The Taxonomy, The Technologies, and the Toolkit for Technology-enchanced Movable Paper Craft

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Natural Coevolution of Tumor and Immunoenvironment in Glioblastoma.

Isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) wild-type glioblastoma (GBM) has a dismal prognosis. A better understanding of tumor evolution holds the key to developing more effective treatment. Here we study GBM\u27s natural evolutionary trajectory by using rare multifocal samples. We sequenced 61,062 single cells from eight multifocal IDH wild-type primary GBMs and defined a natural evolution signature (NES) of the tumor. We show that the NES significantly associates with the activation of transcription factors that regulate brain development, including MYBL2 and FOSL2. Hypoxia is involved in inducing NES transition potentially via activation of the HIF1A-FOSL2 axis. High-NES tumor cells could recruit and polarize bone marrow-derived macrophages through activation of the FOSL2-ANXA1-FPR1/3 axis. These polarized macrophages can efficiently suppress T-cell activity and accelerate NES transition in tumor cells. Moreover, the polarized macrophages could upregulate CCL2 to induce tumor cell migration. SIGNIFICANCE: GBM progression could be induced by hypoxia via the HIF1A-FOSL2 axis. Tumor-derived ANXA1 is associated with recruitment and polarization of bone marrow-derived macrophages to suppress the immunoenvironment. The polarized macrophages promote tumor cell NES transition and migration. This article is highlighted in the In This Issue feature, p. 2711

Digital Humanities and Techno-Animism in Wearables: A Case-Study-Based Collaborative Design Framework for Digitally-Ensouled Jewellery

Presented at HCII 2017.Technology-enhanced jewelleries capable of collecting bio-data are rapidly establishing a presence in the market. Yet there is limited focus on applying core values of traditional jewellery in the making process. In this research, we were inspired by the theory of animism, and investigated the concepts of techno-animism and digital ensoulment of jewellery. By going back to the roots of jewellery design, we investigate the cultural and social importance of the jewellery components and making techniques and propose a set of guidelines that consider data collection as a fundamental component of the creation process. Our findings are based on two research based jewellery-making workshops, along with a technology review and our guidelines aim to provide a set of accessible and actionable suggestions for the design of future technology-enhanced jewellery

An anti-windup approach for nonlinear impulsive system subject to actuator saturation

This paper is concerned with the analysis and design of nonlinear impulsive systems subject to actuator saturation, where both impulsive control problem and impulsive disturbance problem are considered. By utilizing a dead-zone function to deal with saturation nonlinearity, some conditions are obtained for local exponential stability and stabilizablity (LES) of the considered system. The design of the controller is formulated such that the domain of attraction is as large as possible and moreover, it can be solved as a convex optimization problem with linear matrix inequalites (LMIs) constraints. Two numerical examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed results

HapTwist: Creating Interactive Haptic Proxies in Virtual Reality Using Low-cost Twistable Artefacts

In this paper, we present a series of studies on using Rubik's Twist, a type of low-cost twistable artefact, to create haptic proxies for various hand-graspable VR objects. Our pilot studies validated the feasibility and effectiveness of Rubik's-Twist-based haptic proxies. The pilot results also revealed user challenges in the physical shape creation, motivating the development of the HapTwist toolkit. The toolkit consists of the shape-generation algorithm, the software interface for shape-construction guidance and interaction authoring, and the hardware modules for constructing interactive haptic proxies. The user studies showed that HapTwist was easy to learn and use, and it significantly improved user performance in creating interactive haptic proxies with Rubik's Twist. Furthermore, HapTwist-generated haptic proxies achieved similar VR experience as the real objects

Superelastic, Fatigue-Resistant, and Flame-Retardant Spongy Conductor for Human Motion Detection against a Harsh High-Temperature Condition

The construction of wearable piezoresistive sensors with high elasticity, large gauge factor, and excellent durability in a harsh high-temperature environment is highly desired yet challenging. Here, a lightweight, superelastic, and fatigue-resistant spongy conductor was fabricated via a sponge-constrained network assembly, during which highly conductive graphene and flame-retardant montmorillonite were alternatively deposited on a three-dimensional melamine scaffold. The as-obtained spongy conductor exhibited a highly deformation-tolerant conductivity up to 80% strain and excellent fatigue resistance of 10,000 compressive cycles at 70% strain. As a result, the spongy conductor can readily work as a piezoresistive sensor and exhibited a high gauge factor value of ∼2.3 in a strain range of 60-80% and excellent durability under 60% strain for 10,000 cycles without sacrificing its piezoresistive performance. Additionally, the piezoresistive sensor showed great thermal stability up to 250 °C for more than 7 days and sufficient flame-retardant performance for at least 20 s. This lightweight, superelastic, and flame-retardant spongy conductor reveals tremendous potential in human motion detection against a harsh high-temperature environment. </p

Preparation and Characterization of Microemulsions Based on Antarctic Krill Oil

Antarctic krill oil is high in nutritional value and has biological functions like anti-inflammation and hypolipidemic effects. But it has and unpleasant smell, and unsaturated fatty acids are prone to oxidative deterioration. Its high viscosity and low solubility in water make it difficult for processing. Microemulsion can be a new promising route for development of krill oil product. We determined a formula of krill oil-in-water microemulsion with krill oil: isopropyl myristate = 1:3 as oil phase, Tween 80:Span 80 = 8:2 as surfactant, ethanol as co-surfactant and the mass ratio of surfactant to co-surfactant of 3:1. After screening the formula, we researched several characteristics of the prepared oil-in-water microemulsion, including electrical conductivity, microstructure by transmission electron microscope and cryogenic transmission electron microscope, droplet size analysis, rheological properties, thermal behavior by differential scanning calorimeter and stability against pH, salinity, and storage time