory and was in collaboration with the Technical University of Madrid and Indra Software Labs. La Ingeniería de Líneas de Producto Software (Software Product Line Engi¬neering, SPLE) ha demostrado tener ventajas significativas en el desarrollo de software basado en familias de productos. SPLE es un paradigma que se basa en la reutilización sistemática de un conjunto de características comunes que comparten los productos de un mismo dominio o familia, y la personalización masiva a través de una variabilidad bien definida que diferencia unos productos de otros. Este tipo de desarrollo requiere el diseño inicial de una arquitectura de línea de productos (Product-Line Architecture, PLA) a partir de la cual los productos individuales de la familia son diseñados e implementados. La inversión inicial que hay que realizar en el diseño de PLAs entra en conflicto con la necesidad actual de estar continuamente "abierto al cam¬bio", siendo este cambio cada vez más frecuente y radical en la industria software. Para ser competitivos es inevitable adaptarse al cambio, incluso en las últimas etapas del desarrollo de productos software. Esta tendencia se manifiesta de forma especial en el paradigma de Desarrollo Ágil de Software (Agile Software Development, ASD) y se está extendiendo también al ámbito de SPLE. Con el objetivo de reducir la inversión inicial en el diseño de PLAs en la manera en que se plantea en SPLE, en los último años han surgido nuevos enfoques como la Ingeniera de Líneas de Producto Software Ágiles (Agile Product Line Engineering, APLE). APLE propone el desarrollo de líneas de producto de forma más flexible y adaptable a los cambios, iterativa e incremental. Para ello, es necesario disponer de mecanismos que ayuden y guíen a los arquitectos de líneas de producto en el diseño y evolución ágil de PLAs, mientras se cumple con el principio ágil de estar abierto al cambio. Esta tesis define un proceso para la "construcción y evolución ágil de las arquitecturas de lineas de producto software". A este proceso se le ha denominado Agile Product-Line Architecting (APLA). El proceso APLA proporciona a los arquitectos software un conjunto de modelos para de¬scribir, documentar y trazar PLAs, así como un algoritmo para analizar vel impacto del cambio. Los modelos y el análisis del impacto del cambio ofrecen: Flexibilidad y adaptabilidad a la hora de definir las arquitecturas software, facilitando el cambio durante el diseño incremental e iterativo de PLAs (cambios esperados o previstos) y su evolución (cambios no previstos). Asistencia en la verificación de la integridad arquitectónica mediante el análisis de impacto de los cambios en términos de dependencias entre decisiones de diseño, justificación de las decisiones de diseño, limitaciones, riesgos, etc. Orientación en la toma de decisiones derivadas del cambio mediante el análisis de impacto de los cambios en términos de componentes y conexiones. De esta manera, APLA se presenta como una solución para la construcción y evolución de PLAs de forma que puedan ser fácilmente refinadas iteración tras iteración de un ciclo de vida de líneas de producto ágiles. Dicha solución se ha implementado en una herramienta llamada FPLA (Flexible Product-Line Architecture) y ha sido validada mediante su aplicación en un proyecto de desarrollo de un sistema de gestión de medición en redes de energía eléctrica. Dicho proyecto ha sido desarrollado en una fábrica de software global en colaboración con la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid e Indra Software Labs
DAF-16 target identification in C. elegans: past, present and future
No full textIn C. elegans , mutations in the conserved insulin/IGF-1 signaling (IIS) pathway lead to a robust extension in lifespan, improved late life health, and protection from age-related disease. These effects are mediated by the FoxO transcription factor DAF-16 which lies downstream of the IIS kinase cascade. Identifying and functionally testing DAF-16 target genes has been a focal point of ageing research for the last 10 years. Here, I review the recent advances in identifying and understanding IIS/DAF-16 targets. These studies continue to reveal the intricate nature of the IIS/DAF-16 gene regulation network and are helping us to understand the mechanisms that control lifespan. Ageing and age related disease is an area of intense public interest, and the biochemical charac- terization of the genes involved will be critical for identifying drugs to improve the health of our ageing population
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