Making affordable housing greener

With a beneficial focus on up-front planning, green building has moved from the fringes to the mainstream. Studies are finding no statistically significant difference between the costs of green construction and traditional building—and operational savings are significant.Housing ; Housing - Massachusetts ; Environmental policy ; Environmental policy - Massachusetts

Numerical analysis of four-wave mixing between 2 ps mode-locked laser pulses in a tensile-strained bulk SOA

A numerical model of four-wave mixing between 2-ps pulses in a tensile-strained bulk semiconductor optical amplifier is presented. The model utilizes a modified Schrodinger equation to model the pulse propagation. The Schrodinger equation parameters such as the material gain first and second order dispersion, linewidth enhancement factors and optical loss coefficient are obtained using a previously developed steady-state model. The predicted four-wave mixing pulse characteristics show reasonably good agreement with experimental pulse characteristics obtained using frequency resolved optical gating

Strike at the Museum: A Report on Museum Labor Unions

At a time of decline in American labor unions, museums have been an outlier. This recent trend has swept through America regarding museum labor and their desire for union representation. This thesis examines the recent increase in museum employees to unionize, explore recent successes, and outline perceived benefits of union representation. Critiques of not having a voice in the workplace, unfair wages, and calls to acknowledge social injustice have all served as catalysts to museum workers unionizing. Museum work consists of several responsibilities concerning stewardship, education, and public outreach. One often overlooks the function of museum employees since visitors often attend museums for their artifacts and exhibits. The impact museum unions can have on the profession as a whole and surrounding communities is enormous.The history of the American labor movement is full of examples as to how labor unions affect more than just the workplace. Labor unions have often been associated with impacting politics and social justice movements on a national level. Unfortunately, not all press about labor unions has been positive due to counts of corruption. This negative press then serves as an advantage to the management class by creating a skeptical mindset within the working class prior to any organizing efforts. This negative view has led to federal policymaking hindering union ability and harming growth. This opposition to traditional unions held by some has left the door open for a potential transformation. Sectoral bargaining is a direction all labor in America can transition into, including museums. The future of museum labor is uncertain due to many museums still struggling with workers being unhappy with not having a voice, unfair wages, and a desire for their institution to recognize social injustice. Museums, like many other workplaces in America, unionize one by one. It is difficult to run a successful union campaign due to the presence of anti-union firms that educate managers on how to stifle all union activity. This difficulty can be alleviated through sectoral bargaining because entire sectors of museums would be able to negotiate as one on a national scale, instead of relying on solo union campaigns. Sectoral bargaining is tough to achieve because federal and local policymaking is required to make it a reality. Although, other countries like Denmark can serve as a blueprint as to how a country can develop that system successfully. The result of unions and museums will lead to museum employees and upper management working together to achieve a fair and just workplace that can correct past inequities and better serve their surrounding communities

Dynamic analysis of a lithium-boiling potassium refractory metal Rankine cycle power system for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Lithium-boiling potassium refractory metal Rankine cycle power system heat transfer model

Characterizing the universal rigidity of generic frameworks

A framework is a graph and a map from its vertices to E^d (for some d). A framework is universally rigid if any framework in any dimension with the same graph and edge lengths is a Euclidean image of it. We show that a generic universally rigid framework has a positive semi-definite stress matrix of maximal rank. Connelly showed that the existence of such a positive semi-definite stress matrix is sufficient for universal rigidity, so this provides a characterization of universal rigidity for generic frameworks. We also extend our argument to give a new result on the genericity of strict complementarity in semidefinite programming.Comment: 18 pages, v2: updates throughout; v3: published versio

Corticobulbar tract changes as predictors of dysarthria in childhood brain injury.

To identify corticobulbar tract changes that may predict chronic dysarthria in young people who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in childhood using diffusion MRI tractography

Demonstration of early functional compromise of bone marrow derived hematopoietic progenitor cells during bovine neonatal pancytopenia through in vitro culture of bone marrow biopsies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Bovine neonatal pancytopenia (BNP) is a syndrome characterised by thrombocytopenia associated with marked bone marrow destruction in calves, widely reported since 2007 in several European countries and since 2011 in New Zealand. The disease is epidemiologically associated with the use of an inactivated bovine virus diarrhoea (BVD) vaccine and is currently considered to be caused by absorption of colostral antibody produced by some vaccinated cows (“BNP dams”). Alloantibodies capable of binding to the leukocyte surface have been detected in BNP dams and antibodies recognising bovine MHC class I and β-2-microglobulin have been detected in vaccinated cattle. In this study, calves were challenged with pooled colostrum collected from BNP dams or from non-BNP dams and their bone marrow hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPC) cultured <it>in vitro</it> from sternal biopsies taken at 24 hours and 6 days post-challenge.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Clonogenic assay demonstrated that CFU-GEMM (colony forming unit-granulocyte/erythroid/macrophage/megakaryocyte; pluripotential progenitor cell) colony development was compromised from HPCs harvested as early as 24 hour post-challenge. By 6 days post challenge, HPCs harvested from challenged calves failed to develop CFU-E (erythroid) colonies and the development of both CFU-GEMM and CFU-GM (granulocyte/macrophage) was markedly reduced.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study suggests that the bone marrow pathology and clinical signs associated with BNP are related to an insult which compromises the pluripotential progenitor cell within the first 24 hours of life but that this does not initially include all cell types.</p

Optimal packages: binding regular polyhedra

Strings on the surface of gift boxes can be modelled as a special kind of cable-and-joint structure. This paper deals with systems composed of idealised (frictionless) closed loops of strings that provide stable binding to the underlying convex polyhedron (‘package’). Optima are searched in both the sense of topology and geometry in finding minimal number of closed loops as well as the minimal (total) length of cables to ensure such a stable binding for simple cases of polyhedra