Studies in the genetics of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Thesis (Ph. D. in Medical Sciences)--University of Tsukuba, (A), no. 4085, 2006.3.24Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes supplementary treatise

Hadron Production in Neutrino-Nucleon Interactions at High Energies

The multi-particle production at high energy neutrino- nucleon collisions are investigated through the analysis of the data of the experiment CERN-WA-025 at neutrino energy less than 260GeV and the experiments FNAL-616 and FNAL-701 at energy range 120-250 GeV. The general features of these experiments are used as base to build a hypothetical model that views the reaction by a Feynman diagram of two vertices. The first of which concerns the weak interaction between the neutrino and the quark constituents of the nucleon. At the second vertex, a strong color field is assumed to play the role of particle production, which depend on the momentum transferred from the first vertex. The wave function of the nucleon quarks are determined using the variation method and relevant boundary conditions are applied to calculate the deep inelastic cross sections of the virtual diagram.Comment: 6 pages PDF forma

A novel fabrication approach for multifunctional graphene-based thin film nano-composite membranes with enhanced desalination and antibacterial characteristics

A practical fabrication technique is presented to tackle the trade-off between the water flux and salt rejection of thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes through controlled creation of a thinner active selective polyamide (PA) layer. The new thin film nano-composite (TFNC) RO membranes were synthesized with multifunctional poly tannic acid-functionalized graphene oxide nanosheets (pTA-f-GO) embedded in its PA thin active layer, which is produced through interfacial polymerization. The incorporation of pTA-f-GOL into the fabricated TFNC membranes resulted in a thinner PA layer with lower roughness and higher hydrophilicity compared to pristine membrane. These properties enhanced both the membrane water flux (improved by 40%) and salt rejection (increased by 8%) of the TFNC membrane. Furthermore, the incorporation of biocidal pTA-f-GO nanosheets into the PA active layer contributed to improving the antibacterial properties by 80%, compared to pristine membrane. The fabrication of the pTA-f-GO nanosheets embedded in the PA layer presented in this study is a very practical, scalable and generic process that can potentially be applied in different types of separation membranes resulting in less energy consumption, increased cost-efficiency and improved performance.Hanaa M. Hegab, Ahmed ElMekawy, Thomas G. Barclay, Andrew Michelmore, Linda Zou, Dusan Losic, Christopher P. Saint and Milena Ginic-Markovi

Egyptian women fight back!

Women Rights, a topic often underrated and put on the bottom shelf. “It’s not a priority now,” they say. In this project, amazing and empowered women were interviewed discussing women’s rights issues in Egypt, and how the youth fights back after the revolution. The documentary also features “Imprint” movement and the BuSSy project

Expansion of Human Airway Basal Stem Cells and Their Differentiation as 3D Tracheospheres

Although basal cells function as human airway epithelial stem cells, analysis of these cells is limited by in vitro culture techniques that permit only minimal cell growth and differentiation. Here, we report a protocol that dramatically increases the long-term expansion of primary human airway basal cells while maintaining their genomic stability using 3T3-J2 fibroblast coculture and ROCK inhibition. We also describe techniques for the differentiation and imaging of these expanded airway stem cells as three-dimensional tracheospheres containing basal, ciliated, and mucosecretory cells. These procedures allow investigation of the airway epithelium under more physiologically relevant conditions than those found in undifferentiated monolayer cultures. Together these methods represent a novel platform for improved airway stem cell growth and differentiation that is compatible with high-throughput, high-content translational lung research as well as human airway tissue engineering and clinical cellular therapy

External financing: Market timing or managerial optimism

Management of capital structure is an important part of maximizing the firm value. Financial research has proposed many theories that explain aspects of firm behavior when a firm makes financial decisions that change the firm\u27s capital structure. However, none of the theories fully explain why firms with similar fundamental characteristics make different financing choices. This study focuses on what motivates managers when they are making external financing decisions. It investigated whether the motivation for the decisions about capital structure are driven by market timing or managerial overoptimism. This is done by focusing on equity and debt issues and whether these issues bring the firms closer to or farther away from their optimal capital structure. This study finds that the excess leverage proxy is negatively and significantly related to the one, two, and three year post-financing buy-and-hold abnormal returns even when firm characteristics are controlled. These results are also found when non-issuing matched firms, small firms, and large firms are analyzed. These results are consistent with the Managerial Overoptimism Theory. The results of this study also show that in the first post-financing year firms that issue equity when they are predicted to issue debt significantly out-perform firms that issue equity when they are predicted to issue equity. In addition, firms that issue debt when they are predicted to issue equity perform significantly worse than firms that issue debt and are predicted to issue debt. This holds when firms are matched by size, prior return, and book-to-market and when they are matched by industry, market value of equity, and book-to-market. These results support the Managerial Overoptimism Theory. In addition, this study shows that the difference in return for firms that are predicted to increase leverage is significantly different than the firms that are predicted to decrease leverage even when controlling for market, size, book-to-market, and momentum factors. The difference in performance is statistically significant at the 1% level for at least three years after external financing is issued. This study examines press releases mentioning manager optimism or caution (Malmendier and Tate 2008, 24) as a proxy for managerial overoptimism. The results show that the excess leverage proxy and the press proxy for managerial overoptimism are related with a positive correlation. These findings suggest a relationship between the excess leverage proxy and the press proxy for overoptimism and support the validity of the excess leverage proxy as a measure of managerial overoptimism. This study evaluates what influences manager when they are making decisions about issuing external financing. This question is analyzed using many different evaluation criteria. Overall, the results are opposite to the predictions of the Market Timing Theory and consistent with the Managerial Overoptimism Theory. This suggests that manager\u27s optimism influences their decisions related to external financing

Education quality and readability improvement efforts in primary public schools in Egypt: A process analysis

This research aims at investigating the challenges of achieving education quality in public primary schools in Egypt, with a specific focus on readability issues. The researcher employed a qualitative approach to research, using semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The main findings of the research suggested that the main reasons affecting the efficiency of the education quality efforts and thus reading and writing proficiency in public primary schools include: (1) poor school resources including oversized classes and poor quality of teachers; (2) enhanced readability curricula and assessments are not in use, especially for restorative programs; (3) contradicting laws and regulations, such as the decree on automatic transfer of students; (4) lack of coordination between the different entities mandated with achieving education quality; among others. Recommendations include increasing the public funding of the education sector to cover education quality interventions from the state budget; enforcing the use of the readability curricula and the EGRA assessment tools; as well as adopting pro-poor policies in poor communities