bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Synthesis of raspberry‐like organic–inorganic hybrid nanocapsules via pickering miniemulsion polymerization: Colloidal stability and morphology
Authors: Cao Zhihai , Schrade Anika , Landfester Katharina , Ziener Ulrich
Published: April 2011

Raspberry‐like hybrid nanocapsules with a hydrophobic liquid core were successfully prepared via the copolymerization of styrene, divinylbenzene (DVB), and 4‐vinyl pyridine (4‐VP) in Pickering‐stabilized miniemulsions by using silica particles as the sole emulsifier and hexadecane (HD) as liquid template. When compared with conventional Pickering miniemulsions and Pickering suspensions, the colloidal stability of the current systems is much more sensitive to the variation of reaction parameters such as pH, size, amount of silica particles, and content of 4‐VP. The systems without coagulum were only obtained in a narrow pH range at around 9.5 and by using 12 nm silica particles as emulsifier. The formation of well‐defined raspberry‐like capsules was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high‐resolution scanning electron microscopy (HRSEM). The stable attachment of silica particles on the surface of hybrid particles was verified by centrifugation and subsequent characterizations, such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, TEM, and HRSEM. The influence of pH and weight content of HD, DVB, and 4‐VP on the particle morphology was extensively investigated. Interestingly, the particle morphology strongly depends on the particle size. When compared with the organic surface‐active surfactant, the formation of capsule morphology could be promoted by the application of silica particles taking advantage of their surface inactivity. The formation mechanisms of capsules/solid particles are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2011
Fundamental Study on Interaction between Top Blown Jet and Liquid Bath
Authors: Asahara Norifumi , Naito Ken‐ichiro , Kitagawa Itsuro , Matsuo Michitaka , Kumakura Masanori , Iwasaki Masaki
Published: April 2011

It is important to understand the physical interaction between top‐blown oxygen jets and liquid steel in basic oxygen steelmaking furnaces (BOF). In the present study, cold model experiments and CFD simulations were carried out with single‐ and multi‐hole nozzles and the velocity profiles of jets were successfully simulated. Water model experiments were also performed to study the cavity formation and the spitting phenomena by the impinging jets. The cavity shapes and the spitting behavior were correlated to the top‐blowing conditions by considering the characteristics of multi‐hole nozzle jets.
Profiling vocabulary acquisition in Irish
Authors: O'TOOLE CIARA , FLETCHER PAUL
Published: April 2011

Investigations into early vocabulary development, including the timing of the acquisition of nouns, verbs and closed-class words, have produced conflicting results, both within and across languages. Studying vocabulary development in Irish can contribute to this area, as it has potentially informative features such as a VSO word order, and semantically rich prepositions. This study used a parent report adapted for Irish, to measure vocabulary development longitudinally for children aged between 1 ; 04 and 3 ; 04. The findings indicated that the children learned closed-class words at relatively smaller vocabulary sizes compared to children acquiring other languages, and had a strong preference for nouns.
Gender Training: Male Ambitions, Domestic Duties, and Failure in the Magazine Fiction of T. S. Arthur
Authors: Ruppel Tim
Published: April 2011

Although T. S. Arthur'S extraordinary literary presence and popularity were acknowledged during the antebellum period, studies of both the American Renaissance and domestic fiction have failed to provide anything more than a passing reference to his fiction. Arthur's meager current reputation has been defined by a single work, the sensationalist temperance novel,Ten Nights in a Bar-room, And What I Saw There(1854). More generally, cultural historians have labeled Arthur as one of the “fictional eulogists of the self-made man” and a purveyor of the “rags to riches” myth. However, the magazine fiction that Arthur regularly produced forGodey's Lady's Bookin the 1840s had nothing to do with either temperance or the myth of autonomous individualism. Instead, his tales focused on the relationship between behavior in the home and in the marketplace. Writing in the aftermath of the devastating Panic of 1837, Arthur sought to identify the causes of domestic disorder and economic failure. Significantly, his narratives of personal accountability asserted that failure and disorder were the inevitable results of deviations from emerging gender norms. The prospective urban merchant and domestic women who appeared prominently in his magazine fiction must learn that the management of troublesome bodies is the key to economic and domestic stability.
The Ex-Communist Memoirs of Howard Fast and His Contemporaries
Authors: Seed David
Published: April 2011

The wave of investigations into supposed Communist activity from the late 1940s onward by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and similar bodies depended to a large extent on the testimony of expert witnesses. These were former party members as often as not but we should bear in mind a distinction Hannah Arendt drew as early as 1953. Former Communists, she argues, have simply abandoned their commitment and withdrawn from political life whereas, for the ex-Communists,

Communism has remained the chief issue in their lives. They feel that their potential strength is much greater than their small number actually indicates because their past, on which they base present careers and ambitions, is shared by a much larger section of society. They work to persuade their former friends to join them: to make a confession, own up to a conversion, and form a solid political group.
Animation as Art Work
Authors: Bogart Michele H.
Published: April 2011

In 1915, Max and Dave Fleischer inaugurated a series of animated cartoons called Out of the Inkwell. The Out of the Inkwell name, with its evocation of a single artist's pen-and-ink drawings, conjured up an image of individualistic creativity and implied an unproblematic trajectory from the pen to the moving picture.
“In True Relations”: Love, Friendship, and Alternative Society in Emerson
Authors: Meola Frank M.
Published: April 2011

At one point in “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” an essay that deals directly neither with the soul nor with socialism, Oscar Wilde quotes obliquely from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

[People] go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. “He who would be free,” says a fine thinker, “must not conform.” And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of over-fed barbarism among us. (267)

That Wilde was attracted to Emersonian nonconformity is not surprising, and the similarities between the two writers are striking. But my reason for citing Wilde, the ur-homosexual and model of iconoclasm, is that I want to show that Emerson is as innovative a thinker as Wilde, and that indeed on the subject of individualism and personal relationships he is far more so. In fact, Wilde can be seen as taking certain ideas of his teacher Walter Pater and giving them an Emersonian and American cast, expressing more openly Pater's cloistered Oxford radicalism. The “Socialism” essay in particular develops strong connections among aestheticism, individualism, and sociopolitical dissent, revealing a strong desire for alternatives to late-19th-century British society. And of course in the case of Pater as well as Wilde, the need for individualism and the quest for new forms of social connection have obvious links to both writers' alternative sexual orientation. What makes Emerson more radical, more, if you will, “queer,” is precisely that he is not arguing for any sexual orientation, but is attempting — many years before the Oxford aesthetes — to create a free space for alternative forms of gender and new forms of personal relationships to develop. Emerson values dis-orientation more than any orientation.
Writing the Self and the Sixties
Authors: Gelfant Blanche H.
Published: April 2011

I Lived Through the sixties and in certain ways could be considered typical of the times, or at least of women of my class and calling. I might even seem to some an emblematic person worthy, perhaps, of notice. But I belong among the millions elided from the historical records of their time, their lives unnoted and unremembered. I wonder now why I could not have done what Joan Didion did to make herself memorable. Like her, I might have picked out people who seemed, so she said, “emblematic” – Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Linda Kasabian at the Manson trial – and by writing about them I could conceivably have written my self into history. For clearly, Didion intended to inscribe herselfinto the record of the sixties by describing people she went tosee. “I went to see …,” she would write, and again: “I went to see.” She wanted to see symptoms of cultural decline, especially those connected to violence, and wherever she looked, with her selective and impounding gaze, she found what she sought – the disarray that confirmed her vision of a world “devoid of any logic” in which, as she (and Yeats) said, things fall apart. She wrote of social disorder in a stark elliptical style, her insistent parataxis representing the lack of connection that was her theme. The reportorial mode she adopted suited her intent, for personal journalism, which melded the topical with the autobiographical, allowed her to impress her self, as well as her nihilistic vision, upon the reader's consciousness. ‘I want you to know, as you read me,’ she wrote, “precisely who I am and where I am, and what is on my mind” (“In the Islands,”White Album, 133).
The Commerce of Thought: Professional Authority and Business Ethics in 19th-Century America
Authors: Augst Thomas
Published: April 2011

This essay explores the ways that professions seek to claim social distinction by investing particular ways of knowing with moral authority. Through close analysis of popular representations of merchants in conduct books, business manuals, periodicals such asHunt's Merchant's Magazine, and biographical sketches, it describes a pervasive campaign to define business as a form of mental work. Representing the marketplace as a distinctively American school for character, merchants and their advocates sought to appropriate the moral authority traditionally associated with the learned professions of the ministry, the law, and medicine. Developing a critique of elitist pedagogy based on solitary reading, this campaign sought to identity expert knowledge with the practical experience of business. Redefining the relation between study and professional authority, the rhetoric of business helped to alter the symbolic value of education and to transform the nature of ethical reflection for liberal capitalism.
The King's Buttons: The Language of Law inBilly Budd
Authors: Rowe Joyce A.
Published: April 2011

Revolution and law are joined inBilly Budd— and were from its inception. According to the Genetic Text editors, Herman Melville's last work began as a headnote to a ballad about a condemned naval mutineer. Gradually, this kernel evolved into a prose narrative set in 1797, the year of seemingly contagious British naval mutinies — notably Spithead and “The Great Mutiny” at the Nore — that threatened the prosecution of England's naval war against the regicidal French revolutionary forces. By the time Melville had fixed upon these emblematic, modern political events for his scene, the mutineer of the ballad, an older and probably guilty man, had become a very different figure (Hayford and Sealts, 2). Billy Budd's extraordinary qualities now speak to the injustice of his capital sentence, whereas Captain Vere's judgment speaks to the imperative of necessity. This conflict is reflected not only in the doubts of the drumhead court that sentences Billy, but in the arguments of generations of critics and the midrash of commentary the novel has engendered.
Craniometry, Race, and the Artist in Willa Cather
Authors: Meyer Susan
Published: April 2011

Willa Cather's description of Blind d'Arnault, the black pianoplaying prodigy inMy Ántonia(1918), is shocking. “He had the Negro head,” Cather's narrator, Jim Burden, tells us, “almost no head at all; nothing behind the ears but folds of neck under close-clipped wool” (139). This passage, like the entire Blind d'Arnault episode, has usually been ignored by critics, or, in a few more recent instances, confronted as evidence of Willa Cather's racism. Jim's phrase of “astounding insult and innocence,” Blanche Gelfant writes, “assures him that the black man should not frighten, being an incomplete creature, possessed … of instinct and rhythm but deprived of intellect” (120). Elizabeth Ammons cites this passage too, among others, as one of many offensive racist stereotypes in the description of d'Arnault (“African American Art,” 57). The description of d'Arnault is certainly full of racist stereotypes: d'Arnault, with what are termed his “animal desires” and “dark mind,” playing “barbarously and wonderfully” (My Ántonia, 142), is hardly accorded a fully human status by Jim, and nothing in the novel suggests any distance between Jim's racial attitudes and Cather's. I do want to argue, though, that Cather's views on race are considerably more complicated, as well as more central to her fiction, than critics have yet demonstrated. Attending to the preoccupation with skull shape in Cather's fiction gives us a way into this complexity.
Bringing the Real: Lacan and Tupac
Authors: Kane Thomas
Published: April 2011

On February 19, 1999, ABC's Nightline devoted its program to examining the veracity of Tupac Shakur's death. Ted Koppel sought to answer the question: Was Tupac's death real? Dedicated to seeking out evidence of a hoax, the discussion never adequately answered the question for me because it failed to be attentive to any definition of the real. Could Tupac, who is imagined as sipping some tropical drink on a remote island — most recently in Jamaica — have died a real death and remained alive?
Lost and Found: The Imagined Geographies of American Studies
Authors: Katz Cindi
Published: April 2011

In the days after September 11th, 2001, and continuing until now, the national guard and other military personnel fanned out around New York City. Automatic rifles slung over their camouflaged shoulders, they “guarded” New York City's transportation stations, vital corners and thoroughfares, marquee buildings, and each and every bridge and tunnel entrance. Their comportment was usually cordial and rarely vigilant. Exuding the antithesis of an urban sensibility, they complemented the beefy boredom of the police who usually stood nearby, with an almost surreal sense of incredulity; not just “Why am I here?” but a sort of bafflement that anyone would even think they knew how to get to an uptown train. I've grown accustomed to their presence — frighteningly so — but still can't get over their costumes. Green, woodsy camouflage. To blend with Penn Station?!

There is of course an exacting science (and art) of camouflage that involves close study of particular landscapes and the production of patterns that will fade into them so that they may be inhabited by stealth. The U.S. military has dozens of camouflage variants for all manner of apparel, equipment, vessels, and vehicles. But in New York City the military dresses not like bricks or pizza or granite, but in forest and jungle and sometimes Desert Storm fatigues. I walk around wondering why.

In the security state authorized and reinforced (but not ushered in) by September 11th, there has been an explosion of surveillance cameras and other mechanisms of vigilance in and around New York City.
“No Heart for Human Pity”: The U.S.–Mexican War, Depersonalization, and Power in E. D. E. N. Southworth and María Amparo Ruiz de Burton
Authors: Chinn Sarah E.
Published: April 2011

Despite its Current Obscurity today, overshadowed by higher-voltage conflicts such as the Civil War and World War II, the U.S.–Mexican War was an almost unqualified triumph for the United States. In terms of military and geopolitical goals, the United States far exceeded even its own expectations. As well as scoring some pretty impressive victories, up to and including storming Mexico City, the United States succeeded in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which concluded the war, to annex huge tracts of land from Mexico for what was even then a bargain-basement price: more than half of Mexico's territory (including Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, and significant chunks of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah) for only fifteen million dollars. The advantage of this deal to the newly expanded United States became clearer as only a year after the treaty was signed gold was discovered in California and, within two decades, there was also a thriving silver-mining industry in Nevada.

At the time, of course, the war was huge news. The U.S.–Mexican War generated innumerable items of propaganda and related material. As Ronnie C. Tyler has shown, a huge market in chromolithographs of the war emerged, representing “bravery, nobility, and patriotism” (2). The leading lithographers of the day, such as Nathaniel Currier, Carl Nebel, and James Baillie, sold thousands of oversized lithographs of battle scenes, war heroes, and sentimental themes (Baillie'sSoldier's Adieuand Currier'sThe Sailor's Returnwere particular favorites). Even more numerous were written and performed reports of the war, from the hundreds of newspaper reports from the front to dime novels, songs, poems, broadsheets, plays, and minstrel shows, as well as the typical 19th-century round of essays, sermons, and oratory.
Lovechild: Stieglitz, O'Keeffe, and the Birth of American Modernism
Authors: Holloway Camara Dia
Published: April 2011

During the 1910s, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz developed the ambition to create a modern American art and gathered a circle of artists and writers around him who were committed to his spiritual, nature-centered aesthetic. This group of American Moderns is now known as the second Stieglitz circle. A review of the cultural production of this group reveals that concepts of race played a central role in their construction of American modernism. This is especially evident in the discourse about artist Georgia O'Keeffe, who served as the symbol of the aspirations of this circle. Writing under the pseudonym, Search-Light, the writer Waldo Frank made the following observation about the work of O'Keeffe:

Arabesques of branch, form-fugues of fruit and leaf, aspirant trees, shouting skyscrapers of the city — she resolves them all into a sort of whiteness: she soothes the delirious colors of the world into a peaceful whiteness.

As indicated by the title of Frank's essay, “Georgia O'Keeffe: White Paint and Good Order,” the circle felt that O'Keeffe's arrangement of colors, the literal pigments that she used to make her paintings, achieved a harmonious pattern that represented the ideal world they imagined. The use of whiteness to describe their desired configuration of the world was even more apparent in an assessment of O'Keeffe's paintings by cultural critic Paul Rosenfeld:

A white radiance is in all the bright paint felt by this girl… O'Keeffe makes us feel dazzling white in her shrillest scarlet and her heavenliest blue … This art is, a little, a prayer that the indifferent and envious world, always prepared to regard self-respect as an insult to its own frustrate and crushed emotions, may be kept from defiling and wrecking the white glowing place.
The Debate Over Japanese Immigration: The View from France
Authors: Robinson Greg
Published: April 2011

The story of the Issei — the 100,000 Japanese immigrants who traveled to Hawaii and the United States during the turn of the 20th century — is an epic of survival amid hardship. Through the efforts of labor contractors backed by the Japanese consulate, the majority of the newcomers were recruited to undertake heavy labor on Hawaiian plantations. Others settled on the mainland, predominantly on the nation's Pacific Coast, where they worked as farmers, fishermen, railroad workers, and agricultural laborers. Smaller contingents of students, artists, and professionals also crossed the ocean and scattered through the United States. As the immigrants became established, many brought over “picture bride” wives and started families. Through careful saving of wages and communal self-help, numerous immigrant laborers bought farms and established small businesses, churches, and community institutions. At the same time, they were victimized by widespread racial prejudice and discriminatory legislation. Like other Asian immigrants, they were barred from naturalization by federal law, and therefore from voting, and in many states the Issei were forbidden to marry whites or to practice certain professions. In Hawaii, the white planter class limited educational opportunity and kept Issei in menial labor positions. On the West Coast, white laborers and political leaders, who rigidly excluded Asian workers from unions, organized movements to exclude the Issei from residence on the grounds that they depressed wage scales through their willingness to work for lower pay. Following the “Gentlemen's Agreement” of 1907–8, the entry of Japanese laborers into the country was largely restricted. Shortly thereafter, in response to demands by white farmers enraged by competition from their Issei counterparts, California and neighboring states enacted alien land acts, which forbade all Japanese and other “immigrants ineligible to citizenship” from owning agricultural land. As a result, the Issei were forced to take short-term leases on land or to put their holdings in the names of white colleagues or of their own children, the Nisei (American-born citizens of Japanese ancestry). Exclusionist pressure, founded on nativist opposition to the alleged racial danger posed by the Issei to the American population, flared up again following World War I and climaxed in the Immigration Act of 1924, which outlawed all Japanese immigration to the United States.
Women's Place in Travel Texts
Authors: Schriber Mary Suzanne
Published: April 2011

In the 19th Century, white American women of the middle and upper classes began to travel abroad in significant numbers for the first time in history. Prior to the 19th Century, and with the exception of such women as Abigail Adams and Martha Bayard, who accompanied their parents or husbands on diplomatic missions, American women as a rule traveled only about the countryside or to frontier settlements. Beginning in the 1820s, however, and escalating after the Civil War, the prototypes of Henry James's Isabel Archer and Edith Wharton's Undine Spragg set out by the hundreds to see the world, from Europe to the Middle East and from Africa to Japan and China. The greatest number of them visited the British Isles and continental Europe. As early as 1835, according to Paul R. Baker, some fifty American women visited Rome during Holy Week. Many women were among the fifty thousand Americans who, in 1866 alone, traveled to Europe. According to Mrs. John Sherwood in 1890, there were “more than eleven thousand virgins who semi-yearly migrate[d] from America to the shores of England and France.” Women found their way to virtually all parts of the world, as the book-length travel accounts of women (far fewer than the numbers of women who traveled) show. Women published accounts of twenty journeys to China, seventeen to Palestine, eleven to India, twenty-two to Egypt, two to the East Indies, twenty to Greece, three to Arabia, six to Algeria, and four to Africa, as well as travel in Central and South America, Cuba, the Yucatan, and Jamaica.
On the Threshold: Charles Sheeler's Early Photographs
Authors: Lucic Karen
Published: April 2011

Charles Sheeler, like most American modernists of his generation, avoided the human subject. Instead his paintings and photographs focus upon inanimate objects that range from the Shaker furniture seen in Home Sweet Home (Figure 1) to the Ford factory buildings depicted in Rouge River Plant (Figure 2). These depopulated subjects have established Sheeler's reputation as an impersonal celebrant of the functionalist tradition in American design. But on close examination, the images also reveal understated longings and fears; they function as metaphors for a psychological confrontation with the external world.
Gaps in Narratives of the Hiss Case
Authors: Levin David
Published: April 2011

A 1993 article in thewashington postabout responses to David Brock'sThe Real Anita Hillargues persuasively that neither the authors nor reviewers of such books are likely to be disinterested. Yet Howard Kurtz oversimplifies when he asks, “Can reviewers fairly evaluate an investigative work that builds its case upon a mountain of disputed facts and assertions? Or must the debate be relegated to a tiny circle of experts, endlessly hashing over arcane details” as in “some modern-day Hiss case?”

The choice need not be so stark. Reviewers cannot evaluate fairly unless they consider details. If they don't read debates of the experts, they may choose to avoid the tedium of complex cases by relying on the reputation of a single expert. That seems to be what two of the best national newspapers have done in recent years about the Alger Hiss case — even while striving to report fairly.
Muhammad's Midrash: Elijah Muhammad's Biblical Interpretation in Light of Rabbinic Midrash
Authors: Deutsch Nathaniel
Published: April 2011

The nation of islam is well known for its anti-Semitic rhetoric. What is little known, or at least little acknowledged, however, is that the Nation of Islam and Judaism possess a number of striking similarities. Although some of these parallels may be attributed to the influence of Christianity and traditional Islam on the Nation's development, or even to direct or indirect contact with Jewish traditions, themselves, others must be traced to the fertile religious imagination of the movement's prophet and former leader, Elijah Muhammad.
Renarrating the Thirties in the Forties and Fifties
Authors: Foley Barbara
Published: April 2011

Daniel aaron, writing about American literary communism at the turn into the 1960s, concluded that the literary radicalism of the 1930s had been one more “turn in the cycle of revolt” characterizing the generational politics of American writers since the early 19th Century. The American writer's “running quarrel with his [sic] society” springs “as much from his identity with that society as from his alienation,” Aaron argued. When this rebellion fails to sustain itself, the writer is “gradually absorbed into the society he has rejected.” Like earlier “experiments in rebellion,” the 1930s movement had its “ancestors and founders, its foreign prophets, its manifestoes, its saints and renegades.” It “be[gan] in joy and end[ed] in disillusionment,” although (here Aaron was probably alluding to the early signs of civil rights activity) “amidst its monuments and ruins are the shoots of rebellion to come” (20, 22).
Politics and Culture: The Dr. Franklin-Dr. Johnson Connection, with an Analogue
Authors: Joy Neill R.
Published: April 2011

Benjamin franklin and samuel johnson, august humanists from Opposite sides of the ocean, never met on a social footing sufficiently firm enough for them to leave any first-hand impression of the other or give rise to any dramatic encounter, even though they resided for years in London proximity, carrying on lives of remarkably active social intercourse. Certainly, they knew each other by repute as intellectual forces in the age. Yet attracted as they were to mind, they did not seek out each other's intellectual company, and no mutual acquaintance (and there were a number of them) had the temerity apparently to bring them together. All the while a studied indifference seems to reign on the part of both men — although we cannot know this with any certainty — thwarting otherwise strong reasons that should have conspired to link them in some fashion. This social anomaly from our perspective is that much odder since Franklin's social route, briefly traced in section I, now and then intersects with Johnson's.
Unexpected C–C bond cleavage of epoxide motif: Rhodium(i)-catalyzed tandem heterocyclization/[4+1] cycloaddition of 1-(1-alkynyl)oxiranyl ketones
Authors: Wang Tao , Wang Cui-Hong , Zhang Junliang
Published: April 2011

A rhodium(i)-catalyzed tandem heterocyclization and formal [4+1] cycloaddition of 1-(1-alkynyl)oxiranyl ketones was developed, in which the epoxide motif undergo unexpected C–C bond cleavage rather than the classical C–O bond cleavage.
Hydrogen evolution catalyzed by electrodeposited nanoparticles at the liquid/liquid interface
Authors: Nieminen Joonas J. , Hatay Imren , Ge PeiYu , Méndez Manuel A. , Murtomäki Lasse , Girault Hubert H.
Published: April 2011

Hydrogen evolution by decamethylferrocene in 1,2-dichloroethane can be catalyzed efficiently by platinum and palladium nanoparticles electrogenerated in situ at the liquid–liquid interface.
DNA-SWNT hybrid hydrogel
Authors: Cheng Enjun , Li Yulin , Yang Zhongqiang , Deng Zhaoxiang , Liu Dongsheng
Published: April 2011

In this communication, we report the preparation of DNA-SWNT hybrid hydrogel which is pH responsive and strength tunable.
Enhanced resolution in magnetic force microscropy using tips with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy
Authors: Piramanayagam S. N. , Ranjbar M. , Tan E. L. , Tan H. K. , Sbiaa R. , Chong T. C.
Published: April 2011

Magnetic force microscopy (MFM) is commonly used for the characterization of magnetic nanostructures, which gets challenging for sub-20 nm features. The typical resolution of commercial MFM tips stands at about 30 nm, whereas sub-15 nm resolution has been reported by extensive modifications of the tip. In this paper, we show that a tip coated with a magnetic film possessing a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) offers superior resolution compared to tips without PMA. The advantages of a tip with PMA have been demonstrated based on writing magnetic transitions in a commercial perpendicular media. MFM images and line scans at different scan heights are presented along with an explanation for the observed improvement in performance.
Highly enhanced interfacial adhesion properties of steel-polymer composites by dot-shaped surface patterning
Authors: Yun Il Han , Kim Won-Seock , Kim KyoungHwan , Jung Jin-Mi , Lee Jung-Ju , Jung Hee-Tae
Published: April 2011

Interfacial adhesion properties between steel and epoxy layers were improved considerably by fabricating periodic square-shaped dot patterns instead of random roughness via a combination of photolithography and wet chemical etching method. Because adhesion properties are determined generally by a roughness and topography of their surfaces, several approaches have been made to control the surface roughness, topography, and energy, for example, the surface grinding via sand papers, the surface etching by acid treatments, and the surface treatments by plasma gases. Here we confirm the enhanced adhesion performance by 40% via the periodic square-shaped dot patterns compared to conventional methods. Such remarkable enhancement in the adhesion of the dot patterned steel is due to the increased cohesive fracture area and topological interlocking. We believe that this approach is very simple and truly cost-effective and can be applicable to other microelectronics and mechanical systems and will provide potential opportunities for film/coating applications.
Repulsive guidance molecule-A (RGM-A) inhibits leukocyte migration and mitigates inflammation
Authors: Mirakaj Valbona , Brown Sebastian , Laucher Stefanie , Steinl Carolin , Klein Gerd , Köhler David , Skutella Thomas , Meisel Christian , Brommer Benedikt , Rosenberger Peter , Schwab Jan M.
Published: April 2011

Directed cell migration is a prerequisite not only for the development of the central nervous system, but also for topically restricted, appropriate immune responses. This is crucial for host defense and immune surveillance. Attracting environmental cues guiding leukocyte cell traffic are likely to be complemented by repulsive cues, which actively abolish cell migration. One such a paradigm exists in the developing nervous system, where neuronal migration and axonal path finding is balanced by chemoattractive and chemorepulsive cues, such as the neuronal repulsive guidance molecule-A (RGM-A). As expressed at the inflammatory site, the role of RGM-A within the immune response remains unclear. Here we report that RGM-A (
i
) is expressed by epithelium and leukocytes (granulocytes, monocytes, and T/B lymphocytes); (
ii
) inhibits leukocyte migration by contact repulsion and chemorepulsion, depending on dosage, through its receptor neogenin; and (
iii
) suppresses the inflammatory response in a model of zymosan-A–induced peritonitis. Systemic application of RGM-A attenuates the humoral proinflammatory response (TNF-α, IL-6, and macrophage inflammatory protein 1α), infiltration of inflammatory cell traffic, and edema formation. In contrast, the demonstrated anti-inflammatory effect of RGM-A is absent in mice homozygous for a gene trap mutation in the
neo1
locus (encoding neogenin). Thus, our results suggest that RGM-A is a unique endogenous inhibitor of leukocyte chemotaxis that limits inflammatory leukocyte traffic and creates opportunities to better understand and treat pathologies caused by exacerbated or misdirected inflammatory responses.
Key characteristics of knowledge transfer and exchange in healthcare: integrative literature review
Authors: Pentland Duncan , Forsyth Kirsty , Maciver Donald , Walsh Mike , Murray Richard , Irvine Linda , Sikora Simon
Published: April 2011

pentland d., forsyth k., maciver d., walsh m., murray r., irvine l. & sikora s. (2011) Key characteristics of knowledge transfer and exchange in healthcare: integrative literature review. Journal of Advanced Nursing67(7), 1408–1425.

Aim.  This paper presents the results of a review of literature relating to knowledge transfer and exchange in healthcare.

Background.  Treatment, planning and policy decisions in contemporary nursing and healthcare should be based on sound evidence wherever possible, but research knowledge remains generally underused. Knowledge transfer and exchange initiatives aim to facilitate the accessibility, application and production of evidence and may provide solutions to this challenge. This review was conducted to help inform the design and implementation of knowledge transfer and exchange activities for a large healthcare organization.

Data sources.  Databases: ASSIA, Business Source Premier, CINAHL, PsychInfo, Medline and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

Review methods.  An integrative literature review was carried out including an extensive literature search. English language systematic reviews, literature reviews, primary quantitative and qualitative papers and grey literature of high relevance evaluating, describing or discussing knowledge transfer or exchange activities in healthcare were included for review (January 1990–September 2009).

Findings.  Thirty‐three papers were reviewed (four systematic reviews, nine literature reviews, one environmental scan, nine empirical studies and ten case studies).

Conclusion.  Robust research into knowledge transfer and exchange in healthcare is limited. Analysis of a wide range of evidence indicates a number of commonly featured characteristics but further evaluation of these activities would benefit their application in facilitating evidence‐based practice in nursing.
Mutational analysis of Arabidopsis chloroplast polynucleotide phosphorylase reveals roles for both RNase PH core domains in polyadenylation, RNA 3′‐end maturation and intron degradation
Authors: Germain Arnaud , Herlich Shira , Larom Shirley , Kim Sang Hu , Schuster Gadi , Stern David B.
Published: April 2011

Polynucleotide phosphorylase (PNPase) catalyzes RNA polymerization and 3′→5′ phosphorolysis in vitro, but its roles in plant organelles are poorly understood. Here, we have used in vivo and in vitro mutagenesis to study Arabidopsis chloroplast PNPase (cpPNPase). In mutants lacking cpPNPase activity, unusual RNA patterns were broadly observed, implicating cpPNPase in rRNA and mRNA 3′‐end maturation, and RNA degradation. Intron‐containing fragments also accumulated in mutants, and cpPNPase appears to be required for a degradation step following endonucleolytic cleavage of the excised lariat. Analysis of poly(A) tails, which destabilize chloroplast RNAs, indicated that PNPase and a poly(A) polymerase share the polymerization role in wild‐type plants. We also studied two lines carrying mutations in the first PNPase core domain, which does not harbor the catalytic site. These mutants had gene‐dependent and intermediate RNA phenotypes, suggesting that reduced enzyme activity differentially affects chloroplast transcripts. The interpretations of in vivo results were confirmed by in vitro analysis of recombinant enzymes, and showed that the first core domain affects overall catalytic activity. In summary, cpPNPase has a major role in maturing mRNA and rRNA 3′‐ends, but also participates in RNA degradation through exonucleolytic digestion and polyadenylation. These functions depend absolutely on the catalytic site within the second duplicated RNase PH domain, and appear to be modulated by the first RNase PH domain.
Single‐agent gemcitabine chemotherapy in dogs with hepatocellular carcinomas
Authors: Elpiner A. K. , Brodsky E. M. , Hazzah T. N. , Post G. S.
Published: April 2011

The goal of this study was to determine the efficacy and tolerability of gemcitabine in dogs diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Eighteen dogs were examined retrospectively (4 massive HCC, 10 nodular HCC and 4 diffuse HCC). All dogs received gemcitabine at 350–400 mg m−2 weekly for 5 weeks. Toxicity was graded using VCOG‐CTCAE guidelines and response was monitored with serial abdominal ultrasounds. Fifteen dogs completed all five cycles. Toxicity was minimal and consisted of grade I/II vomiting, anorexia and diarrhoea and two episodes of grade III neutropenia. Median survival time for all dogs was 983 days. Median progression free interval was 971 days. Based on the results of this study, surgery remains the best treatment for HCC, despite incomplete resection. There was no improvement in the survival of those diagnosed with nonresectable HCC treated with gemcitabine chemotherapy.
Contributions of Attentional Style and Previous Experience to 4‐Month‐Old Infants’ Categorization
Authors: Kovack‐Lesh Kristine A. , Oakes Lisa M. , McMurray Bob
Published: April 2011

We examined how infants’ categorization is jointly influenced by previous experience and how much they shift their gaze back and forth between stimuli. Extending previous findings reported by K. A. Kovack‐Lesh, J. S. Horst, and L. M. Oakes (2008), we found that 4‐month‐old infants’ (N = 122) learning of the exclusive category of cats was related to whether they had cats at home and how much they shifted attention between two available stimuli during familiarization. Individual differences in attention assessed in an unrelated task were not related to their categorization. Thus, infants’ learning is multiply influenced by past experience and online attentional style.
Percutaneous Treatment of Congenital Coronary Arteriovenous Fistulas
Authors: HARIKRISHNAN SIVADASANPILLAI , BIMAL FRANCIS , AJITHKUMAR VALAPARAMBIL , BHAT ANIL , KRISHNAMOORTHY KAVASSERY MAHADEVAN , SIVASUBRAMONIAN SIVASANKARAN , TITUS THOMAS , THARAKAN JAGANMOHAN
Published: April 2011

Background: Congenital coronary arteriovenous fistulas (CAVF), although rare, can present as significant hemodynamic lesions necessitating intervention.

Methods and results: Six patients (two males) with congenital coronary arteriovenous fistulas (CAVF) underwent percutaneous transcatheter occlusion. The ages ranged from 4 years to 49 years (mean 20.1 years). The fistulas had their origins from the right coronary artery (two), the left anterior descending coronary artery (two), and the left circumflex coronary artery (two). One of the fistulas drained to the right ventricle, four drained to the right atrium, and the remaining one to the left ventricle (LV). The fistulas were closed using the arterial approach with Cook™ coils in two patients and with nitinol ductal occluders (NDOs) using the venous approach in four patients. One patient developed dissection of the wall of the fistula during attempted closure and had spontaneous occlusion of the fistula. Complete occlusion of the fistulas were achieved in all patients. Complications consisted of migration and embolization of the coils in one patient (later closed successfully with NDO) and myocardial infarction occurring two weeks following successful closure in another patient. At mean follow‐up of 39.6 +/− 22.9 months, all patients were asymptomatic and echo‐Doppler evaluation revealed no residual fistulae.

Conclusions: CAVF are very well amenable to percutaneous closure with acceptable morbidity and high success rates. (J Interven Cardiol 2011;24:208–215)
Hospital Nurses’ Perceptions of the Geriatric Care Environment in One Canadian Health Care Region
Authors: McKenzie Jo‐Ann Lapointe , Blandford Audrey A. , Menec Verena H. , Boltz Marie , Capezuti Elizabeth
Published: April 2011

Purpose: To identify and compare perceptions of the geriatric care environment among nurses in three different urban hospital types in one health authority in a Midwestern Canadian province.

Design: The Geriatric Institutional Assessment Profile developed by the Nurses Improving Healthsystem Elders (NICHE) program was administered to staff in eight urban hospitals between 2005 and 2006: two geriatric‐chronic care hospitals, four community hospitals, and two tertiary hospitals. The study focused on 1,189 nurses who completed the survey (n= 298 for geriatric‐chronic care hospitals; n= 387 for community hospitals, n= 504 for tertiary hospitals).

Methods: Analyses focused on items related to the concept of the geriatric nursing practice environment, including a composite measure of overall perceptions and three subscales (institutional values regarding older adults and staff, resource availability, and capacity for collaboration). Nurses’ perceptions of the extent to which facilities supported the provision of aging‐sensitive or aging‐relevant care to older adults and their families was also examined. Univariate analysis of variance was performed to determine significant group differences among nurses in the three hospital types.

Findings: Perceptions of the geriatric nurse practice environment (both in terms of the composite scale and the three subscales) were least positive among nurses in community hospitals relative to the other two hospital types. Perceptions in tertiary hospitals were significantly more positive than those in community hospitals in terms of institutional values and resource availability, albeit not capacity for collaboration. Perceptions were most positive in the geriatric‐chronic care hospitals. Perceptions of aging‐sensitive care delivery were also less positive in community and tertiary hospitals, relative to geriatric‐chronic care hospitals; perceptions in community and tertiary hospitals did not differ from each other.

Conclusions: In this Canadian study, nurses’ perception of the care environment varied by hospital type, with nurses in community hospitals expressing the most concern and nurses in geriatric‐chronic care hospitals being the most positive. This research highlights the importance of the hospital setting in understanding nurses’ ability to provide quality geriatric care.

Clinical Relevance: Enhancing the quality of care for older patients requires an understanding of the challenges and obstacles experienced by nurses. Assessing their perceptions of the care environment they work in, therefore, becomes a key issue in targeting policy and programs.
Corrosion of Structural Ceramics Under Sub‐Critical Conditions in Aqueous Sodium Chloride Solution and in Deionized Water. Part II: Dissolution of Al2O3‐Based Ceramics
Authors: Galusková Dagmar , Hnatko Miroslav , Galusek Dušan , Šajgalík Pavol
Published: April 2011

Two types of alumina‐based ceramics, pure solid‐state sintered (SSS) alumina ceramics, and a liquid phase sintered (LPS) alumina were corrosion tested under both static and quasi—dynamic conditions in 0.5M NaCl solution and in deionized water reference medium at the temperature of 290°C. Static tests were also performed at 150° and 200°C in order to obtain the data for determination of kinetic parameters, and for calculation of the activation energies. The apparent activation energies of dissolution of the LPS alumina in deionized water and in 0.5M NaCl solution were identical and ranged around 49 kJ/mol. The SSS alumina ceramics corroded by grain‐boundary attack and slow dissolution of alumina matrix grains, and the corrosion rates were negligible in both corrosion media. The LPS alumina, corroded by preferential attack and dissolution of calcium aluminosilicate grain‐boundary glass. The alumina matrix remained relatively intact. The dissolution was markedly faster than in the SSS alumina. The rates of dissolution were found to be temperature dependent, but no influence of the corrosion medium was observed.
Structure, Dielectric Properties and Temperature Stability of BaTiO3–Bi(Mg1/2Ti1/2)O3 Perovskite Solid Solutions
Authors: Xiong Bo , Hao Hua , Zhang Shujun , Liu Hanxing , Cao Minghe
Published: April 2011

(1−x)BaTiO3–xBi(Mg1/2Ti1/2)O3 [(1−x)BT–xBMT] polycrystalline ceramics were obtained via solid‐state processing techniques. The solubility limit for (1−x)BT–xBMT was determined to be about x=0.07. A systematic structural change from the ferroelectric tetragonal phase to pseudocubic phase was observed at about x≥0.05 at room temperature. Dielectric measurements revealed a gradual change from normal ferroelectric of pure BaTiO3 to highly dispersive relaxor‐like characteristics in the solid solution with 30–60 mol% Bi(Mg1/2Ti1/2)O3, showing low‐temperature coefficients of capacitance over a wide temperature range. The properties of Nb2O5‐doped 0.85BT–0.15BMT ceramics were investigated to better understand the formation mechanism of core‐shell structure, for further improving the temperature stability of the dielectric behavior.
ÜBER EINIGE INHALTSSTOFFE DER SOLANACEEN UND IHRE BEDEUTUNG FÜR DIE KARTOFFELKÄFERRESISTENZ1
Authors: SCHREIBER KLAUS
Published: April 2011

A summary report is given of naturally occurring substances in plants which confer resistance to the Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata Say). Alkaloid‐glycosides occurring in many Solanum and Lycopersicon varieties' are discussed in some detail, and results are reported of some recent investigations of the alkaloids in Solanum dulcamara, S. nigrum, S. polyadenium and Acaulia. An attempt is made to explain the mechanism by which these substances affect insects. The harmful effects of alkaloid‐tetraosides of Solanum on the taste of fodder are attributed to biophysical processes, particularly to surface and interface phenomena. In addition it is assumed that the alkaloids in question induce a. blocking of the Steroide metabolism and affect the resorption of the phytosterines that are indispensable for the insects, thus explaining frequently observed disturbances in development and fertility.