University of Macau

About: University of Macau is a education organization based out in Macao, Macau, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Computer science & Population. The organization has 6636 authors who have published 18324 publications receiving 327384 citations. The organization is also known as: UM & UMAC.

Development of a Long-Lived Luminescence Probe for Visualizing β-Galactosidase in Ovarian Carcinoma Cells.

Abstract: β-Galactosidase (β-gal) is an important biomarker for ovarian cancers. In this work, we designed and synthesized a novel iridium(III)-based probe 1 for discriminating ovarian carcinoma cell lines from normal cell lines. The probe could detect β-gal even in the presence of a highly autofluorescent background. The probe also showed a good linear response to β-gal between 0 and 30 U/mL, with a detection limit of 0.51 U/mL. Importantly, complex 1 could selectively “light up” ovarian carcinoma cells, while exhibiting negligible luminescence in normal cells. Overall, complex 1 could be potentially used as a useful probe for detecting β-gal expression in the context of ovarian cancer diagnostics.

GRfid: A Device-Free RFID-Based Gesture Recognition System

Abstract: Gesture recognition has emerged recently as a promising application in our daily lives. Owing to low cost, prevalent availability, and structural simplicity, RFID shall become a popular technology for gesture recognition. However, the performance of existing RFID-based gesture recognition systems is constrained by unfavorable intrusiveness to users, requiring users to attach tags on their bodies. To overcome this, we propose GRfid, a novel device-free gesture recognition system based on phase information output by COTS RFID devices. Our work stems from the key insight that the RFID phase information is capable of capturing the spatial features of various gestures with low-cost commodity hardware. In GRfid, after data are collected by hardware, we process the data by a sequence of functional blocks, namely data preprocessing, gesture detection, profiles training, and gesture recognition, all of which are well-designed to achieve high performance in gesture recognition. We have implemented GRfid with a commercial RFID reader and multiple tags, and conducted extensive experiments in different scenarios to evaluate its performance. The results demonstrate that GRfid can achieve an average recognition accuracy of $96.5$ and $92.8$ percent in the identical-position and diverse-positions scenario, respectively. Moreover, experiment results show that GRfid is robust against environmental interference and tag orientations.

When Academic Achievement Is an Obligation: Perspectives From Social-Oriented Achievement Motivation

Abstract: Asian students on average not only performed better than other ethnic groups as documented in multinational achievement tests, but also in general showed more negative emotions and test anxiety. We argued that this seemingly paradoxical achievement pattern was rooted in the endorsement of social-oriented achievement motivation (SOAM) among Asian students. Within SOAM, academic achievement is construed as an obligation to parents and significant others. This research tested if Chinese students endorsing SOAM would indeed show goal endorsement, emotions, and behavioral tendency that typify obligatory endeavors in academic settings. First, endorsing SOAM indeed was associated with viewing academic achievement as indicative of a person’s obligation (Study 1); the stronger the individuals held this link, the more they felt guilty and a failure when they met with academic setbacks (Study 2); endorsing SOAM was associated with experiencing anxiety in taking examination (test anxiety; Studies 4 and 5) and feeling...

Autophagy and Macrophage Functions: Inflammatory Response and Phagocytosis

Abstract: Autophagy is a conserved bulk degradation and recycling process that plays important roles in multiple biological functions, including inflammatory responses. As an important component of the innate immune system, macrophages are involved in defending cells from invading pathogens, clearing cellular debris, and regulating inflammatory responses. During the past two decades, accumulated evidence has revealed the intrinsic connection between autophagy and macrophage function. This review focuses on the role of autophagy, both as nonselective and selective forms, in the regulation of the inflammatory and phagocytotic functions of macrophages. Specifically, the roles of autophagy in pattern recognition, cytokine release, inflammasome activation, macrophage polarization, LC3-associated phagocytosis, and xenophagy are comprehensively reviewed. The roles of autophagy receptors in the macrophage function regulation are also summarized. Finally, the obstacles and remaining questions regarding the molecular regulation mechanisms, disease association, and therapeutic applications are discussed.

Probabilistic choice vs. risk analysis-conflicts and synthesis in power system planning

Abstract: This paper shows the conceptual differences between adopting a probabilistic weighting of the futures and a risk averse strategy, in power system planning under uncertain scenarios. It is illustrated with a distribution planning problem, where optimal solutions in both cases are determined by a genetic algorithm. It shows that the probabilistic approach is less safe and cannot detect some interesting solutions.