Fuel Consumption Tabulation in Laboratory Conditions

Environmental degradation has come about for a number of factors including the use of fossil fuels in vehicles for everyday use. This paper attempts to understand the relationship between fuel consumption and various engine performance parameters under laboratory conditions in order to see how various factors contribute to the overall fuel consumption. The framework for testing has been decided as the New European Drive Cycle (NEDC) given its various testing advantages against other driving cycles. A test rig was applied to simulate the NEDC under laboratory conditions. The findings from this study provide information how vehicular fuel consumption varies with such driving parameters as vehicle speed, acceleration, and throttle position. They can be used to predict fuel consumption under any real life driving conditions, which will contribute to reducing fuel consumption in future vehicle desig

Promotion of leaf degradation by earthworms under laboratory conditions

Organic materials were applied to leaves from organic apple trees. Then, leaves were fed to earthworms in a laboratory culture. The objective was to select materials which promote leaf degradation by earthworms and consequently reduce the inoculum pressure of apple scab in orchards. Used earthworms were fully grown and consequently no effect of the leaf treatments was found on earthworm weights. However, leaf consumption tended to be increased by addition of amino acids and beet pulp to leaves. For beet pulp, this was especially the case when the dose was increased from 1 to 5 % or when it was freshly applied

Exploring the nature of collisionless shocks under laboratory conditions

Collisionless shocks are pervasive in astrophysics and they are critical to understand cosmic ray acceleration. Laboratory experiments with intense lasers are now opening the way to explore and characterise the underlying microphysics, which determine the acceleration process of collisionless shocks. We determine the shock character - electrostatic or electromagnetic - based on the stability of electrostatic shocks to transverse electromagnetic fluctuations as a function of the electron temperature and flow velocity of the plasma components, and we compare the analytical model with particle-in-cell simulations. By making the connection with the laser parameters driving the plasma flows, we demonstrate that shocks with different and distinct underlying microphysics can be explored in the laboratory with state-of-the-art laser systems

Conditions for building a community of practice in an advanced physics laboratory

In this paper we explore the theory of communities of practice in the context of a physics college course and in particular the classroom environment of an advanced laboratory. We introduce the idea of elements of a classroom community being able to provide students with the opportunity to have an accelerated trajectory towards being a more central participant of the community of practice of physicists. This opportunity is a result of structural features of the course and a primary instructional choice which result in the development of a learning community with several elements that encourage students to engage in more authentic practices of a physicist. A jump in accountable disciplinary knowledge is also explored as a motivation for enculturation into the community of practice of physicists. In the advanced laboratory what students are being assessed on as counting as physics is significantly different and so they need to assimilate in order to succeed.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

Evaluation of sixteen antimotion sickness drugs under controlled laboratory conditions

Evaluation of antimotion sickness drugs under controlled laboratory condition

Aspects of energy requirements for rock drilling

Development of laboratory rock breakage techniques to relate energy and surface area produced by slow compression, drop hammer and stamp mill. A detailed study of laboratory rotary-percussive drilling in a wide range of rocks under different conditions, with the collection of drill cuttings and measurement of the drill parameters. The correlation of drill parameters with rock indices by energy concepts and the developed empirical formula. Field rotary-percussive drilling studies and collection of drill cuttings on the basis of laboratory analysis

Survival of Theileria parva in its nymphal tick vector Rhipicephalus appendiculatus under laboratory and quasi natural conditions

Groups of nymphal Rhipicephalus appendiculatus Muguga, having a mean of 1 or 9 Theileria parva Muguga-infected salivary gland acini per tick, were kept under quasi-natural conditions at an altitude of 1950 m or 20°C at a relative humidity of 85% in the laboratory and their survival and infection prevalence and abundance determined over time. Theileria parva infections for both categories of ticks survived in the nymphal ticks for 50 or 26 weeks post salivary gland infection under quasi-natural or laboratory conditions respectively. There was a distinct decline in infections in the more heavily infected nymphae under both conditions of exposure, reflecting an apparent density dependence in parasite survival. Nymphal ticks having an average infection level of 1 infected salivary gland acinus per tick, survived for up to 69 or 65 weeks post-repletion under quasi-natural or the laboratory conditions respectively. Nymphae having an average infection level of 9 infected salivary gland acini per tick survived for a similar duration under each of the 2 conditions. The infection level of 9 infected salivary gland acini per tick did not seem to significantly affect the survival of the tick vector compared to those having an average of 1 infected salivary gland acinus per tick

Bit error rate measurement of free space optical communication links under laboratory controlled conditions

This paper outlines the experimental investigation of the fog effect on the bit error rate (BER) performance of the free space optical (FSO) communication link under a controlled laboratory environment. The link transmittance and the received signal Q-factor are measured against different levels of fog densities. The link visibility derived from fog attenuation measurement is used to characterize the fog within the chamber. Moreover, the effect of using different average transmitted optical communication power (Popt) on the transmittance and received Q-factor of the link is also studied for light and dense fog densities

Investigations of the emissions of monoterpenes from Scots Pine

Plants produce and emit a large number of volatile organic compounds (VOC) such as isoprene and monoterpenes (C10H16). Monoterpene emission rates from Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), a typical central European conifer, were measured under ambient conditions within the scope of this work. The studies focused on diurnal and seasonal cycles of monoterpene emissions, branch-to-branch and plant-to-plant variability of emission rates, and on the transferability ofresults from laboratory (studies of Dr. J. Wildt and coworkers) and outdoor measurements. Generally, no significant differences between the results obtained under laboratory and ambient environmental conditions were found. Under both laboratory and ambient conditions, monoterpene emissions were found to increase with needle temperature at a rate of 5 % to 16 % per Kelvin and fonowed under otherwise unchanged conditions an Arrhenius type dependence on temperature. The temperature dependence of emissions was without a clear seasonal trend and without significant differences from plant-to-plant. Only in the laboratory a dependence of emission rates on photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) was found (increase of 20-30% at a constant temperature, saturation in the light dependence at about 15 % of fun sunlight). Under outdoor conditions, a PAR dependence was not detected. Seasonal variations of a single branch and branch-to-branch variations in the spectrum of emitted monoterpenes were small, but different individual Scots pines emitted a completely different spectrum of monoterpenes. The temperature normalized standard emission rates were found to be highly variable. Values for the sum of monoterpenes ranged between 0.06 and 0.65 µg g(dW)-lh-1 (microgram monoterpenes per gram dry weight of needles and hour) for young pines and between 0.24 and 3.7 µg g(dW)-lh-1 for the adult pine. The variations of the standard emission rates from the same plant at different times of the year were on the same order of magnitude as the plant-to-plant variability. Stress to the plant was a possible explanation for these variations, but this effect could not be described quantitatively. ßased on the results a monoterpene flux was calculated for a forest in Southern Germany (Hartheimer Wald, near Freiburg), ranging between 54-941 ng m-2s-l at T = 30°C. Future laboratory studies should focus on stress effects and their impact on VOC emissions. The effect of stress on VOC emission rates must be quantified and included in the existing models for better predictions of emission rates and fluxes

Impulse for animal welfare outside the experiment

Animal welfare is a growing societal concern and the well-being of animals used for experimental purposes is under particular scrutiny. The vast majority of laboratory animals are mice living in small cages that do not offer very much variety. Moreover, the experimental procedure often takes very little time compared to the time these animals have been bred to the desired age or are being held available for animal experimentation. However, for the assessment of animal welfare, the time spent waiting for an experiment or the time spent after finishing an experiment has also to be taken into account. In addition to experimental animals, many additional animals (e.g. for breeding and maintenance of genetic lines, surplus animals) are related to animal experimentation and usually face similar living conditions. Therefore, in terms of improving the overall welfare of laboratory animals, there is not only a need for refinement of experimental conditions but especially for improving living conditions outside the experiment. The improvement of animal welfare thus depends to a large extent on the housing and maintenance conditions of all animals related to experimentation. Given the current state of animal welfare research there is indeed a great potential for improving the overall welfare of laboratory animals