Spartan Daily, March 11, 2025

Volume 164, Issue 20https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartan_daily_2025/1019/thumbnail.jp

Performance Testing of Asphalt Binder Modified with Amine-Impregnated Zeolite and Plastic in Hot Mix Asphalt to Reduce Carbon Footprint

The rise in global temperatures, driven in part by significant transportation carbon emissions, necessitate sustainable solutions for infrastructure. Traditional asphalt binders and lime additives significantly contribute to carbon emissions, and conventional liquid amine-based antistrip agents, which are used to reduce moisture damage, lose efficacy over time. This study evaluates the performance of PG 64-16 Low Carbon binder, incorporating 10% post-consumer plastic and amine-impregnated zeolite (AIMZ) as a protective carrier for liquid amines. Researchers compare this low-carbon binder to conventional PG 64-16 binder and evaluate AIMZ against amine and zeolite separately (AZ) and a commercial liquid antistrip (LAS). The study tests three aging levels (3, 5, and 7 days), simulating 4, 8, and 10 years, respectively, of field aging in Southern California. The evaluation of moisture-induced damage uses the Tensile Strength Ratio (TSR), while the Hamburg Wheel Tracking (HWT) test assesses rutting resistance (the wear from tires and loads that occurs on roads). The IDEAL Cracking Test measures cracking resistance, Hello,We have a new project that needs to be published to ScholarWorks and registered with DOI.Attached are the report and RB PDFs.Thank you in advance, and the Moisture-Induced Shear-Thinning Index (MISTI) and Multiple-Stress Creep Recovery (MSCR) tests analyze moisture susceptibility and rheological properties, all of which are important factors to consider in long-term efficacy. AIMZ demonstrated higher TSR values compared to those with AZ and LAS at both 5 days and 7 days of aging levels for both binders. Rutting resistance is comparable between binders, and low-carbon binder mixtures show improved cracking resistance over time. MISTI values suggest lower moisture susceptibility for the low-carbon binder, though MSCR results suggest it is best suited for low-traffic volumes. This study indicates that AIMZ effectively prolongs liquid amine efficacy and that low-carbon binders, despite some limitations, offer environmental and performance benefits. These findings support the potential for incorporating post-consumer plastics in asphalt pavements, promoting sustainability in infrastructure

The Post-War Lives of Amputee Civil War Veterans

In August 1865, Ora D. Walbridge sat down with a pen in his left hand to produce a specimen of his best business penmanship. Three years earlier, a gunshot had left Walbridge’s right arm paralyzed. When he submitted his penmanship specimen, he joined a unique group of Civil War veterans: the self-proclaimed “Left-Armed Corps.” This talk examines the lives of these veterans in the decades following the conflict to highlight the lasting resonance of missing limbs during national reconciliation. Demographic and biographical information provides insights into how the veterans’ lives were shaped by their service and their wounds.https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/uss/1064/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, March 5, 2025

Volume 164, Issue 18https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartan_daily_2025/1017/thumbnail.jp

Inspection Technologies for Construction and Maintenance of Highway Infrastructure – Review and Analysis

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) seek to provide high quality infrastructure that meets or exceeds the desired quality standards crucial for ensuring safety and efficiency in our nation\u27s transportation systems. Efficient inspection practices—which enable conformance with plans, specifications, and quality standards—are an essential part of this effort. In this digital age, state DOTs are relying on emerging technologies to improve inspection practices. However, there is limited knowledge available regarding various emerging technologies used for highway infrastructure construction and maintenance inspection. This study identifies various emerging technologies that are implemented at the state DOTs and their uses/applications for various inspection purposes. The emerging technologies studied in this project include Remote Sensing and Monitoring Technologies—specifically, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)—as well as Building Information Modelling (BIM), and Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). Based on a comprehensive literature review and content analysis of journal articles, technical reports, state DOT documents/reports, templates, and guidelines on the identified technologies, the research findings indicate different usage levels among state DOTs and found that DOTs use these technologies for applications such as structural inspection, verifying quantities, bridge and visual inspection, safety inspection, inspection workforce training, inspection documentation, and measurements of pay quantities, among others. This study serves as a valuable resource for state DOTs seeking to maximize the benefits of their investments and embrace innovative inspection technologies to ensure safety and efficiency in the nation\u27s transportation infrastructure

The Data-Driven Library: Communicating the value of your school library program to administrators, parents, students, and colleagues

This article examines the use of data dashboards as a tool for teacher librarians to advocate for their school library programs. It emphasizes the importance of linking library services to district priorities to secure funding, increase collaboration, and demonstrate the library’s impact on student outcomes. An eight-step process is detailed, including defining objectives, identifying target audiences, collecting and visualizing data, and publishing dashboards using accessible tools like Google Workspace. By crafting coherent, audience-specific narratives, librarians can highlight how their programs support educational goals, improve resource utilization, and foster collaboration. The article concludes that data dashboards provide a sustainable and compelling way for librarians to communicate their value to administrators, faculty, students, and parents

Spartan Daily, February 18, 2025

Volume 164, Issue 11https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartan_daily_2025/1010/thumbnail.jp

A morphological cell atlas of the freshwater sponge Ephydatia muelleri with key insights from targeted single-cell transcriptomes

How animal cell types, tissues, and regional body plans arose is a fundamental question in EvoDevo. Many current efforts attempt to link genetic information to the morphology of cells, tissues and regionalization of animal body plans using single-cell sequencing of cell populations. However, a lack of in-depth understanding of the morphology of non-bilaterian animals remains a considerable block to understanding the transitions between bilaterian and non-bilaterian cells and tissues. Sponges (Porifera), one of the earliest diverging animal phyla, pose a particular challenge to this endeavour, because their body plans lack mouths, gut, conventional muscle and nervous systems. With a goal to help bridge this gap, we have studied the morphology, behaviour and transcriptomics of cells and tissue types of an easily accessible and well-studied species of freshwater sponge, Ephydatia muelleri. New features described here include: a polarized external epithelium, a new contractile sieve cell that forms the entry to incurrent canals, motile cilia on apopyle cells at the exit of choanocyte chambers, and non-motile cilia on cells in excurrent canals and oscula. Imaging cells in vivo shows distinct behavioural characteristics of motile cells in the mesohyl. Transcriptomic phenotypes of three cell types (cystencytes, choanocytes and archaeocytes) captured live indicate that cell-type transcriptomes are distinct. Importantly, individual archaeocytes show a range of transcriptomic phenotypes which is supported by the distinct expression of different genes by subsets of this cell type. In contrast, all five choanocyte cells sampled live revealed highly uniform transcriptomes with significantly fewer genes expressed than in other cell types. Our study shows that sponges have tissues whose morphology and cell diversity are both functionally complex, but which together enable the sponge, like other metazoans, to sense and respond to stimuli

Dynamic Imprints of Colliding-wind Dust Formation from WR 140

Carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet (WR) binaries are a prominent source of carbonaceous dust that contribute to the dust budget of galaxies. The “textbook” example of an episodic dust-producing WR binary, WR 140 (HD 193793), provides us with an ideal laboratory for investigating the dust physics and kinematics in an extreme environment. This study is among the first to utilize two separate JWST observations, from Cycle 1 ERS (2022 July) and Cycle 2 (2023 September), to measure WR 140’s dust kinematics and confirm its morphology. To measure the proper motions and projected velocities of the dust shells, we performed a novel point-spread function (PSF) subtraction to reduce the effects of the bright diffraction spikes and carefully aligned the Cycle 2 to the Cycle 1 images. At 7.7 μm, through the bright feature common to 16 dust shells (C1), we find an average dust shell proper motion of 390 ± 29 mas yr−1, which equates to a projected velocity of 2714 ± 188 km s−1 at a distance of 1.64 kpc. Our measured speeds are constant across all visible shells and consistent with previously reported dust expansion velocities. Our observations not only prove that these dusty shells are astrophysical (i.e., not associated with any PSF artifact) and originate from WR 140, but also confirm the “clumpy” morphology of the dust shells, in which identifiable substructures within certain shells persist for at least 14 months from one cycle to the next. These results support the hypothesis that clumping in the wind collision region is required for dust production in WR binaries