Metro Kaohsiung with high percentage (6-10 %) of poor air quality (PSI>100) has been announced officially by Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration (TEPA) as the worst air quality region among seven Air Quality Zones (AQZ) in Taiwan. Ozone is one of two major air pollutants that are responsible for the poor air quality. In this study, the vertical concentration profiles of ozone and its precursors (NOX and VOCs) at eight sites were measured by tethered balloons with air pumps and tedlar sampling bags. This method was used to investigate the vertical profile and the tempospatial distribution of ozone and its precursors in offshore/inland regions. This study further investigated ozone formation mechanism and air mass trajectory via simultaneous air quality sampling around the coastal region of metro Kaohsiung. This study sampled the vertical concentration profiles of ozone and its precursors at both inland and offshore sites during eight intensive sampling periods on August 16-17 and November 2-3, 2006, January 24-25, March 6-7 and May 2-3, 2007, October 30-31, 2008, and March 11-12 and July 15-16, 2009. Eight sampling periods were divided into the sea-land breeze period, the northeast monsoon period, and the mixing wind field period. During the sea-land breeze period, the wind direction changed 90˚ and more between daytime and nighttime, and the wind speeds of the sea breezes varied significantly than those of the land breezes. During the northeast monsoon period, prevailing wind blew from the north (300~60˚) with the average wind speeds of 1~4 m/s. During the mixing wind field period, the wind direction varied significantly from 270˚ to 90˚ with the average wind speeds of 1~3 m/s. Results obtained from the vertical profiles showed that O3 concentration appeared stratification phenomenon at 40 out of 64 sampling sites, in which its precursors (NOX or VOCs) demonstrated stratification phenomenon at 30 sampling sites, accounting for 75 % of total O3 stratification. It suggested that ozone and its precursors had strong correlation with each other. The linear slope of the titration effect showed that the intensity of titration effect at night during the northeast monsoon period was larger and had higher correlation (R> 0.7), and followed by the mixing wind field period and the sea-land breeze period. This phenomenon correlated closely with meteorological conditions, the concentrations of O3 precursors, and solar radiation intensity. Therefore, O3 concentration at night during the northeast monsoon period was lower than those of the sea-land breeze period. Results obtained from VOCs measurement indicated that the major species of VOCs was acetone which accounted for 16.25~64.05 % of total TVOCs-C2 in the offshore region. High concentration of TVOCs-C2 was affected by the usage of organic solvents. While, the major species of VOCs in the inland region was toluene which accounted for 6.41~43.77 % of total TVOCs-C2. Furthermore, results obtained from backward trajectory showed that air pollutants emited from land sources could transport to the offshore region, resulting in high concentration of oversea NOX and VOCs. Major species of VOCs for high O3 formation potential were aromatics and vinyls at the height of 0~500 m around the coastal region of metro Kaohsiung. The control of O3 precursors concentration showed that the ratio of [TVOCs-C2]/[NOX] in the offshore region was higher, indicating that O3 formation was NOX-limited. Therefore, NOX must be controlled for reducing O3 formation. However, the ratio of [TVOCs-C2]/[NOX] in the inland region was lower, some cases even below 4, showing that O3 formation was VOCs-limited. Thus, VOCs must be controlled for reducing O3 formation.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-112). Also available in print.

My dissertation lays out some of the chief philosophical precursors to Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment. It investigates the principal question of Will Durant's The Age of Voltaire: "How did it come about that a major part of the educated classes in Europe and America has lost faith in the theology that for fifteen centuries gave supernatural sanctions and supports to the precarious and uncongenial moral code upon which Western civilization has been based?" The aim of this project is both broad and specific: the first is to provide a general history of the philosophical precursors to the Radical Enlightenment up until the early modern period, and the second is to highlight one of these precursors in detail, which I do in the large Spinoza part. With the assistance of a great deal of scholarship in philosophy of religion, history of philosophy, theological analysis, biblical criticism, and historiography, my dissertation contends that the major philosophical precursors against orthodox faith in revelation and for the Radical Enlightenment have been derived primarily from several forces. I present some of the general arguments of some of the pre-Socratics and Greek philosophers, especially Socrates and Plato, emphasizing their rationalist and non-theological thinking. Then I point out how some of this Greek philosophical literature led to new philosophical and theological elements in some of the teachings of the Church Fathers, some of the medievals, and some of the scholastics, up to the early modern period. The core of my argument, however, begins to pick up steam at the Renaissance. With the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the early Enlightenment New Philosophy, everything changes. Renaissance textual criticism of ancient texts leads to the beginnings of some genuine biblical criticism. The explosion of naturalist-leaning explanations of nature via Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and many others in the Scientific Revolution leads many to wonder if God is needed. The rejection of Aristotelian and Scholastic metaphysics by the New Philosophers, most notably, Descartes, undermine what for many provided the philosophical underpinnings for the Church and theology. And then "the most unkindest cut of all," the revolutionary historical and textual criticism of the Bible (by many early Enlightenment philosophers, especially Spinoza) which utterly undermines and refutes Judaism and Christianity.

published_or_final_version / Surgery / Master / Master of Philosophy

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most lethal cancers in Hong Kong and Southeast Asian countries. Cancer progression is often symptomless, making the early diagnosis difficult, thus leading to a high mortality rate. Treatments against HCC were often found to be less effective than other cancers. Systemic chemotherapy, which is widely used in cancer treatments, has a low response rate in HCC. New treatment regimes, such as targeted therapy, have shown partial responses in clinical trials and therefore continuous effort in searching new drug targets is warranted. Granulin-epithelin Precursor (GEP) is a pluripotent growth factor, and has been shown to be overexpressed in HCC and various cancers. Our group has demonstrated that GEP promotes tumor growth, and regulates chemoresistance in HCC. It shares a highly similar expression pattern with one of the members of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter family, ABCF1. Blocking GEP, both in vitro and in vivo, showed inhibition on HCC growth. These suggest that GEP is a potential target for HCC treatment. However, there is still little information on how GEP and ABCF1 is overexpressed in HCC. This project aims to investigate the mechanisms involved. GEP and ABCF1 genes are located on chromosomes 17q and 6p, respectively, which both are frequently amplified in HCC. We used quantitative microsatellite analysis (QuMA) to detect GEP and ABCF1 amplification in HCC samples. Both GEP and ABCF1 showed about 20% of HCC cases having amplification, and their copy numbers correlated to the mRNA expression levels. The copy numbers of GEP were also found to correlate to those of ABCF1 significantly. Clinico-pathological analysis showed that GEP copy numbers correlated with gender, serum AFP levels and HBV status, while ABCF1 did not associate with any of the clinico-pathological features. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was performed to validate the results on DNA copy number by QuMA. The cases with highest DNA copy number on GEP and ABCF1, were examined. The average difference between FISH and QuMA results ranged ± 0.3 copies, indicating QuMA and FISH results were corroborated on DNA copy number. Furthermore, the FISH results indicated that there are different degrees of aneuploidy involved in chromosome 6p and 17q in 5 out of 6 cases investigated. These suggest that the copy number variations in GEP and ABCF1 were partly caused by the abnormal number of chromosomes. In summary, we observed that GEP and ABCF1 gene copy numbers were increased in subsets of HCC cases, and the increase correlated to their respective transcript expression levels. Furthermore, these copy number variations partly could be explained by aneuploidy as demonstrated by FISH analysis. The current study may help to understand the complex genomic aberrations in HCC and allow better treatment designs in the future. / published_or_final_version / Surgery / Master / Master of Philosophy

No description available.

ABSTRACT Many unusual phenomena in nature were recorded from the regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea from the second millennium BC up to AD 600. The ancient sources interpreted these as prodigies, messages from the gods, but rarely discussed their causes. Numerous reports of these portents were viewed as the illusions of eyewitnesses or the fabrications of ancient literary sources. Many modern authors have interpreted these portents as fabulous, or as astronomical or meteorological events. This thesis examines the portents that occur in the atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere and proposes that many are geophysical phenomena caused by tectonic activity, in particular earthquakes and volcanoes. Modern research on these incidents is examined to identify characteristics and causes, and texts from ancient philosophers and natural historians are investigated to see whether they were aware of these natural occurrences and if so, how they were produced. Portents that possess the characteristics of seismically-induced lights, cloud, fog, storms, anomalous animal behaviour, noises, and hydrological changes are collated in order to discuss individual events. Where possible, ancient examples are compared with modern well-documented episodes with the same features. In a majority of cases, these events have recurred in the same locations at later times. The proposal that many of these phenomena are caused by seismic activity offers an alternative to the suggestions of many modern scholars, who ascribe many of the luminous events to lightning, meteors or comets and some sonics to exploding meteors or thunderstorms. This reappraisal of the ancient portents vindicates the seemingly fantastic reports that occur in the ancient texts, especially some of the poetic or religious sources, and rehabilitates the reputation of the authors who have documented these events. In the process it also adds to the catalogue of geophysical phenomena caused by earthquakes in the classical world.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karolinska institutet, 2006. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [87]-96).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 2004. / "July 2004." Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-117). Also issued on the Internet.