College Students\u27 Motivations for Using Podcasts

Despite potential benefits of podcasts for college education, little research has examined students’ psychological drives for using podcasts. To explore the relationship between the use of podcasts and college students’ appreciation of them, this study investigated students’ motivations, attitudes and behaviors with regard to podcasts use including their learning environment. Based on a survey with 636 college students, this study found that six dimensions of motivations were prominent for podcasts use: (1) voyeurism/social interaction/companionship, (2) entertainment/relaxation/arousal, (3) education/information, (4) pastime/escape, (5) habit, and (6) convenience. In particular, motivations catering to relationship consolidation, excitement and educational achievement better explained the actual use of podcasts as well as students’ appreciation than other motivations identified. In addition, students’ attachment to the medium is a strong predictor of their podcasts use and gratification. Students also used podcasts to satisfy their fashion motivation. Theoretical and practical implications of using podcasts for digital literacy in college education were discussed

Forgetting of Self-Relevant Emotional Information in Major Depression.

Dysfunctional cognitive control plays a central role in the occurrence and maintenance of rumination and depressed mood. For a better understanding of the cognitive, psychophysiological, and emotional characteristics involved in cognitive control in depression, this dissertation consists of three studies that investigate the forgetting of self-generated, emotional material in individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) as compared with healthy controls (HCs). In the first study, the relationship between self-complexity and retrieval induced forgetting (RIF) was assessed in order to examine the underlying mechanisms and individual differences in forgetting unwanted thoughts. As a result, individuals with MDD demonstrated reduced recall of unpracticed but competing negative words (e.g. RIF effect), especially as they came up with more categories relevant to aspects of themselves or their life with less overlap among them. In the second study, event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to valenced self-relevant information in a directed forgetting (DF) task were obtained to examine if either attentional inhibition or lack of elaborative processing or both were related to intentional forgetting, and if those cognitive processes underlying DF varied by valence. The results suggested that HC individuals initiated effortful allocation of attentional resource to remember non-mood congruent (negative) material in early stage of information processing (indexed by the P300 ERP component). HC individuals also demonstrated preferential elaboration and rehearsal of positive self-relevant information in remembering compared to negative one (e.g. positive bias; indexed by the slow wave component). In contrast, individuals with MDD showed even-handed processing of positive and negative stimuli, and also passive and less effortful processing for both remembering and forgetting. In the third study, Joormann et al.’s (2009) forgetting training was revised to better model naturalistic cognitive behavioral therapy process. Therefore, unlike in previous studies, a Think/No-Think (TNT) task with self-referent material and a pre- and post- task mood measurement was administered. As a result, individuals with MDD showed below-baseline forgetting of negative self-relevant information when provided positive substitutes. However the expected mood change was not observed in the MDD group. Implications and limitations of the studies are discussed and future directions are suggested.Ph.D.PsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89811/1/hyangs_1.pd

On Ideal Secret-Sharing Schemes for kk-homogeneous access structures

A $k$-uniform hypergraph is a hypergraph where each $k$-hyperedge has exactly $k$ vertices. A $k$-homogeneous access structure is represented by a $k$-uniform hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$, in which the participants correspond to the vertices of hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$. A set of vertices can reconstruct the secret value from their shares if they are connected by a $k$-hyperedge, while a set of non-adjacent vertices does not obtain any information about the secret. One parameter for measuring the efficiency of a secret sharing scheme is the information rate, defined as the ratio between the length of the secret and the maximum length of the shares given to the participants. Secret sharing schemes with an information rate equal to one are called ideal secret sharing schemes. An access structure is considered ideal if an ideal secret sharing scheme can realize it. Characterizing ideal access structures is one of the important problems in secret sharing schemes. The characterization of ideal access structures has been studied by many authors~\cite{BD, CT,JZB, FP1,FP2,DS1,TD}. In this paper, we characterize ideal $k$-homogeneous access structures using the independent sequence method. In particular, we prove that the reduced access structure of $\Gamma$ is an $(k, n)$-threshold access structure when the optimal information rate of $\Gamma$ is larger than $\frac{k-1}{k}$, where $\Gamma$ is a $k$-homogeneous access structure satisfying specific criteria.Comment: 19 page

Traceless component of the conformal curvature tensor in Kähler manifold

summary:We investigate the traceless component of the conformal curvature tensor defined by (2.1) in Kähler manifolds of dimension $\ge 4$, and show that the traceless component is invariant under concircular change. In particular, we determine Kähler manifolds with vanishing traceless component and improve some theorems (for example, [4, pp. 313–317]) concerning the conformal curvature tensor and the spectrum of the Laplacian acting on $p$ $(0\le p\le 2)$-forms on the manifold by using the traceless component

Towards Round-Optimal Secure Multiparty Computations: Multikey FHE without a CRS

Multikey fully homomorphic encryption (MFHE) allows homomorphic operations between ciphertexts encrypted under different keys. In applications for secure multiparty computation (MPC)protocols, MFHE can be more advantageous than usual fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) since users do not need to agree with a common public key before the computation when using MFHE. In EUROCRYPT 2016, Mukherjee and Wichs constructed a secure MPC protocol in only two rounds via MFHE which deals with a common random/reference string (CRS) in key generation. After then, Brakerski et al.. replaced the role of CRS with the distributed setup for CRS calculation to form a four round secure MPC protocol. Thus, recent improvements in round complexity of MPC protocols have been made using MFHE. In this paper, we go further to obtain round-efficient and secure MPC protocols. The underlying MFHE schemes in previous works still involve the common value, CRS, it seems to weaken the power of using MFHE to allow users to independently generate their own keys. Therefore, we resolve the issue by constructing an MFHE scheme without CRS based on LWE assumption, and then we obtain a secure MPC protocol against semi-malicious security in three rounds

A study on Korean nursing students' educational outcomes

The purpose of this study was to describe outcome indicators of nursing education including critical thinking, professionalism, leadership, and communication and to evaluate differences among nursing programs and academic years. A descriptive research design was employed. A total of 454 students from four year baccalaureate (BS) nursing programs and two three-year associate degree (AD) programs consented to complete self-administered questionnaires. The variables were critical thinking, professionalism, leadership and communication. Descriptive statistics, χ2-test, t-tests, ANOVA, and the Tukey test were utilized for the data analysis. All the mean scores of the variables were above average for the test instruments utilized. Among the BS students, those in the upper classes tended to attain higher scores, but this tendency was not identified in AD students. There were significant differences between BS students and AD students for the mean scores of leadership and communication. These findings suggested the need for further research to define properties of nursing educational outcomes, and to develop standardized instruments for research replication and verification

β-Caryophyllene attenuates dextran sulfate sodium-induced colitis in mice via modulation of gene expression associated mainly with colon inflammation

AbstractWe examined the modulatory activity of β-caryophyllene (CA) and gene expression in colitic colon tissues in a dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis model. Experimental colitis was induced by exposing male BALB/c mice to 5% DSS in drinking water for 7 days. CA (30 or 300mg/kg) was administered orally once a day together with DSS. CA administration attenuated the increases in the disease activity index, colon weight/length ratio, inflammation score, and myeloperoxidase activity in DSS-treated mice. Microarray analysis showed that CA administration regulated the expression in colon tissue of inflammation-related genes including those for cytokines and chemokines (Ccl2, Ccl7, Ccl11, Ifitm3, IL-1β, IL-28, Tnfrsf1b, Tnfrsf12a); acute-phase proteins (S100a8, Saa3, Hp); adhesion molecules (Cd14, Cd55, Cd68, Mmp3, Mmp10, Sema6b, Sema7a, Anax13); and signal regulatory proteins induced by DSS. CA significantly suppressed NF-κB activity, which mediates the expression of a different set of genes. These results suggest that CA attenuates DSS-induced colitis, possibly by modulating the expression of genes associated mainly with colon inflammation through inhibition of DSS-induced NF-κB activity

Sorafenib Modulates the LPS- and A beta-Induced Neuroinflammatory Response in Cells, Wild-Type Mice, and 5xFAD Mice

Sorafenib is FDA-approved for the treatment of primary kidney or liver cancer, but its ability to inhibit many types of kinases suggests it may have potential for treating other diseases. Here, the effects of sorafenib on neuroinflammatory responses in vitro and in vivo and the underlying mechanisms were assessed. Sorafenib reduced the induction of mRNA levels of the proinflammatory cytokines COX-2 and IL-1 beta by LPS in BV2 microglial cells, but in primary astrocytes, only COX-2 mRNA levels were altered by sorafenib. Interestingly, sorafenib altered the LPS-mediated neuroinflammatory response in BV2 microglial cells by modulating AKT/P38-linked STAT3/NF-kB signaling pathways. In LPS-stimulated wild-type mice, sorafenib administration suppressed microglial/astroglial kinetics and morphological changes and COX-2 mRNA levels by decreasing AKT phosphorylation in the brain. In 5xFAD mice (an Alzheimer's disease model), sorafenib treatment daily for 3 days significantly reduced astrogliosis but not microgliosis. Thus, sorafenib may have therapeutic potential for suppressing neuroinflammatory responses in the brain. © 2021 Kim, Park, Park and Hoe.1

Comparison of cytokine expression profiles in infants with a rhinovirus induced lower respiratory tract infection with or without wheezing: a comparison with respiratory syncytial virus

PurposeThe aim of this study was to evaluate whether infants with rhinovirus (RV) infection-induced wheezing and those with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection-induced wheezing have different cytokine profiles in the acute stage.MethodsOf the infants with lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) between September 2011 and May 2012, 88 were confirmed using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and hospitalized. Systemic interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), interleukin (IL)-2, IL-12, IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, and Treg-type cytokine (IL-10) responses were examined with multiplex assay using acute phase serum samples.ResultsOf the 88 patients, 38 had an RV infection (RV group) and 50 had an RSV infection (RSV group). In the RV group, the IFN-γ and IL-10 concentrations were higher in the patients with than in the patients without wheezing (P=0.022 and P=0.007, respectively). In the RSV group, the differences in IFN-γ and IL-10 concentrations did not reach statistical significance between the patients with and the patients without wheezing (P=0.105 and P=0.965, respectively). The IFN-γ and IL-10 concentrations were not significantly different between the RV group with wheezing and the RSV group with wheezing (P=0.155 and P=0.801, respectively), in contrast to the significant difference between the RV group without wheezing and the RSV group without wheezing (P=0.019 and P=0.035, respectively).ConclusionIn comparison with RSV-induced LRTI, RV-induced LRTI combined with wheezing showed similar IFN-γ and IL-10 levels, which may have an important regulatory function