bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Social App Accessibility for Deaf Signers
Authors: Mack Kelly , Bragg Danielle , Morris Meredith Ringel , Bos Maarten W. , Albi Isabelle , Monroy-Hernández Andrés
Published: October 2020

Social media platforms support the sharing of written text, video, and audio. All of these formats may be inaccessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH), particularly those who primarily communicate via sign language, people who we call Deaf signers. We study how Deaf signers engage with social platforms, focusing on how they share content and the barriers they face. We employ a mixed-methods approach involving seven in-depth interviews and a survey of a larger population (n = 60). We find that Deaf signers share the most in written English, despite their desire to share in sign language. We further identify key areas of difficulty in consuming content (e.g., lack of captions for spoken content in videos) and producing content (e.g., captioning signed videos, signing into a phone camera) on social media platforms. Our results both provide novel insights into social media use by Deaf signers and reinforce prior findings on DHH communication more generally, while revealing potential ways to make social media platforms more accessible to Deaf signers.
On the Desiderata for Online Altruism
Authors: Mota Nuno , Chakraborty Abhijnan , Biega Asia J. , Gummadi Krishna P. , Heidari Hoda
Published: October 2020

Online donation platforms help equalize access to opportunity and funding in cases where inequalities exist. In the context of public school education in the United States, for instance, financial inequalities have been shown to be reflected in the educational system, since schools are primarily funded through local property taxes. In response, private charitable donation platforms such as DonorsChoose.org have emerged seeking to alleviate systemic inequalities. Yet, the question remains of how effective these platforms are in redressing existing funding inequalities across school districts. Our analysis of donation data from DonorsChoose shows that such platforms may in fact be ineffective in mitigating existing inequalities or may even exacerbate them. In this paper, we explore how online educational charities could direct more funding towards more impoverished schools without compromising their donors' freedom of choice with respect to donation targets. Seeking to answer this question, we draw on the line of work on choice architectures in behavioral economics and pose a novel research question on the impact of interface design on equity in socio-technical systems. Through controlled experiments, we demonstrate how simple interface design interventions - such as modifying default rankings or displaying additional information about schools - might lead to changes in donation distributions helping platforms direct more funding towards schools in need. Going beyond online educational charities, we hope that our work will bring attention to the role of interface design nudges in the social requirements of online altruism.
Effects of Shared Gaze on Audio- Versus Text-Based Remote Collaborations
Authors: Kütt Grete Helena , Tanprasert Teerapaun , Rodolitz Jay , Moyza Bernardo , So Samuel , Kenderova Georgia , Papoutsaki Alexandra
Published: October 2020

Remote collaborations are becoming ubiquitous, but, despite their many advantages, face unique challenges compared to collocated collaborations. Visualizing the collaborator's point of gaze on a shared screen has been explored as a promising way to alleviate some of these limitations by increasing shared awareness. However, prior studies on shared gaze have not considered the medium of communication and have only studied its effect on audio. This paper presents a study that compares the effects of shared gaze on collaboration performance during audio- and text-based communication. We find that for text, shared gaze improved task correctness and led collaborators to look at and talk more about shared content. Similar trends are found for gaze-augmented voice communication, but contrary to the slower performance in text, it also saw improvements in completion time as well as in cognitive workload. Our findings demonstrate the differences in how shared gaze impacts audio- versus text-based communication and highlight the need to further understand the nuances of the medium of communication when designing novel tools to support remote collaborators.
Designing Digital Safe Spaces for Peer Support and Connectivity in Patriarchal Contexts
Authors: Naseem Mustafa , Younas Fouzia , Mustafa Maryam
Published: October 2020

This paper explores the opportunities and challenges in designing peer-support mechanisms for low-income,low-literate women in Pakistan, a patriarchal and religious context where women's movements, social relationsand access to digital technologies are restricted. Through a qualitative, empirical study with 21 participantswe examine the cultural and patriarchal framework where shame and fear of defamation restrict the seekingof support for personal narratives around taboo subjects like abortion, sexual harassment, rape and domesticabuse. Based on our qualitative data we also conduct a second qualitative study using a technology probe with15 low-income, low-literate women to explore the specific design of peer-support technologies for supportseeking and the sharing of sensitive and taboo narratives in a deeply patriarchal society. The design concernsraised by our participants regarding privacy, anonymity and safety provide CSCW researchers with valuableguidelines about designing for social connections and support for vulnerable populations within a particularcontext.
Vision Skills Needed to Answer Visual Questions
Authors: Zeng Xiaoyu , Wang Yanan , Chiu Tai-Yin , Bhattacharya Nilavra , Gurari Danna
Published: October 2020

The task of answering questions about images has garnered attention as a practical service for assisting populations with visual impairments as well as a visual Turing test for the artificial intelligence community. Our first aim is to identify the common vision skills needed for both scenarios. To do so, we analyze the need for four vision skills--object recognition, text recognition, color recognition, and counting--on over 27,000 visual questions from two datasets representing both scenarios. We next quantify the difficulty of these skills for both humans and computers on both datasets. Finally, we propose a novel task of predicting what vision skills are needed to answer a question about an image. Our results reveal (mis)matches between aims of real users of such services and the focus of the AI community. We conclude with a discussion about future directions for addressing the visual question answering task.
"The Personal is Political"
Authors: D'Ignazio Catherine , Michelson Rebecca , Hope Alexis , Hoy Josephine , Roberts Jennifer , Krontiris Kate
Published: October 2020

Initially conceived as problem-focused programming events, hackathons have expanded to encompass a range of issue areas, stakeholders and activities. There have been important critiques of hackathons in relation to their format and structure, their epistemological assumptions, and their outputs and impacts. Scholars working in Feminist HCI have proposed design considerations for more inclusive hackathons that focus on social justice outcomes for marginalized groups. Evaluative work on hackathons has assessed entrepreneurial contributions, skill development, and affective impacts, but largely absent from the analysis is a view of long-term personal impacts on participants. What kinds of lasting impacts (if any) do issue-focused hackathons have on participants themselves? In this paper, we describe a post-hoc qualitative study with participants and organizers of a postpartum health hackathon in the U.S., one year after the event took place. Our goals were to understand people's motivations for participating, what impact (if any) their participation had on their lives, and how (if at all) their participation shaped how they now understand postpartum health. Our findings indicate that the hackathon functioned as a space of "feminist consciousness raising" in that it provided space for navigating and sharing personal experiences, contextualizing and connecting those experiences to structural oppression, and developing participants' self- and collective-efficacy to create design interventions and enact social change. Feminist consciousness raising is not just "awareness-raising", but rather a specific historic and contemporary practice which we describe and situate in relation to personal experiences of oppression around stigmatized topics. With these findings, we situate feminist consciousness raising in relation to the literature on hackathons and feminist HCI, speculate which aspects of the design of the event led to it fostering feminist consciousness raising, and generate recommendations for how to intentionally bring feminist consciousness raising to the design of hackathons and innovation events.
Raising the Responsible Child
Authors: Oygür Işil , Epstein Daniel A. , Chen Yunan
Published: October 2020

Commercial activity trackers are increasingly being designed for children as young as 3 years old. However, we have limited understanding of family use practices around these trackers. To provide an overall view of how families naturally use activity trackers towards collaborative management of family health, we systematically identified 9 trackers designed for children available on 4 consumer electronics retailers. Our data is composed of 2,628 user reviews both from the consumer retailers (for the wearables) and mobile application stores (for the associated apps). Our findings indicate children's and parents' collaborative use of these technologies beyond health and wellness. Parents state that their children enjoy practicing independence and rewards while contributing to family health management and daily life requirements. Parents expect these devices to ease their life and to teach their children to become more responsible for their health, daily tasks, and schedule. However, the current designs give limited agency on child's side and require parents' active participation for wearable-app coordination. For these reasons, they do not fully address parents' expectations in decreasing their workload. On the other hand, they have the potential to facilitate family interaction with challenges structured around the data reported through trackers.
Emotion Regulation in eSports Gaming
Authors: Kou Yubo , Gui Xinning
Published: October 2020

Today eSports gaming is enjoying growing popularity in the world and much attention from various research areas, including CSCW. eSports gaming is a highly competitive environment commonly associated with negative emotions such as anxiety and stress. However, little attention has been paid to emotion regulation in eSports gaming. In this study, we empirically investigated how players experience emotion and regulate emotions in League of Legends, one of the largest eSports games today. We identify four emotive factors, as well as emotion regulation strategies that players deploy to manage the emotions of their selves, teammates, and opponents. We further report on how they use emotion regulation in emotional self-care and emotional leadership. Building upon this set of findings, we discuss how the competitive eSports gaming context conditions emotion regulation in League of Legends, foreground emotion regulation expertise in competitive gaming, and derive implications for designing emotion regulation technologies.
Conceptual Metaphors Impact Perceptions of Human-AI Collaboration
Authors: Khadpe Pranav , Krishna Ranjay , Fei-Fei Li , Hancock Jeffrey T. , Bernstein Michael S.
Published: October 2020

With the emergence of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) agents, it is important to understand the mechanisms that influence users' experiences of these agents. In this paper, we study one of the most common tools in the designer's toolkit: conceptual metaphors. Metaphors can present an agent as akin to a wry teenager, a toddler, or an experienced butler. How might a choice of metaphor influence our experience of the AI agent? Sampling a set of metaphors along the dimensions of warmth and competence---defined by psychological theories as the primary axes of variation for human social perception---we perform a study $(N=260)$ where we manipulate the metaphor, but not the behavior, of a Wizard-of-Oz conversational agent. Following the experience, participants are surveyed about their intention to use the agent, their desire to cooperate with the agent, and the agent's usability. Contrary to the current tendency of designers to use high competence metaphors to describe AI products, we find that metaphors that signal low competence lead to better evaluations of the agent than metaphors that signal high competence. This effect persists despite both high and low competence agents featuring identical, human-level performance and the wizards being blind to condition. A second study confirms that intention to adopt decreases rapidly as competence projected by the metaphor increases. In a third study, we assess effects of metaphor choices on potential users' desire to try out the system and find that users are drawn to systems that project higher competence and warmth. These results suggest that projecting competence may help attract new users, but those users may discard the agent unless it can quickly correct with a lower competence metaphor. We close with a retrospective analysis that finds similar patterns between metaphors and user attitudes towards past conversational agents such as Xiaoice, Replika, Woebot, Mitsuku, and Tay.
Quality of and Attention to Instructions in Telementoring
Authors: Semsar Azin , McGowan Hannah , Feng Yuanyuan , Zahiri H. Reza , Park Adrian , Kleinsmith Andrea , Mentis Helena M.
Published: October 2020

There is a long-standing interest in CSCW on distributed instruction - both in how it differs from collocated instruction as well as the design of tools to reduce any deficiencies. In this study, we leveraged the unique environment of laparoscopic surgery to compare the efficacy and mechanism of instruction in a collocated and distributed condition. By implementing the same instructional technology in both conditions, we are able to evaluate the effect of distance on instruction without the confounding variable of medium of instruction. Surprisingly, our findings revealed trainees perceived a higher perceived quality of instruction in the distributed condition. Further investigation suggests that in a distributed learning environment, trainees change their behavior to attend more to the provided instructions resulting in this higher perceived quality of instruction. Finally, we discuss our findings with regards to media compensation theory, and we provide both social and technical insights on how to better support a distributed instructional process.
Good for the Many or Best for the Few?
Authors: Dove Graham , Balestra Martina , Mann Devin , Nov Oded
Published: October 2020

Applications in a range of domains, including route planning and well-being, offer advice based on the social information available in prior users' aggregated activity. When designing these applications, is it better to offer: a) advice that if strictly adhered to is more likely to result in an individual successfully achieving their goal, even if fewer users will choose to adopt it? or b) advice that is likely to be adopted by a larger number of users, but which is sub-optimal with regard to any particular individual achieving their goal? We identify this dilemma, characterized as Goal-Directed vs. Adoption-Directed advice, and investigate the design questions it raises through an online experiment undertaken in four advice domains (financial investment, making healthier lifestyle choices, route planning, training for a 5k run), with three user types, and across two levels of uncertainty. We report findings that suggest a preference for advice favoring individual goal attainment over higher user adoption rates, albeit with significant variation across advice domains; and discuss their design implications.
Sketchy: Drawing Inspiration from the Crowd
Authors: Wallace Shaun , Le Brendan , Leiva Luis A. , Haq Aman , Kintisch Ari , Bufrem Gabrielle , Chang Linda , Huang Jeff
Published: October 2020

In-person user studies show that designers draw inspiration by looking at their peers' work while sketching. To recreate this behavior in a virtual environment, we developed Sketchy, a web-based drawing application where users sketch in virtual rooms and use the "Peek'' functionality to gain ideas from their peers' sketches in real-time. To assess if "Peek'' supports individual creativity through finding inspiration, students from a Human-Computer Interaction class sketched user interface design tasks in two studies. Study 1 compares creativity measures with and without Peek between two groups of students, where self-reports reveal Peek increases satisfaction with their final sketch and better supports individual creativity. Study 2 took place in a large classroom, where 90 students, all with Peek enabled, completed different design tasks. Peeking led students to report an intention to change their sketch 18% of the time in Study 1 and 17% of the time in Study 2. Student designers were influenced by sketches that seem closer to completion, contain more details, and are carefully drawn. They were also about three times more likely to clear their canvas and start over if they found a sketch inspirational. Furthermore, sketches created by students with more sketching and design experience influence less experienced student designers. This work explores the directions and benefits of incorporating digital peeking to support individual creativity within a student designer's classroom experience to create more satisfactory final sketches.
Image Wishlist: Context and Images in Commons-Based Peer Production Communities
Authors: Menking Amanda , McDonald David W.
Published: October 2020

One promise of commons-based peer production systems is that they provide content (e.g., text, images, sounds, lines of code) for anyone to use, edit, and distribute. However, when some kinds of content are stripped of context and made available for reuse, there are several knock-on effects. In this paper, we discuss how these knock-on effects can complicate the illustration of Wikipedia's encyclopedic articles. We focus on the particularly difficult case of illustrating articles about female anatomy and women's health. Through our analysis, we demonstrate several barriers to illustrating these kinds of articles, including a lack of representative images on Wikimedia Commons, complex issues of consent, and editorial disagreements about the intended audiences for such images. We argue that these barriers are, in part, the unanticipated effects of decontextualization and subsequent recontextualization as images are removed from their original contexts and made available in Wikimedia Commons. Drawing on prior work in language acquisition and archival studies, we critique the design of commons-based peer production systems and suggest ways in which they might be re-designed to account better for the nuances of context. Finally, we raise questions about the costs of recontextualization in peer production systems in general.
Building Community Knowledge In Online Competitions
Authors: Cheng Ruijia , Zachry Mark
Published: October 2020

Knowledge building is a prevalent feature in open online systems, but it is challenging to motivate participants to contribute and to maintain quality in the participants' contributions. Open online competitions, where participants compete for prizes with knowledge artifacts, offer a potential design model for online systems to incentivize community knowledge building activities. However, while there is evidence that participants contribute to public knowledge and share it during competitions, it remains unclear how and why they do so. In this study, through interviews with 14 participants in Kaggle Competitions, we investigate participants' motivation, practices, and challenges when contributing to community knowledge under a competitive structure. We find that competitive mechanisms impact expert and beginner participants very differently in their public knowledge building behaviors. Experts contribute to shared knowledge in order to compete for reputation, while they tend to form their own niches and only share knowledge artifacts that are abstract and not usable by less experienced participants. Beginners are often driven away from contributing to shared knowledge because of their vulnerable social image. We leverage Scardamalia's framework for Knowledge Building Communities to discuss the different challenges and opportunities that competitive design brings to expert and beginner participants. We offer design implications for effectively implementing competitive mechanisms that could benefit both expert and beginner participants in future knowledge building systems.
Mathematical and Experimental Analysis of the Rate Performance of Viologen-Mediated Glucose Fuel Cells
Authors: Bahari Meisam , Roberts Matthew B. , Watt Gerald D. , Harb John N.
Published: October 2020

Glucose is a desirable source of energy for fuel cell applications. However, its slow oxidation rate on nonprecious metal electrodes has been a challenge. Viologens can potentially mitigate this challenge as they homogeneously oxidize glucose and then transfer electrons to inert electrodes with fast kinetics. This study aims to better understand the factors that determine the effectiveness of viologen as a mediator for glucose oxidation. The relative significance of the key physical processes including homogeneous reaction, mass transfer, and electrochemical reaction was evaluated by dimensional analysis and detailed simulations. While all processes were important under certain conditions, mass transfer was the principal limiting step. Mass transfer was initially improved by flow; however, this impact was counterbalanced by the decreased concentration of the reduced mediator at high flow rates. The maximum obtainable current density was close to 200 mA cm−2, which corresponded to a predicted anode polarization of 300 mV. This current density is noticeably higher than rates available from biological cells and comparable to values for precious-metal-based cells. Thus, viologen-mediated fuel cells offer high rates without the additional cost associated with precious metal electrodes. Finally, the approach presented can be used for process development and optimization of any mediated system.
Spatiotemporal Variations of Extreme Precipitation Events in the Jinsha River Basin, Southwestern China
Authors: Zhang Dan , Wang Wensheng , Liang Shuqi , Wang Shunjiu
Published: October 2020

Climate extremes have attracted widespread attention for their threats to the natural environment and human society. Based on gauged daily precipitation from 1963 to 2016 in four subregions of the Jinsha River Basin (JRB), four extreme precipitation indices developed by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) were employed to assess the spatiotemporal variations of extreme precipitation events. Results show the following: (1) Max one-day precipitation amount (RX1day), max consecutive five-day precipitation amount (RX5day), precipitation on very wet days (R95p), and number of heavy precipitation days (R10mm) showed increasing trends in four subregions except for the decline of R10mm in the southeastern and RX5day in the midsouthern. Extreme precipitation has become more intense and frequent in most parts of the JRB. (2) In space, the four extreme precipitation indices increased from the northwest to the southeast. Temporal trends of extreme precipitation showed great spatial variability. It is notable that extreme precipitation increased apparently in higher elevation areas. (3) The abrupt change of extreme precipitation in the northwestern, midsouthern, and southeastern mainly appeared in the late 1990s and the 2000s. For the midnorthern, abrupt change mainly occurred in the late 1980s. This study is meaningful for regional climate change acquaintance and disaster prevention in the JRB.
Fixed-Time Trajectory Tracking Control of Autonomous Surface Vehicle with Model Uncertainties and Disturbances
Authors: Cui Jiawen , Sun Haibin
Published: October 2020

The issue of fixed-time trajectory tracking control for the autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) system with model uncertainties and external disturbances is investigated in this paper. Particularly, convergence time does not depend on initial conditions. The major contributions include the following: (1) An integral sliding mode controller (ISMC) via integral sliding mode surface is first proposed, which can ensure that the system states can follow the desired trajectory within a fixed time. (2) Unknown external disturbances are absolutely estimated by means of designing a fixed-time disturbance observer (FTDO). By combining the FTDO and ISMC techniques, a new control scheme (FTDO-ISMC) is developed, which can achieve both disturbance compensation and chattering-free condition. (3) Aiming at reconstructing the unknown nonlinear dynamics and external disturbances, a fixed-time unknown observer (FTUO) is proposed, thus providing the FTUO-ISMC scheme that finally achieves trajectory tracking of ASVs with unknown parameters. Finally, simulation tests and detailed comparisons indicate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.
Review of the Urinary Schistosomiasis Control in Morocco (1960–2018)
Authors: Balahbib A. , Amarir F. , Bouhout S. , Rhajaoui M. , Adlaoui E. , Sadak A.
Published: October 2020

The purpose of this study is to describe the epidemiological profile and evolution of urinary schistosomiasis in Morocco, from the first confirmed case in 1960 until disease elimination, and control snails. During this period, 129,526 cases were recorded in Morocco. A majority of cases were reported in Agadir province (25%), Errachidia (18%), and Beni Mellal (13%). Other cases have been reported in the other provinces. Activities within the National Schistosomiasis Control Programme for more than three decades were focused in priori on screening in schools located in high-risk communities, treatment program, surveillance of snails in water bodies, and mollusciciding. Then, the goal of eliminating the transmission of schistosomiasis has been reached in 2004. Sixteen years later, no indigenous cases were detected in Morocco, and only 25 residual cases (resulting from bilharziasis previously treated) are detected, such as in Tata ( 40%), Errachidia (16%), and (12%) in Marrackesh. Similarly, recent national studies conducted on children and the snail reservoir hosts have indicated that no human and molluscs are currently infected with Schistosoma haematobium. Actually, timely investigation and management of imported cases has been implemented to prevent the reintroduction of the disease. The Ministry of Health is planning to implement final confirmatory surveys before requesting WHO to proceed with the formal verification process.
Research on Transient Overvoltage Suppression Measures for Photovoltaics Connected to the DC Sending End in the Smart Power System for Industry 4.0
Authors: Niu Shuanbao , Ke Xianbo , Shen Qiang , Huo Chao , Chen Ning , Li Hua
Published: October 2020

The development of smart power systems in Industry 4.0 will bring people better quality electrical energy. The photovoltaic power generation system in the smart grid for Industry 4.0 is also the focus of development. The rapid development of photovoltaic power generation systems will bring people cleaner and greener energy. However, it will cause the transient overvoltage phenomenon near the DC sending terminal when the large-scale photovoltaic plant is connected to the power grid, further bringing about a profound impact on the power grid and its security and stability. In this paper, it is proposed that the rise of transient overvoltage at the photovoltaic terminal is caused by three main factors including the reactive power surplus of DC commutation failure, the weak power grid at the sending terminal, and the control characteristics of the photovoltaic plant. Then, the coordinated control strategy of transient overvoltage is proposed, and the overvoltage control strategy of the DC transmission terminal and the photovoltaic power plant control strategy are, respectively, optimized. Finally, the influence parameters of overvoltage are analysed and the corresponding photovoltaic strategy is presented. The optimization results of photovoltaic parameters and the proposed strategies of photovoltaic power generation can effectively restrain the voltage or frequency fluctuation and power oscillation caused by HVDC commutation failure. This study promotes the development of the photovoltaic power generation system in the intelligent power system of industry 4.0.
Construction and Analysis of a Novel Wearable Assistive Device for a Visually Impaired Person
Authors: Akram Shahid , Mahmood Ali , Ullah Ihsan , Mujtabah Muhammad Tahir , Yasin Ali Bin , Butt Asif Raza , Shafique Muhammad , Manzoor Sajjad
Published: October 2020

In this paper, we have given the design and development of a new wearable device that assists visually impaired individuals to travel independently and confidently. The newly proposed device is based on range-based sensors and would work effectively in both indoor and outdoor conditions. It is constructed in the form of two separate modules; one module is designed such that it can be attached to the waist belt of the user, and the other module is designed to wear it on ankle of the user. Both the modules communicate with each other using wireless communication and can cover the full front environment of the user. The information about the front environment is transmitted to the user, via headphone, by sending a set of voice instructions, stored in a memory card added in the belt module. In order to use the device in crowd mode, appropriate networking techniques were also implemented in the prototype such that the interference of two or more devices in the close vicinity can be avoided. In the end, effectiveness of the device is analyzed and proved by conducting experiments and obtaining statistical results.
Rethinking Assessment Concepts in Dental Education
Authors: El-Kishawi Mohamed , Khalaf Khaled , Al-Najjar Dana , Seraj Zahra , Al Kawas Sausan
Published: October 2020

Introduction. Dental education involves teaching and assessing the acquisition of verifiable domains that require superior psychomotor, communication, and cognitive skills. Evolving technologies and methods of assessment could enhance student’s learning environment and improve tutor assessment experience. The aim of this study was to review the current body of research and evaluate the effectiveness of various methods of assessments in improving learning and performance in preclinical and clinical dental practice. Materials and Methods. A search strategy was implemented using electronic search in major databases. The following key terms, clinical skills, preclinical, dental students, and assessment, were included in the search. Two reviewers independently screened all the articles retrieved following very specific inclusion criteria. Results. The initial search generated 5371 articles and 24 articles were selected for review and data extraction. Cohen’s kappa coefficient was used to measure interrater agreement and a score of 94.7% was obtained. Conclusion. Preclinical assessment is an effective tool for promoting skills transfer to clinical phase. Early psychomotor skills assessment is valuable. It allows early intervention in the learning process and assists in effective utilization of learning resources. Technology-enhanced assessment systems allow better patient simulation, enhance learning and self-assessment experiences, and improve performance evaluation. However, these systems serve as an adjunct to conventional assessment methods. Further research should aim at calibrating and integrating these systems to optimize students learning and performance.
Ruellia tuberosa L. Extract Improves Histopathology and Lowers Malondialdehyde Levels and TNF Alpha Expression in the Kidney of Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats
Authors: Roosdiana Anna , Permata Fajar Shodiq , Fitriani Riera Indah , Umam Khairul , Safitri Anna
Published: October 2020

Ruellia tuberosa L. is a therapeutic plant that is generally consumed in Indonesian traditional medicine to prevent or cure various illnesses, i.e., diabetes. The current study was conducted to investigate the effects of hydroethanolic root extracts of Ruellia tuberosa L. on the kidney of streptozotocin-induced diabetic Wistar rats. In this study, male Wistar rats were divided into 5 groups: healthy rats (group 1), diabetic rats (group 2), and treated rats which received extract at dosages of 250 (group 3), 375 (group 4), and 500 (group 5) mg/kg body weight for 21 days. Diabetes mellitus was experimentally induced by the administration of five doses of streptozotocin 20 mg/kg body weight within five consecutive days. Significant increases in the value of TNF alpha expression and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels were observed in streptozotocin-induced diabetes rats. Furthermore, severe histological alterations of kidney tissues occurred in the diabetic rats group. After treatment was applied, the value of TNF alpha expression and MDA levels on the kidney decreased considerably

p
<
0.05

in groups 3, 4, and 5. The optimum dosage was obtained at a dose of 250 mg/kg body weight (group 3), which had 42.24% and 52.70% decrease in TNF alpha expression and MDA levels, respectively. The histopathological profiles of the kidney also showed significant improvements in treated groups. The most prominent recoveries were also shown in group 3. The treatments induced repairment in the glomerular and renal tubular damages in the kidney tissues. To conclude, these results emphasize potentially health valuable properties of hydroethanolic root extracts of R. tuberosa L. in rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes.
The Mechanism of the Effects of Experiential Marketing on Urban Consumers’ Well-Being
Authors: Liu Hongshen , Fu Yuying , He Hao
Published: October 2020

Knowing how to improve urban consumers’ well-being is of great importance for sustainable urban development and has become a research hotspot in the field of service marketing, which is evolving from functionality-focused view into experience-focused view. This study explored the mechanism and boundary conditions of experiential marketing on urban consumers’ well-being with a survey data collected from 256 consumers in the catering service industry in China. The results showed that experiential marketing had a significant positive impact on consumer well-being, experiential value played a partial mediation role between experiential marketing and consumer well-being, value proposition engagement moderated the relationship between experiential value and consumer well-being, and value proposition engagement moderated the mediation role of experiential value between experiential marketing and consumer well-being. This study complements the literature of transformative service by revealing a complex mechanism relating to the effects of experiential marketing on urban consumers’ well-being and provides theoretical guidance for service enterprises to improve their offerings.
Retention and Clinical Performance of Zirconia Crowns: A Comprehensive Review
Authors: Soleimani Fatemeh , Jalali Hamid , Mostafavi Azam Sadat , Zeighami Somayeh , Memarian Maryam
Published: October 2020

Zirconia has been used for rehabilitation of edentulous spaces approximately for a decade, and there have been several reports regarding the clinical performance and retention of zirconia crowns. Outstanding mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and excellent aesthetics make zirconia-based crowns as a popular crown among the current all-ceramic crowns in restorative dentistry. However, restoration with a zirconia crown is a challenging treatment. The goal of this study was to assess the current literature to summarize the studies reporting the effective risk factors on retention of zirconia crowns to provide clinicians with a useful point of view in the decision-making process for use of these restorations. Literature based-search was performed to find related articles until August 2020 using EMBASE, Google Scholar, and MEDLINE. Search terms used were “zirconia restorations properties,” “zirconia crowns clinical performance,” “zirconia crown survival,” “biological complications,” and “zirconia crown retention.” Results were limited to papers available in English. The references of all related literature were also searched for further citations. Overall, although clinical long-term and follow-up studies are a vital requirement to conclude that zirconia has great reliability, it seems that zirconia crown restorations are both well tolerated and sufficiently resistant.
Electrochemical Behavior of CsI in LiCl Molten Salt
Authors: Kim Sung-Wook , Lee Sang-Kwon , Jeon Min Ku , Choi Eun-Young
Published: October 2020

The electrochemical behavior of CsI in LiCl molten salt was investigated to identify its impact on the electrolytic oxide reduction of oxide-phase spent nuclear fuels by combined electrolysis and cyclic voltammetry experiments of LiCl-CsI in comparison with LiCl, LiCl-CsCl, and LiCl-LiI. It was found that Cs+ ions were hardly involved in the cathode reaction, and reduction of Li+ ions occurred dominantly in the cathode. In contrast, incorporation of I− ions induced low-potential anode reaction compared with the I− ion-free cases. Such additional electrochemical reaction resulted in the generation of I2 and/or ICl gases, which would increase a process burden for treating 129I with exceptionally long lifetime. In this respect, separating CsI from spent nuclear fuel before the electrolytic oxide reduction is recommended for the purpose of efficient waste management.
Postcontrast Fluid-Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) Sequence MR Imaging in Detecting Intracranial Pathology
Authors: Mahale Ajit , Choudhary Shaloo , Ullal Sonali , Fernandes Merwyn , Prabhu Sonali
Published: October 2020

Background. Imaging sequences for detection of meningeal and parenchymal lesions are critical in intracranial pathology. Our study analysed FLAIR MRI sequence for evaluating postcontrast enhancement. Objectives. FLAIR imaging sequences have been used in evaluation of enhancement in the brain. We conducted a study of FLAIR imaging sequences to better delineate postcontrast enhancement. Materials and Methods. In this prospective hospital-based observational study, postcontrast T1 MTC and delayed postcontrast T2 FLAIR and T1 FLAIR images of 66 patients with intracranial pathology were assessed by experienced radiologists from November 2017 to November 2019. Results. 28 cases of meningeal enhancement were identified in delayed postcontrast T2 FLAIR images. Low-grade gliomas included in the study showed postcontrast enhancement on postcontrast T1 MTC images. Multiple sclerosis lesions were better seen on postcontrast T1 FLAIR. In extraaxial lesions of 11 cases of meningioma, brighter enhancement was seen on delayed postcontrast T2 FLAIR images. Conclusion. We found that delayed postcontrast T2 FLAIR was better in detection of meningeal enhancement in infectious meningitis and in meningitis carcinomatosis than T1 MTC images. In delayed postcontrast T2 FLAIR images, intra-axial parenchyma lesions appeared more conspicuous or similar to T1 MTC images. Delayed postcontrast T1 FLAIR images provided better anatomic delineation of intra-axial lesions.
Experimental Research on Fatigue Behavior of Existing Reinforced Concrete Beams
Authors: Qu Guangzhen , Huang Pingming , Zhou Guangli , Lv Sizhong
Published: October 2020

In order to obtain the law of the fatigue damage development of reinforced concrete hollow beams that has been in service for 24 years, its solid hollow beams were removed and transported to the laboratory for loading test. Two beams were selected for static loading to obtain the ultimate flexural bearing capacity, and three beams were, respectively, subjected to constant‐amplitude fatigue loading with different load amplitudes. The static and dynamic behaviors of the beams were monitored in the fatigue test. The fatigue failure of the beams showed that the outermost rebar at the butt weld fractured at first, and the crack width at the fracture position of the steel bar was about 0.3 mm, which was largest in all cracks. After a rebar was broken, midspan deflection and flexibility increased by approximately 20% and 10%, respectively, relative to the initial state. The damage developed rapidly in the following range: (1) the first 10,000 fatigue cycles; (2) after fatigue fracture of the rebar; and in the intermediate stage of fatigue test, the damage development was relatively stable. As the loading amplitude increased, the stiffness degradation and the cumulative damage that occured under the same loading cycle were more significant.
Successful Pregnancy in a Case of Behçet’s Disease after Treatment with Prednisolone
Authors: Nishii Shogo , Yamaguchi Koushi , Amita Mitsuyoshi , Saito Takakazu , Saito Hidekazu , Sekizawa Akihiko
Published: October 2020

A 34-year-old woman (gravida 1, para 0) visited the Division of Reproductive Medicine/National Center for Child Health and Development due to infertility; she had also been suffering from incompletely treated genital ulcers and stomatitis for 10 years. This case was diagnosed as an incomplete-type Behçet’s disease (BD) at the Department of Maternal-Fetal Biology/National Center for Child Health and Development. Since no apparent abnormality was found in the general infertility test, artificial insemination with the husband’s semen (AIH) was performed for the patient with unexplained infertility, which failed. However, after treating BD with prednisolone, chronic inflammation (stomatitis and genital ulcer) and immunological abnormalities (Th2 and NK cell activity) improved, and conception was possible by AIH. Thus, prednisolone administration may have induced immune tolerance in the patient with BD, which may have contributed to the success of AIH.
Achieving Message-Encapsulated Leveled FHE for IoT Privacy Protection
Authors: Ouyang Weiping , Ma Chunguang , Zhang Guoyin , Diao Keming
Published: October 2020

The rapid development of the Internet of Things has made the issue of privacy protection even more concerning. Privacy protection has affected the large-scale application of the Internet of Things. Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is a newly emerging public key encryption scheme, which can be used to prevent information leakage. It allows performing arbitrary algebraic operations on data which are encrypted, such that the operation performed on the ciphertext is directly transformed into the corresponding plaintext. Recently, overwhelming majority of FHE schemes are confined to single-bit encryption, whereas how to achieve a multibit FHE scheme is still an open problem. This problem is partially (rather than fully) solved by Hiromasa-Abe-Okamoto (PKC′15), who proposed a packed message FHE scheme which only supports decryption in a bit-by-bit manner. Followed by that, Li-Ma-Morais-Du (Inscrypt′16) proposed a multibit FHE scheme which can decrypt the ciphertext at one time, but their scheme is based on dual LWE assumption. Armed with the abovementioned two schemes, in this paper, we propose an efficient packed message FHE that supports the decryption in two ways: single-bit decryption and one-time decryption.
Enumeration of Potential Teaching Methods in Higher Education: A Cross-Disciplinary Study
Authors: Mohiuddin Khalid , Islam Mohammad Aminul , Sharif Mansoor , Nur Shakila , Talukder Md. Shahrear , Alghobiri Mohammed A
Published: October 2020

In today’s multifaceted academic context, selecting, adopting, and adapting appropriate teaching methods (TMs) have been a pivotal concern for teachers. No study, to the researchers’ knowledge, has been conducted on compiling the maximum number of TMs in higher education. This study aims to list, describe, and provide a platform of the potential and the most practicing TMs in four major educational disciplines. This article, taking a cross-disciplinary lens, conducts an in-depth review of 90 articles and enumerates 110 TMs of higher education. It also identifies several TMs that are commonly used in each discipline. The article concludes that knowledge generated from this study fills up the existing literature gap. It calls attention to the current TM practices and provides teachers with an outline to employ available TMs in their respective disciplines.
Analysis Technology of Tennis Sports Match Based on Data Mining and Image Feature Retrieval
Authors: Huang Hong , Deng Risheng
Published: October 2020

Tennis game technical analysis is affected by factors such as complex background and on-site noise, which will lead to certain deviations in the results, and it is difficult to obtain scientific and effective tennis technical training strategies through a few game videos. In order to improve the performance of tennis game technical analysis, based on machine learning algorithms, this paper combines image analysis to identify athletes’ movement characteristics and image feature recognition processing with image recognition technology, realizes real-time tracking of athletes’ dynamic characteristics, and records technical characteristics. Moreover, this paper combines data mining technology to obtain effective data from massive video and image data, uses mathematical statistics and data mining technology for data processing, and scientifically analyzes tennis game technology with the support of ergonomics. In addition, this paper designs a controlled experiment to verify the technical analysis effect of the tennis match and the performance of the model itself. The research results show that the model constructed in this paper has certain practical effects and can be applied to actual competitions.
A Case of Asymptomatic Pulmonary Artery Aneurysm with Review of Management Strategies
Authors: Ayub Muhammad Talha , Zimmerman Allison , Rasool Wajeeha , Kalra Dinesh , Tracy Melissa , Rao Anupama K.
Published: October 2020

Pulmonary artery aneurysm (PAA) is defined as pulmonary artery diameter greater than 4 cm. With advances in cardiac imaging, the detection rate has increased but the natural history remains unknown. We present the case of a large, incidentally identified PAA in a patient with a history of congenital pulmonic stenosis.