Invisible Minority: Experience of Middle Eastern American Women in Using Health Care Services

Issues related to the experiences of minority populations have received increasing attention during the last few decades. The research has been mostly focused on minority populations that are known to the U.S. general population including Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and African Americans. However, the Middle Eastern American population has received little attention. As the research on health disparities advances, there has been a growing attempt to reduce disparities that cause Middle Eastern populations to have chronic or life-threatening diseases. Some of these research studies have looked at the experiences of discrimination as a factor that would make a difference in the health of this population. While these studies are important, they usually engage a quantitative research method that is not fully equipped to evaluate the experiences of discrimination in a fuller sense. Addressing this gap in the literature, I conducted 30 in-depth interviews with Middle Eastern American women about their experiences with the U.S. health care system. Based on these interviews, there seem to be signs of anti-Middle Eastern racial framing among health care professionals that often caused significant problems for these respondents in their attempts to access the U.S. health care system

Protocols and Software for Simplified Educational Video Capture and Editing

Recently, educational videos have become important parts of e-learning systems which have in turn become widely used due to their flexibility. These videos should be of high quality since higher production values lead to superior learning outcomes. However, creating high-quality video is a difficult task for teachers since it needs technical knowledge that includes video recording and timeline usage. Hence, creating educational video production software, that is at the same time easy-to-use and able to produce high-quality educational videos, is very advantageous. In this paper, we developed protocols for an easy-to-use piece of software that enables teachers who have little technological background to produce their own educational videos autonomously. In fact, our contribution is to reduce the complexity of the whole video production process by introducing a preparation step based on micro-teaching and upstream specification. An evaluation of the software with six teachers is performed. This evaluation, based on think-aloud protocol and quantitative measurements, showed that the introduction of the preparation step allowed the participant teachers to produce high-quality educational videos in less than three hours

DASH for 3D Networked Virtual Environment

DASH is now a widely deployed standard for streaming video content due to its simplicity, scalability, and ease of deployment. In this paper, we explore the use of DASH for a different type of media content -- networked virtual environment (NVE), with different properties and requirements. We organize a polygon soup with textures into a structure that is compatible with DASH MPD (Media Presentation Description), with a minimal set of view-independent metadata for the client to make intelligent decisions about what data to download at which resolution. We also present a DASH-based NVE client that uses a view-dependent and network dependent utility metric to decide what to download, based only on the information in the MPD file. We show that DASH can be used on NVE for 3D content streaming. Our work opens up the possibility of using DASH for highly interactive applications, beyond its current use in video streaming

A Salience Measure for 3D Shape Decomposition and Sub-parts Classification

International audienceThis paper introduces a measure of significance on a curve skeleton of a 3D piecewise linear shape mesh, allowing the computation of both the shape's parts and their saliency. We begin by reformulating three existing pruning measures into a non-linear PCA along the skeleton. From this PCA, we then derive a volume-based salience measure, the 3D WEDF, that determines the relative importance to the global shape of the shape part associated to a point of the skeleton. First, we provide robust algorithms for computing the 3D WEDF on a curve skeleton, independent on the number of skeleton branches. Then, we cluster the WEDF values to partition the curve skeleton, and coherently map the decomposition to the associated surface mesh. Thus, we develop an unsupervised hierarchical decomposition of the mesh faces into visually meaningful shape regions that are ordered according to their degree of perceptual salience. The shape analysis tools introduced in this paper are important for many applications including shape comparison, editing, and compression

Impact of 3D Bookmarks on Navigation and Streaming in a Networked Virtual Environment

A 3D bookmark in a networked virtual environment (NVE) provides a navigation aid, allowing the user to move quickly from its current viewpoint to a bookmarked viewpoint by simply clicking on the bookmark. In this paper, we first validate the positive impact that 3D bookmarks have in easing navigation in a 3D scene. Then, we show that, in the context of a NVE that streams content on demand from server to client, navigating with bookmarks leads to lower rendering quality at the bookmarked viewpoint, due to lower locality of data. We then investigate into how prefetching the 3D data at the bookmarks and precomputation of visible faces at the bookmarks help to improve the rendering quality

An Implementation of a DASH Client for Browsing Networked Virtual Environment

International audienceWe demonstrate the use of DASH, a widely-deployed standard for streaming video content, for streaming 3D content in an NVE (Networked Virtual Environment) consisting of 3D geometry and associated textures. We have developed a DASH client for NVE to show how NVE benefits from the advantages of DASH: it offers a scalable, easy-to-deploy 3D streaming framework. In our system, the 3D content is first statically partitioned into compliant DASH data, and metadata is provided in order for the client to manage which data to download. Based on a proposed utility metric for geometry and texture at the different resolution, the client can choose the content to request depending on its viewpoint. We effectively provide a Web-based client to navigate through our sample 3D scene, while deriving the streaming requests from its computation of the necessary online parameters, in a receiver-driven manner

Human Fucci Pancreatic Beta Cell Lines: New Tools to Study Beta Cell Cycle and Terminal Differentiation

<div><p>Regulation of cell cycle in beta cells is poorly understood, especially in humans. We exploited here the recently described human pancreatic beta cell line EndoC-βH2 to set up experimental systems for cell cycle studies. We derived 2 populations from EndoC-βH2 cells that stably harbor the 2 genes encoding the Fucci fluorescent indicators of cell cycle, either from two vectors, or from a unique bicistronic vector. In proliferating non-synchronized cells, the 2 Fucci indicators revealed cells in the expected phases of cell cycle, with orange and green cells being in G1 and S/G2/M cells, respectively, and allowed the sorting of cells in different substeps of G1. The Fucci indicators also faithfully red out alterations in human beta cell proliferative activity since a mitogen-rich medium decreased the proportion of orange cells and inflated the green population, while reciprocal changes were observed when cells were induced to cease proliferation and increased expression of some beta cell genes. In the last situation, acquisition of a more differentiated beta cell phenotype correlates with an increased intensity in orange fluorescence. Hence Fucci beta cell lines provide new tools to address important questions regarding human beta cell cycle and differentiation.</p></div

Fucci indicators reveal growth-arrest and terminal differentiation of human beta cells.

<p>(A) Exponentially growing EndoC-βH2-PGF2AOF Fucci cells were transduced with a retrovector encoding either a selectable marker (zeocin resistance) or both Zeocin resistance and the Cre recombinase, then selected in a zeocin containing medium and analyzed by flow cytometry for their green and orange fluorescences 13 days later. Doublets were excluded from the analysis. EndoC-βH2 cells depends upon two floxed transgenes for their proliferation, <i>SV40LT</i> and <i>hTERT</i>. After 13 days (time of transduction taken as day 0), green EndoC-βH2-PGF2AOF cells become much rarer while the proportion of orange cells inflates in cells transduced with a Cre-encoding vector (right) compared to control cells (left). (B) Control and Cre-transduced cells were analyzed for expression of <i>Cre</i>, <i>SV40LT, Ki67</i> and <i>INSULIN</i> mRNA by quantitative RT-PCR. The maximal value is arbitrarily taken as 100 for each transcript (C) The same experiment as in A was carried out and control and Cre-transduced cells were FACS sorted after 12 days (time of transduction taken as day 0) according to the intensity of the orange fluorescence: the bulk of orange control cells (fraction 0), the exactly corresponding fraction among CRE-transduced orange cells (fraction 1) and the brightest Cre-transduced orange cells (fraction 2). (D) Each fraction harvested in (C) was then submitted to quantitative RT-PCR analyses for the expression of <i>Cre</i>, <i>SV40LT, Ki67</i>, <i>INSULIN</i> and <i>IAPP</i> mRNA. Two PCR experiments (except three for Insulin) done with the same cDNA samples, were performed (two duplicates per sample), and the mean of the values as well as standard deviations are shown. The maximal value is arbitrarily taken as 100 for each transcript (bottom panels).</p

Comparison of ongoing DNA synthesis and Fucci markers in human beta cells.

<p>(A) Exponentially growing EndoC-βH2-OFP-GFZ Fucci cells were exposed for two hours to EdU, then fixed, stained with Hoechst 33342 for DNA content and analyzed by flow cytometry for four fluorescences (UV/blue for Hoechst 33342, green and orange for the two Fucci markers, far red for EdU). Doublets were excluded from the analyse. Left panels: each subpopulation emitting either orange (orange Fucci positive cells, in orange), green (green Fucci positive cells, in green) or far red (EdU positive cells, in pink) fluorescence is shown according to its DNA content (Hoechst 33342 staining) to be compared to each other as well as to the whole population (in violet). Right panel: overlay of the four fluorescences indicates. Almost all cells positive for both Fucci markers in the «G1 peak» are in S phase (positive for EdU). Based on this four color analysis, two ratio were defined to show the accuracy of the Fucci indicators. First the «specificity rate», which means among orange (green) cells, the percentage of cells being in G1 (S/G2/M) based on both Hoechst 33342 and EdU stainings. Reciprocally, the «superposition rate» corresponds to the percentage of orange (green) cells among G1 (S/G2/M) cells. The percentages indicated in the first column corresponds to those in the whole cell population. Note that the fluorescence intensity is somewhat decreased by the protocole used to reveal EdU which lowers the «superposition rate» compared to that reached under standard conditions (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0108202#pone-0108202-g004" target="_blank">Fig. 4</a>). (B) Comparison of ongoing DNA synthesis and Fucci markers in EndoC-βH2-PGF2AOF cells. Same as in A using EndoC-βH2-PGF2AOF cells.</p

The intensity of the orange Fucci fluorescence is correlated with progression throughout G1 in human beta cells.

<p>(A) Exponentially growing EndoC-βH2-OFP-GFZ were FACS sorted according to the intensity of the orange Fucci fluorescence. Each sorted subpopulation (low, medium and high orange fluorescence) was immediately replated in separate wells. (B) 22 hours later, the cells in each well were fixed and analyzed by flow cytometry for its percentage of orange, green, yellow and «black» cells as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0108202#pone-0108202-g004" target="_blank">Fig. 4</a>. Doublets were excluded from the analysis. The results shown in the three bottom panels indicate that the frequency of green and yellow cells in each population is strongly correlated with the intensity of the orange fluorescence of the fraction from which it derives. (C) Each of the three orange subpopulations sorted in A (low, medium and high) were analyzed for the mRNA levels of 2 late G1 markers, CYCLIN E1 and PCNA through quantitative RT-PCR analyses. The maximal value is arbitrarily taken as 100 for each transcript. Two PCR experiments, done with the same cDNA samples, were performed (two duplicates per sample), and the mean of the values as well as standard deviations are shown.</p