Study of Audio Frequency Power Amplifiers with Reactive Loads

Electrical Engineerin

68/02/01 Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae

In sum, we believe that it is consistent with the Fourth Amendment to recognize a power in law enforcement officers to detain and question under circumstances amounting to less than probable cause for a formal arrest, and that, in exercising such power, the officer may legitimately protect himself by a frisk for dangerous weapons -- from page 18

Genetic architecture of human obesity traits in the rhesus macaque

Objective: Whereas the metabolic consequences of obesity have been studied extensively in the rhesus macaque, corollary genetic studies of obesity are nonexistent. This study assessed genetic contributions to spontaneous adiposity in this species. Methods: Phenotypic variation by age class and sex for BMI, waist to height ratio, waist to thigh ratio, and waist circumference was assessed in 583 macaques. Total and sex-specific heritability for all traits was estimated, including waist to thigh ratio adjusted for BMI, as well as genotypic and phenotypic correlations. In addition, functional genetic variation at BDNF, FTO, LEP, LEPR, MC4R, PCSK1, POMC, and SIM1 was assessed in four animals with extreme spontaneous adiposity. Results: Trait heritability in the combined sample was low to moderate (0.14-0.32), whereas sex-specific heritability was more substantial (0.20-0.67). Heritability was greater in females for all traits except BMI. All traits were robustly correlated, with genetic correlations of 0.63 to 0.93 indicating substantial pleiotropy. Likely functional variants were discovered in the four macaques at all eight human obesity genes, including six missense mutations in BDNF, FTO, LEP, LEPR, and PCSK1 and, notably, one nonsense mutation in LEPR. Conclusions: A moderate polygenic contribution to adiposity in rhesus macaques was found, as well as mutations with potentially larger effects in multiple genes that influence obesity in humans

Charting Racial Formations in the New U.S. South: Reflections on North Carolina’s Latino, African-American, and Afro-Latino Relations

The term “New South” has been used for over a hundred years to describe and categorize the Southern U.S. The desire to continually reinvent the South suggests that the current transformations of the region’s economy, demographics, and politics are not radical reconfigurations of a monolithic and unchanging landscape, but rather are the latest articulations of a complex and continually evolving region. Change in the South, however, is not a neutral, uncontested process. The South’s meaning is now being challenged in ways that have not been witnessed before. Multiethnic diversity has been identified as one of the key emerging features of the region, particularly in job-laden metropolitan areas. In North Carolina and other Southern States, migration streams are channeling Latinos into areas with relatively large Black populations, and in geographically defined social/political spaces that have been historically discussed in binary terms of Black and White. This essay is a preliminary exploration of these processes of contested change in North Carolina, examining the stakes involved, the processes that have unfurled, and the histories/legacies produced by these interactions that are rapidly becoming prominent features in the American social landscape

Exact Bayesian curve fitting and signal segmentation.

We consider regression models where the underlying functional relationship between the response and the explanatory variable is modeled as independent linear regressions on disjoint segments. We present an algorithm for perfect simulation from the posterior distribution of such a model, even allowing for an unknown number of segments and an unknown model order for the linear regressions within each segment. The algorithm is simple, can scale well to large data sets, and avoids the problem of diagnosing convergence that is present with Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) approaches to this problem. We demonstrate our algorithm on standard denoising problems, on a piecewise constant AR model, and on a speech segmentation problem

Localisation of renin-angiotensin system (RAS) components in breast

Angiotensin II has mitogenic and angiogenic effects and its receptors are widespread, particularly in epithelial tissue. Tissue renin angiotensin systems (tRASs) may be a local source of angiotensin II that has specific paracrine functions. To investigate the presence of a tRAS in normal human breast and tumours. Immunocytochemistry, and quantitative RT–PCR was used to establish: (i) the presence and localisation of RAS components, (ii) the possibility of their involvement in cancer. (1) mRNA coding for angiotensinogen, prorenin, angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE), and both AT1 and AT2 receptors was demonstrated in normal and diseased breast tissues. (2) (pro)renin was identified in epithelial cells in both normal and diseased tissue, but in invasive carcinoma, its distribution was mostly confined to fibroblasts or could not be detected at all. (3) Angiotensin converting enzyme was shown in epithelial cells in both normal and malignant tissue. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that a tRAS is present in the breast, and is disrupted in invasive cancer

Red wine polyphenols prevent metabolic and cardiovascular alterations associated with obesity in Zucker fatty rats (Fa/Fa)

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