An Exploratory Investigation of Comparisons of Student Evaluations of Learning Pre and Post COVID-19 at Private and Public Universities

Although universities attempted to provide as little disruption to student learning as possible, problems arose with their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current literature is rich with studies reporting experiences with the transition to the virtual learning of the pandemic era. In pursuit of the most effective learning and instructional modes to transition to in times of crisis, university administrators and faculty members need to know more regarding what worked and did not work in the initial response to the COVID- 19 crisis. Questions remain. Given the pre-COVID-19 dominance of face-to-face instruction did student opinion of online learning change based on their experiences with the mandated transitions to virtual learning? Are the perceptions different for students at private versus public and small versus large institutions? This paper reports the results of an exploratory study of these bifurcations based on an online survey of student opinion conducted in Spring 2021. The findings provide some insight to student perceptions of the efficacy of the changed learning environment experienced by the subject populations

Cross-Task Representation Learning for Anatomical Landmark Detection

Recently, there is an increasing demand for automatically detecting anatomical landmarks which provide rich structural information to facilitate subsequent medical image analysis. Current methods related to this task often leverage the power of deep neural networks, while a major challenge in fine tuning such models in medical applications arises from insufficient number of labeled samples. To address this, we propose to regularize the knowledge transfer across source and target tasks through cross-task representation learning. The proposed method is demonstrated for extracting facial anatomical landmarks which facilitate the diagnosis of fetal alcohol syndrome. The source and target tasks in this work are face recognition and landmark detection, respectively. The main idea of the proposed method is to retain the feature representations of the source model on the target task data, and to leverage them as an additional source of supervisory signals for regularizing the target model learning, thereby improving its performance under limited training samples. Concretely, we present two approaches for the proposed representation learning by constraining either final or intermediate model features on the target model. Experimental results on a clinical face image dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach works well with few labeled data, and outperforms other compared approaches.Comment: MICCAI-MLMI 202

Incomitance in Monkeys with Strabismus

Purpose: Rhesus monkeys reared with restricted visual environment during their first few months of life develop large ocular misalignment (strabismus). The purpose of this study was to describe ‘A and V’ patterns and DVD in these animals during fixation and eye movements and suggest that this form of rearing produces animals that are a suitable model to study mechanisms that might cause ‘A/V’ pattern incomitant strabismus and dissociated vertical deviation (DVD) in humans. Methods: Eye movements were recorded during fixation, smooth-pursuit and saccades using binocular search coils in one monkey with esotropia, three monkeys with exotropia and one normal monkey. Results: 1) Monkeys reared with Alternating Monocular Occlusion or Binocular deprivation (tarsal plates intact) showed both horizontal and vertical misalignment during monocular and binocular viewing. 2) Large ‘A’ patterns were evident in 2 out of 3 exotropes while a ‘V’ pattern was observed in the esotrope. 3) Similar ‘A/V’ patterns were observed with either eye viewing and during fixation or eye movements. 4) The vertical misalignment, which consisted of the non-viewing eye being higher than the fixating eye, appeared to constitute a DVD. Conclusion: Visual sensory deprivation methods that induce large strabismus also induce ‘A/V’ patterns and DVD similar to certain types of human strabismus. The source of the pattern strabismus could be central, i.e., altered innervation to extraocular muscles from motor nuclei, or peripheral, i.e., altered location of extraocular muscle pulleys

Horizontal Saccade Disconjugacy in Strabismic Monkeys

Purpose: Previous studies have shown that binocular coordination during saccadic eye movement is affected in humans with large strabismus. The purpose of this study was to examine the conjugacy of saccadic eye movements in monkeys with sensory strabismus. Maethods: The authors recorded binocular eye movements in four strabismic monkeys and one unaffected monkey. Strabismus was induced by first occluding one eye for 24 hours, switching the occluder to the fellow eye for the next 24 hours, and repeating this pattern of daily alternating monocular occlusion for the first 4 to 6 months of life. Horizontal saccades were measured during monocular viewing when the animals were 2 to 3 years of age. Results: Horizontal saccade testing during monocular viewing showed that the amplitude of saccades in the nonviewing eye was usually different from that in the viewing eye (saccade disconjugacy). The amount of saccade disconjugacy varied among animals as a function of the degree of ocular misalignment as measured in primary gaze. Saccade disconjugacy also increased with eccentric orbital positions of the nonviewing eye. If the saccade disconjugacy was large, there was an immediate postsaccadic drift for less than 200 ms. The control animal showed none of these effects. Conclusions: As do humans with large strabismus, strabismic monkey display disconjugate saccadic eye movements. Saccade disconjugacy varies with orbital position and increases as a function of ocular misalignment as measured in primary gaze. This type of sensory-induced strabismus serves as a useful animal model to investigate the neural or mechanical factors responsible for saccade disconjugacy observed in humans with strabismus

Perceptually Motivated Wavelet Packet Transform for Bioacoustic Signal Enhancement

A significant and often unavoidable problem in bioacoustic signal processing is the presence of background noise due to an adverse recording environment. This paper proposes a new bioacoustic signal enhancement technique which can be used on a wide range of species. The technique is based on a perceptually scaled wavelet packet decomposition using a species-specific Greenwood scale function. Spectral estimation techniques, similar to those used for human speech enhancement, are used for estimation of clean signal wavelet coefficients under an additive noise model. The new approach is compared to several other techniques, including basic bandpass filtering as well as classical speech enhancement methods such as spectral subtraction, Wiener filtering, and Ephraim–Malah filtering. Vocalizations recorded from several species are used for evaluation, including the ortolan bunting (Emberiza hortulana), rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta), and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeanglia), with both additive white Gaussian noise and environment recording noise added across a range of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Results, measured by both SNR and segmental SNR of the enhanced wave forms, indicate that the proposed method outperforms other approaches for a wide range of noise conditions

Fitness-driven deactivation in network evolution

Individual nodes in evolving real-world networks typically experience growth and decay --- that is, the popularity and influence of individuals peaks and then fades. In this paper, we study this phenomenon via an intrinsic nodal fitness function and an intuitive aging mechanism. Each node of the network is endowed with a fitness which represents its activity. All the nodes have two discrete stages: active and inactive. The evolution of the network combines the addition of new active nodes randomly connected to existing active ones and the deactivation of old active nodes with possibility inversely proportional to their fitnesses. We obtain a structured exponential network when the fitness distribution of the individuals is homogeneous and a structured scale-free network with heterogeneous fitness distributions. Furthermore, we recover two universal scaling laws of the clustering coefficient for both cases, $C(k) \sim k^{-1}$ and $C \sim n^{-1}$, where $k$ and $n$ refer to the node degree and the number of active individuals, respectively. These results offer a new simple description of the growth and aging of networks where intrinsic features of individual nodes drive their popularity, and hence degree.Comment: IoP Styl

Initial Sulfonylurea Use and Subsequent Insulin Therapy in Older Subjects with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

BACKGROUND: In type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), progressive loss of beta cell function over time requires treatment intensification and eventually initiation of insulin for many patients. Relative to metformin, a greater rate of decline in beta cell function over time has been observed with sulfonylurea treatment. The present study examined the association between initial monotherapy with metformin or sulfonylurea and subsequent initiation of insulin in older subjects with T2DM. METHODS: In a retrospective cohort study using the GE electronic medical record database, eligible subjects with T2DM included those ≥65 years who received their first prescription of sulfonylurea or metformin as initial monotherapy between January 1, 2003 to December 31, 2008. The follow-up period lasted to the end of 2009 or the subject’s latest data available. Insulin initiation was determined by prescription records. Logistic regression analysis evaluated the likelihood of insulin addition. A Cox regression model estimated time to initiation of insulin. Differences in baseline characteristics were controlled for using propensity score matching. RESULTS: Overall, 12,036 subjects were included in the analysis. Mean age was 75 years and 50% were male. Subjects who initiated with sulfonylurea had a significantly (P < 0.001) higher incidence of insulin addition (2.8% vs. 1.4%) compared to those initiated with metformin within 1 year of follow-up. The likelihood of initiating insulin was higher in subjects initiated with sulfonylurea than with metformin (adjusted odds ratio 1.82, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.40–2.38; P < 0.001). Sulfonylurea use was also significantly associated with a shorter time to insulin use compared to metformin (adjusted hazards ratio 2.10, 95% CI 1.83–2.39; P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: In a cohort of older subjects with T2DM initiating antihyperglycemic therapy, new users of sulfonylurea monotherapy were more likely to receive insulin therapy and received it earlier than those starting with metformin

Exosomes containing HIV protein Nef reorganize lipid rafts potentiating inflammatory response in bystander cells.

HIV infection has a profound effect on "bystander" cells causing metabolic co-morbidities. This may be mediated by exosomes secreted by HIV-infected cells and containing viral factors. Here we show that exosomes containing HIV-1 protein Nef (exNef) are rapidly taken up by macrophages releasing Nef into the cell interior. This caused down-regulation of ABCA1, reduction of cholesterol efflux and sharp elevation of the abundance of lipid rafts through reduced activation of small GTPase Cdc42 and decreased actin polymerization. Changes in rafts led to re-localization of TLR4 and TREM-1 to rafts, phosphorylation of ERK1/2, activation of NLRP3 inflammasome, and increased secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. The effects of exNef on lipid rafts and on inflammation were reversed by overexpression of a constitutively active mutant of Cdc42. Similar effects were observed in macrophages treated with exosomes produced by HIV-infected cells or isolated from plasma of HIV-infected subjects, but not with exosomes from cells and subjects infected with ΔNef-HIV or uninfected subjects. Mice injected with exNef exhibited monocytosis, reduced ABCA1 in macrophages, increased raft abundance in monocytes and augmented inflammation. Thus, Nef-containing exosomes potentiated pro-inflammatory response by inducing changes in cholesterol metabolism and reorganizing lipid rafts. These mechanisms may contribute to HIV-associated metabolic co-morbidities