Hydrologic and Nutrient Modeling within an Agricultural Watershed in Southeast Kansas

Access to safe, clean water is important to support society. Agricultural watersheds are often contaminated due to agricultural activities. Identification of specific factors contributing to impairment of water bodies is important to target remediation efforts. This research is designed to explore water quality within the Middle Neosho Watershed in southeastern Kansas to make more informed decisions in potential corrective actions

Cost of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus at individual farm level – An economic disease model

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is reported to be among the diseases with the highest economic impact in modern pig production worldwide. Yet, the economic impact of the disease at farm level is not well understood as, especially in endemically infected pig herds, losses are often not obvious. It is therefore difficult for farmers and veterinarians to appraise whether control measures such as virus elimination or vaccination will be economically beneficial for their farm. Thus, aim of this study was to develop an epidemiological and economic model to determine the costs of PRRS for an individual pig farm. In a production model that simulates farm outputs, depending on farm type, farrowing rhythm or length of suckling period, an epidemiological model was integrated. In this, the impact of PRRS infection on health and productivity was estimated. Financial losses were calculated in a gross margin analysis and a partial budget analysis based on the changes in health and production parameters assumed for different PRRS disease severities. Data on the effects of endemic infection on reproductive performance, morbidity and mortality, daily weight gain, feed efficiency and treatment costs were obtained from literature and expert opinion. Nine different disease scenarios were calculated, in which a farrow-to-finish farm (1000 sows) was slightly, moderately or severely affected by PRRS, based on changes in health and production parameters, and either in breeding, in nursery and fattening or in all three stages together. Annual losses ranged from a median of € 75′724 (90% confidence interval (C.I.): € 78′885–€ 122′946), if the farm was slightly affected in nursery and fattening, to a median of € 650′090 (90% C.I. € 603′585–€ 698′379), if the farm was severely affected in all stages. Overall losses were slightly higher if breeding was affected than if nursery and fattening were affected. In a herd moderately affected in all stages, median losses in breeding were € 46′021 and € 422′387 in fattening, whereas costs were € 25′435 lower in nursery, compared with a PRRSV-negative farm. The model is a valuable decision-support tool for farmers and veterinarians if a farm is proven to be affected by PRRS (confirmed by laboratory diagnosis). The output can help to understand the need for interventions in case of significant impact on the profitability of their enterprise. The model can support veterinarians in their communication to farmers in cases where costly disease control measures are justified

Study of thermal stresses developed during a fatigue test on an electrical motor rotor cage

© 2018 Structural defects in the rotor cage of large electrical machines significantly impact their expected operational lifetime. This work presents the results of simulating the thermal stresses developed in a rotor cage during a fatigue test in which a bar breakage was achieved. A combined model featuring electrical, thermal and mechanical stages as well as three different meshes reflecting a progressing narrowing of one of the bars in its junction to the end ring are used for this purpose. The experimentally implemented startup and plug stopping transients are reproduced as well as, for comparison, the stall operation. The resulting stress levels are in agreement with the progression of the damage and concur with the stator measurements. Based on the analysis of the simulated rotor magnitudes, a strategy to diminish the thermal stresses in a damaged cage is proposed

2-D Magnetomechanical Transient Study of a Motor Suffering a Bar Breakage

© 1972-2012 IEEE. The analysis of the vibration response of electrical machines has importance in noise prediction and more recently, diagnosis of electrical faults, especially in the industrial environment, where it is a well-known technique. This work assesses the performance of a strongly coupled two-dimensional (2-D) magnetomechanical approach, as directly available in multiphysics software, for the simulation of an induction machine under heavy operational conditions: a direct-on-line startup. Both healthy and broken bar states are simulated in a time span long enough to allow the detailed study of the varying frequency components. The results yield, in addition to the usual electrical and magnetic quantities, electromagnetic-induced vibration components in the stator. A comparison with current and vibration experimental data is also performed showing a good agreement with variable frequency components and certain limitations concerning their amplitude

Analysis of an on-line superconducting cryofan motor for indirect cooling by LH2

This work relates to the study of an electrically powered cryofan for circulating close-loop cooling helium gas for superconducting applications with the following features: - Absence of any seal that can leak the pumped fluid or provide a path for heat transfer and require maintenance and/or is prone to failures. - The use of high temperature superconducting (HTS) stacks on the fan-rotor that, below critical temperature, can be magnetized contributing to the driving torque. The absence of electrically connected equipment as well as the lack of any seal, makes this arrangement especially suitable for reliable cryogenic helium gas circulation. Because HTS stacks cannot provide magnetic flux above Tc, during the initial stages of operation, in the presented study we analyse torque that will be provided by the passive iron components of the machine (reluctance torque, due to the saliency of the rotor) and by auxiliary permanent magnets or alternatively magnetizing coils

Computation of Superconducting Stacks Magnetization in an Electrical Machine

Superconducting technology offers the prospect of sharply increase the power density of rotating electrical machines, especially in the low speed, high torque range, with impact in applications such as wind energy and aircraft propulsion. Among the enabling technologies, stacks consisting of piling up layers of high temperature superconductor may provide a source of magnetic flux density for torque production, without the complexity of superconducting wound rotor poles. For this to happen, careful designs, optimizing electromagnetic, mechanical and thermal aspects at the same time, must be developed. In that sense, this work applies a recently developed combined electromagnetic formulation to compute the magnetization level of high temperature superconductor stacks installed in the airgap of an electrical motor after field cooling magnetization. The results are congruent with the applied field, show a strong interaction between teeth and stacks and provide a way of initializing the state of the machine prior to operation.Horizon 2020 research innovation programme under grant agreement No 7231119 (ASuMED consortium) and EPSRC grant EP/P000738/

The enzymes LSD1 and Set1A cooperate with the viral protein HBx to establish an active hepatitis B viral chromatin state

Indexación: Web of ScienceWith about 350 million people chronically infected around the world hepatitis B is a major health problem. Template for progeny HBV synthesis is the viral genome, organized as a minichromosome (cccDNA) inside the hepatocyte nucleus. How viral cccDNA gene expression is regulated by its chromatin structure; more importantly, how the modulation of this structure impacts on viral gene expression remains elusive. Here, we found that the enzyme SetDB1 contributes to setting up a repressed cccDNA chromatin state. This repressive state is activated by the histone lysine demethylase-1 (LSD1). Consistently, inhibiting or reducing LSD1 levels led to repression of viral gene expression. This correlates with the transcriptionally repressive mark H3K9 methylation and reduction on the activating marks H3 acetylation and H3K4 methylation on viral promoters. Investigating the importance of viral proteins we found that LSD1 recruitment to viral promoters was dependent on the viral transactivator protein HBx. Moreover, the histone methyltransferase Set1A and HBx are simultaneously bound to the core promoter, and Set1A expression correlates with cccDNA H3K4 methylation. Our results shed light on the mechanisms of HBV regulation mediated by the cccDNA chromatin structure, offering new therapeutic targets to develop drugs for the treatment of chronically infected HBV patients.http://www.nature.com/articles/srep2590

Testing of Surface Mounted Superconducting Stacks as Trapped-Flux Magnets in a Synchronous Machine

Stacks of high temperature superconducting tapes may offer a technically affordable solution for the application of superconducting materials as trapped-flux magnets in the rotor of synchronous electrical machines. Nevertheless, several concerns must be first addressed, among others, the optimal procedure to induce the current vortexes previously to operation (magnetization), the survivability of these vortexes in the electromagnetic environment present in an electrical machine and the accuracy of recently developed numerical models. With the aim of exploring such practicalities, this paper presents a modified synchronous machine to test under liquid nitrogen conditions thin stacks of superconducting tapes. The machine is run under realistic conditions: currents in the stacks are induced from the stator, then the shaft is rotated and finally the machine is connected to a load, working as a generator. The results confirm previous numerical and experimental studies and establish a procedure for assessing the behavior of stacks in their actual operational environment.Also EPSRC EP/P000738/

Induction motor diagnosis by advanced notch FIR filters and the wigner-ville distribution

During the last years, several time-frequency decomposition tools have been applied for the diagnosis of induction motors, for those cases in which the traditional procedures, such as motor current signature analysis, cannot yield the necessary response. Among them, the Cohen distributions have been widely selected to study transient and even stationary operation due to their high-resolution and detailed information provided at all frequencies. Their main drawback, the cross-terms, has been tackled either modifying the distribution, or carrying out a pretreatment of the signal before computing its time-frequency decomposition. In this paper, a filtering process is proposed that uses advanced notch filters in order to remove constant frequency components present in the current of an induction motor, prior to the computation of its distribution, to study rotor asymmetries and mixed eccentricities. In transient operation of machines directly connected to the grid, this procedure effectively eliminates most of the artifacts that have prevented the use of these tools, allowing a wideband analysis and the definition of a precise quantification parameter able to follow the evolution of their state. © 1982-2012 IEEE