Analyzing the Use and Influence of Various Media in United States Presidential Campaigning

This manuscript will discuss the evolution of information dissemination in political campaigning, with a focus on US presidential campaigns. Moreover, this manuscript will delve into the effectiveness and pitfalls within each method throughout the subsequently established timeline. There will be an emphasis placed upon the degree influence of said disseminated information as per each method through which it was implemented. Finally, this paper will come to a conclusion drawn upon analysis from the introduced data and facts pertaining to the previously alluded methods

Compression Tester Shop Press

A piece of machinery designed to carry out compression and bending tests on building materials constructed by the Center for Vocational Building Technologies (CVBT) in Isarn, Thailand

Final Project Report: Glucose Monitoring Group

Retroreflectors can potentially be used in the design of a minimally invasive glucose-monitoring device. The primary objective of this senior design project is to design, build, and test a system to show that retroreflectors can be detected through a semi-opaque medium similar to human tissue. The secondary objective is to determine if the system can detect the retroreflectors through blood with and without gold nanoparticles. The design constraints of the project are described as well as the design of the apparatus, the test setup and procedure protocols for the project, the results of these tests, and a conceptual design. Data from the test procedure is collected by using a HeNe laser that shines through one converging lenses, an iris, a beam splitter, a semi-opaque medium to emulate human tissue, and gold nanoparticles that mimic glucose molecules in blood. The light hits a retroreflector that sends the light back through the beam splitter to a photodiode that is hooked up to a digital multimeter to measure the detected signal. A full factorial two factor Design of Experiments (DOE) with three levels is used to test the apparatus. Nanoparticle concentration and angle of incidence on the retroreflector are the dependent variables. The DOE is run two times for the water medium, but the testing of semi-opaque media are unable to be performed due to scattering of the beam. In deionized water, minimal interaction effects between nanoparticle concentration and angle are observed, and light scattering appears to increase as nanoparticle concentration increases. In blood, significant interaction effects are observed, and light scattering appears to decrease as nanoparticle concentration increases. This unexpected trend is likely due to unforeseen interactions between the nanoparticles and the solutes in blood. It is concluded that the apparatus is sufficient to provide results for the water medium, and insufficient for more opaque media due to scattering. Altered nanoparticles are needed for testing in blood

About the Iris Journal of Scholarship

The following is a brief history of the Iris Journal of Scholarship and includes biographies of its founding leaders

DAVINCI: Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging

DAVINCI is one of five Discovery-class missions selected by NASA in October 2015 for Phase A studies. Launching in November 2021 and arriving at Venus in June of 2023, DAVINCI would be the first U.S. entry probe to target Venus atmosphere in 45 years. DAVINCI is designed to study the chemical and isotopic composition of a complete cross-section of Venus atmosphere at a level of detail that has not been possible on earlier missions and to image the surface at optical wavelengths and process-relevant scales

Dose-Response of Aerobic Exercise on Cognition: A Community-Based, Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Epidemiological studies suggest a dose-response relationship exists between physical activity and cognitive outcomes. However, no direct data from randomized trials exists to support these indirect observations. The purpose of this study was to explore the possible relationship of aerobic exercise dose on cognition. Underactive or sedentary participants without cognitive impairment were randomized to one of four groups: no-change control, 75, 150, and 225 minutes per week of moderate-intensity semi-supervised aerobic exercise for 26-weeks in a community setting. Cognitive outcomes were latent residual scores derived from a battery of 16 cognitive tests: Verbal Memory, Visuospatial Processing, Simple Attention, Set Maintenance and Shifting, and Reasoning. Other outcome measures were cardiorespiratory fitness (peak oxygen consumption) and measures of function functional health. In intent-to-treat (ITT) analyses (n = 101), cardiorespiratory fitness increased and perceived disability decreased in a dose-dependent manner across the 4 groups. No other exercise-related effects were observed in ITT analyses. Analyses restricted to individuals who exercised per-protocol (n = 77) demonstrated that Simple Attention improved equivalently across all exercise groups compared to controls and a dose-response relationship was present for Visuospatial Processing. A clear dose-response relationship exists between exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness. Cognitive benefits were apparent at low doses with possible increased benefits in visuospatial function at higher doses but only in those who adhered to the exercise protocol. An individual’s cardiorespiratory fitness response was a better predictor of cognitive gains than exercise dose (i.e., duration) and thus maximizing an individual’s cardiorespiratory fitness may be an important therapeutic target for achieving cognitive benefits

Trace-gas metabolic versatility of the facultative methanotroph Methylocella silvestris

The climate-active gas methane is generated both by biological processes and by thermogenic decomposition of fossil organic material, which forms methane and short-chain alkanes, principally ethane, propane and butane1, 2. In addition to natural sources, environments are exposed to anthropogenic inputs of all these gases from oil and gas extraction and distribution. The gases provide carbon and/or energy for a diverse range of microorganisms that can metabolize them in both anoxic3 and oxic zones. Aerobic methanotrophs, which can assimilate methane, have been considered to be entirely distinct from utilizers of short-chain alkanes, and studies of environments exposed to mixtures of methane and multi-carbon alkanes have assumed that disparate groups of microorganisms are responsible for the metabolism of these gases. Here we describe the mechanism by which a single bacterial strain, Methylocella silvestris, can use methane or propane as a carbon and energy source, documenting a methanotroph that can utilize a short-chain alkane as an alternative to methane. Furthermore, during growth on a mixture of these gases, efficient consumption of both gases occurred at the same time. Two soluble di-iron centre monooxygenase (SDIMO) gene clusters were identified and were found to be differentially expressed during bacterial growth on these gases, although both were required for efficient propane utilization. This report of a methanotroph expressing an additional SDIMO that seems to be uniquely involved in short-chain alkane metabolism suggests that such metabolic flexibility may be important in many environments where methane and short-chain alkanes co-occur

Studies on hypexia : X. Effects of synthetic polyribonucleotides on pancreas from hypoxic and control rats: An electron microscopic and biochemical study

Young male Sprague-Dawley rats were paired according to weight, and experimental animals were placed in an environmental chamber which was supplied with a continuous flow of 88% N2 and 12% O2 for 7 days. The paired control animals were treated identically except that a flow of ambient air was made available in place of the gas mixture. One half of each of the experimental and control rats was given an intraperitoneal injection of polyadenylic and polyuridylic acids [poly A:U (1 mg/kg] 24 hr prior to sacrifice. All animals were given an injection of -phenylalanine-3H (2 [mu]Ci/g spact; 5 Ci/mmale) at 60 min prior to sacrifice. Tissues were prepared for microscopic observation by perfusion fixation with 2% formaldehyde derived from paraformaldehyde and embedding in epoxy resin in a routine manner. In biochemical work, tissues were analyzed for amylase, DNA, and protein. Radioactivity in acid-precipitable and soluble fractions was determined by scintillation spectroscopy. The ultrastructural aspects of pancreatic acinar cells from hypoxic rats confirmed findings from earlier studies from this laboratory and showed a general reduction in size and organizational complexity of cytoplasmic organelles that are concerned with exportable protein biosynthesis. In poly (A:U)-treated rats, ultrastructural changes in pancreatic acinar cells included a reduction in the number of mature zymogen granules and a marked enlargement of Golgi apparatus. Biochemically, tissues from poly (A:U)-treated rats showed an enhanced protein synthesis despite a decrease in the total protein and amylase contents, indicating a facilitated release of secretory proteins by poly (A:U). Although similar effects were observed both in control and hypoxic animals, the cells from the experimental rats showed more pronounced changes. It is concluded that (poly (A:U) stimulates protein synthesis by pancreatic acinar cells and that such stimulation is more pronounced in the pancreas from rats that have been exposed to hypoxia.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/22008/1/0000423.pd

Texture Segregation By Visual Cortex: Perceptual Grouping, Attention, and Learning

A neural model is proposed of how laminar interactions in the visual cortex may learn and recognize object texture and form boundaries. The model brings together five interacting processes: region-based texture classification, contour-based boundary grouping, surface filling-in, spatial attention, and object attention. The model shows how form boundaries can determine regions in which surface filling-in occurs; how surface filling-in interacts with spatial attention to generate a form-fitting distribution of spatial attention, or attentional shroud; how the strongest shroud can inhibit weaker shrouds; and how the winning shroud regulates learning of texture categories, and thus the allocation of object attention. The model can discriminate abutted textures with blurred boundaries and is sensitive to texture boundary attributes like discontinuities in orientation and texture flow curvature as well as to relative orientations of texture elements. The model quantitatively fits a large set of human psychophysical data on orientation-based textures. Object boundar output of the model is compared to computer vision algorithms using a set of human segmented photographic images. The model classifies textures and suppresses noise using a multiple scale oriented filterbank and a distributed Adaptive Resonance Theory (dART) classifier. The matched signal between the bottom-up texture inputs and top-down learned texture categories is utilized by oriented competitive and cooperative grouping processes to generate texture boundaries that control surface filling-in and spatial attention. Topdown modulatory attentional feedback from boundary and surface representations to early filtering stages results in enhanced texture boundaries and more efficient learning of texture within attended surface regions. Surface-based attention also provides a self-supervising training signal for learning new textures. Importance of the surface-based attentional feedback in texture learning and classification is tested using a set of textured images from the Brodatz micro-texture album. Benchmark studies vary from 95.1% to 98.6% with attention, and from 90.6% to 93.2% without attention.Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-01-1-0397, F49620-01-1-0423); National Science Foundation (SBE-0354378); Office of Naval Research (N00014-01-1-0624

Associations with age and glomerular filtration rate in a referred population with chronic kidney disease: Methods and baseline data from a UK multicentre cohort study (NURTuRE-CKD)

BACKGROUND: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is common but heterogenous and is associated with multiple adverse outcomes. The National Unified Renal Translational Research Enterprise (NURTuRE)-CKD cohort was established to investigate risk factors for clinically important outcomes in persons with CKD referred to secondary care. METHODS: Eligible participants with CKD stages G3-4 or stages G1-2 plus albuminuria > 30 mg/mmol were enrolled from 16 nephrology centres in England, Scotland and Wales from 2017 to 2019. Baseline assessment included demographic data, routine laboratory data and research samples. Clinical outcomes are being collected over 15 years by the UK Renal Registry using established data linkage. Baseline data are presented with subgroup analysis by age, sex and estimated GFR (eGFR). RESULTS: 2996 participants were enrolled. Median (interquartile range) age was 66 (54 to 74) years, 58.5% were male, eGFR 33.8 (24.0 to 46.6) ml/min/1.73m2 and UACR 209 (33 to 926) mg/g. 1883 participants (69.1%) were in high-risk CKD categories. Primary renal diagnosis was CKD of unknown cause in 32.3%, glomerular disease in 23.4% and diabetic kidney disease in 11.5%. Older participants and those with lower eGFR had higher systolic blood pressure and were less likely to be treated with renin-angiotensin system inhibitors (RASi) but were more likely to receive a statin. Female participants were less likely to receive a RASi or statin. CONCLUSIONS: NURTuRE-CKD is a prospective cohort of persons who are at relatively high risk of adverse outcomes. Long-term follow-up and a large biorepository create opportunities for research to improve risk prediction and investigate underlying mechanisms to inform new treatment development