Effect of Trace Metals on Growth Rate of Algae

Heavy metals, although only in traces, are essential for all forms of life. They are taken up by the living cell in the form of cations, and their uptake is strictly regulated because most or all of them are toxic in excess. A remarkable specificity has been found: seldom can an excess of one essential metal prevent the damage caused by deficiency of another. In fact, such an excess often increase the injurious effect of deficiency. Metal-binding substances, many of which function by chelation, form a class of substances which have furnished many useful drugs and other substances of value in selective toxicity. They are manufactured in huge quantities for this purpose, particularly those that are used in agriculture as fungicides. They function by upsetting the delicate balance of trace heavy metals. Some of them withdraw metals from living tissues, but many others reinforce, strongly, the natural toxicity of heavy metal. Apart from their use as agricultural fungicides, metal-binding substances have found three types of use in veterinary and human medicine. Some are used to differentiate between vertebrates and their parasites. Such substances make a valuable contribution to the fight against fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Others, which may be described as antidotes, are used to distinguish between essential and poisonous metals. The third type is required to differentiate between normal and pathological processes, e.g. in rheumatic diseases, cardiovascular disease, and cancer

Solving FJSSP With a Genetic Algorithm

The Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem is an NP-Hard combinatorial problem. This paper aims to find a solution to this problem using genetic algorithms, and discuss the effectiveness of this. Initially, I did exploratory work on whether neural networks would be effective or not, and found a lot of trade offs between using neural networks and chromosome sequencing. In the end, I decided to use chromosome sequencing over neural networks, due to the scope of my problem being on a small scale rather than on a large scale. Therefore, the genetic algorithm was implemented using chromosome sequencing. My chromosomes were represented as binary strings with reserved bits for the machine and job numbers. This allowed me to experiment with different mutations such as random bit flip mutation and machine job swap mutations. The biggest benefit of genetic algorithms over heuristic algorithms is the potential for improvement. While greedy gives good results initially, genetic beats out greedy quickly after a small number of epochs. Furthermore, I suspect that genetic algorithms should be much faster than other learning algorithms, but as this is an under-documented metric, I decided to contribute my own results to help document this metric. For future work, it would be interesting to see how a neural network model would have reacted, and how its time to find a solution would compare to chromosome sequencing. Another interesting topic is a scheduler that can adapt to any variation of the Job Shop Scheduling Problem, as this would be very useful in the real world. One final interesting topic would be to implement some kind of dynamic job loading for this genetic algorithm, as in real world situations, new jobs and tasks get scheduled all the time. But, this is a very complicated problem, thus it is best left to the future

A case for the use of Arabic dialect in the translation of English commercials

This study makes a case for the use of dialectical Arabic in translating brands and blends from English commercials. We examine the translations of two KitKat and Snickers commercials which contained word blends and slogan statements. As we do so, we compare the dialectical translations with the Modern Standard Arabic choices to demonstrate that dialectical translation better fits into the genre of commercials as a popular culture text due to three main reasons. These include the informal nature of dialectical uses, the greater variation in the linguistic patterns, and the greater flexibility in accommodating new blends

Pain in Children: Assessment and Nonpharmacological Management

Pain perception in children is complex, and is often difficult to assess. In addition, pain management in children is not always optimized in various healthcare settings, including emergency departments. A review of pain assessment scales that can be used in children across all ages, and a discussion of the importance of pain in control and distraction techniques during painful procedures are presented. Age specific nonpharmacological interventions used to manage pain in children are most effective when adapted to the developmental level of the child. Distraction techniques are often provided by nurses, parents or child life specialists and help in pain alleviation during procedures

Transgender TikTok: Analyzing Insider and Outsider Perspectives of a Heavily Debated Topic

In this qualitative media analysis, I accessed and deconstructed content regarding transgender individuals and topics on the popular social media app: TikTok. The objective was to understand the construction of the transgender child on TikTok. Thirty-five TikTok videos about transgender topics were collected between April and September of 2022 through multiple user accounts. Videos originated either from insider (transgender and nonbinary) or outsider (cisgender) creators. The content in this data was analyzed for its messages, whether opinion- or experience-based, regarding transgender people and concepts. Three emerging themes were extracted from the data: change, harm versus care, and traditional beliefs. TikTok content on transgender issues was not limited to one type of video (i.e., comedy skit, informative lesson, interviews, storytelling). Creators used mixed methods, such as audio, filters, and trending video formats to relay their messages and opinions to their audience. A key finding is that videos were polarized to the two extremes, one affirming and supporting transgender individuals and the other delegitimizing diverse gender identities and promoting harm against transgender individuals

Delayed formation of pulmonary artery stump thrombus: a case report and review of the literature

Pulmonary artery stump thrombosis is a recognized complication after pneumonectomy. However, to our knowledge, there is only one case report of delayed development of this complication. We report the case of a 68 year-old man who presented with chest pain nearly ten years after undergoing a right pneumonectomy for lung cancer. Workup identified a pulmonary artery stump thrombosis. Due to the acute onset of his symptoms, the patient was anticoagulated, and his chest pain resolved. While the literature suggests that anticoagulation is not generally required for stump thromboses, we highlight features of this case that may indicate an increased risk of clinically important sequelae. Taking previous reports into account, we argue that a specific subset of patients with stump thrombosis may benefit from systemic anticoagulation

Stabilitet og splittelse i saudisk historieundervisning

For et enevældigt monarki har Saudi-Arabien behændigt formået at undgå folkelig indflydelse. Landets historieundervisning er sjældent studeret af forskere, men spiller en central rolle i forsøget på at sikre opbakning til staten og dens regenter

The myth of the cashless economy

Analyzing the challenges related to achieving a cashless economy in countries with high levels of socio-economic inequalit