This paper presents a solution for measurement automation of spectral characteristics in near and mid-infrared region using the Oriel 77250 monochromator and a general-purpose digital storage oscilloscope. To automate the task a USB controlled stepper motor was attached to the monochromator. The stepper motor and data acquisition through the oscilloscope is controlled from the host computer by means of dedicated LabVIEW software. The acquired data from the detector are processed in real-time and displayed in a form of a graph. Both raw and processed data are then saved for their later post-processing. This solution enables to make measurements at the maximum speed of 1.1 wavelength steps per second. In the first diffraction order the minimum wavelength step is 0.05 nm and the precision is ±0.05 nm. and V práci je představeno řešení automatizace měření spektrálních charakteristik v blízké a střední infračervené oblasti s využitím monochromátoru Oriel 77250 a digitálního paměťového osciloskopu. Pro automatizaci měření byl k monochromátoru připojen krokový motor ovládaný přes USB rozhraní. Krokový motor a sběr dat z digitálního osciloskopu je řízen počítačem pomocí vlastního programu napsaného ve vývojové prostředí LabVIEW. Získaná data z detektoru jsou zpracována v reálném čase a zobrazena ve formě grafu. Jak nezpracovaná, tak zpracovaná data jsou uložena v počítači pro případné pozdější využití. Toto řešení umožňuje provádět měření maximální rychlostí 1,1 bodů spektra za sekundu. V prvním difrakčním řádu je minimální krok měření 0,05 nm a přesnost ±0,05 nm.
To assess BAT activity in humans at a population level, infrared thermography (IRT) represents a safe, readily repeatable and affordable alternative to 18F-FDG-PET. Building upon a previously proposed method by our laboratory, we further refined the image computational algorithm to quantify BAT activation in the cervical-supraclavicular (C-SCV) region of healthy young men under thermo-neutral and cold exposure conditions. Additionally, we validated the whole-body calorimeter (WBC) in reliably measuring cold-induced thermogenesis. The temperature gradient between C-SCV-deltoid regions, and the corresponding difference in heat power output, increased upon cold air exposure relative to thermo-neutral conditions (by 74.88 %, p<0.0001; and by 71.34 %, p<0.0001 respectively). Resting and cumulative energy expenditure (EE) rose significantly (by 13.14 % and 9.12 % respectively, p=0.0001) while positive correlations between IRT measures and EE were found with cold air exposure (percentage change in heat power gradient between ROI and deltoid, cold air: r2 =0.29, p=0.026, Pearson's correlation). IRT and WBC can be used to study BAT activation. The refined algorithm allows for more automation and objectivity in IRT data analysis, especially under cold air exposures.
Th e article distinguishes between two fundamental dynamics in Marx’s critique of capitalism: the humanist, cyclical, perpetually-renewed struggle between capitalists and wage labor over profi ts, wages, and the distribution of social wealth more generally and what I term a “posthuman” dialectic between humans and machines, unfolding as the unilinear historical dynamic of automation and the corresponding decreases it brings to the capacity of living labor to produce surplus value. Th e consequence of this posthuman dialectic is both the growing superfl uity of living labor relegated to a planet of slums and the actual and coming collapse of valorization as a global process (as opposed to its operation in any single unit of capital). If the former, humanist dialectic remained predominant in what Moishe Postone has termed “traditional” Leninist Marxism, the contemporary context of the “Second Machine-Age” and the expanding automation of virtually all production and services points to a collapse of valorization that philosophers such as Michel Henry and Robert Kurz identifi ed in Marx’s conceptualization of capitalism as “the moving contradiction.”