T-REX: Bare electro-dynamic tape-tether technology experimetn on sounding rocket S520

The project to verify the performance of space tether technology was successfully demonstrated by the launch of the sounding rocket S520 the 25tu. The project is the space demonstration of science and engineering technologies of a bare tape electrodynamic tether (EDT) in the international campaign between Japan, USA, Europe and Australia. Method of "Inverse ORIGAMI (Tape tether folding)" was employed in order to deploy the bare tape EDT in a short period time of the suborbital flight. The deployment of tape tether was tested in a various experimental schemes on ground to show high reliability of tape tether deployment. The rocket was launched on the summer of 2010 and deployed a bare electro-dynamic tape tether with length 132.6 m, which is the world record of the length deployment of tape tether. The verification of tether technology has found a variety kind of science and technology results as the first in the humankind and will lead a large number of applications of space tether technologie

How Does Investors' Legal Protection Affect Productivity and Growth?

This paper analyzes the implications of investors' legal protection on aggregate productivity and growth. We have two main results. First, that better investors' legal protection can mitigate agency problems between investors and innovators and therefore expand the range of high-tech projects that can be financed by non-bank investors. Second, investors' legal protection shifts investment resources from less productive (medium-tech) to highly productive (high-tech) projects and therefore enhances economic growth. These results stem from two forces. On one hand, private investors' moral hazard problems (in which entrepreneurs shift investors' resources to their own benefit), and on the other hand innovators' risk of project termination by banks due to wrong signals about projects' probability of success. Our results are consistent with recent empirical studies that show a high correlation between legal investors' protection and the structure of the financial system as well as the economic performance at industry and macroeconomic levels

Physiological and Pathological Factors Affecting Drug Delivery to the Brain by Nanoparticles.

The prevalence of neurological/neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease is known to be increasing due to an aging population and is anticipated to further grow in the decades ahead. The treatment of brain diseases is challenging partly due to the inaccessibility of therapeutic agents to the brain. An increasingly important observation is that the physiology of the brain alters during many brain diseases, and aging adds even more to the complexity of the disease. There is a notion that the permeability of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) increases with aging or disease, however, the body has a defense mechanism that still retains the separation of the brain from harmful chemicals in the blood. This makes drug delivery to the diseased brain, even more challenging and complex task. Here, the physiological changes to the diseased brain and aged brain are covered in the context of drug delivery to the brain using nanoparticles. Also, recent and novel approaches are discussed for the delivery of therapeutic agents to the diseased brain using nanoparticle based or magnetic resonance imaging guided systems. Furthermore, the complement activation, toxicity, and immunogenicity of brain targeting nanoparticles as well as novel in vitro BBB models are discussed

In zikh (1930-1940): Yiddish Modernism in Search of Jewish Self-Consciousness

This dissertation is dedicated to Inzikh (inside the self), the leading group of American Yiddish modernist poets. Since its founding in 1920, the journal Inzikh and the poetics of Introspectivism initiated a revolution in Yiddish literature. The founders of Inzikh, A. Leyeles, Yankev Glatshteyn and N. B. Minkov, rebelled against the dominant proletarian and Symbolist trends in contemporary Yiddish poetry. Introspectivism was a modernist hybrid: it took its anti-mimetic mandate from German expressionism and from Anglo-American imagism it absorbed a sober and objectified tone. Introspectivism developed an analytical approach encouraging the poet to explore his inner self as an unfinished process. Individualism and universalism became the hallmark of this group of Jewish poets writing in Yiddish.Leyeles and Glatshteyn were identified as Inzikh's theoretical and poetical poles. The battle between these two strong poets shaped the course of Introspectivism as well as the critical responses to it. Leyeles was acclaimed for his formal mastery that straddled urban free rhythms and classicist poetry in traditional meter. Glatshteyn, on the other hand, was hailed for his linguistic innovations, thematic eclecticism and for creating imaginary worlds. Scholars of Yiddish modernism tend to interpret Introspectivism either from Leyeles's or Glatshteyn's perspective. This study will take a dialectic and holistic approach to Leyeles's and Glatshteyn's poetry as well as the poetry of their most talented disciples. This is a "group portrait" of Introspectivism at its peak in the 1930s.Scholars have examined certain aspects of Leyeles's or Glatshteyn's poetics in the 1920s. This study offers a monographic consideration of the mature phase of Inzikh in the 1930s. In addition to Leyeles's and Glatshteyn's masterpieces from the second half of the 1930s, the dissertation will also examine books by younger Inzikhistn such as B. Alkvit, Y. L. Teler and Shloyme Shvarts. A new generation of American-educated Yiddish poets joined Inzikh. Poets aspiring to be part of this elitist family of modernists had to side either with Leyeles's or Glatshteyn's version of Introspectivism and had to overcome their anxiety of influence.Jewish identity was marginalized in Inzikh's poetry in the 1920s. In the 1930s, due to the worsening conditions of European Jews, the poets of Inzikh addressed Jewish themes. Opposing fascism and communism challenged the poets of Inzikh to "purify the dialect of the tribe." They used the sensitive tools of suggestion, association and kaleidoscope to reconnect to their repressed Jewish roots. On the eve of the Holocaust, the Inzikhistn produced a remarkable body of modernist Yiddish poetry that was both totally modernist and fundamentally Jewish. In 1940, Inzikh ceased publication, bringing an end to Introspectivism. The poets of Inzikh continued to write, however, in a non-modernist fashion.In the introductory chapter I will discuss the establishment of Inzikh in the 1920s as a journal of modernist Yiddish poetry. Introspectivism will be outlined using the opposing attitudes of Leyeles and Glatshteyn. The poetic principles of Introspectivism will be compared to European and American modernist trends. In Chapter Two I will show Inzikh's turn to political and cultural polemic in the 1930s. Leyeles and Glatshteyn with a new generation of committed lnzikhists reacted introspectively to the worsening of Jewish conditions in Europe. Chapters Three and Four will discuss Glatshteyn's Yidishtaytshn (1937) and Leyeles's Fabyus lind (1937) as masterpieces of engaged Introspectivism that modified the poets' modernist style shifting from universalism to parochialism. The following chapters will show how the poetic battle between Leyeles and Glatshteyn influenced lesser known Inzikhistn. Chapter Four will discuss B. Alkvit's Vegn tsvey un andere (1931) as a benign parody of Glatshteyn's poetic mastery, while Chapter Five is a discussion of Shloyme Shvarts's Bloymontik (1938) as an intensification of Leyeles's experimental style. Chapter Six is an interpretation of Y. L. Teler's Lider fun der tsayt (1940), examining themes of Jewishness and homecoming as an exodus without redemption. The conclusion focuses on the final stages of Inzikh, the A. Leyeles issue of the journal (and Glatshteyn's absence from it) and the decline of the Introspectivist school of modernist Yiddish poetry.Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2011.School code: 0315

Guidance on the management of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) supported patients for the non-LVAD specialist healthcare provider: executive summary

The accepted use of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) technology as a good alternative for the treatment of patients with advanced heart failure together with the improved survival of patients on the device and the scarcity of donor hearts has significantly increased the population of LVAD supported patients. Device-related, and patient-device interaction complications impose a significant burden on the medical system exceeding the capacity of LVAD implanting centres. The probability of an LVAD supported patient presenting with medical emergency to a local ambulance team, emergency department medical team and internal or surgical wards in a non-LVAD implanting centre is increasing. The purpose of this paper is to supply the immediate tools needed by the non-LVAD specialized physician - ambulance clinicians, emergency ward physicians, general cardiologists, and internists - to comply with the medical needs of this fast-growing population of LVAD supported patients. The different issues discussed will follow the patient's pathway from the ambulance to the emergency department, and from the emergency department to the internal or surgical wards and eventually back to the general practitioner

Treatment of a multiple sclerosis animal model by a novel nanodrop formulation of a natural antioxidant

Orli Binyamin,1,* Liraz Larush,2,* Kati Frid,1 Guy Keller,1 Yael Friedman-Levi,1 Haim Ovadia,1 Oded Abramsky,1 Shlomo Magdassi,2 Ruth Gabizon1 1Department of Neurology, The Agnes Ginges Center of Human Neurogenetics, Hadassah University Hospital, 2Casali Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system and is associated with demyelination, neurodegeneration, and sensitivity to oxidative stress. In this work, we administered a nanodroplet formulation of pomegranate seed oil (PSO), denominated Nano-PSO, to mice induced for experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an established model of MS. PSO comprises high levels of punicic acid, a unique polyunsaturated fatty acid considered as one of the strongest natural antioxidants. We show here that while EAE-induced mice treated with natural PSO presented some reduction in disease burden, this beneficial effect increased significantly when EAE mice were treated with Nano-PSO of specific size nanodroplets at much lower concentrations of the oil. Pathological examinations revealed that Nano-PSO administration dramatically reduced demyelination and oxidation of lipids in the brains of the affected animals, which are hallmarks of this severe neurological disease. We propose that novel formulations of natural antioxidants such as Nano-PSO may be considered for the treatment of patients suffering from demyelinating diseases. On the mechanistic side, our results demonstrate that lipid oxidation may be a seminal feature in both demyelination and neurodegeneration. Keywords: nanodrops, PSO, EAE, oxidative stress, neurodegeneratio

Generic arrays of surface-positioned and shallow-buried gold multi-shapes as reference samples to benchmark near-field microscopes. Part 1: Applications in s-SNOM depth imaging

A wide palette of nanoscale imaging techniques operating in the near-field regime has been reported to date, enabling an important number of scientific breakthroughs. While the tuning and benchmarking of near-field microscopes represent a very important step for optimizing the outputs of the imaging sessions, no generally acknowledged standards exist yet in terms of calibration of near-field microscopes, which would play an important role in fully exploiting the potential of these instruments. With this work, we aim to contribute to filling in this gap, by introducing a prototypical sample, that holds potential for becoming a benchmark with respect to comparing the performances of diverse near-field measurement techniques, including traditional, aperture based, scanning near field microscopy (SNOM), or apertureless variants, such as scattering-type scanning nearfield optical microscopy (s-SNOM). The proposed samples have been thoroughly simulated, and an easy fabrication procedure is presented and demonstrated. In this latter context, Au-SiO2 samples sharing different configurations, in terms of geometry, number and depth of contrast yielding layers, enabling both surface and sub-surface nanoscopy measurements, were designed and fabricated. We argue that the proposed prototypical samples can be highly useful for benchmarking the outputs of various near-field microscopy techniques, as they facilitate a broad range of tests, relevant for comparing the performances and accuracy of many diverse investigation methods. We also introduce a methodology for numerically simulating the samples and their near-field after illuminating them with light of different wavelengths, as well as their simple process flow. This methodology can considerably augment their future use as a prototypical sample for the evaluation and calibration of current and next generation near-field nanoscopy techniques. Experimental evidence on the usefulness of these samples as s-SNOM testing and benchmarking tools is provided in the context of differentiation of surface and sub-surface structures, and influence of tip-sample distance on attainable amplitude and phase signals. We consider these efforts to represent an important, required step, in advancing the near-field imaging field, with important potential to augment the outputs of current near-field imaging systems, and to facilitate the development and benchmarking of next generation of near-field instrumentation