Assessment of anaerobic co-digestion of food waste and wastewater solids for sustainable waste management in Yosemite National Park, USA

The growing need for sustainable municipal solid waste treatment and energy production has driven the development of new waste management methods like co-digestion. Anaerobic co-digestion of food waste (FW) and wastewater solids (WWS) has been implemented at a few wastewater treatments plants to efficiently treat organic wastes and produce methane-rich biogas as an energy source. Yosemite National Park has an opportunity to design a new co-digestion facility with an upcoming upgrade to their local wastewater treatment plant in El Portal, California. The Park annually produces approximately 5 million tons of primary WWS and 1 million tons of FW waste, with a volatile solid ratio of 70:30 FW to WWS, or 70% FW. Diverted FW is currently sent to the Mariposa County landfill’s compost facility. To measure the possible increase in biogas production associated with FW addition to WWS, a biochemical methane potential (BMP) test was done over 35 days under mesophilic conditions with treatment mixing ratios ranging from 0% to 100% FW on a volatile solids basis. Calculated annual methane production increased 3.25 times from 0% FW scenario (WWS only) versus a 70% FW scenario, translating to a potential increase in methane production at the wastewater treatment plant of 28,000 to 91,000 m3/yr. Results showed that if the wastewater treatment plant also implemented combined heat and power to combust the increased biogas from 70% FW co-digestion, potentially 920,000 kWh/yr could be produced to cover all electricity and heating needs. This research demonstrates that Yosemite National Park could combine FW and WWS to sustainably manage their organic waste in line with their Zero Landfill Initiative, as well as produce enough energy to fully power the El Portal wastewater treatment plant

An ALMA Dynamical Mass Estimate of the Proposed Planetary-mass Companion FW Tau C

Dynamical mass estimates down to the planet-mass regime can help to understand planet formation. We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 1.3 mm observations of FW Tau C, a proposed ~10 $M_{\rm Jup}$ planet-mass companion at ~330 au from the host binary FW Tau AB. We spatially and spectrally resolve the accretion disk of FW Tau C in ${}^{12}$CO (2-1). By modeling the Keplerian rotation of gas, we derive a dynamical mass of ~0.1 $M_\odot$. Therefore, FW Tau C is unlikely a planet, but rather a low-mass star with a highly inclined disk. This also suggests that FW Tau is a triple system consisting of three ~0.1 $M_\odot$ stars.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ

CIWS-FW: a Customizable InstrumentWorkstation Software Framework for instrument-independent data handling

The CIWS-FW is aimed at providing a common and standard solution for the storage, processing and quick look at the data acquired from scientific instruments for astrophysics. The target system is the instrument workstation either in the context of the Electrical Ground Support Equipment for space-borne experiments, or in the context of the data acquisition system for instrumentation. The CIWS-FW core includes software developed by team members for previous experiments and provides new components and tools that improve the software reusability, configurability and extensibility attributes. The CIWS-FW mainly consists of two packages: the data processing system and the data access system. The former provides the software components and libraries to support the data acquisition, transformation, display and storage in near real time of either a data packet stream and/or a sequence of data files generated by the instrument. The latter is a meta-data and data management system, providing a reusable solution for the archiving and retrieval of the acquired data. A built-in operator GUI allows to control and configure the IW. In addition, the framework provides mechanisms for system error and logging handling. A web portal provides the access to the CIWS-FW documentation, software repository and bug tracking tools for CIWS-FW developers. We will describe the CIWS-FW architecture and summarize the project status.Comment: Accepted for pubblication on ADASS Conference Serie

Hidden Dangers to Researcher Safety While Sampling Freshwater Benthic Macroinvertebrates

Abstract This paper reviews hidden dangers that threaten the safety of freshwater (FW) researchers of benthic macroinvertebrates (BMIs). Six refereed journals containing 2,075 papers were reviewed for field research resulting in 505 FW BMI articles. However, danger was reported in only 18% of FW BMI papers. I discussed: 1) papers that did not warn of existing danger and consider researcher safety, 2) metric threshold values (e.g., chemical hazards), and non-metric dangers, (e.g., caves and aquatic habitats), 3), the frequency of danger occurrence, 4) baseline and extreme values. Examples of 28 danger factors that posed a threat to BMI researchers in water were compared by frequency per journal papers. FW dangers identified by metric thresholds present a safety limit not to be exceeded, whereas non-metric dangers do not have a threshold as further explained. Also, discussed was a recent thesis on civil engineering hydraulics that identified low-head dams as deceptive and an increasing source of drownings in 39 states. A safe shallow water maximum depth to wade and collect BMIs is proposed based on researcher height and gender, compared to human height means in a large database. Practical safety recommendations were presented to help protect the FW researcher avoid and survive hidden dangers

Efficacy of Achieving Pregnancy with Fertility-Focused Intercourse

Purpose: To compare pregnancy rates when women have intercourse on self-estimated high and peak fertile days and when they only have intercourse on low fertile days during the fertile window (FW). Study Design and Methods: We used a prospective observational cohort study design. Our convenience sample included 124 women who utilized our online charting Web sites to achieve pregnancy from January 2010 to November 2012. Participants used an electronic hormonal fertility monitor (EHFM) or self-observed cervical mucus or both to determine fertility during the estimated FW. Pregnancy rates were determined with Kaplan–Meier survival analysis. Chi square analysis was used to evaluate the efficacy of achieving pregnancy between two different intercourse patterns. Results: The pregnancy rate was 87 per 100 women at 12 months when intercourse happened on high or peak days and 5 per 100 when intercourse occurred only on low days of the FW. Chi square analysis showed a greater proportion of pregnancies with intercourse on high and peak fertile days of the menstrual cycle (x2 = 40.2, p \u3c .001, df = 1). Nursing Implications: Focusing intercourse on high or peak fertile days during the estimated FW enhances the probability of achieving a desired pregnancy. Fertility awareness-based online charting system is effective in helping women to determine their FW and target intercourse accordingly to achieve pregnancy