Late Triassic and Early Jurassic radiolarians from Timor, eastern Indonesia

Rich fossil assemblages are used in a biostratigraphic and taxonomic study of the radiolarians occurring in the Aitutu and Wai Luli Formations of West Timor, Indonesia. The emphasis of this study is upon the abundant and diverse Late Triassic age radiolarians recovered from the River Meto sections of central West Timor and their comparison with other taxa found in Tethyan areas. The lower Mesozoic sediments of Timor form part of a displaced Gondwanan terrane and the Upper Triassic (Carnian, Norian and Rhaetian) taxa which are present in the Aitutu Formation compare closely with radiolarians reported from North America, Europe, Japan, China and the Philippines. Early Jurassic (Sinemurian, Pliensbachian and Toarcian) assemblages were also encountered, recorded and compared to those found in other regions. Sequences of co-occurringmicrofossils (including conodonts, foraminifera, ostracods and calcareous nannofossils) offer a control in confirming the age of the radiolarian assemblages encountered during this study. One new genus (Pseudolivarella) and fifteen new Upper Triassic species (Capnuchosphaera kapanesis, C. metoensis, C. timorensis, Deflandrecyrtium rhaetica, D. kozuri, Kahlerosphaera petalouda, Orbiculiforma kyklica, Palaeosaturnalis ovalis, Paronaella leebyi, Pentactinocarpus longispinosis, Pseudoheliodiscus carteri, Stauracanthocircus tozeri, Squinabolella. maxima, Pseudolivarella barkhami) are described and their biostratigraphic significance discussed. Informally, three assemblages and two subassemblages are recognised in the radiolarian faunas from Timor and these are as follows: 1) Capnodoce-Capnuchosphaera Assemblage (upper Carnian to lower Norian). 2) Palaeosaturnalis Assemblage (middle Norian). 3) Kozurastrum-Citraduma Assemblage (upper Norian-Rhaetian) with two subassemblages. 3a) Deflandrecyrtium-Livarella Subassemblage (upper Norian) = Betraccium deweveri Zone 3b) Parahsuum sp. A-Pseudolivarella n. gen. Subassemblage ( upper Norian- Rhaetian). The associations of taxa are defined using the abundant and highly diverse radiolarians from samples provided by Dr. S. T. Barkham. These were then tested on the less abundant and diverse assemblages collected by the author and proved to be of use for age correlation. Assemblages from Indonesia were found to have more species also occurring in European Tethys, North America and the Philippines than elsewhere. This may be the result of patchy sampling/preservation in some regions or genuine palaeobiogeographical differences in faunal assemblages. The other studies which contain highly diverse and abundant assemblages have more species which also occur in Timor than reported assemblages containing low abundances and diversities of radiolarians. The Lower Jurassic (Wai Luli Formation) contains less well-preserved radiolarians of Sinemurian-Toarcian age faunas and is briefly examined. These assemblages contain examples of the genus Parahsuum Yao, 1982 which occur frequently in the Lower Jurassic of Japan and are thus compared to taxa found in that region

Informed Consent and the Research Process: Following Rules or Striking Balances?

Gaining informed consent from people being researched is central to ethical research practice. There are, however, several factors that make the issue of informed consent problematic, especially in research involving members of groups that are commonly characterised as \'vulnerable\' such as children and people with learning disabilities. This paper reports on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which was concerned to identify and disseminate best practice in relation to informed consent in research with six such groups. The context for the study is the increased attention that is being paid to the issue of informed consent in research, not least because of the broad changes taking place in research governance and regulation in the UK. The project involved the analysis of researchers\' views and experiences of informed consent. The paper focuses on two particular difficulties inherent in the processes of gaining and maintaining informed consent. The first of these is that there is no consensus amongst researchers concerning what comprises \'informed consent\'. The second is that there is no consensus about whether the same sets of principles and procedures are equally applicable to research among different groups and to research conducted within different methodological frameworks. In exploring both these difficulties we draw on our findings to highlight the nature of these issues and some of our participants\' responses to them. These issues have relevance to wider debates about the role of guidelines and regulation for ethical practice. We found that study participants were generally less in favour of guidelines that regulate the way research is conducted and more in favour of guidelines that help researchers to strike balances between the conflicting pressures that inevitably occur in research.Informed Consent; Research Ethics; Regulation of Research; Research Governance; Professional Guidelines

Initial development of an ablative leading edge for the space shuttle orbiter

A state-of-the-art preliminary design for typical wing areas is developed. Seven medium-density ablators (with/without honeycomb, flown on Apollo, Prime, X15A2) are evaluated. The screening tests include: (1) leading-edge models sequentially subjected to ascent heating, cold soak, entry heating, post-entry pressure fluctuations, and touchdown shock, and (2) virgin/charred models subjected to bondline strains. Two honeycomb reinforced 30 pcf elastomeric ablators were selected. Roughness/recession degradation of low speed aerodynamics appears acceptable. The design, including attachments, substructure and joints, is presented

Life and Seoul of the Party: South Korea’s Brief Occupation under Communist North Korea

This thesis analyzes the North Korean occupation of Seoul through the oral histories of the men and women who experienced the event. At the beginning of the Korean War, North Korean forces successfully captured and held the South Korean capital for three months. Despite the occupation’s interesting premise, it has received little attention from Korean War scholars. Interviews with the people who lived through the Korean War though, demonstrate that from their point of view, the occupation was a particularly significant part of their war experience

Surviving Oncology: Living With Cancer in the Wake of Integrative Care

This dissertation analyzes the emerging medical field of integrative oncology, attending to how this approach to cancer treatment unsettles and reconfigures existing biomedical ideas about bodies and cancer. Informed by twelve months of multi-sited ethnographic study conducted in the state of California, it examines the attempts made by integrative practitioners to provide whole patient care by incorporating complementary medicines such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine into conventional oncology. I suggest that this approach enacts a kind of sensitivity for how cancer is lived as a disease conditioned by emotional, psychological, social, and environmental factors, requiring treatments attentive to these dimensions. Throughout this study I grapple with the intentions of integrative oncologists and the realities of the political economy of medicine and insurance in the United States that leaves integrative care out of the reach of most people, producing a situation where many are strained to imagine different ways of surviving oncology. At the core of this project is a concern for what it means and what it takes to live well with cancer in biomedicine

Screen Printing Silver Stretchable Conductive Paste to High Density Synthetic Fabric

This project investigated the viability of screen printing stretchable silver conductive paste directly onto fabric and how the resistance changed under cyclic mechanical loading. The paste tested was DuPont™ PE873 stretchable silver conductive paste, which forms a stretchable conductive path by suspending silver flakes in elastomer that can be elastically strained along with the underlying substrate. The silver pastes were printed directly onto two different high-density synthetic fabrics of different weaves. Other samples were prepared by first printing a base layer between the silver paste and the fabric. One base layer was a solvent-based dielectric (DuPont™ ME776) and a stretchable carbon conductor (DuPont™ PE671). This project determined that printing onto either base layer had a significantly smaller change in resistance under cyclic tensile tests than printing onto the fabric directly. Bend tests also revealed the possibility that the rate of change of strain had a higher impact on the change in resistance than the strain itself

IronNetInjector: Weaponizing .NET Dynamic Language Runtime Engines

As adversaries evolve their Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to stay ahead of defenders, Microsoft’s .NET Framework emerges as a common component found in the tradecraft of many contemporary Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), whether through PowerShell or C#. Because of .NET’s ease of use and availability on every recent Windows system, it is at the forefront of modern TTPs and is a primary means of exploitation. This article considers the .NET Dynamic Language Runtime as an attack vector, and how APTs have utilized it for offensive purposes. The technique under scrutiny is Bring Your Own Interpreter (BYOI), which is the ability of developers to embed dynamic languages into .NET using an engine. The focus of this analysis is an adversarial use case in which APT Turla utilized BYOI as an evasion technique, using an IronPython .NET Injector named IronNetInjector. This research analyzes IronNetInjector and how it was used to reflectively load .NET assemblies. It also evaluates the role of Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) in defending Windows. Due to AMSI being at the core of Windows malware mitigation, this article further evaluates the memory patching bypass technique by demonstrating a novel AMSI bypass method in IronPython using Platform Invoke (P/Invoke)

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station: A Question of Benefit versus Risk

This report was requested by Representative Anne Gobi to discuss the benefits and risks associated with Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station and develop recommendations based on the data collected. Concern about the safety of the plant increased after the accident that happened at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on March 11, 2011. Extensive research was done to formulate recommendations on the safety of the plant and its evacuation plans

Mapping of serotype-specific, immunodominant epitopes in the NS-4 region of hepatitis C virus (HCV):use of type-specific peptides to serologically differentiate infections with HCV types 1, 2, and 3

The effect of sequence variability between different types of hepatitis C virus (HCV) on the antigenicity of the NS-4 protein was investigated by epitope mapping and by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay with branched oligopeptides. Epitope mapping of the region between amino acid residues 1679 and 1768 in the HCV polyprotein revealed two major antigenic regions (1961 to 1708 and 1710 to 1728) that were recognized by antibody elicited upon natural infection of HCV. The antigenic regions were highly variable between variants of HCV, with only 50 to 60% amino acid sequence similarity between types 1, 2, and 3. Although limited serological cross-reactivity between HCV types was detected between peptides, particularly in the first antigenic region of NS-4, type-specific reactivity formed the principal component of the natural humoral immune response to NS-4. Type-specific antibody to particular HCV types was detected in 89% of the samples from anti-HCV-positive blood donors and correlated almost exactly with genotypic analysis of HCV sequences amplified from the samples by polymerase chain reaction. Whereas almost all blood donors appeared to be infected with a single virus type (97%), a higher proportion of samples (40%) from hemophiliacs infected from transfusion of non-heat-inactivated clotting factor contained antibody to two or even all three HCV types, providing evidence that long-term exposure may lead to multiple infection with different variants of HCV