2,970 research outputs found
A Model of Low-lying States in Strongly Interacting Electroweak Symmetry-Breaking Sector
It is proposed that, in a strongly-interacting electroweak sector, besides
the Goldstone bosons, the coexistence of a scalar state () and vector
resonances such as [)], [] and
[] is required by the proper Regge behavior of the
forward scattering amplitudes. This is a consequence of the following
well-motivated assumptions: (a). Adler-Weisberger-type sum rules and the
superconvergence relations for scattering amplitudes hold in this strongly
interacting sector; (b). the sum rules at are saturated by a minimal set
of low-lying states with appropriate quantum numbers. It therefore suggests
that a complete description should include all these resonances. These states
may lead to distinctive experimental signatures at future colliders.Comment: revised version, to appear in Modern Physics Letters A; file also
available via anonymous ftp at ftp://ucdhep.ucdavis.edu/han/sews/lowlying.p
IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS OF INSULIN PRODUCTION AND SECRETION IN SMALL AND LARGE RAT ISLETS
The existence of islet subpopulations according to size difference has been described since 1869 when Dr. Paul Langerhans first discovered the islets in the pancreas. Unfortunately, little is known about the functional differences between islet subpopulations until recently. Small islets have been shown to secret more insulin than large islets per volume (islet equivalent; IE) and led to better transplantation outcome both in rodents and in humans. Insulin is produced and released from the beta cells in islets through a cascading pathway from insulin gene transcription to proinsulin biosynthesis to insulin secretion. The central hypothesis of this dissertation is that small and large islets have different characteristics in insulin production and secretion that lead to different transplantation outcomes. More than ten thousands small (diameter less or equal 100µm) and large (diameter above or equal 200µm) islets from healthy rats were investigated. First, the same percentage of beta cells was identified in small and large islets, but small islets had higher density both in vitro and in situ. Next, a new regression model was established to better estimate the islet volume by cell number based on size (diameter), since an overestimation was seen when using conventional IE measurement to normalize islet volume. By applying this new normalization method, a superior glucose-stimulated proinsulin biosynthesis was identified in large islets. However, when normalized to cell number, insulin secretion was not different between small and large islets, unlike the results in literature when normalized to IE. While small and large islets showed no difference in total protein content per cell, large islets showed higher protein levels of prosinulin, NeuroD/Beta2 and MafA with a lower PDX-1 level under basal conditions suggesting that the different characteristics between small and large islets in the insulin production pathway may not correspond to measured insulin secretion. All the findings will not only elucidate new intricacies concerning islet biology research, but also will have significant implications to current islet transplantation research to optimize the success for curing type 1 diabetes
Patient Deception in Health Care: Physical Therapy Education, Beliefs, and Attitudes
A good professional-patient relationship is important to clinical practice, which may be compromised by deception. Deception research in physical therapy is scant. The current study investigated how the topic of patient deception is addressed in Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) educational curriculum, explore DPT students’ beliefs about deception and attitudes toward patient deception, and examine the effects of a pedagogical intervention on DPT students’ beliefs about deception and attitudes toward patient deception. The first objective was pursued by a descriptive survey sent to 217 DPT programs in the US. The second and third objectives were achieved by one-group pretest-posttest design provided to 17 DPT students before and after an educational workshop. Most DPT programs minimally include the topic of patient deception within their curriculum. DPT students held several inaccurate beliefs about the indicators of deception and negative attitudes toward patients who lied. After the educational intervention, students’ inaccurate beliefs were corrected and negative attitudes were reduced. Patient deception seems to be an under-addressed topic in current physical therapy education. An education workshop improved students’ beliefs about deception and attitudes toward to patient deception. Implications of deception research and theory in the applied practice of physical therapy are discussed
Why We Should Report the Details in Subjective Evaluation of TTS More Rigorously
This paper emphasizes the importance of reporting experiment details in
subjective evaluations and demonstrates how such details can significantly
impact evaluation results in the field of speech synthesis. Through an analysis
of 80 papers presented at INTERSPEECH 2022, we find a lack of thorough
reporting on critical details such as evaluator recruitment and filtering,
instructions and payments, and the geographic and linguistic backgrounds of
evaluators. To illustrate the effect of these details on evaluation outcomes,
we conducted mean opinion score (MOS) tests on three well-known TTS systems
under different evaluation settings and we obtain at least three distinct
rankings of TTS models. We urge the community to report experiment details in
subjective evaluations to improve the reliability and interpretability of
experimental results.Comment: Interspeech 2023 camera-ready versio
When Social Influence Meets Item Inference
Research issues and data mining techniques for product recommendation and
viral marketing have been widely studied. Existing works on seed selection in
social networks do not take into account the effect of product recommendations
in e-commerce stores. In this paper, we investigate the seed selection problem
for viral marketing that considers both effects of social influence and item
inference (for product recommendation). We develop a new model, Social Item
Graph (SIG), that captures both effects in form of hyperedges. Accordingly, we
formulate a seed selection problem, called Social Item Maximization Problem
(SIMP), and prove the hardness of SIMP. We design an efficient algorithm with
performance guarantee, called Hyperedge-Aware Greedy (HAG), for SIMP and
develop a new index structure, called SIG-index, to accelerate the computation
of diffusion process in HAG. Moreover, to construct realistic SIG models for
SIMP, we develop a statistical inference based framework to learn the weights
of hyperedges from data. Finally, we perform a comprehensive evaluation on our
proposals with various baselines. Experimental result validates our ideas and
demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model and
algorithms over baselines.Comment: 12 page
The Physiological and Psychological Benefits of CrossFit Training – A Pilot Study
CrossFit has been one of the fastest growing training methods in the fitness industry since its inception in 2000. CrossFit combines classic strength and conditioning along with gymnastics movements, Olympic weightlifting, and other functional movements into a constantly varied, high intensity workout. The success of CrossFit and what seems to be exponential growth of their over 10,000 affiliated gyms is undeniable. This popularity might be stem from two main factors: the physiological changes of training and the psychological benefits of a community emphasized, social atmosphere. However, there is very limited research evidence supporting the potential benefits of CrossFit . This study was conducted to investigate the physiological and psychological benefits of CrossFit training in a healthy adult population undergoing their first exposure to the training method. Sixteen participants were recruited from a local CrossFit affiliate in San Angelo, Texas. Participants completed a series of self-report psychological questionnaires including the Motives for Physical Activity Measures (MPAM), Mental Health Inventory 38 (MHI-38), and the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ). Following these questionnaires, physical metrics including: heart rate, blood pressure, height, body weight, body composition via Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA), along with performance measures including 1-RM back squat, 1-RM bench press, vertical jump test, and a Wingate Anaerobic Power Test were conducted. The CrossFit program was conducted for 8 weeks by certified CrossFit coaches at the local affiliate gym. After the 8-week training, the participants were reassessed using the same measures. Over the course of the study, 6 participants completed the program (2 males, 4 females, 36.2 ± 10.8 years of age, 73.6 ± 7.4 kg, 167.6 ± 5.5 cm, and 31.0 ± 9.2% body fat). Despite the large attrition rate, there were statistically significant increase of lean mass (1.44 ± 1.26 kg; p= 0.039), decrease of mean fat (1.67 ± 1.17 kg ; p= 0.017) and changes in interest subset of motivation from MPAM motivational test (p \u3c 0.05). In conclusion, this pilot study suggests that CrossFit training might be beneficial for improving body composition and concurrently changes certain motivational factors to continue engaging in the fitness activity. Further studies with a longer intervention period and a larger sample size are needed to support these findings
Modeling of Location Estimation for Object Tracking in WSN
Location estimation for object tracking is one of the important topics in the research of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Recently, many location estimation or position schemes in WSN have been proposed. In this paper, we will propose the procedure and modeling of location estimation for object tracking in WSN. The designed modeling is a simple scheme without complex processing. We will use Matlab to conduct the simulation and numerical analyses to find the optimal modeling variables. The analyses with different variables will include object moving model, sensing radius, model weighting value α, and power-level increasing ratio k of neighboring sensor nodes. For practical consideration, we will also carry out the shadowing model for analysis
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