Studies on the Reproductive System in the Guinea-Pig: Intravitam Staining; Fat Production; Influence of Hormones

This research was begun in 1929, and a preliminary account of some of the results of the investigation was published in the Journal of Anatomy, January 1932. The following brief summary indicates the contents of the preliminary paper. A series of unimpregnated animals after parturition were injected with trypan blue, and killed at different intervals of time after parturition. Each animal was treated with similar amounts of the dye according to a weight basis, and received the same number of injections before being killed, the technique of preparation of the sections being the same in all cases. It was recorded that during the first half of the oestrous cycle, which is normally one of about 16 days, only a very small amount of dye appeared in the mucous membrane of the uterus, but that during the second half of the cycle dye appeared in increasing amount in the endometrium up to the time of "heat. on the 16th day post partum. The intense staining with the dye was for the most part subepithelial and practically confined to the stratum compactum; and the dye-carrying cells were large mononuclears, some of which were irregular in outline and appeared to be shedding the dye. A striking feature was that the intensity of the dye was most marked around the anti-mesometrial half of the uterine lumen, and especially at the anti-mesometrial side, i.e. over the implantation zone. In a short series of virgin animals, the series being established by determining the date of heat by the vaginal smear method (Stockard and Papanicolaou, 1917), practically identical results were obtained. No dye reaction was observed in the mucosa of the Fallopian tube at any time in the cycle. Furthermore, no intense dye reaction was found in sexually immature animals. In regard to the nature of these dye-carrying cells, the following questions were formulated:1. Are they enlarged endometrial cells laden with some chemical substance destined after implantation of the blastocyst for the supply of nourishment to the embryo? 2. In view of the enormous amount of destruction which takes place Immediately after implantation, are these cells related rather to destructive than to constructive processes, e.g., enzyme formation responsible for tissue destruction or digestion? 3. Are they cells which wander, like the large mononuclear cells found in great numbers in the resolution phases of peritoneal inflammation, and which experimentally have been shown to take up vital dye, and which generally are regarded as macrophages (Cappell, 1930)

The Role of ECSIT in Mitochondrial Dysfunction Mediated Cardiomyopathy

The evolutionarily conserved signalling intermediate in the toll pathway (ECSIT) is a 50 kDa protein involved in the function of many pathways and implicated in a variety of phenotypes. It functions as part of the toll pathway by integrating the signal from several toll receptors and facilitating the activation of downstream proteins NFКB, JNK and P38 MAPK. It functions as part of the bone morphogenetic protein pathway through interaction with SMAD4 allowing for normal embryonic development. It also functions as a mitochondrial complex I assembly factor and loss of function leads to a reduction in fully assembled complex I. As part of a large scale ENU mutagenesis screen, The Harwell Ageing Screen, a novel missense mutation (N209I) was identified in ECSIT which resulted in a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy phenotype in homozygous mutant animals. Further investigation revealed this phenotype to be a result of a loss of function in ECSIT’s role as a complex I assembly factor. Mitochondria from EcsitN209I/N209I hearts showed a reduction in total complex I protein as well as a loss of enzymatic activity and fully assembled complex I. Interestingly, this mitochondrial dysfunction was limited to the heart with other tissues maintaining protein levels and complex I function at or close to wild type levels, suggesting that there may be tissue specific differences in the complex I assembly pathway. Investigation of the assembly pathway using first and second dimensional blue native PAGE suggests that this tissue specific pathway may involve the formation of a previously undescribed fragment of ECSIT that is present in heart tissue but absent from other tissues tested, is associated with fully assembled complex I in wild type mitochondria but absent in EcsitN209I/N209I hearts

Dynamic analysis of sucker rod pumping

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Oklahoma, 1982The complexity of the interaction between surface and down-hole equipment has made accurate analysis of sucker rod pumping systems difficult at best. Consequently, realistic predictions of performance are seldom, if ever, made in advance of construction. The petroleum industry has, over the years, compiled a substantial catalog of case histories, in effect, as a data base from which general design guidelines can be developed. However, the analytical work to date has been either sketchy or without sufficient basis in published documentation. The analysis to be presented here addresses the dynamic behavior of the complete pumping system in, what is hoped to be, a complete and concise manner. The viewpoint is that of the designer or manufacturer of this system. That is, the total dynamic response will be derived based on a given set of input parameters. Factors which are considered consist of, but are not limited to, pumping unit kinematics, rod stress/strain relationships, imposed torques and drive motor slip

POLYSACCHARIDE SOLUTIONS FROM A STATISTICAL THERMODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CELLULOSE ANALOGUES

The development of new cellulose solvents, motivated by environmental concerns, would greatly benefit from a full understanding of the cellulose dissolution mechanism. With a focus on aqueous solvents, this thesis made progress towards understanding the molecular interactions in solution that lead to successful dissolution of cellulose. These molecular interactions were quantified by using statistical thermodynamic theory based on the Kirkwood-Buff (KB) theory of solutions. This was applied to cellobiose and gave insights into the interactions present in its solubility, highlighting the importance of preferential salt-cellobiose interaction and lending support to the hypothesis of “cellulose charging up” seen in the literature. However, extension of this theory for application to cellulose requires improvement in both accuracy and reliability of solubility quantification. An experimental investigation identified the problem of incomplete dissolution below the saturation point, which is responsible for major inaccuracies in solubility measurements of amorphous cellulose. The requirements for an analogue of cellulose and the correct choice of measurement protocol for solubility of cellulose were identified. In addition to molecular level interactions, macroscopic scale phenomena such as gelation and precipitation could be seen as equally important for understanding cellulose behaviour in solvents. Design of new methods of analysis is required to understand these phenomena in a manner beyond the capabilities of traditional polymer theory. Hence an extension of KB theory using starch gelatinisation as a basis was developed. When applied to starch gelatinisation, this theory clarified the mechanism behind the effect of salt concentration on temperature dependence of gelatinisation. (Salts are excluded from gelatinised starch at low salt concentrations and anions can access inside the starch granule at higher concentration.) Similar theory could be applied to cellulose gelation, or precipitation, to glean information about the interactions present in their mechanisms

Multiprocessor Out-of-Core FFTs with Distributed Memory and Parallel Disks

This paper extends an earlier out-of-core Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) method for a uniprocessor with the Parallel Disk Model (PDM) to use multiple processors. Four out-of-core multiprocessor methods are examined. Operationally, these methods differ in the size of mini-butterfly computed in memory and how the data are organized on the disks and in the distributed memory of the multiprocessor. The methods also perform differing amounts of I/O and communication. Two of them have the remarkable property that even though they are computing the FFT on a multiprocessor, all interprocessor communication occurs outside the mini-butterfly computations. Performance results on a small workstation cluster indicate that except for unusual combinations of problem size and memory size, the methods that do not perform interprocessor communication during the mini-butterfly computations require approximately 86% of the time of those that do. Moreover, the faster methods are much easier to implement

Parametric binary dissection

Binary dissection is widely used to partition non-uniform domains over parallel computers. This algorithm does not consider the perimeter, surface area, or aspect ratio of the regions being generated and can yield decompositions that have poor communication to computation ratio. Parametric Binary Dissection (PBD) is a new algorithm in which each cut is chosen to minimize load + lambda x(shape). In a 2 (or 3) dimensional problem, load is the amount of computation to be performed in a subregion and shape could refer to the perimeter (respectively surface) of that subregion. Shape is a measure of communication overhead and the parameter permits us to trade off load imbalance against communication overhead. When A is zero, the algorithm reduces to plain binary dissection. This algorithm can be used to partition graphs embedded in 2 or 3-d. Load is the number of nodes in a subregion, shape the number of edges that leave that subregion, and lambda the ratio of time to communicate over an edge to the time to compute at a node. An algorithm is presented that finds the depth d parametric dissection of an embedded graph with n vertices and e edges in O(max(n log n, de)) time, which is an improvement over the O(dn log n) time of plain binary dissection. Parallel versions of this algorithm are also presented; the best of these requires O((n/p) log(sup 3)p) time on a p processor hypercube, assuming graphs of bounded degree. How PBD is applied to 3-d unstructured meshes and yields partitions that are better than those obtained by plain dissection is described. Its application to the color image quantization problem is also discussed, in which samples in a high-resolution color space are mapped onto a lower resolution space in a way that minimizes the color error

A toolkit for low-cost thermal comfort sensing

Why is it that we can have standards on how to achieve comfort [5] and advanced building control systems to implement these standards, yet water cooler 'discussions' about how hot, cold, or generally uncomfortable it is, seem to form a backbone to modern office life [8]? In the UK, domestic space and water heating alone was approximately 80% of the country's total final energy in 2017 [9]. Through our heating and cooling infrastructures, we are consuming significant amounts of energy and pumping out growing amounts of carbon, only to achieve a state of further discontentment. Are we approaching this all wrong? To reduce our consumption significantly, we need new methods of understanding and achieving thermal comfort. To help achieve these new methods, this paper argues we need to look again at how we are currently collecting thermal comfort data

A Survey of Pressure Vessel Code Compliance for Superconducting RF Cryomodules

Superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities made from niobium and cooled with liquid helium are becoming key components of many particle accelerators. The helium vessels surrounding the RF cavities, portions of the niobium cavities themselves, and also possibly the vacuum vessels containing these assemblies, generally fall under the scope of local and national pressure vessel codes. In the U.S., Department of Energy rules require national laboratories to follow national consensus pressure vessel standards or to show "a level of safety greater than or equal to" that of the applicable standard. Thus, while used for its superconducting properties, niobium ends up being treated as a low-temperature pressure vessel material. Niobium material is not a code listed material and therefore requires the designer to understand the mechanical properties for material used in each pressure vessel fabrication; compliance with pressure vessel codes therefore becomes a problem. This report summarizes the approaches that various institutions have taken in order to bring superconducting RF cryomodules into compliance with pressure vessel codes.Comment: 7 p