Summary of Dissertation Performances Three Programs of Piano Music

In lieu of a written dissertation, one lecture recital and two solo recitals were presented. The first recital was presented on Monday, May 14, 2012, 8:00 p.m., Walgreen Drama Center, Stamps Auditorium. Program: Fantasie in C Minor, K. 475, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Lieder ohne Worte Book I, Op. 19, by Felix Mendelssohn; Improvisations sur des chansons paysannes hongroises, Op. 20, Sz. 74, by Béla Bartók; Fantasien, Op. 116, by Johannes Brahms. The second recital was a lecture demonstration titled, “George Crumb’s A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979: A Modern Mosaic in the Service of a Spiritual Impulse,” on Friday, November 30, 2012, 8:00 p.m., Earl V. Moore Building, Britton Recital Hall. The lecture included a discussion of George Crumb’s life, musical philosophy, compositional technique, style, quotations, and an analysis of A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979. Program: A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979. The third recital was presented on Friday, January 11, 2013, 8:00 p.m., Earl V. Moore Building, Britton Recital Hall. The program of American composers included: Prelude I, Melody No. 17, Rubato, Prelude II, Novelette in Fourths, Prelude III, by George Gershwin; Dreaming, no. 3, from Four Sketches, Op. 15, by Amy Beach; Dream by John Cage; Forgotten Dreams by Leroy Anderson; Dream Images, no. 11, from Makrokosmos, Volume I by George Crumb; Hymne à l’amour, no. 12, from Twelve New Etudes for Piano by William Bolcom; Nocturne, Op. 33, by Samuel Barber; Rodeo by Aaron Copland.AMUMusic: PerformanceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147656/1/musemk_1.pd

Molecular Weight Dependent Glucose Lowering Effect of Low Molecular Weight Chitosan Oligosaccharide (GO2KA1) on Postprandial Blood Glucose Level in SD Rats Model

Abstract This research investigated the effect of enzymatically digested low molecular weight (MW) chitosan oligosaccharide on type 2 diabetes prevention. Three different chitosan oligosaccharide samples with varying MW were evaluated in vitro for inhibition of rat small intestinal α-glucosidase and porcine pancreatic α-amylase (GO2KA1; \u3c1000 Da, GO2KA2; 1000–10,000 Da, GO2KA3; MW \u3e 10,000 Da). The in vitro results showed that all tested samples had similar rat α-glucosidase inhibitory and porcine α-amylase inhibitory activity. Based on these observations, we decided to further investigate the effect of all three samples at a dose of 0.1 g/kg, on reducing postprandial blood glucose levels in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rat model after sucrose loading test. In the animal trial, all tested samples had postprandial blood glucose reduction effect, when compared to control, however GO2KA1 supplementation had the strongest effect. The glucose peak (Cmax) for GO2KA1 and control was 152 mg/dL and 193 mg/dL, respectively. The area under the blood glucose-time curve (AUC) for GO2KA1 and control was 262 h mg/dL and 305 h mg/dL, respectively. Furthermore, the time of peak plasma concentration of blood glucose (Tmax) for GO2KA1 was significantly delayed (0.9 h) compared to control (0.5 h). These results suggest that GO2KA1 could have a beneficial effect for blood glucose management relevant to diabetes prevention in normal and pre-diabetic individuals. The suggested mechanism of action is via inhibition of the carbohydrate hydrolysis enzyme α-glucosidase and since GO2KA1 (MW \u3c 1000 Da) had higher in vivo effect, we hypothesize that it is more readily absorbed and might exert further biological effect once it is absorbed in the blood stream, relevant to blood glucose management

Prediction of Giant Spin Motive Force due to Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling

Magnetization dynamics in a ferromagnet can induce a spin-dependent electric field through spin motive force. Spin current generated by the spin-dependent electric field can in turn modify the magnetization dynamics through spin-transfer torque. While this feedback effect is usually weak and thus ignored, we predict that in Rashba spin-orbit coupling systems with large Rashba parameter $\alpha_{\rm R}$, the coupling generates the spin-dependent electric field [\pm(\alpha_{\rm R}m_e/e\hbar) (\vhat{z}\times \partial \vec{m}/\partial t)], which can be large enough to modify the magnetization dynamics significantly. This effect should be relevant for device applications based on ultrathin magnetic layers with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling.Comment: 4+ pages, 2 figure

Recovering 3D Hand Mesh Sequence from a Single Blurry Image: A New Dataset and Temporal Unfolding

Hands, one of the most dynamic parts of our body, suffer from blur due to their active movements. However, previous 3D hand mesh recovery methods have mainly focused on sharp hand images rather than considering blur due to the absence of datasets providing blurry hand images. We first present a novel dataset BlurHand, which contains blurry hand images with 3D groundtruths. The BlurHand is constructed by synthesizing motion blur from sequential sharp hand images, imitating realistic and natural motion blurs. In addition to the new dataset, we propose BlurHandNet, a baseline network for accurate 3D hand mesh recovery from a blurry hand image. Our BlurHandNet unfolds a blurry input image to a 3D hand mesh sequence to utilize temporal information in the blurry input image, while previous works output a static single hand mesh. We demonstrate the usefulness of BlurHand for the 3D hand mesh recovery from blurry images in our experiments. The proposed BlurHandNet produces much more robust results on blurry images while generalizing well to in-the-wild images. The training codes and BlurHand dataset are available at https://github.com/JaehaKim97/BlurHand_RELEASE.Comment: Accepted at CVPR 202

Study on Personal Characteristics and Emotional Affordances through User Activity Analysis

Design methodology should address psychological and cognitive aspects based on human emotion and feeling as well as physical and functional aspects based on product structure. Donald Norman introduced perceived affordances as characteristics in the appearance of an object that gives clues for its proper operations. We conducted a case study in a public space - building lobby - used by many general people. User activities and behaviors were analyzed in several specific tasks given to twenty participants with similar cultural background in the lobby of a building they have never been to before. Then we identified affordances and building structure elements, called affordance features, critically related to those affordances. While performing the tasks in the same building lobby, user activities can be classified into several different groups for each task based on affordance features involved in their activities. These user activity differences are then compared with their personal cognitive characteristics derived from their perception and judgment preferences using intuitive and factual perception orientation and objective and subjective decision making inclination respectively. For user of less common activities for some tasks, personal cognitive characteristics have been identified. This study could help in affordance-based design so that alternative affordance features are designed considering diverse user cognitive characteristics

Meteorin regulates mesendoderm development by enhancing nodal expression

During gastrulation, distinct lineage specification into three germ layers, the mesoderm, endoderm and ectoderm, occurs through an elaborate harmony between signaling molecules along the embryonic proximo-distal and anterior-posterior axes, and Nodal signaling plays a key role in the early embryonic development governing embryonic axis formation, mesoderm and endoderm specification, and left-right asymmetry determination. However, the mechanism by which Nodal expression is regulated is largely unknown. Here, we show that Meteorin regulates Nodal expression and is required for mesendoderm development. It is highly expressed in the inner cell mass of blastocysts and further in the epiblast and extra-embryonic ectoderm during gastrulation. Genetic ablation of the Meteorin gene resulted in early embryonic lethality, presumably due to impaired lineage allocation and subsequent cell accumulation. Embryoid body culture using Meteorin-null embryonic stem (ES) cells showed reduced Nodal expression and concomitant impairment of mesendoderm specification. Meteorin-null embryos displayed reduced levels of Nodal transcripts before the gastrulation stage, and impaired expression of Goosecoid, a definitive endoderm marker, during gastrulation, while the proximo-distal and anterior-posterior axes and primitive streak formation were preserved. Our results show that Meteorin is a novel regulator of Nodal transcription and is required to maintain sufficient Nodal levels for endoderm formation, thereby providing new insights in the regulation of mesendoderm allocation.open1113sciescopu