Podium Session F

ABSTRACT:

The main purpose of this study is to expand foundational knowledge about innovation in hospitality and thereby facilitate the future development of a theory of innovation in hospitality. The target population is customers of hospitality and gaming organizations. Participants will be enrolled through MTurk, targeting those who are 21 years and above. Each participant will be shown a video of the robot and kiosk. All participants will be asked to answer to questions regarding their preference in using the kiosk, robot or a human agent when placing a sports bet in a casino.

ABSTRACT:

While the mineral olivine ((Mg,Fe)2SiO4) has been proposed as an indicator for the duration of water-rock interaction on Mars, olivine dissolution rates depend on a complex combination of environmental factors including reacting-fluid pH and temperature. Here we examine the effect of environmental conditions on dissolution of natural and emplaced olivine within Mg- and Fe-rich soils, chemically like many Martian sediments, developing under mediterranean, subarctic, and desert climates to investigate the utility of olivine as an indicator for the duration and nature of water-rock interaction on Mars. Olivine disks were buried for exactly 1 year and analyzed through microscopy and spectroscopy techniques to examine the formation of dissolution features and relative dissolution rates. Natural olivine persists up to ~12 ka in the mediterranean climate but up to >20 ka in the subarctic climate. We observed little alteration of disk surfaces buried in the desert climate but observed leaching of Mg from and formation of lines and shallow pits on disk surfaces buried in the mediterranean and subarctic climate, with the mediterranean climate promoting more rapid dissolution. Disks buried under the mediterranean climate exhibited the greatest formation of dissolution features. Disk alteration thus correlates well with environmental conditions. Variations in olivine weathering on Mars determined by rover analyses and following sample return may thus yield important information about environmental conditions during alteration while olivine persistence on Mars would be consistent with cooler temperatures, limited durations of water-rock interactions, and more alkaline pH conditions.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose of Study

To investigate alterations in lipid metabolism during carcinogenesis from pretumor tissue towards hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and to identify lipid species biomarkers for early detection of HCC.

Methods

Liver tissue samples were collected from HCC patients. The samples were used to investigate the differences in lipid compositions between tumor and its surrounding hepatic tissue (SHT). A sample of the liver tumor and a sample of SHT were collected from each patient. A total of 32 samples were included in this study. Lipid profiling was performed using an automated electrospray ionization–tandem mass spectrometry with continuous infusion at 30 μl/min. The signal detection limit is 0.0005 mol. Concentrations of 1881 lipid species in tissue samples were analyzed. These lipid species include 348 species in 13 polar lipid groups, 44 species in triacylglycerol (TAG) group and 1489 species containing specific fatty acyl (FA). Lipid species with signal detected above or equal to the detection limit and coefficient of variation below 0.3 were retained for statistical analysis. Concentration differences in lipid species between HCC and SHT were compared using paired t-test or Wilcox signed rank. Differences in lipid compositions between HCC and SHT were assessed.

Conclusions

Our study suggests that total FA may serve as biomarkers for the early detection of HCC. Additional study is needed to understand the detailed mechanism of lipid alteration. Our study provides novel insights in the progress of pretumor tissue towards HCC.

ABSTRACT:

Liver cancer hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cases are rising, a common feature of which is nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The liver being overloaded with lipids characterizes this disease. We investigated if lipid concentrations in tumor tissues differed from non-tumor tissues in a STAM^TM mouse model used to replicate nonalcoholic fatty liver disease-induced HCC. We collected liver tissues from mice at normal (n=10) and disease stages (n=50, 10 each of steatosis, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, chronic fibrosis, and HCC, as well as noncancerous HCC liver tissue). Ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometer (UPLC-MS/MS) measured tissue lipid concentrations (signal per milligram (mg) dry tissue weight). We analyzed data with ANOVA, followed by Bonferroni’s post-hoc test.

We determined lipid concentrations in HCC tissues are distinguishable from the noncancerous HCC liver tissues (n=20). Of the 263 lipid concentrations, 15 were distinguishable in HCC tissues described by higher of lower mean concentration percent difference (triacylglycerols (TAG) with acyl group 14:0 containing mass 48:1; +4.6, total TAG with acyl group 14:0; +23.8, TAG with acyl group 16:0 containing mass 52:1; +28.1, TAG with acyl 18:1 containing mass 48:1; +4.2, TAG with acyl 18:1 containing mass 54:2; +87.1; TAG with acyl groups 18:1/18:0/18:1; +134, TAG with acyl groups 16:0/18:0/18:1; +64.1, TAG with acyl groups 14:0/16:0/18:1; +3.5, TAG with acyl group 16:0/16:0/16:1; +3.1, lysophosphatidylcholine 18:2; +7.6, phosphatidylethanolamine 36:1; +5.9, ether-linked phosphatidylcholine 40:5; -3.4, total ether-linked phosphatidylcholines; -11.0, phosphatidylserine 38:4; -14.7). The aforementioned lipid species should be further investigated as lipid species markers for early HCC detection or treatment response.

ABSTRACT:

The astronomy community uses a variety of models to characterize the interior structure of small planets. Underlying these models are multiple computational techniques, numerous experimental measurements and theoretical estimates of the equations of state for planet-building materials, and differing treatments of temperature. MAGRATHEA is an open-source interior structure solver which can be customized to user-defined planet models developed at UNLV. Our code features adaptable phase diagrams for the core, mantle, hydrosphere, and atmosphere and transparent storage for equations of state. I use MAGRATHEA to test model parameters and quantify systematic uncertainties in the characterization of small planets such as those in the Trappist-1, K2-138, and K2-146 systems.

ABSTRACT:

Emotions are a powerful tool in communication and one way that humans show their emotions is through their facial expressions. In the field of Artificial Intelligence, Facial Expression Recognition (FER) is an active research area. It is tough to classify images with multiple class labels and more problematic when the size of an image and dataset is small. We are trying to fill a gap between supervised and unsupervised learning by using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) proposed by Ian J. Goodfellow in 2014. Since then, GANs have been extensively used in multiple computer vision applications. We demonstrate different GANs theoretically and practically using an image database to produce realistic images. We Implement a classifier that takes a mixed dataset of reals/fakes and analyze its accuracy and experiment with replicating the facial expressions through Conditional Cycle-Consistent Generative Adversarial Networks (CCycleGAN). We believe that GANs will also be helpful in the face dataset like FER2013 to generate so real images and will address the overfitting issue using data augmentation techniques.