Superior oxygen and glucose supply in perfusion cell cultures compared to static cell cultures demonstrated by simulations using the finite element method

Oxygen and glucose supply is one of the important factors for the growth and viability of the cells in cultivation of tissues, e.g., spheroid, multilayered cells, and three-dimensional tissue construct. In this study, we used finite element methods to simulate the flow profile as well as oxygen and glucose supply to the multilayered cells in a microwell array chip for static and perfusion cultures. The simulation results indicated that oxygen supply is more crucial than glucose supply in both static and perfusion cultures, and that the oxygen supply through the wall of the perfusion culture chip is important in perfusion cultures. Glucose concentrations decline with time in static cultures, whereas they can be maintained at a constant level over time in perfusion cultures. The simulation of perfusion cultures indicated that the important parameters for glucose supply are the flow rate of the perfusion medium and the length of the cell culture chamber. In a perfusion culture chip made of oxygen-permeable materials, e.g., polydimethylsiloxane, oxygen is hardly supplied via the perfusion medium, but mainly supplied through the walls of the perfusion culture chip. The simulation of perfusion cultures indicated that the important parameters for oxygen supply are the thickness of the flow channel and the oxygen permeability of the walls of the channel, i.e., the type of material and the thickness of the wall.     

Stress responses during aerobic exercise in relation to motivational dominance and state

We examined the hypothesis that congruence between motivational dominance and state results in optimal psychological responses and performance during exercise. Twenty participants (10 telic dominant and 10 paratelic dominant) rated their stress at 5 min intervals as they cycled on an ergometer at gas exchange threshold for 30 min in both telic and paratelic state manipulated conditions. Participants then performed a test to exhaustion at a resistance equivalent to 110% of VO(2max). The hypothesized interaction between condition and dominance was significant for internal tension stress, as paratelic dominants were more stressed than telic dominants when exercising in the telic state and telic dominants were more stressed than paratelic dominants when exercising in the paratelic state. Similarly, the condition × dominance interaction for internal stress discrepancy was significant, as paratelic dominants reported greater internal stress discrepancy exercising in the telic compared with the paratelic state. Findings are discussed in relation to the application of reversal theory for understanding stress responses during aerobic exercise.     

Driving force and structural strength evaluation of a flexible mechanical system with a hydrostatic skeleton

The purpose of this study was to build a flexible mechanical system with a hydrostatic skeleton. The main components of this system are two type flexible bags. One is a structural bag with constant inner pressure. The other is an actuator bag with controlled inner pressure. To design the system, it was necessary to estimate both structural deformation and driving force. Nu- merical analysis of flexible bags, however, is difficult because of large nonlinear deformation. This study analyzed structural strength and driving force of flexible bags with the nonlinear finite element analysis （FEA） software ABAQUS. The stress con- centration dependency on the bag shape is described and the driving force is calculated to include the large deformation. From the analytical results, this study derives an empirical equation of driving force. The validity of the equation was confirmed by condition-changed analyses and experimental results.     

Cultural Difference in Conflict Management Strategies of Children and Its Development: Comparing 3- and 5-Year-Olds Across China,Japan, and Korea

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the development of conflict management strategies, focusing on 3- and 5-year-olds, through a comparison of 3 neighboring Asian cultures, those of China (n = 114), Japan (n = 98), and Korea (n = 90). The dual concern model of conflict management was adopted to probe which strategy children would prefer to use in 2 hypothetical conflict situations. Results indicated that, first, for disagreement, 3-year-olds in the 3 countries equally preferred the dominating strategy. For competition for resources, 3-year-olds differed in their strategy preference across all cultures. Second, the observed strategy preference of 3- to 5-year-old children in this study was more or less different from that of older schoolchildren, regardless of culture. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest the significance of the context, the complexity of the phenomenon of the development of cultural differences, and the significance of cohort sampling.     

A dynamically deformable microfilter for selective separation of specific substances in microfluidics

To study an environmental or biological solution, it is essential to separate its constituents. In this study, a 3D-deformable dynamic microfilter was developed to selectively separate the target substance from a solution. This microfilter is a fine metallic nickel structure fabricated using photolithography and electroplating techniques. It is gold-coated across its entire surface with multiple slits of 10–20 μm in width. Its two-dimensional shape is deformed into a three-dimensional shape when used for fluid separation due to hydrodynamic forces. By adjusting the pressure applied to the microfilter, the size of the gap created by deformation can be changed. To effectively isolate the target substance, the relationship between the solution flow rate and the extent of microfilter deformation was investigated. The filtration experiments demonstrated the microfilter’s ability to isolate the target substance with elastic deformation without undergoing plastic deformation. Additionally, modification of the microfilter surface with nucleic acid aptamers resulted in the selective isolation of the target cell, which further demonstrates the potential application of microfilters in the isolation of specific components of heterogeneous solutions.     

Educating students with mild disabilities in general education classrooms: Minnesota alternatives

This article reports two major data collection efforts conducted during successive years. Study 1 examined the relationship between the school effectiveness variables identified in the Minnesota Educational Effectiveness Project (MEEP), and the attitudes and achievement of students in 31 MEEP schools. Study 2, which focused on 11 of the Study 1 schools, compared the instructional programs provided to students with mild disabilities in three integrated programs in these 11 schools, with those provided by conventional resource "pull-out" programs in three other schools. We not only contrasted program characteristics, but analyzed differences between program characteristics and cognitive and affective outcomes. Results do not provide a strong basis for concluding that general efforts at school improvement will provide the framework for improved outcomes among low-achieving students.     

An Analysis of Children's Web Pages in Public Library Web Sites in Japan

A progenitor article for this work can be found in Public Library Quarterly 27, no. 4. This study is the first to report on the types of contents in children's web pages and the characteristics of Web-OPACs for children in public library websites in Japan. This study reveals that children's web pages, in general, place more emphasis on providing guidance on library services and on the use of information resources for reference services, rather than on helping children with regular learning or providing research assistance to adults on children's services. Other findings are reported as well.     

How narratives move your mind: A corpus of shared-character stories for connecting emotional flow and interestingness

Creativity is considered a human characteristic; creative endeavors, including automatic story generation, have been a major challenge for artificial intelligences. To understand how humans create and evaluate stories, we (1) construct a story dataset and (2) analyze the relationship between emotions and story interestingness. Given that understanding how to move readers emotionally is a crucial creative technique, we focus on the role of emotions in evaluating reader satisfaction. Although conventional research has highlighted emotions read from a text, we hypothesize that readers’ emotions do not necessarily coincide with those of the characters. The story dataset created for this study describes situations surrounding two characters. Crowdsourced volunteers label stories with the emotions of the two characters and those of readers; we then empirically analyze the relationship between emotions and interestingness. The results show that a story’s score has a stronger relationship to the readers’ emotions than the characters’ emotions.     

Interculturality as an interactional achievement: Doubting others’ nationality and accounting for the doubt

ABSTRACT

This article examines the notion of interculturality in face-to-face, multilingual, ordinary interactions. The focus is on how participants perform constituent actions by reference to members’ normative expectations to a specific membership category. Employing ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, this article elucidates interculturality is an interactional achievement in interaction. More specifically, I describe interactional practices for doubting others’ nationality and accounting for doubts accomplished by particular interactional practices in a specific interactional position. Analyzing these interactional contingencies produced by participants demonstrates that members’ practices to make interculturality relevant in a temporal unfolding of the activity and shows how they reflexively use interculturality as a resource for constituent actions. This study contributes to the existing literature on the interactional construction of international and intercultural communication, and on the situated, sequential, and embodied organization of interculturality.     

Do systems pass university entrance exams?

Reading Comprehension tests are commonly used to assess the degree to which people comprehend what they read. This is why we work with the hypothesis that it is reasonable to use these tests to assess the degree to which a machine “comprehends” what it is reading. In this work, we evaluate Question Answering systems using Reading Comprehension tests from exams to enter University. This article analyses the datasets generated, the kind of inferences required, the methodology followed in three evaluation campaigns, the approaches presented by participants and current results. Besides, we study the evolution of systems and the main lessons learned in this evaluation process. We also show how current technologies are unable to pass university-entrance exams. This is because these tests require a deep understanding of texts, as well as detecting the similar meaning of phrases with different words. Future directions focused on these ideas seem more promising than including a massive amount of data for training systems, what has allowed systems to obtain outstanding results in Reading Comprehension tests with more straightforward questions. We think this study helps to increase the knowledge about how to develop better Question Answering systems.