ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst
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Recent Submissions
Publication Language Attrition and Pragmatic Competence Transfer in Immigrant Children: A Case Study of Chinese Americans in the U.S.(2024-09)Previous research has made significant strides in understanding children's language acquisition. However, the phenomenon of language attrition in children, particularly among bilingual children who are native Chinese speakers, remains largely unexplored. With increasing global migration and population mobility, many children who migrate during childhood lose the ability to communicate in their mother tongue within a few years. This underscores the importance of studying language attrition and the impact of newly acquired languages on the fading native language. Such research offers valuable insights into human cognition, language acquisition, and language theory. This study presents a case study of language attrition and transfer in two Chinese-English bilingual children after their move from China to the United States. The father of the subjects is a native Chinese speaker, and their mother is a native English speaker fluent in Chinese. The children spent their early childhood in China, where the dominant language at home and in society was Chinese. When the children were six (Jenny) and three and a half years old (Lisa), the family moved to the United States, making Chinese their minority language, limited to family communication. Using regularly updated internet videos, the researcher observes family conversations from six months before the move to the year following the move. Through discourse analysis and longitudinal comparisons, this study examines the language attrition and pragmatic transfer characteristics of the two children after their relocation. The analysis focuses on discourse proportion, fluency, lexical richness, syntactic accuracy, pragmatic competence, and communicative strategies in different languages. The findings are discussed in terms of the age of onset of input deficit, family and social factors, and affective factors such as language attitudes. Unlike prior studies that regularly test children's language after immigration, this research is grounded in observations of daily family interactions, allowing for a nuanced exploration of the language attrition process. Ultimately, the findings underscore the significance of the age at which language input is diminished and the crucial role of continued, intentional reinforcement of the native language in supporting bilingual development in immigrant children.Publication A Model Extraction Attack without Reference Training Data(2024-09)With the advancement of deep neural networks (DNNs), their application has become increasingly widespread. The security of DNNs is a pressing concern, as they represent valuable intellectual property due to their intricate structure, costly train- ing data, and extensive training process. Typically, DNNs are deployed as black box applications, meaning users can only interact with the model via an application pro- gramming interface to receive outputs. However, even with such restricted access, the security of DNNs is not assured. Adversaries can interrogate these black box mod- els, extracting both inputs and outputs to steal the DNN’s parameters and behavior through model extraction attacks. This approach renders the victim’s DNN training parameters transparent, paving the way for further attacks on the model. To delve deeper into the vulnerabilities of DNN models and offer new protective strategies to developers, we propose a model extraction attack that utilizes noise input instead of solely relying on real images. We use updated random pattern as inputs for the victim model, thereby labeling the noise images for training a surrogate model. Our approach considers efficient sampling rules and a more effective method for learning the weighted loss of images near decision boundaries. This enables us to more pre- cisely replicate the structure of the victim model and enhance the generalizability of our surrogate model. We utilize the weighted loss function to focus on the images which have more number of forgetting events, and we got the best results no mat- ter on the training size or the training time. The performance shows our method can avoid the problem of asking for the reference data or the large number of public dataset, so we can save the computing resource and more fit in the real scenario. Our results indicate that our method on using simple random pattern images, as small number as possible of real images and weighted loss function achieves 94.58% of the victim model’s accuracy with 5.14 hours training time and 58880 images.Publication The Impact of Companion Dogs on Physical Activity in Older Adults who Live Alone(2024-09)The aging population in the United States is rapidly increasing, and with it, the prevalence of chronic diseases and social isolation among older adults. The purpose of this thesis was to examine whether older adults who live alone are more bonded to their dogs and get more physical activity through their canine companions compared to those who do not live alone. This thesis used secondary data from two studies conducted at the Behavioral Medicine Lab at UMass Amherst. The study focuses on the relationships between living arrangements, marital status, and perceived isolation with the strength of the dog-owner bond, as well as physical activity levels through dog walking. Participants logged their physical activities, including dog walking, for 7 consecutive days. Due to the skewness of the dependent variables and the small sample size, the Mann–Whitney U test was utilized to assess the associations between living status, marital status, and perceived isolation with the strength of the dog owner bond, minutes of dog walking per week, and average number of dog walking steps per day. Of the 27 participants= (mean age 69.9 ± 6.7years ;59.2% female), 29.6% lived alone, 44.4% were unmarried, divorced, or widowed and 59.3% were v grouped into the less isolation group. On average, participants walked their dogs for 211.7 ± 284.5 minutes per week, taking 1579.2 ± 2970.9 dog walking steps per day. Statistical analyses revealed no significant differences in the strength of the dog owner bond or physical activity levels (minutes of dog walking per week and average daily dog walking steps) between older adults living alone and those living with others. Similarly, no significant associations were found between marital status or perceived isolation and the dog-owner bond or physical activity levels. While the study found no significant associations within this sample, existing literature suggests dog ownership can enhance physical activity and reduce loneliness, particularly in single-occupancy households. This research highlights the potential benefits of companion dogs for promoting successful aging by increasing physical activity and social connectedness. Future research with larger, more diverse samples and those who are socially isolated is needed to better understand the impact of dog ownership on community dwelling older adults who live alone.Publication Collagen Structures of Demineralized Bone Paper Direct Mineral Metabolism(2024-09)Bone is a dynamic mineralized tissue that undergoes continuous remodeling throughout life. While the general mechanism of bone mineral metabolism is documented, the role of collagen structures in regulating osteoblastic mineral deposition and osteoclastic mineral resorption remains an active research area due to the lack of biomaterial platforms to support the complex structure of the bone matrix. Recently introduced, an osteoid-inspired demineralized bone paper (DBP) prepared by 20 µm thin sectioning of demineralized bovine compact bone holds promise to address this challenge as it preserves the intrinsic bony collagen structure and retains semi-transparency. Leveraging these unique features of DBP, we investigated how collagen structures modulate osteoblast and osteoclast-driven bone mineral metabolism. DBP exhibits distinct collagen structures depending on the sectioning direction, with uniaxially aligned collagen in vertical DBP (vDBP) and a concentric ring structure in transverse DBP (tDBP). Translucent DBP reveals these collagen structures and facilitates longitudinal tracking of mineral deposition and resorption under brightfield microscopy for at least 3 weeks. Genetically labeled primary osteogenic cells allow fluorescent monitoring of these cellular processes. Osteoblasts adhere and proliferate following the underlying collagen structures of DBPs, resulting in significantly higher mineral deposition in vertical DBP compared to transversal DBP. Spatiotemporal analysis reveals notably more osteoblast adhesion and faster mineral deposition in vascular regions known to contain type IV collagen and laminin than in bone regions predominantly consisting of type I collagen. Subsequent osteoclastic resorption occurs following the mineralized collagen structures, directing distinct trench and pit-type resorption. In vertical DBP, trench-type resorption occurs at an 80% frequency, whereas in transversal DBP, trench- and pit-type resorption are observed at frequencies of 35 % and 65 %, respectively. Our studies substantiate the importance of collagen structures in regulating mineral metabolism by osteogenic cells. DBP is expected to serve as an enabling biomaterial platform for studying various aspects of cellular and extracellular dynamics of bone remodeling.Publication KIP: Karate in Preschool Feasibility and Preliminary Efficacy of a Karate-Themed Physical Activity Intervention on the Physical Activity and Classroom Behavior of Preschool-aged Children(2024-09)Background: Physical activity (PA) has shown numerous benefits in preschoolers (2.9–5 years). Preschoolers aren’t meeting recommendations for adequate daily PA. Novel techniques are needed to increase PA via intervention within the preschool center, where preschoolers spend much of their weekdays. Karate has shown promise for improving health (e.g., fitness, behavior) in elementary school-age children. No studies have examined the effects of karate on PA or behavior in preschoolers. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a 6-week karate-themed PA intervention on PA and classroom behavior in preschoolers. Methods: The intervention was implemented 20 minutes per session, three days per week, for six weeks. Process evaluation data was collected during each session using a semi-structured questionnaire. One randomly selected day per week, participants wore accelerometers during the intervention to measure intervention intensity. At baseline and six weeks, participants' school day PA and teacher-reported classroom behavior were assessed using accelerometers and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, respectively. Results: The participants (n=29) were 72.4% male, 44.4% African American, and 44.4% Hispanic. The average age of participants was 4.35±0.47 years, and the average BMI percentile was 72±32.3. The program exhibited low fidelity, with 28% of intervention sessions implemented as intended, and low intensity, with participants spending 57%±17.9% of intervention time sedentary, 15.1%±6% in light PA, and 27.9%±14.3% in MVPA. The program exhibited high quality, with 100% of intervention sessions implemented clearly and 95.6% of sessions implemented correctly, and high acceptability, with preschoolers enjoying the sessions 97.8% of the time and preschoolers paying attention 100% of the time. Percent time spent sedentary during the preschool day significantly increased from baseline (78.3%±4%) to six weeks (87.6%±5.9%). Percent time in light PA significantly decreased from baseline (9.4±1.8%) to six weeks (5.9%±2.6%), as did MVPA from baseline (12.3%±2.9%) to 6 weeks (6.6%±3.4%). Participants’ total difficulty scores for behavior significantly improved from baseline (10.6±8.7) to six weeks (9.0±7.7). Conclusion: Overall, the high quality, acceptability, and efficacy of teacher-reported classroom behavior highlight KIP’s potential in preschoolers. More studies are needed to examine the effects of karate-based physical activity interventions in preschoolers.
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