Enhancing Design Undergraduates’ Entrepreneurship, Employability, and Engagement with Real-world Problem Solving and Innovation

Entrepreneurship, employability, and engagement with real-world problem-solving and innovation are becoming essential to undergraduate education and yet fulfilled in pedagogy design. More specifically, for design students, these components will help them leverage their design knowledge and contribute to understanding design applications for economic, social, and environmental challenges and their future career development. This research paper presented the author’s teaching practice of designing and developing the module Design Enterprise at DJCAD in the University of Dundee during the past two years to address the listed learning aims above and challenges for online teaching during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The curriculum design used the Double Diamond framework (a classic design thinking process framework) as the methodology to guide the teaching development process. The main description in this paper focuses on the workshop design with online teaching methods, supported by lectures, industry expert talks and tutorials. Observation and survey have been adopted to gather students’ responses to the curriculum design. Findings showcase positive effects on the identified four categories: understanding meaningful design practice, critical thinking and research, problem-solving and decision-making, and communication and presentation. Moreover, the research identified the importance of inviting students to join the process of curriculum design and gathered experiences and insights on online teaching and blended learning. Further improvement has been pointed out from the survey, which needs guidance for time management and more in-person contacts to balance the disadvantage of online learning. These weaknesses will be considered for the next iteration of teaching development

Enhancing Design Undergraduates’ Entrepreneurship, Employability, and Engagement with Real-world Problem Solving and Innovation

Entrepreneurship, employability, and engagement with real-world problem-solving and innovation are becoming essential to undergraduate education and yet fulfilled in pedagogy design. More specifically, for design students, these components will help them leverage their design knowledge and contribute to understanding design applications for economic, social, and environmental challenges and their future career development. This research paper presented the author’s teaching practice of designing and developing the module Design Enterprise at DJCAD in the University of Dundee during the past two years to address the listed learning aims above and challenges for online teaching during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The curriculum design used the Double Diamond framework (a classic design thinking process framework) as the methodology to guide the teaching development process. The main description in this paper focuses on the workshop design with online teaching methods, supported by lectures, industry expert talks and tutorials. Observation and survey have been adopted to gather students’ responses to the curriculum design. Findings showcase positive effects on the identified four categories: understanding meaningful design practice, critical thinking and research, problem-solving and decision-making, and communication and presentation. Moreover, the research identified the importance of inviting students to join the process of curriculum design and gathered experiences and insights on online teaching and blended learning. Further improvement has been pointed out from the survey, which needs guidance for time management and more in-person contacts to balance the disadvantage of online learning. These weaknesses will be considered for the next iteration of teaching development

Master of Science

thesisWe examined mice with cardiac specific deletion of the gene encoding glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4, G4H-/-). These mice develop moderate cardiac hypertrophy with normal basal cardiac function and show signs of mitochondrial and whole cell oxidative stress as evidenced by increased concentration of oxidized glutathione (GSSG). Preliminary research in our laboratory has shown that treatment with the antioxidant tempol (a whole cell antioxidant), but not MnTBAP (a mitochondrial targeted superoxide 2 mimetic), can attenuate cardiac hypertrophy. Furthermore, GSSG concentrations were not altered by tempol, but reduced by MnTBAP. Based on these preliminary data, we hypothesized that 1) glutathione peroxidase (Gpx) was elevated and glutathione reductase (Gsr) was lower in hearts of G4H-/- mice. Both Gpx and Gsr are important components of glutathione cycle. 2) MnTBAP treatment increases Gsr and lowers Gpx expression, but tempol did not affect either of them. 3) Tempol treatment can decrease GSK3? phosphorylation and increase Txn2 expression. In contrast to our hypothesis, Gpx was not elevated in G4H-/- mice and Gsr levels were similar between G4H-/- and control. Treatment with either tempol or MnTBAP did not affect Gpx protein levels. On the other hand, tempol reduced Gsr in G4H-/- mice vs. untreated G4H-/- and controls. GSK3? activity was similar between G4H-/- mice and controls and remained unchanged after tempol and MnTBAP. Txn2 expression was also similar between controls and G4H-/-. Tempol treatment increased Txn2 mRNA expression in controls only, but MnTBAP did not affect Txn2 in any group. Additionally, after tempol treatment, mRNA level of Gpx was not elevated in G4H-/- mice but actually lower, whereas Gsr was unchanged. To sum up, the reduction of hypertrophy after tempol treatment was not associated with changes in; a) GSK3? phosphorylation, b) enzymes used in the glutathione oxidation and reduction cycle, or c) Txn2 expression. Additionally, though preliminary studies found a reduction of GSSG after MnTBAP treatment, the present study found this was not accompanied by any change in Gpx or Gsr. Therefore, we conclude that the attenuation of cardiac hypertrophy is unrelated to the modulation of oxidative stress by these enzymes, or a change in GSK3? phosphorylation

Investigating ultrasound–light interaction in scattering media

Significance: Ultrasound-assisted optical imaging techniques, such as ultrasound-modulated optical tomography, allow for imaging deep inside scattering media. In these modalities, a fraction of the photons passing through the ultrasound beam is modulated. The efficiency by which the photons are converted is typically referred to as the ultrasound modulation’s “tagging efficiency.” Interestingly, this efficiency has been defined in varied and discrepant fashion throughout the scientific literature. Aim: The aim of this study is the ultrasound tagging efficiency in a manner consistent with its definition and experimentally verify the contributive (or noncontributive) relationship between the mechanisms involved in the ultrasound optical modulation process. Approach: We adopt a general description of the tagging efficiency as the fraction of photons traversing an ultrasound beam that is frequency shifted (inclusion of all frequency-shifted components). We then systematically studied the impact of ultrasound pressure and frequency on the tagging efficiency through a balanced detection measurement system that measured the power of each order of the ultrasound tagged light, as well as the power of the unmodulated light component. Results: Through our experiments, we showed that the tagging efficiency can reach 70% in a scattering phantom with a scattering anisotropy of 0.9 and a scattering coefficient of 4  mm⁻¹ for a 1-MHz ultrasound with a relatively low (and biomedically acceptable) peak pressure of 0.47 MPa. Furthermore, we experimentally confirmed that the two ultrasound-induced light modulation mechanisms, particle displacement and refractive index change, act in opposition to each other. Conclusion: Tagging efficiency was quantified via simulation and experiments. These findings reveal avenues of investigation that may help improve ultrasound-assisted optical imaging techniques

Value Premium In The Chinese Stock Market：Free Lunch Or Paid Lunch?

In this paper we examine the time-series predictability of the book-to-market (B/M) ratio for annual and monthly portfolio returns in the Chinese stock market.  We find that value premiums exist throughout our sample period of 1998 to 2008. However, the predictability of B/M appears to be unrelated with financial distress risk. In fact, value stocks are less risky than growth stocks in terms of return volatility and estimated financial distress risk. Further, our results suggest that the factor VMG, which is directly related to value premium, is not a pervasive risk measure compared to market factor and SMB. While the size effect seems to be closely related to distress risk, both size and B/M factors do not appear to be driven by financial distress risk

Automated Fault-Detection for Small Satellite Pointing Control Systems Using One-Sided Learning

In this paper, we propose a ground-based automated novelty detection system for a small satellite attitude dynamics control system using a one-sided learning algorithm: One-Class Support Vector Machine (OC-SVM) method. This fault-detection system was designed to only learn from nominal behavior of the satellite during the commissioning phase and to identify and detect anomalies when there was a subtle behavioral failure in the attitude control system. The detection system was trained by only observing the nominal attitude dynamics behavior of a small satellite for a period of time. Training data was obtained from reaction wheel outputs in a healthy attitude control system, and reaction wheel currents and angular velocities were selected as training features. A one-class classifier was built from a hyperplane decision function during training. An adaptive Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO) method was utilized to solve the quadratic problem in the application of OC-SVM algorithm to provide an optimal solution for the hyperplane decision function. Two tests were performed on the system to validate its feasibility and detection accuracy. Untrained reaction wheel bearing failures were added into the attitude control system validation tests to examine whether the fault-detection system was capable of detecting and diagnosing the reaction wheel failures. Training and testing performance for the fault-detection system are presented with discussion

Genome-wide identification, functional analysis and expression profiling of pleiotropic drug resistance (PDR) sub-family in potato

The plant pleiotropic drug resistance (PDR) family of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters has comprehensively been researched in relation to transport of antifungal agents and resistant pathogens. In our study, analyses of the whole family of PDR genes present in the potato genome were provided. This analysis resolves discrepancies of potato PDR proteins and provides an expression analysis of all annotated potato PDR genes based on RNA-seq data. The results indicate that the potato genome contains 76 encoding PDR proteins and that these genes show a specific expression patterns, both at the organ level and in response to various hormonal treatment. These data provide some clues for future molecular genetic analysis of this important subfamily of ABC transporters. In addition, potato PDR genes may also play some important roles in the transportation of antifungal agents and resistant pathogens.Keywords: ABC transporter, potato, pleiotropic drug resistance (PDR), RNA-seq.African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(30), pp. 4722-472