Klipsun Magazine, 2014, Volume 45, Issue 03 - Fall

Thinking back to your childhood, I’m sure each of you has engaged in the simple fun of spinning in a circle. Your feet began shuffling as you pushed yourself to spin rapidly and erratically. Depending on your mood, you either shut your eyes tightly for the rush of possibly colliding or you kept them wide open to experience the thrill of losing focus. Spinning and spinning. Faster. Now you’ve opened your eyes and continued spinning for a few more seconds. Unable to maintain your balance, you fell to the ground and stared up at the sky - waiting for your focus to return. Your eyes feel as if they’re swirling around and flicking back and forth. During this activity you’ve changed your perspective of the environment around you. While small scale and basic, the act of pushing yourself to experience a new viewpoint taps into the human need to connect. Either to connect to one another or an intangible idea, this publication provides a moment for you to step back into your childhood when everything was new and nothing was concrete. Take the time to open your mind and view another person’s perspective on death, life, courage, service, dreams.https://cedar.wwu.edu/klipsun_magazine/1182/thumbnail.jp

Klipsun Magazine, 2015, Volume 45, Issue 04 - Winter

One of my favorite novelists, James Joyce, once wrote, “I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.” These two sentences speak to the ongoing reality that is a person’s life. Everyday people are looking forward toward a change or looking back at what they once needed. We live in a world that is perpetually unsatisfied but also entrenched with hope. To reach a world people want to live in they may choose to stand silently in a demonstration, or rush head first and fists crashing into a protest. Another person may simply be gripping onto each day as they let go of an addiction or escape a social status. We here at Klipsun have also been feeling the pull toward something new. Currently, Klipsun is a bi-quarterly publication. We have decided to change to a quarterly publication. Why? Just like any person wants to reach their highest potential, we too wanted Klipsun to push itself to reach its highest journalistic ability. We craved a larger quarterly publication with more in-depth content for readers to sink into. We wanted an active online presence that included releasing articles that weren’t going to be in the printed publication. We’re going to provide more for our readers not only in quantity but quality. The previous publication, Perspective, was one of our first moves toward an online-first publication. Before distributing the print publication, we released all the articles online. With Crave you will also begin to notice us release articles and multimedia pieces that aren’t related to the publication theme. These are some of the steps we have begun taking toward keeping our readers engaged throughout the year. More changes will continue to occur and we hope you stay involved as Klipsun expands.https://cedar.wwu.edu/klipsun_magazine/1181/thumbnail.jp

Klipsun Magazine, 2014, Volume 45, Issue 02 - Fall

From the moment you picked up this publication to the time you sat down to read it you have passed someone who has lost a loved one, has achieved a fitness goal, who balances a mental disorder, has aced a final and who is advocating for a cause. It’s easy to become engrossed in your own story and not realize the thousands of stories similar to your own. We all each achieve, suffer, balance. Whether for humanity, animals, the Earth or ourselves, everyone is forging a path that has and will encounter barriers. One of my most memorable barriers was when I was 13 and my GPA was dwindling at 1.4. My teachers rallied together to put me into drug and alcohol counseling. My parents reminded me of college. At the time, I was not on track to reach any of my academic goals. This left me with two options: accept my situation and continue with it, or accept my situation and surpass it. Within one quarter my GPA shot up to 3.4 and I was enrolling in honors classes. This isn’t to say every limit should be surpassed. To see a limit as a barricade or safety is entirely in the eye of the beholder. A limit is an acknowledgment of a line that you cannot pass or you must break; a step in a certain direction to achieve the ending you’re searching for.https://cedar.wwu.edu/klipsun_magazine/1183/thumbnail.jp

Numerical Investigations of a Counter-Current Moving Bed Reactor for Thermochemical Energy Storage at High Temperatures

High temperature storage is a key factor for compensating the fluctuating energy supply of solar thermal power plants, and thus enables renewable base load power. In thermochemical energy storage, the thermal energy is stored as the reaction enthalpy of a chemically reversible gas-solid reaction. Metal oxides are suitable candidates for thermochemical energy storage for solar thermal power plants, due to their high reaction temperatures and use of oxygen as a gaseous reaction partner. However, it is crucial to extract both sensible and thermochemical energy at these elevated temperatures to boost the overall system efficiency. Therefore, this study focuses on the combined extraction of thermochemical and sensible energy from a metal oxide and its effects on thermal power and energy density during discharging. A counter-current moving bed, based on manganese-iron-oxide, was investigated with a transient, one-dimensional model using the finite element method. A nearly isothermal temperature distribution along the bed height was formed, as long as the gas flow did not exceed a tipping point. A maximal energy density of 933 kJ/kg was achieved, when (Mn,Fe)3O4 was oxidized and cooled from 1050 °C to 300 °C. However, reaction kinetics can limit the thermal power and energy density. To avoid this drawback, a moving bed reactor based on the investigated manganese-iron oxide should combine direct and indirect heat transfer to overcome kinetic limitations

Rheumatoid arthritis, gold therapy, contact allergy and blood cytokines

OBJECTIVE: To study the clinical and biochemical effects of a low starting dose for gold therapy in rheumatoid arthritis patients with a contact allergy to gold. METHODS: Serum cytokines were assayed before and 24 h after the first injection of gold sodium thiomalate (GSTM). RESULTS: Contact allergy to gold was found in 4 of 19 patients. Compared to gold-negative patients (starting dose: 10 mg GSTM), there was a larger increase in serum TNFalpha (p < 0.05), sTNF-R1 (NS), and IL-1 ra (p < 0.05) in gold-allergic patients. CONCLUSIONS: Cytokines are released in blood by GSTM in RA patients with gold allergy. To minimize the risk of acute adverse reactions the starting dose of GSTM should be lowered to 5 mg. Alternatively, patients should be patch-tested before gold therapy; in test-positive cases, 5 mg is recommended as the first dose

Safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (AZD1222) against SARS-CoV-2: an interim analysis of four randomised controlled trials in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK.

BACKGROUND: A safe and efficacious vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), if deployed with high coverage, could contribute to the control of the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluated the safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine in a pooled interim analysis of four trials. METHODS: This analysis includes data from four ongoing blinded, randomised, controlled trials done across the UK, Brazil, and South Africa. Participants aged 18 years and older were randomly assigned (1:1) to ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine or control (meningococcal group A, C, W, and Y conjugate vaccine or saline). Participants in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group received two doses containing 5 × 1010 viral particles (standard dose; SD/SD cohort); a subset in the UK trial received a half dose as their first dose (low dose) and a standard dose as their second dose (LD/SD cohort). The primary efficacy analysis included symptomatic COVID-19 in seronegative participants with a nucleic acid amplification test-positive swab more than 14 days after a second dose of vaccine. Participants were analysed according to treatment received, with data cutoff on Nov 4, 2020. Vaccine efficacy was calculated as 1 - relative risk derived from a robust Poisson regression model adjusted for age. Studies are registered at ISRCTN89951424 and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04324606, NCT04400838, and NCT04444674. FINDINGS: Between April 23 and Nov 4, 2020, 23 848 participants were enrolled and 11 636 participants (7548 in the UK, 4088 in Brazil) were included in the interim primary efficacy analysis. In participants who received two standard doses, vaccine efficacy was 62·1% (95% CI 41·0-75·7; 27 [0·6%] of 4440 in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group vs71 [1·6%] of 4455 in the control group) and in participants who received a low dose followed by a standard dose, efficacy was 90·0% (67·4-97·0; three [0·2%] of 1367 vs 30 [2·2%] of 1374; pinteraction=0·010). Overall vaccine efficacy across both groups was 70·4% (95·8% CI 54·8-80·6; 30 [0·5%] of 5807 vs 101 [1·7%] of 5829). From 21 days after the first dose, there were ten cases hospitalised for COVID-19, all in the control arm; two were classified as severe COVID-19, including one death. There were 74 341 person-months of safety follow-up (median 3·4 months, IQR 1·3-4·8): 175 severe adverse events occurred in 168 participants, 84 events in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group and 91 in the control group. Three events were classified as possibly related to a vaccine: one in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group, one in the control group, and one in a participant who remains masked to group allocation. INTERPRETATION: ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 has an acceptable safety profile and has been found to be efficacious against symptomatic COVID-19 in this interim analysis of ongoing clinical trials. FUNDING: UK Research and Innovation, National Institutes for Health Research (NIHR), Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lemann Foundation, Rede D'Or, Brava and Telles Foundation, NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, Thames Valley and South Midland's NIHR Clinical Research Network, and AstraZeneca

Safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (AZD1222) against SARS-CoV-2: an interim analysis of four randomised controlled trials in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK

Background A safe and efficacious vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), if deployed with high coverage, could contribute to the control of the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluated the safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine in a pooled interim analysis of four trials. Methods This analysis includes data from four ongoing blinded, randomised, controlled trials done across the UK, Brazil, and South Africa. Participants aged 18 years and older were randomly assigned (1:1) to ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine or control (meningococcal group A, C, W, and Y conjugate vaccine or saline). Participants in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group received two doses containing 5 × 1010 viral particles (standard dose; SD/SD cohort); a subset in the UK trial received a half dose as their first dose (low dose) and a standard dose as their second dose (LD/SD cohort). The primary efficacy analysis included symptomatic COVID-19 in seronegative participants with a nucleic acid amplification test-positive swab more than 14 days after a second dose of vaccine. Participants were analysed according to treatment received, with data cutoff on Nov 4, 2020. Vaccine efficacy was calculated as 1 - relative risk derived from a robust Poisson regression model adjusted for age. Studies are registered at ISRCTN89951424 and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04324606, NCT04400838, and NCT04444674. Findings Between April 23 and Nov 4, 2020, 23 848 participants were enrolled and 11 636 participants (7548 in the UK, 4088 in Brazil) were included in the interim primary efficacy analysis. In participants who received two standard doses, vaccine efficacy was 62·1% (95% CI 41·0–75·7; 27 [0·6%] of 4440 in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group vs71 [1·6%] of 4455 in the control group) and in participants who received a low dose followed by a standard dose, efficacy was 90·0% (67·4–97·0; three [0·2%] of 1367 vs 30 [2·2%] of 1374; pinteraction=0·010). Overall vaccine efficacy across both groups was 70·4% (95·8% CI 54·8–80·6; 30 [0·5%] of 5807 vs 101 [1·7%] of 5829). From 21 days after the first dose, there were ten cases hospitalised for COVID-19, all in the control arm; two were classified as severe COVID-19, including one death. There were 74 341 person-months of safety follow-up (median 3·4 months, IQR 1·3–4·8): 175 severe adverse events occurred in 168 participants, 84 events in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group and 91 in the control group. Three events were classified as possibly related to a vaccine: one in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group, one in the control group, and one in a participant who remains masked to group allocation. Interpretation ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 has an acceptable safety profile and has been found to be efficacious against symptomatic COVID-19 in this interim analysis of ongoing clinical trials

A Moving Bed Reactor for Thermochemical Energy Storage Based on Metal Oxides

High temperature thermal energy storage enables concentrated solar power plants to provide base load. Thermochemical energy storage is based on reversible gas-solid reactions and brings along the advantage of potential loss-free energy storage in the form of separated reaction products and possible high energy densities. The redox reaction of metal oxides is able to store thermal energy at elevated temperatures with air providing the gaseous reaction partner. However, due to the high temperature level, it is crucial to extract both the inherent sensible and thermochemical energies of the metal oxide particles for enhanced system efficiency. So far, experimental research in the field of thermochemical energy storage focused mainly on solar receivers for continuously charging metal oxides. A continuously operated system of energy storage and solar tower decouples the storage capacity from generated power with metal-oxide particles applied as heat transfer medium and energy storage material. Hence, a heat exchanger based on a countercurrent moving bed concept was developed in a kW-scale. The reactor addresses the combined utilization of the reaction enthalpy of the oxidation and the extraction of thermal energy of a manganese-iron-oxide particle flow. A stationary temperature profile of the bulk was achieved with two distinct temperature sections. The oxidation induced a nearly isothermal section with an overall stable off-gas temperature. The oxidation and heat extraction from the manganese-iron oxide resulted in a total energy density of 569 kJ/kg with a thermochemical share of 21.1 %

Bankruptcy forecasting : An empirical study of small businesses in Sweden

Corporate failures pose a problem for banks, investors, customers, employees andinsurers. With a multivariate discrimination method, the study aims to find the specificfinancial ratios that most accurate reveals a company's financial health, which is ofinterest to all of the above parties. The data consist of 1042 Swedish small enterprisesand 30 different financial ratios between the years 2005‐2007. The result shows thatbankrupt firms three years before bankruptcy have a disadvantaged capital structurewith poor solvency and high debt. The year before bankruptcy, profitability and liquiditydeclined for bankruptcy group, and rates vary considerably in comparison with thesurviving companies. Our model can correctly classify 91,2 % of the total sample one yearbefore bankruptcy.Företagskonkurser är dyrt för samhället och utgör ett problem för bland annat banker,investerare, kunder, anställda, försäkringsbolag och leverantörer. Studien syftar till attfinna de specifika nyckeltal vilka avslöjar ett företags finansiella hälsa, vilket är av intresseför alla ovanstående parter. Med en kvantitativ multivariat analysmetod har 30 olikanyckeltal från sammanlagt 1042 svenska mindre aktiebolag mellan åren 2005 och 2007studerats.Resultatet visar att konkursföretagen tre år innan konkurs har en missgynnandekapitalstruktur med svag soliditet och hög skuldsättning. Året innan konkurs harlönsamheten och likviditeten minskat för konkursgruppen och talen uppvisar storaskillnader i jämförelse med de överlevande företagen. Modellen klassificerar 91,2 % avföretagen korrekt ett år innan konkurs

Låt det gå åt skogen ibland - det lär man sig av : Entreprenörskap och entreprenöriellt lärande i fritidshemmet

Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur fritidspedagoger/lärare i fritidshem talar om begreppen entreprenörskap och entreprenöriellt lärande i fritidshemmets verksamhet. Vilken innebörd menar de att dessa begrepp har och i vilka aktiviteter stimuleras elevernas entreprenöriella förmågor? En kvalitativ undersökningsmetod användes där sex fritidspedagoger/lärare i fritidshem intervjuades. Resultatet analyserades genom det sociokulturella perspektivet eftersom det tydliggör hur viktigt det sociala samspelet är för lärandet och tillägnandet av kunskaper. Litteraturen som använts vid litteraturgenomgången är relevant för denna studies syfte och frågeställningar. I resultatet framkom att pedagogerna inte kände förtrogenhet med de båda begreppen och att kompetensutveckling saknats, delvis eller helt. Vid samtal framhåller pedagogerna hur viktigt samspelet, fri lek samt rollek med innehållet i leklådor är för elevernas entreprenöriella lärande. Pedagogerna anser även att eleverna ska ges möjligheter att pröva olika idéer och att det är okej att göra fel eftersom även det ses som ett lärande. Dessutom betonade flera av pedagogerna betydelsen av att stimulera eleverna att få tänka själva och därmed hålla tillbaka sin egen kunskap för att stimulera elevernas entreprenöriella förmågor. Pedagogerna talade också om vissa svårigheter med att utföra sitt pedagogiska uppdrag då antalet inskrivna elever i grupperna anses för stort