Office of university affairs management information system: Users guide and documentation

Data on the NASA-University relationship are reported that encompass research in over 600 schools through several thousand grants and contracts. This user-driven system is capable of producing a variety of cyclical and query-type reports describing the total NASA-University profile. The capabilities, designed as part of the system, require a minimum of user maintenance in order to ensure system efficiency and data validity to meet the recurrent Statutory and Executive Branch information requirements as well as ad hoc inquiries from NASA general management, Congress, other Federal agencies, private sector organizations, universities and individuals. The data base contains information on each university, the individual projects and the financial details, current and historic, on all contracts and grants. Complete details are given on the system from its unique design features to the actual steps required for daily operation

Assessment of a spodumene ore by advanced analytical and mass spectrometry techniques to determine its amenability to processing for the extraction of lithium

A combination of analytical microscopy and mass spectrometry techniques have been used to detect and characterise different lithium minerals in a LCT-Complex spodumene-type pegmatite from Pilgangoora located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Information collated by these techniques can be used to predict processing amenability. Samples were categorised into three subsamples (Pil1, Pil2, Pil3) based on colour and texture having different lithologies. The mineralogy and liberation characteristics of samples were characterised using automated mineralogy techniques and the Li content and elemental distribution within minerals defined using instrumentation with secondary mass spectrometry capabilities. The majority of lithium is associated with spodumene particles with minor amounts of lithium bearing micas and beryl in the Pil1 sample, whereas in Pil2 and Pil3 spodumene is largely the lithium source. In the Pil1 sample a proportion of spodumene particles have undergone alteration with spodumene being replaced by micaceous minerals of muscovite, lepidolite and trilithionite, as well as calcite. In Pil2 and Pil3 samples the spodumene particles are generally free of mineral impurities except minor intergrowths of quartz, feldspar and spodumene are evident in the coarser fractions. Based on mineralogical observations in the current study, the majority of the main gangue minerals quartz, K feldspar and albite can be rejected at a coarse grind size of −4 mm, to recover 90% of the spodumene with Li upgrade from 0.99–1.5 wt% Li to 3.0–3.5 wt% (6.5–7.5 wt% Li 2 O). The iron content (81–1475 ppm) in the spodumene is low and therefore make these spodumene concentrates suitable for use in ceramic and glass applications. Recovery of spodumene in the coarse fractions could be improved by further particle size reduction to liberate spodumene from micas and feldspars in the middling class, which account for between 15 and 49% of the sample. However, the requirement to remove mineral impurities in the spodumene in downstream processing will be dependent on the method of processing as the presence of Li bearing micas, calcite and feldspar can be beneficial or detrimental to lithium recovery. The high content of Rb (1 wt%) and the abundance of free grains makes K feldspar a source of rubidium, particularly in the Pil3 sample which has K feldspar in high abundance (21 wt%) and can potentially be recovered by reverse flotation technique. The low concentrations of the Ta, Nb and Sn minerals identified in samples were found to be fairly well liberated and could be recovered by conventional gravity separation techniques

Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Case Study

Although the theory of memetics appeared highly promising at the beginning, it is no longer considered a scientific theory among contemporary evolutionary scholars. This study aims to compare the genealogy of memetics with the historically more successful gene-culture coevolution theory. This comparison is made in order to determine the constraints that emerged during the internal development of the memetics theory that could bias memeticists to work on the ontology of meme units as opposed to hypotheses testing, which was adopted by the gene-culture scholars. I trace this problem back to the diachronic development of memetics to its origin in the gene-centered anti-group-selectionist argument of George C. Williams and Richard Dawkins. The strict adoption of this argument predisposed memeticists with the a priori idea that there is no evolution without discrete units of selection, which in turn, made them dependent on the principal separation of biological and memetic fitness. This separation thus prevented memeticists from accepting an adaptationist view of culture which, on the contrary, allowed gene-culture theorists to attract more scientists to test the hypotheses, creating the historical success of the gene-culture coevolution theory

A formal approach to the study of the evolution and commonality of patterns

The formal approach outlined in this paper uses symbolic memes as a framework for the hierarchical deconstruction of a cultural artefact, the traditional Korean pattern known as bosangwhamun, to describe the evolutionary development of such a pattern using shape grammar rules. The formal descriptions of this pattern are thus the basis for generating its variations, and the process is used to evaluate the validity of the rules and their appropriateness for the study of bosangwhamun

Radical Constructivism and Radical Constructedness: Luhmann’s Sociology and the Non-linear Dynamics of Expectations

The communication (and reflexive translation) of denotations between semantic domains can generate “horizons of meaning” as reflexive orders that remain structurally coupled to individual minds. Luhmann noted that this elusive order contains a trade-off between “organization” at interfaces integrating (differently coded) expectations at each moment of time, and the potential of further differentiation among symbolically generalized codes of communication in a “self-organization” over time. One can model the coding in the communication of meaning as eigenvectors which evolve as an implication of the interacting intentions and expectations. The interacting horizons of meaning generate new options (redundancy) against the arrow of time, since meaning is provided to events from the perspective of hindsight. Using the theory and computation of anticipatory systems, “self-organization” and “interaction” can be considered as hyper-incursive routines that use (expectations of) future states for their reconstruction, whereas “organization” operates in terms of instantiations (of expectations). Mathematical metaphors can guide us in further exploring the nonlinear dynamics of a social order of intentions and expectations without reification

The Kinetics of Gas-Liquid Metal Reactions Involving Levitated Drops. Carburization and Decarburization of Molten Iron in CO-CO₂ Gas Mixtures at High Pressures

The kinetics of decarburization and carburization of levitated molten iron-carbon alloy drops at 1650° in CO-CO2 gas mixtures were studied at a pressure of 40 atm. The results showed that, under the experimental conditions used, the rates were controlled by transport in the gas phase (decarburization) or by mixed transport control (carburization). The levitated drops behaved as static spherical particles as far as transport in the liquid phase was concerned since the effective diffusivity of carbon in the liquid was close to the atomic diffusivity. The transport model developed in the paper was applied to explain the data from some earlier investigations