Kathy Muhr, Aniko Laszlo and Alexis Henry on Using Concept Mapping to Evaluate Employment Collaboratives for People with Disabilities

Blog post to AEA365, a blog sponsored by the American Evaluation Association (AEA) dedicated to highlighting Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources, and Lessons Learned for evaluators. The American Evaluation Association is an international professional association of evaluators devoted to the application and exploration of program evaluation, personnel evaluation, technology, and many other forms of evaluation. Evaluation involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of programs, policies, personnel, products, and organizations to improve their effectiveness

Myoblast Migration and Directional Persistence Affected by Syndecan-4-Mediated Tiam-1 Expression and Distribution

Skeletal muscle is constantly renewed in response to injury, exercise, or muscle diseases. Muscle stem cells, also known as satellite cells, are stimulated by local damage to proliferate extensively and form myoblasts that then migrate, differentiate, and fuse to form muscle fibers. The transmembrane heparan sulfate proteoglycan syndecan-4 plays multiple roles in signal transduction processes, such as regulating the activity of the small GTPase Rac1 (Ras-related C3 botulinum toxin substrate 1) by binding and inhibiting the activity of Tiam1 (T-lymphoma invasion and metastasis-1), a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Rac1. The Rac1-mediated actin remodeling is required for cell migration. Syndecan-4 knockout mice cannot regenerate injured muscle; however, the detailed underlying mechanism is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that shRNA-mediated knockdown of syndecan-4 decreases the random migration of mouse myoblasts during live-cell microscopy. Treatment with the Rac1 inhibitor NSC23766 did not restore the migration capacity of syndecan-4 silenced cells; in fact, it was further reduced. Syndecan-4 knockdown decreased the directional persistence of migration, abrogated the polarized, asymmetric distribution of Tiam1, and reduced the total Tiam1 level of the cells. Syndecan-4 affects myoblast migration via its role in expression and localization of Tiam1; this finding may facilitate greater understanding of the essential role of syndecan-4 in the development and regeneration of skeletal muscle

Through a different lens : the perceived quality of light field visualization assessed by test participants with imperfect visual acuity and color blindness

With the emergence of commercially-available light field displays, both industry and academia have begun research on the potential use cases of future society. However, while there is an unfortunate global trend that the eyesight-related issues are getting more common among the new generations, such individuals are underrepresented in light field research. In this paper, we present the results of the series of subjective tests carried out on light field displays, exclusively with test participants that otherwise would not qualify to assess visualization quality in a regular study. The investigated topics include spatial resolution, angular resolution and viewing distance

Syndecan-4 affects myogenesis via Rac1-mediated actin remodeling and exhibits copy-number amplification and increased expression in human rhabdomyosarcoma tumors

Skeletal muscle demonstrates a high degree of regenerative capacity repeating the embryonic myogenic program under strict control. Rhabdomyosarcoma is the most common sarcoma in childhood and is characterized by impaired muscle differentiation. In this study, we observed that silencing the expression of syndecan-4, the ubiquitously expressed transmembrane heparan sulfate proteoglycan, significantly enhanced myoblast differentiation, and fusion. During muscle differentiation, the gradually decreasing expression of syndecan-4 allows the activation of Rac1, thereby mediating myoblast fusion. Single-molecule localized superresolution direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (dSTORM) imaging revealed nanoscale changes in actin cytoskeletal architecture, and atomic force microscopy showed reduced elasticity of syndecan-4-knockdown cells during fusion. Syndecan-4 copy-number amplification was observed in 28% of human fusion-negative rhabdomyosarcoma tumors and was accompanied by increased syndecan-4 expression based on RNA sequencing data. Our study suggests that syndecan-4 can serve as a tumor driver gene in promoting rabdomyosarcoma tumor development. Our results contribute to the understanding of the role of syndecan-4 in skeletal muscle development, regeneration, and tumorigenesis

On the quality of experience of content sharing in online education and online meetings

The turn of the decade introduced a new era of global pandemics to the world through the appearance of COVID-19, which is still an active crisis at the time of this paper. As a countermeasure, the phenomena of home office and online education became not only widely available, but also mandatory in many countries. However, the performance, reliability and general usability of such real-time activities may be severely affected by unfavorable network conditions. In both contexts, content sharing is now a common practice, and the success of the related use cases may fundamentally depend on it. In this paper, we present our surveys and subjective studies on the Quality of Experience of content sharing in online education and online meetings. A total of 6 surveys and 5 experiments are detailed, addressing topics of student experience, user interface settings, sharing options of lecturers and employees of the private sector, the perceivable effects of network impairments and the related long-term adaptation, the rubber band effect of slide sharing, the overall perceived quality and the separate quality aspects of media loading times, and the preference between visual quality, average frame rate and frame rate uniformity. The findings of the subjective studies do not characterize the use cases of the investigated topics on a general, widely-applicable level, as only a single online platform is involved throughout the experiments. However, their experimental configurations are reinforced by comprehensive surveys and many results indicate statistically significant differences between the selected test conditions