1,073 research outputs found

    30th European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2023)

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    This is the abstract book of 30th European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2023

    The Socio-Technical Dynamics of Renewable Energy Policies in Germany

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    Growing environmental concerns and human-caused climate change increase the pressure on policymakers for rapid action to transform how societies convert energy, produce goods, or transport freight. Innovation and technological progress may contribute to such transitions. However, technological change is hard to predict, requires time, and may be laden with political conflicts. Although more sustainable technologies are available, incentivizing demand and deployment are crucial to accelerate transitions. As transformations develop over decades, understanding the temporal dynamics of policies is critical for governance. In Germany, the renewable energy act incentivizes the deployment of renewable energy technologies by remunerating electricity fed into the common grid. This dissertation assesses how socio-technical developments of solar and wind energy conversion technologies and the renewable energy act interactively shaped each other. Drawing on frameworks such as technological innovation systems, legitimacy, framing, and policy feedback, the contents of 16,485 newspaper articles and additional empirical studies were scrutinized. Combining methods from natural language processing, machine learning, and statistics, this thesis develops text models to assess changes in content and sentiment in large corpora over time. Three studies focus on the shifts in media framing of the German renewable energy act, the underlying co-evolution of technological and policy processes, and the development of the legitimacy of wind power. The results confirm that renewable energy deployment and policy are contested with varying intensity over time. Where change ought to occur, non-linear dynamics of innovation and technology uptake, growing policy costs, economic interests of incumbents, and technology side effects increasingly complicate policymaking over time. The early phases of the renewable energy act were shaped by positive expectations toward renewable energy technologies, which later shifted towards an emphasis on policy costs. The findings highlight the importance of the prosperity of underlying innovation systems as supporters of policy ambition and maintenance over time. However, policy costs and side effects must be managed effectively to withstand increasing contestation. These results may contribute to advancing the successful governance of sectoral transitions likely to unfold over several decades

    Insights on Learning Tractable Probabilistic Graphical Models

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    Undergraduate and Graduate Course Descriptions, 2023 Spring

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    Wright State University undergraduate and graduate course descriptions from Spring 2023

    Structured data abstractions and interpretable latent representations for single-cell multimodal genomics

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    Single-cell multimodal genomics involves simultaneous measurement of multiple types of molecular data, such as gene expression, epigenetic marks and protein abundance, in individual cells. This allows for a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the molecular basis of cellular identity and function. The large volume of data generated by single-cell multimodal genomics experiments requires specialised methods and tools for handling, storing, and analysing it. This work provides contributions on multiple levels. First, it introduces a single-cell multimodal data standard — MuData — designed to facilitate the handling, storage and exchange of multimodal data. MuData provides interfaces that enable transparent access to multimodal annotations as well as data from individual modalities. This data structure has formed the foundation for the multimodal integration framework, which enables complex and composable workflows that can be naturally integrated with existing omics-specific analysis approaches. Joint analysis of multimodal data can be performed using integration methods. In order to enable integration of single-cell data, an improved multi-omics factor analysis model (MOFA+) has been designed and implemented building on the canonical dimensionality reduction approach for multi-omics integration. Inferring later factors that explain variation across multiple modalities of the data, MOFA+ enables the modelling of latent factors with cell group-specific patterns of activity. MOFA+ model has been implemented as part of the respective multi-omics integration framework, and its utility has been extended by software solutions that facilitate interactive model exploration and interpretation. The newly improved model for multi-omics integration of single cells has been applied to the study of gene expression signatures upon targeted gene activation. In a dataset featuring targeted activation of candidate regulators of zygotic genome activation (ZGA) — a crucial transcriptional event in early embryonic development, — modelling expression of both coding and non-coding loci with MOFA+ allowed to rank genes by their potency to activate a ZGA-like transcriptional response. With identification of Patz1, Dppa2 and Smarca5 as potent inducers of ZGA-like transcription in mouse embryonic stem cells, these findings have contributed to the understanding of molecular mechanisms behind ZGA and laid the foundation for future research of ZGA in vivo. In summary, this work’s contributions include the development of data handling and integration methods as well as new biological insights that arose from applying these methods to studying gene expression regulation in early development. This highlights how single-cell multimodal genomics can aid to generate valuable insights into complex biological systems

    The Constructivistly-Organised Dimensional-Appraisal (CODA) Model and Evidence for the Role of Goal-directed Processes in Emotional Episodes Induced by Music

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    The study of affective responses to music is a flourishing field. Advancements in the study of this phenomena have been complemented by the introduction of several music-specific models of emotion, with two of the most well-cited ones being the BRECVEMA and the Multifactorial Process Model. These two models have undoubtedly contributed to the field. However, contemporary developments in the wider affective sciences (broadly described as the ‘rise of affectivism’) have yet to be incorporated into the music emotion literature. These developments in the affective sciences may aid in addressing remaining gaps in the music literature, in particular for acknowledging individual and contextual differences. The first aim of this thesis was to outline contemporary theories from the wider affective sciences and subsequently critique current popular models of musical emotions through the lens of these advancements. The second aim was to propose a new model based on this critique: the Constructivistly-Organised Dimensional-Appraisal (CODA) model. This CODA model draws together multiple competing models into a single framework centralised around goal-directed appraisal mechanisms which are key to the wider affective sciences but are a less commonly acknowledged component of musical affect. The third aim was to empirically test some of the core hypotheses of the CODA model. In particular, examining goal-directed mechanisms, their validity in a musical context, and their ability to address individual and contextual differences in musically induced affect. Across four experiments which include exploratory and lab-based designs through to real- world applications, the results are supportive of the role of goal-directed mechanisms in musically induced emotional episodes. Experiment one presents a first test battery of multiple appraisal dimensions developed for music. The results show that several of the hypothesised appraisal dimensions are valid dimensions is a musical context. Moreover, these mechanisms cluster into goal-directed latent variables. Experiment two develops a new set of stimuli annotations relating to musical goals, showing that music can be more or less appropriate for different musical goals (functions). Experiment three, using the new stimuli set from experiment two, tests the effects of different goals with more or less appropriate music on musically induced affect. These results show that goal-directed mechanisms can change induced core-affect (valence and arousal) and intensity, even for the same piece of music. Experiment four extends the study of goal-directed mechanisms into a real-world context through an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural design. The final experiment demonstrates how goal-directed mechanisms can be manipulated through different algorithms to induce negative affect in a Colombian population. The main conclusions of this thesis are that the CODA model, more specifically goal-directed mechanisms, provide a valuable, non-reductive, and more efficient approach to addressing individual and contextual differences for musically induced emotional episodes in the new era of affectivism
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