Development of a diagnostic system using a testing-based approach for strengthening student prior knowledge

Students learn new instructions well by building on relevant prior knowledge, as it affects how instructors and students interact with the learning materials. Moreover, studies have found that good prior knowledge can enable students to attain better learning motivation, comprehension, and performance. This suggests it is important to assist students in obtaining the relevant prior knowledge, as this can enable them to engage meaningfully with the learning materials. Tests are often used to help instructors assess students’ prior knowledge. Nevertheless, conventional testing approaches usually assign only a score to each student, and this may mean that students are unable to realize their own individual weaknesses. To address this problem, instructors can diagnose the test results to provide more detailed information to each student, but this is obviously a time-consuming process. Therefore, this study proposes a testing-based diagnosis system to assist instructors and students in diagnosing and strengthening prior knowledge before new instruction is undertaken. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in an interdisciplinary course, since several studies have indicated that students learn more and better in such courses when applying relevant prior knowledge to what they are learning. The experimental results show that the developed system is able to effectively diagnose students’ prior knowledge and enhance their learning motivation and performance on an interdisciplinary course. In addition, two diagnostic evaluations were also conducted to assess whether the diagnoses given by the system were consistent with the decisions of experts. The results demonstrate that the proposed system can effectively assist instructors and students in diagnosing and strengthening prior knowledge before new instruction is undertaken, since the diagnoses produced by the system were broadly consistent with those of experts.     

Development of high throughput microfluidic cell culture chip for perfusion 3-dimensional cell culture-based chemosensitivity assay

This study reports a microfluidic cell culture chip encompassing 36 microbioreactors for high throughput perfusion 3-dimensional (3D) cell culture-based chemosensitivity assays. Its advantages include the capability for multiplexed medium delivery, and the function for both efficient and high throughput micro-scale 3D culture construct preparation and loading. The results showed that the proposed medium pumping mechanism was able to provide a uniform pumping rates ranging from 1.2 to 3.9 μl h⁻¹. In addition, the simple cell/hydrogel loading scheme has been proven to be able to carry out 3D cell culture construct preparation and loading precisely and efficiently. Furthermore, a chemosensitivity assay was successfully demonstrated using the proposed cell culture chip. The results obtained were also compared with the same evaluation based on a conventional 2D monolayer cell culture. It can be concluded that the choice of cell culture format can result in different chemosensitivity evaluation results. Overall, because of the nature of miniaturized perfusion 3D cell culture, the cell culture chip not only can provide stable, well-defined and more biologically relevant culture environments, but it also features low consumption of research resources. All these traits are found particularly useful for high-precision and high-throughput 3D cell culture-based assays.     

The low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) thin film MOS Schottky diode on glass substrate for low cost and high performance CO sensing applications

The Au/SnO₂/n-LTPS MOS Schottky diode prepared on a glass substrate for carbon monoxide (CO) sensing applications is studied. The n-LTPS (n-type low temperature polysilicon) is prepared by excimer laser annealing and PH₃ plasma treatment of an amorphous Si thin film on glass substrate. The developed Schottky diode exhibits a high relative response ratio of ∼546% to 100 ppm CO ambient under condition of 200 °C and −3 V bias. The response ratio is better than the reported SnO₂ based resistive type CO sensors of 100% and 37%, respectively on poly-alumina and glass substrates or comparable to 390% of Pt-AlGaN/GaN Schottky diode CO sensor. Thus, the Au/SnO₂/n-LTPS Schottky diode has the potential to develop a low cost high performance CO sensor.     

MINING SURPRISING PATTERNS AND THEIR EXPLANATIONS IN CLINICAL DATA

□ We present a new technique for interactively mining patterns and generating explanations by harnessing the expertise of domain experts. Key to the approach is the distinction between what is unexpected from the perspective of the computational data mining process and what is surprising to the domain experts and interesting relative to their needs. We demonstrate the potential of the approach for discovering patterns and generating rich explanations in a clinical domain. Discovering interesting facts in clinical data is a grand challenge, because medical practitioners and clinicians generally have exceptional knowledge in the problem domain in which they work, however, this knowledge is typically difficult to isolate computationally. To identify the desired surprising patterns, we formally record user knowledge and use that knowledge to filter and constrain the output from an objective data mining technique, with the user making the final judgement about whether a rule is surprising. Specifically, we introduce an unexpectedness algorithm based on association rule mining and Bayesian Networks and a ?-explanations technique for explanation generation to identify unexpected patterns. An implemented prototype is successfully demonstrated using a large clinical database recording incidence, prevalance, and outcome of dialysis and kidney transplant patients.     

Lead-lag compensator design by the Hough transform

The frequency response of a compensator can be expressed as a curve in the complex plane. The Hough transform is very useful in finding a mathematical model which matches the curve in a plane very well. We combine these concepts to generate a new method of compensator design. Two examples are illustrated to explain the design procedure and results.     

A low cost n-SiCN/p-SiCN homojunction for high temperature and high gain ultraviolet detecting applications

A novel n-SiCN/p-SiCN homojunction was developed on Si substrate for low cost and high temperature ultraviolet (UV) detecting applications. The current ratio of the junction under −5 V bias, with and without irradiation of 254 nm UV light are 1940 and 96.3, at room temperature and 175 °C, respectively. Compared to the reported UV detectors with material of 4H-SiC or β-SiC, the developed n-SiCN/p-SiCN homojunction has better current ratio in both room and elevated temperature.     

Differences in indentation and wear behaviors between the two sides of thermally tempered soda lime silica glass

Thermal tempering is an industrial process widely used to make soda lime silica (SLS) glass panels stronger and tougher. During the tempering process, the upper and bottom sides of the glass may experience different cooling rates, and thus, their properties could be different. This study characterized changes in surface composition and subsurface glass network structures as well as indentation and wear resistance properties of the air- and tin-sides of 6-mm-thick SLS window panels faced toward the upper and sliding roller sides during thermal tempering. The results showed that although the chemical and structural differences detected with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and specular reflection infrared spectroscopy are subtle, there are large differences in nanoindentation behaviors and mechanochemical wear properties of the SLS glass surface. The findings of this study provide further insights into the performance difference between the air- and tin-sides of the SLS glass panel treated with thermal tempering.     

Characteristics of highly orientated BiFeO3 thin films on a LaNiO3-coated Si substrate by RF sputtering

BiFeO₃ (BFO) films were grown on LaNiO₃-coated Si substrate by a RF magnetron sputtering system at temperatures in the range of 300-700 °C. X-ray reflectivity and high-resolution diffraction measurements were employed to characterize the microstructure of these films. For a substrate temperature below 300 °C and at 700 °C only partially crystalline films and completely randomly polycrystalline films were grown, whereas highly (001)-orientated BFO film was obtained for a substrate temperature in the range of 400-600 °C. The crystalline quality of BFO thin films increase as the deposition temperature increase except for the film deposited at 700 °C. The fitted result from X-ray reflectivity curves show that the densities of the BFO films are slightly less than their bulk values. For the BFO films deposited at 300-600 °C, the higher the deposition temperature, the larger the remnant polarization and surface roughness of the films present.     

Evaluation of a multi-layer microbraided polylactic acid fiber-reinforced conduit for peripheral nerve regeneration

We evaluated peripheral nerve regeneration using a biodegradable multi-layer microbraided polylactic acid (PLA) fiber-reinforced conduit. Biodegradability of the PLA conduit and its effectiveness as a guidance channel were examined as it was used to repair a 10 mm gap in the rat sciatic nerve. As a result, tube fragmentation was not obvious and successful regeneration through the gap occurred in all the conduits at 8 weeks after operation. These results indicate the superiority of the PLA materials and suggest that the multi-layer microbraided PLA fiber-reinforced conduits provide a promising tool for neuro-regeneration. Ming-Chin Lu, Chun-Hsu Yao, and Yueh-Sheng Chen are contributed equally to this work.     

Novel Authentic and Ultrafast Organic Photorecorders Enhanced by AIE-Active Polymer Electrets via Interlayer Charge Recombination

Organic photonic memory, featuring a variety of glamorously light-driven characteristics, is rapidly growing into an indispensable building block for next-generation optical communication systems. However, the ambiguity of their operating mechanism associated with the limitation of photoadaptive materials as an electronics promoter results in the slow development of photonic transistor-based devices. In this study, the conjugated polymers composed of donor–acceptor motifs with typical aggregation-induced emission (AIE) behaviors are designed and successfully discover high-performance photoprogrammable memory. Moreover, the mechanism of photoboosted recording behavior, attributed to the recombination of the formed interlayer excitons right after simultaneous excitation without applying vertical and parallel electric-field at the interface in-between active semiconductor and AIE polymers, is cautiously corroborated by steady-state PL and pulse PL measurements. The AIE-polymer memory devices perform ultrafast photoresponse time of 0.1 ms, an outstanding current switch ratio up to 10⁶, and retention stability over 40 000 s without significant dissipation. Furthermore, photoresponsive AIE-polymer electrets not only modulate the memory performance through the emission wavelength but easily switch storage behavior of nonvolatile memory from flash to WORM by adjusting the torsion-angle through the motif of the donor and acceptor moieties. These findings open an avenue for designing conjugated polymer electret for ultrafast optical storage devices.