Displaying Authority: Ashikaga Formal Display in the Muromachi Period

This dissertation project investigates the socio-political and socio-economic contexts of the Ashikaga collection of Chinese paintings and objects and the associated development, function, and multifaceted meanings of formal decoration and display in medieval Japan. Scholars have been interested in the Ashikaga collection, kaisho reception halls, and shogunal art manuals (Kundaikan sōchōki) as either a way to understand the Japanese reception of Chinese paintings or to trace and reconstruct shoin-style architecture. However, formal display as an ensemble and a means of representing the patrons’ identities within the political and economic spheres of Kyoto have not been adequately addressed. My dissertation also investigates the relationship between the Ashikaga and their cultural advisors (dōbōshū) who were in charge of the arrangement of the collection. I show that the Ashikaga skillfully combined Japanese court and Buddhist traditions with elements of continental culture as a means to consolidate their own political and cultural authority. Additionally, I explore the gradual change in the meaning of formal display from an expression of political authority to a commodity circulated among the elite following the Ōnin War (1467-1477). The architectural space where the objects were displayed will be examined through visual and textual evidence. To this end, this dissertation moves beyond a survey of shogunal palaces and examines the development of interior space in medieval Japan and the relationship between formal interior display and the identity of the patron or owner

Echoes of Creation and Salvation by the Triune God in John 9

This thesis aims to solve the enigmatic narrative of Jesus’ healing of a man blind from birth at Siloam in the Gospel of John 9, with a particular focus on verses 6–7. Within the context of intertextual connections, this story resonates with numerous narrative patterns and echoes found throughout the Bible. These intertextual connections provide important keys for interpreting this passage. By discerning the intertextual connections between this narrative and other parts of the Bible, readers will gain insight into the broader themes of Creation, Salvation, and the Trinity that are interwoven into this story. It means that this passage is not merely a standalone chapter within the Gospel of John but a vessel for conveying the profound themes that permeate the entire book of John, the Johannine literature, the New Testament, and even the entirety of the Bible. Through this interconnectedness, it becomes evident that the Bible delivers a unified message about Jesus

Exploring Transformative Relationships in a Virtual Learning Environment

This study attempts to explore how transformative relationships take shape, and how they are fostered in the context of online learning environments. This knowledge will contribute to extending current understanding of quality of the relational conditions for cultivating transformative learning

Diffusion of Lifelong Learning Policy. The Case of Recognition, Validation and Accreditation of Learning Outcomes

The purpose of this study is to understand the diffusion and adoption of lifelong learning policy discourses at the global and national levels by examining the policies of recognition of learning outcomes across 35 countries in Europe, employing content analysis and statistical analysis. Findings, conclusions and limitations are discussed

Development of high-throughput methods for testing neurotoxicity of environmental samples

Micropollutants in the aquatic environment pose a risk to human and environmental health. Effect-based tools have been applied in environmental monitoring for diverse toxicity endpoints but testing method for neurotoxicity is still limited. The goal of this PhD thesis was to develop and implement high-throughput methods for testing neurotoxicity of typical environmental organic pollutants and mixtures of chemicals extracted from water samples. Neurite outgrowth inhibition and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition were considered as key neurotoxicity endpoints and human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells were used for both assays. The assays were set up in 384-well plates for high-throughput and repeatable concentration-response assessment. The AChE inhibition assay using purified enzyme has been applied widely, but there has been an issue that natural organic matters such as dissolved organic carbon (DOC) contained in environmental samples can suppress AChE inhibition in the assay. In the cellular assay, AChE inhibition by paraoxon-ethyl was not impacted by DOC up to 68 mgc/L and binary mixtures of paraoxon-ethyl and water extracts showed concentration-additive effects, which indicates no disturbance by DOC and applicability of the cell-based AChE inhibition assay for testing of environmental samples. Chemicals with potential developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) are often hydrophobic. Hydrophobic chemicals can easily intercalate into the cell membrane and provoke effects via nonspecific manner, i.e., baseline toxicity. To investigate whether DNT of chemicals is driven via specific modes of action or merely via baseline toxicity, test chemicals were selected based on their potential DNT from literature or a combination of occurrence data and effects detected in water samples. The effects on neurite outgrowth and cytotoxicity were directly measured in SH-SY5Y cells and the observed effects were compared with predicted baseline cytotoxicity. Since existing prediction models for baseline toxicity had limited application, a prediction model was newly established using a mass balance model based on constant critical membrane concentrations, which can be applied for chemicals of a wide range of hydrophobicity and speciation. When comparing the measured effects in SH-SY5Y with the predicted baseline toxicity, more hydrophobic chemicals tended to trigger toxicity on neurite outgrowth and cell viability via baseline toxicity. The hydrophobic chemicals were still often highly potent while some more hydrophilic chemicals exhibited high specificity but often lower potency. Environmental pollutants with specific modes of action targeting neurite outgrowth were identified by comparing the effects on neurite outgrowth and cytotoxicity. Highly specific effects were observed for two carbamate insecticides, the pharmaceutical mebendazole, the biocide 1,2-benzisothiazolin-3-one, and many other chemicals that were detected in surface water and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent samples. The two types of water samples were tested in neurite outgrowth assay and the effects on neurite outgrowth were even observed when the samples were diluted by a factor of 5. While overall cytotoxicity was similar between two types of samples, higher toxicity on neurite outgrowth was observed for surface water than WWTP effluent. This led to more specific inhibition of neurite outgrowth by surface water, indicating that higher concentrations of chemicals and/or more potent chemicals acting on neurite outgrowth were contained in the surface water samples. Subsequently, the measured mixture effects were further explained by measured effects of single chemicals and overall, chemicals with high effect potency and/or high occurrence were identified as major mixture effect drivers. While main contributors were different between individual samples for surface water, mebendazole was a dominant contributor for the effects observed in WWTP effluent. The detected chemicals still explained only a small fraction of the measured mixture effects of surface water (up to 4.4%) and WWTP effluent (up to 6.8%). When the two neurotoxicity endpoints were assessed in identical samples, the effects appeared not to be related to each other and both neurotoxicity endpoints were sensitive enough to capture toxicity even when the samples were diluted. The experiments with single chemicals and the applications in case studies demonstrated that both neurotoxicity assays are suitable for environmental monitoring of neurotoxicants. Further testing of various chemicals and environmental mixtures can be useful to identify more effect drivers in the environment. Consideration of more diverse neurotoxicity endpoints would enable more comprehensive assessment of water quality. In the future, these assays have also the potential to be used for human biomonitoring and can be applied to other complex environmental matrices such sediments or biota

Sustainable Production of Microbial Lipids from Renewable Biomass: Evaluation of Oleaginous Yeast Cultures for High Yield and Productivity

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Grain Science and IndustryPraveen V. VadlaniMicrobial lipids derived from oleaginous yeasts are a promising alternative source of edible oils due to the following advantages: no requirement of broad lands; availability of year-round production; and no food versus fuels controversy. Oleaginous yeast has an inherent ability to accumulate lipids inside cells and their lipids are preferable as starting materials in oleo-chemical industries because of their distinct fatty acid composition. Lignocellulosic biomass is a promising substrate to supply carbon sources for oleaginous yeast to produce lipids due to the high content of polysaccharides and their abundancy. Lignocellulosic-based sugar streams, which can be generated via pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis, contained diverse monosaccharides and inhibitors. The major objectives of this study were: 1) to develop a novel purification method to generate clean sugar stream using sorghum stalks after acid pretreatment; 2) to optimize fermentation conditions for Trichosporon oleaginosus to achieve high yields and productivity of microbial lipids using lignocellulosic hydrolysates; 3) to investigate the potentials of sorghum stalks and switchgrass as feedstocks for microbial lipid production using oleaginous yeast strains, such as T. oleaginosus, Lipomyces starkeyi, and Cryptococcus albidus; 4) to develop an integrated process of corn bran based-microbial lipids production using T. oleaginosus; and 5) to develop bioconversion process for high yields of lipids from switchgrass using engineered Escherichia coli. In our investigation, major inhibitory compounds of lignocellulosic hydrolysates induced by pretreatment were acetic acid, formic acid, hydroxymethyl furfural (HMF) and furfural. The activated charcoal was effective in removing hydrophobic compounds from sorghum stalk hydrolysates. Resin mixtures containing cationic exchangers and anionic exchangers in 7:3 ratio at pH 2.7 completely removed HMF, acetic acid, and formic acid from sorghum stalk hydrolysates. T. oleaginosus was a robust yeast strain for lipid production. In the nitrogen-limited synthetic media, total 22 g/L of lipid titers were achieved by T. oleaginosus with a lipid content of 76% (w/w). In addition, T. oleaginosus efficiently produced microbial lipids from lignocellulosic biomass hydrolysates. The highest lipid titers of 13 g/L lipids were achieved by T. oleaginosus using sorghum stalk hydrolysates with a lipid content of 60% (w/w). L. starkeyi and C. albidus also successfully produced microbial lipids using lignocellulosic hydrolysate with a lipid content of 40% (w/w). Furthermore, corn bran was a promising feedstock for microbial lipid production. The highest sugar yields of 0.53 g/g were achieved from corn bran at the pretreatment condition of 1% acid and 5% solid loading. Microbial lipids were successfully produced from corn bran hydrolysates by T. oleaginosus with lipid yields of 216 mg/g. Engineered E. coli also effectively produced lipids using switchgrass as feedstocks. E. coli ML103 pXZ18Z produced a total of 3.3 g/L free fatty acids with a yield of 0.23 g/g. The overall yield of free fatty acids was 0.12 g/g of raw switchgrass and it was 51 % of the maximum theoretical yield. This study provided useful strategies for the development of sustainable bioconversion processes for microbial lipids from renewable biomass and demonstrated the economic viability of a lignocellulosic based-biorefinery

Culturally Responsive Distance Counselor Education for International Counseling Students

Counselor education programs have increasingly offered distance education during the last decades. As one of the growing student populations in counselor education programs, international students need to be given more attention pertaining to their cultural and educational experiences as counseling students. Although distance learning in counselor education has gained empirical support for its effectiveness, it may still pose challenges to international counseling students due to their unique characteristics such as language barriers and cultural differences, which may render differing qualities of students’ learning experiences. Aiming to enhance our understanding of this student population to provide culturally responsive distance counselor education, the present article introduces international students in the context of distance counselor education and discusses implications for supporting international students in distance counselor education

Dynamics of Online Engagement: Counseling Students’ Experiences and Perceptions in Distance Learning

In this article, the authors present counseling students’ personal accounts of their experiences in distance education with a focus on online engagement based on an extensive review of the counseling literature. In addition, an evaluation tool was introduced for gathering qualitative and quantitative information regarding patterns of instructor engagement efforts and styles. Facilitating factors for experiential online learning were also identified from the students’ perceptions of online learning experience. Finally, the results were used to make specific recommendations for counselor educators to enhance their teaching efficacy and engagement

DPM: A Novel Training Method for Physics-Informed Neural Networks in Extrapolation

We present a method for learning dynamics of complex physical processes described by time-dependent nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). Our particular interest lies in extrapolating solutions in time beyond the range of temporal domain used in training. Our choice for a baseline method is physics-informed neural network (PINN) [Raissi et al., J. Comput. Phys., 378:686--707, 2019] because the method parameterizes not only the solutions but also the equations that describe the dynamics of physical processes. We demonstrate that PINN performs poorly on extrapolation tasks in many benchmark problems. To address this, we propose a novel method for better training PINN and demonstrate that our newly enhanced PINNs can accurately extrapolate solutions in time. Our method shows up to 72% smaller errors than existing methods in terms of the standard L2-norm metric.Comment: Accepted by AAAI 202

Effects of time perspective and self-control on procrastination and Internet addiction

College students experiencing stress show tendencies to procrastinate and can develop Internet addiction problems. This study investigated the structural relationship between time perspective and self-control on procrastination and Internet addiction. Methods College students (N = 377) residing in South Korea completed the following questionnaires: the Pathological Internet Use Behavior Symptom Scale for Adults, the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, the Self-Control Rating Scale, and the Aitken Procrastination Inventory. The sample variance–covariance matrix was analyzed using AMOS 20.0. Results Time perspective had a direct effect on self-control and an indirect effect on Internet use and procrastination. In addition, self-control affected procrastination and Internet use. Conclusions Individuals with a present-oriented time perspective tend to evidence poorer self-control, increasing the likelihood of procrastination and Internet addiction. Individuals with a future-oriented time perspective, on the other hand, tend to have stronger self-control, decreasing their risk of procrastination and Internet addiction