Comet Assay Automation for DNA Testing

Single cell gel electrophoresis, also known as comet assay, is a process used to study the formation and repair of DNA damage. Comet assay is gaining popularity as industry and academic institutions begin to use the process more for single cell analysis. Some of the limiting factors to Comet Assay’s increased implementation is its’ low sample throughput, inherent inaccuracy, inconsistency due to human error, inaccurate temperature control, and laboratories’ long sample workup procedure. In order to increase the effectiveness of comet assay, it is necessary to achieve accurate temperature control and remove human intrusion in the process while maintaining consistent results. We are addressing these needs by creating a device that automates the entire process of Comet Assay up until scoring. Automation will remove the need for human intervention in the process, and will allow for consistent and accurate temperature control as well as the prevention of light contamination. All of this will lead to a more reliable outcome in the experiments, while allowing lab employees to be more efficient by eliminating the need for supervision and constant attendance in the long and tedious process. This automated approach is a significant advancement in Comet Assay experimentation

Up We Go! Developing a Web-Based Instructional Module on the Transition from Elementary to Middle School

For a brief description of the paper, please see the abstract. This paper was presented at the Learning Design & Technology's TCC online conference in April 2016.Youth will experience numerous transitions throughout their lifetime as they venture towards adulthood.  Students completing the final year of elementary school are set for one of their first major life changing events as the move on to middle school.  Alongside the academic concerns they will face, these youths will experience issues that may affect their physical, emotional, moral, and social well being.  Though there is an abundance of evidence-based academic literature, there currently lacks content designed for children.  Technology’s importance and presence is intertwined with our everyday lives and the ability to learn can be simply had within the grasp of your fingertips.  Current educational climate emphasizes effective technology usage that promotes a student’s ability to be responsible for their learning while changing the teacher’s role as an advisor, coach, or facilitator. Therefore, in order to better prepare these learners, a web-based instructional design project was designed and evaluated in attempt to provide information to these students based upon common concerns many students face during this transitional period.  The independent online module can be found at http://patrickdevega.wix.com/upwego.  John Keller’s ARCS Model (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) was employed throughout development. The module features a fictional story involving a group of friends navigating middle school while encountering problems like academic pressure and concerns with appearance.  Learners gain strategies to assist characters and receive feedback through embedded assessments

Variability in second language learning:the roles of individual differences, learning conditions, and linguistic complexity

Second language learning outcomes are highly variable, due to a variety of factors, including individual differences, exposure conditions, and linguistic complexity. However, exactly how these factors interact to influence language learning is unknown. This paper examines the relationship between these three variables in language learners. Native English speakers were exposed to an artificial language containing three sentence patterns of varying linguistic complexity. They were randomly assigned to two groups – incidental and instructed – designed to promote the acquisition of implicit and explicit knowledge, respectively. Learning was assessed with a grammaticality judgment task, while subjective measures of awareness were used to measure whether exposure had resulted in implicit or explicit knowledge. Participants also completed cognitive tests. Awareness measures demonstrated that learners in the incidental group relied more on implicit knowledge, whereas learners in the instructed group relied more on explicit knowledge. Overall, exposure condition was the most significant predictor of performance on the grammaticality judgment task, with learners in the instructed group outperforming those in the incidental group. Performance on a procedural learning task accounted for additional variance. When outcomes were analysed according to linguistic complexity, exposure condition was the most significant predictor for two syntactic patterns, but it was not a predictor for the most complex sentence group; instead, procedural learning ability was

Simulasi Routing Protokol Berbasis Distance Vector Menggunakan Gns3 Versi 0.8.

Measurement of routing protocol performance in a network can be done with the help of simulation. The writers are trying to simulate package delivery data over Virtual Private Network (VPN) with the use of Graphical Network Simulator version 0.8.6 (GNS3). The topology used in the delivery of data packets is a ring topology which consists of 6 routers based on distance vector routing protocol. The results of simulation that the writers get are the throughput of the wireless and wireline on the server and client were averaging 1Mbit/s. The packet loss values generated for both wireless and wireline were 0 %. The measurement delay of the wireless and wireline for server and client side were averaging 7 ms.Pengukuran performansi routing protocol dalam suatu network dapat dilakukan dengan bantuan simulasi. Penulis mencoba mensimulasikan pengiriman paket data melalui Virtual Private Network (VPN) menggunakan simulator Graphical Network Simulator versi 0.8.6 (GNS3). Topologi yang penulis gunakan dalam pengiriman data paket menggunakan topologi ring yang terdiri dari 6 router, dengan salah satu routing protokol yang berbasis distance vector. Hasil simulasi yang penulis dapatkan nilai throughput dari wireless maupun wireline pada sisi server dan client rata-rata 1Mbit/sec. Sedangkan untuk nilai packet loss dihasilkan 0% baik itu wireless dan wireline dari posisi server ataupun client. Pengukuran pada delay wireless maupun wireline pada sisi server dan client rata-rata 7ms

Investigating the functionality of an OCT4-short response element in human induced pluripotent stem cells.

Pluripotent stem cells offer great therapeutic promise for personalized treatment platforms for numerous injuries, disorders, and diseases. Octamer-binding transcription factor 4 (OCT4) is a key regulatory gene maintaining pluripotency and self-renewal of mammalian cells. With site-specific integration for gene correction in cellular therapeutics, use of the OCT4 promoter may have advantages when expressing a suicide gene if pluripotency remains. However, the human OCT4 promoter region is 4 kb in size, limiting the capacity of therapeutic genes and other regulatory components for viral vectors, and decreasing the efficiency of homologous recombination. The purpose of this investigation was to characterize the functionality of a novel 967bp OCT4-short response element during pluripotency and to examine the OCT4 titer-dependent response during differentiation to human derivatives not expressing OCT4. Our findings demonstrate that the OCT4-short response element is active in pluripotency and this activity is in high correlation with transgene expression in vitro, and the OCT4-short response element is inactivated when pluripotent cells differentiate. These studies demonstrate that this shortened OCT4 regulatory element is functional and may be useful as part of an optimized safety component in a site-specific gene transferring system that could be used as an efficient and clinically applicable safety platform for gene transfer in cellular therapeutics

Frequency-explicit a posteriori error estimates for finite element discretizations of Maxwell's equations

International audienceWe consider residual-based {\it a posteriori} error estimators for Galerkin discretizations of time-harmonic Maxwell's equations. We focus on configurations where the frequency is high, or close to a resonance frequency, and derive reliability and efficiency estimates. In contrast to previous related works, our estimates are frequency-explicit. In particular, our key contribution is to show that even if the constants appearing in the reliability and efficiency estimates may blow up on coarse meshes, they become independent of the frequency for sufficiently refined meshes. Such results were previously known for the Helmholtz equation describing scalar wave propagation problems, and we show that they naturally extend, at the price of many technicalities in the proofs, to Maxwell's equations. Our mathematical analysis is performed in the 3D case and covers conforming Nédélec discretizations of the first and second family. We also present numerical experiments in the 2D case, where Maxwell's equations are discretized with Nédélec elements of the first family. These illustrating examples perfectly fit our key theoretical findings and suggest that our estimates are sharp

Frequency-explicit a posteriori error estimates for discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of Maxwell's equations

We propose a new residual-based a posteriori error estimator for discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of time-harmonic Maxwell's equations in first-order form. We establish that the estimator is reliable and efficient, and the dependency of the reliability and efficiency constants on the frequency is analyzed and discussed. The proposed estimates generalize similar results previously obtained for the Helmholtz equation and conforming finite element discretization of Maxwell's equations. In addition, for the discontinuous Galerkin scheme considered here, we also show that the proposed estimator is asymptotically constantfree for smooth solutions. We also present two-dimensional numerical examples that highlight our key theoretical findings and suggest that the proposed estimator is suited to drive h and hp-adaptive iterative refinements

Frequency-explicit approximability estimates for time-harmonic Maxwell's equations

We consider time-harmonic Maxwell's equations set in an heterogeneous medium with perfectly conducting boundary conditions. Given a divergence-free right-hand side lying in $L^2$, we provide a frequency-explicit approximability estimate measuring the difference between the corresponding solution and its best approximation by high-order Nédélec finite elements. Such an approximability estimate is crucial in both the a priori and a posteriori error analysis of finite element discretizations of Maxwell's equations, but the derivation is not trivial. Indeed, it is hard to take advantage of high-order polynomials given that the righthand side only exhibits $L^2$ regularity. We proceed in line with previously obtained results for the simpler setting of the scalar Helmholtz equation, and propose a regularity splitting of the solution. In turn, this splitting yields sharp approximability estimates generalizing known results for the scalar Helmoltz equation and showing the interest of high-order methods