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BackgroundPost-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC) is marked by persistent or newly developing symptoms beyond 4 weeks of infection. Investigating gut integrity, oxidized lipids and inflammatory markers is important for understanding PASC pathogenesis.MethodsA cross-sectional study including COVID+ with PASC, COVID+ without PASC, and COVID-negative (COVID-) participants. We measured plasma markers by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to assess intestinal permeability (ZONULIN), microbial translocation (lipopolysaccharide-binding protein or LBP), systemic inflammation (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein or hs-CRP), and oxidized low-density lipoprotein (Ox-LDL).Results415 participants were enrolled in this study; 37.83% (n=157) had prior COVID diagnosis and among COVID+, 54% (n=85) had PASC. The median zonulin among COVID- was 3.37 (IQR: 2.13, 4.91) mg/mL, 3.43 (IQR: 1.65, 5.25) mg/mL among COVID+ no PASC, and highest [4.76 (IQR: 3.2, 7.35) mg/mL] among COVID+ PASC+ (pConclusionsPASC is associated with increased gut permeability and oxidized lipids. Further studies are needed to clarify whether these relationships are causal which could lead to targeted therapeutics.

Electric Vehicles (EVs) significantly reduce energy consumption and emissions from on-road operations and help create more sustainable transportation environment by reducing emissions from the entire well-to wheel energy cycle. Differences between hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), and battery electric vehicles (BEV) users is an important element in understanding potential impacts on travel demand and vehicle adoption, the fact that these vehicles may be adopted into households that undertake very different vehicle activities and energy usage patterns has not been a primary focus in the literature. This study differentiates between HEV, PHEV, and BEV users across three factors: owner household socio-demographic attributes, household daily travel patterns, and household energy usage profiles. The analyses examine factors that appear to influence users’ preferences towards specific EV types and how the selection of different EV types potentially relates to household socio demographics and daily travel patterns. The 2019 Puget Sound Regional Council travel survey data set serves as the main analytical dataset. Influential factors identified as significant through statistical approaches are employed as variables for developing a two-phase choice model for determining potential EV-purchasing households and their choice of specific EV type. As EVs continue to capture increasing market share over time, these research findings and the resulting vehicle type choice model are expected to significantly improve future travel demand model development, allowing activity-based travel demand models to assign specific vehicles to specific households and then to individual trips in planning scenario analysis.View the NCST Project Webpage

This white paper summarizes the development of MOVES-Matrix 3.0 based on EPA’s latest MOVES model known as MOVES3 (version 3.0.4). The research team updated the programs to account for changes in data structures and source sub-types and applied the same conceptual design used in MOVES-Matrix 2.0. The review of the MOVES3 and MOVES 2014b databases indicated a finer definition of the regions in terms of the unique combinations of fuel supply regions vs. Inspection/Maintenance (I/M) programs, with 40 fuel scenarios and 87 I/M scenarios in MOVES3 and 22 fuel scenarios and 84 I/M scenarios in MOVES 2014b. The increased number of fuel scenarios is due to the increased number of formulation regions and the one-to-many corresponding relationship between counties vs. fuel formulation regions by year. A total of 122 regions are defined in MOVES3 compared with 109 regions in MOVES 2014b, and the team anticipates at least 10% more running time to generate matrices for MOVES3, given the larger number of regions and the more complicated source type VSP/STP variables.View the NCST Project Webpage

Editorial 24, 2 (2021)

Editorial 23, 1 (2020)

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s. For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable an affordable space-based telescope mission capable of discovering and characterizing Earthlike planets orbiting nearby bright sunlike stars in order to search for signs of habitability and biosignatures. Such a mission can also be equipped with instrumentation that will enable broad and exciting general astrophysics and planetary science not possible from current or planned facilities. HabEx is a space telescope with unique imaging and multi-object spectroscopic capabilities at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet (UV) to near-IR. These capabilities allow for a broad suite of compelling science that cuts across the entire NASA astrophysics portfolio. HabEx has three primary science goals: (1) Seek out nearby worlds and explore their habitability; (2) Map out nearby planetary systems and understand the diversity of the worlds they contain; (3) Enable new explorations of astrophysical systems from our own solar system to external galaxies by extending our reach in the UV through near-IR. This Great Observatory science will be selected through a competed GO program, and will account for about 50% of the HabEx primary mission. The preferred HabEx architecture is a 4m, monolithic, off-axis telescope that is diffraction-limited at 0.4 microns and is in an L2 orbit. HabEx employs two starlight suppression systems: a coronagraph and a starshade, each with their own dedicated instrument., Comment: Full report: 498 pages. Executive Summary: 14 pages. More information about HabEx can be found here: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex/

ispartof: Language Learning Journal status: accepted

The ground conditions in the Terryland River Valley area present considerable site development challenges to geotechnical engineers. The soft soil formation consists of peat overlying very soft, highly compressible calcareous silt overlying slow draining organic silts and inorganic clays. These soil deposits are typical of those encountered in Limestone Basin regions throughout Ireland. NUI Galway has been involved in investigating these soils since the 1980s. The investigations at Terryland involved Cone Penetration Testing (CPT), shear vane and piston sampling plus laboratory testing. This paper summarises some previously unpublished data and places the results in the context of various published soil data from sites elsewhere in Ireland. The laboratory testing confirms that the design parameters for the soft soils in the Terryland River Valley are more onerous than for many other soft soil sites in Ireland. The authors would like to acknowledge COFORD, Coillte Teo., O’Malley Construction Ltd. and Galway County Council for their generous financial support, in addition to staff and postgraduate students at NUI Galway who helped with laboratory and field testing. peer-reviewed

We report on the design, fabrication, and on-sky performance of the Florida Image Slicer for Infrared Cosmology and Astrophysics (FISICA)- a fully-cryogenic all-reflective image-slicing integral field unit for the FLAMINGOS near-infrared spectrograph. Designed to accept input beams near f/15, FISICA with FLAMINGOS provides R \sim 1300 spectra over a 16x33-arcsec field-of-view on the Cassegrain f/15 focus of the KPNO 4-meter telescope, or a 6x12-arcsec field-of-view on the Nasmyth or Bent Cassegrain foci of the Gran Telescopio Canarias 10.4-meter telescope. FISICA accomplishes this using three sets of "monolithic" powered mirror arrays, each with 22 mirrored surfaces cut into a single piece of aluminum. We review the optical and opto-mechanical design and fabrication of FISICA, as well as laboratory test results for FISICA integrated with the FLAMINGOS instrument. Finally, we present performance results from observations with FISICA at the KPNO 4-m telescope and comparisons of FISICA performance to other available IFUs on 4-m to 8-m-class telescopes., Comment: Submitted to SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation; 8 pages, incl. color figures

Libro de texto para la asignatura de 'Estudio de los medios de comunicación' en enseñanza secundaria, según la especificación OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations) para la obtención del certificado GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education). Los contenidos del libro, estructurados en tres secciones (porfolio individual de los medios, análisis textual y realización de una presentación) facilitan al alumno una introducción a los conceptos básicos de los medios de comunicación, una explicación de cómo el trabajo práctico refuerza la comprensión teórica, actividades y ejercicios para realizar en clase o en casa, casos de estudio reales y ejemplos, comentarios de expertos y preguntas tipo examen. SC Biblioteca de Educación del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Calle San Agustín, 5 - 3 planta; 28014 Madrid; Tel. +34917748000; biblioteca@mecd.es GBR

Critics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have denigrated its purpose and scoffed at its principles of consensus and sharing the burdens of defense. To many, it has been flawed from the outset as concerns its American business principles, false promise of democracy, and claim to be a basis for durable peace in Europe. Yet NATO may be the most successful security institution in modern history, even as it wages war for the second time in a decade. This study assesses underlying causes for this success by examining NATO's foundation, against the background of war and peace in 20th century Europe. Embracing the discipline of history as the ideal method of inquiry to discover the essence of this alliance as well as the fundamental issues of democracy and collective defense in the 21st century this study contains a thorough examination of NATO's origins and general principles of same for the present. Covering NATO from its inception, well before the end of the 1939-1945 war, until the 1949 signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in April 1949, this work contains an inventory of historical knowledge to provide a comprehensive history of NATO's formation and a full appreciation of the conditions within which related decisions were made. http://archive.org/details/natofromshadowto109453409 US Marine Corps (USMC) author. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

We report on the design, fabrication, and on-sky performance of the Florida Image Slicer for Infrared Cosmology and Astrophysics (FISICA)- a fully-cryogenic all-reflective image-slicing integral field unit for the FLAMINGOS near-infrared spectrograph. Designed to accept input beams near f/15, FISICA with FLAMINGOS provides R \sim 1300 spectra over a 16x33-arcsec field-of-view on the Cassegrain f/15 focus of the KPNO 4-meter telescope, or a 6x12-arcsec field-of-view on the Nasmyth or Bent Cassegrain foci of the Gran Telescopio Canarias 10.4-meter telescope. FISICA accomplishes this using three sets of "monolithic" powered mirror arrays, each with 22 mirrored surfaces cut into a single piece of aluminum. We review the optical and opto-mechanical design and fabrication of FISICA, as well as laboratory test results for FISICA integrated with the FLAMINGOS instrument. Finally, we present performance results from observations with FISICA at the KPNO 4-m telescope and comparisons of FISICA performance to other available IFUs on 4-m to 8-m-class telescopes., Submitted to SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation; 8 pages, incl. color figures

A stratified sand filter column, operated in recirculation mode and treating synthetic effluent resembling high-strength dairy wastewaters was studied over a 342-d duration. The aim of this paper was to examine the organic, total suspended solids (TSS) and nutrient removal rates of the sand filter, operated in recirculation mode, under incrementally increasing hydraulic and organic loading rates and to propose a field filter-sizing criterion. Best performance was obtained at a system hydraulic loading rate of 10 L m(-2) d(-1); a higher system hydraulic loading rate (of 13.4 L m(-2) d(-1)) caused surface ponding. The system hydraulic loading rate of 10 L m(-2) d(-1) gave a filter chemical oxygen demand (COD), TSS, and total kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN) loading rate of 14, 3.7, and 2.1 g m(-2) d(-1), respectively, and produced consistent COD and TSS removals of greater than 99%, and an effluent NO(3)-N concentration of 42 mg L(-1) (accounting for an 86% reduction in total nitrogen (Tot-N)). As the proportional surface area requirement for the sand filter described in this study is less than the recommended surface area requirement of a free-water surface (FWS) wetland treating an effluent of similar quality, it could provide an economic and sustainable alternative to conventional wetland treatment.

Drawing upon anthropological and historical studies of constraints governing the depiction of intercourse, Jajdelska explores the ethics and esthetics of Nabokov’s representations of sex. While such ethical constraints survive despite changes in norms which Nabokov both lived through and helped to produce, this chapter claims that aesthetic problems arise from the nature of embodied cognition; a vivid description takes the risk of being an arousing one. Jajdelska argues that Nabokov shows an uncanny intuitive understanding of perceptual processes in his descriptions of sex in Lolita, when it comes to structure and anticipation. Her chapter highlights how Nabokov uses aspects of embodied cognition to create representations which succeed both esthetically, in being vivid, and ethically, in shielding Dolores Haze from the potential for the reader’s arousal.

The milking process produces dairy soiled water (DSW) that contains variable concentrations of nutrients. The most common method of disposal is by application to land. However, this practice can result in the pollution of nearby receiving water bodies. It is proposed that aerobic woodchip filters would decrease contaminant concentrations of nutrients in DSW. A laboratory-based experiment investigated woodchip as a filter medium to treat DSW. Subsequently, farm-scale filters investigated the system under normal farm conditions. The effectiveness of two types of sand filters (SFs), single-layer and stratified, were compared to treat effluent from the farm-scale woodchip filters. 0.5, 1, and 1.5 m-deep laboratory filters (n=3) containing Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.) treated DSW at two loading rates: 280 g suspended solids (SS) m-2 d-1 (S1) and 840 g SS m-2 d-1 (S2). Average chemical oxygen demand (COD), SS and total nitrogen (TN) decreases of 95, 99 and 88 %, respectively, were achieved and the effect of depth was negligible. Based on these findings, three replicated farm-scale 1 m-deep filters, each with a surface area of 100 m2, were constructed and loaded at 30 L m-2 d-1 for 11 months. Average decreases of 65, 84 and 60 % for COD, SS and TN, respectively, were achieved. Three replicated single-layer SFs and stratified SFs were operated for 82 days and loaded at 20 L m-2 d-1 with the effluent from the farm-scale filters. Average influent COD, SS and TN concentrations were decreased by an average of 39, 52 and 36 % for the single-layer SFs and 56, 62 and 57 % for the stratified SFs, respectively. These results demonstrate the potential use of woodchip as a filter medium for treating DSW to produce an effluent for re-use in washing yards, or for application to land as an organic fertiliser. This would reduce water usage and the environmental risks associated with land spreading. Woodchip filters are a low cost, minimal maintenance treatment system, using a renewable resource, which can be easily integrated into existing farm infrastructure.