Hotel Warren is a novel by Matthew David Charlton.

Marathon is a novel about a young girl who is not born into the best family, who sets out to make a family for herself.

The Never-Knowns is a novel about a high-intensity behavioral group home for adults with severe to profound developmental disabilities, its residents, and the staff who are employed there. Focusing on plural protagonists, no single narrative is ever fully realized or resolved, leaving only a cryptic aggregate of experiences, revelations, and trauma. In a typical suburban neighborhood, much like any of us grew up in or now live, there is a house down the block that no one discusses openly. This house seems like all the rest, well landscaped and tidy. Although three times a day much coming and going of college-aged kids and ne’er-do-wells whispers of something covert, obscure. This house is many things to many people; a workplace, or home, or burden, or profit, or prison. An unfortunate, absurd one-act play echoes infinitely for those kept here. Constance is a thirty-something disabled woman who wakes every morning by sprinting nude in a wondrous fury toward the first person or thing she can destroy. Malcolm is a new staff member who snorts meth and masturbates in his car during shift breaks. Terry is a twenty-five year old deaf mute who believes his clothes dresser is God and always knows exactly how many feet are between him and every other place he’d rather be. Jake is a veteran staff member who has finalized his plans to take all the residents of the house deep into a forest and abandon them. Using disjointed, prolix, and often dissonant approaches to storytelling, The NeverKnowns seeks to convey the perspectives of developmentally disabled individuals who possess few or no language skills, and who are so far detached from their own existence that their iv understanding and interaction with the world is simultaneously grotesque, beautiful, and confounding

In this novel, after Tiana, an au pair from El Salvador, living in New Jersey now, witnesses Beth Boyle stage her husband's death, she decides to blackmail her. / MFA

<p> In this thesis we develop and evaluate automated "expert systems" for two applications: (i) gas/oil pipeline inspection using magnetic flux leakage information, (ii) treatment efficacy prediction and medical diagnosis using electroencephalograph (EEG) and clinical information. Both applications share the same methodology and procedure as they employ machine learning methods which learn their decision models using the training data (or past examples in real life/environment).</p> <p> The magnetic flux leakage (MFL) technique is commonly used for nondestructive testing (NDT) of oil and gas pipelines which are mostly buried underground. This testing involves the detection of metal defects and anomalies in the pipe wall, and the evaluation of the severity of these defects. The difficulty with the MFL method is the extent and complexity of the analysis of the MFL images. In this thesis we show how modern machine learning techniques can be used to considerable advantage in this respect.</p> <p> The problem of identifying in advance the most effective treatment agent for various psychiatric conditions remains an elusive goal. To address this challenge, an automated medical expert system is designed and then evaluated. The system is capable of predicting the treatment response for each individual patient at the outset of a therapy (i.e., using pre-treatment information) thus improving therapeutic efficiency and reducing personal and economic costs. Our experiments are focused on treatment planning and diagnosis of mood disorders and psychiatric illnesses. Through different experiments, we have shown that it is possible to predict treatment efficacy of a 'selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor' (SSRI) antidepressant and 'repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation' (rTMS) therapies for patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (MDD) or major depression. The predictions are based on pre-treatment quantitative EEG measurements. Also, prediction of post-treatment schizophrenia symptomatic scores, using pre-treatment EEG data, showed significant performance in patients treated with the drug clozapine. Clozapine is an antipsychotic medication of superior effectiveness in treating Schizophrenia but has several potentially severe side effects.</p> <p> Medical diagnosis is the second problem we consider in the neuroscience aspects of this thesis. In this research, an automated digital medical diagnosis methodology is developed to estimate/detect the type of a disease or illness that a patient is suffering. This intelligent diagnostic system can assist the physician/clinician by offering a second opinion on diagnosis. Several complex psychiatric illnesses may have many common symptoms and accurate diagnosis can, at times, be very difficult. Efficient diagnosis helps by avoiding prescription of wrong therapy /treatment to a patient. In our limited experiments, EEG data is used to make a diagnosis for distinguishing between various psychiatric illnesses including MDD, schizophrenia, and the depressed phase of bipolar affective disorder (BAD).</p> <p> In all problems considered in this thesis, specifically the neuroscience problem, a large number of candidate features are extracted from measurement data but most candidate features are found to be irrelevant and have little or no discriminative power. Finding a few most discriminating features that guarantee numerical efficiency and obtain a smooth and generalizable decision function, is a major challenge in this research. In this thesis, feature selection methods based on mutual information or Kullback-Leibler (KL) distance is employed to find the most statistically relevant features. For the multi-class diagnosis problem, to improve performance, a feature selection procedure denoted as feature combination feature selection is used which first finds discriminating features in all binary classification combinations, and then combines them into a larger feature subset to make a final multi-class decision. The two-dimensional (2D) representation of the feature data is also found to be useful for clustering analysis. The overall method was evaluated using a nested cross-validation procedure for which over 80% average prediction performance is obtained in all experiments. The results indicate that machine learning methods hold considerable promise in solving the challenging problems encountered in the two applications of concern.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p> Carbocyclic and heterocyclic compounds are ubiquitous in nature. Therefore, the discovery and development of new ring forming reactions are of paramount interest to synthetic organic chemists. Recently, the intramolecular cyclization of reactive intermediates, such as anions, cations, and radicals have provided a number of new methods by which known and novel ring systems can be constructed. Cyclizations involving tandem, or multiple sequences have gained considerable popularity due to their high overall efficiency and remarkable speed by which these processes can yield complex polycyclic ring systems.</p> <p> Carbenes are another interesting class of reactive intermediates which undergo characteristic reactions. The cyclization reactions of carbenes have not been studied to a significant extent. In particular, the work described in this thesis outlines the only study of the intramolecular cyclization of dioxycarbenes onto a tethered alkyne moiety.</p> <p> The first section of this dissertation details the development of a convenient new class of thermal dioxycarbene precursors, dioxyoxadiazolines I, which display many significant advantages over previously used sources of dioxycarbenes ll. (See Diagram in Thesis)</p> <p> The second section of this dissertation details the use of dioxyoxadiazolines possessing a tethered triple bond for the thermal generation of dioxycarbenes III which are capable of intramolecular cyclization. It was found that the cyclization of a dioxycarbene onto a tethered triple bond results in the regioselective generation, of another reactive intermediate, a 3,3-dioxyvinylcarbene (IV or V, depending on the nature of R'), which can undergo a number of interesting intermolecular reactions. This approach leads to the rapid construction of some interesting and rather complex polycyclic heterocyles which are, in many cases, obtained with high regioselectivity and sometimes even high stereoselectivity. (See Diagram in Thesis)</p> <p> The results described in this thesis mark the discovery and development of a new synthetic methodology which may, by appropriate choice of the starting material, provide a valuable tool for the rapid and selective synthesis of a number of heterocyclic ring systems.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Graphic Novels sind ein Comic-Genre, das gerade immer größere Umsatzzahlen generiert und großes Zukunftspotential hat. Entgegen diesem Trend ist die Nachfrage nach Graphic Novels in der Stadtbücherei Trier noch eher verhalten, was sich in geringen Ausleihzahlen zeigt. In dieser Arbeit sollen die möglichen Gründe für die noch geringe Nachfrage in Trier analysiert und Maßnahmen entwickelt werden, um dem entgegenzusteuern. Dabei wird der Fokus auf dem Graphic-Novel-Bestand für Erwachsene liegen. Da der Begriff „Graphic Novel“ nicht eindeutig definiert ist, muss zunächst eine Arbeitsdefinition mit charakteristischen Merkmalen des Genres erarbeitet werden. Im Anschluss folgt nach der Struktur des Marketing-Management-Prozesses eine Analyse der aktuellen Situation in Bezug auf Graphic Novels in der Gesellschaft, auf dem Buchmarkt, in Trier und in der Bibliothek. Grundlagen für die Analyse sind die aktuelle Literatur zu Graphic Novels, Gespräche mit der zuständigen Bibliothekarin vor Ort, die Auswertung der lokalen Ausleihstatistik und eine Befragung der Graphic-Novel-Leser der Stadtbücherei Trier. Aus den gewonnenen Erkenntnissen werden konkrete Maßnahmen erarbeitet, wie die Nachfrage nach Graphic Novels für Erwachsene in der Stadtbücherei Trier gesteigert werden kann.:Abbildungs- und Tabellenverzeichnis 1. Einleitung 2 Die angewendeten Methoden und Informationsgrundlagen 3 Der Begriff „Graphic Novel“ 3.1 Aufkommen und grundsätzliche Bedeutung 3.2 Merkmale 3.3 Kritik 3.4 Verwendung in dieser Arbeit 4 Anwendung des Marketing-Management-Prozesses 4.1 Marktanalyse 4.1.1 Umfeld-Analyse 4.1.2 Buchmarktanalyse 4.1.3 Nachfrage-Analyse 4.1.4 Gemeinwesenanalyse 4.1.5 Wettbewerbsanalyse 4.1.6 Bibliotheksanalyse 4.1.7 Ist-Stand-Analyse 4.2 Festlegung von Marketing-Zielen – strategisches Marketing 4.3 Maßnahmen zum Erreichen der Ziele – operatives Marketing 4.3.1 Maßnahmen für Ziel 1 4.3.2 Maßnahmen für Ziel 2 4.4 Evaluationsmethoden 5 Fazit Literaturverzeichnis Anhang 1: Der schriftliche Fragebogen Anhang 2: Hinweisplakat zur Befragung Anhang 3: Ergebnisse der Befragung Anhang 4: Flyer „Wo finde ich was?“ Anhang 5: Liste aller Graphic-Novel-Titel für Erwachsene der Stadtbücherei Trier

Fescue toxicosis is a condition that afflicts livestock grazing endophyte-infected tall fescue and is particularly detrimental to pregnant mares. A two year evaluation study of a novel endophtye-infected cultivar, AGRFA-144 (A-144), did not induce fescue toxicosis in late-term pregnant mares. All mares delivered viable foals except in E+ group which had two viable foals, one stillborn-dystocia and one compromised foal which was euthanized at 72 h pp. Serum P4 concentrations were similar among A-144, NE+, and E- mares (p>0.05). Foal BW and foal/placental weight ratios were similar for A-144, NE+, and E- (p>0.05). Foal serum P4 was similar on 1 d and 2 d in all groups, but was lower (p = 0.049) in the A-144 group than the E- foals on day 0. Neutrophil/lymphocyte ratios were similar (~5:1) in all foals on d 0 and 2. IgG values were similar (p>0.05) among A-144, NE+, and E-.

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