Examining the relationship of variables related to litigation regarding students with significant cognitive disabilities

Non-null interferometry offers a viable alternative to traditional interferometric testing of aspheric micro-lenses since computer generated holograms or null optics whose fabrication and testing are very expensive, are not required. However, due to the violation of the Nyquist sampling theorem these non-null tests provide limited dynamic range. The dynamic range of these non-null tests can be extended by implementing an index liquid which allows the measurement of micro-lenses with several microns of departure from a sphere. The first objective of this dissertation was to test important micro-lens properties such as the sag, radius of curvature and form errors for a micro-lens by using an index liquid. The results compared favorably to measurements taken on a Twyman-Green interferometer, a contact profilometer and an optical non-contact profilometer. Also, retrace errors, which are aberrations caused by altered ray paths of the test beam through a micro-lens were investigated. Reverse ray-trace and reverse optimization techniques are typically used to calibrate retrace errors, but in depth knowledge of the interferometer optics is assumed, and hence cannot be used for systems containing commercial optics. In this dissertation, re-trace errors are quantified and a novel calibration procedure derived to experimentally compensate for these errors. This retrace error calibration led to agreement of within 1% for the sag values between the index liquid technique and a profilometer. The second objective of this dissertation was to enable measurements of arbitrary geometries and to reduce testing time compared to profilometry. The index liquid technique was applied to faceted microstructured optical products which are becoming more widespread due to advances in manufacturing. Many of these structures contain faceted surfaces with steep slopes. Adequate metrology for such surfaces is lacking. The use of the index liquid technique achieved high quality, high speed measurements of such faceted microstructures. Refraction is accounted for at the interfaces, rather than consider only optical path length changes due to the index liquid, and this significantly improves the facet angle measurement. The technique is demonstrated with the measurement of an array of micro-pyramids and show that our results are in good agreement with measurements taken on a contact profilometer. The index liquid measurements took approximately five seconds to complete compared to a measurement time of six hours for the contact profilometer. The technique was also extended to measure opaque micro-corner cubes by implementing an intermediate replication step. This allowed a measurement of the angle between facets of a nickel micro-corner cube hexagonal array, a combination not previously demonstrated in the literature. A first order uncertainty analysis was carried out on the index liquid technique to determine any limiting factors that need to be taken into account when assessing such parameters as the sag and facet angle. The uncertainties in the sag and facet angle were found to be well below 1%. Lastly secondary factors such interferometer bias, refraction, masking effects and pixel calibration were investigated to understand the possible implications on the sag and facet angle calculation

Artificial Neural Networks in Agriculture

Modern agriculture needs to have high production efficiency combined with a high quality of obtained products. This applies to both crop and livestock production. To meet these requirements, advanced methods of data analysis are more and more frequently used, including those derived from artificial intelligence methods. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are one of the most popular tools of this kind. They are widely used in solving various classification and prediction tasks, for some time also in the broadly defined field of agriculture. They can form part of precision farming and decision support systems. Artificial neural networks can replace the classical methods of modelling many issues, and are one of the main alternatives to classical mathematical models. The spectrum of applications of artificial neural networks is very wide. For a long time now, researchers from all over the world have been using these tools to support agricultural production, making it more efficient and providing the highest-quality products possible

Dynamics and Limiting Mechanisms of Self-Aligned Carbon Nanotube Growth.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are long, cylindrical molecules, which boast exceptional tensile strength and large thermal and electrical conductivities. Vertically aligned CNT “forests” have promising potential uses, including dry adhesives, electrical interconnects, light emitters, thermal interface materials, gas and liquid filters, composite reinforcements, and photonic crystals. Manufacturing indefinitely long CNTs may realize dreams of CNT-based cables and wires having stiffness, strength, and transport properties exceeding today’s best metal alloys and advanced fibers. However, the functional properties of CNT forests have so far fallen short of those of individual CNTs due to low packing fraction, polydisperse diameters, and relatively short lengths. Toward the eventual goal of bridging this structure-property relationship, my dissertation presents a novel set of in situ and ex situ characterization tools for CNT forest growth by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), as well as the use of these tools to investigate the limiting mechanisms thereof. In situ X-ray scattering reveals the dynamics of catalyst thin film dewetting into nanoparticle growth sites, the initial self-organization of the CNT forest, and the abrupt self-termination of growth. Quantification of catalyst and CNT sizes show that they are inevitably polydisperse, regardless of synthesis conditions. To overcome this, a novel method is introduced for templated dewetting of the catalyst film toward the formation of ordered, monodisperse particles using nanoporous anodic alumina. Further, a map of thermal conditions is explored by independently tuning the temperatures of the catalyst and gaseous precursors, thereby establishing a set of rules for engineering crucial characteristics of forest growth, including CNT diameter, structural quality, vertical alignment, as well as rate and lifetime of the reaction. Finally, aligned CNT ensembles are used as templates to direct the self-assembly of fullerene C60, creating hybrid films with high photoconductive gain, thereby demonstrating an immediate application of this exciting material. These studies represent many new insights into the so-called “birth, life, and death” of CNT growth, and they have important implications for future work in synthesis of advanced carbon materials, including CNTs, fullerenes, and graphene. Meanwhile, these results have immediate applicability to efficient CNT manufacturing, improved characterization, and new hybrid materials for energy conversion.Ph.D.Mechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91427/1/emeshot_1.pd

COUPLING CELLS COMPETITION, GROWTH AND REMODELLING IN MECHANICS OF BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

The biomechanical behavior and the mechanobiology of cells, tissues and organs have been intensively investigated in the last decades, with the aim of discovering the key feedback mechanisms governing the ways in which cascades of chemical signals are transmitted within the hierarchically organized living structures and interplay with physical events at different scale levels. Continuum Mechanics has deeply contributed to develop this research area and to meet related challenges, by creating the physically and mathematically consistent ground on which large deformation, stresses, evolving constitutive laws, growth, remodeling and morphogenesis do interact. The needed multiphysics vision in analysing the complex behavior of the living matter has in particular consolidated Tissue Mechanics theoretical approaches and related modeling strategies which are currently recognized as indispensable tools for explaining experimental evidences, for predicting dynamics of living systems as well as for supporting the design of prostheses for both soft and hard tissues. Further impulse to these studies is then given by the rapidly growing advances of the research in tissue engineering which continuously redraw new scenarios for applications in medicine and lead to envisage innovative drug delivery systems and biomaterials. Within this vivid multidisciplinary debate, an increasing interest has been recently registered in the Literature for the mechanical properties of living cells -and for the understanding of the dynamics to which they obey at different scale levels- also motivated by some recent discoveries which seem to allow to envisage new horizons for therapy and diagnosis of human diseases like cancer, by for example exploiting the different in-frequency response of single healthy and tumor cells stimulated by Utrasound. However, at the macroscopic scale -say at the tissue level- the feedback mechanisms and the cascade of bio-chemical and physical signals characterizing the complex interaction of dynamics occuring at different scales significantly complicates the biomechanical response of living matter and growing tumor masses, thus requiring enriched models which encorporate the mechanobiology at the micro- and meso-scale levels. Cancer diseases in fact occur when in a healthy tissue the cell-cell and cells-ECM (the Extra-Cellular Matrix) interactions are altered, and hyperplasia is generated as effect of sudden and often unforeseeable genetic modifications followed by a cascade of biochemical events leading to abnormal cell growth, lost of apoptosis, back-differentiation and metastasis. As a consequence, the determination of models capable to macroscopically describe how tumor masses behave and evolve in living tissues by embodying tumor invasion dynamics determined by cell-cell and cells-environment to date still remains an open issue. Growth of biological tissues has been recently treated within the framework of Continuum Mechanics, by adopting heterogeneous poroelastic models where the interaction between soft matrix and interstitial fluid flow is additionally coupled with inelastic effects ad hoc introduced to simulate the macroscopic volumetric growth determined by cells division, cells growth and extracellular matrix changes occurring at the micro-scale level. These continuum models seem to overcome some limitations intrinsically associated to other alternative approaches based on mass balances in multiphase systems, because the crucial role played by residual stresses accompanying growth and nutrients walkway is preserved. Nevertheless, when these strategies are applied to analyse solid tumors, mass growth is usually assigned in a prescribed form that essentially copies the in vitro measured intrinsic growth rates of the cell species. As a consequence, some important cell-cell dynamics governing mass evolution and invasion rates of cancer cells, as well as their coupling and feedback mechanisms associated to in situ stresses, are inevitably lost and hence the spatial distribution and the evolution with time of the growth inside the tumor --which would be results rather than input-- are forced to simply be data. In order to solve this sort of paradox, the present Thesis work, within a consistent thermodynamic framework, builds up an enhanced multi-scale poroelastic model undergoing large deformation and embodying inelastic growth, where the net growth terms directly result from the "interspecific" predator-prey (Volterra/Lotka-like) competition occurring at the micro-scale level between healthy and abnormal cell species. In this way, a system of fully-coupled non-linear PDEs is derived to describe how the fight among cell species to grab the available common resources, stress field, pressure gradients, interstitial fluid flows driving nutrients and inhomogeneous growth do all simultaneously interact to decide the tumor fate. The stability of the predator-prey dynamics and some original theoretical results for the non-linear mechanics of growing media are also developed and discussed in detail. The general approach -that is the coupling of growth, large deformation and competitive cell dynamics- is therefore applied to actual biomechanical problems (in particular analyzing growth and stress in tumor spheroids and arterial walls) and the theoretical outcomes are finally compared with in vivo experiments and animal models to validate the effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed strategy

An evolutionary metaphysics of human enhancement technologies

The monograph is an English, expanded and revised version of the book Cheshko, V. T., Ivanitskaya, L.V., & Glazko, V.I. (2018). Anthropocene. Philosophy of Biotechnology. Moscow, Course. The manuscript was completed by me on November 15, 2019. It is a study devoted to the development of the concept of a stable evolutionary human strategy as a unique phenomenon of global evolution. The name “An Evolutionary Metaphysics (Cheshko, 2012; Glazko et al., 2016). With equal rights, this study could be entitled “Biotechnology as a result and factor of the evolutionary processˮ. The choice in favor of used “The Evolutionary Metaphysics of Human Enhancement Technologiesˮ was made in accordance with the basic principle of modern post-academician and human-sized science, a classic example of which is biotechnology. The “Metaphysics of Evolution” and “Evolutionary Metaphysics” concepts are used in several ways in modern philosophical discourse. In any case, the values contain a logical or associative reference to the teleological nature of the evolutionary process (Hull, 1967, 1989; Apel, 1995; Faye, 2016; Dupre, 2017; Rose, 2018, etc). In our study, the “evolutionary metaphysics” serves to denote the thesis of the rationalization and technologization of global evolution and anthropogenesis, in particular. At the same time, the postulate of an open future remains relevant in relation to the results of the evolutionary process. The theory of evolution of complex, including the humans system and algorithm for its constructing are а synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern science. ln other words, natural philosophy is regaining the status bar element theoretical science in the era of technology-driven evolution. The co-evolutionary concept of 3-modal stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens is developed. The concept based оn the principle of evolutionary complementarity of anthropogenesis: value of evolutionary risk and evolutionary path of human evolution are defined bу descriptive (evolutionary efficiency) and creative-teleological (evolutionary correctness) parameters simultaneously, that cannot bе instrumental reduced to others ones. Resulting volume of both parameters define the vectors of blological, social, cultural and techno-rationalistic human evolution Ьу two gear mechanism genetic and cultural co-evolution and techno-humanitarian balance. The resultant each of them сап estimated Ьу the ratio of socio-psychological predispositions of humanization / dehumanization in mentality. Explanatory model and methodology of evaluation of creatively teleological evolutionary risk component of NBIC technological complex is proposed. Integral part of the model is evolutionary semantics (time-varying semantic code, the compliance of the blological, socio-cultural and techno-rationalist adaptive modules of human stable evolutionary strategy). It is seem necessary to make three clarifications. First, logical construct, “evolutionary metaphysics” contains an internal contradiction, because it unites two alternative explanatory models. “Metaphysics”, as a subject, implies deducibility of the process from the initial general abstract principle, and, consequently, the outcome of the development of the object is uniquely determined by the initial conditions. Predicate, “evolutionary”, means stochastic mechanism of realizing the same principle by memorizing and replicating random choices in all variants of the post-Darwin paradigm. In philosophy, random choice corresponds to the category of “free will” of a reasonable agent. In evolutionary theory, the same phenomenon is reflected in the concept of “covariant replication”. Authors will attempt to synthesize both of these models in a single transdisciplinary theoretical framework. Secondly, the interpretation of the term “evolutionary (adaptive) strategyˮ is different from the classical definition. The difference is that the adaptive strategy in this context is equivalent to the survival, i.e. it includes the adaptation to the environment and the transformation (construction) of the medium in accordance with the objectives of survival. To emphasize this difference authors used verbal construction “adaptiveˮ (rather than “evolutionaryˮ) strategy as more adequate. In all other cases, the two terms may be regarded as synonymous. Thirdly, the initial two essays of this series were published in one book in 2012. Their main goal was the development of the logically consistent methodological concept of stable adaptive (evolutionary) strategy of hominines and the argumentation of its heuristic possibilities as a transdisciplinary scientific paradigm of modern anthropology. The task was to demonstrate the possibilities of the SESH concept in describing and explaining the evolutionary prospects for the interaction of social organization and technology (techno-humanitarian balance) and the associated biological and cultural mechanisms of the genesis of religion (gene-cultural co-evolution). In other words, it was related to the sphere of cultural and philosophical anthropology, i.e. to the axiological component of any theoretical constructions describing the behavior of self-organizing systems with human participation. In contrast, the present work is an attempt to introduce this concept into the sphere of biological anthropology and, consequently, its main goal is to demonstrate the possibility of verification of its main provisions by means of procedures developed by natural science, i.e. refers to the descriptive component of the same theoretical constructions. The result of this in the future should be methods for assessing, calculating and predicting the risk of loss of biological and cultural identity of a person, associated with a permanent and continuously deepening process of development of science and technology

Growth by stretch: an interdisciplinary approach

Tissue expansion is a technique used by plastic and restorative surgeons to cause the body to grow additional skin, bone or other tissues. Distraction osteogenesis (DO) is an example of tissue expansion which has been widely applied in lower limb surgery (trauma/congenital), and congenital upper limb reconstruction (e.g. radial dysplasia). This complex and tightly regulated expansion process has resulted in adverse effects such as severe soft-tissue contractures and loss of nerve function as well as microtrauma and micro-haematoma formation (Natu et al., 2014). Thus far, the procedure can only be optimised by long-term animal or human experimentation. This thesis explains the development of an in vitro model that will allow extension regimes (µm/h, continuous/ intermittent) and molecular pathways involved in soft tissue damage related to DO to be explored. Cells cultured onto polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer films can be stretched at very low, adjustable speeds, using a stepper motor and various 3D printed and laser cut designs. The idea here is that plastic flow of PCL can be utilised to enable the material to stay extended upon strain being released, to represent permanent stretching of soft tissue. PCL film for the purposes of this project was made using a solvent in conjunction with a spin-coating process; A semi-crystalline and amorphous derivative of the polymer was made (C-PCL and A-PCL respectively). Testing the two polymer sheets indicated that C-PCL is a more rigid material and that strain occurs in more localised regions when it is stretched in comparison to A-PCL. The profile of the stress-strain curve for both C-PCL and A-PCL closely resemble that of a typical soft tissue after it has passed its yield point (33% strain). Due to the known involvement of fibroblasts in mechanical loading of tissue (B. Hinz, 2004), they were used as an initial cell line to develop an in vitro model for growth by stretch. Both A-PCL and C-PCL were used as substrates and were stretched passed their yield point (33% strain) before cells were cultured on. Following fibroblast proliferation to confluency substrates were further stretched by 1mm (2.5% strain) over 24 hours (stepped stretching at 0.04mm per hour). Orientation analysis indicated that cells grown on C-PCL initially elongate and orient to the direction of pre-stretch (when substrates are initially stretched passed their yield point), then contract upon being further stretched by 1mm over 24 hours. Cells cultured on A-PCL, under the same stretching regime initially align to the direction of pre-stretch; after being further stretched by 1mm the majority of cells remain aligned, but also elongate in the direction of stretch. Initial alignment on both materials was deemed a result of tension in the material and/or or topographical features which formed during stretching of substrates before cells were cultured on. The alignment was more pronounced on the C-PCL substrate and cell nuclei were analysed to be more elongated indicating the topography caused the fibroblasts to reside in a stressed state. This aligned cell effect was lost on C-PCL during further 1mm stretching due to; stress relaxation after each step of stretching; and/or localised strain regions causing cells to round during the stepped 1mm stretch. A-PCL was further investigated as a substrate to model soft tissue expansion in relation to DO where MRTF-A nuclear translocation was shown to increase in response to stretch (by 3-fold). F-actin texture analysis further implied cytoskeletal involvement in the stretching regime utilised for this project. Based on the results obtained, it was concluded that A-PCL with the stretching regime detailed (where plastic flow is utilised), provides the basis for a representative in vitro model of stretching soft tissue in relation to DO. Future work outlined to build on this model would be to: further investigate the relation between strain and cell response at the cell level for both materials using live imaging (in conjunction with fiducial markers in the substrate) and atomic force microscopy methods; and to develop understanding of extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions with cells in response to the stretching in the plastic flow region by again using live imaging methods (fluorescently tagging ECM components)

Mediated Cognition: Information Technologies and the Sciences of Mind

This dissertation investigates the interconnections between minds, media, and the cognitive sciences. It asks what it means for media to have effects upon the mind: do our tools influence the ways that we think? It considers what scientific evidence can be brought to bear on the question: how can we know and measure these effects? Ultimately, it looks to the looping pathways by which science employs technological media in understanding the mind, and the public comes to understand and respond to these scientific discourses. I contend that like human cognition itself, the enterprise of cognitive science is a deeply and distinctively mediated phenomenon. This casts a different light on contemporary debates about whether television, computers, or the Internet are changing our brains, for better or for worse. Rather than imagining media effects as befalling a fictive natural mind, I draw on multiple disciplines to situate mind and the sciences thereof as shaped from their origins through interaction with technology. Our task is then to interrogate the forms of cognition and attention fostered by different media, alongside their attendant costs and benefits. The first chapter positions this dissertation between the fields of media studies and STS, developing a case for the reality of media effects without the implication of technological determinism. The second considers the history of technological metaphor in scientific characterizations of the mind. The third section consists of three separate chapters on the history of cognitive science, presenting the core of my case for its uniquely mediated character. Across three distinct eras, what unifies cognitive science is the quest to understand the mind using computational systems, operating by turns as generative metaphors and tangible models. I then evaluate the contemporary cognitive-scientific research on the question of media effects, and the growing role of electronic media in science. My fifth and final section develops a content analysis: what is said in the media about the popular theory that media themselves, in one way or another, are causing attention deficit disorders? The work concludes with a summary and some reflections on mind, culture, technoscience and markets as recursively interwoven causal systems

Dendrimers: A Themed Issue in Honor of Professor Donald A. Tomalia on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday

Dendrimers have firmly established their space in the macromolecular field since their first discovery in 1978. These monodispersed and hyperbranched macromolecules present unique properties with demonstrated potential in varied scientific disciplines. Dr. Donald A Tomalia is one of the pioneers in this area whose name is synonym for polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers, one of the most extensively investigated macromolecular architectures. In this monograph, his colleagues and friends celebrate Don’s achievements and contributions to the field, on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2018, which also coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first report on dendrimers. It provides the reader with excellent reviews on different aspects of dendritic architectures, followed by research articles that explore the state-of-the-art in synthesis, properties and varied applications, including in biology. Collectively, it provides scientists just beginning their careers, as well as firmly established ones, with the pulse of the field and inspiration to continue to explore these intriguing macromolecules