COMPLIANCE TESTING OF IOWA’S SKID-MOUNTED SIGN DEVICE

A wide variety of traffic control devices are used in work zones, some of which are nont ormally found on the roadside or in the traveled way outsideofthe work zones. These devices are used to enhance the safety of the work zones by controlling the traffic through these areas. Due to the placement of the traffic control devices, the devices themselves may be potentially hazardous to both workers and errant vehicles. The impact performance of many work zone traffic control devices is mainly unknown and to date limited crash testing has been conducted under the criteria of National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report No. 350, Recommended Procedures for the Safety Performance Evaluation of Highway Features. The objective of the study was to evaluatethe safety performance of existing skid-mounted sign supports through full- scale crash testing. Two full-scale crash tests were conducted on skid-mounted sign supports to determine their safety performance according to the Test Level 3 (TL-3) criteria set forth in the NCHRP Report No. 350. The safety performancevaluations indicate that these skid-mounted sign supports did not perform satisfactorily in the full-scale crash tests. The results of the crash tests were documented, and conclusions and recommendations pertaining tothe safety performance of the existing work zone traffic control devices were made

Efeito de aditivos em substrato de arroz para produção de conídios de Metarhizium anisopliae (Metsch.) Sorok. e Beauveria bassiana (Bals.) Vuill.

O incremento de meios de cultura com diversas fontes de carbono e nitrogênio, principalmente de meios a base de produtos vegetais, tem sido estudado com o objetivo de aumentar a produtividade de fungos entomopatogênicos. Assim, o presente trabalho teve como objetivo avaliar o efeito de aditivos na produção dos fungos entomopatogênicos Metarhizium anisopliae e Beauveria bassiana em substrato de arroz. A produção e a viabilidade de conídios em meio sólido de arroz foi avaliada utilizando os diferentes aditivos: caldo de batata (5%; 10%: 15% e 20%), lactose (1 g; 2 g; 3 g e 4 g;), extrato de levedura (0,005 g; 0,01 g e 0,1 g), além dos sais: nitrato de sódio; cloreto de potássio; cloreto de cálcio; sulfato de magnésio e ácido ascórbico na concentração 0,01 g. Cada tratamento teve quatro repetições, sendo o tratamento testemunha constituído apenas por substrato de arroz. Os dados foram submetidos à análise de variância e as médias comparadas por regressão e teste de Tukey (P≤0,05). Verificou-se que o aumento da concentração de aditivos no meio de cultura de arroz causou uma pequena redução na produção de conídios de ambos os fungos avaliados, exceto no tratamento extrato de levedura 0,005 g e lactose 1 g onde houve um incremento na produção do fungo M. anisopliae (2,31×108 e 1,89×108 conídios.g-1, respectivamente). A viabilidade dos conídios não foi afetada pelos aditivos no meio de cultura. A adição de 0,01 g de cloreto de potássio aumentou significativamente a produção de M. anisopliae e os demais tratamentos não afetaram a produção deste fungo. A adição de sais minerais ao meio de cultivo não afetou a produção de B. bassiana. A germinação dos conídios de M. anisopliae não foi afetada pela adição de sais minerais ao meio de cultura. Já para B. bassiana o tratamento nitrato de sódio diferiu estatisticamente dos tratamentos sulfato de magnésio e cloreto de potássio, os demais tratamentos não apresentaram diferenças significativas em relação ao tratamento testemunha

Quantum gate characterization in an extended Hilbert space

We describe an approach for characterizing the process of quantum gates using quantum process tomography, by first modeling them in an extended Hilbert space, which includes non-qubit degrees of freedom. To prevent unphysical processes from being predicted, present quantum process tomography procedures incorporate mathematical constraints, which make no assumptions as to the actual physical nature of the system being described. By contrast, the procedure presented here ensures physicality by placing physical constraints on the nature of quantum processes. This allows quantum process tomography to be performed using a smaller experimental data set, and produces parameters with a direct physical interpretation. The approach is demonstrated by example of mode-matching in an all-optical controlled-NOT gate. The techniques described are non-specific and could be applied to other optical circuits or quantum computing architectures.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, REVTeX (published version

Hodge numbers for the cohomology of Calabi-Yau type local systems

We use Higgs cohomology to determine the Hodge numbers of the first intersection cohomology group of a local system V arising from the third direct image of a family of Calabi-Yau 3-folds over a smooth, quasi-projective curve. We give applications to Rhode's families of Calabi-Yau 3-folds without MUM.Comment: Some signs corrected. This article draws heavily from arXiv:0911.027

Fluxes of microbes, organic aerosols, dust, sea-salt Na ions, non-sea-salt Ca ions, and methanesulfonate onto Greenland and Antarctic ice

Using a spectrofluorimeter with 224-nm laser excitation and six emission bands from 300 to 420 nm to measure fluorescence intensities at 0.3-mm depth intervals in ice cores, we report results of the first comparative study of concentrations of microbial cells (using the spectrum of protein-bound tryptophan (Trp) as a proxy) and of aerosols with autofluorescence spectra different from Trp (denoted "non-Trp") as a function of depth in ice cores from West Antarctica (WAIS Divide and Siple Dome) and Greenland (GISP2). The ratio of fluxes of microbial cells onto West Antarctic (WAIS Divide) versus Greenland sites is 0.13±0.06; the ratio of non-Trp aerosols onto WAIS Divide versus Greenland sites is 0.16±0.08; and the ratio of non-sea-salt Ca<sup>2+</sup> ions (a proxy for dust grains) onto WAIS Divide versus Greenland sites is 0.06±0.03. All of these are roughly comparable to the ratio of fluxes of dust onto Antarctic versus Greenland sites (0.08±0.05). By contrast to those values, which are considerably lower than unity, the ratio of fluxes of methanesulfonate (MSA) onto Antarctic versus Greenland sites is 1.9±0.4 and the ratio of sea-salt Na<sup>2+</sup> ions onto WAIS Divide versus Greenland sites is 3.0±2. These ratios are more than an order of magnitude higher than those in the first grouping. We infer that the correlation of microbes and non-Trp aerosols with non-sea-salt Ca and dust suggests a largely terrestrial rather than marine origin. The lower fluxes of microbes, non-Trp aerosols, non-sea-salt Ca and dust onto WAIS Divide ice than onto Greenland ice may be due to the smaller areas of their source regions and less favorable wind patterns for transport onto Antarctic ice than onto Greenland ice. The correlated higher relative fluxes of MSA and marine Na onto Antarctic versus Greenland ice is consistent with the view that both originate largely on or around sea ice, with the Antarctic sea ice being far more extensive than that around Greenland

(Per)chlorate-reducing bacteria can utilize aerobic and anaerobic pathways of aromatic degradation with (per)chlorate as an electron acceptor.

UnlabelledThe pathways involved in aromatic compound oxidation under perchlorate and chlorate [collectively known as (per)chlorate]-reducing conditions are poorly understood. Previous studies suggest that these are oxygenase-dependent pathways involving O2 biogenically produced during (per)chlorate respiration. Recently, we described Sedimenticola selenatireducens CUZ and Dechloromarinus chlorophilus NSS, which oxidized phenylacetate and benzoate, two key intermediates in aromatic compound catabolism, coupled to the reduction of perchlorate or chlorate, respectively, and nitrate. While strain CUZ also oxidized benzoate and phenylacetate with oxygen as an electron acceptor, strain NSS oxidized only the latter, even at a very low oxygen concentration (1%, vol/vol). Strains CUZ and NSS contain similar genes for both the anaerobic and aerobic-hybrid pathways of benzoate and phenylacetate degradation; however, the key genes (paaABCD) encoding the epoxidase of the aerobic-hybrid phenylacetate pathway were not found in either genome. By using transcriptomics and proteomics, as well as by monitoring metabolic intermediates, we investigated the utilization of the anaerobic and aerobic-hybrid pathways on different electron acceptors. For strain CUZ, the results indicated utilization of the anaerobic pathways with perchlorate and nitrate as electron acceptors and of the aerobic-hybrid pathways in the presence of oxygen. In contrast, proteomic results suggest that strain NSS may use a combination of the anaerobic and aerobic-hybrid pathways when growing on phenylacetate with chlorate. Though microbial (per)chlorate reduction produces molecular oxygen through the dismutation of chlorite (ClO2(-)), this study demonstrates that anaerobic pathways for the degradation of aromatics can still be utilized by these novel organisms.ImportanceS. selenatireducens CUZ and D. chlorophilus NSS are (per)chlorate- and chlorate-reducing bacteria, respectively, whose genomes encode both anaerobic and aerobic-hybrid pathways for the degradation of phenylacetate and benzoate. Previous studies have shown that (per)chlorate-reducing bacteria and chlorate-reducing bacteria (CRB) can use aerobic pathways to oxidize aromatic compounds in otherwise anoxic environments by capturing the oxygen produced from chlorite dismutation. In contrast, we demonstrate that S. selenatireducens CUZ is the first perchlorate reducer known to utilize anaerobic aromatic degradation pathways with perchlorate as an electron acceptor and that it does so in preference over the aerobic-hybrid pathways, regardless of any oxygen produced from chlorite dismutation. D. chlorophilus NSS, on the other hand, may be carrying out anaerobic and aerobic-hybrid processes simultaneously. Concurrent use of anaerobic and aerobic pathways has not been previously reported for other CRB or any microorganisms that encode similar pathways of phenylacetate or benzoate degradation and may be advantageous in low-oxygen environments

Simultaneous Matrix Diagonalization for Structural Brain Networks Classification

This paper considers the problem of brain disease classification based on connectome data. A connectome is a network representation of a human brain. The typical connectome classification problem is very challenging because of the small sample size and high dimensionality of the data. We propose to use simultaneous approximate diagonalization of adjacency matrices in order to compute their eigenstructures in more stable way. The obtained approximate eigenvalues are further used as features for classification. The proposed approach is demonstrated to be efficient for detection of Alzheimer's disease, outperforming simple baselines and competing with state-of-the-art approaches to brain disease classification

Experiments towards quantum information with trapped Calcium ions

Ground state cooling and coherent manipulation of ions in an rf-(Paul) trap is the prerequisite for quantum information experiments with trapped ions. With resolved sideband cooling on the optical S1/2 - D5/2 quadrupole transition we have cooled one and two 40Ca+ ions to the ground state of vibration with up to 99.9% probability. With a novel cooling scheme utilizing electromagnetically induced transparency on the S1/2 - P1/2 manifold we have achieved simultaneous ground state cooling of two motional sidebands 1.7 MHz apart. Starting from the motional ground state we have demonstrated coherent quantum state manipulation on the S1/2 - D5/2 quadrupole transition at 729 nm. Up to 30 Rabi oscillations within 1.4 ms have been observed in the motional ground state and in the n=1 Fock state. In the linear quadrupole rf-trap with 700 kHz trap frequency along the symmetry axis (2 MHz in radial direction) the minimum ion spacing is more than 5 micron for up to 4 ions. We are able to cool two ions to the ground state in the trap and individually address the ions with laser pulses through a special optical addressing channel.Comment: Proceedings of the ICAP 2000, Firenz