Effects of PREPARE/ENRICH Couple Relationship Education for Chinese College Students in Heterosexual Exclusive Dating Relationships

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2015. Major: Educational Psychology. Advisor: John Romano. 1 computer file (PDF); 115 pages.With the rapid economic growth and urbanization in mainland China since 1980s, there is a growing need for prevention efforts to help couples obtain skills and knowledge in order to sustain a satisfying intimate relationship. Couple Relationship Education (CRE) programs were developed by psychologists in Western countries as a preventive intervention for couples before relationships reach crisis stage. There was, however, a lack of empirical studies to examine the effectiveness of CRE in Chinese cultural context. The present study examined PREPARE/ENRICH (PE) effectiveness (as one example of a CRE program) on improving relationship quality by focusing on the college heterosexual dating couples in mainland China. A total of 92 recruited college couples in mainland China were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (a) treatment (PE assessment report + 12-hour workshop; 31 couples), (b) comparison (PE assessment report only; 30 couples), and (c) no-contact control group (31 couples). Seven measures were used to measure couple satisfaction; communication, conflict resolution, leisure activities, partner style and habits, sex and affection, and couple closeness at pre- and post-test. Results showed that the PE workshop was effective in improving all relationship variables except for the variable of sex and affection. The results also suggested that the PE workshop had more significant effects on female participants than on male participants on the dependent variables of relationship satisfaction, communication, conflict resolution and couple closeness. Recommendations for future research are discussed

Why accumulation mode organic electrochemical transistors turn off much faster than they turn on

Understanding the factors underpinning device switching times is crucial for the implementation of organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) in neuromorphic computing and real-time sensing applications. Existing models of device operation cannot explain the experimental observations that turn-off times are generally much faster than turn-on times in accumulation mode OECTs. Through operando optical microscopy, we image the local doping level of the transistor channel and show that device turn-on occurs in two stages, while turn-off occurs in one stage. We attribute the faster turn-off to a combination of engineering as well as physical and chemical factors including channel geometry, differences in doping and dedoping kinetics, and the physical phenomena of carrier density-dependent mobility. We show that ion transport is limiting the device operation speed in our model devices. Our study provides insights into the kinetics of OECTs and guidelines for engineering faster OECTs

Reactive SPS of Al2O3–RE:YAG (RE = Ce; Ce+Gd) composite ceramic phosphors

Ultrafine-grained Al2O3–rare earth:yttrium aluminium garnet (Al2O3–RE:YAG) (RE = Ce; Ce+Gd) composite ceramics were obtained for the first time by reactive spark plasma sintering (SPS) using commercially available initial oxide powders. The effect of key sintering parameters (temperature, dwell time, and external pressure (Pload)) on densification peculiarities, structural-phase states, and luminescent properties of composites was studied comprehensively. Differences in phase formation and densification between Ce-doped and Ce,Gd-codoped systems were shown. Parameters of reactive SPS, at which there is partial melting with the formation of near-eutectic zones of the Al2O3–YAG system/coexistence of several variations of the YAG-type phase, were established. Pure corundum–garnet biphasic ceramics with an optimal balance between microstructural and luminescence performance were synthesized at 1425 ℃/30 min/30–60 MPa. The external quantum efficiency (EQE) of the phosphor converters reached 80.7% and 72% with close lifetime of ~63.8 ns, similar to those of commercial Ce:YAG materials, which is promising for further applications in the field of high-power white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) and laser diodes (LDs)

Chemotaxis of Cell Populations through Confined Spaces at Single-Cell Resolution

Cell migration is crucial for both physiological and pathological processes. Current in vitro cell motility assays suffer from various drawbacks, including insufficient temporal and/or optical resolution, or the failure to include a controlled chemotactic stimulus. Here, we address these limitations with a migration chamber that utilizes a self-sustaining chemotactic gradient to induce locomotion through confined environments that emulate physiological settings. Dynamic real-time analysis of both population-scale and single-cell movement are achieved at high resolution. Interior surfaces can be functionalized through adsorption of extracellular matrix components, and pharmacological agents can be administered to cells directly, or indirectly through the chemotactic reservoir. Direct comparison of multiple cell types can be achieved in a single enclosed system to compare inherent migratory potentials. Our novel microfluidic design is therefore a powerful tool for the study of cellular chemotaxis, and is suitable for a wide range of biological and biomedical applications

The Retroflex Sound of Languages Spoken in Southeast Tibet: Feature Floating, Feature Recombination and Its Historical Typological Value

In Southeast Tibet, some Tibeto-Burman languages have apparent retroflex feature floating. Some initial research on this phenomenon shows that different sound categories, such as a post consonant r and retroflex vowels (or finals), are not totally independent. This feature is likely the result of the evolution of one sound category toward another, and the evolution mechanism is the feature recombination between r and the basic consonant. This research approach can be applied to studying the whole Sino-Tibetan historical typology, including Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages

Using psychodrama to relieve social barriers in an autistic child: A case study and literature review

Objective: To review and update the evidence for the effect of psychodrama for children with autism, and evaluate the effect of psychodrama on an autistic child with severe social barriers, using the theory of mind and psychodrama methodology as the analytical frameworks. Methods: A 5 year-old boy, the research object, was diagnosed as severe autism using behavior observation and autism screening tools, with an DSM-Ⅵcriteria. Autism symptom severity was usually measured by Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) and Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC) in research of autism. In this study, the autistic boy accepted psychodrama training and was measured with CARS before and after the entire training program. The ABC was adopted to evaluate him after each intervention program. Meanwhile the entire training process was recorded. The evaluation criterion consists of four aspects including eye contact, following instructions, focusing attention and imitation ability. Finally, all live records and changes presented in volume tables were analyzed. Results: The patient's social barriers were relieved at the end of the third month of the training program. The CARS data shows a shift from the severe to moderate level of autism. Conclusions: It was possible for autistic children to relieve social barriers by implementing psychodrama training, then to improve the social cognitive ability and enhance the social function of the autistic children. These results provided basic Clinical implications for exploring a new intervention technique to reduce autistic symptom severity

Experimental and Numerical Studies on the Ultimate Bending Strength of Welded Plated Grillage with Combined Openings

Plated grillage with combined openings was susceptible to complex failure behaviors as the main load-bearing structure of the superstructure on passenger ships subjected to deck loads. Additionally, the deformation and stresses generated during the welding of the plated grillage complicated the prediction of its failure behavior. In this case, a new partitioned inherent strain method and nonlinear finite element method were used to simulate the welding and loading process, and experiments were designed and carried out to make comparisons, unveiling the influence regulations between the failure behavior of the structure and the loading condition, the initial welding state. This research on the failure mode analysis of plated grillages could provide references for the optimization of the structural form of plated grillages and the cargo loading scheme on the deck of a real ship

A Novel Malware Detection and Family Classification Scheme for IoT Based on DEAM and DenseNet

With the rapid increase in the amount and type of malware, traditional methods of malware detection and family classification for IoT applications through static and dynamic analysis have been greatly challenged. In this paper, a new simple and effective attention module of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), named as Depthwise Efficient Attention Module (DEAM), is proposed and combined with a DenseNet to propose a new malware detection and family classification model. Based on the good effect of the DenseNet in the field of image classification and the visual similarity of the malware family on images, the gray-scale image transformed from malware is input into the model combined with the DEAM and DenseNet for malware detection, and then the family classification is carried out. The DEAM is a general lightweight attention module improved based on the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), which can strengthen the attention to the characteristics of malware and improve the model effect. We use the MalImg dataset, Microsoft malware classification challenge dataset (BIG 2015), and our dataset constructed by the two above-mentioned datasets to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model in family classification and malware detection. Experimental results show that the proposed model achieves 99.3% in terms of accuracy for malware detection on our dataset and achieves 98.5% and 97.3% in terms of accuracy for family classification on the MalImg dataset and BIG 2015 dataset, respectively. The model can reliably detect IoT malware and classify its families

Milling Tool Wear Prediction Method Based on Deep Learning Under Variable Working Conditions

Tool wear prediction is essential to ensure part quality and machining efficiency. Tool wear is affected by factors such as the material, structure, process, and processing time of the parts. Tool wear under the variable working conditions and the above factors show a complex coupling and timing correlation, which makes it challenging to predict tool wear under variable working conditions. This article aims to resolve this issue. First, we establish a unified representation of working condition factors. The stacked autoencoder (SAE) model adaptively extracts tool wear features from the machining signal. The extracted wear features and respective working conditions then combine into a working condition feature sequence for predicting tool wear. Finally, the advantages of the long short-term memory (LSTM) model to solve memory accumulation effects learn the regular wear pattern of the working condition feature sequence to realize the prediction of the tool wear. An experiment illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed method

Cable Force Calculation of Cable Hoisting of CFST Arch Bridge Research

To effectively control the stress state and spatial alignment of arch ribs in the cable hoisting construction of a long-span, concrete-filled, steel tube arch bridge and ensure the safety of the structure, it is necessary to calculate and determine the appropriate cable force. Based on the actual project of a double-span, concrete-filled, steel tubular arch bridge, the construction stage of the left span of the bridge from the beginning of construction to the closure is taken as an example. The linear control method of “quiet do not move” is adopted. Based on the principle that the vertical displacement of the front end of the installed segment caused by the self-weight of the new hoisting segment is equal to the vertical displacement of the front end of the previous segment caused by the tension of the new hoisting segment, the tension cable force is calculated by forward iteration. Finally, based on the theory of the stress-free state method, the ideal linear design of the structure was achieved. The results show that after the closure of the bridge, the error range of the cable tension force is −13.33–15.40% on the left bank and −8.37–11.00% on the right bank. The elevation error of the arch rib is −0.003–0.043 m on the left bank and −0.007–0.032 m on the right bank. The overall stress error of the bridge arch is ±7.0 MPa. The error between the theoretical value and the actual value is within the scope of the specification requirements, which meets the specification requirements. After the closure, the arch shape of the bridge meets the smooth requirements