Circular Nomogram

The paper describes constructional details of a circular nomogram designed for solving equations of the forms

Making a Case for Social Innovation as a Structural Counterpart to Public Participation in Regional Planning

Multi-locational living – working, shopping, playing, learning and commuting across administrative and, sometimes even political boundaries is an essential aspect of metropolitan living. Although it is anticipated that everyday experiences of the physical, social and economic inter-connectedness between urban communities and peri-urban hinterlands would automatically engender a regional outlook in planning and governance, it is currently not the case. In the New York City region, a lived regional experience does not translate into support for a regional governance structure. While strong legislative support has ensured the public its rightful place within metropolitan regional planning, it has regrettably bred a procedural focus that has reduced public participation to an end in itself. Current approaches to public participation at the metropolitan scale limit the extent to which the public can meaningfully engage with issues of regional import, contribute their experiential knowledge towards envisioning solutions, and impact plan outcomes. This thesis presents a structural approach to public participation that redresses the current procedural focus by emphasizing the significance of the interlinkages between the governance structure, planning process and public participatory process in determining the quality and outcome of public participation in planning processes. Applying the structural approach to the case of metropolitan transportation planning (MTP) in the United States, this thesis provides a comparative analysis of the public participation exercises conducted by two Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) in the New York - New Jersey – Connecticut Tristate region, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) and the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA). The NJTPA and NYMTC, despite being neighboring MPOs that share a common regional legacy, have responded differently to the region’s dynamics and evolved to be MPOs with very disparate organizational characteristics and regional impact. An in-depth study of newspaper articles, plan documents and government reports, and interviews of key office bearers demonstrate how this disparity impacts the design and implementation of the respective MPO’s public participation exercises. The structural approach demonstrates that lack of a direct relationship, such as a regional tax base or regional service provision, is an impediment to public perception of and active participation in regional governance. In the absence of opportunities for direct relationship with the regional public, engaged leadership and robust inter and intra-regional partnerships emerge as significant factors for fostering public participation in metropolitan planning processes. This thesis identifies best practices for successful engagement of the regional public –adapting to emerging (millennial) modes of engagement, appropriate messaging of complex, large-scale problems in personally relatable terms and convening the public on a regional scale - exemplified in NJTPA’s public outreach strategy. Six indicators of regional governance capacity from a public participatory perspective are proposed to raise awareness and address the lack of metrics for evaluating structural support for public participation in regional planning contexts. Finally, the structural approach demonstrates how the MPO governance structure and MTP planning process prioritize public participation as an accessory to decision making thereby undermining its potential for problem solving and social innovation. Addressing this lack, this thesis advocates for recognizing public-led social innovation as a structural counterpart to public participation for devising visionary solutions to regional scale issues. It concludes that public participation in regulatory planning tasks such as allocation of funds for transportation improvement programs is the right mechanism to implement solutions but not necessarily the right one for devising solutions

A Mathematical Game of Reaching an Island in a Deep Lake with the Aid of a Rope

The problem of reaching an island in a deep lake by a man who cannot swim, with the help of just a rope, has been generalised. The rope is such that it can be used to tie the two trees only, one on the edge of the lake and other in the island. The least length of the rope that the man would require has been obtained. The particular case of an elliptical lake with one tree at an end of a latus rectum and the other at the corresponding focus in an island there has been discussed

Ecology and Occurrence of Pugilina (Hemifusus) cochlidium and Pugilina erecta (Gastropoda: Melongenidae) from Thondi coast , Palk strait in Tamil Nadu

The environment is a selective force of an organism and its population. Knowledge of the environmental parameters of study area is thus an essential prerequisite to understand the composition of animal’s inhabitants and their distribution. In the present study the Ecology and Occurrence  of two species of Pugilina (Hemifusus) cochlidium and Pugilina erecta along the coast of Thondi are influenced by the environmental factors with less significance. As these animals are bottom living, they were not much affected by changes in the environmental factors.  In the present study the maximum temperature was recorded during summer season and the minimum during monsoon. The changes in the temperature have been proved to have meager influence in the distribution of these two species as the temperature variation was not sufficient enough to affect their distribution.Keywords: Pugilina (Hemifusus) cochlidium, Pugilina erecta, temperature, monsoon, distribution

Analysis of Psychosocial Environment and Its Management Onboard A Merchant Ship

This report analyses the health, safety and psychosocial work environment and its management on board a merchant ship – M.T.Orchids. On field study is done onboard the merchant ship in order to understand the existing practices onboard the ship using questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, observation and documentary analysis as research techniques. The study specifically looks at analyzing the gaps between the documented procedures and the actual followed procedures onboard the ship. This study shows a significant gap between the documented procedures and the followed practices. It indicated that the factors that caused but not limited to be complex procedures, need for training, seafarer’s job insecurity, lack of organizational support and low-trust work environment

Asymptotic behavior of support points for planar curves

In this paper we prove a universal inequality describing the asymptotic behavior of support points for planar continuous curves. As corollaries we get an analogous result for tangent points of differentiable planar curves and some (partially known) assertions on the asymptotic of the mean value points for various classical analytic theorems. Some open questions are formulated.Comment: 17 pages, some typos corrected, some references adde

Vertebrate TFPI-2 C-terminal peptides exert therapeutic applications against Gram-negative infections

Background: Tissue factor pathway inhibitor-2 (TFPI-2) is a serine protease inhibitor that exerts multiple physiological and patho-physiological activities involving the modulation of coagulation, angiogenesis, tumor invasion, and apoptosis. In previous studies we reported a novel role of human TFPI-2 in innate immunity by serving as a precursor for host defense peptides. Here we employed a number of TFPI-2 derived peptides from different vertebrate species and found that their antibacterial activity is evolutionary conserved although the amino acid sequence is not well conserved. We further studied the theraputic potential of one selected TFPI-2 derived peptide (mouse) in a murine sepsis model. Results: Hydrophobicity and net charge of many peptides play a important role in their host defence to invading bacterial pathogens. In vertebrates, the C-terminal portion of TFPI-2 consists of a highly conserved cluster of positively charged amino acids which may point to an antimicrobial activity. Thus a number of selected C-terminal TFPI-2 derived peptides from different species were synthesized and it was found that all of them exert antimicrobial activity against E. coli and P. aeruginosa. The peptide-mediated killing of E. coli was enhanced in human plasma, suggesting an involvement of the classical pathway of the complement. Under in vitro conditions the peptides displayed anti-coagulant activity by modulating the intrinsic pathway of coagulation and in vivo treatment with the mouse derived VKG24 peptide protects mice from an otherwise lethal LPS shock model. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the evolutionary conserved C-terminal part of TFPI-2 is an interesting agent for the development of novel antimicrobial therapies

Integrated Remediation Processes Toward Heavy Metal Removal/Recovery From Various Environments-A Review

Addressing heavy metal pollution is one of the hot areas of environmental research. Despite natural existence, various anthropomorphic sources have contributed to an unusually high concentration of heavy metals in the environment. They are characterized by their long persistence in natural environment leading to serious health consequences in humans, animals, and plants even at very low concentrations (1 or 2 μg in some cases). Failure of strict regulations by government authorities is also to be blamed for heavy metal pollution. Several individual treatments, namely, physical, chemical, and biological are being implied to remove heavy metals from the environment. But, they all face challenges in terms of expensiveness and in-situ treatment failure. Hence, integrated processes are gaining popularity as it is reported to achieve the goal effectively in various environmental matrices and will overcome a major drawback of large scale implementation. Integrated processes are the combination of two different methods to achieve a synergistic and an effective effort to remove heavy metals. Most of the review articles published so far mainly focus on individual methods on specific heavy metal removal, that too from a particular environmental matrix only. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review of this kind that summarizes on various integrated processes for heavy metal removal from all environmental matrices. In addition, we too have discussed on the advantages and disadvantages of each integrated process, with a special mention of the few methods that needs more research attention. To conclude, integrated processes are proved as a right remedial option which has been detaily discussed in the present review. However, more research focus on the process is needed to challenge the in situ operative conditions. We believe, this review on integrated processes will surely evoke a research thrust that could give rise to novel remediation projects for research community in the future

Event detection using roles and relationships of entities

A method, system, and computer program product for event detection using roles and relationships of entities are provided in the illustrative embodiments. A training event and a set of entities participating in the training event are identified in a training data. For a first entity in the set of entities, a first role occupied by the entity in the event is determined. A behavior attribute is assigned to the first role. A relationship of the first role with a second role corresponding to a second entity in the set of entities is determined. An event rule is constructed to detect an event corresponding to the training event in new data and comprising a plurality of roles, behavior attributes, and the relationship. The plurality of roles includes the first role and the second role, and the plurality of behavior attributes includes the behavior attribute assigned to the first role.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Features of Idebenone and Related Short-Chain Quinones that Rescue ATP Levels under Conditions of Impaired Mitochondrial Complex I

Short-chain quinones have been investigated as therapeutic molecules due to their ability to modulate cellular redox reactions, mitochondrial electron transfer and oxidative stress, which are pathologically altered in many mitochondrial and neuromuscular disorders. Recently, we and others described that certain short-chain quinones are able to bypass a deficiency in complex I by shuttling electrons directly from the cytoplasm to complex III of the mitochondrial respiratory chain to produce ATP. Although this energy rescue activity is highly interesting for the therapy of disorders associated with complex I dysfunction, no structure-activity-relationship has been reported for short-chain quinones so far. Using a panel of 70 quinones, we observed that the capacity for this cellular energy rescue as well as their effect on lipid peroxidation was influenced more by the physicochemical properties (in particular logD) of the whole molecule than the quinone moiety itself. Thus, the observed correlations allow us to explain the differential biological activities and therapeutic potential of short-chain quinones for the therapy of disorders associated with mitochondrial complex I dysfunction and/or oxidative stress