Neighborhood Environments and Depression: A Longitudinal Study

Does a neighborhood affect individuals\u27 depression levels? Despite a large amount of research suggesting the importance of neighborhood for mental health, there is a lack of longitudinal studies specifying the temporal association between them. The current study makes use of three waves of the American\u27s Changing Lives (House, 1986a) dataset to examine the effect of neighborhood quality on depression across time and to investigate if social support buffers this effect. Particularly, the current study uses the interviewers\u27 ratings of neighborhoods, along with the respondents\u27 ratings to assess neighborhood effects more objectively. Besides examining people who did not move across all three waves, the current study also looks at respondents who had changed their residences during this time period and explores the interaction between moving and changes in the respondents\u27 ratings of their neighborhoods. Results indicate that being more dissatisfied with the new neighborhood is associated with an increase in depression for people who changed their residences and that the effect of the interviewers\u27 ratings of neighborhoods on depression can be attenuated by individual differences

Defining the role of mast cells in guinea pig models of asthma

Asthma is a common respiratory disease characterized by several pathophysiological features, such as allergen induced bronchoconstriction (in allergic asthma), airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR), airway inflammation, airway remodeling and mast cell hyperplasia. An increase of mast cells has been found in asthma patients. However, how these cells are involved in the development of asthma are not well defined. To investigate the role of mast cells in the pathophysiological characteristics of asthma, we established asthma models in guinea pigs, which have many similarities with humans, by exposing the animals to human relevant allergens: house dust mite (HDM) and cat dander extract (CDE). The involvement of mast cells in asthma-like features was investigated either by the addition of mast cell mediator antagonists or inhibitors, or inducing mast cell death. In paper I, we repeatedly exposed guinea pigs to HDM via intranasal instillation for seven weeks and successfully recaptured the antigen induced bronchoconstriction, the production of HDM specific immunoglobulins, AHR, eosinophilic inflammation with an increase of IL-13, airway remodeling (e.g., subepithelial collagen deposition and goblet cell hyperplasia) and mast cell hyperplasia. This model can be further used to study the role of mast cells in asthma. In paper II, we exposed guinea pigs to HDM or CDE intranasally for different time. Both HDM and CDE induce airway inflammation and airway remodeling after 4 weeks’ antigen exposures. These increases maintained after 8- and 12-week exposures. Exposing to both antigens for 8 weeks and 12 weeks induced a clear expansion of mast cells which is predominated by mast cells expressing tryptase. An increase of mast cells expressing both tryptase and chymase were also observed. In paper III, we isolated guinea pig trachea for comparing the effect of different mast cell agonists (HDM and Compound 48/80 (C48/80)) on airway smooth muscle responses and mediator release. We found that histamine, prostaglandins and 5- lipoxygenase products mediated the bronchoconstriction induced by HDM and C48/80. Both agonists induced a release of histamine, prostaglandin D2 and leukotriene B4. However, distinct of lipid mediator profiles were observed. The leukotriene E4 was only elevated by HDM, whereas C48/80 induced a broader release of lipid mediators. In paper IV and V, we identified an antibiotic monensin that can induce mast cell death. To examine if monensin can be a tool for investigating the role of mast cells in asthma, we cultured guinea pig tracheal segments from HDM sensitized guinea pigs and human bronchi with different concentrations of monensin for different time. We found that monensin has robust effects on causing mast cell death and totally blocked the HDM (in guinea pig trachea) and anti-IgE (in human bronchi) induced bronchoconstriction after 2 to 72h exposure without affecting the general tissue viability at low concentration. In the in vivo investigations, we exposed the guinea pigs to HDM repeatedly with or without monensin interventions. Monensin reduced the AHR, airway inflammation and mast cell hyperplasia in the HDM induced guinea pig model. In conclusion, exposing to human relevant allergens (HDM and CDE) are suitable for modeling of allergic asthma in guinea pigs. The increase of mast cells by HDM and CDE helps to investigate the role of mast cells in asthma models. Mast cells in guinea pig airways can respond differently to antigen and non-antigen agonists. Monensin can be a robust tool to induce mast cell death. The antigen induced bronchoconstriction by HDM in guinea pig trachea and anti-IgE in human bronchi are purely mast cell mediated. Our findings emphasize that mast cells have important roles in the development of AHR and airway inflammation in the guinea pig model used in this PhD study. The findings in this thesis highlight the importance of mast cells in asthma and the models we developed can be used as important tools for defining the mechanisms behind asthma

Modeling Inflation in Singapore: An econometric bottom-up approach

Master'sMASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Wearable or Not? : Experiencing Contemporary Jewellery

“How is that supposed to be worn?” is the general query of people who come across contemporary jewellery. Sitting at the intersection of art and craft, contemporary jewellery blurs the relationship between form and function. Emerging out of the aesthetic radicalism of the 1960s and evolving ever since, contemporary jewellery breaks the culturally-informed role as bodily adornment and exists as conceptual artwork that constantly challenges traditional thinking. Not surprisingly, contemporary jewellery has also challenged traditional exhibition strategies. The standard museum practices of display are called into question. In this exhibition I examine the relationship between the human body and contemporary jewellery via the works of six artists. I also explore ways to interact with visitors to experience the works visually and tactilely. As contemporary jewellery is a relatively new art form, my thesis exhibition contributes to scholarships in the realm, as well as the curatorial practice for other art-based objects

Text2Seg: Remote Sensing Image Semantic Segmentation via Text-Guided Visual Foundation Models

Recent advancements in foundation models (FMs), such as GPT-4 and LLaMA, have attracted significant attention due to their exceptional performance in zero-shot learning scenarios. Similarly, in the field of visual learning, models like Grounding DINO and the Segment Anything Model (SAM) have exhibited remarkable progress in open-set detection and instance segmentation tasks. It is undeniable that these FMs will profoundly impact a wide range of real-world visual learning tasks, ushering in a new paradigm shift for developing such models. In this study, we concentrate on the remote sensing domain, where the images are notably dissimilar from those in conventional scenarios. We developed a pipeline that leverages multiple FMs to facilitate remote sensing image semantic segmentation tasks guided by text prompt, which we denote as Text2Seg. The pipeline is benchmarked on several widely-used remote sensing datasets, and we present preliminary results to demonstrate its effectiveness. Through this work, we aim to provide insights into maximizing the applicability of visual FMs in specific contexts with minimal model tuning. The code is available at https://github.com/Douglas2Code/Text2Seg.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Comparison Study of Hydration Characteristics Between Cements with 50% and 85% Slag

This study aims at comparing the hydration characteristics between two kinds of cements, the Portland slag cement (PSC) containing 50 wt.% ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), and the supersulfated cement (SSC) containing 85 wt.% GGBFS. The reason caused the different hydration properties with the same type raw materials were analyzed by determining the compressive strength of the pastes, the hydration heat release and the hydration products at different curing ages. The results show that in PSC system, alkali activation was predominating and it mainly generated hydrated calcium silicate (C-S-H gels) and calcium hydroxide (CH). While in SSC system, the hydration mechanism was the combination of sulfate and alkali excitation, it mainly generated C-S-H gels and ettringite. The compressive strength of PSC was higher than that of SSC at every curing age. However, the difference of the compressive strength between PSC and SSC narrowed gradually as curing age went on. The early compressive strength of PSC was high while at late hydration age it increased slowly. The early compressive strength of SSC was low, while the later compressive strength increased quikly. Compared with PSC, the hydration heat evolution rate of SSC was slower and the hydration heat of SSC was relatively less low. Moreover, the second exothermic peak of SSC delayed. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.24.4.17746</p

Why Do Women Get Less in Job Market? --Evidence on the Gender Pay Gap from Twitter Data

The gender pay gap is one of the serious issues in the labor market today and closing the gap is the major theme in the Equal Pay movement. This gap cannot be simply explained by any common labor market characteristics that form the basis of wage determination. In this thesis, I intend to understand the connection between wage gap and factors including workplace discrimination, education, occupational segregation, and, to uncover the challenges of the Equal Pay movement by identifying the main issues arise around the movement. Specifically, I performed a Twitter-based user generated content analysis (UGC) to extract twitter data with the hashtag #GenderPay and #EqualPay to further understand the issues around the equal pay movement. In the UGC analysis, I built a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model to identify top 20 topics in the dataset. I classified the tweets into three categories - positive, negative, and neutral - and plotted two word-clouds. My findings underscore the following two topics: (i) motherhood penalty (ii) racial inequality. The identified topics can be a starting point for future research on pay equity in the work environment as well as provide insights to close the gender inequality problem around the world

Gender, Race, and the Politics of Crime Rhetoric

Since the mid-1970s, the United States has taken a punitive policy turn and incarcerated more of its citizens than any other industrialized democracy. To explain the rise of the carceral state, extant research has focused mainly on the influence of the punitive public or the public speeches of conservative national male leaders. Yet, we do not know much about the political rhetoric adopted by women and racial/ethnic minorities. Do women and racial/ethnic minority leaders talk about crime in distinct ways? Are women and racial/ethnic minority more or less likely to adopt tough-on-crime rhetoric and non-punitive rhetoric than men and whites? Is there an interactive effect of demographic and social identities on crime rhetoric? This dissertation aims to answer these questions. The existing literature provides two theoretical narratives to understand how political elites bring out a carceral state. One focuses on the racial politics and the other is derived from the social construction theory of target population. While both lines of research successfully demonstrate the political nature of mass incarceration, neither of them explores the possible variation in crime rhetoric among political elites. To fill in this knowledge gap, I use the literature of descriptive representation and stereotypes of voters to demonstrate why female and racial/ethnic minority elites may have distinct voices in the public discourse on crime. In the first empirical chapter of my dissertation, I use Google’s Speech-to-Text API to tran- scribe more than 1100 political ad videos in 2012 and 2016 into an original text dataset. Using structural topic models, I find that female candidates, particularly Democratic women, are more likely to discuss crimes against women than their male counterparts. I also find women are less likely to adopt a punitive stance by avoiding highlighting powerless and negatively viewed social groups. There was also a marked difference in their vocabularies used to discuss criminal justice issues. In the second empirical chapter, I examine the cause and consequence of gendered voices in crime rhetoric. I conduct a survey experiment to test a 2X2 research design in which the rhetoric used and gender of the candidate are randomly varied in embedded political ads. Focusing on the impact of gender stereotypes, I find that adopting tough-on-crime rhetoric does not dispropor- tionately lower the rating of female candidates, but using rehabilitation rhetoric will. I also find that only male candidates’ tough-on-crime rhetoric has a framing effect on the public. The last empirical chapter focuses on the crime rhetoric of Blacks and Latinxs. Using traditional content analysis, I find evidence for descriptive representation of Latinx candidates as they are more likely to discuss illegal immigration and less likely to support decriminalization of illegal immigrants than whites. But I do not find that African American candidates attach more attention to the topic of incarceration/sentencing than whites. They are also just like their white peers regarding the use of war-on-drugs rhetoric. My dissertation makes several contributions to the literature. First, it increases our knowledge about descriptive representation. It shows that descriptive representation does not always enhance substance substantive representation. It depends on how women and racial/ethnic minor- ity leaders understand the issue and how they perceive the target population of crime policies based on their life experience. It is also conditioned on the interaction of different demographic and so- cial identities. Second, this project shows how electoral concerns shape the crime rhetoric adopted by women and racial/ethnic minority politicians. Finally, I demonstrate how to use machines to analyze political discourse from videos and audios. This innovative approach allows scholars to analyze a large collection of rhetoric text without massive funding support. It also illustrates how to use structural topic modeling to measure crime rhetoric

Standard Radiation: A New Perspective Leading the Coordinated Development of Urban Agglomerations

With the increased communication among cities, coordinated development between regions has become a common trend. An urban agglomeration is a special spatial structure unit, which becomes an important driving force for the coordinated development of the region through the radiation effect generated by the central city. The existing studies on regional integration have focused more on the economic, financial, and technological innovation radiation effects. However, as an essential tool for economic development, technological progress, and social governance, the standard plays an irreplaceable role in promoting regional integration and enhancing the coordinated development of urban agglomerations due to its ability to consensus and cooperation sharing. Therefore, based on the theories of growth pole, radiation effect, and city field, this paper first puts forward the concept of the standard radiation effect and argues that the standardization level of the central city can lead and drive the development of the urban agglomerations through the method of theoretical elaboration. Secondly, we explain the mechanism of the standard radiation effect in promoting the coordinated development of urban agglomerations under the interaction of multi-dimensional proximity. Finally, taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in China as typical cases, this research explores and summarizes three different models of the standard radiation effect, which are dominated by institutional proximity, economical proximity, and geographical proximity, respectively. The results of the study show that the standard radiation has a regional leading role. Furthermore, the effect of the central city in different urban agglomerations is dominated by different proximity, and there are different models and paths. Thus, in the process of regional industrial collaboration, it is necessary to focus on the standard cooperation among cities, and according to the characteristics of different urban agglomerations, make the most effective use of advantageous proximity to promote the development of regional integration. The conclusion can enrich the relevant studies on the agglomeration and radiation effects, give theoretical explanations on how the standard radiation effect of the central city leads to regional development, and provide new thinking perspectives and practical references on the way to achieve coordinated development of urban agglomerations

Measuring Product Similarity with Hesitant Fuzzy Set for Recommendation

The processing of a sparse matrix is a hot topic in the recommendation system. This paper applies the method of hesitant fuzzy set to study the sparse matrix processing problem. Based on the uncertain factors in the recommendation process, this paper applies hesitant fuzzy set theory to characterize the historical ratings embedded in the recommendation system and studies the data processing problem of the sparse matrix under the condition of a hesitant fuzzy set. The key is to transform the similarity problem of products in the sparse matrix into the similarity problem of two hesitant fuzzy sets by data conversion, data processing, and data complement. This paper further considers the influence of the difference of user ratings on the recommendation results and obtains a user’s recommendation list. On the one hand, the proposed method effectively solves the matrix in the recommendation system; on the other hand, it provides a feasible method for calculating similarity in the recommendation system