Strain weakening and superplasticity in a Bi-Sn eutectic alloy processed by high-pressure torsion

High-pressure torsion (HPT) was conducted on disks of a Bi-Sn eutectic alloy under a pressure of 6.0 GPa. The microstructural evolution was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Measurements of Vickers microhardness showed decreasing strength caused by strain weakening after HPT processing. Tensile testing was performed under initial strain rates from 10?4 to 10?2 s?1 at room temperature. The results demonstrate a much improved elongation to failure for the Bi-Sn alloy after HPT- processing. The Bi-Sn alloy processed through 10 turns gave an elongation to failure of more than 1200% at an initial strain rate of 10?4 s?1 at room temperature which is significantly larger than the elongation to failure of ~110% in the as-cast Bi-Sn alloy under the same tensile condition

Hedonic pricing models for metropolitan bus services

Conventional studies on the pricing of bus services use the cost structure to explain bus fares. In this paper, a hedonic pricing model for bus services in Hong Kong is estimated. The contributions of cost and market factors are uncovered. It is found that the cost factors dominate the determination of bus fares. In contrast to our expectation, bus fares do not react to competition faced by bus companies. Moreover, except the three cross-harbour tunnels, the bus fare has no direct relationship with the tolls of other tunnels. Our model serves well as a reference tool for bus companies to set market-acceptable bus fares.Hedonic Pricing Model, Bus Fares, Kowloon Motor Bus.

The affordability of China's residential real estate market and opportunities for property developers

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-68).China has the largest housing market in the world and the property market continues to advance at an astonishing pace. In 2009, 22.2% of China's RMB 19.3 trillion fixed asset investment and 17.9% of foreign direct investment were invested into the real estate sector. At the same time, the highly dynamic market structure and huge regional disparities in China created mixed interpretation and confusion. Nationwide statistics blending urban and suburban prices and the indifferent treatment towards subsidized housing and private housing overshadowed the actual development on the local level. With unprecedented investment pouring into the Chinese real estate market and sky rocketing property prices in most major cities, the legendary short-seller James Chanos described the Chinese real estate sector as "Dubai times 1,000 - or worse". Yet, another American financial guru Jim Rogers openly debunked the statement from James Chanos and remained his bullish views on China. This thesis is divided into two sections. First it reviews the historical development from the Chinese property market. The paper explores the current situation of the market and focuses on the affordability comparison between the national level and the local levels. On a national level, housing prices grow at a pace similar to China's GDP growth supported by an even faster growth in income levels. Affordability ratios are in line with international standards and below the levels experienced by Japan and US during their bubble era. At the local level, different cities experienced drastic differences in price growth and supply surpluses. In some cities, even the suburban areas are beyond the affordability of an average household. In the second section, this paper explores the development of affordable housing, the new frontier of Chinese real estate market. The emergence of the affordable housing market together with new housing policies has different implications and opportunities to the incumbent property developers as well as potential low-end disruptors in China. This paper concludes with recommendations on some of the available investment options for a bearish investor in the Chinese real estate market.by Terence T. Lam.S.M

Motivation Failure — Failure to fulfil the psychological contract in organizations

This research focuses on the psychological contract in organizations. This research tries to reveal the causes, the methods, the consequences of breaching the psychological contract and ways to minimize the chance to breach the contracts at workplaces. The author conducted interviews with six junior level employees and six managers in this research. The interviewees chosen deliberately as they had all experienced the breach of the contracts in organizations. One of the focuses of this research is the causes of the breach of the psychological contract. This topic was often neglected by the researchers as there were limited researches regarding the causes of the psychological contract breach. Some new findings regarding the causes of the psychological contract were revealed by the author. Also, the consequences of breaching the contract are proved to be destructive to both the organizations and the employees, so there are some ways suggested by the interviewees to prevent the breach of the contract

cDNA Microarray Gene Expression Profiling of Hedgehog Signaling Pathway Inhibition in Human Colon Cancer Cells

Hedgehog (HH) signaling plays a critical role in normal cellular processes, in normal mammalian gastrointestinal development and differentiation, and in oncogenesis and maintenance of the malignant phenotype in a variety of human cancers. Increasing evidence further implicates the involvement of HH signaling in oncogenesis and metastatic behavior of colon cancers. However, genomic approaches to elucidate the role of HH signaling in cancers in general are lacking, and data derived on HH signaling in colon cancer is extremely limited.To identify unique downstream targets of the GLI genes, the transcriptional regulators of HH signaling, in the context of colon carcinoma, we employed a small molecule inhibitor of both GLI1 and GLI2, GANT61, in two human colon cancer cell lines, HT29 and GC3/c1. Cell cycle analysis demonstrated accumulation of GANT61-treated cells at the G1/S boundary. cDNA microarray gene expression profiling of 18,401 genes identified Differentially Expressed Genes (DEGs) both common and unique to HT29 and GC3/c1. Analyses using GenomeStudio (statistics), Matlab (heat map), Ingenuity (canonical pathway analysis), or by qRT-PCR, identified p21(Cip1) (CDKN1A) and p15(Ink4b) (CDKN2B), which play a role in the G1/S checkpoint, as up-regulated genes at the G1/S boundary. Genes that determine further cell cycle progression at G1/S including E2F2, CYCLIN E2 (CCNE2), CDC25A and CDK2, and genes that regulate passage of cells through G2/M (CYCLIN A2 [CCNA2], CDC25C, CYCLIN B2 [CCNB2], CDC20 and CDC2 [CDK1], were down-regulated. In addition, novel genes involved in stress response, DNA damage response, DNA replication and DNA repair were identified following inhibition of HH signaling.This study identifies genes that are involved in HH-dependent cellular proliferation in colon cancer cells, and following its inhibition, genes that regulate cell cycle progression and events downstream of the G1/S boundary

Replication and Meta-analysis of the Association between BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism and Cognitive Impairment in Patients Receiving Chemotherapy.

Cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) adversely affects cancer patients. We had previously demonstrated that the BDNF Val66Met genetic polymorphism is associated with lower odds of subjective CRCI in the multitasking and verbal ability domains among breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. To further assess our previous findings, we evaluated the association of BDNF Val66Met polymorphism with subjective and objective CRCI in a temporally separate cohort of patients and pooled findings from both the original (n = 145) and current (n = 193) cohorts in a meta-analysis. Subjective CRCI was assessed using FACT-Cog. Objective CRCI was evaluated using computerized neuropsychological tests. Genotyping was carried out using Sanger sequencing. The association of BDNF Val66Met genotypes and CRCI was examined with logistic regression. A fixed-effect meta-analysis was conducted using the inverse variance method. In the meta-analysis (n = 338), significantly lower odds of CRCI were associated with Met allele carriers based on the global FACT-Cog score (OR = 0.52, 95% CI 0.29-0.94). Furthermore, Met allele carriers were at lower odds of developing impairment in the domains of memory (OR = 0.34, 95% CI: 0.17-0.70), multitasking (OR = 0.33, 95% CI: 0.18-0.59), and verbal ability (OR = 0.46, 95% CI: 0.24-0.88). Consistent with the previous study, lower odds of subjective CRCI among patients with the BDNF Met allele was observed after adjusting for potential confounders in the multitasking (OR = 0.30, 95% CI: 0.14-0.67) domain. In conclusion, carriers of the BDNF Met allele were protected against global subjective CRCI, particularly in the domains of memory, multitasking, and verbal ability. Our findings further contribute to the understanding of CRCI pathophysiology

A single-array preprocessing method for estimating full-resolution raw copy numbers from all Affymetrix genotyping arrays including GenomeWideSNP 5 & 6

Motivation: High-resolution copy-number (CN) analysis has in recent years gained much attention, not only for the purpose of identifying CN aberrations associated with a certain phenotype, but also for identifying CN polymorphisms. In order for such studies to be successful and cost effective, the statistical methods have to be optimized. We propose a single-array preprocessing method for estimating full-resolution total CNs. It is applicable to all Affymetrix genotyping arrays, including the recent ones that also contain non-polymorphic probes. A reference signal is only needed at the last step when calculating relative CNs

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis