Ecocriticism and the Young Adult Audience in Dry and The Islands at the End of the World

This thesis focuses on exploring and analyzing two young adult novels through an ecocritical lens. The authors of the young adult novels, Dry and The Islands at the End of the Earth, bring awareness to young readers about the progression of global warming and effects this devastation has on humans and animals. Both of these novels show character’s relationships with nature, decision making skills in terms of crisis, and coping mechanisms which can translate to young readers. There is a great balance of teaching young readers the importance of their own relationship with the environment and how to cope in times of environmental crisis. Characters in both young adult texts learn to navigate a new norm and find ways to cope in everyday life after environmental ruin to their communities. The characters in both texts work to create a new sense of normalcy as a way to handle the environmental situation. This thesis offers coping strategies for young adult readers while also informing them of their relationship with the environment. This thesis also analyzes Dry through a Marxist lens due to the differing class status of characters and explores the ways in which characters react to climate change and crisis. With many young adult character’s perspectives throughout the novel, class status plays a major role in the character’s relationships with nature and class whereas The Islands at the End of the Earth id only written through one point of view. Through young adult novels, pre-teens and teens can make changes to better their relationships with the environment and slow the progression of global warming due to influences in the ecocritical texts and young adult characters

INFLUENCE OF CROSSING WEAR ON ROLLING CONTACT FATIGUE DAMAGE OF FROG RAIL

The damage of the frog rail significantly affects the wear of the crossing rail and restricts the passing speed of the train. A geometric 3D modeling of the vehicle passing through the crossing center is particularly concerned with the cumulative wheel-rail contact of the traffic volume. The frog rail wear is simulated to obtain the dynamic change of the impact force of the wheel on the frog rail as the rail wears. By summarizing the existing experimental results of other scholars, it is clear that the important factors, that cause the damage of the frog rail, are vehicle load, friction coefficient, slip roll ratio and shear stress.  This paper combines the theoretical analysis of mechanics and 3D simulation to obtain the position change of the wheel-rail contact point with the wear of the frog rail, and finally compares it with the actual measurement results. It can more accurately predict the area where the maximum damage occurs after a certain amount of traffic for a certain fixed model, the change of wheel-rail contact point at frog rail is simulated with the wear of each component. Through theoretical analysis, the main factors determining frog rail damage were determined. Then evaluate the possible damage area of the frog track and control the prediction range to 5-10 cm, which reduces the detection time and cost. The worst state of distraction will be detected in time to facilitate replacement or polishing. Through further research in this area, the service life of the frog rail can be predicted

EVALUATION OF RAILWAY BALLAST LAYER CONSOLIDATION AFTER MAINTENANCE WORKS

The results of the study of the ballast layer consolidation after the work of ballast-tamping machines of different types are given in the article. The existing methods of determining the degree of consolidation of the ballast layer are analysed. The seismic method was improved by means of a complex dynamic and kinematic interpretation of the impulse response. For the dynamic interpretation with the use of statistical analysis, the features are selected so that they correspond to the degree of consolidation of the ballast layer. On the basis of researches, a device and software were developed that allow an automated evaluation of the ballast layer consolidation based on the kinematic and dynamic analysis of the measured impulse response. The measurements of the degree of the ballast layer consolidation after an operation of ballast-consolidation machines in different sequences allowed establishing the efficiency of the consolidation and the feasibility of the machines’ application

Evolution of hepatitis B virus liver disease after hepatic replacement. Practical and theoretical considerations

The morphologic evolution of hepatitis B virus (HBV) liver disease in 45 hepatic allograft recipients who were HBV surface-antigen positive (HBs-Ag+) at the time of liver replacement and who survived for more than 60 days was studied by routine histologic and immunocytochemical analysis of serial pathology specimens. The findings in these patients were compared to a control group of 30 individuals who were immune to the HBV (anti-HBs antibody positive), but required hepatic replacement for other reasons. Eight of the forty-five (18%) HBsAg-positive patients have no serologic evidence of HBV reinfection after transplantation. All 37 remaining patients are reinfected; 21 (47%) developed chronic active hepatitis and/or cirhosis, 3 (7%) developed submassive necrosis, and 6 (14%) developed chronic lobular hepatitis. One patient lost her graft to chronic rejection, despite reinfection with the B virus. Four other patients (9%) developed a chronic carrier state. No long-term follow-up biopsies were available in the remaining two patients. The histologic features associated with dysfunction related to recurrent HBV infection evolved from an acute to chronic phase and were similar to hepatitis B seen in nonallografted livers. Furthermore HBV-related lesions could be separated from rejection using routine histology alone. The only exception to this conclusion was the occurrence of a peculiar HBV-related lesion in two recipients, described herein. Immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated the presence of viral antigens in almost all cases. Hepatic inflammation also was commonly present during HBV disease and consisted mostly of accessory cells and T lymphocytes. Analysis of the effect of major histocompatibility complex matching revealed no clear association between the number of class I or II matches or mismatches and the development, or pattern, of active hepatitis in the allograft. Peculiar pathologic alterations in several of the biopsies and failed allografts after HBV reinfection suggests that, under special circumstances, the B virus may by cytopathic

COMMON CROSSING CONDITION MONITORING WITH ON BOARD INERTIAL MEASUREMENTS

A railway turnout is an element of the railway infrastructure that influences the reliability of a railway traffic operation the most. The growing necessity for the reliability and availability in the railway transportation promotes a wide use of condition monitoring systems. These systems are typically based on the measurement of the dynamic response during operation. The inertial dynamic response measurement with on-board systems is the simplest and reliable way of monitoring the railway infrastructure. However, the new possibilities of condition monitoring are faced with new challenges of the measured information utilization. The paper deals with the condition monitoring of the most critical part of turnouts - the common crossing. The application of an on-board inertial measurement system ESAH-F for a crossing condition monitoring is presented and explained. The inertial measurements are characterized with the low correlation of maximal vertical accelerations to the lifetime. The data mining approach is used to recover the latent relations in the measurement’s information. An additional time domain and spectral feature sets are extracted from axle-box acceleration signals. The popular spectral kurtosis features are used additionally to the wavelet ones. The feature monotonicity ranking is carried out to select the most suited features for the condition indicator. The most significant features are fused in a one condition indicator with a principal component analysis. The proposed condition indicator delivers an almost two-time higher correlation to the lifetime as the maximal vertical accelerations. The regression analysis of the indicator to the lifetime with an exponential fit proves its good applicability for the crossing residual useful life prognosis