Multiscale Biofluidic and Nanobiotechnology Approaches for Treating Sepsis in Extracorporeal Circuits

Infectious diseases and their pandemics periodically attract public interests due to difficulty in treating the patients and the consequent high mortality. Sepsis caused by an imbalanced systemic inflammatory response to infection often leads to organ failure and death. The current therapeutic intervention mainly includes "the sepsis bundles," antibiotics (antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal), intravenous fluids for resuscitation, and surgery, which have significantly improved the clinical outcomes in past decades; however, the patients with fulminant sepsis are still in desperate need of alternative therapeutic approaches. One of the potential supportive therapies, extracorporeal blood treatment, has emerged and been developed for improving the current therapeutic efficacy. Here, I overview how the treatment of infectious diseases has been assisted with the extracorporeal adjuvant therapy and the potential utility of various nanobiotechnology and microfluidic approaches for developing new auxiliary therapeutic methods

Antidiscrimination Rights of Contingent Workers in the United States

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits an employer\u27s discriminatory employment practices against an employee on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. Most contingent workers in the United States are faced with discriminatory employment practices, such as low wages and low or no benefits, and they are disproportionately women and minorities. Title VII is the focal point, but Title VII has not functioned as a remedy for contingent workers. This dissertation examines why contingent workers suffer discrimination, despite Title VII, and suggests possible solutions. In the United States, the distinctive interpretation of laws has not functioned as a remedy for contingent workers: 1. The Definition of Employee in Determining Who is Covered by Antidiscrimination Laws is too Narrow. The United States Excludes Independent Contractors as Defined Under the Right to Direct and Control Test. Some Independent Contractors can be Dependent, Suffer Discrimination just like Employees, and Have few Opportunities to offer work subject to discrimination by Contractors. 2. The Definition of Employer in Determining Whom is Covered by Antidiscrimination Laws is too Narrow. Temporary Employees Are Employees of the Temporary Agency, but Not the Primary Contractor for Whom They Work. The Primary Contractor is the One Who Has Economic Control of the Situation, Effectively Sets Wages and Benefits, and can Discriminate Against Contingent Workers. 3. The Definition of What constitutes Discrimination is too Narrow. The United States Does Not Accept Applications of Disparate Impact Analysis, But Accepts Business Necessity Defense. The Employer\u27s Pay Practices Have a Disparate Impact on Vulnerable Classes to Their Detriment, Even though there Is No Intent to Discriminate. This study suggests that the U.S. needs to give antidiscrimination remedies to contingent workers through a change in the interpretation of the law and/or legislation: 1. Congress and/or courts must broaden the definition of covered employee to include contingent workers in the term worker, and adopt the economic realities test to include some independent contractors as covered worker. 2. Congress and/or courts must apply the single employer doctrine more broadly to include both the primary contractor and the temporary agency as one employer under the antidiscrimination laws. 3. Congress and/or courts must apply the disparate impact theory more broadly (business necessity defense such as saving cost and market standard should not succeed), or pass legislation requiring proportional wages and benefits for workers in the same workplace

Music teacher education in the United States and the Republic of Korea: a comparison of music teacher licensure policies and their implementation in two contexts

Teacher preparation programs have played a major role in developing candidates’ knowledge and abilities in teaching. These preparation programs have been designed according to the policies and regulations of national and state governments, accrediting agencies, and universities. Moreover, cultural contexts influence practices and educational systems. Investigating education policies and their implementation in the United States and the Republic of Korea would shed light on music teacher training in each context, and help officials understand and diagnose local problems. The purpose of this study was to analyze documented policies and procedures for music teacher licensure programs in two countries, to explore their implementation, and investigate candidates’ learning during both programs. The perspectives of two types of knowledge, subject matter knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge, also guided the study. Massachusetts policies and regulations were analyzed. Tito University in Massachusetts and Quinn University in the ROK were selected. Document analysis, individual interviews with professors, and focus group interviews with student teachers in licensure programs in each context were employed. Both Massachusetts and the ROK required music teacher candidates to possess knowledge and skills in Western Classical music. While Massachusetts regulations included what kinds of music and music education knowledge teacher candidates must have, the ROK regulations indicated how many credits teacher candidates must complete in music, music education, and general education areas. In both contexts, interviews with professors revealed that these programs followed policies and standards of the national, state, and accrediting agencies. In planning curriculum, all professors must consider policies. However, at Tito, professors reported paying closer attention to training students in classroom expertise, whereas Quinn professors paid closer attention to preparing students for the national exam. Teacher candidates wanted to have more field-based experiences in both contexts, although students in Massachusetts worked at practice for a longer period than those in the ROK. Candidates at Tito needed to learn a variety of music from other traditions besides Western Classical music. Candidates at Quinn were overwhelmed due to preparation for The Examination. Individual policy interpretation produced different outcomes. Further research is needed regarding implementation of policies in other licensure programs

The Effects of Unilateral Ankle Loading on the Long-Range Correlation of Spatiotemporal Gait Parameters during Treadmill Walking

Long-range correlation has been observed in the time series of the human neuromuscular system and indicative of a healthy system. However, this analysis has not been used for an scenario of asymmetrical loading during walking. This study aimed to understand the effect of unilateral ankle loading on long-range correlation of spatiotemporal gait parameters in healthy young adults during treadmill walking. We used four unilateral ankle loads (A0, A25, A50, and A75, representing the increase of the moment of inertia of the leg about the knee joint by 0%, 25%, 50% and 75%, respectively) and attached it on the non-dominant leg. We used a modified lower-extremity marker set to collect kinematic data. Subjects walked on a treadmill at their self-selected speed for five minutes under each load condition. For data analysis, we used the toe and heel markers to identify the gait events of heel strike and toe off. We divided each five minute trial into three 100-second segments to investigate potential time effect. We calculated the mean and standard deviation of step length and step time, and conducted a detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and calculated the scaling exponent for every 100 seconds. For statistical analysis, we conducted three-way (2 side x 3 time x 4 load) ANOVA with repeated measures on step length and time. Our results demonstrate that mean step time and step length showed three-way interaction, in which step length increased with the load for both sides whereas step time increased on the loaded side but decreased on the unloaded side. Asymmetry between two legs decreased in step length while asymmetry in step time remained over time and across load conditions. DFA results revealed long-range correlation in step length and step time; however, step length showed only a time effect whereas step time showed neither a time nor a load effect. Our results suggest that there might be different control mechanisms on regulating spatiotemporal variables and its long-range correlation while walking with unilateral ankle load

A study on the unicellularity of some lower triangular operators

The investigation of invariant subspaces is the first step in the attempt to understand the structure of operators. We will investigate bounded linear operators on Hilbert spaces which have the simplest possible invariant subspace structure. ..

Almost CR manifolds with contracting CR automorphism

In this paper, we deal with a strongly pseudoconvex almost CR manifold with a CR contraction. We will prove that the stable manifold of the CR contaction is CR equivalent to the Heisenberg group model.Comment: 16 page

Personalized Cinemagraphs using Semantic Understanding and Collaborative Learning

Cinemagraphs are a compelling way to convey dynamic aspects of a scene. In these media, dynamic and still elements are juxtaposed to create an artistic and narrative experience. Creating a high-quality, aesthetically pleasing cinemagraph requires isolating objects in a semantically meaningful way and then selecting good start times and looping periods for those objects to minimize visual artifacts (such a tearing). To achieve this, we present a new technique that uses object recognition and semantic segmentation as part of an optimization method to automatically create cinemagraphs from videos that are both visually appealing and semantically meaningful. Given a scene with multiple objects, there are many cinemagraphs one could create. Our method evaluates these multiple candidates and presents the best one, as determined by a model trained to predict human preferences in a collaborative way. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach with multiple results and a user study.Comment: To appear in ICCV 2017. Total 17 pages including the supplementary materia