A coding theoretic approach to extending designs

AbstractWe introduce the study of designs in a coset of a binary code which can be held by vectors of a fixed weight. If C is a binary [2n, n, d] code with n odd and the words of weights n - 1 and n + 1 hold complementary t-designs, then we show that the vectors of weight n in a coset of weight 1 also hold a t-design. We also show how to “extend” these designs. We then consider designs in cosets of type I self-dual codes, in particular in the shadow. If the vectors of a fixed weight in the code hold t-designs then so do the vectors of a fixed weight in the shadow. For [24k - 2, 12k - 1, 2 + 4k] type I codes, these designs extend to designs in the type II parent code

Orphans of British Fiction, 1880-1911

Orphans of British Fiction, 1880-1911 Abstract William David Floyd Orphans of British Fiction, 1880-1911 focuses on the depiction of orphans in genre fiction of the Victorian fin-de-siecle. The overwhelming majority of criticism focusing on orphans centers particularly on the form as an early- to middle-century convention, primarily found in realist and domestic works; in effect, the non-traditional, aberrant, at times Gothic orphan of the fin-de-siecle has been largely overlooked, if not denied outright. This oversight has given rise to the need for a study of this potent cultural figure as it pertains to preoccupations characteristic of the turn of the century. The term “orphan” may typically elicit images of the Dickensian type, such as Oliver Twist, the homeless waif with no family or fortune with which he or she may discern identity and totality of self. The earlier-century portrayals of orphanhood that produced this stereotype dealt almost exclusively with issues arising from industrialization, such as class affiliation, economic disparity and social reform and were often informed by the cult of the ideal Victorian family. Beginning with an overview of orphanhood as presented in earlier fiction of the long nineteenth century, including its metaphorical import and the conventions associated with it, Orphans of British Literature, 1880-1911 goes on to examine the notable variance in literary orphans in genre fiction at the turn of the century. Indicators of the zeitgeist of modernism’s advent, turn-of-the-century orphans functioned as registers of burgeoning cultural anxieties particular to the fin-de-siecle, such as sexual ambiguity, moral and physical degeneration and concerns about the imperial enterprise. Furthermore, toward the century’s end, the notion of the ideal family fell under suspicion and was even criticized as limiting and oppressive rather than reliable and inclusive, casting into doubt the institution to which the orphan historically aspired and through which the orphan state was typically rectified. As a result, in contrast to the sentimental street urchin of early and middle century fiction, fin-de-siecle orphans are often unsettling, irresolute, even monstrous and violent figures

Genotypic and epidemiological characterization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in Ghana

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a public health challenge. In 2013, TB was estimated to have caused 9 million incident cases of which 1.1 million were co infected with HIV and 1.5 million deaths worldwide. For the effective control of TB, the use of simplified diagnostic tools for case detection diagnosis of drug resistant TB and understanding the effects of comorbidities such as HIV on the prevalence of TB is paramount. Ghana, housing six of the seven phylogenetic lineages of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) with high TB/HIV prevalence provides a unique opportunity to study and better understand the dynamics of TB. In the context of TB control, we studied the level of drug resistance using phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (DST) and correlated the DST results with patient treatment outcome (Chapter 3). We found a low rate of multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB rate (1.9%), high isoniazid (INH) mono resistance (15%) and the dependence of treatment outcome on the susceptibility to rifampicin (RIF). For the rapid diagnosis of MDR cases, we further evaluated the accuracy of a molecular base diagnostic tool (Genotype MTBDRplus) and compared it with the gold standard phenotypic DST method (Chapter4). We found 100% correlation for detection of both MDR and RIF mono resistance and 83% for INH mono resistance. The remaining 17% INH resistance detected by standard phenotypic DST but not Genotype MTBDRplus are likely due to molecular mechanisms whose targets are not interrogated by Genotype MTBDRplus. The high overall sensitivity and the relative short turn- around time of Genotype MTBDRplus makes it a valuable addition to diagnostic algorithm in Ghana. The control of TB also depends on understanding the patterns and dynamics of TB transmission to reduce source of infection. Existing tools for studying transmission such as MIRU-15 used for routine molecular epidemiological studies have been shown to exhibit varying discriminatory power among the different human-associated MTBC lineages. We established a robust and cost-effective PCR based reduced but lineage-specific set of MIRU-VNTR loci with high discrimination power in the main MTBC circulating in Ghana (Chapter 5). This assay will help identify risk factors that enhance transmission and patient groups at increased risk of developing TB. In addition, this assay can be used to differentiate between exogenous re-infection from true relapse cases SNP- based genotyping and spoligotyping established that M. africanum (MAF) still causes 20% of all TB cases in Ghana (Chapter 6 and 7). Reasons for the restriction of MAF to West Africa have eluded researchers for many years. Using retrospective isolates, we provide for the first time plausible reason why MAF is restricted to parts of West Africa. We showed a significant association between MAF and the Ewe ethnic group. This association was confirmed using prospective isolates and supports possible host pathogen co-evolution inn TB. In addition, we observed a strong association between MAF2 and HIV co-infection supporting the notion that MAF might have a lower virulence compared to other MTBC in human

Sex, Labor, And The American Way: Detroit Aesthetic In Mid-Twentieth-Century Literature

The essay analyzes Sinclair Lewis short fiction in If I Were Boss, U.S.A. by John Dos Passos, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, and Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. The primary literature is juxtaposed with a study of visual texts and historic research with a locational and thematic basis in Detroit. Ford Times and early automobile advertisements, Diego Rivera\u27s mural Detroit Industry, photographs of the Sojourner Truth housing project riots, and the accounts of gay union workers comprise a framework for each of the central texts. Detroit aesthetic is gritty, realist, and shaped by and in the defiance of the organizational logic of the Ford Motor Company. This aesthetic is observable in the following ways: 1) Form-- publishing format is shaped by commercial concerns that sometimes determined the content and distribution methods of the work. Some texts are self-reflexive about their own consumption. The narratives are of each are crafted in distinct components that often resist the temptation to be read as working together like a well-oiled machine. 2) Subject--labor, production, consumption, and advertising are all recurring motifs the authors use figuratively and literally. 3) Language--the wording and punctuation represent the fast-paced modern dialect; the assemblage of new signifiers do not line up with the objects they traditionally signified in. 4) Gender, sexuality, and reproduction--control and order rein in desire and sexuality. Women in the workforce cause traditional gender codes to be redesigned, resulting in fear of the loss of efficiency. Masculine identity is as equally shaped by capitalism as women\u27s roles are. Production and consumption are tied to sexual reproduction in different ways in each text

Covering Radius 1985-1994

We survey important developments in the theory of covering radius during the period 1985-1994. We present lower bounds, constructions and upper bounds, the linear and nonlinear cases, density and asymptotic results, normality, specific classes of codes, covering radius and dual distance, tables, and open problems

FRUSTRATION: PHYSICO-CHEMICAL PREREQUISITES FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A SYNTHETIC CELL

To construct a synthetic cell we need to understand the rules that permit life. A central idea in modern biology is that in addition to the four entities making reality, matter, energy, space and time, a fifth one, information, plays a central role. As a consequence of this central importance of the management of information, the bacterial cell is organised as a Turing machine, where the machine, with its compartments defining an inside and an outside and its metabolism, reads and expresses the genetic program carried by the genome. This highly abstract organisation is implemented using concrete objects and dynamics, and this is at the cost of repeated incompatibilities (frustration), which need to be sorted out by appropriate «patches». After describing the organisation of the genome into the paleome (sustaining and propagating life) and the cenome (permitting life in context), we describe some chemical hurdles that the cell as to cope with, ending with the specific case of the methionine salvage pathwa

Aren\u27t They Keen? Early Children\u27s Food Advertising and the Emergence of the Brand-loyal Child Consumer

This dissertation examines how American food advertisers approached children in the early twentieth century and how this conceptualization changed during a critical juncture that lasted from approximately 1928 until 1945. Prior to the late 1920s, national advertisers acknowledged children as “consumers” (that is to say, eaters) of food and celebrated their idyllic innocence; however, advertisers rarely addressed children as active participants in the consumer marketplace. This perspective changed due to new commercial media platforms, such as radio and comic strips, as well as changing attitudes within the business community. By the 1930s, food advertisers began to communicate with children as a direct audience in a significant, strategic, and consistent manner, effectively positioning children as brand-loyal consuming subjects for the first time. Although parents and consumer activists pushed back against marketers, these groups were largely unable to contain food advertising to children. This business, cultural, and political-economic history considers the following three research questions: (i) Why, and in what broader contexts, did national food advertisers begin targeting children in earnest? (ii) Using what strategies did these advertisers attempt to draw children into the marketplace as brand-loyal and demanding consuming subjects? (iii) How did food advertisers, their agencies, commercial media, and market researchers grapple with, valorize, and construct children as a valuable audience segment? My analysis incorporates extensive primary research from a variety of archival sources. I examine advertisements and papers from the advertising agencies that represented key food brands, including Cream of Wheat and Post. I also review the advertising trade press and numerous marketing practitioner textbooks. These latter sources provide a “back-stage” view of the industry and allow me to understand how early advertising practitioners approached, valorized, and socially constructed young people as a market segment

THE ROLE OF EPIGENETICS IN TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATION OF FXR AND SILENCING FXR EXPRESSION IN HUMAN COLON CANCER

Farnesoid X receptor (FXR) is a ligand activated transcription factor belonging to the nuclear receptor superfamily and bile acids are its endogenous ligands. FXR is a critical regulator of the enterohepatic circulation of bile acids, lipid homeostasis, glucose metabolism, and tumor suppression in liver and intestine. Consequently, FXR has become a very promising therapeutic target for the prevention and/or treatment of cholestasis, hyperlipidemic disorders, metabolic syndrome, and liver and colon cancer. Studies suggest epigenetic mechanisms are critical for proper transcriptional induction of nuclear receptors. Likewise, evidence shows epigenetic mechanisms are responsible for modulating the tissue/cell-specific FXR expression in human colon cancer. However, how epigenetic mechanisms are involved in FXR induced transcription or tissue-specific FXR expression remains elusive. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial for future development of pharmacological modulators of FXR as well as understanding the full physiological roles of FXR. This dissertation was designed to elucidate epigenetic mechanisms involved in tissue-specific FXR induced gene transcription, orphan nuclear receptors critical for regulating FXR function, and epigenetic mechanisms responsible for FXR silencing in colon cancer. In specific aim 1, a genome-wide FXR binding assay was done in mouse liver and intestine. Specific aim 2 focuses on the role of the orphan nuclear receptor hepatocyte nuclear factor 4fnalpha (HNF4&alpha) in regulating liver-specific functions of FXR. And finally, in specific aim 3, DNA methylation of FXR promoter was investigated as the mechanism responsible for FXR silencing in human colon cancer. In conclusion, genome-wide binding of FXR implicates novel epigenetic mechanisms and orphan nuclear receptors in regulating FXR function. Furthermore, this study indicates that HNF4&alpha is at least one orphan nuclear receptor capable of regulating FXR function in the liver. Findings from these first two aims succeeded in progressing drug development fields aimed at finding new FXR modulators for the treatment of multiple metabolic disorders by elucidating novel epigenetic mechanisms that may be investigated as therapeutic targets. Finally, FXR is at least partially down-regulated by DNA methylation in human colon cancer, suggesting a potential mechanism to be targeted for the prevention, treatment, and/or diagnosis of colon cancer

The Predicament of Illegality: Undocumented Aliens in Contemporary American Immigration Fiction

This dissertation examines representations of undocumented aliens and explores the issue of illegality in contemporary American immigration fiction. It takes as a fundamental premise that in immigration, status matters. The importance of immigration status in the "real world" is evident not only in ongoing national debates but also in the daily experiences of immigrants, whose inclusion in or exclusion from America's social, economic and political spheres is largely dependent on their status as documented or undocumented persons. This dissertation proposes that status likewise matters in literary representations of immigration. As this project demonstrates, immigration narratives often rely on conventional structures, themes and tropes that privilege the legal immigrant subject. Indeed, the legality of protagonists is often taken for granted in many novels about immigration. Thus, by foregrounding fundamental questions concerning legal status in the study of immigration literature, this dissertation aims to show the ways in which status informs, influences and directly shapes immigration novels. While this project broadly proposes the concept of status as an analytical lens, I approach this literary inquiry primarily by critically examining the "illegal alien" as the subject of immigration novels. Focusing on three novels that feature an undocumented immigrant protagonist - Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine, Gish Jen's Typical American, and Mario Bencastro's Odyssey to the North - this dissertation argues that, like its real-world counterpart who poses social, political and legal problems for the nation state, the figure of the illegal alien poses problems for the genre of immigration fiction, challenging its narrative conventions and calling into question the ideology of American exceptionalism that underpins it. By exploring the relationship between law and literature, this dissertation seeks to bring insight into the ways in which stories about immigration participate in the broader political discourse on U.S. immigration. On the one hand, it demonstrates how conventional immigration narratives perform cultural labor for the dominant legal regime by reaffirming normative modes of inclusion into the nation. On the other, it shows how literature, by wrestling with the question of illegality, can serve as means to critique the exclusionary practices of American law and society