What it Means to be Human: A Review of You\u27re Only Human

We are embodied creatures created by God to be limited by time and space and with our own unique set of gifts and abilities. Posting about ­­­­­­­­the book You\u27re Only Human from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation. https://inallthings.org/what-it-means-to-be-human-a-review-of-youre-only-human

Immunological basis of differences in disease resistance in the chicken

Genetic resistance to diseases is a multigenic trait governed mainly by the immune system and its interactions with many physiologic and environmental factors. In the adaptive immunity, T cell and B cell responses, the specific recognition of antigens and interactions between antigen presenting cells, T cells and B cells are crucial. It occurs through a network of mediator proteins such as the molecules of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), T cell receptors, immunoglobulins and secreted proteins such as the cytokines and antibodies. The diversity of these proteins that mainly is due to an intrinsic polymorphism of the genes causes phenotypic variation in disease resistance. The well-known linkage of MHC polymorphism and Marek's disease resistance difference represents a classic model revealing immunological factors in resistance differences and diversity of mediator molecules. The molecular bases in any resistance variation to infectious pathogens are vaguely understood. This paper presents a review of the major immune mediators involved in resistance and susceptibility to infectious diseases and their functional mechanisms in the chicken. The genetic interaction of disease resistance with production traits and the environment is mentioned

Phase-Controlled Force and Magnetization Oscillations in Superconducting Ballistic Nanowires

The emergence of superconductivity-induced phase-controlled forces in the (0.01-0.1) nN range, and of magnetization oscillations, in nanowire junctions, is discussed. A giant magnetic response to applied weak magnetic fields, is predicted in the ballistic Josephson junction formed by a superconducting tip and a surface, bridged by a normal metal nanowire where Andreev states form.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Oxygen clamps in gold nanowires

We investigate how the insertion of an oxygen atom in an atomically thin gold nanowire can affect its rupture. We find, using ab initio total energy density functional theory calculations, that O atoms when inserted in gold nanowires form not only stable but also very strong bonds, in such a way that they can extract atoms from a stable tip, serving in this way as a clamp that could be used to pull a string of gold atoms.Comment: 4 pages; 4 figure

Application of Robustness Analysis for Developing a Procedure for Better Urban Transportation Planning Decisions

This paper shows that robustness analysis is a technique with a potential for aiding decision makers in choosing transportation investment projects. In this paper, it has been demonstrated that it can be successfully used in urban transportation planning in conjunction with urban travel demand software. The robustness analysis procedure emphasizes the need, under conditions of uncertainty, to make early decisions in a time-phased sequence, while preserving future options that currently seem attractive. The results of the robustness analysis from the case study used in this paper indicate that the method is simple to understand, easy to use, minimizes future surprises in terms of expected future events not happening, and provides the flexibility required in typical urban planning problems where decision making is needed to be taken under conditions of uncertainty. A general framework to be used in such cases is proposed

Empirical analysis of the relationship between CC and SLOC in a large corpus of Java methods and C functions

Measuring the internal quality of source code is one of the traditional goals of making software development into an engineering discipline. Cyclomatic complexity (CC) is an often used source code quality metric, next to source lines of code (SLOC). However, the use of the CC metric is challenged by the repeated claim that CC is redundant with respect to SLOC because of strong linear correlation.We conducted an extensive literature study of the CC/SLOC correlation results. Next, we tested correlation on large Java (17.6 M methods) and C (6.3 M functions) corpora. Our results show that linear correlation between SLOC and CC is only moderate as a result of increasingly high variance. We further observe that aggregating CC and SLOC as well as performing a power transform improves the correlation.Our conclusion is that the observed linear correlation between CC and SLOC of Java methods or C functions is not strong enough to conclude that CC is redundant with SLOC. This conclusion contradicts earlier claims from literature but concurs with the widely accepted practice of measuring of CC next to SLOC

Edge states in graphene quantum dots: Fractional quantum Hall effect analogies and differences at zero magnetic field

We investigate the way that the degenerate manifold of midgap edge states in quasicircular graphene quantum dots with zig-zag boundaries supports, under free-magnetic-field conditions, strongly correlated many-body behavior analogous to the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE), familiar from the case of semiconductor heterostructures in high magnetic fields. Systematic exact-diagonalization (EXD) numerical studies are presented for the first time for 5 <= N <= 8 fully spin-polarized electrons and for total angular momenta in the range of N(N-1)/2 <= L <= 150. We present a derivation of a rotating-electron-molecule (REM) type wave function based on the methodology introduced earlier [C. Yannouleas and U. Landman, Phys. Rev. B 66, 115315 (2002)] in the context of the FQHE in two-dimensional semiconductor quantum dots. The EXD wave functions are compared with FQHE trial functions of the Laughlin and the derived REM types. It is found that a variational extension of the REM offers a better description for all fractional fillings compared with that of the Laughlin functions (including total energies and overlaps), a fact that reflects the strong azimuthal localization of the edge electrons. In contrast with the multiring arrangements of electrons in circular semiconductor quantum dots, the graphene REMs exhibit in all instances a single (0,N) polygonal-ring molecular (crystalline) structure, with all the electrons localized on the edge. Disruptions in the zig-zag boundary condition along the circular edge act effectively as impurities that pin the electron molecule, yielding single-particle densities with broken rotational symmetry that portray directly the azimuthal localization of the edge electrons.Comment: Revtex. 14 pages with 13 figures and 2 tables. Physical Review B, in press. For related papers, see http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~ph274cy

Development of Multiple Growth Strategies for Use in Developing Traffic Forecasts: A Robustness Approach

Decisions that may be based on misleading forecasts may lead to a misallocation of funds and to under-performing projects during construction and operation. Poor projections of demographic and socioeconomic data are usually cited as the major source of poor traffic assignment projections and hence, unfavorably conceived planning and construction of street and highway infrastructure facilities. This report evaluated the accuracy of long range projections by using a transportation study done the in 1970s, projecting transportation demand 20 years into the future. The projected travel model inputs were compared with what actually happened after the horizon year had been reached and also compared the projected traffic volumes versus the actual ground counts at the same horizon year. The results of this study show that there is a poor correlation between what was forecasted and what actually happened in terms of socioeconomic and demographic data, which are the major inputs used by travel demand models to forecast future traffic volumes on road links. The projected traffic volumes were poorly correlated with the actual ground traffic counts for the same road links in the network. However, the end results of these projections, the estimated number of lanes required to accommodate the resulting traffic, were not adversely affected. It was found that 98 percent of the major streets had the number of lanes correctly estimated based on the 1994 Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) planning level of service (LOS) criteria. Robustness analysis is a technique with the potential in aiding decision makers in choosing transportation investment projects that more closely correlate to actual future development. In this report it has been demonstrated that robustness analysis can be successfully used in urban transportation planning in conjunction with urban travel demand software. The robustness analysis procedure emphasizes the need, under conditions of uncertainty, to make early decisions in a time-phased sequence, while preserving many future options until the choices are more definitive. The results of the robustness analysis indicate that the method is simple to understand, easy to use, minimizes future surprises in terms of expected future events not happening, and provides the flexibility required in typical urban planning problems where decision making has to be done under conditions of uncertainties. A general framework to be used in such cases is proposed