LM cathode thruster system Quarterly progress report, 4 Oct. 1969 - 4 Jan. 1970

Optimization testing of thermally integrated liquid mercury cathode thruster syste

RELAP-5/MOD 3.2 Assessment Using an 11% Upper Plenum Break Experiment in the PSB Facility

The RELAP/MOD3.2 computer code has been assessed using an 11% upper plenum break experiment in the PSB test facility at the Electrogorsk Research and Engineering Center. This work was performed as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's International Nuclear Safety Program, and is part of the effort addressing the capability of the RELAP5/MOD3.2 code to model transients in Soviet-designed reactors. Designated VVER Standard Problem PSBV1, the test addressed several important phenomena related to VVER behavior that the code needs to simulate well. The code was judged to reasonably model the phenomena of two-phase flow natural circulation in the primary coolant system, asymmetric loop behavior, leak flow, loop seal clearance in the cold legs, heat transfer in a covered core, heat transfer in a partially covered core, pressurizer thermal-hydraulics, and integral system effects. The code was judged to be in minimal agreement with the experiment data for the mixture level and entrainment in the core, leading to a user recommendation to assess the sensitivity of transient calculations to the interphase drag modeling in the core. No judgments were made for the phenomena of phase separation without mixture level formation, mixture level and entrainment in the steam generators, pool formation in the upper plenum, or flow stratification in horizontal pipes because either the phenomenon did not occur in the test or there were insufficient measurements to characterize the behavior

Basic Utilities Vehicle (BUV) Milk Transportation

In developing countries, a need exists for the transportation of raw foods to communities without spoilage. Traditional methods of transporting goods don’t meet the needs of the consumer, and often times food is wasted due to the harsh climate and time constraints. Food often becomes salvage under the heat, causing a hurt to the profitability of vendors and family needs for fresh produce. In particular milk transportation has become difficult, due to the lack of cold storage in standard transit. As a response to the need for affordable raw food transport, our sponsor Basic Utilities Vehicle (BUV) has tasked us with designing a vehicle bed, for their existing vehicle models, that will withstand the harsh terrain and humid tropical environment during transit. Our job is to create an affordable unit that will transport milk containers unspoiled, without sacrificing storage space for sturdier bulky goods. Our vehicle bed design will replace the pre-existing 6.5’X4’ wooded box bed with a design that will keep cool over a 4-hour transit time, with extra space for vehicle repair tools, and overhead space for other various goods. This design will allow for the transport of raw goods, without sacrificing space for other cargo

Exoskeletons and economics:indoor arthropod diversity increases in affluent neighbourhoods

In urban ecosystems, socioeconomics contribute to patterns of biodiversity. The ‘luxury effect’, in which wealthier neighbourhoods are more biologically diverse, has been observed for plants, birds, bats and lizards. Here, we used data from a survey of indoor arthropod diversity (defined throughout as family-level richness) from 50 urban houses and found that house size, surrounding vegetation, as well as mean neighbourhood income best predict the number of kinds of arthropods found indoors. Our finding, that homes in wealthier neighbourhoods host higher indoor arthropod diversity (consisting of primarily non-pest species), shows that the luxury effect can extend to the indoor environment. The effect of mean neighbourhood income on indoor arthropod diversity was particularly strong for individual houses that lacked high surrounding vegetation ground cover, suggesting that neighbourhood dynamics can compensate for local choices of homeowners. Our work suggests that the management of neighbourhoods and cities can have effects on biodiversity that can extend from trees and birds all the way to the arthropod life in bedrooms and basements

Role of a cdk5-associated protein, p35, in herpes simplex virus type 1 replication in vivo

Previous studies have shown that herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) replication is inhibited by the cyclin-dependent kinase (cdk) inhibitor roscovitine. One roscovitine-sensitive cdk that functions in neurons is cdk5, which is activated in part by its binding partner, p35. Because HSV establishes latent infections in sensory neurons, we sought to determine the role p35 plays in HSV-1 replication in vivo. For these studies, wild-type (wt) and p35-/- mice were infected with HSV-1 using the mouse ocular model of HSV latency and reactivation. The current results indicate that p35 is an important determinant of viral replication in vivo

The habitats humans provide:factors affecting the diversity and composition of arthropods in houses

Abstract The indoor biome is a novel habitat which recent studies have shown exhibit not only high microbial diversity, but also high arthropod diversity. Here, we analyze findings from a survey of 50 houses (southeastern USA) within the context of additional survey data concerning house and room features, along with resident behavior, to explore how arthropod diversity and community composition are influenced by physical aspects of rooms and their usage, as well as the lifestyles of human residents. We found that indoor arthropod diversity is strongly influenced by access to the outdoors and carpeted rooms hosted more types of arthropods than non-carpeted rooms. Arthropod communities were similar across most room types, but basements exhibited more unique community compositions. Resident behavior such as house tidiness, pesticide usage, and pet ownership showed no significant influence on arthropod community composition. Arthropod communities across all rooms in houses exhibit trophic structure—with both generalized predators and scavengers included in the most frequently found groups. These findings suggest that indoor arthropods serve as a connection to the outdoors, and that there is still much yet to be discovered about their impact on indoor health and the unique ecological dynamics within our homes

Arthropods of the great indoorssuburban homes:characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes

Although humans and arthropods have been living and evolving together for all of our history, we know very little about the arthropods we share our homes with apart from major pest groups. Here we surveyed, for the first time, the complete arthropod fauna of the indoor biome in 50 houses (located in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, USA). We discovered high diversity, with a conservative estimate range of 32–211 morphospecies, and 24–128 distinct arthropod families per house. The majority of this indoor diversity (73%) was made up of true flies (Diptera), spiders (Araneae), beetles (Coleoptera), and wasps and kin (Hymenoptera, especially ants: Formicidae). Much of the arthropod diversity within houses did not consist of synanthropic species, but instead included arthropods that were filtered from the surrounding landscape. As such, common pest species were found less frequently than benign species. Some of the most frequently found arthropods in houses, such as gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) and book lice (Liposcelididae), are unfamiliar to the general public despite their ubiquity. These findings present a new understanding of the diversity, prevalence, and distribution of the arthropods in our daily lives. Considering their impact as household pests, disease vectors, generators of allergens, and facilitators of the indoor microbiome, advancing our knowledge of the ecology and evolution of arthropods in homes has major economic and human health implications

Recent Improvements To The RELAP5-3D Code

The RELAP5-3D computer program has been recently improved. Changes were made as follows: (1) heat structures are allowed to be decoupled from hydrodynamic components, (2) built-in material properties for heat structures have been made consistent with those in MATPRO and the Nuclear Systems Materials Handbook (they are now documented in the RELAP5-3D manual, (3) Schrock's flow quality correlation is now used for a downward oriented junction from a horizontal volume for the stratification entrainment/pullthrough model

Key Thermal Fluid Phenomena In Prismatic Gas-Cooled Reactors

Several types of gas-cooled nuclear reactors have been suggested as part of the international Generation IV initiative with the proposed NGNP (Next Generation Nuclear Plant) as one of the main concepts [MacDonald et al., 2003]. Meaningful studies for these designs will require accurate, reliable predictions of material temperatures to evaluate the material capabilities; these temperatures depend on the thermal convection in the core and in other important components. Some of these reactors feature complex geometries and wide ranges of temperatures, leading to significant variations of the gas thermodynamic and transport properties plus possible effects of buoyancy during normal and reduced power operations and loss-of-flow (LOFA) and loss-of-coolant scenarios. Potential issues identified to date include ''hot streaking'' in the lower plenum evolving from ''hot channels'' in prismatic cores. In order to predict thermal hydraulic behavior of proposed designs effectively and efficiently, it is useful to identify the dominant phenomena occurring

The effect of IGFC warm gas cleanup system conditions on the gas-solid partitioning and form of trace species in coal syngas and their interactions with SOFC anodes

The U.S. Department of Energy is currently working on coupling coal gasification and high temperature fuel cell to produce electrical power in a highly efficient manner while being emissions free. Many investigations have already investigated the effects of major coal syngas species such as CO and H2S. However coal contains many trace species and the effect of these species on solid oxide fuel cell anode is not presently known. Warm gas cleanup systems are planned to be used with these advanced power generation systems for the removal of major constituents such as H2S and HCl but the operational parameters of such systems is not well defined at this point in time. This paper focuses on the effect of anticipated warm gas cleanup conditions has on trace specie partitioning between the vapor and condensed phase and the effects the trace vapor species have on the SOFC anode. Results show that Be, Cr, K, Na, V, and Z trace species will form condensed phases and should not effect SOFC anode performance since it is anticipated that the warm gas cleanup systems will have a high removal efficiency of particulate matter. Also the results show that Sb, As, Cd, Hg, Pb, P, and Se trace species form vapor phases and the Sb, As, and P vapor phase species show the ability to form secondary Ni phases in the SOFC anode