The effect on Ni^2+ uptake of human serum albumin (HSA), sodium diethyldithiocarbamate (DOC), D-penicillamine (O-Pen) , ethylenediaminetetra-acetic acid [di sodiurn salt] (EDTA) , L-aspartic acid (L-Asp) , L-Lysine (L-Lys) , and L-histidine (L-His) was examined in three cell lines: (1) human red blood cells (RBCs), (2) cultured human B-lymphoblasts and (3) rabbit alveolar macrophages. It was found that EDTA, L-His, HSA, and O-Pen were good inhibitors of ^63Ni^2+ uptake by cells and each was able to remove ^63Ni^2+ previously associated with the cells. In contrast L-Lys and L-Asp, which do not bind Ni^2+ well, were both poor inhibitors of Ni uptake and poor sequestering agents for cell-associated Ni^2 +. Thus it seems that at physiological concentrations , L-His and HSA play a major role in regulating the association of Ni^2+ with cells. DOC enhanced cellular uptake of ^63Ni^2+, but was not very effective in removing ^63Ni^2+ from cells. An increase in pH enhanced ^63Ni^2+ uptake in the lymphoblasts, macrophages and human peripheral lymphocytes. This dependence was interpreted to indicate the existence of either: (1) an increase in membrane permeability with an increase in pH; (2) the development of a proton gradient across the cell membrane favouring the antiport transport of H^+ and Ni^2+; or (3) Ni^2+;proton competition for cellular binding groups. The cellular uptake of Ni^2+ is interpreted in terms of an "equilbrium" model of metal-ion transport. It is concluded that since HSA and L-His can control cellular uptake and removal of Ni^2+, they may play a role in regulating the cellular toxicity of this ion. It was found that L-His and O-Pen acted similarly such that at various concentrations both inhibited cellular uptake of ^63Ni^2+ but did not change the normal distribution of Ni^2+ within the cell. Conversely, DOC enhanced Ni^2+ uptake by cells while simultaneously shifting the distribution of Ni^2+ from the cell lysate to the cellular membranous pellet. Furthermore, DOC caused Ni^2+ to become more lipophilic as shown by the increase of ^63Ni^2+ in a chloroform extract. DOC also caused a change in Ni^2+ distribution in whole blood by enhancing Ni^2+ association with RBCs and lymphocytes and decreasing serum-associated Ni^2+. The different responses produced by O-Pen, L-His and DOC are ascribed to the hydrophilicity of the [Ni(D-Pen)_2]^2- and Ni(His)_2 complexes and the lipophilicity of the Ni(DDC)_2 complex, and allow a rationalization of the contrasting therapeutic effects of O-Pen and DDC. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

ITC/USA 2013 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Ninth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 21-24, 2013 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / Instead of using a single data acquisition device, the distribute data acquisition system is broadly applied for onboard flight testing now. Therefore, the sync of data acquisition in varied devices and the real time data transportation have become the most important factors in a telemetry system. This paper presents a new approach to clock synchronization in a real time transportation network for a data acquisition system by using IRIG time code and an inner timer through network time recovery technique. This paper also illustrates how to keep the synchronization and continuity of a time tag used by each device through a precise estimation method for the difference of time resources and local inner timers.

abstract: This thesis proposed a novel approach to establish the trust model in a social network scenario based on users' emails. Email is one of the most important social connections nowadays. By analyzing email exchange activities among users, a social network trust model can be established to judge the trust rate between each two users. The whole trust checking process is divided into two steps: local checking and remote checking. Local checking directly contacts the email server to calculate the trust rate based on user's own email communication history. Remote checking is a distributed computing process to get help from user's social network friends and built the trust rate together. The email-based trust model is built upon a cloud computing framework called MobiCloud. Inside MobiCloud, each user occupies a virtual machine which can directly communicate with others. Based on this feature, the distributed trust model is implemented as a combination of local analysis and remote analysis in the cloud. Experiment results show that the trust evaluation model can give accurate trust rate even in a small scale social network which does not have lots of social connections. With this trust model, the security in both social network services and email communication could be improved. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Computer Science 2011

本研究旨在探討經濟發展、教育發展及政治民主對所得分配的影響，並嘗試建立其因 果關係；此外，根據所選定指標，以主成份分析編製成－「國家發展綜合指數」，並 探討我國在國際地位為何。 本研究在棋斷面國際比較方面，樣本包括聯合國、世界銀行、美國海外開發協會統計 年鑑中各項指標較齊全及人口超過一百萬的國家，合計為９２個有效樣。所選用指標 包括經濟發展指標７個、教育發展指標４個、政治民主指標２個文化發展指標３個、 及所得不均Gini係數等共１７個指。標縱貫面時間系列分析，則以我國民國５３年至 ７６年各項相閞統計指標為分析對象。 經統計分析後，主要研究結果如下： （一）在國際比較方面： １．經濟發展對所得分配有顯著影響。經濟發展程度愈高，所得分配愈均等。此外Ku znets 曲線在本研究中並未獲得支持。 ２．教育發展對所得分配有顯著影響，不論在量或質方面的發展，程度愈高者，所得 分配愈均等。 ３．所有自變項約可解釋所得分配總變異量的４６％。 （二）在國內時間系列方面，支持國際比較之研究，經濟與教育發展均有利於所得分 配均等。 （三）有關變項間的因果關係並未獲得實證上支持。 根據以上結果加以討論，並提出對我國未來國家發展之建議，以及未來研究之建議。

Power converters are used in many distributed energy resources (DER) applications. With proper controls, DER systems can reduce losses and achieve higher energy efficiency if various power sources and loads are integrated through DC bus. High voltage electric vehicle (EV) DC charging station is becoming popular in order to reduce charging time and improve energy efficiency. A DC EV charging station model involving photovoltaic, energy storage system (ESS), fuel cell and DC loads is studied in this work. A dynamic programming technique that considers various uncertainties involved in the system is adopted to obtain optimal dispatch of ESS and fuel cell system. The effects of different tariffs, demand response programs and contract capacities of demand in the power scheduling are investigated and the results are presented.

This thesis examines the consequences of an increased institutional involvement in the recently emerging lending business known as peer-to-peer lending (P2PL). Since the P2PL business itself is a type of originate-to-distribute (OTD) lending model – in which the originator never carries the risk for the loans – this thesis investigates the effects it can have on the quality of the screening of potential borrowers, and if it could create a misalignment of interests between different stakeholders in the P2PL market. It also examines how the information asymmetry in the screening process is affecting moral hazard behavior and adverse selection problems. From the empirical research – which was gathered from interviews with significant participants in the Swedish P2PL market and the financial market as a whole – the authors find that an increased institutional involvement seems to come hand-in-hand with an increased loan volume, which creates incentives for the P2PL companies to ease their screening of borrowers and thus decreasing the average quality of the loans they originate. Furthermore, it shows evidence of great similarities between the current P2PL market and the sub-prime mortgage market that was the cause of the financial crisis in 2008. By comparing different geographic P2PL markets the thesis is providing the reader with four development phases that the P2PL markets seem to follow.

This paper may be of interest for anyone developing component based software, (such as software architects and designers, advanced web system developers etc), companies choosing between technologies and that are in need of high performance, etc. The Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) technology and the .NET technology are similar to each other in many ways. Both of the technologies are used for developing components that can interact through some kind of server, it is possible to make distributed applications etc. The similarities between these technologies make it interesting to compare them. They also make it hard to decide which technology to choose. One goal of this report is to present information that can help choosing. This is done by presenting basic component theory, information about EJB and .NET, and finally the result of an experiment is presented. In the experiment one or more clients connect to one or more servers to get to a set of distributed components. As it turns out, EJB is superior to .NET in all areas but one. EJB needs more resources and may cut clients of when not getting enough. .NET on the other hand is slow, but it always delivers. / Det här arbetet kan vara av intresse för komponentutvecklare, företag som väljer mellan teknologier och anser att prestanda är viktigt. Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) och .NET har många likheter och kan användas för komponentutveckling. Likheten mellan teknologierna gör det intressanta att jämföra dem med varandra. Grundläggande komponentteori bygger tillsammans med teori om EJB och .NET upp en bas som sedan används för att göra en teoribaserad jämförelse. Slutligen presenteras resultatet av ett experiment där de båda teknologierna jämförs. Där visar det sig att EJB är överlägsen i alla avseenden utom ett. I EJB behövs mer resurser än i .NET för att det ska fungera optimalt och för att allt arbete ska klaras av. .NET är långsammare men lyckas alltid genomföra sitt uppdrag. / If using my mail address found under “Författares e-post/Author's e-mail:”, please remove “ANTI_SPAM” from the rear end of the address. Om du vill skicka ett mail till e-postadressen under rubriken "Författares e-post/Author's e-mail:", så ta bort texten "ANTI_SPAM".

This thesis is about causes of the current financial crisis and it has four parts. 1st - description of evolution of the US housing market; 2nd - US mortgage market and the originate-to-distribute model; 3rd - evolution of the crisis and its spread into other markets and countries; 4th - proposals of main changes in the regulation and supervision in order to prevent similar crisis to happen

Molecular-biological annotation data is continuously being collected, curated and made accessible in numerous public data sources. Integration of this data is a major challenge in bioinformatics. We present the GenMapper system that physically integrates heterogeneous annotation data in a flexible way and supports large-scale analysis on the integrated data. It uses a generic data model to uniformly represent different kinds of annotations originating from different data sources. Existing associations between objects, which represent valuable biological knowledge, are explicitly utilized to drive data integration and combine annotation knowledge from different sources. To serve specific analysis needs, powerful operators are provided to derive tailored annotation views from the generic data representation. GenMapper is operational and has been successfully used for large-scale functional profiling of genes.

No description available.