Marvin\u27s Room

Marvin\u27s Room is about a family that keeps trying to stay a family in the face of illness, anger and burned-down houses. It was produced at John Carroll University in late October/early November of 2000.https://collected.jcu.edu/plays/1122/thumbnail.jp

Performance Loss Investigation Using Thermal Imaging

Case StudyAn axially split, opposed impeller, high speed water injection pump ran well for several months. Head, capacity and efficiency started to degrade markedly, but the pump turned freely and was relatively smooth. It was disassembled and inspected. All the wear parts, impellers, casing and other components were in like new condition. The impellers were underfiled and the pump returned to service - with the same unacceptable performance results. A thermal image camera was used to check for hot or cold spots and those images will be presented. The detected hotspot resulted in a bore scope inspection of the cross over passage, and uncovered the cause of the performance problem

A diagnostic guide of selected conditions for helping to identify children who present with visually related reading problems

In order to properly identify and treat those children with visually related reading problems, a diagnostic flow chart was developed to assist optometrists with this task. This diagnostic tool addresses ten of the most commonly encountered visual problems associated with reading. It is a user friendly product that easily moves between some of the common signs/symptoms presented by your patients and an appropriate diagnostic condition. Within each diagnostic condition are the following sections: a short description, other signs and symptoms, and suggested treatment options for this condition. This diagnostic flow chart and CD are included in the appendix section of this document and is available for anyone\u27s use. Our hope is that optometrists will find this product useful and therefore, children with visually related reading problems will receive the proper treatment so that they can reach their full potential

An Economic Analysis of the Luxury Car Tax in Australia

Luxury cars are a symbol of wealth, succe ss and prestige and are a commodity of a sophisticated monopolistically competitive market around the world. Considering luxury cars to be representative of s uperior goods, you would expect sales to be decreasing during an economic downturn. However, while sales of luxury cars in Europe and the US declined during the GFC, sales within Australia increased substantially. This paper presents a closer inspection of this market in Australia and particularly focuses on how the government has applied the Luxury Car Tax (LCT). It looks at the impact of the LCT on the Australian luxury car market from an economic perspectiv e, and attempts to explain the political rationale for maintaining such a tax

Assessing invasive plant species as threats in Mojave Desert parks

The invasion and persistence of exotic plant species threatens the natural features that national parks are designed to protect. For example, park managers have witnessed an increase in the frequency, extent and intensity of fires along with a reduction in native species richness and diversity. Many park managers are familiar with a suite of highly invasive plants, but lack a comprehensive and systematic way of prioritizing invasive plant species based on potential threats to the parks’ resources. We have entered into a collaborative project with the National Park Service’s Inventory and Monitoring program to develop an invasive plant early detection and monitoring protocol for the Mojave Desert Network (MOJN),which includes seven national park units. Our first step was to identify and prioritize invasive plants presently occurring or having the potential to invade each of the seven parks. To date, we have compiled a list of 350 species considered unnatural or weedy to the Mojave Desert region. From this comprehensive list, 154 were identified as having a medium or higher impact on the desert ecosystem. Since the MOJN hosts a wide variety of habitat types, our second step was to identify locations that are most vulnerable to invasion. We are currently synthesizing existing literature on species richness and elevation relationships, life-history and spatial distribution for these plants species

Factors affecting the underpricing of junior mining initial public offerings in a “hot issue” market

The pricing of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) is an area of interest to practitioners and academics alike given the empirical regularity of investors in IPOs making very large first day returns. These first day returns are as a result of share underpricing. Academics have explained the underpricing phenomenon in terms of ex ante uncertainty, namely the risk of pricing, off take and issuing of such shares. In an attempt to predict the degree of the phenomenon much work has been done in linking underpricing to company, issue and market related factors that are known prior to the listing (ex ante as opposed to ex post information). In the case of junior mining companies, underpricing is exacerbated by a lack of financial information making these issues difficult to value since such unseasoned companies have no past earnings history on which to base predictions of future earnings. Given this context, this study identified relevant factors from secondary sources which could be used to proxy the level of ex ante uncertainty and therefore correlate with the degree of underpricing. The analysis firstly sought to ensure that underpricing exists for the issues, market and time period of interest. Secondly the presence of a “hot issue” period (Ritter, 1984), which is exclusive to the natural resources sector, was investigated. Finally the relationship between underpricing and the relevant factors was explored using hypothesis testing about means and regression analysis. It was found that underpricing does indeed exist for junior mining listings on the Toronto Venture Exchange (TSX-V) between 2005-2007. This said no evidence of the “hot issue” period could be found. In terms of linking company, issue and market related factors to the degree of underpricing this study failed to identify any significant predictors. It is argued that junior mining listings on the TSX-V may be a special case since some of these factors have successfully been used, by other researchers, to predict the degree of underpricing of mining IPOs. The fact that junior mining IPO’s listed on the TSX-V show a constant degree of underpricing over time implies that investors do not build market specific factors (market sentiment and commodity price) into the listing price. Rather investors seem to demand a constant degree of underpricing regardless of the market situation to compensate them for the “unknown” exploration risk.Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)unrestricte

Regulation of CD8+ T Cell Responses to Retinal Antigen by Local FoxP3+ Regulatory T Cells

While pathogenic CD4 T cells are well known mediators of autoimmune uveoretinitis, CD8 T cells can also be uveitogenic. Since preliminary studies indicated that C57BL/6 mice were minimally susceptible to autoimmune uveoretinitis induction by CD8 T cells, the basis of the retinal disease resistance was sought. Mice that express β-galactosidase (βgal) on a retina-specific promoter (arrβgal mice) were backcrossed to mice expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) and diphtheria toxin (DTx) receptor (DTR) under control of the Foxp3 promoter (Foxp3-DTR/GFP mice), and to T cell receptor transgenic mice that produce βgal-specific CD8 T cells (BG1 mice). These mice were used to explore the role of regulatory T cells in the resistance to retinal autoimmune disease. Experiments with T cells from double transgenic BG1 × Foxp3-DTR/GFP mice transferred into Foxp3-DTR/GFP × arrβgal mice confirmed that the retina was well protected from attempts to induce disease by adoptive transfer of activated BG1 T cells. The successful induction of retinal disease following unilateral intraocular administration of DTx to deplete regulatory T cells showed that the protective activity was dependent on local, toxin-sensitive regulatory T cells; the opposite, untreated eye remained disease-free. Although there were very few Foxp3+ regulatory T cells in the parenchyma of quiescent retina, and they did not accumulate in retina, their depletion by local toxin administration led to disease susceptibility. We propose that these regulatory T cells modulate the pathogenic activity of βgal-specific CD8 T cells in the retinas of arrβgal mice on a local basis, allowing immuno regulation to be responsive to local conditions

Echolocation detections and digital video surveys provide reliable estimates of the relative density of harbour porpoises

Acknowledgements We would like to thank Erik Rexstad and Rob Williams for useful reviews of this manuscript. The collection of visual and acoustic data was funded by the UK Department of Energy & Climate Change, the Scottish Government, Collaborative Offshore Wind Research into the Environment (COWRIE) and Oil & Gas UK. Digital aerial surveys were funded by Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd and additional funding for analysis of the combined datasets was provided by Marine Scotland. Collaboration between the University of Aberdeen and Marine Scotland was supported by MarCRF. We thank colleagues at the University of Aberdeen, Moray First Marine, NERI, Hi-Def Aerial Surveying Ltd and Ravenair for essential support in the field, particularly Tim Barton, Bill Ruck, Rasmus Nielson and Dave Rutter. Thanks also to Andy Webb, David Borchers, Len Thomas, Kelly McLeod, David L. Miller, Dinara Sadykova and Thomas Cornulier for advice on survey design and statistical approache. Data Accessibility Data are available from the Dryad Digital Repository: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cf04gPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Small scale design of experiment investigation of equilibrium solubility in simulated fasted and fed intestinal fluid

It is widely recognised that drug solubility within the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) differs from values determined in a simple aqueous buffer and to circumvent this problem measurement in biorelevant fluids is determined. Biorelevant fluids are complex mixtures of components (sodium taurocholate, lecithin, sodium phosphate, sodium chloride, pancreatin and sodium oleate) at various concentrations and pH levels to provide systems simulating fasted (FaSSIF) or fed (FeSSIF) intestinal media. Design of Experiment (DoE) studies have been applied to investigate FaSSIF and FeSSIF and indicate that a drug's equilibrium solubility varies over orders of magnitude, is influenced by the drug type and individual or combinations of media components, with some of these interactions being drug specific. Although providing great detail on the drug media interactions these studies are resource intensive requiring up to ninety individual experiments for FeSSIF. In this paper a low sample number or reduced DoE system has been investigated by restricting components with minimal solubility impact to a single value and only investigating variations in the concentrations of sodium taurocholate, lecithin, sodium oleate, pH and additionally in the case of fed media, monoglyceride. This reduces the experiments required to ten (FaSSIF) and nine (FeSSIF). Twelve poorly soluble drugs (Ibuprofen, Valsartan, Zafirlukast, Indomethacin, Fenofibrate, Felodipine, Probucol, Tadalafil, Carvedilol, Aprepitant, Bromocriptine and Itraconazole) were investigated and the results compared to published DoE studies and literature solubility values in human intestinal fluid (HIF), FaSSIF or FeSSIF. The solubility range determined by the reduced DoE is statistically equivalent to the larger scale published DoE results in over eighty five percent of the cases. The reduced DoE range also covers HIF, FaSSIF or FeSSIF literature solubility values. In addition the reduced DoE provides lowest measured solubility values that agree with the published DoE values in ninety percent of the cases. However, the reduced DoE only identified single and in some cases none of the major components influencing solubility in contrast to the larger published DoE studies which identified multiple individual components and component interactions. The identification of significant components within the reduced DoE was also dependent upon the drug and system under investigation. The study demonstrates that the lower experimental number reduces statistical power of the DoE to resolve the impact of media components on solubility. However, in a situation where only the solubility range is required the reduced DoE can provide the desired information, which will be of benefit during in vitro development studies. Further refinements are possible to extend the reduced DoE protocol to improve biorelevance and application into areas such as PBPK modelling