University of Maine Students\u27 Family Income and Its Relation to Alcoholism

This study was designed to address the issue of alcohol abuse among University of Maine students’ families and to look for correlating factors, mainly income. The project used an online, anonymous survey of on-campus students at the University of Maine to examine a possible correlation between (a) having a family member with alcoholism and (b) their family’s social economic status. One purpose of this research study was to find if there is accurate, adequate education or counseling for students who have alcohol abuse problems or family members who are alcoholics. A non-research byproduct of the survey was that, for students who were seeking counseling, this project could help to connect them with a professional who can help

Simplified moving boundary models of heat exchanger in Modelica. Modelli semplificati moving boundary di scambiatori in Modelica

LAUREA SPECIALISTIC

The Scale and Sustainability of an Early Childhood Dual Language Program

The history of multilingual education in the United States over the last fifty years has gradually transitioned from a subtractive bilingual approach to additive approaches, where students increase their cognition of both their native language and the target language. The dissertation study explored the scale and sustainability of one dual language early childhood program that has been implemented over the past 19 years, expanding across grade levels. The research question of this dissertation study was, “What can we learn from a long-lasting and steadily expanding public early childhood dual language program?” The data for this dissertation was collected through a series of one-on-one and focus group interviews with key rightsholders from the program including the school administrator, teachers, and paraprofessionals. The findings from this study provide evidence that quantitative measures of scale and sustainability are not enough to help a program flourish– it is strategic hiring practices, staff commitment, and responsibility as culture carriers that help the program grow. These findings indicate that purposeful and intentional decision making from school leaders about staffing plays a large role in a program’s survival beyond implementation stages. This study contributes to the larger body of literature on scale and sustainability as it offers a unique perspective on scaling up a program by hiring from within the community, developing a democratic system of decision making within a school, and putting student’s cultures and heritage at the center of the program’s goal, which is pedagogical equity between both heritage and target languages

On faster marginalization with squared circuits via orthonormalization

Squared tensor networks (TNs) and their generalization as parameterized computational graphs -- squared circuits -- have been recently used as expressive distribution estimators in high dimensions. However, the squaring operation introduces additional complexity when marginalizing variables or computing the partition function, which hinders their usage in machine learning applications. Canonical forms of popular TNs are parameterized via unitary matrices as to simplify the computation of particular marginals, but cannot be mapped to general circuits since these might not correspond to a known TN. Inspired by TN canonical forms, we show how to parameterize squared circuits to ensure they encode already normalized distributions. We then use this parameterization to devise an algorithm to compute any marginal of squared circuits that is more efficient than a previously known one. We conclude by formally showing the proposed parameterization comes with no expressiveness loss for many circuit classes

Sum of squares circuits

Designing expressive generative models that support exact and efficient inference is a core question in probabilistic ML. Probabilistic circuits (PCs) offer a framework where this tractability-vs-expressiveness trade-off can be analyzed theoretically. Recently, squared PCs encoding subtractive mixtures via negative parameters have emerged as tractable models that can be exponentially more expressive than monotonic PCs, i.e., PCs with positive parameters only. In this paper, we provide a more precise theoretical characterization of the expressiveness relationships among these models. First, we prove that squared PCs can be less expressive than monotonic ones. Second, we formalize a novel class of PCs -- sum of squares PCs -- that can be exponentially more expressive than both squared and monotonic PCs. Around sum of squares PCs, we build an expressiveness hierarchy that allows us to precisely unify and separate different tractable model classes such as Born Machines and PSD models, and other recently introduced tractable probabilistic models by using complex parameters. Finally, we empirically show the effectiveness of sum of squares circuits in performing distribution estimation

Ipotiroidismo congenito da difetti della organificazione dello iodio

L’ipotiroidismo congenito è una sindrome clinica caratterizzata da un deficit degli ormoni tiroidei presente alla nascita. Si stima che nelle regioni ad adeguato apporto iodico la sua incidenza sia di circa 1:3000-4000 nati vivi. Questo rapporto rende di fatto l’ipotiroidismo congenito l’endocrinopatia più frequente dell’infanzia ed una delle cause prevenibili di ritardo mentale più comuni. Si può identificare una forma transitoria, identificata alla nascita e che va incontro a completa risoluzione nei primi mesi/anni di vita, ed una forma permanente, che come tale richiederà una terapia sostitutiva a vita. L’ipotiroidismo congenito permanente è dovuto a un quadro di disgenesia tiroidea nell’85% dei casi; il restante 10-15% è legato alla disormonogenesi, cioè l’alterazione della sintesi ormonale tiroidea. Una diagnosi ed un trattamento tempestivo permettono di prevenire le alterazioni dello sviluppo neuropsicofisico causate dall’assenza degli ormoni tiroidei nei bambini affetti, dato che da questi dipende lo sviluppo del sistema nervoso centrale, sia in epoca fetale sia nei primi anni di vita. Lo scopo di questo studio è quello di identificare le anomalie genetiche in 6 pazienti individuati all’interno di un gruppo di 32 bambini affetti da ipotiroidismo congenito o da ipotiroidismo giovanile con tiroide in sede. Il gruppo dei nostri 6 pazienti è composto da 2 bambine (# 1,2), sorelle, che presentano un test al perclorato negativo ed una TG sierica indosabile e da 4 bambini (# 3,4,5,6) con un test al perclorato fortemente positivo, dato che indica un difetto totale della organificazione dello iodio (TIOD). Nelle due pazienti con la TG sierica indosabile è stato sequenziato il gene della TG mentre nei 4 pazienti con il test al perclorato positivo è stato sequenziato il gene della TPO. L’analisi di tali geni ha evidenziato: una mutazione inattivante (R768X) espressa in omozigosi, mai descritta in letteratura, a carico del gene della TG e causa del difetto della sintesi della glicoproteina nelle pazienti # 1 e 2; una nuova mutazione (E746X) ed una già descritta in letteratura (907X) a carico del gene della TPO, espresse in eterozigosi composta, responsabili del quadro di TIOD nel paziente # 3; una nuova mutazione (T561M) a carico del gene della TPO, espressa in omozigosi, responsabile del quadro di TIOD nella paziente # 6. Nelle pazienti # 4 e 5, che presentavano una TIOD, non è stata identificata alcuna mutazione a carico del gene della TPO; si è proceduto pertanto a sequenziare il promotore del gene della TPO ed il gene DUOX2 senza tuttavia identificare alcuna anomalia. E’ verosimile che queste pazienti siano portatrici, a livello di una sequenza intronica, di alterazioni che interferiscono con il normale meccanismo di splicing dell’mRNA, con la conseguente sintesi di una proteina troncata