110 research outputs found
“For explorers by explorers”: A discursive analysis of cruise tourism in Norway
The Norwegian company Hurtigruten operates ships cruising along the Norwegian coast and has played an important role in tourism for over a century. This article provides a multimodal discourse analysis of the website advertising Hurtigruten’s most popular journey, drawing on a critical tourism studies approach. It aims to answer the question as to what central themes emerge in tourism discourse on Norway, targeted at an international audience. Central characteristics of tourism discourse (Dann 1996), i.e., strangerhood, conflict, authenticity, and playfulness, are shown to be crucial in the analysed material. The paper discusses the notion of authenticity as a performative strategy in the promotion of Norwegian cruise tourism. One central aim of this paper is finding out what and how the notion of “authentically Norwegian” is advertised. The results imply that these topics, and especially the notion of authenticity, are aligned with general tourism imaginaries, which are similar globally.
 
Rolle des humanen Apolipoprotein E im angeborenen Immunsystem
Research on age-related diseases like arteriosclerosis, dementia and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is playing an important role in our steadily aging society. A conspicuous feature of many of these diseases is their association with the apolipoprotein E (ApoE). ApoE is an important protein in lipid metabolism and binds lipids as well as lipid receptors. Three isoforms, ApoE2, ApoE3 and ApoE4 differ only by one or two amino acids. Carriers of the ApoE2 isoform have an increased risk to develop AMD wheres the ApoE4 isoform is associated with a higher risk to develop dementia and arteriosclerosis. The cause of this is currently unknown. ApoE is found mainly in the deposits characteristic for the diseases. The deposits consist to a large extent of lipids, amyloid beta and cell debris, and form an activator surface for the complement system. An important role of the complement system is to eliminate body-borne waste products anti-inflammatorily, such as dead and damaged cells or modified lipids, with the help of regulators. However, in the case of the disease-related deposits, overactivation of the complement system, permanent inflammation and local damage occur. An association of the ApoE isoforms with the complement system has not yet been investigated. For the first time, this thesis shows that ApoE inhibits the classical pathway of the complement system at the level of the initial phase. Thus, ApoE is a new regulator of this pathway. All ApoE isoforms bind to the N-terminal domain between amino acids 139 and 152 to C1q. ApoE does not compete with the C1s-C1r-C1r-C1s tetramer to bind to C1q, but prevents the proteolytic cleavage of C2 and C4 by the C1 complex. According to that, ApoE has a double function: it acts as a lipid transport molecule and at the same time as a regulator of the classical complement pathway. Complement-activating surfaces, such as oxidized lipids which bind C1q, can thus be eliminated anti-inflammatorily with the aid of ApoE
The design, construction and maintenance of a SuDS management train to address surface water flows by engaging the community: Gawilan refugee camp, Ninewah Governate, Kurdistan Region of Iraq
PIAAC 2012: Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse im Ăśberblick
Die Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD) untersucht mit dem Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Com-petencies (PIAAC) zentrale Grundkompetenzen in der erwachsenen Bevölkerung – wie die Lesekompetenz, die alltagsmathematische Kompetenz und technologiebasiertes Problemlösen –, von denen angenommen wird, dass sie für die erfolgreiche Teilhabe an der heutigen Gesellschaft von zentraler Bedeutung sind. Sie sind ein wichtiger Grundstein für die Entwicklung zahlreicher weiterer spezifischer Kompetenzen und Fertigkeiten. Mittels PIAAC sollen diese Schlüsselkompetenzen im Erwachsenenalter international verglichen werden. Der Fokus liegt hierbei auf der Bevölkerung im erwerbsfähigen Alter (16 bis 65 Jahre). Ergänzend hierzu werden in einigen Ländern, so auch in Deutschland, die Kompetenzen im höheren Alter untersucht, was insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund der Verschiebung des Renteneintrittsalters in Deutschland wichtige Informationen über den Kompetenzerhalt liefer
Modeling and Experimental Evaluation of a Bunch Arrival-Time Monitor with Rod-Shaped Pickups and a Low-Pi-Voltage Ultra-Wideband Traveling Wave Electro-Optic Modulator for X-Ray Free-Electron Lasers
The Allen Telescope Array: The First Widefield, Panchromatic, Snapshot Radio Camera for Radio Astronomy and SETI
The first 42 elements of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA-42) are beginning to
deliver data at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Northern California.
Scientists and engineers are actively exploiting all of the flexibility
designed into this innovative instrument for simultaneously conducting surveys
of the astrophysical sky and conducting searches for distant technological
civilizations. This paper summarizes the design elements of the ATA, the cost
savings made possible by the use of COTS components, and the cost/performance
trades that eventually enabled this first snapshot radio camera. The
fundamental scientific program of this new telescope is varied and exciting;
some of the first astronomical results will be discussed.Comment: Special Issue of Proceedings of the IEEE: "Advances in Radio
Telescopes", Baars,J. Thompson,R., D'Addario, L., eds, 2009, in pres
The Allen Telescope Array Pi GHz Sky Survey I. Survey Description and Static Catalog Results for the Bootes Field
The Pi GHz Sky Survey (PiGSS) is a key project of the Allen Telescope Array.
PiGSS is a 3.1 GHz survey of radio continuum emission in the extragalactic sky
with an emphasis on synoptic observations that measure the static and
time-variable properties of the sky. During the 2.5-year campaign, PiGSS will
twice observe ~250,000 radio sources in the 10,000 deg^2 region of the sky with
b > 30 deg to an rms sensitivity of ~1 mJy. Additionally, sub-regions of the
sky will be observed multiple times to characterize variability on time scales
of days to years. We present here observations of a 10 deg^2 region in the
Bootes constellation overlapping the NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey field. The
PiGSS image was constructed from 75 daily observations distributed over a
4-month period and has an rms flux density between 200 and 250 microJy. This
represents a deeper image by a factor of 4 to 8 than we will achieve over the
entire 10,000 deg^2. We provide flux densities, source sizes, and spectral
indices for the 425 sources detected in the image. We identify ~100$ new flat
spectrum radio sources; we project that when completed PiGSS will identify 10^4
flat spectrum sources. We identify one source that is a possible transient
radio source. This survey provides new limits on faint radio transients and
variables with characteristic durations of months.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; revision submitted with extraneous
figure remove
The Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey - A 690-Square-Degree, 12-Epoch Radio Dataset - I: Catalog and Long-Duration Transient Statistics
We present the Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey (ATATS), a
multi-epoch (12 visits), 690 square degree radio image and catalog at 1.4GHz.
The survey is designed to detect rare, very bright transients as well as to
verify the capabilities of the ATA to form large mosaics. The combined image
using data from all 12 ATATS epochs has RMS noise sigma = 3.94mJy / beam and
dynamic range 180, with a circular beam of 150 arcsec FWHM. It contains 4408
sources to a limiting sensitivity of S = 20 mJy / beam. We compare the catalog
generated from this 12-epoch combined image to the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS),
a legacy survey at the same frequency, and find that we can measure source
positions to better than ~20 arcsec. For sources above the ATATS completeness
limit, the median flux density is 97% of the median value for matched NVSS
sources, indicative of an accurate overall flux calibration. We examine the
effects of source confusion due to the effects of differing resolution between
ATATS and NVSS on our ability to compare flux densities. We detect no
transients at flux densities greater than 40 mJy in comparison with NVSS, and
place a 2-sigma upper limit on the transient rate for such sources of 0.004 per
square degree. These results suggest that the > 1 Jy transients reported by
Matsumura et al. (2009) may not be true transients, but rather variable sources
at their flux density threshold.Comment: 41 pages, 19 figures, ApJ accepted; corrected minor typo in Table
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