The discovery of lithium-rich giants contradicts expectations from canonical stellar evolution. Although multiple scenarios have been proposed to preserve or produce Li, no model can explain the ensemble properties of Li-rich giants. We report on the serendipitous discovery of 20 Li-rich giants observed through the Gaia-ESO Survey. Our sample is one of the largest in the literature, and includes nine towards the CoRoT fields. We explore all mechanisms proposed to explain Li-rich giants. While the planet accretion scenario was presented to reconcile observations of Li-rich giants across the RGB/AGB, this is inconsistent with recent studies of close-in giant planets. We highlight recent observations of the difference in hot Jupiter occurrence rates around dwarf and sub-giant stars as evidence for their tidal destruction when the convective envelope expands. Therefore any close-in giant planet is likely to be engulfed well before the host evolves up the RGB/AGB. When this occurs, simulations indicate a giant planet will provide a small reservoir of unburnt Li to replenish the stellar photospheric abundance, and subsequently induce deep mixing to produce additional Li. We argue these two independent lines of evidence actually predict the existence of Li-rich giants, and suggests they should be preferentially found before the luminosity bump at near-solar metallicities, consistent with observations. This scenario explains (indeed, predicts) the majority properties of Li-rich giants, leaving a minority population of evolved metal-poor Li-rich giants which are explainable by internal mixing processes associated with late evolutionary stages, or mass transfer from more evolved AGB stars.


Various methods are needed to extract information from current (digital) comics. Furthermore, the use of different (proprietary) formats by comic distribution platforms causes an overhead for authors. To overcome these issues, we propose a solution that makes use of the EPUB 3 specification, additionally leveraging the Open Web Platform to support animations, reading assistance, audio and multiple languages in a single format, by using our JavaScript library comicreader.js. We also provide administrative and descriptive metadata in the same format by introducing a new ontology: Dicera. Our solution is complementary to the current extraction methods, on the one hand because they can help with metadata creation, and on the other hand because the machine-understandable metadata alleviates their use. While the reading system support for our solution is currently limited, it can offer all features needed by current comic distribution platforms. When comparing comics generated by our solution to EPUB 3 textbooks, we observed an increase in file size, mainly due to the use of images. In future work, our solution can be further improved by extending the presentation features, investigating different types of comics, studying the use of new EPUB 3 extensions, and by incorporating it in digital book authoring environments.


Using data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals, this paper describes the shape of consumption profiles over the month for Social Security benefit recipients. Individuals with income mostly made up of Social Security benefits and who have some savings smooth consumption over the pay period, while individuals with little savings consume 25 percent fewer calories the week before checks are received relative to the week after checks are received. The findings for individuals with little savings are inconsistent with the Permanent Income/Lifecycle Hypothesis, but are consistent with hyperbolic discounting.


Over the last few decades global warming and human intervention have led to changes and deterioration in natural vegetation across the world. The Al Jabal Al Akhdar, in north east Libya, is one of those areas that have experienced changes in land cover. This region has environmental and economic importance in providing suitable habitat for wildlife and providing services for local communities and cities in the Libyan Desert. The overall aim of this thesis was to evaluate the factors which have affected vegetation cover change in the Al Jabal Al Akhdar region over the last 42 years. There were three key objectives to this research: (1) to assess changes in natural and semi-natural vegetation cover in the north-east of Libya using forty years of satellite image data, (2) to assess land cover change and the effects of human activities in the study area over a period of 42 years, (3) to assess the factors affecting vegetation change in the study area. A further objective was to assess climate change in the study area using the climate data which was available from three climatic stations as climate change may be responsible for vegetation cover change in the areas that have low human activity. To address these objectives, remote sensing techniques were used to assess vegetation cover change and the changes in human activity from 1972 to the present. Satellite images provide data that cannot be collected by traditional methods and provide a historical archive of what the landscape looked like in the past. This study used multi-temporal Landsat images, which are freely available, for the period from 1972 to the present and provide the key temporal record of vegetation change on the Earth. Vegetation Indices (NDVI, SAVI and EVI), derived from the spectral reflectance of leaves and canopies, were used to assess the changes in vegetation cover over time. Image classification was also used to characterise the nature of land cover change, in particular the impact of human intervention. A key finding related to Objective (1) was that some areas have experienced a statistically significant change in vegetation indices over the 42 years which was interpreted as a change in vegetation cover in the areas in question. A key conclusion related to Objective (2) was that land cover had changed in the study area over the period of study. The influence of human activities was exerted through increased land use and decreased areas of forest and shrubland in the region. The outputs of the above-mentioned objectives and the effects of climate change were used to assess Objective (3), to detect which factors caused vegetation cover change in the Al Jabal Al Akhdar region. The main factors causing vegetation change were the effects of human activities in the areas adjacent to human settlements, while in the sparsely populated areas in the south of the study area, vegetation cover changes may be related to recent climate change. In conclusion, although the number of available Landsat images used to delineate the changes in vegetation cover was limited, the methods used to interpret the images for vegetation indices and image classification were invaluable in determining important results for the objectives of the thesis. The results obtained from assessing vegetation cover and land cover change and patterns of changes are major steps towards filling the information gap and creating a database for monitoring land cover in the study area. This effort will contribute towards facilitating decision-making on mitigating the impact of land use dynamics on land cover as well as provide a basis for future research.


This issue of APRJA examines the implications of datafication for research. The articles provide responses that outsmart and outplay the logic of capturing everything applied by the corporate as well as scientific communities. Each in their own way they address the complexity af 'capture', and examine datafication's connection to commodification (and even to zombification), and examine alternatives such as obfuscation in order to know and unknow things at different registers and scales – from the grain of data to big data, the materiality of data and the politics of data structures, or in other ways afforded by emergent practices of datafied research.


The vertically coupled microring resonator filter is an attractive add-drop wavelength filter due to its functionality and compactness and the possibility of dense integration resulting from the cross-grid configuration. However, in the concatenated 1 /spl times/ 8 filter array in which the ring radii are changed with the increments of 50 nm, the wavelength channel spacing was limited to 5.7 nm due to the resolution limit of photomask (50 nm). Therefore, we developed a new technique to control precisely the channel spacing by an ultraviolet (UV)-trimming technique using polysilane as the over-cladding layer. As a result, we successfully decreased the channel spacing to 0.5 nm, and also controlled the channel spacing precisely to 1.0 nm using the same trimming technique.


Importance
Glaucoma affects more than 75 million people worldwide. Intraocular pressure (IOP)-lowering surgery is an important treatment for this disease. Interest in reducing surgical morbidity has led to the introduction of minimally invasive glaucoma surgeries (MIGS). Understanding the comparative effectiveness and safety of MIGS is necessary for clinicians and patients.

Objective
To summarize data from randomized clinical trials of MIGS for open-angle glaucoma, which were evaluated in a suite of Cochrane reviews.

Data Sources
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews including studies published before June 1, 2021.

Study Selection
Reviews of randomized clinical trials comparing MIGS with cataract extraction alone, other MIGS, traditional glaucoma surgery, laser trabeculoplasty, or medical therapy.

Data Extraction and Synthesis
Data were extracted according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines by one investigator and confirmed by a second. Methodologic rigor was assessed using the AMSTAR 2 appraisal tool and random-effects network meta-analyses were conducted.

Main Outcomes and Measures
The proportion of participants who did not need to use medication to reduce intraocular pressure (IOP) postsurgery (drop-free). Outcomes were analyzed at short-term (<6 months), medium-term (6-18 months), and long-term (>18 months) follow-up.

Results
Six eligible Cochrane reviews were identified discussing trabecular bypass with iStent or Hydrus microstents, ab interno trabeculotomy with Trabectome, subconjunctival and supraciliary drainage devices, and endoscopic cyclophotocoagulation. Moderate certainty evidence indicated that adding a Hydrus safely improved the likelihood of drop-free glaucoma control at medium-term (relative risk [RR], 1.6; 95% CI, 1.4 to 1.8) and long-term (RR, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.4 to 1.9) follow-up and conferred 2.0-mm Hg (95% CI, -2.7 to -1.3 mm Hg) greater IOP reduction at long-term follow-up, compared with cataract surgery alone. Adding an iStent also safely improved drop-free disease control compared with cataract surgery alone (RR, 1.4; 95% CI, 1.2 to 1.6), but the short-term IOP-lowering effect of the iStent was not sustained. Addition of a CyPass microstent improved drop-free glaucoma control compared with cataract surgery alone (RR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1 to 1.5) but was associated with an increased risk of vraision loss. Network meta-analyses supported the direction and magnitude of these results.

Conclusions and Relevance
Based on data synthesized in Cochrane reviews, some MIGS may afford patients with glaucoma greater drop-free disease control than cataract surgery alone. Among the products currently available, randomized clinical trial data associate the Hydrus with greater drop-free glaucoma control and IOP lowering than the iStent; however, these effect sizes were small.


In United States v. Windsor, while the Supreme Court did not treat the question of religious exemptions from state laws recognizing same-sex marriage, the case could nevertheless affect the success of future efforts to attain religious exemptions. Windsor strongly suggested that any view of marriage excluding the possibility of same-sex unions is irrational and even hateful. Religious institutions and individuals, however, particularly the Catholic Church, are leading proponents of the view that opposite-sex marriage is uniquely valuable. Also for Catholics, this view forms a central and nonseverable part of a theological worldview encompassing teachings about matters such as the identity of God, and the meaning and purpose of life as servant love. Refusing to exempt Catholics from cooperating with same-sex marriage is therefore tantamount to denying them the right to practice their faith, or even insisting that they practice a different faith.In order to address the matter of religious freedom in the context of state-recognized same-sex marriage, post-Windsor, this article will proceed as follows: Part I. will set forth Windsor's treatment of the nature of marriage and its characterization – as "animus" – of a refusal to recognize a marital union between two persons of the same sex. Part II. will set forth the elements constituting the cosmological and anthropological significance of Catholic teachings about marriage. Part III. will discuss the benefits offered to a pluralistic society by its continuing to allow a visibly Catholic witness on marriage. It will also acknowledge practical hurdles to such a resolution.


Surrogates for JP8 have been developed in the high temperature gas phase environment of gas turbines. In diesel engines, the fuel is introduced in the liquid phase where volatility plays a major role in the formation of the combustible mixture and autoignition reactions that occur at relatively lower temperatures. In this paper, the role of volatility on the combustion of JP8 and five different surrogate fuels was investigated in the constant volume combustion chamber of the Ignition Quality Tester (IQT). IQT is used to determine the derived cetane number (DCN) of diesel engine fuels according to ASTM D6890. The surrogate fuels were formulated such that their DCNs matched that of JP8, but with different volatilities. Tests were conducted to investigate the effect of volatility on the autoignition and combustion characteristics of the surrogates using a detailed analysis of the rate of heat release immediately after the start of injection. In addition, the effect of volatility on the spray dynamics was investigated by Schlieren imaging in an optically accessible rapid compression machine (RCM). The images supported the conclusions made in the IQT tests. Furthermore, apparent activation energies of JP8 and surrogate fuels were determined based on the chemical delay periods, which could be considered as a new parameter for developing surrogate fuel. Sector: Automotive


Vegetable oils and their derivatives (especially methyl esters), commonly referred to as {open_quotes}biodiesel{close_quotes}, are prominent candidates as alternative diesel fuels. They have advanced from being purely experimental fuels to initial stages of commercialization. They are technically competitive with or offer technical advantages compared to conventional diesel fuel. Besides being a renewable resource, biodiesel reduces most emissions while engine performance and fuel economy are nearly identical compared to conventional fuels. Several problems, however, remain, which include economics, combustion, some emissions, lube oil contamination, and low-temperature properties. An overview on all the mentioned aspects of biodiesel will be presented.


The purpose of this single case study was to describe community perspectives of a service learning (SL) partnership with a single university conferring a baccalaureate nursing degree. The longevity of the partnership extended the study purpose to explain why the partnership continued and worked well. A review of nursing literature revealed descriptive accounts of programs designed to meet needs of underserved populations and student learners. However, the review also revealed a knowledge gap in nursing education science regarding the community perspectives of successful SL partnerships. This study focused on relationships with the academe partner, interactions with students and faculty, and benefits of services rendered. Using a case study approach, the investigator sought disparate sources of information including interviews with 21 community members, the primary nursing professor, and the university administrator for rural health and community partnerships. The investigator reviewed relevant documents and made observations during nine days in the community. Triangulation of multiple data sources illuminated a relationship in which key players remained committed to mutual goals beyond immediate projects. Compelling findings were the a) immersed accessibility of the primary nursing professor who lived in the community, b) competency of community members to be expert teachers and set the agenda for the university's involvement, and c) increased social connectedness that empowered a community to improve its health. The American Association of Critical Care Nurses Synergy Model (Hardin, 2009) was useful for understanding the synergistic relationship involving community partners, student learners, and nursing faculty. However, the


Mesic savannas are dominated by trees that are strong resprouters caught in a frequent fire trap. Persistence within this fire trap has been described by a resprout curve of SizeNext ~ f(Pre-fire size), defined by the Michaelis-Menten function. A key feature of this resprout curve is a stable persistence equilibrium that represents the size of individual plants upon which a population will converge over successive inter-fire time steps under a given fire regime. Here, we contend that such a resprout curve does not adequately describe resprout tree dynamics in frequently burnt mesic savannas because it is constrained to an asymptote. We propose a new framework for modelling the resprout curve, which recognizes that local environmental stochasticity and growth patterns can interact to change the growth response function entirely, and thus more readily reflect the range of feasible resprout responses. Importantly, we define an unstable equilibrium representing the size above which individuals have escaped the fire trap and explore mechanisms that can shift an individual from persistence to escape. Through a case study from northern Australia, we confirm that our framework provides a simple yet practical approach to defining these critical aspects of savanna tree growth dynamics: persistence and escape.


Accepted: 04.06.2013 This study was carried out to elucidate how the 7th year students perceive the relatives. The sample of the study was constituted by the students studying public and private schools located in Ankara province. The data were collected by the use of a survey prepared by the researchers. The answers given to the open ended question were evaluated according to the gender, the type of the school, the frequency of meeting the relatives and the monthly income of the family. It was found the average values of the students studying in the private school, the male students , the ones who had a monthly income of 2000tl and above and the ones who meet their relatives more than 4 times a year were much higher than the rest.


The United States faces a "fiscal cliff" at the end of calendar year 2012, when the two major tax cuts from the Bush era and some other tax provisions will expire and in the absence of action scheduled reductions in spending will begin. The subsequent increase in taxes and reduction in spending would dramatically tighten the federal budget deficit at a time when unemployment remains high. On an annual basis the total impact of the fiscal cliff amounts to a reduction in the federal budget deficit of about $800 billion on a direct basis (about 5 percent of GDP). After taking account of revenue losses and extra social spending resulting from induced slowdown in the economy, the Congressional Budget Office places the net fiscal impact at $560 billion for the first nine months of 2013, implying $745 billion or 4.5 percent of GDP for calendar year 2013. An aging population and rising health care costs continue to boost federal spending under current policies, and it is critical that the United States put the budget on a sustainable path, which will require significant changes in spending and tax policies. It is therefore difficult to escape the conclusion that it is a good thing that the United States faces a fiscal cliff. The expiration of the Bush era tax cuts at the end of 2012 provides a unique opportunity to raise tax rates and/or eliminate tax deductions so that the United States can restore federal revenue to at least 18 percent of GDP and probably more in order to meet growing fiscal needs associated with an aging population. The political pain of higher tax rates should concentrate political minds on the associated task of finding more ways of cutting spending and limiting increases in entitlement spending. It will nonetheless be important to phase in the fiscal adjustment gradually, for example, over the four years of the next presidential term, in order to moderate the output loss that would otherwise occur under current conditions of high unemployment combined with interest rates near zero. Moreover, Cline says the needed structural fiscal adjustment amounts to 3 percent of GDP and the component of overkill included in the fiscal cliff's 5 percent of GDP adjustment should be avoided.


Price-coordination and investment coordination are analyzed in a monopolistic multi-sector general equilibrium model with consumption complementarities. Possible solutions to the investment coordination problem are consistent with historical examples of government intervention in investment, the different roles of banking sectors in different countries, and the effect of optimism on the development of new sectors. Price coordination within sectors between monopolists of complementary intermediaries lowers prices and increases welfare because the competition between the final goods of different sectors then becomes the paramount concern of each monopolist. With no price coordination, each monopolist sets infinite prices as the effect of price increases on demand is shared by all other intermediary monopolists due to the complementarities.


Abstract. It is commonly assumed that models are more prone to errors in predicted cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations when the aerosol populations are externally mixed. In this work we investigate this assumption by using the mixing state index (χ) proposed by Riemer and West (2013) to quantify the degree of external and internal mixing of aerosol populations. We combine this metric with particle-resolved model simulations to quantify error in CCN predictions when mixing state information is neglected, exploring a range of scenarios that cover different conditions of aerosol aging. We show that mixing state information does indeed become unimportant for more internally mixed populations, more precisely for populations with χ larger than 75 %. For more externally mixed populations (χ below 20 %) the relationship of χ and the error in CCN predictions is not unique and ranges from lower than −40 % to about 150 %, depending on the underlying aerosol population and the environmental supersaturation. We explain the reasons for this behavior with detailed process analyses.


Abstract. The local and global plasma properties in the magnetosheath play a fundamental role in regulating solar wind–magnetosphere coupling processes. However, the magnetosheath is a complex region to characterise as it has been shown theoretically, observationally and through simulations that plasma properties are inhomogeneous, non-isotropic and asymmetric about the Sun-Earth line. To complicate matters, dawn–dusk asymmetries are sensitive to various changes in the upstream conditions on an array of timescales. The present paper focuses exclusively on dawn–dusk asymmetries, in particularly that of ion density. We present a statistical study using THEMIS data of the dawn–dusk asymmetry of ion density in the dayside magnetosheath and its long-term variations between 2009 and 2015. Our data suggest that, in general, the dawn-side densities are higher, and the asymmetry grows from noon towards the terminator. This trend was only observed close to the magnetopause and not in the central magnetosheath. In addition, between 2009 and 2015, the largest asymmetry occurred around 2009 decreasing thereafter. We also concluded that no single parameter such as the Alfven Mach number, plasma velocity, or the interplanetary magnetic field strength could exclusively account for the observed asymmetry. Interestingly, the dependence on Alfven Mach number differed between data sets from different time periods. The asymmetry obtained in the THEMIS data set is consistent with previous studies, but the solar cycle dependence was opposite to an analysis based on IMP-8 data. We discuss the physical mechanisms for this asymmetry and its temporal variation. We also put the current results into context with the existing literature in order to relate THEMIS era measurements to those made during earlier solar cycles.


This thesis concerns the general area of experimental benchmarking of Iterative Learning Control (ILC) algorithms using two experimental facilities. ILC is an approach which is suitable for applications where the same task is executed repeatedly over the necessarily finite time duration, known as the trial length. The process is reset prior to the commencement of each execution. The basic idea of ILC is to use information from previously executed trials to update the control input to be applied during the next one. The first experimental facility is a nonminimum phase electro-mechanical system and the other is a gantry robot whose basic task is to pick and place objects on a moving conveyor under synchronization and in a fixed finite time duration that replicates many tasks encountered in the process industries. Novel contributions are made in both the development of new algorithms and,especially, in the analysis of experimental results both of a single algorithm alone and also in the comparison of the relative performance of different algorithms. In the case of non-minimum phase systems, a new algorithm, named Reference Shift ILC (RSILC) is developed that is of a two loop structure. One learning loop addresses the system lag and another tackles the possibility of a large initial plant input commonly encountered when using basic iterative learning control algorithms. After basic algorithm development and simulation studies, experimental results are given to conclude that performance improvement over previously reported algorithms is reasonable. The gantry robot has been previously used to experimentally benchmark a range of simple structure ILC algorithms, such as those based on the ILC versions of the classical proportional plus derivative error actuated controllers, and some state-space based optimal ILC algorithms. Here these results are extended by the first ever detailed experimental study of the performance of stochastic ILC algorithms together with some modifications necessary to their configuration in order to increase performance. The majority of the currently reported ILC algorithms mainly focus on reducing the trial-to-trial error but it is known that this may come at the cost of poor or unacceptable performance along the trial dynamics. Control theory for discrete linear repetitive processes is used to design ILC control laws that enable the control of both trial-to-trial error convergence and along the trial dynamics. These algorithms can be computed using Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs) and again the results of experimental implementation on the gantry robot are given. These results are the first ever in this key area and represent a benchmark against which alternatives can be compared. In the concluding chapter, a critical overview of the results presented is given together with areas for both short and medium term further research


"System Design and Management" program, a study that integrates humanities and sciences by crossing many disciplines, is essential to foster talented persons who can lead in the development and operation of large-scale complex systems that are symbiotic, safe and secure. The subject of the new graduate school education is large-scale complex technological and social systems, with an education curriculum that provides practically oriented lectures through which students can acquire the capacity to consider systems, the faculty to design systems in line with system life cycles, and the ability for system management. By collaborating with industries and related stakeholders such as domestic and international educational research institutions, we designed an educational curriculum. As for the establishment of the graduate school in April 2008, the educational curriculum was formed to provide students with opportunities to acquire must-learn capability and knowledge that were classified into six groups. The validity of the education method was confirmed based on verification of the students' self-evaluation and evaluation by the external evaluation committee after the first two years of graduate education.


Lamb's self-deprecatory reflex has made him his own worst enemy. (1) His very appeal of humility risks the impression of inconsequence. The subtle irony to which the author is equally prone, by which Lamb achieves an obverse mode of self-promotion, can easily be missed. In 'Witches, and Other Night-Fears' (London Magazine, October 1821), Elia slyly affects to lament the "poverty" of his dreams in comparison with the fantastic, poetic visions conjured by Coleridge and Lamb's fellow contributor to the London Magazine, Bryan Waller Procter, or "Barry Cornwall": For the credit of my imagination, I am almost ashamed to say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. They are never romantic, seldom even rural. They are of architecture and buildings--cities abroad, which I have never seen and hardly have hope to see. I have traversed, for the seeming length of a natural day, Rome. Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon--their churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight--a map-like distinctness of trace and a daylight vividness of vision, that was all bin being awake. I have formerly travelled among the Westmoreland fells--my highest Alps, but they are objects too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming recognition; and I have again and again awoke with ineffectual struggles of the inner eye, to make out a shape, in any way whatever of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that country, but the mountains were gone. The poverty of my dreams mortifies me (387). Elia follows this with a comical anecdote about an anticlimactic dream of his own, which has served to convince him that his proper, apparently deferential place is in "prosaic" prose rather than poetry--the supposed medium of high, imaginative endeavour. Lamb here not only parodies the already famous conception of Kubla Khan as an archetypal moment of Romantic genius, but also satirises De Quincey's opium-eater. The first instalment of the opium-eater's "Confessions" appears in the same issue of the London Magazine as the "Night-Fears" essay, thus making the ultra-realistic, un-dreamlike dreams of cities that Elia describes all the more suggestive of parody. As an ostensible self-representation of inadequacy which functions to empower the relatively humble periodical essayist, therefore, Lamb advertises an alternative notion of the city to that of his peers. De Quincey uses Wordsworth's vision of an ethereal city in Book II of The Excursion to buttress his urban versioning, and his habit impels the opium-eater into a prototypical act of flanerie, restlessly roaming an "enigmatical" and labyrinthine London on Saturday nights, seeking a spiritual bond with the poor which the opium habit ensures can only ever be of a fleeting, transient nature. De Quincey's city is like the phantasmagorical and ineffable city of Wordsworth's "Residence in London", in Book VII of the 1805 version of The Prelude, in which the admonitory figure of the blind beggar suggests to the poet the unknowableness of urban life, and the dehumanizing maelstrom of the fair represents "blank confusion! and a type not false/Of what the mighty city is itself" (11. 595-6: 292). Wordsworth's and De Quincey's are existentially troubling cities, where losing oneself (or indeed others, as with the opium-eater's failure to find again the prostitute Ann, who saves his life in Oxford Street) is a sublime rather than pleasurable experience. If Lamb's prosaic prose can familiarise foreign and exotic dues, then his home city, London, for all the connotations of power and sublimity, is still less likely to appear mysterious. And so it proves. Enfeebled with age and tending toward hypochondria, hence typically enclosed in domestic spaces rather than rambling the streets without, Elia nevertheless knows a consequently knowable London. The sociability of the Elia essays adds to this effect, populated as they are by amicable and familial, often recurring characters such as the South-Sea clerks, the old benchers, a laughing sweep, a know-it-all schoolmaster, Bridget and John Elia, G. …


Remarkable global climate oscillations were recorded during the timespan middle Carboniferous-Triassic, which allows definition of two cold (icehouse 1: middle Carboniferous; icehouse 2: early Permian) and two warm episodes (greenhouse 1: late Carboniferous-earliest Permian; greenhouse 2: middle Permian-Triassic). The tectonic evolution of the central Pangean realm from Variscan to late Variscan, and finally to early Alpine offers an explanation for these climate oscillations, in terms of mountain building, extensional collapse, rifting, epeirogeny, volcanism, erosion, and exhumation. The cold periods were associated with orogenic (icehouse 1) or epeirogenic (icehouse 2) movements leading to uplift and erosion, and therefore, to CO 2 output from the atmosphere. On the contrary, the warm periods were related to extension-related phenomena, such as volcanism, deep- and shallow-seated hydrothermal activity, unroofing of large-scale metamorphic core-complexes (greenhouse 1), or vast exhumation of coal and peat deposits and volcanism (greenhouse 2), all of them processes leading to massive input of CO 2 into the atmosphere, hence, to global warming.


Discriminative learning-based image denoisers have achieved promising performance on synthetic noises such as Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). The synthetic noises adopted in most previous work are pixel-independent, but real noises are mostly spatially/channel-correlated and spatially/channel-variant. This domain gap yields unsatisfied performance on images with real noises if the model is only trained with AWGN. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to boost the performance of a real image denoiser which is trained only with synthetic pixel-independent noise data dominated by AWGN. First, we train a deep model that consists of a noise estimator and a denoiser with mixed AWGN and Random Value Impulse Noise (RVIN). We then investigate Pixel-shuffle Down-sampling (PD) strategy to adapt the trained model to real noises. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization of the proposed approach. Notably, our method achieves state-of-the-art performance on real sRGB images in the DND benchmark among models trained with synthetic noises. Codes are available at this https URL.


Oral health continues
to be a major issue affecting children these days. Early childhood caries are
considered to be the most common chronic childhood disease in the United
States. Despite the availability of Medicaid, millions of children can still
not access a dental provider to receive proper care. Getting children in for
dental care early in their lives saves money. Children that do not receive
proper oral health care during their childhood are at higher risk for more
complex and restorative care as they age. Plans to reduce childhood caries
include more creative interventions such as oral assessment, education and
fluoride varnish application in primary care practices. Pediatric primary care
providers are trusted by parents to care for their children and have an ideal
opportunity to make a lasting impression and create behavioral changes in oral
health during their frequent contacts with children and families. Integrating
oral health promotion is a simple task with numerous benefits for children and
families, as well as primary care doctors' offices. With proper professional
and governmental support oral health promotion programs in primary care
practice can further increase in number which can ultimately improve oral
health outcomes, save time and prevent costly dental repairs, as well as
benefit the practice through proper reimbursement.


Once upon a time, in a backyard not very far from you, lived a dog named Rex with long fluffy and shiny hair. Rex really loved to play outside, especially with his best friend and owner Jack, a nine-year-old boy. On a perfect spring day, when it was not too cold or too hot, Jack and Rex went for a walk in a green park close by, and when they returned home Jack noticed that his loyal friend was very itchy and was scratching his ear a lot. His first thought was as follows: "Well, there must be some dirt in his ear! After so much rolling on the grass it is normal." A few days later Jack saw that Rex was very unhappy and started wondering what was happening. He called his mother quickly and they both rushed to see Rex. "Mommy what's that on Rex's ear? It seems like a wart! Is Rex sick?" Then his mother said "Hopefully not! You know Jack, these little things are parasites called ticks and they can make Rex itch and feel uncomfortable. I am sure that if you learn more about such small and incredible creatures, you will be amazed because there is more to them than meets the eye..." REVIEWED BY:


The characterizations of survival potential of microorganisms which are able to thrive in extreme environments are receiving a great attention in astrobiological research as driven by the possibility of their existence in extraterrestrial extreme niches. Speculations about lithoautotrophic subsurface life on Mars are arising since ESA mission Mars Express determined water existence on Mars, fundamental requirement for life, and presence of CH4 in the Martian atmosphere, which could be originated only from active volcanism or from biological sources. Comparable conditions exist in permafrost regions on Earth.Methanogenic archaea, which colonized Siberian permafrost, are highly specialized organisms which can gain energy by the oxidation of H2 and use CO2 as the only carbon source. We present the investigations of resistance of methanogens from Siberian permafrost complementary to the already well-studied methanogens from non-permafrost habitats to different extreme life conditions of terrestrial or extraterrestrial permafrost: desiccation, temperature extremes, radiation, starvation, high salt concentration and simulated Mars conditions. The methanogenic archaea in pure cultures as well as in their natural environment of Siberian permafrost represent high survival potential under these extreme conditions. In contrast, these conditions were lethal for the reference organisms from non-permafrost habitats. Our data suggest that in scenario of subsurface lithoautotrophic life on Mars methanogenic archaea from Siberian permafrost could be used as appropriate candidates for possible life on Mars.


Abstract In modern Danish, main clauses have the word order X>Verb>Adverb (i. e., V2) whereas subordinate clauses are generally characterized by the "subordinate clause" word order Subject>Adverb>Verb. Spoken Danish has a high frequency of "main clause" word order in subordinate clauses, however, and in the article we argue that this "Main Clause Phenomena" (cf. Aelbrecht et  al. 2012) functions as a foregrounding device, signaling that the more important information of the clause complex is to be found in the subordinate clause instead of in its matrix clause. A prediction from the foregrounding hypothesis is that a subordinate clause with Verb>Adverb word order will attract more attention than a clause with Adverb>Verb word order. To test this, we conducted an experiment under the text change paradigm. 59 students each read 24 constructions twice, each containing a subordinate clause with either Verb>Adverb or Adverb>Verb word order. Half of the subordinate clauses were governed by a semifactive predicate (open to both word orders) and the other half by a semantically secondary sentence (in itself strongly favoring Verb>Adverb word order). Attention to the subordinate clause was tested by measuring how disinclined the participants were to notice change of a word in the subordinate clause when re-reading it. Results showed significantly more attention to Verb>Adverb clauses than to Adverb>Verb clauses (though only under semifactive predicates), and more attention to subordinate clauses under semantically secondary than semifactive predicates. We consider this as strongly supporting the hypothesis that Verb>Adv word order functions as a foregrounding signal in subordinate clauses.


In this innovative and engaging history of homicide investigation in Republican Beijing, Daniel Asen explores the transformation of ideas about death in China in the first half of the twentieth century. In this period, those who died violently or under suspicious circumstances constituted a particularly important population of the dead, subject to new claims by police, legal and medical professionals, and a newspaper industry intent on covering urban fatality in sensational detail. Asen examines the process through which imperial China's old tradition of forensic science came to serve the needs of a changing state and society under these dramatically new circumstances. This is a story of the unexpected outcomes and contingencies of modernity, presenting new perspectives on China's transition from empire to modern nation state, competing visions of science and expertise, and the ways in which the meanings of death and dead bodies changed amid China's modern transformation.


An experiment involving 56 male reindeer calves, with a mean initial live weight of 39 kg (SD=4.6), was undertaken to evaluate the effect of the concentrate:silage ratio on the performance during feeding to slaughter. Forty four of the calves were divided in four groups, two groups each being allotted to diets with low, 60% (LC), or high, 80% (HC) proportions of a commercial pelleted feed. The remaining twelve calves were slaughtered at the start of the experiment. The experimenral period lasted from January to March. The proportions of concentrate to silage were based on the dry matter (DM) content. The silage, 44% DM, was made from the primary growth of a predominantly grass sward preserved as plastic-wrapped big bales. Animal health was good throughour the experimenr. Small amounts of lichens were mixed into the diets during the first rwo weeks of feeding and may have contributed to the lack of adapta-tionai problems. The mean daily intakes of DM and metabolisable energy were higher (P<0.01) for calves offered the HC-diet. Despite the higher feed intakes, the increased proportion of concentrate in the diet did not significantly alter live weight gains or carcass weight gains. However, the greater fat deposition (P<0.05) and better carcass gradings indicated a better condition of the animals at slaughtet when less silage was fed. This experiment was the the final part of a three year study of silage based diets for reindeer intended for slaughter and the general conclusion is that the best role of grass silage of this quality is as a limited part of the ration. The silage may, however, play an important role during the adaptation period and further detailed studies are needed to evaluate the applicability of silage as a part of the diet to reindeer.


Streptozotocin (STZ) was used to induce type-1 diabetes mellitus in animal models (twenty-one rabbits) at 60 mg/kg birth weight with two weekly booster doses to cause chronic diabetes in New Zealand White rabbits. They were given single intravenous dose of STZ in 1mL citrate buffer having a pH 4.6 and the booster dose given after 7 days and 14 days respectively. The blood glucose level was monitored along with the clinical signs including changes in behavior and weight loss. Treatment commenced immediately after the third booster when the rise in blood sugar was observed (4 hours later). They were treated with glucovance (a drug), fresh garlic extract, yogurt, beniseed liquor and orange juice for a period of 12 weeks (3 months) with the effect of the treatments checked on the glucose level of their blood, full blood count analysis using Mindray BC3300 auto-hematology analyzer and histopathology analysis of their pancreas. The results showed that the glucose level of the rabbits was within 70.02 ± 1.0 mg/dl at p ≤ 0.05 before they were induced. The level rose to 187.33 ± 0.9 mg/dl after the 3rd booster dose of streptozotocin was given to the rabbits. Gross morphology of selected organs showed that the inducement caused discoloration of the kidneys, oedema of the pancreas and significant increase in weight of the heart at p ≤ 0.05. There were no significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 between Packed Cell Volume (PCV) of the control group and the group induced and treated with diabetes drug; while there were significant differences in the fibrinogen values for the experimental groups. The induced type 1 diabetes mellitus caused an increase in the basophils, monocytes, and neutrophils while it caused significant decrease in the percentage of lymphocytes. Histopathologically, the inducement caused poor formation of the islet of Langerhans cells and dot necrotized cells. There is profuse hemorrhage from highly vascularized pancreatic acini surrounded by parenchyma fat cells. The group induced and treated with garlic extract showed some good features that not only depict a good and fast recovery from diabetes but showed some other health benefits of garlic. They are presence of well-formed pancreatic acini and cell infiltrations with well-spaced interstitial cells of the pancreas that shows active cell division of the pancreatic ducts and acini. There is splay and intrafaradization of the cracked pancreatic ducts. The presence of artifacts is seen at the anterior portion of the plate with well-formed interlobular and intralobular ducts. The effect of garlic extract as a good antidiabetic agent has been well established in this research. The curative strength of other foods such as yogurt and fruit extract has been proven in the findings of this research. Therefore, garlic has the most outstanding positive effect on diabetes and is recommended for people who are diabetic to feed on it or use it as food supplement.


Voice Onset Time (VOT) is a prominent acoustic cue that indicates plosive voicing contrast in word-initial position. This study is a preliminary research to investigate voicing contrast between voiced and voiceless plosive in initial position produced by Malay children. Acoustic phonetic approach and spectrographic analysis were applied in this study. The contrast was focused on the initial position of Malay words. Result clearly shows that there is an obvious voicing contrast between plosives in initial position. Negative VOT values of voiced plosive show the occurrence of voicing lead before the release of stop closure while positive VOT value of voiceless plosive show the occurrence of voicing lag which showed the occurrence of voicing after the stop release. Exception occurred on children that are three years old, which there is no voicing lag during the production of plosive sound. This shows that they have still not acquired Malay plosive voice. This study has direct implications in the area of Speech and Linguistic Sciences in Malaysia, particularly in the development of acoustic-based speech tests for speech and language therapists. Speech and language therapists may find this study significantly useful as a guide to identifying speech problems and phonological development of Malay children.


Glucocorticoids (GCs) have been a mainstay in the treatment of various autoimmune and allergic diseases for many decades due to their potent anti-inflammatory activities. The beneficial effects of GCs are mediated by the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) mainly through modulation of target gene expression via transactivation or transrepression. Despite their therapeutic potency, the use of GCs is limited as their broad activity profile may lead to the development of severe side effects. Therefore, a better understanding of the precise mode and site of GC-action could help to improve this therapeutic regimen.
Allergic airway inflammation (AAI) as a model of asthma was induced in GRdim mice to dissect the molecular mechanisms of GCs. These mice carry a point mutation that impairs GR-dimerization and thus interferes with gene transactivation. Treatment of AAI with dexamethasone (Dex) failed to diminish clinical symptoms in the airways of GRdim mice, indicating that an intact GR-dimerization interface was essential for therapeutic efficacy in this disease model. As previous data had revealed that GCs presumably target structural cells of the lung in the treatment of AAI rather than immune cells, it was tested whether airway epithelial cells (AECs) were essential targets. Hence, AAI was induced in GRspc mice that specifically lack the GR in alveolar type II epithelial (AT-II) cells. Dex repressed AAI in GRspc mice only partially, highlighting that AT-II cells play a crucial role for the efficacy of GC-therapy. Notably, GC-treatment of acute lung injury (ALI), another pulmonary disease, was not impaired in GRspc mice.
A potential link between GC-target site and mode of action was confirmed by expression analysis of various inflammatory genes in the lung, which revealed that GRdim and GRspc mice behaved similarly with regard to transcriptional control. Furthermore, antibody-conjugated betamethasone nanoparticles were investigated as a novel vehicle for AT-II cell-directed delivery of GCs in AAI but did not show any efficacy in improving disease symptoms.
Taken together, the findings reported in this thesis bring about a novel concept of GC-therapy of allergic asthma, indicating that its efficacy depends on GR-dependent gene regulation in AECs. This notion paves the way for a future cell-directed delivery of GCs as an interesting approach for the improvement of GC-therapy in allergic asthma with fewer side effects.


Thin films of a molecular spin crossover iron(II) complex featuring a photochromic diarylethene-based ligand have been grown by sublimation in ultra-high vacuum on an Au(111) single crystal, and investigated by X-ray and UV photoelectron spectroscopies. Temperature-dependent studies demonstrate that the thermally induced spin crossover behaviour is preserved in thin films. The photochromic ligand deliberately integrated into the complex allows photoswitching of the spin states of this iron(II) complex at room temperature, and this photomagnetic effect is still observed in 5 nm thick sublimated films. Thus, this work opens new horizons and pushes bistable spin crossover systems closer to prospective applications in molecular electronics and molecular spintronics devices functioning at room temperature.


This paper presents the results of tests of single-channel deformable mirrors with controllable curvature of the reflective surfaces in stable cavities of industrial CO2 lasers of various types. Stable, reproducible control of the output radiation power of CO2 processing lasers is obtained in both the single-mode and the multimode regime all the way to complete quenching of the lasing. These results make it possible to implement pulsed-periodic radiation regimes in cw CO2 lasers at low modulation frequencies (0-1300 Hz), as well as close to the resonance frequency of the given mirrors. © 2004 Optical Society of America


In Acinetobacter calcoaceticus the seven genes coding for the enzymes responsible for tryptophan synthesis map at three chromosomal locations. Two three-gene clusters, one (trpGDC) specifying the small subunit of anthranilate synthase, phosphoribosyl transferase, and indoleglycerol phosphate synthase and the other (trpFBA) specifying phosphoribosyl anthranilate isomerase and both tryptophan synthase subunits, are not linked to each other or to the trpE gene specifying the large anthranilate synthase subunit. When regulation of trp gene expression is studied in the wild type, only the level of the trpF gene product decreases upon addition of tryptophan to the medium. Tryptophan starvation of tryptophan auxotrophs, however, results in increased levels of all the tryptophan enzymes; this and additional evidence suggests that the expression of all the trp genes is subject to repression. The trpGDC genes are coordinately controlled, and the trpE gene is regulated in parallel with them. The trpFBA genes are controlled neither coordinately nor in parallel with the other trp genes, but respond proportionally when compared with each other. So far, two types of constitutive mutants have been found. The first class of mutants apparently occurs in the structural gene for a repressor protein; this repressor locus is unlinked to any of the biosynthetic trp genes and affects only the expression of trpE and the trpGDC cluster. The second class contains mutants closely linked to the trpGDC region; they overproduce only the gene products of this cluster.


This thesis is a cultural materialist exploration of the trans-generic work of D. H. Lawrence. Combining formalist analyses with this historical approach, I provide perspectives on Lawrence which attend to the particularity of his texts' form while revealing their constitution as historical and material products. The consequence is neither a "radicalized" Lawrence nor a right-wing caricature of him, but a politically hybrid Lawrence whose texts are sites of struggle with the socio-historical contradictions of modernity. In chapter 1, I show how Lawrence can critique bourgeois culture and its material foundations more profoundly than has been assumed. Pansies, whose dialogical poetics undermines conventional literary genres and assaults a bourgeois "literature" which suppresses its materiality, is read as a critique of its own conditions of production. In chapter 2, I illustrate how Lawrence's post-war work is more embattled than• is usually realised, in its intense exploration of the contradictions of liberal capitalism; the notion of Lawrence's post-war texts as largely monologic and reactionary is radically undermined. In chapter 3, I argue that Lawrence's life as an exile does not signify, as it is normally understood to, a sustained hostility to England and nation-ness. Rather, Lawrence's articles on Englishness offer an abstract, bourgeois myth of England which occludes the conflicts of class and gender. Finally, in chapter 4, I illuminate the darker cultural roots of Lawrence's unconscious, which is commonly perceived as a liberatory force, opposing hegemonic cultural ideologies. While Lawrence critiques the hypocrisy and repression of modern democratic idealism, his positing of an extra-cultural unconscious is haunted by an intensified version of the very cultural repression he assaults.


ABSTRACT
The prostanoid thromboxane (TX)A2 plays a fundamental role in vascular haemostasis and, more recently, is increasingly implicated in various neoplasms including in prostate, breast and bladder cancers, among others. In humans, TXA2 signals through the TPα and TPβ isoforms of the T prostanoid receptor (TP), two structurally related receptors that display both common, overlapping but also distinct, isoform-specific physiologic roles. Consistent with this, while TPα and TPβ are encoded by the same gene, the TBXA2R, they are differentially expressed due to their transcriptional regulation by distinct promoters where promoter (Prm) 1 regulates TPα expression and Prm3 regulates TPβ. While the clinical evidence for the role of the TXA2-TP axis in neoplastic progression is increasing, few studies to date have investigated the role of the individual TPα/TPβ isoforms in human cancer or indeed in most other diseases in which the TXA2-TP axis is implicated. Focusing on TPα, this review details the current understanding of the factors regulating its expression and tran¬scriptional regulation through Prm1, including in prostate and breast cancers. Emphasis is placed on the trans-acting transcriptional regulators that bind to cis-elements within the core and upstream regulatory regions of Prm1 under basal conditions and in response to cellular differentiation. A particular focus is placed on the role of the tumour suppressor Wilms' tumour 1 in the regulation of TPα expression through Prm1 in megakaryoblastic cells of vascular origin and in prostate and breast carcinoma cells. Collectively, this review details current knowledge of the factors determining regulation of the TXA2-TPα axis and thereby provides a genetic basis for understanding the role of TXA2 in the progression of certain human cancers.


Unlike congressional and presidential papers collections, which have a rich archival literature in support of their acquisition and management, archivists and researchers frequently overlook and undervalue state legislators' papers. One reason for undervaluing state legislators' papers is the lack of legal guidelines in most states for ownership of these political papers. This article presents the results of a broad survey of state laws and collecting policies within state archives regarding the collecting of state legislators' papers. Overall, archivists, lawmakers, and the general public need to become more aware of the value of state legislators' papers, pass laws that protect and define ownership of state legislators' papers, and advocate for greater collaboration between state archival programs and other archival repositories to ensure their preservation.


The purpose of this study is to find out the differences of perceptions on urban regeneration issues by resident characteristics in Daegu. Survey questionnaires were composed of 7 questionnaires in 4 fields – perception to residential environment & urban regeneration, the most important issue in urban regeneration and type of implementation. Total 2,016 surveys were selected, and the independent-sample t-test, ANOVA, post-hoc analysis, and chi-square analysis were applied for analyses. Results showed that gender, age, houisng type, ownership and residence periods statistically influenced on the perception to residential environment & urban regeneration, the most important issue in urban regeneration and type of implementation. Especially, resident's housing type and residence periods showed statistically significant in six questions except type of implementation and the most important urban regeneration issue respectively. Age groups also showed significant differences in five questions except satisfaction to physical environments and necessity of urban regeneration. Gender and ownership showed only differences in three questions. Results showed that considering resident's characteristics are important when urban policy makers prepare for strategic urban regeneration plan.


In high-energy physics, bioinformatics, and other disciplines, we encounter applications involving numerous, loosely coupled jobs that both access and generate large data sets. So-called Data Grids seek to harness geographically distributed resources for such large-scale data-intensive problems. Yet effective scheduling in such environments is challenging, due to a need to address a variety of metrics and constraints while dealing with multiple, potentially independent sources of jobs and a large number of storage, compute, and network resources. We describe a scheduling framework that addresses these problems. Within this framework, data movement operations may be either tightly bound to job scheduling decisions or, alternatively, performed by a decoupled, asynchronous process on the basis of observed data access patterns and load. We develop a family of algorithms and use simulation studies to evaluate various combinations. Our results suggest that while it is necessary to consider the impact of replication, it is not always necessary to couple data movement and computation scheduling. Instead, these two activities can be addressed separately, thus significantly simplifying the design and implementation.


Abstract The effectiveness of most cancer targeted therapies is short lived since tumors evolve and develop resistance. Combinations of drugs offer the potential to overcome resistance, however the number of possible combinations is vast necessitating data-driven approaches to find optimal treatments tailored to a patient's tumor. AstraZeneca carried out 11,576 experiments on 910 drug combinations across 85 cancer cell lines, recapitulating in vivo response profiles. These data, the largest openly available screen, were hosted by DREAM alongside deep molecular characterization from the Sanger Institute for a Challenge to computationally predict synergistic drug pairs and associated biomarkers. 160 teams participated to provide the most comprehensive methodological development and subsequent benchmarking to date. Winning methods incorporated prior knowledge of putative drug target interactions. For >60% of drug combinations synergy was reproducibly predicted with an accuracy matching biological replicate experiments, however 20% of drug combinations were poorly predicted by all methods. Genomic rationale for synergy predictions were identified, including antagonism unique to combined PIK3CB/D inhibition with the ADAM17 inhibitor where synergy is seen with other PI3K pathway inhibitors. All data, methods and code are freely available as a resource to the community.


Written to meet the needs of teachers, lecturers, tutors and trainers, this is the essential guide to understanding the key issues in learning and teaching in social policy and social work - as well as related areas such as early childhood studies, youth and community work and probation studies. The field of social care is constantly changing, and this book acts an accessible introduction to all the core concerns that will be critical to teaching professionals working in the field today. Key areas covered include curriculum planning, design and delivery of teaching, assessment, promoting inclusion, e-learning and interprofessional practice. This book also aims to provide an international perspective, outlining innovative best practice from around the world. Written for undergraduate and postgraduate level teaching, less experienced teachers looking for authoritative, expert guidance will find this title indispensable, as will more experienced professionals seeking material for reflection.


Relaxation of donor and acceptor bound excitons, (D°, X) and (A°, X), to a final state in which the impurity atoms are left in an internally excited state has been used in several laboratories as a tool in assigning the chemical identity of the impurity species. In many specific samples, however, this excited final state emission is obscured by the free to bound (e−, A°) or an interfering donor to acceptor (D°, A°) transition. Enhanced emission from excited final state relaxation processes in GaAs has been observed using selective excitation to increase the population of the appropriate initial states. Increases in emission intensity of approximately 8 for (D°, X)* and 30 for (A°, X)* were observed. The excitation wavelength dependence of the enhancement is explained in terms of instrumental parameters and free exciton absorption. The converse of the selective excitation experiment was performed in order to learn more about the mechanisms which populate the levels giving rise to the analytically interesting emission. Anti-Stokes emission was observed in the near-gap region in high purity GaAs for the first time. The emission intensity as a function of excitation wavelength data is discussed in terms of a simple parallel pathway model for upconversion. The model postulates two parallel mechanisms which may populate the emitting states, and the access to one or the other of the two is determined by the energy of the incident photon. The model explains both the absolute intensity behavior of the (D°, X) and (D+, X) emission and the intensity ratio trend as a function of excitation wavelength.


The formulation of drug compounds into nanoparticles has many potential advantages in enhancing bioavailability and improving therapeutic efficacy. However, few drug molecules will assemble into stable, well-defined nanoparticulate structures. Amphiphilic polymer coatings are able to stabilise nanoparticles, imparting defined surface properties for many possible drug delivery applications. In the present article we explore, both experimentally and in silico, a potential methodology to coat drug nanoparticles with an amphiphilic co-polymer. Monomethoxy polyethylene glycol–polycaprolactone (mPEG-b-PCL) diblock copolymers with different mPEG lengths (Mw 350, 550, 750 and 2000), designed to give different levels of colloidal stability, were used to coat the surface of indomethacin nanoparticles. Polymer coating was achieved by a flow nanoprecipitation method that demonstrated excellent batch-to-batch reproducibility and resulted in nanoparticles with high drug loadings (up to 78%). At the same time, in order to understand this modified nanoprecipitation method at an atomistic level, large-scale all-atom molecular dynamics simulations were performed in parallel using the GROMOS53a6 forcefield parameters. It was observed that the mPEG-b-PCL chains act synergistically with the acetone molecules to dissolve the indomethacin nanoparticle while after the removal of the acetone molecules (mimicking the evaporation of the organic solvent) a polymer–drug nanoparticle was formed (yield 99%). This work could facilitate the development of more efficient methodologies for producing nanoparticles of hydrophobic drugs coated with amphiphilic polymers. The atomistic insight from the MD simulations in tandem with the data from the drug encapsulation experiments thus leads the way to a nanoformulation-by-design approach for therapeutic nanoparticles.


Coated composite corrugated panels have wide applications in engineering, especially in morphing skins where extreme anisotropic stiffness properties are required. The optimal design of these structures requires high-fidelity models of the panels that would be incorporated into multi-disciplinary system models. Therefore, numerical and experimental investigations are required that retain the dependence on the nonlinear static and dynamic behavior of these structures. Considering the nonlinear effects due to the material properties and mechanism of deformation, the mechanical behavior of composite corrugated laminates with elastomeric coatings is studied in this paper by means of numerical and experimental investigations. The importance of this work is that it provides detailed experimental and numerical models of the panel that can be used for further static and dynamic homogenization and optimization studies. In this regard, an investigation of the manufacturing method and an evaluation of the mechanical characteristics of the materials are presented. Then the tensile, hysteresis and three-point bending tests of the coated corrugated panels are analyzed and the mechanical behavior of the panel is simulated. The comparison studies demonstrate the accuracy of the finite element model to predict the mechanical behavior of the coated corrugated panels. Finally, two concepts to deal with the non-smooth surface of the panel during bending for the morphing skin application are proposed.


Multi-Party Computation (MPC) is a technique enabling data from several sources to be used in a secure computation revealing only the result while protecting the original data, facilitating shared utilization of data sets gathered by different entities. The presence of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) hardware in datacenters can provide accelerated computing as well as low latency, high bandwidth communication that bolsters the performance of MPC and lowers the barrier to using MPC for many applications. In this work, we propose a Secret Sharing FPGA design based on the protocol described by Araki et al. We compare our hardware design to the original authors' software implementations of Secret Sharing and to work accelerating MPC protocols based on Garbled Circuits with FPGAs. Our conclusion is that Secret Sharing in the datacenter is competitive and when implemented on FPGA hardware was able to use at least 10× fewer computer resources than the original work using CPUs.


Objectives: Stress fractures occur as a result of repeatedly making the same movement in a specific region, which can lead to fatigue and imbalance between osteoblast and osteoclast activity, thus favouring bone breakage. Stress fractures in military recruits causes long periods of absence from training and economic losses. The purpose of this prospective study was to determine the incidence and distribution of stress fracture in military recruits and present evidence-based concepts to provide with an overview of diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation. Methods: 284 military recruits at a peripheral military hospital who had presented with symptoms of pain, swelling or deformity of lower limb were studied over a period of 1 year. All of them with clinical and radiological diagnosis of Stress fracture were hospitalised and treated conservatively for a week followed by 4 weeks of sick leave and thereafter observed for 6-12 weeks depending upon the severity of their symptoms wherein stress fracture rehabilitation was provided in a phased manner. Results: 284 recruits had reported with pain, swelling, deformity of lower limb at the end of physical activity with a focal point of tenderness. The average age of the patients with Stress fracture was 20 years. The incidence of Stress fracture reached maximum during 11-20 weeks of the training schedule. Overall, the most common sites of bone injuries were the tibia (52.11%), fibula (23.59%), femur shaft (9.50%), femur neck (7.74%)and metatarsals (7.04%). Most fractures healed in an average period of 5 weeks. Most individuals returned to their full activity in an average period of 18 weeks. Conclusion: The study provides evidence that Stress fracture among military recruits occur frequently during their training period. To prevent stress fractures, modifiable risk factors must be identified and a proactive approach should be adopted which helps recruits withstand intense physical activity.


Obsidian-bearing sites spanning the temporal framework of the Palaeolithic and located in Africa and Europe are analysed with the aim of elucidating the evolution of modern social behaviour. Obsidian is a rock that forms only under very special conditions; its geological sources are infrequent and distinguished from each other on the basis of unique chemical properties. As such it is possible to reconstruct the distances of its movement and use these data to infer the scale of social life during the Palaeolithic. A strong correlation between obsidian use and long distances is observed implying that the hominins involved in the circulation of the specific material were behaving in a socially modern way.


It is well known that many high performance sintered alloys have been produced by Metal Injection Molding (MIM) process so far. A Fe-Ni system is one of the objected alloys, and they are used for machine structural parts. Although assessment of the dynamic fracture properties such as fatigue strength is important to design a reliable sintered structual parts, there are few reports for the dynamic properties of MIM alloys even at the present time.In this study, the behaviore of dynamic properties (impact and fatigue strength) for Fe-Ni (Fe-2, 4 and 7mass%Ni) alloys produced by MIM process has been investigated. Approximately 96% of theoretical density was obtained in all Fe-Ni alloys. Impact strength of MIM alloys was superior to that of the conventional P/M alloys, because the pore structure of the former was fine and spheroidized as compared to that of the latter. Fatigue strength was increased with increasing Ni content because of the solution strengthening and grain refining effects. Endurance ratio of MIM alloys was similar to that of the wrought alloys.


A common-mode (CM) filter based on the LCL filter topology is proposed in this paper, which provides a parallel path for ground currents and which also restricts the magnitude of the EMI noise injected into the grid. The CM filter makes use of the components of a line to line LCL filter, which is modified to address the CM voltage with minimal additional components. This leads to a compact filtering solution. The CM voltage of an adjustable speed drive using a PWM rectifier is analyzed for this purpose. The filter design is based on the CM equivalent circuit of the drive system. The filter addresses the adverse effects of the PWM rectifier in an adjustable speed drive. Guidelines are provided on the selection of the filter components. Different variants of the filter topology are evaluated to establish the effectiveness of the proposed circuit. Experimental results based on EMI measurement on the grid side and the CM current measurement on the motor side are presented. These results validate the effectiveness of the filter.


Following the EU-India summit in May 2021, talks on both an EU-India trade and an investment agreement have resumed. This analysis provides background on where EU-India economic relations stand and why it is important to maintain momentum following this breakthrough, despite a somewhat unpromising domestic political environment in India. This new impetus largely reflects a transformed geopolitical landscape since the last round of EU-India talks were abandoned in 2013. The increased tension between India and China, as well as the EU's intent to reduce its reliance on Chinese manufacturing have created the conditions for changes in policy by both parties. However, many of the issues that bedeviled the 2007-2013 negotiations remain unresolved. In this analysis, we provide an overview of EU-India trade and investment relations as well as the major topics in these negotiations. The impact of key global initiatives on climate change and WTO reform that will shape the negotiations is also briefly discussed. Based on this analysis, we discuss three potential ways forward for EU-India trade and investment negotiations: a comprehensive agreement similar to that reached between the EU and Vietnam; a limited investment deal primarily focused on manufacturing; and a reinforced status quo with trade and investment relations growing organically under the existing multilateral umbrella. Policy Department, Directorate-General for External Policies


Since the introduction of feedforward–feedback comb allpass filters by Schroeder and Logan, its popularity has not diminished due to its computational efficiency and versatile applicability in artificial reverberation, decorrelation, and dispersive system design. In this work, we present an extension to the Schroeder allpass filter by introducing frequency-dependent feedforward and feedback gains while maintaining the allpass characteristic. By this, we directly improve upon the design of Dahl and Jot which exhibits a frequency-dependent absorption but does not preserve the allpass property. At the same time, we also improve upon Gerzon's allpass filter as our design is both less restrictive and computationally more efficient. We provide a complete derivation of the filter structure and its properties. Furthermore, we illustrate the usefulness of the structure by designing an allpass decorrelation filter with frequency-dependent decay characteristics.


The Supreme Court's opinion in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case legally ended decades of racial segregation in America's public schools. Originally named after Oliver Brown, the first of many plaintiffs listed in the lower court case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, the landmark decision actually resolved five separate segregation cases from four states and the District of Columbia consolidated under the name Brown v. Board of Education. While the attorneys originally argued the cases on appeal to the Court in 1952, the featured document, School Segregation Cases--Order of Argument, offers a window into the three days in December 1953 during which they reargued the cases. A reargument was necessary because the Court desired briefs from both sides in answer to five questions, all pertaining to the attorneys' opinions on whether or not Congress had segregation in public schools in mind when the 14th Amendment was ratified. The document lists the names of each case, the states from which they came, the order in which the Court heard them, the names of the attorneys for the appellants and appellees, the total time allotted for arguments, and the dates over which the arguments took place. The first case listed, Briggs v. Elliott, originated in Clarendon County, South Carolina, in the fall of 1950. Harry Briggs was one of twenty plaintiffs who charged that R. W Elliott, as president of the Clarendon County School Board, violated their right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment by upholding the county's segregated education law. Brigs featured social science testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs from some of the nation's leading child psychologists, such as Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose famous doll study concluded that segregation negatively affected the self-esteem and psyche of African American children. Such testimony was groundbreaking because only once before in U.S. history had a plaintiff attempted to present such evidence before the Court. Thurgood Marshall, the noted NAACP attorney and future Supreme Court justice, argued the Briggs case at the district and federal court levels. After the U.S. District Court's three-judge panel ruled against the plaintiffs, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. Marshall also argued the Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, case at the federal level. Originally filed in May 1951 by plaintiff's attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill, the Davis case, like the others, argued that Virginia's segregated education laws were unconstitutional because they violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. And like the Briggs case, Virginia's three-judge panel ruled against the 117 students who were identified as plaintiffs in the case. Listed third in the order of arguments, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was initially filed in February 1951 by three Topeka area lawyers, assisted by the NAACP's Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg. As in the Briggs case, this case featured social science testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs that segregation had a harmful effect on the psychology of African American children. While that testimony did not prevent the Topeka judges from ruling against the plaintiffs, the evidence from this case eventually found its way into the wording of the Warren court's May 17, 1954, opinion. The Court concluded that To separate them [children in grade and high schools] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone. (1) Because Washington, DC, is a federal territory governed by Congress and is not a state, the Bolling v. Sharpe case was argued as a violation of the Fifth Amendment guarantee of "due process." The 14th Amendment only mentions states, so this case could not be argued as a violation of "equal protection," as were the other cases. …


Pseudostatic slope stability procedures can be employed in a straightforward manner, and thus, their use in engineering practice is appealing. The magnitude of the seismic coefficient that is applied to the potential sliding mass to represent the destabilizing effect of the earthquake shaking is a critical component of the procedure. It is often selected based on precedence, regulatory design guidance, and engineering judgment. However, the selection of the design value of the seismic coefficient employed in pseudostatic slope stability analysis should be based on the seismic hazard and the amount of seismic displacement that constitutes satisfactory performance for the project. The seismic coefficient should have a rational basis that depends on the seismic hazard and the allowable amount of calculated seismically induced permanent displacement. The recommended pseudostatic slope stability procedure requires that the engineer develops the project-specific allowable level of seismic displacement. The sitedependent seismic demand is characterized by the 5% damped elastic design spectral acceleration at the degraded period of the potential sliding mass as well as other key parameters. The level of uncertainty in the estimates of the seismic demand and displacement can be handled through the use of different percentile estimates of these values. Thus, the engineer can properly incorporate the amount of seismic displacement judged to be allowable and the seismic hazard at the site in the selection of the seismic coefficient.


In the first results of electron Bernstein wave heating (EBWH) via O-X-B double mode conversion in a medium aspect ratio tokamak performed in TCV, the total power absorption efficiency was typically 60% and the deposition was made off-axis to avoid the central sawteeth perturbation that would prevent a clear detection of the deposition location. Central power deposition is however needed to maximize the global EBWH effects. Therefore, initial experiments have been started to optimize central deposition using an equatorial rather than poloidally oblique launch. A toroidal field scan provided promising central deposition results within a small database, in preparation for dedicated central high power deposition. The deposition location in presence of strong sawteeth could be determined from the slope break of soft X-ray traces at the EC power switch-ON times, in conditions where usual methods failed. Further analysis of these discharges will be presented. In particular, the difference between the experimental results and the non-relativistic calculations of deposition locations appears more significant than in the earlier off-axis deposition experiments, which provides a good opportunity for the simulation of relativistic ray propagation effects.


Teachers, parents, and administrators tell students that consent is "simple." To be sure, every day, millions of people follow the directive to have only consensual sex with great success and have mutually wanted, unproblematic intimate contact. Law and policy, however, rarely intervene in easy cases. Consent standards intervene in the hard cases. College sexual consent policies delineate when sex between two competent adults of equal status, without force or threat, is a punishable offense. They determine what should happen when the accuser feels harmed but the accused believes he or she has not committed harm. They weigh in on default views of sex — whether people generally desire, are ambivalent toward, or fear sex. They guide decision makers on whom to believe in "he-said-she-said" cases. In short, consent is far from simple. This chapter, written for the book Adjudicating Campus Sexual Misconduct and Assault, unpacks the complex concept of consent in college codes. Its aim is taxonomical and explanatory: to categorize various consent formulations and clarify how they regulate behavior and resolve disputes. The first part of the chapter is a brief history of "ordinary" and affirmative consent standards in criminal law. The second turns to the concept of consent itself. There, I explore what it means to say that a sexual transaction between two people is consensual and whether consent relates to a state of mind, communication, or both. The third part examines the various formulations of consent in college codes, placing them on a scale from most to least regulatory. Finally, I discuss the complicated costs and benefits of affirmative consent.


There is limited safety information about ferric carboxymaltose (FCM), a new intravenous iron preparation. This randomized, crossover study compared the safety and tolerability of double‐blinded intravenous doses of FCM or placebo in patients with iron deficiency anemia. Subjects (559) with iron deficiency anemia received a dose of either FCM (15 mg/kg, maximum 1000 mg) over 15 minutes or placebo on day 0. On day 7, subjects received the other agent. Safety evaluations were performed on days 7 and 14. The primary endpoint was the incidence of treatment‐emergent adverse events during each 7‐day study period. During the first 24 hours and during the 7‐day treatment period, at least one treatment‐emergent adverse event was experienced by 15.0% and 29.3% of subjects after FCM and 11.4% and 19.7% after placebo, respectively. Most were classified as Grade 1 or 2. Six subjects had Grade 3 treatment‐emergent adverse events after FCM and 9 subjects after placebo. One subject had a Grade 4, and 1 subject had a Grade 5 treatment‐emergent adverse event, but neither was considered study drug‐related. During the first 24 hours of the treatment period, drug‐related adverse events were reported in 9.3% of subjects receiving FCM and 4.8% receiving placebo. Of drug‐related Grade 3 events, 4 subjects received FCM and 5 subjects received placebo. Administration of FCM (15 mg/kg, maximum of 1000 mg) over 15 minutes was well tolerated and associated with minimal risk of adverse reactions in patients with iron deficiency anemia.


The successful application of bioventing systems for in situ remediation of petroleum hydrocarbon‐contaminated sites depends on many factors including: moisture content, temperature, number and location of injection and extraction wells, as well as corresponding airflow rates. The importance of well locations and air flow rates has been explored in this study and their optimal values were obtained via the fixed well method. The design problem was formulated to maximize total contaminant mass removal within a given time frame subject to physical and budgetary constraints. The technique developed herein was applied to a field case study. Results indicate that optimal well locations are found along the mass centerline(s) of the contaminant plume. Furthermore, well location optimization was proven to be more important than pumping rate optimization.


Nanomaterials in water present an array of identifiable potential hazards to ecological and human health. There is no general consensus about the influence of anionic or cationic charge on the toxicity of nanomaterials on environmental ecology. One challenge is the limited number of scalable technologies available for the removal of charged nanomaterials from water. A new method based on polymer coating has been developed in our laboratory for rapid sedimentation of nanomaterials in aqueous suspension. Using colloidal silica as a model inorganic oxide, coating of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) around the SiO2 nanoparticles produced SiO2@PVP particles, as indicated by a linear increase of nephelometric turbidity. Purification of the water sample was afforded by total sedimentation of SiO2@PVP particles when left for 24 h. Characterization by capillary electrophoresis (CE) revealed nearly zero ionic charge on the particles. Further coating of polydopamine (PDA) around those particles in aqueous suspension produced an intense dark color due to the formation of SiO2@PVP@PDA. The SiO2@PVP@PDA peak appeared at a characteristic migration time of 4.2 min that allowed for quantitative CE-UV analysis to determine the original SiO2 concentration with enhanced sensitivity and without any ambiguous identity.


The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is one of the most important electrochemical reactions in energy conversion and storage technologies, such as fuel cells and metal–air batteries. However, the sluggish kinetics of the ORR is a key factor limiting the performance of these energy storage and conversion devices. Perovskite oxides are a promising family of electrocatalysts for the ORR because of their unique physical and chemical properties, such as variable crystal structure and non-stoichiometric chemistry. Studies have shown that the catalytic properties of perovskite oxides in the ORR are largely related to oxygen vacancies, which alter their electronic and crystal structures and surface chemistry. This review summarizes recent research advances on understanding the role of oxygen vacancies of the ABO3 perovskite oxides in catalyzing the ORR. With a brief introduction of perovskite oxides, approaches to creating oxygen vacancies in the ABO3 perovskite oxides and the role of oxygen vacancies in improving their catalytic performance for the ORR are discussed. Research perspectives in this important area are highlighted.


The slave-plantation system was clearly evil and a war was fought to end it. The Reconstruction period was a half hearted attempt to institute reforms in former slave states. Regionally and locally the former slave-owners regained political and economic power in the years following Reconstruction. The crop-lien system replaced the slave-plantation system. The two systems were similar in that labor was a dependent underclass with severely limited rights and freedoms. The only way this could have been thwarted would have been to fully implement promised reforms including land redistribution. The South as a whole was harmed by this process but Eastern North Carolina was particularly set back as there were few alternatives to agriculture. The beginnings of reforms that had been promised in the 1860's were not seen until a century later when a new social movement forwarded civil rights. The eastern third of North Carolina still suffers economically socially and educationally from the lingering effects of the failure of Reconstruction.


Abstract All of the three exercises of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Regulatory Commission pressurized water reactor main steam line break (PWR MSLB) benchmark were calculated at VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland. For the first exercise, the plant simulation with point-kinetic neutronics, the thermal-hydraulics code SMABRE was used. The second exercise was calculated with the three-dimensional reactor dynamics code TRAB-3D, and the third exercise with the combination TRAB-3D/SMABRE. VTT has over ten years' experience of coupling neutronic and thermal-hydraulic codes, but this benchmark was the first time these two codes, both developed at VTT, were coupled together. The coupled code system is fast and efficient; the total computation time of the 100-s transient in the third exercise was 16 min on a modern UNIX workstation. The results of all the exercises are similar to those of the other participants. In order to demonstrate the effect of secondary circuit modeling on the results, three different cases were calculated. In case 1 there is no phase separation in the steam lines and no flow reversal in the aspirator. In case 2 the flow reversal in the aspirator is allowed, but there is no phase separation in the steam lines. Finally, in case 3 the drift-flux model is used for the phase separation in the steam lines, but the aspirator flow reversal is not allowed. With these two modeling variations, it is possible to cover a remarkably broad range of results. The maximum power level reached after the reactor trip varies from 534 to 904 MW, the range of the time of the power maximum being close to 30 s. Compared to the total calculated transient time of 100 s, the effect of the secondary side modeling is extremely important.


In this paper we study the impact of the implementation of an IXP in the city of La Paz, Bolivia. The case has some desirable characteristics. First, Bolivia ranks at or near the bottom in Internet development (however measured) in Latin America, and thus presents a fertile environment in which the benefits of an IXP should be readily observed. Second, the IXP emerged from a new interconnection regime that requires that large access providers exchange traffic locally through a single interconnection point. This is critically different from other scenarios in which IXP membership is voluntary, and thus its impact is highly dependent on which networks choose to participate. Our impact evaluation strategy is twofold. First we analyze industry performance data collected by the Bolivian telecom authority. Second, we deploy active probes located in different network operators across Bolivia in order to obtain direct measurements about latency, the utilization of local routes, and other network performance metrics. These are combined with traffic indicators obtained from the IXP itself. Our preliminary results suggest that PIT Bolivia has made a positive impact on network performance in Bolivia. More specifically, local traffic passing through PIT Bolivia exhibits significantly lower latency and fewer hops than local traffic routed over international transit links. However, because traffic levels at PIT Bolivia are low and growing slowly, the economic benefit to participating ISP, and therefore to the Bolivian Internet ecosystem as a whole, is more modest than predicted. Further, given existing Internet usage patterns that heavily favor content access, the current absence of CDNs at PIT Bolivia considerably limits traffic growth, thus reducing the potential impact of the initiative.


For many Westerners, the term sacrifice is associated with ancient, often primitive ritual practices. It suggests the death-frequently violent, often bloody-of an animal victim, usually with the aim of atoning for human guilt. Sacrifice is a serious ritual, culminating in a dramatic event. The reality of religious sacrificial acts across the globe and throughout history is, however, more expansive and inclusive. In Beyond Sacred Violence, Kathryn McClymond argues that the modern Western world's reductive understanding of sacrifice simplifies an enormously broad and dynamic cluster of religious activities. Drawing on a comparative study of Vedic and Jewish sacrificial practices, she demonstrates not only that sacrifice has no single, essential, identifying characteristic but also that the elements most frequently attributed to such acts-death and violence-are not universal. McClymond reveals that the world of religious sacrifice varies greatly, including grain-based offerings, precious liquids, and complex interdependent activities. Engagingly argued and written, Beyond Sacred Violence significantly extends our understanding of religious sacrifice and serves as a timely reminder that the field of religious studies is largely framed by Christianity.


In this thesis, the MIS device was fabricated using P3HT and PMMA:TiO2 as semiconductor and insulator layer respectively. The spin coating technique was used as the deposition process. The electrical and physical properties of the MIS were studies by varying the P3HT semiconductor film thickness. The MIS was fabricated on top of indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass acting as substrate and bottom electrode. The goal of this study is to investigate the performance of MIS by varying the thickness of the P3HT semiconductor film.P3HT film was prepared by dissolving a 15 mg of P3HT powder in 15 ml chloroform to obtain P3HT solution. Then, the solution was spin coated on glass substrate to form the P3HT semiconductor film. The deposition speed was varied from 500 rpm, 1000 rpm, 1500 rpm, 2000 rpm and 2500 rpm to obtain different P3HT film thickness. Then, the P3HT film was characterized for it electrical and physical properties. The physical properties result of P3HT film shows that the relationship between thickness, conductivity and surface roughness of the P3HT when deposition speed is increased. The thickness of the P3HT film decreased by 317.69, 276.95, 239.03, 193.17 and 151.53 nm for 500, 1000, 1500, 2000 and 2500 rpm, respectively. The conductivity is 0.0731, 0.09402, 0.1039, 013793 and 0.19015 S/cm and the surface roughness are 145.628, 11,74, 8.872, 4.088 and 4.663 nm for 500, 1000, 1500, 2000 and 2500 rpm, respectively. P3HT film roughness also can effect on MIS performance. The 500 rpm give the biggest value of surface roughness which is 15.628 nm compare to other samples. The surface roughness of P3HT film can be minimizing by increasing the deposition speed. Result from the characterization shows that P3HT with 1500 rpm has the optimized compare to other deposition speed. MIS with different P3HT film as semiconductor were demonstrated. The device performance displayed by MIS indicates that P3HT semiconductor is compatible with PMMA:TiO2. The improvement in the threshold voltage, VTH of MIS was observed when P3HT film thickness is reduced. The VTH is in the range of -2 to -13 V and for rotational speed of 2500 rpm presented the smaller VTH. The conductivity and electrical properties P3HT thin film was investigated from I-V characteristic. It shows that all MIS samples have resulted the lower of P3HT film thickness has a fast operating voltage. It can see that have improvement on VTH when iv the P3HT film thickness is reduce. From the leakage current, J characteristic, it can be observed that the P3HT layer is suitable with PMMA:TiO2 layer. The J value is always on the 10-8 A/cm2. C-V characteristics of MIS were discovered by charge stored in the MIS device. Overall results show that the inversion region for the C-V curve has change the operation from high frequency (HF) to low frequency (LF) by increasing the spin speed. Surface morphology proved that the increasing spin speed not only reduced the thickness, it also reduced the surface roughness for P3HT films.