A direct current compensator dynamo

Thesis (MS)--University of Illinois, 1912Typescrip

Oral History Interview: Charles W. Day

This interview is one of a series conducted with former employees of the Huntington Owens-Illinois, Inc. glass bottle factory. Mr. Charles Day, born December 9, 1937, began working at the Owens glass plant in Huntington, West Virginia, in 1962 in the shipping department. He was later promoted to crew leader of the maintenance department where he stayed until he retired in 1992. In this interview, Mr. Day discusses the details of the jobs he performed, company-sponsored activities, and friends he made at work. Mr. Day talks about union activities and strikes, serious injuries he suffered on the job, and issues regarding the employment of blacks and women at the plant. Finally, Mr. Day expresses his discontent with management changes that occurred in the 1980\u27s and how those changes made his work experience less enjoyable.https://mds.marshall.edu/oral_history/1424/thumbnail.jp

Orbital magnetization in periodic insulators

Working in the Wannier representation, we derive an expression for the orbital magnetization of a periodic insulator. The magnetization is shown to be comprised of two contributions, an obvious one associated with the internal circulation of bulk-like Wannier functions in the interior, and an unexpected one arising from net currents carried by Wannier functions near the surface. Each contribution can be expressed as a bulk property in terms of Bloch functions in a gauge-invariant way. Our expression is verified by comparing numerical tight-binding calculations for finite and periodic samples.Comment: submitted to PRL; signs corrected in Eqs. (11), (12), (19), and (20

Trace Element Studies Using Activation Analysis

This thesis describes the estimation of elements at trace levels in biological samples, mainly human, by the technique of thermal neutron activation analysis. The work falls into three main parts. In the first part the history, background, principles and details of the activation analysis technique are described; in the second part details of the methods used and their modification or development are described; and in the third part the applications made to trace element studies are described. In neutron activation analysis the induced radioactivity of an element enables its concentration in a sample to be assessed. The advantages of this technique made it a suitable choice for the determination of the low levels of trace elements in biological tissue. A search of the literature for neutron activation analysis techniques reveals that analysis methods for many of the elements have been described already. Methods found suitable for copper, mercury and cadmium analyses are used as described. Methods described for arsenic, gold, manganese and zinc analyses are modified to improve them and make them more suitable. For selenium and barium analyses it is necessary to develop new methods. The development of these methods is described and discussed. All methods are then applied to the trace element analyses described in the following section. The trace element studies carried out fall into three fields of research: (1) A study of the role in tissue of some trace elements, (2) A study into environmental uptake by man, and clinical application of the analysis technique, (3) A study of specimens of historical interest. (1) The question of whether an element is essential or nonessential to a tissue may be indicated by distribution studies. Using this as a basic criterion, manganese, cadmium and selenium are investigated in the major tissues of the human body. Manganese is also investigated in Rhesus monkey tissue and levels of human and monkey tissue compared. Manganese and selenium are established as essential and cadmium is found to be nonessential. The role of barium in the human lung is investigated and it is shown to be nonessential and to accumulate in the broncopulmonary lymph nodes. The variation with time of copper levels in the nail and skin of an individual is investigated and shown to be held within a narrower range than that found in the whole population. (2) A study is made of the occupational uptake of mercury in dental groups. Workers who were industrially exposed to mercury, arsenic and copper are also examined. A high uptake is found in all these groups. A feature, that is found common to all groups, is that a surprisingly high amount of absorption could be tolerated in many cases, without the associated occurrence of poisoning symptoms. Thus, the value of the analysis as a means of detecting a potential health hazard is demonstrated. Arsenic analysis of hair, nail and urine is shown to be of use in monitoring a case of known arsenic poisoning. Head hair analysis enables, very elegantly, a record of previous uptake to be found. Analysis for arsenic and mercury is able to be extended into further clinical application and is proved to be useful. Zinc levels in salivary glands are investigated to see what part zinc played in their function. Lower zinc levels than in other soft tissue are found, indicating that here fewer zinc associated metabolic processes are involved. A possible association between zinc in saliva and the labial gland is found. (3) The value of the activation technique for the examination of small historical specimens is demonstrated by the analysis undertaken of mercury in head hair from Robert Burns and of arsenic in head hair from Napoleon Bonaparte. It is thus shown that Burns may well have been suffering from mercury poisoning, but the evidence is not conclusive. It is found that there is much evidence to suggest that Napoleon was suffering from consistent arsenic poisoning during 1816. In conclusion, the technique of neutron activation analysis is developed and applied to biological materials. It allows simple, but precise, investigation to be made into trace element levels in both living subjects and in other tissues where only small samples are available

Learning technology in Scottish higher education ‐ a survey of the views of senior managers, academic staff and ‘experts’

As part of an evaluation of the Scottish Learning Technology Dissemination Initiative (LTDI), a survey was conducted of the views of academic staff, members of computer‐assisted learning and staff development units, and senior managers in all Scottish higher education institutions (HEIs). Most respondents across all subject areas and types of institutions (including those who rated themselves as less experienced with use of C&IT in teaching than their colleagues) believed that learning technology (LT) had moderate to very high potential for improving the way in which students learn. Awareness of the various agencies which have been established to promote its use in HEIs was very high, with few staff being unaware of any of them. Senior staff largely agreed that the value of these approaches lay in the improvement or maintenance of quality rather than in creating efficiency gains. Whilst there was a mostly positive view of the value of learning technology there are still significant barriers to its uptake by staff, the most important being lack of time, infrastructure, software and training, plus a failure (perceived or actual) of institutions to value teaching. The rather pessimistic view of ‘experts’ of the willingness of their less committed colleagues to make use of learning technology contrasted with the generally positive responses obtained from a broad group of 1,000 academic staff on their awareness of and attitudes to it. An analysis of the SHEFC's Teaching Quality Assessment reports during 1992–6 revealed substantial variability between and within subject assessments as to whether specific comments were made about IT provision and its use in learning and teaching

Development and validation of a military fear avoidance questionnaire

Chronic pain due to musculoskeletal injury is one of the leading causes of disability and reduced combat readiness in the U.S. Army. Unidimensional pain management systems are not effective in addressing the complex phenomenon of pain-related disability. Growing evidence has supported use of the Fear Avoidance Model (FAM) as a suitable model to address pain-related disability and chronicity from a multidimensional pain neuroscience approach. While several fear avoidance measurement tools exist, one that addresses the complexity of the Army environment encouraged the authors to develop and test the reliability and validity of a military specific questionnaire. This study developed and validated an Army specific fear avoidance screening, the Return to Duty Readiness Questionnaire (RDRQ), which subsequently demonstrated good psychometric properties. Reliability coefficients demonstrate high internal consistency values both during pilot study (α = 0.96) and validation study (α = 0.94, ωt = 0.94). A Correlation Coefficient of 0.74 when compared with the Fear Avoidance Components Scale (FACS) suggests good concurrent validity. Future study should include replication in a new army population, investigation of responsiveness, test-retest reliability, structural validity and establishing severity scores with minimal clinically important differences to enhance utility

Topological entropy of realistic quantum Hall wave functions

The entanglement entropy of the incompressible states of a realistic quantum Hall system are studied by direct diagonalization. The subdominant term to the area law, the topological entanglement entropy, which is believed to carry information about topologic order in the ground state, was extracted for filling factors 1/3, 1/5 and 5/2. The results for 1/3 and 1/5 are consistent with the topological entanglement entropy for the Laughlin wave function. The 5/2 state exhibits a topological entanglement entropy consistent with the Moore-Read wave function.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures; improved computations and graphics; added reference

Automated reduction the speckle noise of the panoramic ultrasound images of Muscles and Tendons

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

High-Speed Fluorescence Imaging and Intensity Profiling of Femtosecond-Induced Calcium Transients

We have demonstrated a combined imaging system, where the physiology of biological specimens can be imaged and profiled at 10–20 frames per second whilst undergoing femtosecond laser irradiation. Individual GH3 cells labeled with the calcium fluorophore Fluo-3 were stimulated using a counter-propagating focused femtosecond beam with respect to the imaging system. As a result of the stimulation, calcium waves can be generated in COS cells, and laser-induced calcium oscillations are initiated in the GH3 cells. Single-photon fluorescence images and intensity profiles of the targeted specimens are sampled in real-time using a modified PerkinElmer UltraView LCI microscope