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Dirac materials and their advanced physical properties are one of the most active fields of topological matter. In this paper, we present an ab initio study of electronics properties of newly designed LaXS (X = Si, Ge, Sn) tetragonal structured ternaries, with the absence and presence of spin–orbit coupling. We design the LaXS tetragonal non-symophic p4/nmm space group (no. 129) structures and identify their optimization lattice parameters. The electronic band structures display several Dirac crossings with the coexistence of both type I and type II Dirac points identified by considering the effect of spin–orbit coupling toward the linear crossing. Additionally, we perform the formation energy calculation through the density functional theory (DFT) to predict the stability of the structures and the elastic constants calculations to verify the Born mechanical stability criteria of the compounds.

The purposes of this study were: to identify factors differentiating self-employed retail managers who started their business from those who bought their business; to identify factors differentiating self-employed retail managers from all retail managers; and to develop a supply function to predict the number of self-employed from the total population of retail managers. Factors investigated included personal variables (such as age, sex, birthplace, and family data) and behavioral variables (such as satisfaction with business, hours worked, and number of sources of business information). The sample consisted of 200 randomly selected retail managers of Madison, Wisconsin, each of whom was interviewed personally. Results indicated that those who started their own business had greater job satisfaction and more work experience than those who bought their business. In comparing the self-employed manager and all retail managers, the self-employed were in the labor force significantly longer and their self-reliance factor was significantly greater, while the wage and salaried managers had significantly larger business. The development of a supply function to estimate the number of self-employed managers was achieved in a restricted sense. (SC)

Tetanus is one of the most dreadful diseases which has been produced in nature to torment mankind. No one who has seen a case can ever forget it. The poor victim, thrown every few minutes into the most violent spasms, bent backwards to such an extent that only his head and heels touch the bed, his teeth tightly clenched, unable to eat or drink, his face expressing the fiendish torture he is undergoing, at last is mercifully released by death.Sir David Bruce (1920) (1) Although tetanus was des...

Before 1922, the diagnosis of what was then called juvenile onset diabetes (type I or insulin-dependent diabetes, IDD), meant a lingering death within months. In that year, however, a team of workers in the physiological laboratories at the University of Toronto isolated and purified the hormone, insulin, from the pancreas. The purified insulin was shown to control not only the symptoms induced by removal of the pancreas in dogs, but also those of diabetes mellitus in patients. The production...

Any individual old enough to have even occasional recall of a childhood before World War II must be aware of the impact of antibacterial agents and vaccination on infective disease. With the advent of prontosil and hence the sulphonamides, followed by the antibiotics, death from common bacterial infections has become a comparative rarity. Similarly, the leg braces and iron lungs (Fig. 6.1) – a mark of the epidemics of poliomyelitis that were a regular feature of Europe and North America throu...

Doctors misled for over 200 years:History shows that a dependence on animal research delayed the introduction of blood transfusion by over 200 years.NAVS Leaflet, Ever had a blood transfusion? The assertion that animal experiments delayed the development of blood transfusion derives from the superficial and inaccurate accounts found in animal rights literature (see for example Ref. 1, page 157; Ref. 2 page 220). A brief review of primary sources reveals that animal experiments were crucial to...

Meningitis The reduction of morbidity and mortality through development of new or improved vaccines continues. In October 1992, vaccination against infection by Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), a major cause of meningitis, was included in the childhood immunisation programme in Britain. The effect was immediate, for Hib infections fell by 70% in the period January to March, 1993 (1). The introduction of the vaccine in Britain was triggered by the outstanding success of the experiment in F...

Diphtheria levies a toll of clinical incidence of 10% of all born with a mortality of 5 to 7 per 1000; immunisation reduces this to an incidence of 1% and zero mortality. Report of Medical Officers of Health,Diphtheria Immunisation in Infancy,The Medical Officer (1932) 48 188. In the sanitary 1990s it is hard to envisage the experiences of physicians working in the fever hospitals a century ago. Yet this is the only way to appreciate the progress made in the treatment and prevention of infect...

The dramatic impact of penicillin on the treatment of patients with severe infections has rightfully been paraded by biomedical researchers as a vindication of the value of laboratory animals in research. Opponents of animal experimentation are equally emphatic that animal experiments not only played no part in the development of penicillin but also that reliance on such techniques might well have caused penicillin to be discarded (1,2). The basis of the animal rights argument is that Fleming...

Whooping cough prophylaxis, as pertussis vaccine, is routinely administered to infants together with diphtheria and tetanus as the DPT combined immunisation. After a short catarrhal phase, whooping cough begins with a dry nocturnal cough. This progresses to prolonged bouts of coughing which often end with a sharp intake of breath. The coughing fits may induce vomiting and, in severe cases, convulsions. Frank damage to the nervous system may occur, this is due to haemorrhage and lack of oxygen...

Animals and Medicine: The Contribution of Animal Experiments to the Control of Disease offers a detailed, scholarly historical review of the critical role animal experiments have played in advancing medical knowledge. Laboratory animals have been essential to this progress, and the knowledge gained has saved countless lives - both human and animal. Unfortunately, those opposed to using animals in research have often employed doctored evidence to suggest that the practice has impeded medical progress. This volume presents the articles Jack Botting wrote for the Research Defence Society News from 1991 to 1996, papers which provided scientists with the information needed to rebut such claims. Collected, they can now reach a wider readership interested in understanding the part of animal experiments in the history of medicine - from the discovery of key vaccines to the advancement of research on a range of diseases, among them hypertension, kidney failure and cancer. This book is essential reading for anyone curious about the role of animal experimentation in the history of science from the nineteenth century to the present.

The kidney regulates the water, acid/alkali and ion balance of the body, and removes toxic products of metabolism and ingested poisons. It is thus not surprising that when the kidney fails to function properly the consequences are dire. Urine production falls and toxins build up in the plasma ultimately producing coma. Cardiac arrhythmias may be induced through build-up of potassium ions in the plasma. Death results if the condition is severe and untreated. Acute renal failure is a sudden dec...

In an attempt to make the history of scientific developments readable authors tend to highlight bizarre and amusing incidents, sometimes to the extent of inadvertently misleading the reader. Thus most essays that purport to describe the background to the introduction of general anaesthesia to surgery inevitably refer to the laughing gas parties or ether frolics that were apparently commonplace in the 1840s (see (1) for example). The inhalation of nitrous oxide or ether produced instantaneous ...

The reduction of the death and morbidity rates due to infective disease in the 1930s and 40s threw other pathological problems into sharper relief. Thus, in the developed world, cardiovascular disease and cancer became the major causes of death. An important risk factor for many cardiovascular diseases is raised blood pressure, a symptom which the opponents of animal experiments imply could be avoided by changes in one’s lifestyle – stopping smoking, taking exercise and reducing fat intake, a...

In the early seventeenth century William Harvey established that there is continuity between arteries and veins, and that the heart pumps blood through these vessels in a circular fashion. Harvey developed his hypothesis by observation of the relatively slowly beating hearts of cold blooded animals, such as snakes, rather than those of warm-blooded animals, which beat too fast to detect the pattern of their motion. In his use of further observational and quantitative techniques to substantiat...

Scientists supported by the Cancer Research Campaign have prepared a vaccine which it is hoped will protect against infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Apart from causing glandular fever EBV is believed to be one causative factor for certain cancers. There is firm evidence for the involvement of this virus in Burkitt’s lymphoma and in cancer of the throat and nasopharynx, and evidence for the suggested link between EBV and Hodgkin’s disease is becoming more conclusive. Progress has recen...

Haemodialysis is life-saving and curative in acute renal failure. By reversing the build-up of metabolic products normally excreted by a functioning kidney, dialysis enables the temporarily affected kidneys to heal and resume normal function. In chronic renal failure however, the burden of regular dialysis is necessary unless a healthy kidney from a donor can be grafted. Chronic Renal Failure Chronic renal failure (CRF) due to glomerulonephritis, pyelonephritis or polycystic kidney disease is...

The assertion that animal experimentation is a “failed technology” (1) is the linchpin of the pseudoscientific attack on animal-based biomedical research that has been waged over the last two decades. However, it is an undeniable fact that our knowledge of the function of the organs of the human body stems almost solely from research in other animals. For example, the investigation of the function of the heart by William Harvey (2) was one of the earliest adventures in experimental medicine. ...

On the 17th of June, 1981 an Englishwoman travelling in India was bitten on the leg by a dog. The wound was immediately cleansed by her husband using whisky as an antiseptic. She later attended a local clinic where the wound was again washed and packed with antiseptic powder. The woman returned to England in July and the wound was redressed in her local hospital. By the middle of August she became constantly tired and complained of aches and shooting pains in the back. She was anxious and dep...

The heart is a dual pump. The right side receives blood from the body into the right atrium. From this chamber it passes to the right ventricle, a muscular pump capable of driving the de-oxygenated blood through the lungs via the pulmonary artery. Freshly-oxygenated blood returns to the left side of the pump via the pulmonary vein. From the left atrium blood passes into the left ventricle, an organ powerful enough to pump blood through all the organs of the body. The heart therefore pumps by ...

Pain is perceived through activation of the endings of nociceptive afferent nerves by pain-producing substances released from tissue. These nerves in turn activate nociceptive nerve cells in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord through the release of excitatory amino acids and neuropeptides. The activation of the nociceptive afferents can be amplified after repetitive stimulation via the production of nitric oxide, which facilitates the release of excitatory amino acid transmitters.

Throughout history humans have experimented with herbal remedies to alleviate the symptoms of diseases. The active principles of some of these remedies are of proven value and have become established in modern therapeutics. None, however, has been more widely accepted nor as universally practised as the use of the extracts of certain plants for the treatment of the various symptoms of inflammatory conditions such as pain, swelling and fever.

Volatile compounds formed via the Maillard reaction contribute significantly to the flavor profile of heated foods. The reaction is dependent on many factors; among the most important are the type and concentration of the initial precursors. Changes in the precursor composition can result in considerable changes to the final volatile composition, thereby altering the organoleptic properties of the final product. In this study, the initial sugar concentration of an aqueous beef muscle extract was manipulated by adding sufficient ribose to increase the sugar content by 10-fold. The extract was heated at 130°C and the volatiles were analyzed by GC-MS at time intervals between 5 and 90 minutes. The effect of ribose concentration on the volatile profile was examined and the data were used to build a kinetic model that described the formation of ribose-derived volatile compounds.

The original Mackay School of Mines Building was constructed in 1908. It is one of the original buildings of the University of Nevada, and is situated at the north end of the main quadrangle within the campus. Prominent in its location at University of Nevada and in appearance, the building is designated as a national historic monument. During the years of 1926 and 1956, significant structural alterations were made to the original building. Phase III work at the original Mackay School of Mines Building involves adding a library at the basement, with the balance of the building being remodeled for similar-type functions. Constructed mainly of unreinforced masonry, the seismic rehabilitation of the structure warrants careful attention. During the schematic phase of the work, both conventional strengthening and Base Isolation were explored as potential techniques with which to mitigate damage from earthquakes. Cost estimate of both schemes were also developed. From a preservationist point of view, there were definite advantages in the isolation design. Since the isolation system could filter out most of the damaging forces associated with earthquakes, none of the unreinforced masonry walls required strengthening. As a result, many of the original architectural features of the original building can be salvaged, maintaining the original quality of the building and its identity. For these reasons the Base Isolation option was selected as the seismic retrofit scheme. This paper illustrates the Base Isolation design for the Mackay School of Mines, a historical structure constructed of unreinforced masonry. The isolation system consists of high-damping rubber bearings in combination with sliding elements.

This is the final report for the Schafer Corporation Genetic Algorithm-Based System Design and Photonics-Based Receiver Technologies Program support under delivery order No. 0018 covering the period of August 2003 through December 2003. This report covers the work accomplished by Team Schafer (Schafer Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton). Team Schafer supported DARPA with programmatic, technical, and financial assistance support.

For over 3000 years various herbal medicines, such as extracts of willow bark, or dried leaves of myrtle or meadowsweet have been used with apparent anecdotal success for the treatment of the pain and swelling of inflammatory disease. By the middle of the nineteenth century the active constituent of these various herbal remedies was found to be salicylate, and the better tolerated acetylated derivative, acetylsalicylate was introduced to medicine as aspirin over a hundred years ago. The manifest efficacy of aspirin resulted in its wide use as an antipyretic and as an analgesic for the pain associated with inflammatory conditions [1]. However, it soon became apparent that aspirin could cause gastrotoxicity, a fact demonstrated unequivocally in 1938 by the endoscopic studies of Douthwaite who observed erosions and ulcers in the gastric mucosa of patients on long-term aspirin therapy [2].

This paper describes the concept of application microprogramming. The major areas discussed are a definition of microprogramming, the invocation of microprograms from ordinary programming languages, the development cycle of a microprogram from initial design to final implementation, and the data processing tasks suitable for microprogramming, A calculation of “variance” with and without microcode enhancement is used for demonstration.

WHAT IS probably the only film of its kind ever produced in the United States has just been completed by a graduate theater arts student at the University of California, Los Angeles campus. The film, entitled A Place to Live, is Harry L. Cooper's master's thesis and represents active cobperation between the Psychology and Theater Arts departments of the university in an effort to develop a multipurpose film. Basically, the subject of this film is the so-called racial or ethnic tensions as illustrated in a student housing situation. The subject of tension is, of course, of prime interest to the social scientist concerned with human relations, and is a major area of research. At the same time, social tensions resulting from ethnic or racial discrimination are a prime concern of educators and citizens of good will who recognize in them a major threat to our democratic way of life. Thus, at the outset the film deals with content material which has potential uses both for educators and for social scientists. The film is unique because it provides material for two methods of utilizing motion pictures, the two approaches mentioned above. In the first place, it tells a particular story of racial prejudice and discrimination and thus is suitable as subject material for discussion groups concerned with this problem. Second, the film is so constructed that it can be used for psychological research in the field of social perception of ethnic differences. There have been documentary films dealing with group conflict, and there have been testing films, too, but in the opinion of University of Cali

THE CLAMOR ABOUT three-dimensional movies tells us that Hollywood is on the offensive against the competition of television, but behind the headlines, in two Federal actions on opposite coasts of the nation, the real fight the movie industry is waging against television goes on hardly noticed. Movies that bring us one step closer to Huxley's "feelies" may attract more paid admissions, but the tactical gain is nothing compared to the strategic advantage the industry is fighting for. Given a certain combination of decisions, the major movie producers could well come out of the actions stripped of their preeminence in the mass-entertainment business, with television the undisputed master. At the other extreme, the opposite set of decisions could destroy permanently television's chance for developing into an independent communications medium with its own artistic standards and achievements and would curb the newest lively art for the convenience and financial well-being of the major film producers and distributors. On the West Coast, the action is a Federal antitrust suit filed in Los Angeles last summer against twelve major film producers and distributors for the purpose of forcing them to make their products available for television use. Arguments in this trial will undoubtedly continue for months because, as the industry has admitted, this suit strikes at the very heart of the present relationship between the major producers and the television industry. A clear decision against the producers could seriously weaken their position, because since 1948 none of the majors has released

This department is devoted to shorter articles and notes on research in the communications field, either completed or in progress. Readers are invited to submit reports on investigative studies which might prove useful to other students because of content, method, or implications for further research.