A Network Approach to Understanding miRNA Regulation in Adipose Tissue

Adipose tissue is a complex organ that is essential for lipid storage and energy homeostasis in mammals. While transcription factors that govern adipogenesis, inflammation, non-shivering thermogenesis, and endocrine function in fat tissue have been well-described, comparatively less attention has been given to post-transcriptional regulators. Here, we employ two contrasting approaches to identify miRNAs that influence adipocyte phenotype. First, miRNAs were sequenced from 6 fat pads, primary preadipocytes, and primary mature adipocytes. Comparative analyses of abundance across adipose tissue type and stage of differentiation revealed a number of miRNAs that influence key metabolic processes. miR-335 inhibited adipogenesis, miR-192 promoted pro-thermogenic and pro-inflammatory pathways, and miR-338 upregulated a variety of genes involved in both lipogenesis and lipolysis/β-oxidation. Although most effects on mRNA abundance were modest, these candidates and others identified in the analysis provide a foundation for further study. The second portion of this thesis focuses on network-based approaches to describe miRNA regulators in adipose tissue with an emphasis on miRNA binding activity. Most notably, we used Ago HITS-CLIP to comprehensively map mRNA:miRNA interactions in brown and white fat, revealing 21,281 unique miRNA binding sites in 6,717 genes. Most binding sites were shared between brown and white fat, although reads per binding site and reads per gene varied substantially. Targets for each miRNA were ranked to generate a catalog of miRNA binding activity. The miR-29 family emerged as a top regulator of adipose tissue phenotype with multiple binding sites in the leptin 3’-UTR that were confirmed with luciferase assay validations. miR-29 gain and loss-of-function modulated leptin mRNA and protein levels in primary adipocytes, and miR-29 abundance inversely correlated with leptin levels in adipose tissues. This work represents the only experimentally generated miRNA targetome in adipose tissue and identifies the first known post-transcriptional regulator of leptin

Transportation Active Safety Institute

poster abstractSince its founding in February 2006, the mission of the Transportation Active Safety Institute (TASI) has been to advance the use of active safety systems to reduce vehicle crashes and save lives. TASI was one of 10 centers awarded IUPUI Signature Center funding (second round) in January, 2008. With core faculty drawn from ten departments representing eight schools at IUPUI, IUB and PUWL, the Transportation Active Safety Institute (TASI) is an interdisciplinary center for advanced transportation safety research and development on the IUPUI campus. Partnership with industry, government, and non-profit agencies ensures that university research activities complement existing technologies and address existing and future needs. TASI aims to provide a neutral forum for pre-competitive discussion and development of standards and test methodologies for establishing objective benefits of active-safety systems. TASI has established a driving simulator laboratory for research into driver behavior and for testing active safety system performance. The state-of-the-art DriveSafety DS-600c Driving Simulator is providing a flexible and realistic driving environment for industry, government, and internally sponsored research. This reconfigurable platform allows TASI to test various sensors and driver interfaces, in order to determine effective and convenient solutions to challenges in enhancing safety. Faculty members, research staff and graduate students have been working on several funded research projects such as human factors for semi-autonomous driving systems, intelligent human vehicle interfaces, real vehicle testing for crash-imminent braking system (autonomous braking system), distracted and impaired driving assessment, teen and older driver safety research, dealing with uncertainty in autonomous braking system, etc. TASI has also established an active dialog with other vehicle safety centers around the world through our “Global Academic Network for Active Safety.” Currently, global academic partners include Center for Automotive Research at the Ohio State University, National Advanced Driving Simulator at University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin, Tsinghua University in China, and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden

Factors that support or inhibit academic affairs and student affairs from working collaboratively to better support holistic students’ experiences: a phenomenological study

Within a traditional organizational structure in higher education, academic and student affairs divisions may not be collaborating well, and the lack of such collaboration may be impacting the students' holistic experiences. Students’ academic and personal development depends not only on the quality of the curriculum and classroom instruction, but also on the quality of another major educational division within the university, student development services, departments commonly collected under the umbrella known as student affairs. This qualitative phenomenological study seeks to identify the factors supporting or inhibiting academic affairs faculty and student affairs professionals from working collaboratively to better support students' holistic experiences. Using three primary methods of data collection – interviews, focus groups, and document review – the researcher examined the following questions: 1) How do higher education professionals describe the interaction between the silos of academic affairs and student affairs divisions? 2) From inhibiting to supporting, what is the spectrum of factors that impact how academic affairs faculty and student affairs professionals work collaboratively? and 3) What are the elements of collaboration between academic and student affairs divisions that would benefit student development? The research intended to examine the collaborative climate on the UC Davis campus in regard to the working relationships between student affairs professionals and academic affair faculty. Five emergent themes ascended from the research: (1) Academic Success, (2) Need for Collaboration and Relationship Building, (3) Silos, (4) Lack of Knowledge of the Other Divisions, and (5) Student Experience. As a result, the research found many factors supporting and inhibiting collaborative work between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs professionals. It is evident silos exist, causing a disconnect in communication, resources, student support, and collaboration between the two divisions. Leadership, increased collaboration, and sharing of information will assist in the deconstruction of preexisting silos. The Academic and Student Affairs Divisions leadership needs to fulfill the mission, goals, and values of their division, while always putting the student first. To accomplish this, the leadership must focus on the mission of the university, reach across silos, and focus on holistic collaborative partnerships that shape the holistic students’ experiences.Ed.D., Educational Leadership and Management -- Drexel University, 201

Factors that support or inhibit academic affairs and student affairs from working collaboratively to better support holistic students’ experiences: a phenomenological study

Within a traditional organizational structure in higher education, academic and student affairs divisions may not be collaborating well, and the lack of such collaboration may be impacting the students' holistic experiences. Students’ academic and personal development depends not only on the quality of the curriculum and classroom instruction, but also on the quality of another major educational division within the university, student development services, departments commonly collected under the umbrella known as student affairs. This qualitative phenomenological study seeks to identify the factors supporting or inhibiting academic affairs faculty and student affairs professionals from working collaboratively to better support students' holistic experiences. Using three primary methods of data collection – interviews, focus groups, and document review – the researcher examined the following questions: 1) How do higher education professionals describe the interaction between the silos of academic affairs and student affairs divisions? 2) From inhibiting to supporting, what is the spectrum of factors that impact how academic affairs faculty and student affairs professionals work collaboratively? and 3) What are the elements of collaboration between academic and student affairs divisions that would benefit student development? The research intended to examine the collaborative climate on the UC Davis campus in regard to the working relationships between student affairs professionals and academic affair faculty. Five emergent themes ascended from the research: (1) Academic Success, (2) Need for Collaboration and Relationship Building, (3) Silos, (4) Lack of Knowledge of the Other Divisions, and (5) Student Experience. As a result, the research found many factors supporting and inhibiting collaborative work between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs professionals. It is evident silos exist, causing a disconnect in communication, resources, student support, and collaboration between the two divisions. Leadership, increased collaboration, and sharing of information will assist in the deconstruction of preexisting silos. The Academic and Student Affairs Divisions leadership needs to fulfill the mission, goals, and values of their division, while always putting the student first. To accomplish this, the leadership must focus on the mission of the university, reach across silos, and focus on holistic collaborative partnerships that shape the holistic students’ experiences.Ed.D., Educational Leadership and Management -- Drexel University, 201

Acceptability of a Mobile App (iMPAKT) for Measurement and Implementation of Person-Centredness: Mixed-Methods Study

This study tested the acceptability of the iMPAKT App with end users. Cognitive task analysis and semi-structured interviews were used. Twelve participants took part. The majority of tasks were found to be easy to complete but issues were identified with a section of the app that provides Speech-To-Text transcription of patients speaking about their experience of care. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based systems may be needed to address these limitations. Overall views on acceptability of the app were positive and participants valued how it could be used to support practice improvement initiatives and large scale collection of person-centred measures

Psychometric properties of the Sexual Attitudes and Beliefs Scale (SABS-C8) for health professionals in cancer care settings

BackgroundCancer and associated treatment can have a significant and detrimental impact on a person’s sexual wellbeing. Sexual attitudes and beliefs of healthcare professionals (HPs) working in cancer care settings can affect the support provided to help patients and partners to manage these concerns. This study evaluated psychometric properties of the Sexual Attitudes and Beliefs Scale (SABS-C8) adapted for use in cancer care settings.MethodsAdaptation of original SABS was informed by evidence reviews and an expert panel of researchers. The 12-item SABS was completed by HPs working in cancer care (n = 391) prior to completing an eLearning intervention aimed at promoting provision of sexual support to patients and partners. Exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted, reliability and validity of the scale were also explored.ResultsEFA showed potential for a three-factor model, with CFA indicating a better model fit (CMIN/DF < 3; GFI > .9; CFI > .9 and < RMSEA < .08) for 8 of the SABS-C items, lending support for a unidimensional model, with moderately acceptable reliability of.69. The 8-item scale was also able to discriminate between known groups with lower attitudinal barriers to providing sexual support apparent in HPs with over 12 years of experience, in nurses compared with other HPs, and in those with previous sexual wellbeing education (p < 0.001).ConclusionThe SABS-C8 is a brief scale with acceptable reliability that can be used to assess attitudinal barriers to sexual support and help to identify HPs learning needs around providing sexual support in cancer care

Pairing Neutral Cues with Alcohol Intoxication: New Findings in Executive and Attention Networks

Rationale: Alcohol-associated stimuli capture attention, yet drinkers differ in the precise stimuli that become paired with intoxication. Objectives: Extending our prior work to examine the influence of alcoholism risk factors, we paired abstract visual stimuli with intravenous alcohol delivered covertly and examined brain responses to these Pavlovian conditioned stimuli in fMRI when subjects were not intoxicated. Methods: Sixty healthy drinkers performed task-irrelevant alcohol conditioning that presented geometric shapes as conditioned stimuli. Shapes were paired with a rapidly rising alcohol limb (CS+) using intravenous alcohol infusion targeting a final peak breath alcohol concentration of 0.045 g/dL or saline (CS−) infusion at matched rates. On day two, subjects performed monetary delay discounting outside the scanner to assess delay tolerance and then underwent event-related fMRI while performing the same task with CS+, CS−, and an irrelevant symbol. Results: CS+ elicited stronger activation than CS− in frontoparietal executive/attention and orbitofrontal reward-associated networks. Risk factors including family history, recent drinking, sex, and age of drinking onset did not relate to the [CS+ > CS−] activation. Delay-tolerant choice and [CS+ > CS−] activation in right inferior parietal cortex were positively related. Conclusions: Networks governing executive attention and reward showed enhanced responses to stimuli experimentally paired with intoxication, with the right parietal cortex implicated in both alcohol cue pairing and intertemporal choice. While different from our previous study results in 14 men, we believe this paradigm in a large sample of male and female drinkers offers novel insights into Pavlovian processes less affected by idiosyncratic drug associations

Automatic TV advertisement detection from MPEG bitstream

The Centre for Digital Video Processing at Dublin City University conducts concentrated research and development in the area of digital video management. The current stage of development is demonstrated on our Web-based digital video system called Físchlár (Proceedings of the Content based Multimedia Information Access, RIAO 2000, Vol. 2, Paris, France, 12–14 April 2000, p. 1390), which provides for efficient recording, analysing, browsing and viewing of digitally captured television programmes. Advertisement breaks during or between television programmes are typically recognised by a series of ‘black’ video frames simultaneously accompanying a depression in audio volume which separate each advertisement from one another by recurrently occurring before and after each individual advertisement. It is the regular prevalence of these flags that enables automatic differentiation between what is programme and what is a commercial break. This paper reports on the progress made in the development of this idea into an advertisement detector system that automatically detects the commercial breaks from the bitstream of digitally captured television broadcasts

Maintenance processes modelling and optimisation

A Maintenance Procedure is conducted in order to prevent the failure of a system or to restore the functionality of a failed system. Such a procedure consists of a series of tasks, each of which has a distribution of times to complete and a probability of being performed incorrectly. The inclusion of tests can be used to identify any maintenance errors which have occurred. When an error is identified it can be addressed through a corresponding correction sequence which will have associated costs and add to the maintenance process completion time. A modified FMEA approach has been used to identify the possible tests. By incorporating any selection of tests into the maintenance process it can then analysed using a discrete-event simulation to predict the expected completion time distribution. The choice of tests to perform and when to do them is then made to successfully complete the maintenance objective in the shortest possible time using a genetic algorithm. The methodology is demonstrated by applying it to the repair process for a car braking system. The developed method is suitable for application in abroad range of industries