EVALUATION STANDARD FOR INSTITUSIONAL EVALUATION OF OPEN UNIVERSITY

This study is to develop the standards and indexes for evaluating the open university as an institution. Having successfully taken root in their societies since their launching, Asian open universities now need to further up their teaching and learning system which demands a rigid evaluation and assessment of a university as an institution. For the past ten years, Korea National Open University (KNOU) was evaluated twice by Korean Council for University Education (KCUE), which is in charge of the evaluation of the Korean universities; the result was not so satisfactory. It was because its evaluation standards and indexes were not appropriate for KNOU as an open university. They were primarily for the conventional universities. Thus KNOU needed its own assessment indexes, and this is a research looking for the proper ones for evaluating KNOU within the frame of university evaluation in Korea. Other open universities in Asia also have experienced or will face such problems in terms of the university evaluation. The result of this research will be helpful not only for KNOU but for other Asian open universities preparing for the university evaluation

STANDARDS AND INDEXES FOR EVALUATING OPEN UNIVERSITIES

This article is the second part of the research on the institutional evaluation of the open universities. The title of the first one was ‘Evaluation Standards for Institutional Evaluation of Open Universities,’ which was presented at the 22nd AAOU Annual Conference, Tianjin, China. In the previous study we discussed the definition of university evaluation and some of the controversial points in the existing evaluation. The focal point was that the existing standards and indexes are not appropriate for Korea National Open University (KNOU) as an open university, and that it is necessary to establish a new evaluating system for the university. We believe it is true of the other open universities throughout Asia and the world. In short, the present research provides the practical and effective data on the evaluation standard. It also includes some new qualitative, quantitative and modified evaluation indexes reflecting the distinctive features of the open universities. The main part of this article elaborates on 5 evaluation domains, 23 evaluation sections, 81 evaluation items and 229 evaluation indexes. These evaluation domains, sections, items and indexes result from the practical surveys and AHP and Swing analyses. The result of this research will prove a good and essential element for ranking indicators in ODE universities. At the end of the paper we add some new standards and indexes for evaluating regional campuses of the open universities, which is another important agenda for upgrading the learner support throughout the country

Self-describing and data propagation model for data distribution service

Abstract. To realize real-time information sharing in generic platforms, it is especially important to support dynamic message structure changes. For the case of IDL, it is necessary to rewrite applications to change data sample structures. In this paper, we propose a dynamic reconfiguration scheme of data sample structures for DDS. Instead of using IDL, which is the static data sample structure model of DDS, we use a self describing model using data sample schema, as a dynamic data sample structure model to support dynamic reconfiguration of data sample structures. We also propose a data propagation model to provide data persistency in distributed environments. We guarantee persistency by transferring data samples through relay nodes to the receiving nodes, which have not participated in the data distribution network at the data sample distribution time. The proposed schemes can be utilized to support data sample structure changes during operation time and to provide data persistency in various environments, such as real-time enterprise environments and connection-less internet environments

The acute myeloid leukemia associated AML1-ETO fusion protein alters the transcriptome and cellular progression in a single-oncogene expressing in vitro induced pluripotent stem cell based granulocyte differentiation model

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is characterized by recurrent mutations that affect normal hematopoiesis. The analysis of human AMLs has mostly been performed using end-point materials, such as cell lines and patient derived AMLs that also carry additional contributing mutations. The molecular effects of a single oncogenic hit, such as expression of the AML associated oncoprotein AML1-ETO on hematopoietic development and transformation into a (pre-) leukemic state still needs further investigation. Here we describe the development and characterization of an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) system that allows in vitro differentiation towards different mature myeloid cell types such as monocytes and granulocytes. During in vitro differentiation we expressed the AML1-ETO fusion protein and examined the effects of the oncoprotein on differentiation and the underlying alterations in the gene program at 8 different time points. Our analysis revealed that AML1-ETO as a single oncogenic hit in a non-mutated background blocks granulocytic differentiation, deregulates the gene program via altering the acetylome of the differentiating granulocytic cells, and induces t(8;21) AML associated leukemic characteristics. Together, these results reveal that inducible oncogene expression during in vitro differentiation of iPS cells provides a valuable platform for analysis of aberrant regulation in disease

Assisted reproductive technologies are associated with limited epigenetic variation at birth that largely resolves by adulthood

More than 7 million individuals have been conceived by Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) and there is clear evidence that ART is associated with a range of adverse early life outcomes, including rare imprinting disorders. The periconception period and early embryogenesis are associated with widespread epigenetic remodeling, which can be influenced by ART, with effects on the developmental trajectory in utero, and potentially on health throughout life. Here we profile genome-wide DNA methylation in blood collected in the newborn period and in adulthood (age 22-35 years) from a unique longitudinal cohort of ART-conceived individuals, previously shown to have no differences in health outcomes in early adulthood compared with non-ART-conceived individuals. We show evidence for specific ART-associated variation in methylation around birth, most of which occurred independently of embryo culturing. Importantly, ART-associated epigenetic variation at birth largely resolves by adulthood with no direct evidence that it impacts on development and health

The Allelic Landscape of Human Blood Cell Trait Variation and Links to Common Complex Disease

Many common variants have been associated with hematological traits, but identification of causal genes and pathways has proven challenging. We performed a genome-wide association analysis in the UK Biobank and INTERVAL studies, testing 29.5 million genetic variants for association with 36 red cell, white cell, and platelet properties in 173,480 European-ancestry participants. This effort yielded hundreds of low frequency (<5%) and rare (<1%) variants with a strong impact on blood cell phenotypes. Our data highlight general properties of the allelic architecture of complex traits, including the proportion of the heritable component of each blood trait explained by the polygenic signal across different genome regulatory domains. Finally, through Mendelian randomization, we provide evidence of shared genetic pathways linking blood cell indices with complex pathologies, including autoimmune diseases, schizophrenia, and coronary heart disease and evidence suggesting previously reported population associations between blood cell indices and cardiovascular disease may be non-causal.We thank members of the Cambridge BioResource Scientific Advisory Board and Management Committee for their support of our study and the National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre for funding. K.D. is funded as a HSST trainee by NHS Health Education England. M.F. is funded from the BLUEPRINT Grant Code HEALTH-F5-2011-282510 and the BHF Cambridge Centre of Excellence [RE/13/6/30180]. J.R.S. is funded by a MRC CASE Industrial studentship, co-funded by Pfizer. J.D. is a British Heart Foundation Professor, European Research Council Senior Investigator, and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator. S.M., S.T, M.H, K.M. and L.D. are supported by the NIHR BioResource-Rare Diseases, which is funded by NIHR. Research in the Ouwehand laboratory is supported by program grants from the NIHR to W.H.O., the European Commission (HEALTH-F2-2012-279233), the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to W.J.A. and D.R. under numbers RP-PG-0310-1002 and RG/09/12/28096 and Bristol Myers-Squibb; the laboratory also receives funding from NHSBT. W.H.O is a NIHR Senior Investigator. The INTERVAL academic coordinating centre receives core support from the UK Medical Research Council (G0800270), the BHF (SP/09/002), the NIHR and Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, as well as grants from the European Research Council (268834), the European Commission Framework Programme 7 (HEALTH-F2-2012-279233), Merck and Pfizer. DJR and DA were supported by the NIHR Programme ‘Erythropoiesis in Health and Disease’ (Ref. NIHR-RP-PG-0310-1004). N.S. is supported by the Wellcome Trust (Grant Codes WT098051 and WT091310), the EU FP7 (EPIGENESYS Grant Code 257082 and BLUEPRINT Grant Code HEALTH-F5-2011-282510). The INTERVAL study is funded by NHSBT and has been supported by the NIHR-BTRU in Donor Health and Genomics at the University of Cambridge in partnership with NHSBT. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, the Department of Health of England or NHSBT. D.G. is supported by a “la Caixa”-Severo Ochoa pre-doctoral fellowship

25th annual computational neuroscience meeting: CNS-2016

The same neuron may play different functional roles in the neural circuits to which it belongs. For example, neurons in the Tritonia pedal ganglia may participate in variable phases of the swim motor rhythms [1]. While such neuronal functional variability is likely to play a major role the delivery of the functionality of neural systems, it is difficult to study it in most nervous systems. We work on the pyloric rhythm network of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) [2]. Typically network models of the STG treat neurons of the same functional type as a single model neuron (e.g. PD neurons), assuming the same conductance parameters for these neurons and implying their synchronous firing [3, 4]. However, simultaneous recording of PD neurons shows differences between the timings of spikes of these neurons. This may indicate functional variability of these neurons. Here we modelled separately the two PD neurons of the STG in a multi-neuron model of the pyloric network. Our neuron models comply with known correlations between conductance parameters of ionic currents. Our results reproduce the experimental finding of increasing spike time distance between spikes originating from the two model PD neurons during their synchronised burst phase. The PD neuron with the larger calcium conductance generates its spikes before the other PD neuron. Larger potassium conductance values in the follower neuron imply longer delays between spikes, see Fig. 17.Neuromodulators change the conductance parameters of neurons and maintain the ratios of these parameters [5]. Our results show that such changes may shift the individual contribution of two PD neurons to the PD-phase of the pyloric rhythm altering their functionality within this rhythm. Our work paves the way towards an accessible experimental and computational framework for the analysis of the mechanisms and impact of functional variability of neurons within the neural circuits to which they belong