Relationship between Personality Traits of the Urban Poor Concerning Solid Waste Management and Household Income and Education

This study analyzes the relationship between knowledge, attitude, and behaviour of the urban poor householders concerning solid waste management systems and monthly household income and education. To attain the objective, the study employed statistical techniques such as t-tests of equality of means, one-way ANOVA, chi-squared „likelihood ratio“ test and simple descriptive statistics. The findings show that the urban poor communities with low income and education have been proven to behave in ways matching with and conducive to environment-friendly solid waste management, for instance, by practicing recycling and waste source reduction. This study also proves that the urban low-income communities generally have a very proactive role from a sound environmental management perspective, as they are the main recyclers and source-reducers of solid waste. The study suggests that policies should be formulated to focus on promoting knowledge, education, skills, and empowerment of the urban poor as means of promoting their living conditions

Nitric Oxide and Cyclic GMP Signaling in Cancer Therapy

The nitric oxide-3’,5’-cyclic guanosine monophosphate signaling pathway (NO-cGMP signaling pathway) is a well-known signal transduction pathway which elicits several physiological processes including: cell proliferation, vasodilation, cardiac protection, etc. In this pathway, NO binds to the ferrous heme of histidine-105 on the prosthetic heme of the β1 subunit of soluble guanylyl cyclase, resulting in the production of cGMP. This pathway, however, is inhibited in certain cancer cells—as observed in glioma cell lines. As a result, the production of cGMP is reduced. This mechanism may facilitate uncontrolled tumor cell growth. The cancers under research—lung carcinoma, glioma, and pancreatic carcinoma—are all highly malignant cancers with low survival rates and few effective treatments. To save the lives of 213,920+ U.S. patients expected to die from these diseases, new therapies must be developed. We hypothesize that regulating the expression of sGC via pharmacology and/or genetic manipulation in the aforementioned cancers—which possess lower expression levels of subunits sGCα1 and sGCβ1—will increase cGMP synthesis. As experimental approach, the H460 human large lung cell carcinoma cell line, the PA-TU-8988 human pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell line, and the U87 human glioma cell line were cultured in 2D and 3D culture. MTT assay, qRT-PCR, Western Blot, and ImageJ analysis were utilized to assess cell proliferation, detection and quantification of genes and proteins expression, and size of colonies in 3D culture, respectively. Research is still continuing; results are not final. The expected results after treatment are: reduced cancer cell viability, enhanced sGC expression, presence of cGMP, and inhibited tumor growt

Optimization of flocculation process by microbial coagulant for removal of turbidity in river water

The existing process of coagulation and flocculation is using chemicals that known as the cationic coagulant such as alum, ferric sulfate, calcium oxide, and organic polymers. Thus, this study focuses on optimizing of the flocculation process by microbial coagulant in river water. Turbidity and suspended solids are the main constraints of river water quality in Malaysia since they may reduce the dissolved oxygen in the water and affects the aquatic life. Hence, a study is conducted to produce microbial coagulants isolated locally for river water treatment. The chosen microbe used as the bioflocculant producer is Aspergillus niger. The parameters optimized in the flocculation process were pH, bioflocculant dosage and effluent concentration. The research was done in the jar test process and the process parameters for maximum turbidity removal was validated. The highest flocculating activity was obtained on day seven of cultivation in the supernatant. The optimum pH and bioflocculant dosage for an effective flocculation process were between 4-5 and 2-3 ml for 0.3 g/l of effluent concentration, respectively. The model was validated by using a river water sample from Sungai Pusu (Pusu river) and the result showed that the model was acceptable to evaluate the bioflocculation process

Rolling nanoelectrode lithography

Non-uniformity and low throughput issues severely limit the application of nanoelectrode lithography for large area nanopatterning. This paper proposes, for the first time, a new rolling nanoelectrode lithography approach to overcome these challenges. A test-bed was developed to realize uniform pressure distribution over the whole contact area between the roller and the silicon specimen, so that the local oxidation process occurred uniformly over a large area of the specimen. In this work, a brass roller wrapped with a fabricated polycarbonate strip was used as a stamp to generate nanopatterns on a silicon surface. The experimental results show that a uniform pattern transfer for a large area can be achieved with this new rolling nanoelectrode lithography approach. The rolling speed and the applied bias voltage were identified as the primary control parameters for oxide growth. Furthermore, the pattern direction showed no significant influence on the oxide process. We therefore demonstrated that nanoelectrode lithography can be scaled up for large-area nanofabrication by incorporating a roller stamp

Public Procurement, Big Data Analytics Capabilities, and Healthcare Supply Chain Sustainability

Big data analytics (BDA) is considered the most critical supply chain activity for organizations. Implementing BDA requires specialized infrastructure coupled with specialized analytical expertise. Most of the existing research focuses on building BDA capabilities or perceived benefits of organizations' BDA capabilities. However, the benefits of having BDA capabilities, neither immediately visible nor straightforward. Optimizing procurement is one of the many intermediate factors that influence BDA capabilities' impact on the supply chain's sustainability performance. This paper has analyzed the existing literature to develop a conceptual framework to investigate the relationships among procurement optimization, BDA capabilities, and healthcare sustainable supply chain

The placental cholinergic system: localization to the cytotrophoblast and modulation of nitric oxide

BACKGROUND: The human placenta, a non-neuronal tissue, contains an active cholinergic system comprised of acetylcholine (ACh), choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), acetylcholinesterase (AChE), and high affinity muscarinic receptors. The cell(s) of origin of placental ACh and its role in trophoblast function has not been defined. These studies were performed to define the cellular location of ACh synthesis (ChAT) in the human placenta and to begin studying its functional role. RESULTS: Using immunohistochemical techniques, ChAT was observed primarily within the cytotrophoblasts of preterm placentae as well as some mesenchymal elements. Similar intense immunostaining of the cytotrophoblast was observed for endothelium-derived nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) suggesting that ACh may interact with nitric oxide (NO)-dependent signaling pathways. The ability of carbamylcholine (CCh), an ACh analogue, to stimulate a rise in intracellular Ca(++ )and NO production in trophoblasts was therefore tested using the BeWo(b30 )choriocarcinoma cell as a model system. First, CCh significantly increased intracellular calcium as assessed by fluorescence microscopy. We then examined the ability of CCh to stimulate NO production by measuring total nitrite/nitrate production in conditioned media using chemiluminescence-based analysis. CCh, alone, had no effect on NO production. However, CCh increased measurable NO approximately 100% in the presence of 10 nM estradiol. This stimulatory effect was inhibited by 1 (micro)M scopolamine suggesting mediation via muscarinic receptors. Estradiol, alone, had no effect on total NO or eNOS protein or mRNA. CONCLUSION: These data demonstrate that placental ChAT localizes to the cytotrophoblast and some mesenchymal cells in human placenta. It further suggests that ACh acts via muscarinic receptors on the trophoblast cell membrane to modulate NO in an estrogen-dependent manner

中性子過剰核195Osのβ-γ分光

この博士論文は内容の要約のみの公開（または一部非公開）になっています筑波大学 (University of Tsukuba)201

Substrate orientation effects on nanoelectrode lithography : ReaxFF molecular dynamics and experimental study

The crystallographic orientation of the substrate is an essential parameter in the kinetic mechanism for the oxidation process. Hence, the choice of substrate surface orientation is crucial in nanofabrication industries. In the present work, we have studied qualitatively the influence of substrate orientation in nanoelectrode lithography using ReaxFF reactive molecular dynamics simulation. We have investigated the oxidation processes on (100), (110) and (111) orientation surfaces of silicon at different electric field intensities. The simulation results show the thickness of the oxide film and the initial oxygen diffusion rate follow an order of (100) > (110) > (111) at lower electric field intensities. It also confirms that surfaces with higher surface energy are more reactive at lower electric field intensity. Crossovers occurred at a higher electric field intensity (7 V nm -1) under which the thickness of the oxide film yields an order of T(110) > T(100) > T(111). These types of anomalous characteristics have previously been observed for thermal oxidation of silicon surfaces. Experimental results show different orders for the (100) and (111) substrate, while (110) remains the largest for the oxide thickness. A good correlation has been found between the oxide growth and the orientation-dependent parameters where the oxide growth is proportional to the areal density of the surfaces. The oxide growth also follows the relative order of the activation energies, which could be another controlling factor for the oxide growth. Less activation energy of the surface allows more oxide growth and vice versa. However, the differences between simulation and experimental results probably relate to the empirical potential as well as different time and spatial scales of the process

中性子過剰核195Osのβ-γ分光

筑波大学 (University of Tsukuba)201