The Importance of Developing E-Books Using The 4S-TMD Method to Improve Environmental Literacy

This preliminary study aimed to describe the importance of developing redox electronic books using the 4S-TMD method to increase environmental literacy. The 4S-TMD method consists of four stages: selection, structuring, characterization and didactic reduction. This study focused on the selection stage as a first step. Environmental literacy is the ability to understand and interpret ecological conditions. From the results of this understanding and interpretation, an individual can decide the appropriate action to maintain, restore and improve the condition of an environment. The components of environmental literacy that must be achieved include ecological knowledge, attitudes towards the environment, cognitive skills, and behavior towards the environment. This study used the Development Research (DR) method with the Design, Development and Evaluation type. This article discussed the importance of developing chemistry e-books in the selection stage. The results of the selection stage determined basic competencies, which are formulated as learning indicators and concept labels based on curriculum demands. The results of the selection stage were also related to the context of content related to everyday life and the development of basic concepts sourced from international textbooks, as well as pedagogic contexts related to achieving environmental literacy. The results of the selection stage were evaluated by expert lecturers in chemistry education who were declared valid. Based on the results and discussion of the research, it was concluded that the development of electronic books on redox material using the 4S TMD method was developed in several stages where the first stage, the selection stage, showed that development began with the selection of basic competencies, namely KD 3.9, by experiencing the development of indicators, namely eight indicators. Keywords: redox, electronic books, 4S-TMD method, environmental literac

Formalizing Cyber--Physical System Model Transformation via Abstract Interpretation

Model transformation tools assist system designers by reducing the labor--intensive task of creating and updating models of various aspects of systems, ensuring that modeling assumptions remain consistent across every model of a system, and identifying constraints on system design imposed by these modeling assumptions. We have proposed a model transformation approach based on abstract interpretation, a static program analysis technique. Abstract interpretation allows us to define transformations that are provably correct and specific. This work develops the foundations of this approach to model transformation. We define model transformation in terms of abstract interpretation and prove the soundness of our approach. Furthermore, we develop formalisms useful for encoding model properties. This work provides a methodology for relating models of different aspects of a system and for applying modeling techniques from one system domain, such as smart power grids, to other domains, such as water distribution networks.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; to appear in HASE 2019 proceeding

MRSA and MSSA: The Mechanism of Methicillin Resistance and the Influence of Methicillin Resistance on Biofilm Phenotype of Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), which is one of the most common causes of indwelling device–associated, nosocomial, and community-acquired infections, can produce biofilm as a virulence factor. Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) that is resistant to β-lactam antibiotics causes life-threatening infections. Biofilm producer strains of S. aureus that causes indwelling device–associated infections resist to antimicrobials and immune system. The combination of methicillin resistance and the ability of biofilm formation of S. aureus makes treatment difficult. Methicillin resistance of S. aureus can affect biofilm phenotype of S. aureus; the mecA gene of MRSA increases biofilm production by inactivating accessory gene regulator (agr) quorum sensing regulator system, which is a two-component regulator system of virulence factor production. The aim of this review is to determine virulence factors of S. aureus, resistance mechanisms of methicillin, and the influence of methicillin resistance on biofilm phenotype of S. aureus

Contested Memories and the Role of Emotions in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe

Der Sammelband Disputed Memory. Emotions and Memory Politics in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe bietet eine Vielzahl von Fallstudien, die die Komplexität und Besonderheit der weithin umstrittenen Vergangenheiten in den Regionen aufzeigen. Der Band versucht sowohl den ‚methodischen Nationalismus‘ als auch die Konzentration auf eine ausschließliche Repräsentation von Erinnerungen zu überwinden und dabei stärker die sozialen Kontexte in der Vermittlung und Übertragungen von Erinnerungen in den Blick zu nehmen. Ein zunächst neuer und interessanter Zugang ist der Fokus auf die Bedeutung von Emotionen in der Hervorbringung und Vermittlung von Erinnerungen sowie damit zusammenhängender Politiken. Während der Sammelband die ausgewählten transnationalen Erinnerungsbewegungen in Ost- und Südosteuropa überzeugend darstellt, verdeutlicht er bei der Erforschung von Emotionen zwar deren Bedeutung, zeigt aber kaum neue methodologische und theoretische Zugänge auf. Es wäre für den Band sicher bereichernd gewesen, soziologische wie auch geschichtswissenschaftliche Entwicklungen in der Emotionsforschung einzubeziehen und entsprechend deren Konzepte in der Erinnerungsforschung nutzbar zu machen.The multi- and interdisciplinary volume Disputed Memory. Emotions and Memory Politics in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe provides a variety of case studies to display the complexity and specificity of disputed pasts in this region. By trying to overcome a methodological nationalism and a “representation bias” in the study of memory, the volume aims at understanding the mediation and transmission of memories in their social contexts. Furthermore, the authors integrate the role of emotions in processes of memory making and politics – at first sight a new and interesting approach. While the volume successfully displays transnational memory movements in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, the analysis of emotions in the assembled texts could have benefitted from integrating methods and theories from the already rich sociological and historical literature on the study of emotions

ACPE Theory Paper of the Year

In honor of Len Cedarleaf, Pioneer ACPE Certified Educator and former President of ACPE, Inc., this set of theory papers were deemed to be exemplary of quality theory papers written and utilzed by people seeking certification as ACPE Certified Educators

Generative modelling: addressing open problems in model misspecification and differential privacy

Generative modelling has become a popular application of artificial intelligence. Model performance can, however, be impacted negatively when the generative model is misspecified, or when the generative model estimator is modified to adhere to a privacy notion such as differential privacy. In this thesis, we approach generative modelling under model misspecification and differential privacy by presenting four different works. We first present related work on generative modelling. Subsequently, we delve into the reasons that necessitate an examination of generative modelling under the challenges of model misspecification and differential privacy. As an initial contribution, we consider generative modelling for density estimation. One way to approach model misspecification is to relax model assumptions. We show that this can also help in nonparametric models. In particular, we study a recently proposed nonparametric quasi-Bayesian density estimator and identify its strong model assumptions as a reason for poor performance in finite data sets. We propose an autoregressive extension relaxing model assumptions to allow for a-priori feature dependencies. Next, we consider generative modelling for missingness imputation. After categorising current deep generative imputation approaches into the classes of nonignorable missingness models as introduced by Rubin [1976], we extend the formulation of variational autoencoders to factorise according to a nonignorable missingness model class that has not been studied in the deep generative modelling literature before. These explicitly model the missingness mechanisms to prevent model misspecification when missingness is not at random. Then, we focus the attention of this thesis on improving synthetic data generation under differential privacy. For this purpose, we propose differentially private importance sampling of differentially private synthetic data samples. We observe that importance sampling helps more, the better the generative model is. We next focus on increasing data generation quality by considering differentially private diffusion models. We identify training strategies that significantly improve the performance of DP image generators. We conclude the dissertation with a discussion, including contributions and limitations of the presented work, and propose potential directions for future work

The Role of KIM-1 Mediated Efferocytosis by Cancer Cells in Blocking the Immunogenicity of Tumor Cell Death

The phagocytic clearance of apoptotic cells –efferocytosis- is essential for maintaining immune tissue homeostasis. Uncleared apoptotic cells can undergo secondary necrosis releasing endogenous danger signals such as high mobility group box protein 1 (HMGB1) into the extracellular milieu, triggering the innate immune system. Kidney Injury Molecule -1 (KIM-1) is a phosphatidylserine (PS) receptor that has been shown to confer on proximal tubular epithelial cells (PTECs) the ability to clear apoptotic cells during acute kidney injury. KIM-1 is overexpressed by various human tumours including renal clear cell carcinoma (RCC), though the impact of this on tumour progression is not known. Importantly, RCC tumours are highly resistant to chemotherapies and radiotherapies that are known to concurrently induce tumour cell apoptosis and trigger an immune response to the dying cancer cells. In this thesis I show, for the first time, that endogenous KIM-1 expressed by human RCC cell lines enables them to become semi-professional phagocytes and efficiently engulf apoptotic and necrotic cells. Using siRNA-mediated knockdown of KIM-1 expression in RCC cells, we show that KIM-1-dependent phagocytosis by RCC cells significantly reduced the leakage of HMGB1 from apoptotic cells undergoing secondary necrosis or necrotic cells. In addition, we demonstrate that the failure to clear dying cells by RCC cells was associated with enhanced activation of primary dendritic cells when they were exposed to the conditioned medium from RCC cells fed apoptotic or necrotic cells. Therefore, we propose that the upregulation of KIM-1 expression by cancers may allow them to evade the immune system and immunogenic cell death by chemotherapy and thereby makes KIM-1 a potential therapeutic target

Essays on risk preferences and peer effects in household decision-making : experimental evidence

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The upgrade in human evolution? It's a matter of TIME!

The upgrade in human evolution? It's a matter of TIME! RESOLUTION aims to achieve an accurate and highly resolved chronology back to 55,000 years BP (Before Present), to establish the timing of when Homo sapiens arrived in Europe, their interaction with Neanderthals and the final cause of Neanderthal extinction