Vitis aestivalis F.Michx.

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/herbarium_specimens_byname/19496/thumbnail.jp

Scorpion Venom and the Inflammatory Response

Scorpion venoms consist of a complex of several toxins that exhibit a wide range of biological properties and actions, as well as chemical compositions, toxicity, and pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic characteristics. These venoms are associated with high morbility and mortality, especially among children. Victims of envenoming by a scorpion suffer a variety of pathologies, involving mainly both sympathetic and parasympathetic stimulation as well as central manifestations such as irritability, hyperthermia, vomiting, profuse salivation, tremor, and convulsion. The clinical signs and symptoms observed in humans and experimental animals are related with an excessive systemic host inflammatory response to stings and stings, respectively. Although the pathophysiology of envenomation is complex and not yet fully understood, venom and immune responses are known to trigger the release of inflammatory mediators that are largely mediated by cytokines. In models of severe systemic inflammation produced by injection of high doses of venom or venoms products, the increase in production of proinflammatory cytokines significantly contributes to immunological imbalance, multiple organ dysfunction and death. The cytokines initiate a cascade of events that lead to illness behaviors such as fever, anorexia, and also physiological events in the host such as activation of vasodilatation, hypotension, and increased of vessel permeability

Shifting freight transport from road to rail

Road freight transport in Slovenia is becoming a major issue. High daily volume of trucks are burdening the Slovenian traffic system and their emissions have a negative effect on the environment and people´s health. In the first part of the thesis we have displayed the road and rail freight traffic loads for selected years. Additionally, using the TRANSvisions study we have constructed a forecast of the freight loads for the year 2030. One of the plausible solutions for amending the problem of freight traffic on roads is in its shift to the railway system. This type of the solution is currently implemented solely in one of the Slovenian routes; between Maribor and Wels (Austria). Austria is well known for its strict traffic policies and for shifting freight traffic from roads to railways, which has been a common practice for several years. Also in other European countries the so called piggy back system is already widely implemented.\ud In the second part of the thesis we displayed the technologies that are used in shifting the freight road vehicles (trailers, semi-trailers, swap bodies and containers) to the railways and specialized logistic terminals. Since the bulk of daily transit trucks in direction from Hungary to Italy pass through Slovenia, we have foreseen a logistic terminal in the Prekmurje region for which we have defined its throughput capacity and spatial requirements in order to accommodate the daily truck transit in 2030.\ud Currently, there are two main issues in Slovenia that are impeding the shifting of road freight traffic to railways: Slovenian traffic policy which does not charge the external costs to trucks and inadequate condition of Slovenian railway system. That is why we have assumed that Slovenia will regulate its traffic policy and also restore and upgrade the railway system until the 2030. The goal of the European commission is to shift 30 % of the road freight traffic over 300 km to the railwa

Stormwater management on public roads - the design of facilities on the basis of Slovenian and American recommendations

The first part of the diploma thesis presents basic concepts we come across when dimensioning the works for meteoric water treatment on public roads. A summary of the Slovenian and American legislation related to this field has been provided. Moreover, a review of the works for wastewater management is provided according to reference books of the United States of America and the Slovenian manual »Project Engineering Manual for the Composition of Technical Documentation – Meteoric Water Drainage on Public Roads«. Theoretical principles and the equations for wastewater treatment plant are presented according to Slovene and American manuals. The second part of the thesis contains the data which have been used with the ongoing hydraulic dimensioning of the works. The calculations have been made in the Excel programme. The conclusion includes a comparison of the results of the hydraulic calculation presented textual and in tables. The comparison has been made between Slovenia and USA as well as between the results of various data collected in Slovenia

Hamiltonian identifiability assisted by a single-probe measurement

We study the Hamiltonian identifiability of a many-body spin-1/2 system assisted by the measurement on a single quantum probe based on the eigensystem realization algorithm approach employed in Zhang and Sarovar, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 080401 (2014). We demonstrate a potential application of Gröbner basis to the identifiability test of the Hamiltonian, and provide the necessary experimental resources, such as the lower bound in the number of the required sampling points, the upper bound in total required evolution time, and thus the total measurement time. Focusing on the examples of the identifiability in the spin-chain model with nearest-neighbor interaction, we classify the spin-chain Hamiltonian based on its identifiability, and provide the control protocols to engineer the nonidentifiable Hamiltonian to be an identifiable Hamiltonian.United States. Army Research Office (W911NF-11-1-0400)United States. Army Research Office (W911NF-15-1-0548)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (PHY0551153

Sugar alcohol provides imaging contrast in cancer detection

Clinical imaging is widely used to detect, characterize and stage cancers in addition to monitoring the therapeutic progress. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) aided by contrast agents utilizes the differential relaxivity property of water to distinguish between tumorous and normal tissue. Here, we describe an MRI contrast method for the detection of cancer using a sugar alcohol, maltitol, a common low caloric sugar substitute that exploits the chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) property of the labile hydroxyl group protons on maltitol (malCEST). In vitro studies pointed toward concentration and pH-dependent CEST effect peaking at 1?ppm downfield to the water resonance. Studies with control rats showed that intravenously injected maltitol does not cross the intact blood-brain barrier (BBB). In glioma carrying rats, administration of maltitol resulted in the elevation of CEST contrast in the tumor region only owing to permeable BBB. These preliminary results show that this method may lead to the development of maltitol and other sugar alcohol derivatives as MRI contrast agents for a variety of preclinical imaging applications