Short History of Waterville, Maine

If we were to simplify the story of Waterville to the lightest exploration possible, a good strategy might be to look at the city’s names. True, a good number of important events might be overlooked, but examining the names and name changes in the city’s history offers a unique view into the essence of its identity. Waterville has a rich history when it comes to names. The city itself went through a number of them in its early days, and these changes reflect the city’s continual reinvention of itself. The first people we know about who lived here, the Canibas people, called the falls on the river and their settlement Teconnet, or Ticonic Village, depending on whose spelling we prefer. From the beginning the settlement was deeply connected to those falls on the Kennebec River, which offered fishing and eventually great industrial potential. When Europeans took over the area, the community became the plantation of Kingfield and then the town of Winslow, named for the general who established Fort Halifax there. The section of town on the west side of the river, however, grew on its own to the point of demanding its independence, and this section became the town of Waterville. Little is known about why the name Waterville was suggested, besides the obvious river and streams, but it is interesting to consider the fact that this simple name combines English and French words. The town would be shaped greatly by both English-speaking Americans and French-Canadian immigrants in the times to come. Two final shifts related to the town’s name are relatively minor. In time, like Waterville itself had done before, the western section of the town began to grow on its own and eventually seceded, incorporating itself as West Waterville until adopting the name of Oakland to establish a more distinct identity. The Town of Waterville that remained soon became the City of Waterville, ushering in an era of bustling industry and lively culture. Waterville was dubbed the Elm City for its many elm trees, and as such grew to be considered one of the more beautiful cities of Maine. Waterville’s other nickname is “The University City of Maine,” and the city’s two colleges are another example of the city’s history of name changes and redefinition. The first college was called the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, which became Waterville College and then Colby University, before becoming Colby College. The changes mark a progression towards becoming a more secular institution and also reflect who had invested in the school. Waterville’s second college began as Kiest Business College, then became Morgan Business College and then Morgan-Thomas Business College—all reflecting the private ownership of the school—before becoming Thomas Junior College and then simply Thomas College. With each name change the schools explored new opportunities, and with each new name the institutions had new meaning. The names significant to Waterville are not limited to the city itself nor its institutions. One final, personal level of name changing to consider occurred among the immigrant populations as they came to the city to establish new lives. French-Canadian immigrants often changed their names for convenience of assimilation or due to their own uncertainty about spellings, although their employers also often simply forced new names or adjusted spellings on them. For example, the name Roi changed to Roy, or Ware, or, by translation, King. The Syrian-Lebanese immigrants faced similar experiences, with their Arabic names often unpronounceable to the Yankee population. What, in the end, is the significance of Waterville’s names and their changes? If nothing else, they show the history of Waterville to be a dynamic one. The city has grown and shrunk, experienced changing population demographics, shifted economic bases, yet through it all the city remains. The hard-working people of the city are at the root of its successes; they form a community continually eager to reshape their city into the best place it can be. Waterville has been an Indian burial ground, a trade center, a mill town, a regional hub for employment and transportation, a business center, a college town, and a bustling city. The story of Waterville is one of frequent adjustment, ambition, and perseverance. Like the story told by the city’s names, it is a story of steady development and of dynamic change

Fibre-reinforced additive manufacturing: from design guidelines to advanced lattice structures

In pursuit of achieving ultimate lightweight designs with additive manufacturing (AM), engineers across industries are increasingly gravitating towards composites and architected cellular solids; more precisely, fibre-reinforced polymers and functionally graded lattices (FGLs). Control over material anisotropy and the cell topology in design for AM (DfAM) offer immense scope for customising a part’s properties and for the efficient use of material. This research expands the knowledge on the design with fibre-reinforced AM (FRAM) and the elastic-plastic performance of FGLs. Novel toolpath strategies, design guidelines and assessment criteria for FRAM were developed. For this purpose, an open-source solution was proposed, successfully overcoming the limitations of commercial printers. The effect of infill patterns on structural performance, economy, and manufacturability was examined. It was demonstrated how print paths informed by stress trajectories and key geometric features can outperform conventional patterns, laying the groundwork for more sophisticated process planning. A compilation of the first comprehensive database on fibre-reinforced FGLs provided insights into the effect of grading on the elastic performance and energy absorption capability, subject to strut-and surface-based lattices, build direction and fibre volume fraction. It was elucidated how grading the unit cell density within a lattice offers the possibility of tailoring the stiffness and achieving higher energy absorption than ungraded lattices. Vice versa, grading the unit cell size of lattices yielded no effect on the performance and is thus exclusively governed by the density. These findings help exploit the lightweight potential of FGLs through better informed DfAM. A new and efficient methodology for predicting the elastic-plastic characteristics of FGLs under large strain deformation, assuming homogenised material properties, was presented. A phenomenological constitutive model that was calibrated based upon interpolated material data of uniform density lattices facilitated a computationally inexpensive simulation approach and thus helps streamline the design workflow with architected lattices.Open Acces

Improving end-of-life care

The purpose of this report is to examine our attitudes towards end-of-life care and assess the systems of reimbursement and quality measurement that support and sustain it. This report is divided into two primary sections: the first, Culture, explores the culture of end-of-life care, from its historical roots and development to its slow integration into modern medicine. The second, Infrastructure, focuses on the Medicare Hospice Benefit and quality measurement under the Affordable Care Act. Under healthcare reform, reimbursement is now more than ever tied to quality and as such the two systems operate in close concert. Their influence on the provision and assessment of end-of-life care is significant, and this report analyzes flaws in each that undermine their potential to truly advance quality, person-centered care. This report ends with recommendations for improvement for both reimbursement and quality measurement, with the sincere hope that by strengthening the structures that support end-of-life care, we will better support patients and their families.Public AffairsSocial Wor

In Any Weather : a Collection of Short Stories

Short Storie

Population Dynamics in Response to Fire in \u3ci\u3eQuercus laevis - Pinus palustris\u3c/i\u3e Barrens and Related Communities in Southeast Virginia

Permanent plots in the Zuni Pine Barrens (Isle of Wight Co., Virginia) were sampled in order to: quantify plant population dynamics in response to fire, compare these dynamics among different moisture regimes, compare the effect of mechanical understory removal to that of fire on tree seedling and herbaceous dynamics, and determine the effect of dense lichen (Cladonia spp.) coverage on pine seedling establishment and survival. Fire resulted in 40% aboveground mortality in the overstory, 80% in the sapling/large shrub layer, and nearly 100% in the understory, followed by a 3.3 to 10.6 fold increase in understory density. Regeneration was predominantly by vegetative means and shrub species accounted for greater than 90% of the post-fire density and 80% of the increase in density. In the wetter areas, tree and herbaceous species made up a larger percentage of post-fire understory density than was the case in drier areas, and species diversity was greater. In drier areas, the same species which dominated the understory before the fire continued to do so afterward, and these same species increased in number significantly more than other species. In the wetter areas, the majority of pre-fire dominant understory species were no longer important components of the communities after the fire, and these species either failed to increase significantly or even decreased in number. Several species that were not important components of the communities before the fire increased significantly more than others and were among the dominant post-fire understory species. In drier areas, all significant changes in density occurred in the first year following the fire, while in wetter areas, significant changes occurred in the second year as well. Burning differed from mechanical clearing of the understory in that tree seedling species exhibited greater densities and increases in density. Burned areas did not differ from mechanically cleared areas in herbaceous density or dynamics, but differences in herbaceous species composition were noted. Dense lichen patches did not differ from areas devoid of lichens with respect to pine seedling mortality. Pine seedling density, however, was significantly greater in lichen patches

Making an administrative trustee agent accountable: reason-based decision making within the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism

"Decisions within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol are made by an expert body that acts as a trustee agent of the member states. Trustee agents help overcome the credible commitment problems of their principals and promise reason-based decisions. In contrast to traditional principal-agent settings, trusteeship relations are typically triadic. Beside the preferences of the principals and the trustee, decision criteria provide an external point of reference. They reflect the principals' long-term interest and define the trustee's decision rationale. The triadic structure helps protect the autonomy of trustees and allows for making them accountable for their decisions. Accountability mechanisms intend to ensure that a trustee's decisions are in line with established decision criteria. Against this backdrop, we explore the incentives created by the existing institutional arrangement for the making of CDM decisions and examine selected cases. We conclude that CDM arrangements provide a model for nonpartisan international regulation." (author's abstract

Additive manufacturing of bone-inspired structural-power composites

Design for additive manufacturing today – benefitting from unprecedented geometrical freedom – isincreasingly exploiting means of structural optimization, including topology optimization, latticing andby taking inspiration from nature. This paper constitutes a case study, highlighting the added value andpotential of combining these structural design approaches in AM, particularly in terms ofmultifunctionality. A method to obtain bone-inspired structural-power composites, designed for fibre-reinforced additive manufacturing, with both high stiffness-to-weight ratio and ionic conductivity ispresented. For this purpose, a sandwich structure with reinforced shell (compact bone) and lattice core(spongy bone) filled with ionic liquid (bone marrow) is proposed. A finite element analysis andcalculations based on a resistance network model provided insight into the change and trade-off betweenmechanical and electrical performance with increasing shell thickness i.e. level of reinforcement.Investigations into fibre angle assignments following the central difference scheme and the medial axistransformation have shown comparable performance, providing ways of controlling and tailoringdeposition paths to best meet requirements associated with the manufacturing with short and continuousfibre-reinforcements. The model with continuous fibre-reinforcement has shown great potential forimproving the specific stiffness compared to the isotropic functional counterpart used as benchmark,while additionally providing the potential for energy storage, constituting a promising theoreticalapproach as to how AM can serve as means for lightweighting through functional integration. It wasconcluded, that in pursuit of improving the efficient material usage, tailored shell-infill designs shouldbe considered in the future

Learning from nature: Bio-Inspiration for damage-tolerant high-performance fibre-reinforced composites

Over millions of years Nature has attained highly optimized structural designs with remarkable toughness, strength, damage resistance and damage tolerance - properties that are so far difficult to combine in artificial high-performance fibre-reinforced polymers (HPFRPs). Recent studies, which have successfully replicated the structures and especially the toughening mechanisms found in flora and fauna, are reviewed in this work. At the core of the manufacturing of damage-tolerant bio-inspired composites, an understanding of the design principles and mechanisms is key. Universal and naturally-inherent design features, such as hierarchical- and organic-inorganic-structures as well as helical or fibrous arrangements of building blocks were found to promote numerous toughening mechanisms. Common to these features, the outstanding ability of diffusing damage at a sub-critical state has been identified as a powerful and effective mechanism to achieve high damage tolerance. Novel manufacturing processes suitable for HPFRP (such as tailored high-precision tape placement, micro-moulding, laser-engraving and additive manufacturing) have recently gained immense traction in the research community. This stems from the achievable and required geometrical complexity for HPFRPs and the replication of subtly balanced interaction between the material constituents. Even though trends in the literature clearly show that a bio-inspired material design philosophy is a successful strategy to design more efficient composite structures with enhanced damage tolerance and mechanical performance, Nature continues to offer new challenging opportunities yet to be explored, which could lead to a new era of HPFRP composites