The Effects of Regional Separatism on Late Roman Identity in Fourteenth-Century Byzantium

This thesis explores how tendencies of regional separatism affected the political and ethnic contexts of late Roman identity during the course of the fourteenth century in the Byzantine Roman Empire. Fourteenth-century Byzantium was characterized by political fragmentation, significant sociopolitical changes and alterations, and subsequently a crisis of the Roman identity. The major question that the research will answer is: who was considered to be a Roman during the fourteenth century, and what did it mean for someone to hold that identity? The thesis will focus on two major and important geographical areas in the fourteenth century: the Principality of Achaia (Morea) and the Despotate of Epirus through the analysis of the writings of historians such as John VI Kantakouzenos (d. 1383 A.D.) and Nikephoros Gregoras (d. 1360 A.D.), as well as the chronicles of Morea and Tocco. The goal of this thesis is to prove that Roman identity during the fourteenth century developed strong territorial and political elements that resulted in a disjointed and fluid affiliation with the Roman ethnonym. There was no longer one unified understanding of “Roman” identity throughout the empire, but rather Romanness differed from region to region

Crystalization studies in hollow fiber devices

Crystallization was examined under a new perspective and in a flow environment much different from that available in currently used industrial devices. Three crystallization techniques were tested in the unique flow environment offered by hollow fiber devices. In addition, a new type of heat exchanger based on hollow fibers was tested as well as the potential use of porous hollow fiber devices as mixing devices. Hollow fiber devices are compact, extremely efficient on a volumetric basis, easy to scale up and control and their inherent characteristics promote the creation of homogeneous temperature and concentration conditions on a scale considerably smaller than existing industrial crystallizers without the necessity of a large energy input. Porous hollow fiber heat exchangers (PHFHEs) were proven superior to conventional metal heat transfer equipment. For the liquid-liquid systems studied, they can transfer up to ten times more heat on a volumetric basis, achieve the same efficiency and number of transfer units at considerably smaller lengths; also, the height of a transfer unit achieved by them is 10-20 times smaller. In addition, they can transfer up to 20 times more heat at the same pumping power expenditure and need to utilize as low as 1 kPa for the achievement of one transfer unit compared to 30 kPa for metal heat exchangers. Considering their lower fixed cost, they can be considered suitable alternatives for metal and plastic heat exchangers at lower temperatures and pressures. Solid hollow fiber cooling crystallization (SHFCC) was proved to be a promising technique for crystal size distribution control of both aqueous and organic systems. A combination of a solid hollow fiber crystallizer with a mixing device downstream was the most successful. For the aqueous potassium nitrate system, this combination provided crystal size distributions with 3-4 times smaller mean sizes compared to those mentioned in existing literature of Mixed Suspension Mixed Product Removal (MSMPR) crystallizers. In addition, 90% of the crystals produced were confined to sizes at least two times smaller, while the nucleation rates achieved were 2-3 orders of magnitude higher. Runs with aqueous paracetamol (4-acetamidophenol) solutions showed that an SHFCstatic mixer assembly can be operated successfully up to 30-40°C below the metastable zone limit, a capability not existent in industrial cooling crystallizers. This ability allows the achievement of very high nucleation rates and the decoupling of nucleation and growth, an opportunity offered currently only by impinging jet mixers for antisolvent crystallization. Porous hollow fiber devices proved efficient mixing devices, which unlike other tubular devices offer the opportunity for substantial radial mixing and hence the production of good micromixing. By proper rating they can potentially be utilized for reaction purposes, especially for liquid-liquid reactions on a 1:1 stoichiometric ratio, a task never performed before in membrane reactors. Porous hollow fiber emulsion crystallization (PHFEC) of a system with an immiscible solvent-antisolvent pair, salicylic acid in 1-octanol and water, encountered difficulties. While an emulsion of droplets smaller than 50 μm was obtained, crystallization at the droplet surface or interior was strongly hindered probably due to the presence of the emulsifier. The latter, although beneficial for droplet stabilization and size control, prevents contact of the solute and the antisolvent and consequently the generation of supersaturation conditions. Polymeric hollow fiber antisolvent crystallization (PHFAC) was found to be a promising crystallization technique for miscible solvent-antisolvent pairs. When crystallization was performed at the tube side of the device, the crystal size distributions obtained for the system aqueous L-asparagine monohydrate and 2-propanol as the antisolvent were confined below 200 μm. However, prolonged operation of the membrane hollow fiber crystallizer was problematic due to pore and/or fiber blockage. The same was not true when crystallization was performed at the shell side of the device. Crystallization runs with the same system showed that, apart from stable operation, mean sizes as low as 30-40 μm can be achieved. The crystal size distribution was confined between 70 and 150 μm, a size range suitable for most pharmaceutical crystalline products and about 2-4 times smaller compared to 200-300 μm achieved in stirred crystallizers for the same system. In addition, 1-5 orders of magnitude higher nucleation rates were obtained at the same levels of supersaturation

Mesophilic Anaerobic Co-digestion of Olive-Mill Waste With Cattle Manure: Effects of Mixture Ratio

The co-digestion of agri-food by-products and livestock manure is a feasible alternative for waste management and the recovery of biogas provides an option to generate renewable energy. A series of batch experiments were carried out in order to investigate the mesophilic anaerobic co-digestion of two-phase olive-mill waste (2POMW) and cattle manure (CM) in different mixtures (2POMW:CM = 50:50; 60:40; 75:25; 85:15). In addition, the biodegradability of the co-substrates was studied in order to analyze the performance of the co-digestion process. The results obtained in this study indicate that 2POMW has a low biodegradability since a high soluble organic matter concentration and a low accumulated methane production were obtained at the end of the corresponding biodegradability test. However, CM is more easily biodegradable in mesophilic anaerobic conditions. The co-digestion of both wastes produced an enhancement of the hydrolytic-acidogenic phase, increasing the organic matter potentially bioavailable as volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and the biogas productivity, as a consequence of the subsequent degradation of VFAs by methanogens. However, an accumulation of VFA, principally propionic acid, was observed in the reactors with higher proportions of 2POMW. The volatile solids (VS) removal increased with the 2POMW percentage of the mixture up to 75% fresh weight. The increase of 2POMW above 75% led to a decrease in total VS removal. Moreover, a decrease in methane production was observed for the 85:15 mixture, as a consequence of the high concentration of propionic acid, which is a known inhibitor of methanogenesis. The maximum cumulative methane production and methane yield were achieved in the 75:25 mixture with values of 18.70 L and 112.40 LCH4/kgVS(added), respectively. Compared with 2POMW, the co-digestion produced an increase of 264-319% in the volume of accumulated methane (L), 293-351% in the methane yield (LCH4/kgVS(added)) and 312-342% based on the VS consumed (LCH4/kgVS(removed)). These results suggest that the mixture of these agro-industrial by-products could be effective to enhance biogas production and organic matter removal from 2POMW

BPF-oF: Storage Function Pushdown Over the Network

Storage disaggregation, wherein storage is accessed over the network, is popular because it allows applications to independently scale storage capacity and bandwidth based on dynamic application demand. However, the added network processing introduced by disaggregation can consume significant CPU resources. In many storage systems, logical storage operations (e.g., lookups, aggregations) involve a series of simple but dependent I/O access patterns. Therefore, one way to reduce the network processing overhead is to execute dependent series of I/O accesses at the remote storage server, reducing the back-and-forth communication between the storage layer and the application. We refer to this approach as \emph{remote-storage pushdown}. We present BPF-oF, a new remote-storage pushdown protocol built on top of NVMe-oF, which enables applications to safely push custom eBPF storage functions to a remote storage server. The main challenge in integrating BPF-oF with storage systems is preserving the benefits of their client-based in-memory caches. We address this challenge by designing novel caching techniques for storage pushdown, including splitting queries into separate in-memory and remote-storage phases and periodically refreshing the client cache with sampled accesses from the remote storage device. We demonstrate the utility of BPF-oF by integrating it with three storage systems, including RocksDB, a popular persistent key-value store that has no existing storage pushdown capability. We show BPF-oF provides significant speedups in all three systems when accessed over the network, for example improving RocksDB's throughput by up to 2.8$\times$ and tail latency by up to 2.6$\times$

Agronomic and Kernel Compositional Traits of Blue Maize Landraces from the Southwestern United States

Diverse landraces of maize have been cultivated for centuries in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico primarily for human food consumption. A striking feature of these landraces is the wide array of kernel colors displayed. Traditional cultivation is declining, but blue maize has received increasing commercial interest due to rising consumer demand for unique food products with health benefits and special culinary uses. We evaluated grain yield, agronomic and morphological traits, and analyzed the kernel biochemical composition of five blue and one purple landraces representative of diversity in the Southwest. These were compared with selected open-pollinated populations derived from Southwest and Corn Belt blue maize at several New Mexico locations in 2012 and 2013. Kernel amino acids, oil, protein, starch, fatty acids, crude fiber, ash and anthocyanin pigment contents were determined. Grain yield across all locations, years, and accessions averaged 2.11 Mg ha−1. Navajo Blue and Hopi Blue were the highest and lowest yielding accessions, respectively. The majority of southwestern landraces displayed higher oil content, and two displayed higher protein content, than the Corn Belt Dent variety. Little variation in total amino acid content was observed. Several southwestern floury accessions displayed ∼10% greater lysine and methionine than did dent or flint genotypes. Considerable variation for plant, ear, and kernel compositional traits within and across southwestern landraces was consistent with the presence of racial admixtures. The health-promoting properties of anthocyanin-rich landraces contribute to sound dietary nutrition and human health. This study further illustrates the diversity of southwestern maize and supports the rationale for their continued conservation through sustained cultivation and utilization. Directed selection to improve grain yield and uniformity will be necessary to enhance their potential for commercial production

The role of nano-perovskite in the negligible thorium release in seawater from Greek bauxite residue (red mud)

We present new data about the chemical and structural characteristics of bauxite residue (BR) from Greek Al industry, using a combination of microscopic, analytical, and spectroscopic techniques. SEM-EDS indicated a homogeneous dominant “Al-Fe-Ca-Ti-Si-Na-Cr matrix”, appearing at the microscale. The bulk chemical analyses showed considerable levels of Th (111 μg g−1), along with minor U (15 μg g−1), which are responsible for radioactivity (355 and 133 Bq kg−1 for 232Th and 238U, respectively) with a total dose rate of 295 nGy h−1. Leaching experiments, in conjunction with SF-ICP-MS, using Mediterranean seawater from Greece, indicated significant release of V, depending on S/L ratio, and negligible release of Th at least after 12 months leaching. STEM-EDS/EELS & HR-STEM-HAADF study of the leached BR at the nanoscale revealed that the significant immobility of Th4+ is due to its incorporation into an insoluble perovskite-type phase with major composition of Ca0.8Na0.2TiO3 and crystallites observed in nanoscale. The Th LIII-edge EXAFS spectra demonstrated that Th4+ ions, which are hosted in this novel nano-perovskite of BR, occupy Ca2+ sites, rather than Ti4+ sites. That is most likely the reason of no Th release in Mediterranean seawater

Psychosocial aspects of coeliac disease: a cross-sectional survey of a UK population.

yesObjectives. Coeliac disease (CD) is an autoimmune condition managed by a lifelong therapeutic gluten-free diet. Previous research suggests that the chronicity of CD, the limitations imposed by the gluten-free diet, and the risk of other associated diseases can have a negative impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and psychological well-being. The aim of this study was to explore the illness perceptions and self-efficacy beliefs of adults with CD in the United Kingdom and to report their subjective levels of HRQoL and psychological well-being. Design. The study employed a cross-sectional postal questionnaire design. Method. Participants (n= 288) were adults with CD recruited via Coeliac UK. Measures of well-being, HRQoL, self-efficacy, illness perceptions, and dietary self-management were analysed. Preliminary descriptive and univariate procedures were employed before bivariate tests of association or difference were carried out. Backward stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the predictive strength of variables on well-being, quality of life, and self-efficacy. Logistic regression was used to look at the influence of variables on adherence. Results. Results indicate that HRQoL and psychological well-being were comparable to those found in previous related studies. Participants with weak beliefs in the serious consequences of CD and poorer emotional reactions to the condition had a greater likelihood of having enhanced HRQoL, improved psychological well-being, and higher self-efficacy. Strong beliefs in personal control and a greater perceived understanding of CD were associated with greater self-efficacy. Conclusions. Perceived self-efficacy and illness perceptions could play a role in informing psychological interventions for individuals with CD

The Canadian celiac health survey – the Ottawa chapter pilot

BACKGROUND: Celiac disease may manifest with a variety of symptoms which can result in delays in diagnosis. Celiac disease is associated with a number of other medical conditions. The last national survey of members of the Canadian Celiac Association (CCA) was in 1989. Our objective was to determine the feasibility of surveying over 5,000 members of the CCA, in addition to obtaining more health related information about celiac disease. METHODS: The Professional Advisory Board of the CCA in collaboration with the University of Ottawa developed a comprehensive questionnaire on celiac disease. The questionnaire was pre-tested and then a pilot survey was conducted on members of the Ottawa Chapter of the CCA using a Modified Dillmans' Total Design method for mail surveys. RESULTS: We had a 76% response to the first mailout of the questionnaire. The mean age of participants was 55.5 years and the mean age at diagnosis was 45 years. The majority of respondents presented with abdominal pain, diarrhea, fatigue or weight loss. Prior to diagnosis, 30% of respondents consulted four or more family doctors. Thirty seven percent of individuals were told they had either osteoporosis or osteopenia. Regarding the impact of the gluten-free diet (GFD), 45% of individuals reported that they found following a GFD was very or moderately difficult. The quality of life of individuals with celiac disease was comparable to the mean quality of life of Canadians. CONCLUSION: On the basis of our results, we concluded that a nationwide survey is feasible and this is in progress. Important concerns included delays in the diagnosis of celiac disease and the awareness of associated medical conditions. Other issues include awareness of celiac disease by health professionals and the impact of the GFD on quality of life. These issues will be addressed further in the national survey