A bibliography of Jacob Abbot with a biographical and critical introduction

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1941. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Study for evaluation of incineration and microwave treatment of human fecal matter for spacecraft operation

Incineration and microwave treatment of human fecal matter to determine concentration ranges and identities of liquid, gaseous, and solid product

An investigation into the role of adenoma and host-specific factors on the incidence and recurrence of colorectal neoplasia

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the fourth most common cancer in the United Kingdom. For males and females combined, it is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK. The majority of CRC develops as a result of malignant transformation of adenomas via the adenoma-carcinoma sequence. Firm evidence exists that bowel screening, colonoscopy, and polypectomy results in a reduction of CRC incidence and death. An understanding of the association between both adenoma-specific and host characteristics, on the incidence and recurrence of colorectal neoplasia, is necessary to target finite colonoscopy resources, enhance post-polypectomy surveillance guidelines and reduce CRC incidence. An improved understanding of the host mechanisms underpinning the early and pre-malignant stage of CRC could encourage the development of targeted intervention strategies aimed at reducing the primary incidence, post-polypectomy recurrence, and progression of colorectal adenomas to cancer. Notably, bowel screening is now understandably an integral part of the strategy to reduce CRC incidence and mortality, mainly by intervention at the pre-malignant stage. However, it must be ensured that several inherent risks of screening are considered, especially in the era of CT colonography (CTC), where the entire abdomen is imaged, resulting in the identification of extracolonic findings. Chapter 1 presents an overview of CRC, including the risk factors, treatment, and determinants of prognosis and outcome. This is followed by an outline of the process, evidence for, risks, benefits, and outcomes of CRC screening in Scotland. Finally, a detailed summary of the potential risk factors, natural history, management, and surveillance strategies relating to colorectal adenomatous polyps is presented. Chapter 2 presents findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis using pooled, raw data with regards to post-polypectomy colorectal adenoma recurrence. The work found that age ≥60 years, OR 1.56 [95% CI; 1.13-2.14, p<0.01], male sex, OR 1.58 [95% CI; 1.42-1.76, p<0.001] and BMI ≥25, OR 1.35 [95% CI; 1.14-1.58, p<0.001] were associated with post-polypectomy adenoma recurrence. The work concluded that these host factors could be considered for inclusion in post-polypectomy surveillance guidelines. Chapter 3 presents original data from the Scottish Bowel Screening Programme (SBoSP). An examination was undertaken of the association between adenoma-specific and host characteristics, on subsequent adenoma recurrence post-polypectomy in intermediate and high-risk bowel screening patients. The work reported that in high-risk groups, 50% of patients were found to have adenoma recurrence at follow-up, and a third of these patients harbour advanced adenomas. The work also demonstrates that although host characteristics, other than male sex, were not associated with adenoma recurrence, a higher baseline adenoma number was associated with the finding of subsequent adenomas at follow-up (OR 2.23 [95% CI; 1.53-3.25, p<0.001] and 4.19 [9% CI; 2.53-6.97, p<0.001], for 3–4 and ≥5 vs. 1–2 adenomas at baseline respectively). While elevated adenoma number at baseline did not increase the risk of subsequent advanced adenomas at follow-up, the presence of advanced adenomas at baseline was itself a risk for subsequent advanced adenomas, OR 2.34 [95% CI; 1.18-4.61, p<0.05]. This chapter concluded that adenoma-specific factors are superior to host characteristics in predicting future risk for bowel screening patients. On that basis, additional work is required to explore the adenoma further at a genetic level, while additional adenoma-specific factors, other than solely size, should be considered for inclusion in post-polypectomy surveillance guidelines. Chapter 4 presents original, prospectively collected data, from patients attending for colonoscopy as part of the SBoSP. In contrast to Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, which focussed on secondary prevention (post-polypectomy) of colorectal adenomas, Chapter 4 focussed on primary prevention. The association between host characteristics, systemic inflammation, and colorectal neoplasia incidence at bowel screening was examined. The work reported that obesity, adjusted OR 2.72 [95% CI; 1.35–5.49, p<0.01], smoking, OR 2.26 [95% CI; 1.33-3.84, p<0.01] and aspirin use, OR 2.59 [95% CI; 1.15-5.86, p<0.05] were associated with a systemic inflammatory response. Despite this, none of the host factors were associated with an increased risk of incident colorectal neoplasia, while aspirin was associated with reduced risk, OR 0.51 [95% CI; 0.29–0.89, p<0.05] when adjusting for age, sex and smoking. The work concluded that while several host factors are associated with systemic inflammation, a direct link between these host factors, systemic inflammation and incident colorectal neoplasia remains unclear. It also concluded that BMI might be an inferior measure with which to study the effects of adiposity on colorectal neoplasia incidence, and suggested more precise measures of body composition could be used to explore the relationship further. Chapter 5 presents original data collected from patients undergoing CTC as part of the SBoSP. The association between CT derived body composition and colorectal neoplasia incidence was examined. The work concludes that; similar to Chapter 4, BMI was not useful in predicting the risk of colorectal neoplasia, but the presence of visceral obesity was strongly associated with neoplasia incidence, adjusted OR 2.79 [95% CI; 1.48-5.25, p<0.01]. In addition, no association was found between the presence of sarcopenia and early, largely pre-malignant disease. The chapter concluded that targeted interventions specifically for visceral obesity, and further investigation into the mechanism for its association with neoplastic findings should be sought. Moreover, a further examination into the role of sarcopenia and its development between the pre-malignant and malignant stage of CRC is required. Chapter 6 presents original data collected from patients undergoing CTC as part of the SBoSP with a focus on the risks of bowel screening, where CTC is increasingly being utilised. Original data are reported on the incidence, risk factors for, cost and implications of both colorectal (CRF) and incidental extracolonic findings (ECF) at CTC conducted as part of the SBoSP. The work reported that ECFs were very common in the bowel screening cohort (62% of patients) and that the subsequent additional yield of useful CRF (11%) from completion CTCs was lower than the incidence of important ECFs (15%). The majority of ECFs that required further investigation were subsequently benign (63%), and as a result of the investigation process, there was an additional estimated cost of £45 per CTC. The work concluded that while CTC remains a useful adjunct for screening programmes, it should be utilised with caution. Both the clinician and patient must have an awareness of the additional risk, cost and implications of a test designed to investigate the colon and rectum, which may have a higher yield of ECFs than important CRFs. Chapter 7 summarises the main findings presented in the thesis, provides a relevant update on newly published work during the thesis preparation period and suggests some recommendations for future study

Supervised and Unsupervised Categorization of an Imbalanced Italian Crime News Dataset

The automatic categorization of crime news is useful to create statistics on the type of crimes occurring in a certain area. This assignment can be treated as a text categorization problem. Several studies have shown that the use of word embeddings improves outcomes in many Natural Language Processing (NLP), including text categorization. The scope of this paper is to explore the use of word embeddings for Italian crime news text categorization. The approach followed is to compare different document pre-processing, Word2Vec models and methods to obtain word embeddings, including the extraction of bigrams and keyphrases. Then, supervised and unsupervised Machine Learning categorization algorithms have been applied and compared. In addition, the imbalance issue of the input dataset has been addressed by using Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) to oversample the elements in the minority classes. Experiments conducted on an Italian dataset of 17,500 crime news articles collected from 2011 till 2021 show very promising results. The supervised categorization has proven to be better than the unsupervised categorization, overcoming 80% both in precision and recall, reaching an accuracy of 0.86. Furthermore, lemmatization, bigrams and keyphrase extraction are not so decisive. In the end, the availability of our model on GitHub together with the code we used to extract word embeddings allows replicating our approach to other corpus either in Italian or other languages

The Evolution of Cambridge Publishing (Book Review)

published or submitted for publicatio

In-Operation Experimental Modal Analysis of a Three Span Open-Spandrel RC Arch Bridge

This paper presents the results of the dynamic tests conducted on a historical reinforced concrete arch bridge located in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, in the province of Parma (Italy). The design of the sensors location was determined in order to investigate the possible separation into bodies operated by the joints between the different spans. The ambient vibration data allowed the dynamic characterization of the 3-span arch bridge with the total length of 146 m and 18 m in width. The interpretation of the main global modes, distinctly detected through time domain identification methods, indicates that the horizontal response is governed by the deformability of the joints. The results show that the obtained modal features provide a reliable reference for the subsequent updating of the bridge FE model

Phylogenetic position of a copper age sheep (Ovis aries) mitochondrial DNA.

Background: Sheep (Ovis aries) were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent region about 9,000-8,000 years ago. Currently, few mitochondrial (mt) DNA studies are available on archaeological sheep. In particular, no data on archaeological European sheep are available. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we describe the first portion of mtDNA sequence of a Copper Age European sheep. DNA was extracted from hair shafts which were part of the clothes of the so-called Tyrolean Iceman or O¨ tzi (5,350 - 5,100 years before present). Mitochondrial DNA (a total of 2,429 base pairs, encompassing a portion of the control region, tRNAPhe, a portion of the 12S rRNA gene, and the whole cytochrome B gene) was sequenced using a mixed sequencing procedure based on PCR amplification and 454 sequencing of pooled amplification products. We have compared the sequence with the corresponding sequence of 334 extant lineages. Conclusions/Significance: A phylogenetic network based on a new cladistic notation for the mitochondrial diversity of domestic sheep shows that the O¨ tzi’s sheep falls within haplogroup B, thus demonstrating that sheep belonging to this haplogroup were already present in the Alps more than 5,000 years ago. On the other hand, the lineage of the O¨ tzi’s sheep is defined by two transitions (16147, and 16440) which, assembled together, define a motif that has not yet been identified in modern sheep populations

Insights into the role of three Endonuclease III enzymes for oxidative stress resistance in the extremely radiation resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans

The extremely radiation and desiccation resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans possesses three genes encoding Endonuclease III-like enzymes (DrEndoIII1, DrEndoIII2, DrEndoIII3). In vitro enzymatic activity measurements revealed that DrEndoIII2 is the main Endonuclease III in this organism, while DrEndoIII1 and 3 possess unusual and, so far, no detectable EndoIII activity, respectively. In order to understand the role of these enzymes at a cellular level, DrEndoIII knockout mutants were constructed and subjected to various oxidative stress related conditions. The results showed that the mutants are as resistant to ionizing and UV-C radiation as well as H2O2 exposure as the wild type. However, upon exposure to oxidative stress induced by methyl viologen, the knockout strains were more resistant than the wild type. The difference in resistance may be attributed to the observed upregulation of the EndoIII homologs gene expression upon addition of methyl viologen. In conclusion, our data suggest that all three EndoIII homologs are crucial for cell survival in stress conditions, since the knockout of one of the genes tend to be compensated for by overexpression of the genes encoding the other two

Fatigue Characterisation and Monitoring in 3D Printed Short Fibres Reinforced Polyamide

The use of fused filament fabrication technology as a competitor of the conventional manufacturing processes for end-use parts production is of a great interest. However, a deep knowledge of the mechanical properties and failure behavior of printed parts is required to safely design final usable components. The present work aims to characterize the mechanical properties of a 3D printed short carbon fiber reinforced polyamide and to investigate the relationship between its unique morphology and its failure behavior. Tensile tests were conducted on rectangular specimens printed with an alternating sequence of layers with 0°/90° and ±45° raster orientation. Fracture surfaces of failed specimens were analyzed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Possible failure mechanisms were then inferred by surface morphology analysis. Moreover, several specimens’ geometries were designed and printed to characterize the in-plane and out-of-plane material compressive properties. Considerations about the longitudinal strength of the material were eventually drawn