qualitative difference
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2022 ◽  
Vol 1048 ◽  
pp. 485-492
Author(s):  
Tran Thi Kim Ngan ◽  
Tran Thien Hien ◽  
Dao Tan Phat ◽  
Ly Thi Ngoc Minh ◽  
Huynh Bao Long ◽  
...  

Hydrodistillation (HD) is a traditional technique used in most extraction processes. On the other hand, microwave-assisted hydrogen distillation (MAHD), an advanced method using microwaves in the extraction process, has recently emerged. The chemical ingredients of essential oils obtained from pomelo (Citrus grandis L.) peels obtained by MAHD and by hydrodistillation (HD) were analyzed and compared gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The results show that there is no significant difference between the two methods in terms of extraction efficiency, at around 4.45 to 4.7%. The main components of essential oils were Limonene, α-pinene, β-Myrcene and Sabinene. The content of those compounds showed no clear quantitative and qualitative difference between HD and MAHD. Experimental results show that the MAHD method provides a good alternative to extracting essential oils from grapefruit, saving time, operating costs and achieving more optimal levels. Keywords: Comparison, Pomelo (Citrus grandis L.), Essential oil, Hydrodistillation, Microwave assist hydrodistillation,


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 44-71
Author(s):  
Muhammed Asadi

My purpose in this paper is to link the larger social context that structurally necessitates „wars without end” perpetrated by the U.S. elite with the rhetoric that legitimizes them so as to sociologically situate the rhetoric, the vocabularies of motive within a historically formed war-centric social structure that reveals an easily discernible pattern in the use of language. I consider Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech of December 8, 1941 announcing U.S. entry into World War II to be the rhetorical “Master Frame”, the blueprint in this regard that was subsequently incorporated by later presidents to justify all wars without end. I compared dissected components of this rhetorical Master Frame to war speeches made by different U.S. presidents in the pre- and post-World War II era to reveal the qualitative difference between war rhetoric of a peace-time social structure where war is an aberration and the permanent war based social structure of the post-World War II U.S., when war became the taken for granted norm.


2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
V.I. Tsoі ◽  

In the conditions of market uncertainty, the coronavirus pandemic, the absence of an officially articulated national idea, national interests and ideology in Kazakhstan, the problem of the lack of logically justified and coordinated coordinates of systemic thinking, an unambiguous paradigm of humanitarian thinking (analytical, pedagogical, managerial, economic, etc.) is becoming more and more clearly realized as the most important conditions for personal, civil and professional self-determination. The purpose is to substantiate the general logical coordinates and methods of reformatting the ambiguous humanitarian paradigm used in the activity. The study used various methods: the ontological principle of genetically meaningful logic, the method of transformation of concrete images of objects based on their abstract essence, the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete, the speculative language of schematic images of thought and the language of methodological theory of activity. Logically justified universal abstract-concrete coordinates of universal motion are given. In relation to life and the world of activity, they can be concretized by coordinates: "standard of living – efficiency of activity", or "efficiency of activity – time", or "results – costs", or "quality – quantity", etc. The use of motion vectors in the logic of descent from the concrete to the abstract (NCA), ascent from the abstract to the concrete (AAC), as well as in their combination – logic CAC gives certainty to thinking. As an example, the scheme of the qualitative difference between educational (pre-professional) activities from professional ones using these methods and paired dialectical categories is given. The scheme and description of the functional model of the system object, considered as a rubicon of the transformation of educational activity into professional activity, are given. To reformat the indefinite, ambiguous paradigms of the humanities used in the activity into functional-logical, visible, constructive and unambiguous, it is recommended to use abstract-concrete coordinates, the methods given, the language of schematic images and the paradigm of the methodological theory of activity. As an example, the concept of a typical unit of activity development is given. A visible unambiguous paradigm is a necessary, but not sufficient prerequisite for adequate personal, civil and professional self-determination of a person in situations of high uncertainty. A sufficient prerequisite is the acquisition by subjects of appropriate reflexive-thinking abilities for self-determination, self-organization, self-regulation, etc.


Diametros ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vitaliy Nadurak

The article proposes a consideration of the dual-process theory of higher cognition as a theory of the classification of acts of information processing. One of the reasons why the dual-process approach has been criticized is the fact that the information processing process can sometimes have characteristics that undermine a clear-cut attribution to one of the two traditionally defined opposite types. To avoid this criticism, it is proposed that the object of classification should not be the processes of information processing, but separate acts of combining two units of information. Unlike a process, a particular act of information processing at a particular moment in time cannot simultaneously have opposite characteristics, nor can it simultaneously have and not have some characteristic. In order to show the qualitative difference between various information processing acts as falling individually into either Type 1 or Type 2 processing, it is proposed to classify them by a feature that is present in one type and absent in another. It is suggested to take conscious control as such a feature. As a result, in the information processing acts corresponding to Type 2 category, units of information are combined in a consciously controlled way, whereas in the acts to be considered as Type 1, those units either already are combined or combine autonomously due to the existence of indirect associative connections.


2021 ◽  
pp. 237-268
Author(s):  
Samuel Reid ◽  
◽  
Travis West ◽  

As technology and globalization increase the chances of exposure to information, learners’ Critical Thinking (CT) and researchers’ ability to measure it will play an important role in developing modern educational experiences. This is particularly the case for English language learners who wish to enter tertiary education in English-speaking countries (Liaw, 2007; Wagner, 2010). Emphasis on such skills is increasingly a facet of language education in Japanese contexts. This can be seen in changes implemented by the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology which have encouraged a focus on CT in English language courses during recent years (MEXT, 2011). However, it can be difficult for second language (L2) learners to exhibit CT in an L2 (Bali, 2015; Luk & Lin, 2015). Measuring CT in learner output has also proven difficult, which can be an obstacle to further integrating CT in L2 pedagogy. Studies exploring ways of measuring CT in an L2 have largely focused on written work (e.g., Davidson & Dunham, 1997; Floyd, 2011; Stapleton, 2001), while analysis of CT in spoken L2 discourse has seen little attention. As a result, little advice can be found on practical steps for teachers to help learners display CT when speaking in an L2. This chapter describes a study of arguments made during group discussions in an L2 English Discussion course at a Japanese university. A corpus of spontaneous spoken discourse recorded during class was analyzed to measure the frequency of CT displayed in an academic setting where CT was not an explicit focus of the course. Arguments in the corpus were identified using Ramage et al.’s (2016) model of argument criteria, and a categorization system was developed in which discourse was classified as displaying either objective reasoning or subjective reasoning. Participants were found to have used approximately 72% objective and 28% subjective reasoning. However, further analysis revealed an important qualitative difference in arguments identified as incorporating objective reasoning. The results of the study suggest two areas that may help teachers promote an increase in student usage of CT: the importance of question prompts in orienting learners towards CT in their answers, and a specific focus on the role of pronoun usage in taking a subjective or objective stance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (24) ◽  
pp. 13190
Author(s):  
Kamila Rząd ◽  
Ewa Paluszkiewicz ◽  
Damian Neubauer ◽  
Mateusz Olszewski ◽  
Katarzyna Kozłowska-Tylingo ◽  
...  

Acridine cell-penetrating peptide conjugates are an extremely important family of compounds in antitumor chemotherapy. These conjugates are not so widely analysed in antimicrobial therapy, although bioactive peptides could be used as nanocarriers to smuggle antimicrobial compounds. An octaarginine conjugate of an imidazoacridinone derivative (Compound 1-R8) synthetized by us exhibited high antifungal activity against reference and fluconazole-resistant clinical strains (MICs ≤ 4 μg mL−1). Our results clearly demonstrate the qualitative difference in accumulation of the mother compound and Compound 1-R8 conjugate into fungal cells. Only the latter was transported and accumulated effectively. Microscopic and flow cytometry analysis provide some evidence that the killing activity of Compound 1-R8 may be associated with a change in the permeability of the fungal cell membrane. The conjugate exhibited low cytotoxicity against human embryonic kidney (HEK-293) and human liver (HEPG2) cancer cell lines. Nevertheless, the selectivity index value of the conjugate for human pathogenic strains remained favourable and no hemolytic activity was observed. The inhibitory effect of the analysed compound on yeast topoisomerase II activity suggested its molecular target. In summary, conjugation with R8 effectively increased imidazoacridinone derivative ability to enter the fungal cell and achieve a concentration inside the cell that resulted in a high antifungal effect.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Benjamin John Ruck

<p>In this thesis the magnetic response of a layered type-II superconducting system is explored across the entire range of fields, temperatures and currents where superconductivity exists, with the results providing valuable insight into the role of reduced dimensionality in determining the behaviour of type-II materials such as the new high temperature superconductors. The system in question consists of alternating layers of amorphous Ta or TaxGe1-x (x approximation 0.3) with amorphous Ge where the individual layer thicknesses vary between 17A [angstrom] and 210A [angstrom]. These multilayers were fabricated by vapour deposition in a high vacuum chamber which allowed the creation of samples with uniform layers of high purity. The resistive transport properties have been measured from Tc (approximation 1-3K) to temperatures as low as 50mK in some cases, and in fields of up to 15T. The upper critical fields have been determined from the fluctuation conductivity both with the field parallel and perpendicular to the layer plane of the samples. The results show clearly the dependence of the dimensionality on the superconducting layer thickness and the degree of coupling across the Ge layers. For the samples with the most two-dimensional properties the zero field resistive transition is governed by the unbinding of thermally created vortex-antivortex pairs as described by the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless theory. A detailed investigation of the perpendicular field vortex states and dynamics has been performed, including measurement of the activation energies needed for thermally activated vortex motion. Qualitative difference are observed between the activation energies in two- and three-dimensional samples, with the barriers being generally higher in 3D. The non-linear current-voltage characteristics of the samples provide evidence for the existence of a vortex glass state which melts into a liquid below Hc2, although the divergence of the activation barriers in the glass can be restricted by the finite sample thickness. A brief investigation of the corresponding parallel field regime showed considerably less dissipation, due largely to the transparent nature of the Ge layers to the magnetic field. At the highest currents an instability is observed in the vortices which can drive the samples discontinuously back into the normal state. This instability is shown to be of the type predicted by Larkin and Ovchinnikov (LO), including quantitative agreement between the measured and predicted values of the critical vortex velocity. Several features of the instability are noted which are not specifically predicted by the LO theory, and comparisons are drawn between these and the prevailing vortex state at lower currents.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Benjamin John Ruck

<p>In this thesis the magnetic response of a layered type-II superconducting system is explored across the entire range of fields, temperatures and currents where superconductivity exists, with the results providing valuable insight into the role of reduced dimensionality in determining the behaviour of type-II materials such as the new high temperature superconductors. The system in question consists of alternating layers of amorphous Ta or TaxGe1-x (x approximation 0.3) with amorphous Ge where the individual layer thicknesses vary between 17A [angstrom] and 210A [angstrom]. These multilayers were fabricated by vapour deposition in a high vacuum chamber which allowed the creation of samples with uniform layers of high purity. The resistive transport properties have been measured from Tc (approximation 1-3K) to temperatures as low as 50mK in some cases, and in fields of up to 15T. The upper critical fields have been determined from the fluctuation conductivity both with the field parallel and perpendicular to the layer plane of the samples. The results show clearly the dependence of the dimensionality on the superconducting layer thickness and the degree of coupling across the Ge layers. For the samples with the most two-dimensional properties the zero field resistive transition is governed by the unbinding of thermally created vortex-antivortex pairs as described by the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless theory. A detailed investigation of the perpendicular field vortex states and dynamics has been performed, including measurement of the activation energies needed for thermally activated vortex motion. Qualitative difference are observed between the activation energies in two- and three-dimensional samples, with the barriers being generally higher in 3D. The non-linear current-voltage characteristics of the samples provide evidence for the existence of a vortex glass state which melts into a liquid below Hc2, although the divergence of the activation barriers in the glass can be restricted by the finite sample thickness. A brief investigation of the corresponding parallel field regime showed considerably less dissipation, due largely to the transparent nature of the Ge layers to the magnetic field. At the highest currents an instability is observed in the vortices which can drive the samples discontinuously back into the normal state. This instability is shown to be of the type predicted by Larkin and Ovchinnikov (LO), including quantitative agreement between the measured and predicted values of the critical vortex velocity. Several features of the instability are noted which are not specifically predicted by the LO theory, and comparisons are drawn between these and the prevailing vortex state at lower currents.</p>


Blood ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 3227-3227
Author(s):  
Abdulrahman Saadalla ◽  
Rachel Leger ◽  
Aneel A. Ashrani ◽  
Rajiv K. Pruthi ◽  
Dong Chen ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Heparin induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is a rare immune mediated complication that is triggered in a subset of patients temporal to therapeutic heparin exposure. Laboratory testing is based on screening for the presence of serum anti-PF4 antibodies using sensitive solid-phase immunoassays. If antibodies are detected, functional testing to demonstrate the platelet activating properties and heparin dependence of these immune complexes is then performed. Previous studies have reported possible clinical utility in identifying non heparin dependent platelet activating antibodies using a buffer control with zero heparin in the serotonin release functional assay (SRA). These reports suggested a correlation between reactivity in the zero heparin buffer control and pathogenicity of HIT antibodies which may define a subtype of HIT, referred to as autoimmune HIT. We aimed to investigate the utility of zero heparin buffer control as a part of an inhouse validation study of a mass spectrometry-coupled SRA (Mayo-SRA). Methods: Three hundred archived serum samples were tested using anti-PF4 IgG antibody enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA; Immucor Diagnostics, GA, USA). SRA was preformed on all samples using Mayo-SRA and reference 14C SRA methods. Zero heparin control buffer was included in the Mayo-SRA assay. Serotonin release &gt;20% in the low dose heparin (0.1U/mL, LDH) and ELISA optical density (OD) &gt;0.4 were considered positive. Drug interference studies were performed by spiking known SRA-positive samples with increasing concentrations of unfractionated heparin (UFH), low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) or fondaparinux in the LDH and zero heparin SRA. The clinical 4T score was calculated retrospectively calculated for all patients. Results: Of the 300 tested samples, 57 were anti-PF4 ELISA positive. 33 of the 57 samples were positive using the reference 14C SRA method. Whereas 43 samples were positive by Mayo-SRA assay. Three additional samples were positive by Mayo-SRA, but negative by both screening anti-PF4 ELISA and the reference SRA method (Fig- 1A). Lastly, 13 samples were anti-PF4 ELISA positive, but SRA negative by both methods in comparison. Interestingly, 44 of 46 (95%) samples interpreted positive by LDH were also interpreted positive (serotonin release &gt;20%) under zero heparin conditions. These included the 3 samples that were positive by Mayo-SRA but negative by both screening anti-PF4 ELISA and the reference SRA. The overall % serotonin release using zero heparin control was significantly lower (P= 0.003, paired Student T-test) compared to LDH (Fig-1B). In addition, zero heparin followed a similar pattern as LDH, with highest levels at ELISA OD units &gt;2 (Fig-1C). Strikingly, drug interference studies showed artifactual serotonin release in the zero heparin reaction, which was not detected in the absence of spiked drugs. For UFH, serotonin release in zero heparin control occurred at very low spiked concentrations, ≥0.063 U/mL. LMWH and fondaparinux spiking experiments also displayed similar zero heparin serotonin release patterns (Fig-1D). Of note, none of these interferences were detected in UFH spiked SRA-negative samples (data not shown). Conclusion: Contrary to prior results suggesting that less than 50% of LDH SRA positive samples are also positive in the zero heparin SRA, our results show high zero heparin SRA positivity rate of &gt;95%. Zero heparin SRA showed a pattern with highest levels at ELISA OD units &gt;2 suggesting that reactivity in this condition is a function of antibody strength rather than a qualitative difference (i.e. "autoimmune" HIT antibodies vs "non-autoimmune" HIT antibodies). In addition, contamination of patient sera with small amounts of remnant heparin can significantly impact platelet activation in the zero heparin SRA test. Thus, zero heparin SRA positive results may be artifactual and represent residual heparin contained in the patient sample. Figure legend: Fig-1A. Scatter plots of SRA positive samples grouped by 4T scores. Red dots are Mayo-SRA only positive samples. Fig-1B and Fig-1C. Scatter plots of % serotonin release of Mayo-SRA positive samples at LDH (circles) vs. zero heparin buffers (squares), and grouped by ELISA OD values, respectively. Fig-1D. % Serotonin release of known SRA-positive samples spiked with increasing concentrations of UFH, LMWH, or fondaparinux at LDH (white) or zero heparin buffers (red). Figure 1 Figure 1. Disclosures Pruthi: CSL Behring: Honoraria; Genentech: Honoraria; Bayer Healthcare AG: Honoraria; HEMA Biologics: Honoraria; Instrumentation Laboratory: Honoraria; Merck: Honoraria. Padmanabhan: Veralox Therapeutics: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002224372110569
Author(s):  
Hyeong-Tak Lee ◽  
Sriram Venkataraman

Durable goods often come bundled with limited-time and sometimes generous factory/base warranties. Yet a sizable number of durable goods customers purchase extended warranties that they rarely make claims against. This study offers a reference-dependent-preferences-based theoretical explanation of why consumers purchase extended warranties even if their purchased good is already covered by a base warranty. Consistent with our theory of reference-dependent preferences, we show that consumers treat base warranties as a reference point, thereby creating a qualitative difference in the valuation of an extended warranty on the purchased product. Specifically, our theory model predicts that the loss aversion motivation for consumers with base warranties results in these consumers valuing extended warranties more favorably than their peers purchasing identical products without a base warranty. The authors validate the predictions from the theory model using observational data from the automobile industry and show how the reference-dependent-preferences-based effect varies with vehicle quality and with macroeconomic conditions. The analyses reveal autobuyers' elevated loss-aversion motivations and higher price sensitivity during weaker macroeconomic conditions than during more robust macroeconomic conditions. Finally, the authors use the empirical model to identify opportunities for auto dealers to engage in targeted price promotions as a function of prevailing macroeconomic conditions. These findings have important implications for marketing managers, as they provide valuable guidance on when an extended warranty should be promoted, to whom and what extended warranty should be marketed.


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