2,928 research outputs found
Social change and religious experience : aspects of rural society in south Lincolnshire with specific reference to Primitive Methodism, 1815-1875
During the nineteenth century there were considerable changes in the social life and economy of south Lincolnshire. Rapid population growth to the middle of the century and agricultural change led to the development of new ways of life among the people of the area. Their attitudes were shaped by the particular local community in which they lived and by how and where they earned their livings.The Primitive Methodists entered south Lincolnshire in 1817. Their preaching was appropriate to the needs of the people in this period. It gave a sense of coherence and significance to the lives of its converts, although in the early stages of their activities the Primitives also incurred the hostility of crowds who sought to maintain traditional patterns of behaviour. By the 1830s this type of communal action seems to have disappeared in south Lincolnshire, leaving only clandestine acts as a vehicle for rural protest. The Primitives, who were establishing their place in the new social order, appear to have had no links with these protesters but concentrated their energies on building up the structures of the connexion.By the time of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship Primitive Methodist chapels tended to be concentrated in open villages where the connexion was free to develop into an established part of the lives of these communities. As they became increasingly concerned with maintaining and servicing the connexion's institutions the Primitive Methodists avoided any action which would threaten their position, while their local communities were brought into contact with the wider world of nonconformity through the connexion's organisation and links with the towns of the area. This development paralleled that of other bodies and by 1875 Primitive Methodism was one of a number of village organisations from which the rural worker could draw social and spiritual sustenance
Plankton dynamics on the outer southeastern U.S. continental shelf. Part II: A time-dependent biological model
A system of ten coupled ordinary differential equations was developed to investigate the time-dependent behavior of phytoplankton and copepod populations associated with frontal eddy and bottom intrusion upwelling features on the outer southeastern U.S. continental shelf. Model equations describe the interactions of nitrate, ammonium, two phytoplankton size fractions (\u3e10 μm and \u3c10 μm), five copepod categories that represent the developmental stages of a population, and a detrital pool. Formulations for the biological processes are based primarily upon data obtained from laboratory and field experiments for southeastern U.S. continental shelf plankton populations. Time series of nutrient and plankton distributions obtained from GABEX II provide verification of model results. The simulated time dependent distributions for bottom intrusions show a phytoplankton maximum occurring approximately eight days after the nitrate maximum, and the copepod biomass peaks within eight to nine days after the phytoplankton. Frontal eddy simulations show the same succession except that the short time scale of these events precludes the development of large copepod blooms. To obtain the correct relative abundance of the two phytoplankton size fractions in the bottom intrusion simulations it was necessary to increase the cell death rate of the small (\u3c10 μm) cell size fraction relative to the large cells (.15 d–1 vs. .1 d–1). The additional loss from the small cells may represent a transfer to a zooplankton or microzooplankton grazer that is not included in the model. The depth-averaged (20 to 40 m) carbon production calculated from the bottom intrusion simulation was approximately 4 mgC m–2d–1 which agrees with production values measured for bottom intrusions. Model simulations indicate that temperature is a potentially important factor in determining the trophic structure in bottom intrusions. Also the role of frequency of nutrient input, fecal pellet remineralization and phytoplankton growth coefficient in determining the biological distributions in bottom intrusions were evaluated with the model
Statistical analysis plan for the Laser-1st versus Drops-1st for Glaucoma and Ocular Hypertension Trial (LiGHT): a multi-centre randomised controlled trial (vol 16, 517, 2015)
Nuclear Spin Relaxation for Higher Spin
We study the relaxation of a spin I that is weakly coupled to a quantum
mechanical environment. Starting from the microscopic description, we derive a
system of coupled relaxation equations within the adiabatic approximation.
These are valid for arbitrary I and also for a general stationary
non--equilibrium state of the environment. In the case of equilibrium, the
stationary solution of the equations becomes the correct Boltzmannian
equilibrium distribution for given spin I. The relaxation towards the
stationary solution is characterized by a set of relaxation times, the longest
of which can be shorter, by a factor of up to 2I, than the relaxation time in
the corresponding Bloch equations calculated in the standard perturbative way.Comment: 4 pages, Latex, 2 figure
Generating natural language specifications from UML class diagrams
Early phases of software development are known to be problematic, difficult to manage and errors occurring during these phases are expensive to correct. Many systems have been developed to aid the transition from informal Natural Language requirements to semistructured or formal specifications. Furthermore, consistency checking is seen by many software engineers as the solution to reduce the number of errors occurring during the software development life cycle and allow early verification and validation of software systems. However, this is confined to the models developed during analysis and design and fails to include the early Natural Language requirements. This excludes proper user involvement and creates a gap between the original requirements and the updated and modified models and implementations of the system. To improve this process, we propose a system that generates Natural Language specifications from UML class diagrams. We first investigate the variation of the input language used in naming the components of a class diagram based on the study of a large number of examples from the literature and then develop rules for removing ambiguities in the subset of Natural Language used within UML. We use WordNet,a linguistic ontology, to disambiguate the lexical structures of the UML string names and generate semantically sound sentences. Our system is developed in Java and is tested on an independent though academic case study
Copper-Catalyzed Synthesis of Trifluoroethylarenes from Benzylic Bromodifluoroacetates
Trifluoroethylarenes are found in a variety of biologically active molecules, and strategies for accessing this substructure are important for developing therapeutic candidates and biological probes. Trifluoroethylarenes can be directly accessed via nucleophilic trifluoromethylation of benzylic electrophiles; however, current catalytic methods do not effectively transform electron-deficient substrates and heterocycles. To address this gap, we report a Cu-catalyzed decarboxylative trifluoromethylation of benzylic bromodifluoroacetates. To account for the tolerance of sensitive functional groups, we propose an inner-sphere mechanism of decarboxylation
A comparison of low- versus standard-dose bridging alteplase in acute ischemic stroke mechanical thrombectomy using indirect methods
Background: Whether low-dose alteplase is similar to standard-dose bridging alteplase prior to endovascular mechanical thrombectomy in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) remains uncertain. Aims: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety outcomes of low- versus standard-dose bridging alteplase therapy (BT) in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) who are eligible for intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) within 4.5 h after onset. Methods: We conducted an indirect comparison of low- versus standard-dose bridging alteplase before mechanical thrombectomy in AIS of current available clinical randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compared direct mechanical thrombectomy treatment (dMT) to BT. Primary efficacy outcomes were functional independence and excellent recovery defined as a dichotomized modified Rankin Scale (mRS) 0–2 and 0–1 at 90 days. Safety outcomes included symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (sICH) and any intracranial hemorrhage (ICH). Results: We included six RCTs of 2334 AIS patients in this analysis, including one trial using low-dose bridging alteplase (n = 103) and five trials using standard-dose bridging alteplase (n = 1067) against a common comparator (dMT). Indirect comparisons of low- to standard-dose bridging alteplase yielded an odds ratio (OR) of 0.84 (95% CI 0.47–1.50) for 90-day mRS 0–2, 1.18 (95% CI 0.65–2.12) for 90-day mRS 0–1, 1.21 (95% CI 0.44–3.36) for mortality, and 1.11 (95% CI 0.39–3.14) for successful recanalization. There were no significant differences in the odds for sICH (OR 1.05, 95% CI 0.32–3.41) or any ICH (OR 1.71, 95% CI 0.94–3.10) between low- and standard-dose bridging alteplase. Conclusion: Indirect evidence shows that the effects of low- and standard-dose bridging alteplase are similar for key efficacy and safety outcomes. Due to the wide confidence intervals, larger randomized trials comparing low- and standard-dose alteplase bridging therapy are required
Adenosine 2A receptor and TIM3 suppress cytolytic killing of tumor cells via cytoskeletal polarization
Tumors generate an immune-suppressive environment that prevents effective killing of tumor cells by CD8(+) cytotoxic T cells (CTL). It remains largely unclear upon which cell type and at which stage of the anti-tumor response mediators of suppression act. We have combined an in vivo tumor model with a matching in vitro reconstruction of the tumor microenvironment based on tumor spheroids to identify suppressors of anti-tumor immunity that directly act on interaction between CTL and tumor cells and to determine mechanisms of action. An adenosine 2A receptor antagonist, as enhanced by blockade of TIM3, slowed tumor growth in vivo. Engagement of the adenosine 2A receptor and TIM3 reduced tumor cell killing in spheroids, impaired CTL cytoskeletal polarization ex vivo and in vitro and inhibited CTL infiltration into tumors and spheroids. With this role in CTL killing, blocking A(2A)R and TIM3 may complement therapies that enhance T cell priming, e.g. anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4
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