Impoliteness in Jeremy Clarkson’s humor in the tv series Top Gear

This research was conducted  to observe impoliteness strategies employed by Jeremy Clarkson in his humor in the TV Series Top Gear with the intention to unveil which strategy he utilized most and elucidate the reason upon the most and least occurring impoliteness strategies. The present research utilizes Culpeper’s (1996) model of impoliteness super strategies as the main framework to identify, analyze, and elaborate the research data. Other theories related to impoliteness such as face-threatening act and politeness was also utilized to assist the analysis process. The result of the research revealed that negative impoliteness strategy was the most commonly used strategy through which Jeremy Clarkson delivers his humor. Contrary to the withhold politeness strategy which accounted for the least occurring strategy. The explanation upon the result to be the way they are could be referred back to Jeremy Clarkson’s main intentions of uttering impolite remarks—in an effort to amuse the audience and keep the show entertaining

Efficacy of Kinesio Taping as an Adjunct Intervention to Traditional Physical Therapy in the Treatment of Nonspecific Acute Low Back Pain: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial

The Efficacy of Kinesio Taping as an Adjunct Intervention to Traditional Physical Therapy in the Treatment of Nonspecific Acute Low Back Pain: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial Background: Acute low back pain (LBP) is a significant health problem worldwide and is one of the leading causes of disability. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Kinesio Taping (KT) on disability, fear-avoidance beliefs, and pain intensity in patients with acute, nonspecific LBP. Research Design and Methods: A prospective, randomized controlled study of consecutive patients referred to physical therapy with a primary complaint of LBP. Seventy-eight patients with acute, nonspecific LBP were randomized to an experimental group that received traditional physical therapy plus KT and a control group that received traditional physical therapy alone. Interventions were administered twice a week for 4 weeks. Assessment tools used were Ronald Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ) for disability, Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ) for fear-avoidance beliefs, and Numerical Pain Rating Scale (NPRS) for pain intensity. Assessments were conducted at baseline, end of week 1, end of week 2, end of week 3, and end of week 4. Analysis: Repeated measures mixed model analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine the effect of treatment on each variable. The group type was the between-subjects variable and the time was the within-subjects variable. A significance level of .05 was used in the analyses. Results: Both groups showed statistically significant lower disability, fear-avoidance beliefs, and pain levels over time compared with baseline scores (p \u3c .0001). The experimental group showed statistically significant lower RMDQ scores at week 2, 3, and 4 (p \u3c .05), statistically significant lower FABQ-physical activity subscale scores at the end of week 1 (p \u3c .01), at the end of week 2 (p \u3c .01), at the end of week 3 (p \u3c .01), and at the end of week 4 (p \u3c .05), statistically significant lower FABQ-work subscale scores at week 3 (p \u3c .05) and week 4 (p \u3c .01), and statistically significant lower NPRS scores at week 1, 2, 3, and 4 (p \u3c .05). Conclusion: Kinesio Taping can be considered a useful adjunct intervention to reduce disability and pain and to modulate fear-avoidance beliefs in patients with acute, nonspecific LBP

Are the Effects of Structure Formation Seen in the Central Metallicity of Galaxy Clusters?

A sample of 46 nearby clusters observed with Chandra is analyzed to produce radial density, temperature, entropy and metallicity profiles, as well as other morphological measurements. The entropy profiles are computed to larger radial extents than in previous Chandra cluster sample analyses. We find that the iron mass fraction measured in the inner 0.15 R500 shows a larger dispersion across the sample of low-mass clusters, than it does for the sample of high-mass clusters. We interpret this finding as the result of the mixing of more haloes in large clusters than in small clusters, which leads to an averaging of the metal content in the large clusters, and thus less dispersion of metallicity for high-mass clusters. This interpretation lends support to the idea that the low-entropy, metal-rich gas of merging haloes reaches clusters' centers, which explains observations of Core-Collapse Supernova products metallicity peaks, and which is seen in hydrodynamical simulations. The gas in these merging haloes would have to reach the centers of clusters without mixing in the outer regions, in order to support our interpretation. On the other hand, metallicity dispersion does not change with mass in the outer regions of clusters, suggesting that most of the outer metals come from a source with a more uniform metallicity level, such as during pre-enrichment. We also measure a correlation between the metal content in low-mass clusters and the degree to which their Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM) is morphologically disturbed, as measured by centroid shift. This suggests an alternative interpretation of the large width of the metallicity distribution in low-mass clusters, whereby a metallicity boost in the center of low-mass clusters is induced as a transitional state, during mergers.Comment: Accepted in ApJ, March 9, 201

High-temperature Electrochemical Systems for Clean Energy Production

With the depletion of fossil fuels and increase in carbon emissions, power generation using clean energy technology remains a major research thrust today. High temperature electrochemical systems such as solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) are upcoming energy conversion systems with advantages of fuel flexibility, high efficiency, and cost effectiveness. Our research at KSU focuses on the development of a fundamental understanding of various surface and interfacial degradation modes in fuel cells. This study will highlight ongoing research from both the computational and experimental work and the fundamental working principle of SOFC will be presented. Simulation data pertaining to the structural stability of fuel cells under thermal gradient and cycling conditions will be discussed. Experimental results of fabrication of laboratory scale single fuel cell will be highlighted, and performance matrix will be discussed. Results from high-temperature oxidation and measurement of electrical conductivity at elevated temperatures on stainless steel samples will also be discussed. SOFC power systems find numerous applications in automotive, residential power grids, industrial power plants, and in mission-critical projects

Circuits and Systems for On-Chip RF Chemical Sensors and RF FDD Duplexers

Integrating RF bio-chemical sensors and RF duplexers helps to reduce cost and area in the current applications. Furthermore, new applications can exist based on the large scale integration of these crucial blocks. This dissertation addresses the integration of RF bio-chemical sensors and RF duplexers by proposing these initiatives. A low power integrated LC-oscillator-based broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BDS) system is presented. The real relative permittivity ε’r is measured as a shift in the oscillator frequency using an on-chip frequency-to-digital converter (FDC). The imaginary relative permittivity ε”r increases the losses of the oscillator tank which mandates a higher dc biasing current to preserve the same oscillation amplitude. An amplitude-locked loop (ALL) is used to fix the amplitude and linearize the relation between the oscillator bias current and ε”r. The proposed BDS system employs a sensing oscillator and a reference oscillator where correlated double sampling (CDS) is used to mitigate the impact of flicker noise, temperature variations and frequency drifts. A prototype is implemented in 0.18 µm CMOS process with total chip area of 6.24 mm^2 to operate in 1-6 GHz range using three dual bands LC oscillators. The achieved standard deviation in the air is 2.1 ppm for frequency reading and 110 ppm for current reading. A tunable integrated electrical balanced duplexer (EBD) is presented as a compact alternative to multiple bulky SAW and BAW duplexers in 3G/4G cellular transceivers. A balancing network creates a replica of the transmitter signal for cancellation at the input of a single-ended low noise amplifier (LNA) to isolate the receive path from the transmitter. The proposed passive EBD is based on a cross-connected transformer topology without the need of any extra balun at the antenna side. The duplexer achieves around 50 dB TX-RX isolation within 1.6-2.2 GHz range up to 22 dBm. The cascaded noise figure of the duplexer and LNA is 6.5 dB, and TX insertion loss (TXIL) of the duplexer is about 3.2 dB. The duplexer and LNA are implemented in 0.18 µm CMOS process and occupy an active area of 0.35 mm^2

Letter to the Editor

A missed complicated Morgagni–Larrey’s herni