Balloon-borne package temperature controller

Simple, inexpensive, lightweight enclosure traps upward long wave radiation of earth while reflecting harsh solar radiation in upper atmosphere. It warms enclosed instruments in cold regions and protects them from overheating during the day. Device can be attached to balloon system without any changes in experimental design

The Way Around: Walking into Revolution

The Way Around: Walking into Revolution Chairperson: Phil Condon The Way Around investigates revolution through personal accounts of pilgrimage, ecopsychology, and activism. For ten years (2006-2016), I engaged in various forms of circular travel across the world to understand the true shape of revolution—its etymology, its use throughout history, and if revolution might be some universal inertia that drives us all forward. The journey begins in 2006, where I travel around the world for a year. I weave together discoveries of place and planet with a 500-year historical account of human circumnavigation. Returning to Portland, Oregon, I’m introduced to the practice of long-distance running through circling around several Pacific Northwest volcanoes on foot. This more localized form of circumnavigation further attunes me to the cyclical patterns of ecology, which pulls me into more political orbits of activism and civic engagement to protect these spaces. I get involved with Occupy Wall Street and one evening run for several hours around the Portland encampment, a kinesthetic revolution evolving into a meditation on political revolution. After circling the globe, orbiting volcanoes, and budding as an activist, in 2014, I travel 7,000 miles to Western Tibet and circumambulate 21,778-foot Mount Kailash. Here, I find circumambulation functioning both as spiritual practice and cultural survival. This journey would direct me a year later back to Northern California, my birthplace, where, in 2015, I organize a fifty-year anniversary circumambulation of Mount Tamalpais, a tradition started in 1965, by poet Gary Snyder. The aperture of my personal revolution through all of these experiences continues to focus locally inward, towards home. In my new home in Missoula, Montana, on the opening day of the 2015 COP21 climate negotiations in Paris, I hold a demonstration on the University of Montana campus and incorporate circular walking to represent the planet’s six mass extinctions. In the end, after a decade of circuitous experiences, each brought me closer and closer to home, closer to a shared tension of rootedness and curiosity for the whole. I discovered that transformation—personal, political, planetary—moves in sweeps of cycles, and The Way Around attempts to illustrate this revolutionary heritage we all carry with us, not just as humans but as expressions of a planet ever-revolving, ever-renewing, and constantly requiring overthrow to thrive. Revolution, I found, is everywhere

Effect of Polydispersity and Anisotropy in Colloidal and Protein Solutions: an Integral Equation Approach

Application of integral equation theory to complex fluids is reviewed, with particular emphasis to the effects of polydispersity and anisotropy on their structural and thermodynamic properties. Both analytical and numerical solutions of integral equations are discussed within the context of a set of minimal potential models that have been widely used in the literature. While other popular theoretical tools, such as numerical simulations and density functional theory, are superior for quantitative and accurate predictions, we argue that integral equation theory still provides, as in simple fluids, an invaluable technique that is able to capture the main essential features of a complex system, at a much lower computational cost. In addition, it can provide a detailed description of the angular dependence in arbitrary frame, unlike numerical simulations where this information is frequently hampered by insufficient statistics. Applications to colloidal mixtures, globular proteins and patchy colloids are discussed, within a unified framework.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Interdiscip. Sci. Comput. Life Sci. (2011), special issue dedicated to Prof. Lesser Blu

WF/PC internal molecular contamination during system thermal-vacuum test

During the recent system thermal vacuum test of the Wide-Field/Planetary Camera (WF/PC), instrumentation was added to the WF/PC to characterize the internal molecular contamination and verify the instrument throughput down to 1470 angstroms. Analysis of data elements revealed two contaminants affecting the far-ultraviolet (FUV) performance of the WF/PC. The one contaminant (heavy volatile) is correlated with the electronic and housing temperature, and the contamination is significantly reduced when the electronics are operated below plus 8 degrees to plus 10 degrees C. The other contaminant (light volatile) is controlled by the heat pipe temperature, and the contamination is significantly reduced when the Thermal Electric Cooler (TEC) hot-junction temperature is below minus 40 degrees to minus 50 degrees C. The utility of contamination sensors located behind instruments during system tests was demonstrated

Validation and Recommendation of Methods to Measure Biogas Production Potential of Animal Manure

In developing countries, biogas energy production is seen as a technology that can provide clean energy in poor regions and reduce pollution caused by animal manure. Laboratories in these countries have little access to advanced gas measuring equipment, which may limit research aimed at improving local adapted biogas production. They may also be unable to produce valid estimates of an international standard that can be used for articles published in international peer-reviewed science journals. This study tested and validated methods for measuring total biogas and methane (CH4) production using batch fermentation and for characterizing the biomass. The biochemical methane potential (BMP) (CH4 NL kg−1 VS) of pig manure, cow manure and cellulose determined with the Moller and VDI methods was not significantly different in this test (p>0.05). The biodegradability using a ratio of BMP and theoretical BMP (TBMP) was slightly higher using the Hansen method, but differences were not significant. Degradation rate assessed by methane formation rate showed wide variation within the batch method tested. The first-order kinetics constant k for the cumulative methane production curve was highest when two animal manures were fermented using the VDI 4630 method, indicating that this method was able to reach steady conditions in a shorter time, reducing fermentation duration. In precision tests, the repeatability of the relative standard deviation (RSDr) for all batch methods was very low (4.8 to 8.1%), while the reproducibility of the relative standard deviation (RSDR) varied widely, from 7.3 to 19.8%. In determination of biomethane concentration, the values obtained using the liquid replacement method (LRM) were comparable to those obtained using gas chromatography (GC). This indicates that the LRM method could be used to determine biomethane concentration in biogas in laboratories with limited access to GC

Excellence in Nursing Administration [Complete issue : Second Quarter 2001, Vol. 2, 2]

Publishing History: Nursing Excellence published yearly in 1998 and 1999. The publication became Excellence in the first quarter 2000. It transitioned to Excellence in Nursing Education, Excellence in Nursing Administration, and Excellence in Clinical Practice in the second quarter 2000 with volume 1, number 2. Excellence in Nursing Education transitioned to Excellence in Nursing Education & Research in the first quarter 2002. Publishing Frequency: Yearly 1998, 1999; Quarterly 2000 – 2004. Format: Print 1999 – third quarter 2002; Online fourth quarter 2002 – first quarter 2004. Ceased publishing in 2004. Select features in this issue: Back to school together: Nurse leaders support each other through graduate education, by Pamela Klauer Triolo, Janet Gilmore, Kathy Lynn, and Ann Qui Connect media with your front-line experts, by Doris Lippman and Audrey Wise Taking control of your career and your future, by Gail J. Donner and Mary M. Wheele

Monitoring biological wastewater treatment processes: Recent advances in spectroscopy applications

Biological processes based on aerobic and anaerobic technologies have been continuously developed to wastewater treatment and are currently routinely employed to reduce the contaminants discharge levels in the environment. However, most methodologies commonly applied for monitoring key parameters are labor intensive, time-consuming and just provide a snapshot of the process. Thus, spectroscopy applications in biological processes are, nowadays, considered a rapid and effective alternative technology for real-time monitoring though still lacking implementation in full-scale plants. In this review, the application of spectroscopic techniques to aerobic and anaerobic systems is addressed focusing on UV--Vis, infrared, and fluorescence spectroscopy. Furthermore, chemometric techniques, valuable tools to extract the relevant data, are also referred. To that effect, a detailed analysis is performed for aerobic and anaerobic systems to summarize the findings that have been obtained since 2000. Future prospects for the application of spectroscopic techniques in biological wastewater treatment processes are further discussed.The authors thank the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit, COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) and the project RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. The authors also acknowledge the financial support to Daniela P. Mesquita and Cristina Quintelas through the postdoctoral Grants (SFRH/BPD/82558/2011 and SFRH/BPD/101338/2014) provided by FCT - Portugal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biogas Production from Vietnamese Animal Manure, Plant Residues and Organic Waste: Influence of Biomass Composition on Methane Yield

Anaerobic digestion is an efficient and renewable energy technology that can produce biogas from a variety of biomasses such as animal manure, food waste and plant residues. In developing countries this technology is widely used for the production of biogas using local biomasses, but there is little information about the value of these biomasses for energy production. This study was therefore carried out with the objective of estimating the biogas production potential of typical Vietnamese biomasses such as animal manure, slaughterhouse waste and plant residues, and developing a model that relates methane (CH4) production to the chemical characteristics of the biomass. The biochemical methane potential (BMP) and biomass characteristics were measured. Results showed that piglet manure produced the highest CH4 yield of 443 normal litter (NL) CH4 kg−1 volatile solids (VS) compared to 222 from cows, 177 from sows, 172 from rabbits, 169 from goats and 153 from buffaloes. Methane production from duckweed (Spirodela polyrrhiza) was higher than from lawn grass and water spinach at 340, 220, and 110.6 NL CH4 kg−1 VS, respectively. The BMP experiment also demonstrated that the CH4 production was inhibited with chicken manure, slaughterhouse waste, cassava residue and shoe-making waste. Statistical analysis showed that lipid and lignin are the most significant predictors of BMP. The model was developed from knowledge that the BMP was related to biomass content of lipid, lignin and protein from manure and plant residues as a percentage of VS with coefficient of determination (R-square) at 0.95. This model was applied to calculate the CH4 yield for a household with 17 fattening pigs in the highlands and lowlands of northern Vietnam