Warren County, Kentucky Hazardous Materials Commodity Flow Analysis

This report presents the results of a Commodity Flow Analysis of Hazardous Materials for I-65 and the William H. Natcher Parkway conducted by Western Kentucky University in partnership with the Warren County (Kentucky) Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC). Kentucky counties within the study area include Warren, Simpson, Edmonson, Butler, Barren, and Hart. Figure 1 shows the sections of I-65 and Natcher Parkway that run through these counties. The purpose of our report is to give information on patterns of hazardous materials being transported along I-65 and Natcher Parkway as observed from May 24th 2010 to June 18th 2010. A secondary purpose is to summarize incidents involving hazardous materials over the previous ten years (January 2001-2009). Finally, this report assesses survey information collected from fixed facilities that ship and receive hazardous materials in the I-65 and Natcher Parkway corridors. Commodity flow analysis is necessary in order for the LEPC to prepare for future hazardous material releases that may occur along this section of I-65 and Natcher Parkway. Data collected from this study will aid the emergency planning process for specific hazardous materials that were observed to frequent the study area during the study period

Creativity and Autonomy in Swarm Intelligence Systems

This work introduces two swarm intelligence algorithms -- one mimicking the behaviour of one species of ants (\emph{Leptothorax acervorum}) foraging (a `Stochastic Diffusion Search', SDS) and the other algorithm mimicking the behaviour of birds flocking (a `Particle Swarm Optimiser', PSO) -- and outlines a novel integration strategy exploiting the local search properties of the PSO with global SDS behaviour. The resulting hybrid algorithm is used to sketch novel drawings of an input image, exploliting an artistic tension between the local behaviour of the `birds flocking' - as they seek to follow the input sketch - and the global behaviour of the `ants foraging' - as they seek to encourage the flock to explore novel regions of the canvas. The paper concludes by exploring the putative `creativity' of this hybrid swarm system in the philosophical light of the `rhizome' and Deleuze's well known `Orchid and Wasp' metaphor

Programming a Plasma Physics Calculator with the Use of Python

Practitioners in plasma physics and engineering often make use of formula booklets when making calculations [e.g., The NRL Plasma Formulary...]. Computing these formulas by hand is often tedious and error prone, particularly if the quantities need to be converted from a different set of units. In our research, we decided to develop a Python program that solves this problem by taking user input, converting it into the correct units, performing the user's calculation and then outputting it with the units of the user's choice. This was done by using object oriented programming, python libraries that stored basic unit conversions, and tagged data which is essentially tuples that use a number as index zero and the respective units as index one. EX: (23.45, "cm"). Through implementing these three strategies we were able to successfully create a base program that is easy to use, manipulate, and further extend for future purposes. Therefore, by utilizing python to create a plasma physics calculator we were able to find an effective way to organize a plasma formulary. For future purposes, we would like to create a user interface for our program, and add additional formulas, and units to it

Conserved genes and pathways in primary human fibroblast strains undergoing replicative and radiation induced senescence

Additional file 3: Figure S3. Regulation of genes of Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy pathway during senescence induction in HFF strains Genes of the “Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy” pathway which are significantly up- (green) and down- (red) regulated (log2 fold change >1) during irradiation induced senescence (120 h after 20 Gy irradiation) in HFF strains. Orange color signifies genes which are commonly up-regulated during both, irradiation induced and replicative senescence

Whole-body tissue stabilization and selective extractions via tissue-hydrogel hybrids for high-resolution intact circuit mapping and phenotyping

To facilitate fine-scale phenotyping of whole specimens, we describe here a set of tissue fixation-embedding, detergent-clearing and staining protocols that can be used to transform excised organs and whole organisms into optically transparent samples within 1–2 weeks without compromising their cellular architecture or endogenous fluorescence. PACT (passive CLARITY technique) and PARS (perfusion-assisted agent release in situ) use tissue-hydrogel hybrids to stabilize tissue biomolecules during selective lipid extraction, resulting in enhanced clearing efficiency and sample integrity. Furthermore, the macromolecule permeability of PACT- and PARS-processed tissue hybrids supports the diffusion of immunolabels throughout intact tissue, whereas RIMS (refractive index matching solution) grants high-resolution imaging at depth by further reducing light scattering in cleared and uncleared samples alike. These methods are adaptable to difficult-to-image tissues, such as bone (PACT-deCAL), and to magnified single-cell visualization (ePACT). Together, these protocols and solutions enable phenotyping of subcellular components and tracing cellular connectivity in intact biological networks

Information sharing impact of stochastic diffusion search on differential evolution algorithm

This work details the research aimed at applying the powerful resource allocation mechanism deployed in stochastic diffusion search (SDS) to the differential evolution (DE), effectively merging a nature inspired swarm intelligence algorithm with a biologically inspired evolutionary algorithm. The results reported herein suggest that the hybrid algorithm, exploiting information sharing between the population elements, has the potential to improve the optimisation capability of classical DE algorithms. This claim is verified by running several experiments using state-of-the-art benchmarks. Additionally, the significance of the frequency within which SDS introduces communication and information exchange is also investigated