Development of a geographic information system-based virtual geotechnical database and assessment of liquefaction potential for the St. Louis Metropolitan area

The St. Louis Metropolitan area is the focus the U.S. Geological Survey\u27s Earthquake Hazard Program\u27s plan for assessing and reducing the likely risks of an earthquake likely emanating from New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), which is the most active seismic zone in the Midwestern United States. The St. Louis Metropolitan area consists of three counties in Missouri and four in Illinois, which are divided by the state boundary along the Mississippi River. Both of the state\u27s respective geological surveys have produced their own geologic maps and datasets, employing dissimilar geodata information and systems, with differing map units, map scales, and storage formats, with data stored in hard copy (analog) or digital formats. This combined dissimilar geodata from both states and integrate them into a single Virtual Geotechnical Database (VGDB) in an accepted Geographic Information System (ArcGIS), which can be used to retrieve subsurface data and perform an array of spatial analyses. The VGDB will be made available to the general public and other researchers, and is intended to promote more standardization of geologic interpretations between Missouri and Illinois --Abstract, page iii

Picturing Everyday Life: Politics and Aesthetics of Saenghwal in Postwar South Korea, 1953-1959

Following the collapse of the Japanese Empire (1945) and the devastation of the Korean War (1950-1953), the question of how to represent and imagine “everyday life” or “way of life” (saenghwal, 生活) became a focal point of post-colonial and Cold War contestations. For example, President Syngman Rhee’s administration attempted to control the discourse of “New Life” (shinsaenghwal) by linking the spatio-temporality of the everyday to reconstruction and modernization. “Everyday life” was also a concept of strategic interest to the United States, whose postwar hegemonic ambitions in East Asia meant spreading “the truth” about an idealized vision of American way of life through government agencies such as the United States Information Service (USIS). These ideas and representations were designed to interpellate the South Korean people into a particular kind of regulatory relationship with their bodies and minds, their conduct of their day-to-day lives, their vision of themselves within the nation and the “Free World.” “Everyday life” became, in other words, part-and-parcel of Cold War governmentality’s mechanism of subjectification. Overly privileging these top-down discourses and techniques, however, can foreclose a nuanced understanding of a rich and complex set of negotiations over the meaning of saenghwal underway in both elite intellectual and popular imagination. Through my examination of literature, criticism, reportage, human-interest stories, government bulletins, philosophical essays, photography (artistic, popular, journalistic, archival, exhibition), cartoons, and educational and feature films, I characterize this period broadly in terms of “postwar crisis of modernity.” If “colonial modernity” in Korea had consisted of tensions and collaborations between colonialism, enlightenment, and modernization, then the emergent neocolonial order of the Cold War would give rise to a reconfiguration of this problematic: national division, South Korea’s semi-sovereignty vis-à-vis the U.S. and the denial of decolonization accompanied by the false promise of democratic freedom and American-style prosperity. Negotiations of this crisis can be found across urban and rural space, contesting the representation and dissemination of universalist and developmentalist “everyday life,” which was linked to the postwar restoration of the enlightenment subject. The stakes of these contestations through the framework of saenghwal could be ontological, aesthetic, economic, affective or universalist, and were articulated across popular and intellectual registers. While works of recent English-language scholarship in modern Korean history have productively explored the question of everyday life during the colonial period and in DPRK after liberation, no work thus far has examined the significance of the relationship between intermediality and saenghwal in the cultural field of ROK in the postwar 1950s. In addition to building on the current trend of scholarship that emphasizes the continuity between colonial and post-colonial cultural formations, my analysis of literature opens up future avenues of research for those interested in understanding literature’s intersection with modes of reportage, photography, and mass visuality. The chapter on the countryside draws from a diverse array of cultural productions to analyze a space that has traditionally been discussed within the limited geopolitical context of U.S. aid and development; no scholar to my knowledge has undertaken medium-specific inquiry to think through ontological and aesthetic negotiations unfolding in the countryside. My chapter on film culture reads the postwar debates around plagiarism/imitation, melodrama/sinp’a, and realism/neorealism through the gendering discourse of “everyday feelings” (saenghwal kamjŏng), and analyzes understudied films of the era with particular attention paid to their exploration of postwar sentiment. Finally, the last chapter intervenes on the wealth of existing scholarship on The Family of Man in visual studies by situating it within a broader formation of the postwar enlightenment subject as a democratic modernizing ideal. By focusing on the affective premise of this ideal, I contribute to the existing scholarship on theories of everyday life, sovereignty, and Cold War culture, which have tended to neglect the role of intermediation and affective interpellation in the governmentality of everyday life

Comparison of intravaginal and oral metronidazole in patients with bacterial vaginosis

Background: Metronidazole is considered an effective treatment for bacterial vaginosis. Only oral preparations were available until 2014, but an intravaginal gel preparation recently became commercially available in South Korea. In this report, the efficacy and safety of metronidazole intravaginal gel application was compared to that of the conventional oral metronidazole preparation.Methods: Patients who were treated with either intravaginal metronidazole or oral metronidazole after diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis were included in this study. Patient characteristics, mode of treatment, recurrence rate, and complications including gastro-intestinal discomfort and concomitant vulvovaginal candidiasis were analyzed.Results: There were no differences in patient characteristics, except the mean age was older in the intravaginal group. Treatment outcomes were similar in both groups. In the oral metronidazole group, 6.3% of patients reported ongoing symptoms of bacterial vaginosis within one month of treatment and required a refill, while 7.3% of the intravaginal group required a refill. Significantly more patients on oral metronidazole treatment complained about gastro-intestinal discomfort including nausea (13.4%) and diarrhea (9.4%). Patients who took intravaginal metronidazole complained about increased watery vaginal discharge (26.8%). The comparatively high cost of metronidazole intravaginal gel was another factor that could affect patient access to this treatment versus the oral preparation. The incidence of vulvovaginal candidiasis was similar between groups (oral 3.9%, intravaginal 4.9%).Conclusions: Intravaginal metronidazole usage can be considered as an effective alternative treatment for bacterial vaginosis in patients with gastro-intestinal complications. However, the increased incidence of watery vaginal discharge and high cost remain obstacles to widespread use of the intravaginal preparation

The Investigation on Fibrous Veins and Their Host from Mt. Ida, Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas

I have studied syntectonic veins from shales and coarse calcareous sands of the Ordovician Womble Shale, Benton uplift, Arkansas. All veins are composed of calcite with minor quartz and trace feldspar and dolomite or high-Mg calcite in the coarser veins. All host lithologies have a pressure-solution cleavage, more closely spaced in the fine-grained shale beds. The vein internal fabrics are coarsely to finely fibered, with a strong host-rock grain size control on fiber width. The finest fibers are in veins with shale host and the coarsest in the coarse-grained calcareous sandstone. Fiber aspect ratio is inversely proportional to host grain size; more equant vein grains are found in the veins hosted in the coarse host fraction. Within one outcrop, the δ13C and δ18O compositions of the host lithologies range from 1.5 to -3.0 per mil and 7.5 to -14.0 per mil (VPDB), respectively. By contrast, the δ18O composition of the veins is remarkably constant (-13.5 per mil) among veins of starkly different fabrics. This composition is identical to that of the coarse calcareous sandstone lithology in the outcrop. No cathodoluminescence or stable isotope zoning was observed in the veins. In addition, there were no gradients in Ca or Si in the vicinity of the veins, suggesting either that the host did not contribute these elements or that diffusion was not the rate-limiting step to vein formation. In any case, the wide variety of veins was probably formed from meter-scale migration of fluid derived from local calcite-rich layers in calcareous sandstone

Zeus: Understanding and Optimizing GPU Energy Consumption of DNN Training

Training deep neural networks (DNNs) is becoming increasingly more resource- and energy-intensive every year. Unfortunately, existing works primarily focus on optimizing DNN training for faster completion, often without considering the impact on energy efficiency. In this paper, we observe that common practices to improve training performance can often lead to inefficient energy usage. More importantly, we demonstrate that there is a tradeoff between energy consumption and performance optimization. To this end, we propose Zeus, an optimization framework to navigate this tradeoff by automatically finding optimal job- and GPU-level configurations for recurring DNN training jobs. Zeus uses an online exploration-exploitation approach in conjunction with just-in-time energy profiling, averting the need for expensive offline measurements, while adapting to data drifts over time. Our evaluation shows that Zeus can improve the energy efficiency of DNN training by 15.3%-75.8% for diverse workloads.Comment: NSDI 2023 | Homepage https://ml.energy/zeu

Peridynamic modeling for crack propagation analysis of materials

In this paper, the computer simulations are carried out by using the peridynamic theory model with various conditions including quasi-static loads, dynamic loads and crack propagation, branching crack pattern and isotropic materials, orthotropic materials. Three examples, a plate with a hole under quasi-static loading, a plate with a pre-existing crack under dynamic loading and a lamina with a pre-existing crack under quasi-static loading are analyzed by computational simulations. In order to simulate the quasi-static load, an adaptive dynamic relaxation technique is used. In the orthotropic material analysis, a homogenization method is used considering the strain energy density ratio between the classical continuum mechanics and the peridynamic. As a result, crack propagation and branching cracks are observed successfully and the direction and initiation of the crack are also captured within the peridynamic modeling. In case of applying peridynamic used homogenization method to a relatively complicated orthotropic material, it is also verified by comparing with experimental result

Hepatitis C Virus and Hepatocarcinogenesis

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an RNA virus that is unable to integrate into the host genome. However, its proteins interact with various host proteins and induce host responses. The oncogenic process of HCV infection is slow and insidious and probably requires multiple steps of genetic and epigenetic alterations, the activation of cellular oncogenes, the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes, and dysregulation of multiple signal transduction pathways. Stellate cells may transdifferentiate into progenitor cells and possibly be linked to the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Viral proteins also have been implicated in several cellular signal transduction pathways that affect cell survival, proliferation, migration and transformation. Current advances in gene expression profile and selective messenger RNA analysis have improved approach to the pathogenesis of HCC. The heterogeneity of genetic events observed in HCV-related HCCs has suggested that complex mechanisms underlie malignant transformation induced by HCV infection. Considering the complexity and heterogeneity of HCCs of both etiological and genetic aspects, further molecular classification is required and an understanding of these molecular complexities may provide the opportunity for effective chemoprevention and personalized therapy for HCV-related HCC patients in the future. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge of the mechanisms of hepatocarcinogenesis induced by HCV infection

Multi-jet electrospinning of polystyrene/polyamide 6 blend: thermal and mechanical properties

Citation: Yoon, J. W., Park, Y., Kim, J., & Park, C. H. (2017). Multi-jet electrospinning of polystyrene/polyamide 6 blend: thermal and mechanical properties. Fashion and Textiles, 4, 12. doi:10.1186/s40691-017-0090-4Polystyrene (PS) has high thermal resistance thus can be applied as thermally comfortable textile. However, the application is limited due its low mechanical strength. In this study, polyamide 6 (PA6) was blended with PS to improve the mechanical strength of PS, by means of a multi-jet electrospinning. Content ratio of the blend web was measured by chemical immersion test and confocal microscopy analysis. Fiber content was in accordance with the number of syringes used for PS and PA6 respectively. The effects of content ratio on the web morphology, thermal resistance, tensile behavior, air and water vapor permeability, and surface hydrophilicity were investigated. The influence of environmental humidity during electrospinning process on three dimensional (3D) web structure was also reported. PS web produced from higher humidity had more pores and corrugations at the surface. The increased surface roughness and porosity led to the increased hydrophobicity and thermal resistance. Though the blending of PA6 with PS enhanced the mechanical strength, the added PA6 decreased air/water vapor permeability and thermal resistance. The lowered thermal resistance by the addition of PA6 was mainly attributed to higher thermal conductivity of PA6 material and lowered air content with PA6 fibers