Inspiratory muscle training reduces blood lactate concentration during volitional hyperpnoea

Although reduced blood lactate concentrations ([lac−]B) have been observed during whole-body exercise following inspiratory muscle training (IMT), it remains unknown whether the inspiratory muscles are the source of at least part of this reduction. To investigate this, we tested the hypothesis that IMT would attenuate the increase in [lac−]B caused by mimicking, at rest, the breathing pattern observed during high-intensity exercise. Twenty-two physically active males were matched for 85% maximal exercise minute ventilation (V˙Emax) and divided equally into an IMT or a control group. Prior to and following a 6 week intervention, participants performed 10 min of volitional hyperpnoea at the breathing pattern commensurate with 85% V˙Emax

A Study of the Influence of Public and Private Christian High School Education on Academic Achievement and Spiritual Formation of College Students

This investigation compared the influence of public and Christian high schools on the spiritual formation and academic achievement of college students. Recent high school graduates who attend a private, liberal arts university in the southeastern United States responded to an online survey and interview questions related to the influence of one’s high school experience on spiritual formation and academic achievement. Significant differences were found between high school type and the type of problems faced by students and teachers, students’ ability to intelligently defend their faith, and students’ perceived ability to function in a diverse world. Significant differences favoring Christian school graduates were also found related to high school’s influence on taking college classes seriously, helping others, defending beliefs, sharing their faith, appreciation for other cultures, taking responsibility for actions, ability to receive constructive feedback, and being honest with oneself. Suggestions for educational improvement from both public and private high school graduates include: the need for hiring and retaining inspiring teachers who model moral behavior daily; the need for school personnel to listen to students and involve them in decision making; better problem-solving skills by school administrators; less favoritism shown to certain students by teachers and administrators; greater focus on authentic learning in real-world contexts; and the need for academic freedom to discuss critical issues without fear of retribution by teachers, administrators, or other students

Robust storage systems for persistent memory

Protecting the integrity of stored data is the main responsibility of storage systems. However, it is challenging to ensure that data is always kept safe in the event of crashes or data corruption, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to building robust systems. The developers of different systems have different goals, requirements, and resources, and thus have different priorities when it comes to how they gain confidence in the correctness and robustness of their systems. In this dissertation, we present a set of new techniques for building crash-consistent and corruption-resistant systems. Each technique occupies a different point in the trade-off space between complexity and the level of confidence it offers, providing developers with a toolbox of approaches that are useful in a variety of settings. The techniques presented in this dissertation focus on the problem of ensuring robustness in storage systems built for persistent memory (PM). Persistent memory (PM) technologies, such as Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory and battery-backed DRAM, promise low-latency, byte-addressable access to dense storage media. These characteristics present an opportunity to build new file and storage systems that provide both high performance and strong crash-consistency guarantees, but also introduce new challenges when it comes to building robust systems. Developers of PM storage systems must contend with a complex low-level interface and the need to develop new designs to take advantage of new performance characteristics. Furthermore, PM systems differ in many fundamental ways from traditional systems, so many previously-developed tools and techniques are not compatible. In this dissertation, we present three new techniques for ensuring that PM storage systems are robust in the face of crashes and corruption. We first present Chipmunk, a testing tool for PM file systems for crash consistency bugs. We analyze 23 bugs in five PM file systems found by Chipmunk and learn important lessons about how to design these systems and prevent such bugs. We next present SquirrelFS, a PM file system that utilizes the Rust compiler to statically check ordering-related crash-consistency properties. SquirrelFS checks these properties in a new crash-consistency mechanism we call Synchronous Soft Updates using an API design pattern called the typestate pattern. Finally, we present PoWER (Preconditions on Writes Enforcing Recoverability), a new approach to formally verifying crash-consistency, and use it to build CapybaraKV, a verified PM key-value store. Unlike prior work on verifying crash consistency, PoWER relies only on standard verifier features and requires minimal additional libraries and infrastructure. We also introduce several new techniques that make building verified PM storage systems easier, including a new primitive for atomic checksum updates and a Rust crate to help developers implement fast, provably-safe durable updates. This dissertation advances the state of the art by presenting new results that inform how we should build robust storage systems and new techniques to help developers achieve this goal. While the tools and techniques we discuss were developed with PM in mind, many are applicable to traditional storage systems as well. All the work presented in this dissertation is open-source.Computer Scienc

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Micromachined printheads for the direct evaporative patterning of organic materials

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, 2007.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references.Organic optoelectronic devices are appealing for low-performance applications on very low cost and flexible substrates, due to their low-temperature processing. However, it still remains a challenge to develop suitable fabrication techniques to pattern organic thin films on low-cost, large-area substrates. The two techniques used commercially are inkjet printing of polymers, which limits the morphology and performance of devices, and shadow-masking of vacuum sublimation for small molecule materials, which is not scalable to large-area substrates. In this thesis, we investigate the use of MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) to provide new ways of patterning organic materials deposited by an evaporative process. We present the design, fabrication, modeling and characterization of two generations of micromachined printheads developed to expand the possibilities of printing of organic optoelectronics. The design and fabrication of a compact electrostatic actuator enabling the first generation of printhead is first presented. It is then used to actuate a microshutter, and modulate the flux of evaporated organic materials in a vacuum chamber. We prove the feasibility of evaporative printing of small molecular organic materials at resolutions of the order of 800 dpi with high-throughput on large areas.(cont.) We demonstrate that MicroElectroMechanical Systems can be used to pattern organic thin films in a way that combines the advantages of ink-jet printing and thermal evaporation. We also present the design and fabrication of a microevaporator for molecular organics, and show its suitability for the ambient printing of devices on low-cost substrates, without the limitations of ink-jet printing due to the drying of solvent on the substrate. We demonstrate the feasibility of using an array of pores in a membrane to capture molecular organic materials delivered by a solvent and an integrated microheater to release them by evaporation onto a substrate. This second generation of printhead enables evaporative printing of organic materials at ambient pressure. This thesis also provides a study of the failure of thin film platinum heaters used in the second generation printheads. We study the effect of current level, temperature, presence of a membrane, anneal conditions, and adhesion layer thickness on the failure of the heaters.by Valérie Leblanc.Ph.D

The <i>Ectocarpus</i> genome and the independent evolution of multicellularity in brown algae

Brown algae (Phaeophyceae) are complex photosynthetic organisms with a very different evolutionary history to green plants, to which they are only distantly related1. These seaweeds are the dominant species in rocky coastal ecosystems and they exhibit many interesting adaptations to these, often harsh, environments. Brown algae are also one of only a small number of eukaryotic lineages that have evolved complex multicellularity (Fig. 1).We report the 214 million base pair (Mbp) genome sequence of the filamentous seaweed Ectocarpus siliculosus (Dillwyn) Lyngbye, a model organism for brown algae, closely related to the kelps (Fig. 1). Genome features such as the presence of an extended set of light-harvesting and pigment biosynthesis genes and new metabolic processes such as halide metabolism help explain the ability of this organism to cope with the highly variable tidal environment. The evolution of multicellularity in this lineage is correlated with the presence of a rich array of signal transduction genes. Of particular interest is the presence of a family of receptor kinases, as the independent evolution of related molecules has been linked with the emergence of multicellularity in both the animal and green plant lineages. The Ectocarpus genome sequence represents an important step towards developing this organism as a model species, providing the possibility to combine genomic and genetic2 approaches to explore these and other aspects of brown algal biology further