Redeploying semiology: Contrapuntalism in coetzee, friel, and darwish

The aim of this thesis is to approach the role of the self as it emerges in three texts that are differently impacted by the end of colonialism. This is done by redeploying Roland Barthes\u27 theory of semiology as a way of looking at the spaces between signs as the clue to what the text suggests as a historical document. The spaces between signs will open up the contrapuntal readings of texts that are sometimes called postcolonial. This thesis examines how identity is unmade in Coetzee\u27s Foe, Brian Friel\u27s Translations, and Mahmoud Darwish\u27s Tibaq (A Contrapuntal Reading: On Edward Said). Roland Barthes focuses on how the textual signs can form a new image; hence, in a new reading of any text, Edward Said\u27s contrapuntal approach helps contextualize these signs, allowing us to reach a more comprehensive reading. I aim at answering the question of whether these three texts are postcolonial. This study concludes that the three texts, which might fall under the umbrella of postcolonialism, can be classified differently, based on the contrapuntal reading of textual signs

Nanocarriers for simultaneous delivery of structurally different polynucleotides encoding antigens and adjuvants

The rapid approval of mRNA-based vaccines for human use following the Covid-19 pandemic established their public health value. Yet, room for improvement to reduce number of required booster doses still exists. This study aimed to investigate the development of a nanocarrier to co-deliver NA-encoded antigens and adjuvants and achieve their time-resolved expression, such that adjuvant expression follows target cell (APC) priming with antigen expression. Hence, a core-shell system was constructed based on a plasmid DNA (pDNA)-gelatin coacervate core, thermally stabilized into a nanogel, coated with protamine (P-TS-CoAc), and surface loaded with mRNA. The system showed unique co-transfectional ability for two such NAs encoding fluorescent reporter proteins when compared to several established controls in dendritic murine cell line (DC2.4). The system also showed time-resolved expression of the two NAs, with a rapid and transient expression of mRNA on the shell and a delayed, prolonged-expression of pDNA in the core. NA-encoded adjuvant candidates were selected to assess P-TS-CoAc’s capacity to transfect them into DC2.4, namely, CCL4 and CCR7, involved in mobilizing immune cells towards inflammation sites or draining lymph nodes, respectively. CCL4 encoding NAs induced CCL4 release from DC2.4 following electroporation, yet, not upon DC2.4 treatment with P-TS-CoAc loaded with CCL4 encoding-NAs. Further studies could still be conducted to improve system performance.Die rasche Zulassung von mRNA-basierten Impfstoffen für den menschlichen Gebrauch nach der Covid-19-Pandemie hat ihren Wert für die öffentliche Gesundheit bewiesen. Dennoch gibt es Raum für Verbesserungen, um die Anzahl der erforderlichen Auffrischungsdosen zu verringern. Ziel dieser Studie war es, einen Nanoträger zu entwickeln, der Nukleotid (NT)-kodierte Antigene und Adjuvantien gemeinsam abgibt und deren zeitversetzte Expression ermöglicht, so dass die Adjuvantexpression dem Priming der Zielzellen (APC) mit der Antigenexpression folgt. Daher wurde ein Kern-Schale-System konstruiert, das auf einem Plasmid-DNA (pDNA)- Gelatine-Koazervat-Kern basiert, der thermisch zu einem Nanogel stabilisiert, mit Protamin (P-TS-CoAc) beschichtet und an der Oberfläche mit mRNA beladen wurde. Das System zeigte eine einzigartige Co-Transfektion für beide NT, die für fluoreszierende Reporterproteine kodieren, im Vergleich zu mehreren etablierten Kontrollen in einer dendritischen Mäusezelllinie (DC2.4). Ebenso zeigte das System eine zeitversetzte Expression der beiden NT, mit einer schnellen,vorübergehenden Expression der mRNA und einer verzögerten, längeren Expression der pDNA. Es wurden NT-kodierte Adjuvans-Kandidaten ausgewählt, um die Transfektionsfähigkeit von P-TS-CoAc in DC2.4 zu prüfen. Diese waren CCL4 und CCR7, die an der Mobilisierung von Immunzellen zu Entzündungsherden bzw. drainierenden Lymphknoten beteiligt sind. CCL4-kodierende NT induzierten die Freisetzung von CCL4 aus DC2.4 nach Elektroporation, jedoch nicht nach Behandlung von DC2.4 mit entsprechend beladenen PTS- CoAc. Weitere Studien könnten durchgeführt werden, um die Leistung des Systems zu verbessern

The Relative Priority of Personal Safety Concerns for Young People on Public Transport

This paper presents the results of a survey of young people concerning personal safety and public transport. Previous research suggests concerns amongst public transport users in general with regarding personal safety issues. Young people are highly dependent on public transport and tend to travel at times (evenings) and locations (fringe areas) where personal safety issues are more prevalent. Research on young people shows that young women, migrant teenagers and homosexual youth have more concerns about personal safety then other groups. Concerns about use of rail and waiting at stations is also highlighted in the literature.A web based survey of 239 young people aged 18-25 explored experience of personal safety issues on public transport in Melbourne, Australia. Analysis explored the relative priorities which young people have about personal safety compared to other public transport issues. Results suggest that personal safety issues are not as highly rated as concerns about service levels (frequency and availability). Nevertheless personal safety in general and personal safety at night in particular was considered to be very important to young people but to have only medium to high performance.Using public transport at night and waiting at rail stations was considered to be the most dangerous aspects of public transport use amongst the sample. Interestingly travelling on train was not rated as a significantly high issue which contrasts somewhat with results from previous research. The survey also found high concerns about passengers influenced by alcohol. The highest ratings for measures to address personal safety concerns involved the presence of security guards on stations and trains. Emergency/panic buttons, better lighting and measures to ban intoxicated passengers were also highly rated

Planning of PEVs Parking Lots in Conjunction With Renewable Energy Resources and Battery Energy Storage Systems

The last few decades have seen growing concerns about climate change caused by global warming, which is cause primarily by CO2 emissions. Thus, the reduction of these emissions has become critically important. One of the effective methods for achieving this goal is to shift towards green electricity energy resources and green vehicles in transportation. For these reasons, the goal of the work presented in this thesis was to address the challenges associated with the planning of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) parking lots in combination with renewable energy sources (RES) and battery energy storage systems (BESS) in power distribution networks. This thesis introduces a new planning technique that aims to minimize the overall capital and operational costs, taking into consideration the operational aspects of distribution networks, such as 1) coordinated PEV charging, 2) smart inverter control of renewable distributed generation (DG) units, and 3) smart scheduling of BESS. Moreover, a new model for the PEV coordinated charging demand is introduced in this work. Due to the complexity of the proposed planning approach, a combination between metaheuristic technique and deterministic optimization techniques have been utilized to manage both the planning and operational aspects respectively

Reduced OoB Emission and PAPR Using Partial-OSLM technique in 5G UFMC Systems

Universal-filtered multi-carrier (UFMC) waveformis considered as a potential candidate for next generation wirelesssystems due to its robustness against inter-carrier interference(ICI) and the low latency required in 5G systems. In this paper, apulse shaping approaches in UFMC technique is studied to reducethe spectral leakage into nearby sub-bands. The performance ofvarious types of window functions such as Chebychev, Hamming,Hanning and Blackman with UFMC are compared. This leadsto different coefficients and attenuation shapes, that enabledto choose the proper window function. Finally, a new selectivemapping (SLM) peak to average power ratio (PAPR) reductiontechnique is proposed to enhance the UFMC system performance.Results show that the BER performance of UFMC with allwindows functions are the same. However, Blackman windowfunction has a higher attenuation for sidebands compared withothers

Perceptions and Realities of Personal Safety on Public Transport for Young People in Melbourne

This paper aims to explore how perceptions of safety relate to actual experience in the context of urban public transport. It presents the results of an empirical analysis of links between perceptions of personal safety on public transport and compares these with actual experience of travellers. The focus of the work is a survey of young people using public transport in Melbourne Australia.The research literature demonstrates contrasting views with regard to perceptions of personal safety and actual risks. Positive links have been found in some contexts while others have found fears to be unrelated to risk. Some crime surveys and empirical studies suggest perceptions of personal safety are not justified by crime rates. However a series of surveys have shown that those with direct experience of safety incidents have greater concerns with safety. Other research suggests that feelings of anxiety and psychological factors act to make some people feel uncomfortable on public transport and that this acts to increase perceptions of poor personal safety. The paper aims to explore which factors are more important in explaining perceptions of safety.The analysis has identified a series of three statistically significant models which predict personal feelings of safety on public transport using different measures of safety perceptions. In each model psychological influences i.e. „feeling comfortable with people you don‟t know‟ had the biggest individual influence on perceptions of safety with a medium effect size. Gender and the actual experience of a personal safety incident were also found to influence perceptions of personal safety but these variables only had a small effect on perceptions of safety.The paper discusses policy and research implications of the findings including suggestions for future research

Loss of locus coeruleus noradrenergic neurons alters the inflammatory response to LPS in substantia nigra but does not affect nigral cell loss

This is the accepted version of the following article: Mahmoud M. Iravani, Mona Sadeghian, Sarah Rose and Peter Jenner, “Loss of locus coeruleus noradrenergic neurons alters the inflammatory response to LPS in substantia nigra but does not affect nigral cell loss”, Journal of Neural Transmission, Vol. 121(12): 1493-1505, first published online 30 April 2014. The version of record is available online via doi: 10.1007/s00702-014-1223-1. © Springer-Verlag Wien 2014In Parkinson's disease (PD), destruction of noradrenergic neurons in the locus coeruleus (LC) may precede damage to nigral cells and subsequently exaggerate dopaminergic cell loss. We examine if destruction of the locus coeruleus with N-(2-chloroethyl)-N-ethyl-2-bromobenzylamine (DSP-4) alters dopaminergic cell loss in substantia nigra (SN) initiated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in the rat through an effect on glial cell activation. In rats, a single intraperitoneal dose of DSP-4 administered 8 days previously, caused a marked loss of tyrosine hydroxylase positive neurons in LC but no change in dopaminergic cell number in SN. Unilateral nigral LPS administration resulted in marked dopaminergic cell death with reactive microgliosis associated with enhanced p47 phox in OX-6 and OX-42 positive microglia. There was proliferation of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS)-positive cells, formation of 3-nitrotyrosine (3-NT) and proliferation of astrocytes that expressed glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF). Following combined DSP-4 treatment and subsequent administration of LPS, unexpectedly, no further loss of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-immunoreactivity (-ir) occurred in the SN compared to the effects of LPS alone. However, there was a marked alteration in the morphology of microglial cell and a reduction of 3-NT- and iNOS-ir was evident. Expression of p47 phox was downregulated in microglia but up-regulated in TH-ir neurons. No further change in GFAP-ir was observed compared to that produced by DSP-4 alone or LPS alone, but the expression of GDNF was markedly reduced. This study suggests that in contrast to previous reports, prior LC damage does not influence subsequent nigral dopaminergic cell degeneration induced by LPS. Rather it appears to attenuate the microglial response thought to contribute to disease progression in PD.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Behaviour of Extended Endplate Connection with Mild and High Strength Steel

This paper uses the multi-purpose software ABAQUS to create a three-dimensional finite element model of an extended end plate connection to analyze and compare the behaviour of mild steel and high-strength steel endplate connections. The numerical model\u27s results are calibrated against reported experimental results to ensure that it can simulate and analyze both the overall and detailed behaviour of different types of bolted endplate steel connections. The results of the study compare and analyze the moment-rotation relationships and the behaviour characteristics of the connection with mild steel and high strength steel. Upon validation of the FE models\u27 parametric studies were performed to investigate the effect of different parameters on the behavior of bolted extended end-plate connection. Therefore, the geometric parameters are selected and varied within the comprehensive practical ranges of extended end-plate connections.The parameters varied for the parametric studies include the thickness of the end plate, bolt diameter and steel grade of the endplate

Behaviour of Extended Endplate Connection with Mild and High Strength Steel

This paper uses the multi-purpose software ABAQUS to create a three-dimensional finite element model of an extended end plate connection to analyze and compare the behaviour of mild steel and high-strength steel endplate connections. The numerical model\u27s results are calibrated against reported experimental results to ensure that it can simulate and analyze both the overall and detailed behaviour of different types of bolted endplate steel connections. The results of the study compare and analyze the moment-rotation relationships and the behaviour characteristics of the connection with mild steel and high strength steel. Upon validation of the FE models\u27 parametric studies were performed to investigate the effect of different parameters on the behavior of bolted extended end-plate connection. Therefore, the geometric parameters are selected and varied within the comprehensive practical ranges of extended end-plate connections.The parameters varied for the parametric studies include the thickness of the end plate, bolt diameter and steel grade of the endplate

Selecting the best stochastic systems for large scale engineering problems

Selecting a subset of the best solutions among large-scale problems is an important area of research. When the alternative solutions are stochastic in nature, then it puts more burden on the problem. The objective of this paper is to select a set that is likely to contain the actual best solutions with high probability. If the selected set contains all the best solutions, then the selection is denoted as correct selection. We are interested in maximizing the probability of this selection; P(CS). In many cases, the available computation budget for simulating the solution set in order to maximize P(CS) is limited. Therefore, instead of distributing these computational efforts equally likely among the alternatives, the optimal computing budget allocation (OCBA) procedure came to put more effort on the solutions that have more impact on the selected set. In this paper, we derive formulas of how to distribute the available budget asymptotically to find the approximation of P(CS). We then present a procedure that uses OCBA with the ordinal optimization (OO) in order to select the set of best solutions. The properties and performance of the proposed procedure are illustrated through a numerical example. Overall results indicate that the procedure is able to select a subset of the best systems with high probability of correct selection using small number of simulation samples under different parameter settings