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Microsoft Word - Sustainable University Book Review 2013.docx
No full textAt a time when there is an increasing interest in transforming higher education institutions into green exemplars, The Sustainable University (2012) is an opportune and bold volume that will assist educational stakeholders in making such an interest a reality. Whereas publications on the connections between higher education and sustainability have been growing in number since the publication of Ecodemia (1995) by Julian Keniry, perhaps the first comprehensive book on the topic with specific action plans for U.S. college administrators, faculty, and students, The Sustainable University picks up on the how of sustainability, with particular attention to areas that hitherto have received less attention, such as assessment measures, college presidency and endowments, university athletics, and campus architecture beyond LEED. The volume comprises chapters by key actors in the higher education sustainability movement, including college presidents, university sustainability directors, and leaders of influential national groups, such as the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), U.S. Partnerships for Education for Sustainable Development, and Second Nature. Overall, it is a highly informative book for readers keen on advancing the cause of sustainability writ large
IMPACT OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS
No full textABSTRACT A good higher education system is required for overall prosperity of a nation. Many researches reveal that the integration of ICT helps to reduce the complexity and enhance the overall administration of higher education. This study has been undertaken to identify the various functional areas to which ICT is deployed for information administration in higher education institutions and to find the current extent of usage of ICT in all these functional areas pertaining to Information administration. The various factors that contribute to these functional areas were identified. A theoretical model was derived and validated
Measurement of Radon Exhalation Rate from Destroyed Building Material in the Gaza Strip
No full textAbstract Building materials are one of the potential sources of indoor radioactivity because of the naturally occurring radionuclides in them. Radon exhalation rate is one of the most important factors for evaluation of the environmental radon level. Radon contributes more than half of the total ionizing radiation dose Indoor radon has been recognized as one of the health hazards for mankind because long-term exposure to radon increases the risk of developing lung cancer. This study aims at assessing the contribution of destroyed building materials in war 2014 towards the total indoor radon exposure to the inhabitants of in Gaza. 40 Samples have been collected from common destroyed building materials in Jabalia district. The closed-can technique has been employed in this study using solid state nuclear track detectors (CR-39). After 124 days of exposure to radon, CR-39 detectors were etched chemically by (6 N) NaOH solution at 75°C for three months and then counted under an optical microscope. Results obtained from the current study show that radon exhalation rates from concrete and asbestos have relatively high values as compared to other building materials while glass, marble and a red brick contribute less to radon exhalation rate. The average radon exhalation rate in term of area in the studied samples ranged from (86.506) mBq.m .h -1 for Concrete samples. In general, the annual effective doses from the investigated building materials are low and under the global value (from 1 to 5 mSv/y) except for Concrete and asbestos samples with average values (9.464) and (9.3528) mSv/y, respectively
A Bioinformatics Pipeline for the Analyses of Viral Escape Dynamics and Host Immune Responses during an Infection
No full textRapidly mutating viruses, such as hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV, have adopted evolutionary strategies that allow escape from the host immune response via genomic mutations. Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing are reshaping the field of immunovirology of viral infections, as these allow fast and cheap generation of genomic data. However, due to the large volumes of data generated, a thorough understanding of the biological and immunological significance of such information is often difficult. This paper proposes a pipeline that allows visualization and statistical analysis of viral mutations that are associated with immune escape. Taking next generation sequencing data from longitudinal analysis of HCV viral genomes during a single HCV infection, along with antigen specific T-cell responses detected from the same subject, we demonstrate the applicability of these tools in the context of primary HCV infection. We provide a statistical and visual explanation of the relationship between cooccurring mutations on the viral genome and the parallel adaptive immune response against HCV
Identification and In Vitro Antimicrobial Susceptibility of Brucella Species Isolated from Human Brucellosis
No full textBrucellosis is a world-wide zoonotic disease with a major impact on the public health. Due to the high risk of laboratory acquired infection, limited laboratory investigations were performed on this organism, including detailed identification and susceptibility study. Brucella melitensis is the commonest aetiological agent for human brucellosis in this region. The in vitro susceptibility pattern against selected antimicrobial agents was assessed using E-test. All isolates were noted to be sensitive to all the antimicrobial agents tested except for rifampicin where elevated MIC > 1 g/mL was noted in 30 out of 41 isolates tested
Towards automation of control software: A review of challenges in mechatronic design * "Towards automation of control software: A review of challenges in mechatronic design Towards Automation of Control Software: A Review of Challenges in Mechatronic Desi
No full textAbstract Development of mechatronic systems requires collaboration among experts from different design domains. In this paper the authors identify a set of challenges related to the design of mechatronic systems. The challenges are mostly related to integration of design and analysis tools, and automation of current design practices. Addressing these challenges enables the adoption of a concurrent development approach in which the synergetic effects that characterize mechatronic systems are taken into account during design. The main argument is that in order to deal with software development problems for complex mechatronic systems, there is a need to look at system design practices beyond concurrency, i.e., there is a need to consider the complex interdependencies among subsystems and the designers that develop them. A review on current methods and tools is carried out to identify possible solutions proposed in previous works. The purpose is not to make an extensive review, but to show that integration, from different points of view, is a major issue and that increasing the level of abstraction in the description of systems can help to overcome the integration challenges. An increased level of abstraction also forms a basis for addressing other issues in mechatronic product development, which are presented in this work. With that in mind, concepts for an integration framework are proposed. The goal of the framework is to support a multi-disciplinary design team to (almost) automatically generate and verify control software. Based on high-level architectural descriptions, the software generation and verification process can be supported by knowledge-based methods and tools. Other goals are to support communication among engineers, improve reliability of designs, increase reuse of design knowledge, and reduce development time and development costs
USING OPEN SOURCE COMPUTATIONAL TOOLS FOR PREDICTING HUMAN METABOLIC STABILITY AND ADDITIONAL ADME/TOX PROPERTIES
No full textThe role of cell surface architecture of lactobacilli in host-microbe interactions in the gastrointestinal tract
No full textCongenital Defects in Neutrophil Dynamics
No full textNeutrophil granulocytes are key effector cells of the vertebrate immune system. They represent 50-70% of the leukocytes in the human blood and their loss by disease or drug side effect causes devastating bacterial infections. Their high turnover rate, their fine-tuned killing machinery, and their arsenal of toxic vesicles leave them particularly vulnerable to various genetic deficiencies. The aim of this review is to highlight those congenital immunodeficiencies which impede the dynamics of neutrophils, such as migration, cytoskeletal rearrangements, vesicular trafficking, and secretion
An OFDM Based MAC Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Networks
No full textABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate OFDM based MAC protocols for underwater acoustic networks. Due to the severe multi-path effects of underwater acoustic channels, the guard time between OFDM blocks becomes significant, which greatly degrades the system rate. In addition, the highly dynamic nature of underwater acoustic channels makes it hard to choose the optimal transmitting power and modulation mode. Furthermore, the bandwidth of most current OFDM modems is only around tens of kHz, which is much less than the available bandwidth in a network with short range communication links. All these challenges make existing OFDM based MAC protocols for designed terrestrial wireless networks unsuitable. In this work, we propose a new MAC protocol called TDM with FDM over OFDM MAC protocol (TFO-MAC), which smoothly couples TDM with FDM/OFDM for the uplink traffic in a cellular like underwater acoustic network. In TFO-MAC, the acoustic channel is divided into multiple sub-channels in frequency via FDM technology, and OFDM modulation is used in every sub-channel. In addition, time is partitioned into slots and every node can use different channels in different slots. Powerful base stations in the network are responsible for the dynamic channel assignment, power optimization and modulation method selection for all nodes in every slot. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer programming problem and propose an efficient greedy algorithm to solve it. Simulation results show that TFO-MAC can achieve high throughput with good fairness