Procedure for analysis of nickel-cadmium cell materials

Quality control procedures include analyses on electrolyte, active materials, and separators for nickel cadmium cell materials. Tests range from the visual/mechanical inspection of cells to gas sampling, electrolyte extract, electrochemical tests, and physical measurements

It's My Right to Fix the City: Women, Class, and the Postcolonial, Politics of Neoliberal Urbanism in Ibadan, Nigeria

This dissertation offers an alternative to the current trajectory for Africa’s urban future, informed by the discourse that African cities are failing and in need of catching up to northern global cities in order to develop. I use an African feminist postcolonial urbanism theoretical framing to suggest that understanding the lived reality and politics of urban space from the viewpoint of women living in Ibadan provides a more nuanced and multidimensional understanding of Ibadan that eschews a developmentalist and interventionist framework. Specifically, this dissertation investigates whether and how women’s lived experiences have been changed by, as well as have informed, neoliberal urban planning discourses and practices in Ibadan. I argue that women believe that neoliberal urban planning projects inaccurately capture their reality and exacerbate their socio-economic conditions largely due to their exclusion from urban governance and local decision-making processes. I contend that cultural religious discourses and political violence play critical roles in women’s political exclusion. I also assert that despite women’s exclusion from formal politics, women engage in informal politics to challenge the imposition of neoliberal urban planning. I posit that women have alternative visions for the city that are rooted in a populist politics that challenge both the “feminism is un-African” narrative and the literature that stipulates that poor women are not really attentive to gender issues as they care more about “bread and butter” issues. Qualitative interviews with eight government workers as well as with two local politicians provide insight into the government’s limited and gendered approaches to women’s issues that often tend to label feminist social transformation projects as “un-African”. In-depth semi-structured interviews with 48 women in Ibadan, showed Ibadan women to be positioned as knowledgeable urban subjects who challenge the gendered and development interventionist approaches to African cities and who make gendered rights claims to the city

Association of smoking and right ventricular function in middle age: CARDIA study

Objective: To evaluate the association of cigarette smoking and right ventricular (RV) systolic and diastolic functions in a population-based cohort of individuals at middle age. Methods: This cross-sectional study included participants who answered the smoking questionnaire and underwent echocardiography at the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adulthood year 25 examination. RV systolic function was assessed by echocardiographic-derived tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE) and by right ventricular peak systolic velocity (RVS\u27), while RV diastolic function was evaluated by early right ventricular tissue velocity (RVE\u27). Multivariable linear regression models assessed the relationship of smoking with RV function, adjusting for age, sex, race, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, diabetes mellitus, alcohol consumption, pulmonary function, left ventricular systolic and diastolic function and coronary artery calcium score. Results: A total of 3424 participants were included. The mean age was 50+/-4 years; 57% were female; and 53% were black. There were 2106 (61%) never smokers, 750 (22%) former smokers and 589 (17%) current smokers. In the multivariable analysis, current smokers had significantly lower TAPSE (beta=-0.082, SE=0.031, p=0.008), RVS\u27 (beta=-0.343, SE=0.156, p=0.028) and RVE\u27 (beta=-0.715, SE=0.195, p \u3c 0.001) compared with never smokers. Former smokers had a significantly lower RVE\u27 compared with never smokers (beta=-0.414, SE=0.162, p=0.011), whereas no significant difference in RV systolic function was found between former smokers and never smokers. Conclusions: In a large multicenter community-based biracial cohort of middle-aged individuals, smoking was independently related to both worse RV systolic and diastolic functions

Genome-Wide Association Study of Cardiac Structure and Systolic Function in African Americans: The Candidate Gene Association Resource (CARe) Study

Using data from four community-based cohorts of African Americans (AA), we tested the association between genome-wide markers (SNPs) and cardiac phenotypes in the Candidate-gene Association REsource (CARe) study