The Effects of Stress During Drying Upon Physical Characteristics

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of stress during drying upon the strength of the paper. This study consisted of two machine runs on a pilot paper machine. The machine was operated with minimum tension in all draws to provide a standard condition. For experimental conditions, tension was applied at various draws and increased until the sheet broke. Samples were taken from the standard condition sets and from-all experimental sets for evaluation purposes. The samples were evaluated for machine and cross-machine direction elongation, machine and cross-machine direction tensile, mullen, and machine and cross-machine direction tensile energy absorption. It was observed that machine direction elongation decreased, the machine direction tensile strength increased, and the mullen decreased when increased tension was applied. The machine direction tensile energy absorption (T.E.A) decreased and the cross-machine direction T.E.A. increased when tension was applied to the drying paper

Forensic Gunshot Residue Distance Determination Testing Using Identical Make and Model Handguns and Different Ammunitions.

The determination of how far a firearm was from a victim or target when it was discharged is a frequent request to crime laboratories. This determination requires test firing the firearm at various distances to compare gunshot residue patterns made during the test with patterns on the victim or target. Crime laboratories stipulate that the same firearm and ammunition used in commission of the crime must be used for this testing; however, little empirical evidence exists supporting this requirement. It was the purpose of this study to determine if there were any significant differences using different firearms and different ammunition in distance determination testing. The findings indicated that no significant differences occurred with different firearms but there were significant differences with different brands of ammunition

Multiplexed tandem PCR: gene profiling from small amounts of RNA using SYBR Green detection

Multiplexed tandem PCR (MT-PCR) is a process for highly multiplexed gene expression profiling. In the first step, multiple primer pairs are added to the RNA to be analysed together with reverse transcriptase and Taq DNA polymerase. Following reverse transcription, the multiplexed amplicons are simultaneously amplified for a small number of cycles so as to avoid competition between amplicons. The reaction product is then diluted and analysed in multiple individual PCRs using primers nested inside the primers used for the multiplexed amplification. As the second PCR uses a template enriched in the amplicons of interest, the conditions can be optimized to significantly reduce ‘primer dimer’ formation allowing SYBR Green chemistry to be used for quantification. MT-PCR can be configured for as little as 10 pg RNA (equivalent to a single mammalian cell) and works well with RNA extracted from archival formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded sections. We illustrate MT-PCR with gene expression profiles of breast cancer cell lines

Review of \u3cem\u3eThe Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America\u3c/em\u3e by Matthew E. Stanley

Interest in Civil War memory and post–Civil War sectional reconciliation has expanded greatly in recent years, as two 2016 historiographical essays attest.1 Matthew E. Stanley\u27s new book, The Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America is thus well timed to make an important contribution to our evolving understanding of the process of sectional reconciliation in the decades following the Civil War. With his focus on Kentucky\u27s northern neighbors in the lower portions of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, the editorial staff of the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society believe Stanley\u27s book will help historians better understand the role Kentucky played in the events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which saw a white supremacist version of Civil War memory eclipse an emancipationist version nationally. We have asked four nineteenth-century historians to consider Stanley\u27s book from varying perspectives. M. Keith Harris teaches history at a private high school in Los Angeles, California. He is the author of Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration among Civil War Veterans (2014) and is currently writing a book on D. W. Griffith\u27s controversial 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation. Anne E. Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University and the author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (2012). James Marten is professor and chair of the history department at Marquette University. His most recent books are Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (2011) and America\u27s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace (2014). Kristopher Maulden is a visiting assistant professor of history at Columbia College in Missouri. He is completing a book manuscript on the influence of Federalist politics and federal policy in the Ohio River Valley, and he is engaged in a study of nineteenth-century Ohio newspaper editor Charles Hammond. Finally, the author of The Loyal West, Matthew E. Stanley, assistant professor of history at Albany State University, will respond to the reviews

THE DETERMINANTS OF FOOD STAMP PROGRAM PARTICIPATION

Food Security and Poverty,

Intellectual Property and Opportunities for Food Security in the Philippines

By 2050, the Philippine population is projected to increase by as much as 41 percent, from 99.9 million to nearly 153 million people. Producing enough food for such an expanding population and achieving food security remain a challenge for the Philippine government. This paper argued that intellectual property rights (IPR) can play a key role in achieving the nation’s current goal to be food-secure and provided examples to illustrate that the presence of sound intellectual property (IP) helps foster research, development, and deployment of agricultural innovations. This paper also offered key recommendations about how the IP system can be further leveraged to enable access, creation, and commercialization of new and innovative agricultural practices and technologies to enhance the nation’s agricultural productivity, meet rice self-sufficiency, and sustain food security

Zechstein-Kupferschiefer Mineralization Reconsidered as a Product of Ultra-Deep Hydrothermal, Mud-Brine Volcanism

The Kupferschiefer is a copper-, polymetallic-, hydrocarbon-bearing black shale of the lowermost Zechstein Group of Permo-Triassic age (252 Ma) in Germany and Poland. It is usually 1 m thick and underlies 600,000 km2, extending from Great Britain to Belarus for a distance of over 1500 km. At a district scale, copper has been mined for over 800 years since its discovery circa 1200 A.D. Mineralogical, chemical, and geological analyses of the combined Zechstein-Kupferschiefer show strong chemical and paragenetic relationships between the Zechstein salines, Kupferschiefer, and Weissliegend sandstones that lead to a broader, more unified, genetically linked model related to deep-sourced, hot, hydrothermal, mud-brine volcanism. The overall Zechstein-Kupferschiefer chemical stratigraphy suggests density-/composition-driven fractionation of deep-sourced, metal-rich, alkali-rich, silica-aluminum-rich, halogen-rich, high-density brines. The ultimate brine source is interpreted to be serpentinized peridotite in the lower crust near the Moho transition to the mantle. Dehydration of the serpentinite source to talc (steatization) by mantle heat during failed, intra-continental rifting of the Pangaea supercontinent at the end of Permian time released vast amounts of element-laden, high-density brines into deep-basement fractures, depositing them into and above the Rotliegend Sandstone in the shallow Kupferschiefer Sea, which is analogous to the modern northern Caspian Sea

1:1 LAPTOP INITIATIVES AND TEACHER PRACTICE CHANGE: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF CONSTRUCTIVIST TEACHING PRACTICE

This exploratory study poses a number of important questions regarding the costly reform movement of 1:1 laptop programs. The study seeks to evaluate the extent to which teachers are genuinely adopting the educational reform movement of 1:1 laptop initiatives. The extent to which teachers are genuinely adopting (represented by constructivist teaching practice) versus symbolically adopting (represented by traditional teaching practice) is measured by a survey instrument, the 1:1 Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (1:1 CLES), with follow up interviews conducted to gain additional insight. The study was conducted with teachers in a mid-sized suburban district in the Midwest, which had recently begun implementation of a 1:1 initiative. The results indicated that there is a wide spectrum of traditional and constructivist practice among teachers of the district. Teachers which the survey identified as being constructivist in their use of laptops clearly saw their role as that of a facilitator and consistently used the laptops in methods that applied student-centered instructional approaches. Traditional teachers used the laptops as more of a replacement, communication, and efficiency device, and did not show frequent application of constructivist approaches to how the laptops were used. While there was some variance, the majority of teachers were implementing the 1:1 reform with fidelity as demonstrated by their constructivist instructional practice. This study provides a new lens through which to evaluate the extent of genuine adoption of 1:1 initiatives, looking at the level of adoption of the reform movement as measured by the level of constructivist practice. This lens provides rich opportunities to better understand the extent to which 1:1 laptop initiatives are being adopted. In order to gauge the effectiveness of the reform movement, the level of adoption must first be evaluated