Fuel and the Battle Fleet: Coal, Oil, and American Naval Strategy, 1898-1925

Logistics considerations always influence strategy and fuel may be the chief of those considerations. Fuel requirements must alway be satisfied. A critical quarter­century of American experience is discussed here

Surveillance strategy for a four year operating cycle in commercial boiling water reactors

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, 1996.Includes bibliographical references.by John H. Maurer, III.M.S

Trading on Preconceptions: Why World War I Was Not a Failure of Economic Interdependence

World War I is generally viewed by both advocates and critics of commercial liberal theory as the quintessential example of a failure of economic integration to maintain peace. Yet this consensus relies on both methodologically flawed inference and an incomplete accounting of the antecedents to the war. Crucially, World War I began in a weakly integrated portion of Europe with which highly integrated powers were entangled through the alliance system. Crises among the highly interdependent European powers in the decades leading up to the war were generally resolved without bloodshed. Among the less interdependent powers in Eastern Europe, however, crises regularly escalated to militarized violence. Moreover, the crises leading to the war created increased incentives for the integrated powers to strengthen commitments to their less interdependent partners. In attempting to make these alliances more credible, Western powers shifted foreign policy discretion to the very states that lacked strong economic disincentives to fight. Had globalization pervaded Eastern Europe, or if the rest of Europe had been less locked into events in the east, Europe might have avoided a “Great War.” </jats:p

The Claims Culture: A Taxonomy of Industry Attitudes

This paper presents an analysis of a familiar aspect of construction industry culture that we have dubbed 'the claims culture'. This is a culture of contract administration that lays a strong emphasis on the planning and management of claims. The principal elements of the analysis are two sets of distinctions. The first comprises economic and occupational orders, referring to two kinds of control that are exercised over the construction process; predicated respectively on economic ownership and occupational competence. The second refers to contrasting attitudes towards relationships and problem solving within these orders: respectively 'distributive' and 'integrative'. The concepts of economic and occupational order entail further sub-categories. The various attitudes associated with these categories and sub-categories are described. They are assessed as to their consequences for change initiatives in the industry

Liver Directed Drugs for Transthyretin-Mediated Amyloidosis

AIM: Transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis (ATTR) is a rare, under-recognized, progressively debilitating, fatal disease caused by the aggregation and extracellular deposition of amyloid transthyretin (TTR) fibrils in multiple organs and tissues throughout the body. TTR is predominantly synthesized by the liver, and normally circulates as a homotetramer, while misfolded monomers aggregate to form amyloid fibrils. One strategy to treat ATTR amyloidosis is to reduce the amount of TTR produced by the liver using drugs that directly target the TTR mRNA or gene. METHODS: This narrative review focuses on how TTR gene silencing tools act to reduce TTR production, describing strategies for improved targeted delivery of these agents to hepatocytes where TTR is preferentially expressed. RESULTS: Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), termed RNA silencers, cause selective degradation of TTR mRNA, while a TTR gene editing tool reduces TTR expression by introducing nonsense mutations into the TTR gene. Two strategies to facilitate tissue-specific delivery of these nucleic acid-based drugs employ endogenous receptors expressed by hepatocytes. Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that recruit apolipoprotein E support low density lipoprotein receptor-mediated uptake of unconjugated siRNA and is now used for CRISPR gene editing tools. Additionally, conjugating N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) moieties to ASOs or siRNAs facilitates receptor-mediated uptake by the asialoglycoprotein receptor. CONCLUSION: ATTR is a progressive disease with various clinical manifestations due to TTR aggregation, deposition, and amyloid formation. Receptor-targeted ligands (e.g., GalNAc) and nanoparticle encapsulation (e.g., LNPs) are technologies to deliver ASOs, siRNAs, and gene editing tools to hepatocytes, the primary location of TTR synthesis