Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Water Concentration in Low Moisture Content Wood

A new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique, termed SPRITE (Single Point Ramped Imaging with T1 Enhancement) permits visualization of water content in previously inaccessible wood fiber systems. We demonstrate the superiority of SPRITE methods, in comparison to conventional MRI methods, for studying fluid content in low water content wood materials. SPRITE and conventional MRI images were acquired from four species of wood, equilibrated at multiple moisture content levels. Both methods were also used to examine relative moisture content during forced drying of a white ash wood sample

Standardizing 1RU Chassis to PCBA Interfaces

Cisco currently designs a variety of custom chassis for different types of servers, routers, and switches. Our senior design project aims to reduce the number of custom chassis Cisco develops by standardizing the perimeter mounting locations for the printed circuit board assembly on the chassis. The purpose of this report is to document our selected project direction and support the decisions with appropriate evidence. In addition to research on the customer’s needs, the product, and the technical background used to understand the project scope, our group has come up with a way to analyze and compare mounting locations for various designs. Our team focused on the Quake chassis family to compare new designs with existing tooling and created a guideline for future standardization. We completed a MATLAB script that compares existing and future chassis hole locations to tooling locations in order to determine the best tooling set for a given chassis. We also made a document that analyzes hole locations based on the different depths of the Quake chassis families. We hope that our research and analysis will become a future guideline for designers to implement common features for PCBA mounting locations and chassis interfaces

A feasibility randomised controlled trial of the New Orleans intervention of infant mental health: a study protocol

Child maltreatment is associated with life-long social, physical, and mental health problems. Intervening early to provide maltreated children with safe, nurturing care can improve outcomes. The need for prompt decisions about permanent placement (i.e., regarding adoption or return home) is internationally recognised. However, a recent Glasgow audit showed that many maltreated children “revolve” between birth families and foster carers. This paper describes the protocol of the first exploratory randomised controlled trial of a mental health intervention aimed at improving placement permanency decisions for maltreated children. This trial compares an infant's mental health intervention with the new enhanced service as usual for maltreated children entering care in Glasgow. As both are new services, the trial is being conducted from a position of equipoise. The outcome assessment covers various fields of a child’s neurodevelopment to identify problems in any ESSENCE domain. The feasibility, reliability, and developmental appropriateness of all outcome measures are examined. Additionally, the potential for linkage with routinely collected data on health and social care and, in the future, education is explored. The results will inform a definitive randomised controlled trial that could potentially lead to long lasting benefits for the Scottish population and which may be applicable to other areas of the world

Search for Rayleigh scattering in the atmosphere of GJ1214b

We investigate the atmosphere of GJ1214b, a transiting super-Earth planet with a low mean density, by measuring its transit depth as a function of wavelength in the blue optical portion of the spectrum. It is thought that this planet is either a mini-Neptune, consisting of a rocky core with a thick, hydrogen-rich atmosphere, or a planet with a composition dominated by water. Most observations favor a water-dominated atmosphere with a small scale-height, however, some observations indicate that GJ1214b could have an extended atmosphere with a cloud layer muting the molecular features. In an atmosphere with a large scale-height, Rayleigh scattering at blue wavelengths is likely to cause a measurable increase in the apparent size of the planet towards the blue. We observed the transit of GJ1214b in the B-band with the FOcal Reducing Spectrograph (FORS) at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and in the g-band with both ACAM on the William Hershel Telescope (WHT) and the Wide Field Camera (WFC) at the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT). We find a planet-to-star radius ratio in the B-band of 0.1162+/-0.0017, and in the g-band 0.1180+/-0.0009 and 0.1174+/-0.0017 for the WHT & INT observations respectively. These optical data do not show significant deviations from previous measurements at longer wavelengths. In fact, a flat transmission spectrum across all wavelengths best describes the combined observations. When atmospheric models are considered a small scale-height water-dominated model fits the data best.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Chronicles of Oklahoma

Article consists of editorials written by The Chronicles' staff. Included is an announcement regarding delinquent payments made by members, an explanation for why some school will not receive copies of the magazine, and a resolution for the creation of a new building for the Historical Society

LiST as a catalyst in program planning: experiences from Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi

Background African countries are working to achieve rapid reductions in maternal and child mortality and meet their targets for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Partners in the Catalytic Initiative to Save One Million Lives (CI) are assisting them by providing funding and technical assistance to increase and accelerate coverage for proven interventions. Here we describe how the Lives Saved Tool (LiST) was used as part of an early assessment of the expected impact of CI plans in Malawi, Burkina Faso and Ghana

The Use of Poro-Elastic Finite Elements to Model the Structural Damping Effect of Fibrous Acoustical Treatments

Recently, new models for limp, fibrous sound absorbing materials have been proposed and verified. It has also been shown that these models may be used to optimize the sound absorption and barrier performance of layered acoustical systems. During that work, it was noticed that layers of fibrous materials can, under some circumstances, provide significant damping when they are applied to panel structures. It has since been shown that that structural damping effect may be predicted analytically by using a modal expansion procedure. The latter approach, however, can only conveniently be applied in circumstances when the vibrating structure has a simple shape and boundary conditions. Thus, in the work reported here it was of interest to demonstrate that the damping effect created by fibrous materials could also be predicted by using a finite element procedure. Successful application of the finite element method would then allow the damping effect of fibrous materials on arbitrarily shaped vibrating bodies to be studied. The poro-elastic finite element model that was used here to model the fibrous material has been described extensively elsewhere. That model has now been incorporated into a software package known as SAFE (Structural Acoustic Finite Element), an analysis module of the finite/boundary element package, COMET/Acoustics. The SAFE package was used to make the calculations reported here. The detailed objectives of the present work were first to duplicate analytical structural damping predictions by using a finite element approach, and thus to verify the earlier predictions. Secondly, it was desired to gain experience with modeling limp, fibrous materials by using SAFE. Finally, it was of interest to begin to optimize the acoustical behavior of acoustical materials by using numerical tools, and to examine the impact of these materials on the structural vibration of automotive panels, for example