Study of man pulling a cart on the moon

Metabolic cost evaluation of self-locomotion in simulated lunar gravity using space suits and carts including weight load and surface effect

Calibration of thickness-dependent k-factors for germanium X-ray lines to improve energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy of SiGe layers in analytical transmission electron microscopy

We show that the accuracy of energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy can be improved by analysing and comparing multiple lines from the same element. For each line, an effective k-factor can be defined that varies as a function of the intensity ratio of multiple lines (e.g. K/L) from the same element. This basically performs an internal self-consistency check in the quantification using differently absorbed X-ray lines, which is in principle equivalent to an absorption correction as a function of specimen thickness but has the practical advantage that the specimen thickness itself does not actually need to be measured

Positive for youth work? Contested terrains of professional youth work in austerity England

© 2014 Taylor & Francis. This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below.This article considers professional youth work in England. It reflects on youth work's persistently anomalous position in the division of labour. Since their achievement of a contested professional status in the 1960s and 1970s, youth workers have pursued an occupational ideology that draws principally on a romantic humanism. Until recently, this provided a relatively stable basis to their practices. Under a dominant contemporary neo-liberalism, influential in different ways across Europe, youth work has been subjected to a range of managerialist practices that have further exposed its ambiguity as a profession. Austerity policy, enacted under the Coalition government, has further weakened professional youth work's position in the welfare division of labour. The article points to resistance to austerity on the part of some youth workers and speculates on the possible future of professional youth work in a policy regime that has little sympathy for the public professions

Man's capability for self-locomotion on the moon. Phase 2 - Bungee simulator evaluation

Design and performance of suspension system for lunar gravity simulatio

Germline determinants of outcome and risk in colorectal cancer

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified germline single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are associated with colorectal cancer (CRC) susceptibility. This thesis applies the same approach to the identification of germline determinants of prognosis in CRC, attempts to verify potential susceptibility loci, and examines the relationship between SNPs and some forms of non-SNP based germline variation. The GWAS for prognosis used 931 patients enrolled in the VICTOR trial in the discovery phase, screening 309,200 autosomal SNPs for an association with disease-free survival (DFS). Following the application of selection filters based on statistical significance levels and performance of the genotyping, 40 SNPs were identified to be examined in further cohorts. The verification phase consisted of 1338 patients in the PETACC 3 trial and three population based cohorts: 899 patients from Scotland, 599 patients from Denmark, and 962 patients from Finland. The SNPs that came closest to genome-wide significance in stage 2 and 3 CRC was rs7556894, 15kb from Actin-related protein 2 (ARP2) on chromosome 2, part of the ARP2/3 complex essential for cell shape and motility, with p=8.96e-07. The impact on prognosis of rs7556894 was estimated as HR=1.52 (95% CI 1.17-1.96). Because of the failure to reach genome-wide significance (p<1e-07), two further approaches to the discovery phase are presented: the meta-analysis of two discovery cohorts to increase event rate and subject numbers and a GWAS for predictive markers for the benefit of adjuvant 5-FU chemotherapy. Formal verification of either approach was not undertaken as part of this thesis. Further loci were subjected to specific analyses of association with prognosis or CRC susceptibility: rs6983267 and the previously identified CRC susceptibility loci to a survival analysis, and not found to be associated; rs6687758, previously identified as a potential CRC risk locus to a susceptibility verification, confirming a significant association with HR=1.15, 95% CI 1.10-1.21, p=5.04e-08; and a variety of hypothesis driven potential risk loci to a screen for an association with CRC susceptibility, none was found but the LD relationship between tagSNPs and insertion/deletion polymorphisms appears to be the same as for ‘normal’ SNPs. Overall, the data presented in this thesis quantify further the contribution of germline variation to CRC susceptibility, exclude a major effect of such variation on prognosis, and verify rs6687758 as a further low-penetrance CRC susceptibility locus