Particulate airborne impurities

The cumulative effects of air pollutants are of principal concern in research on environmental protection in Sweden. Post-industrial society has imposed many limits on emitted air pollutants, yet the number of reports on the negative effects from them is increasing, largely due to human activity in the form of industrial emissions and increased traffic flows. Rising concerns over the health effects from airborne particulate matter (PM) stem from in vitro, in vivo, and cohort studies revealing effects of mostly negative nature. Full insight into the health effects from PM can only be achieved through practical investigation of the mode of toxicity from distinct types of particles and requires techniques for their identification, monitoring, and the production of model fractions for health studies. To this effect, comprehensive collection and chemical analysis of particulates at the origin of emission was performed in order to provide clearer insight into the nature of the particulates at exposure and add detail to aid risk assessment. Methods of capturing particles and analyzing their chemical nature were devised using scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Furthermore, taking the approach of in vitro cytotoxicity testing, nanoparticles of types typical to automotive emissions, were synthesized and extensively characterized using SEM-EDS, X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM),dynamic light scattering (DLS), and nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA). The produced model magnetite and palladium nanoparticles were found to induce toxicity in human pulmonary epithelial cells (A549 and PBEC) as well as impact severely on immunological and renal cells (221 B- and 293T-cells) in a dose-dependent manner

Typographic And Image Explorations

These typographic and image based designs explore multiple components of design including: legibility, manipulation, communication, and conventionalism with an emphasis on information graphics. Drawing from influences of the Futurist designers and Dadaist typography, I take the mundane details of an object such as a baseball or car to create excessive amounts of visually stimulating graphics. Through this process of gathering detailed information, I take photographs, draw by hand and scan images to fully understand and portray an objects identity until I feel satisfied that the objects visual potential has been exhausted. These personal expressions are combined to form printed material and book designs. These works explore the experimental use of type and image montage to break the rules of graphic design while keeping some of the traditional aesthetics associated with this discipline. My love for detailed subject matter may be seen in my books, The Baseball and 1 (One) which include subject matter from my childhood interests such as rare 1/1 baseball cards

Components reuse in the building sector – A systematic review

© The Author(s) 2020. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Rakhshan, K., Morel, J.-C., Alaka, H., & Charef, R. (2020). Components reuse in the building sector – A systematic review. Waste Management & Research, 38(4), 347–370 by Sage Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. It is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0734242X20910463.Widespread reuse of building components can promote the circularity of materials in the building sector. However, the reuse ofbuilding components is not yet a mainstream practise. Although there have been several studies on the factors affecting the reuse ofbuilding components, there is no single study that has tried to harmonize the circumstances affecting this intervention. Through asystematic literature review targeting peer-reviewed journal articles, this study intends to identify and stratify factors affecting thereuse of components of the superstructure of a building and eventually delineate correlations between these factors. Factors identifiedthroughout this study are classified into six major categories and 23 sub-categories. Then the inter-dependencies between the barriersare studied by developing the correlation indices between the sub-categories. Results indicate that addressing the economic, socialand regulatory barriers should be prioritized. Although the impact of barriers under perception, risk, compliance and market subcategoriesare very pronounced, the highest inter-dependency among the sub-categories is found between perception and risk. Itsuggests that the perception of the stakeholders about building components reuse is affected by the potential risks associated with thisintervention.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Architectural Documentation Through Thick Description

Architectural documentation focuses on deconstructing the built environment in the form of two-dimensional measured drawings. Documentation activities, therefore, seem to be purely technical exercises that afford documenters the ability to collect metric data from architectural surfaces and then to transform field data into graphical representations. However, architectural documentation involves more than just the technical reproduction of a context as it involves an intellectual effort to thickly describe the socio-cultural heritage setting. During the process, documenters conduct an informed survey and bring all the knowledge with them in order to decode the cultural signifiers embedded in the architectural heritage. Discussing measured drawings as an interpretive account of the built environment and surveying practices as a means to acquire heritage information, this article examines architectural documentation through the lens of thick description

Museums and New Media Art

Investigates the relationship between new media art and museums

Deceptive Patents: Deconstructing Juicy Whip

Moral utility largely prevents the granting of a patent if the patent would be injurious to the well-being of society. The moral utility doctrine has prevailed through much of American patent history and still endures in many parts of the world. In Juicy Whip I, the Federal Circuit chose to abandon the doctrine, but the court’s rationale in support of the decision was ill-suited. The court’s holding sanctioned deceptive patent applications but, intentionally or unintentionally, neglected applicable unfair competition, free speech, and consumer deception doctrines. In light of the Intellectual Property Clause of the U.S. Constitution, deceptive patents should be barred, because they convey no inherently useful qualities beyond deceiving consumers

The Self-Calibration Method for Multiple Systems at the CHARA Array

The self-calibration method, a new interferometric technique using measurements in the K′-band (2.1 μm) at the CHARA Array, has been used to derive orbits for several spectroscopic binaries. This method uses the wide component of a hierarchical triple system to calibrate visibility measurements of the triple’s close binary system through quasi-simultaneous observations of the separated fringe packets of both. Prior to the onset of this project, the reduction of separated fringe packet data had never included the goal of deriving visibilities for both fringe packets, so new data reduction software has been written. Visibilities obtained with separated fringe packet data for the target close binary are run through both Monte Carlo simulations and grid search programs in order to determine the best-fit orbital elements of the close binary. Several targets, with spectral types ranging from O to G and luminosity classesfrom III to V, have been observed in this fashion, and orbits have been derived for the close binaries of eight targets (V819 Her B, Kappa Peg B, Eta Vir A, Eta Ori Aab, 55 UMa A, 13 Ceti A, CHARA 96 Ab, HD 129132 Aa). The derivation of an orbit has allowed for the calculation of the masses of the components in these systems. The magnitude differences between the components can also be derived, provided that the components of the close binary have a magnitude difference of Delta K \u3c 2.5 (CHARA’s limit). Derivation of the orbit also allows for the calculation of the mutual inclination (Phi), which is the angle between the planes of the wide and close orbits. According to data from the Multiple Star Catalog, there are 34 triple systems other than the 8 studied here for which the wide and close systems both have visual orbits. Early formation scenarios for multiple systems predict coplanarity (Phi \u3c 15 degrees), but only 6 of these 42 systems are possibly coplanar. This tendency against coplanarity may suggest that the capture method of multiple system formation is more important than previously believed

The Data Analysis Pipeline for the SDSS-IV MaNGA IFU Galaxy Survey: Emission-Line Modeling

SDSS-IV MaNGA (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory) is the largest integral-field spectroscopy survey to date, aiming to observe a statistically representative sample of 10,000 low-redshift galaxies. In this paper we study the reliability of the emission-line fluxes and kinematic properties derived by the MaNGA Data Analysis Pipeline (DAP). We describe the algorithmic choices made in the DAP with regards to measuring emission-line properties, and the effect of our adopted strategy of simultaneously fitting the continuum and line emission. The effect of random errors are quantified by studying various fit-quality metrics, idealized recovery simulations and repeat observations. This analysis demonstrates that the emission lines are well-fit in the vast majority of the MaNGA dataset and the derived fluxes and errors are statistically robust. The systematic uncertainty on emission-line properties introduced by the choice of continuum templates is also discussed. In particular, we test the effect of using different stellar libraries and simple stellar-population models on the derived emission-line fluxes and the effect of introducing different tying prescriptions for the emission-line kinematics. We show that these effects can generate large ($>$ 0.2 dex) discrepancies at low signal-to-noise and for lines with low equivalent width (EW); however, the combined effect is noticeable even for H$\alpha$ EW $>$ 6~\AA. We provide suggestions for optimal use of the data provided by SDSS data release 15 and propose refinements on the \DAP\ for future MaNGA data releases.Comment: accepted on A