Water System for Developing Countries / Disaster Relief Made with Local Materials

As the equipment builder of the team, I was responsible for building the treadle pump, the sand filter tank, the hand pump, and generating the instructions for each equipment. Each team member was responsible for certain parts of the water purification system, but everyone worked cohesively on all parts of the design when assistance was necessary. The original design for the treadle pump was a two-man powered pump which discharged water at 15 gallons per minute. Since our system only required less than half of the flow rate, and required another person to operate the bicycle, the pump was redesigned as a one-man powered pump which discharges water at five gallons per minute. The treadle pump consists of two pistons which can draw and discharge water. One piston will draw water from a well and discharge it to the sand filter, while the other piston will draw water from the sand filter and discharge it to an empty container for further treatment. Once the water is treated, a hand pump will draw clean water from a storage reservoir. The hand pump was assembled using PVC parts found in a local hardware store. The hand pump can also discharge water at five gallons per minute. The experiment for the treadle pump was conducted with the assistance from Mr. Hasan. Each piston was tested three times for the volume and the number of strokes at time intervals ranging from 30 to 120 seconds. The same procedure was followed for the experiment with the hand pump. The sand filter was assembled using an 18 gallon plastic bucket, all-purpose gravel, all-purpose sand, a PVC mechanism, and wool felt cut in specific dimensions. Before testing for filtering capability, the sand was cleaned by pumping clean water through the filter for approximately five hours. Once the sand filter was ready for testing, water containing dirt and other natural debris was poured into the filter. Three trials were performed and three samples were collected before and after running it through the sand filter. The turbidity was tested using a turbidimeter and the turbidity level of all samples were below five NTU (Nephelometric Turbidity Units) which is the maximum turbidity level allowed for drinking water. The pictorial instructions for the treadle pump, sand filter, and the hand pump were prepared using computer software such as Paint and photographs taken when each instruments were assembled. The instructions were captioned in English along with dimensions indicated in English units. This research opportunity has provided great hands-on experience as well as vision for the future as a development worker. My current goal for the future is to work in the oil field service industry as research and development scientist. In the future, I wish to travel to developing countries, especially the countries in the horn of Africa to help the underprivileged people. Knowing how to build a system that provides sanitary water for a whole village is a significant advantage to save lives as a worker in the missionary field

Practices of research data curation in institutional repositories: A qualitative view from repository staff

The importance of managing research data has been emphasized by the government, funding agencies, and scholarly communities. Increased access to research data increases the impact and efficiency of scientific activities and funding. Thus, many research institutions have established or plan to establish research data curation services as part of their Institutional Repositories (IRs). However, in order to design effective research data curation services in IRs, and to build active research data providers and user communities around those IRs, it is essential to study current data curation practices and provide rich descriptions of the sociotechnical factors and relationships shaping those practices. Based on 13 interviews with 15 IR staff members from 13 large research universities in the United States, this paper provides a rich, qualitative description of research data curation and use practices in IRs. In particular, the paper identifies data curation and use activities in IRs, as well as their structures, roles played, skills needed, contradictions and problems present, solutions sought, and workarounds applied. The paper can inform the development of best practice guides, infrastructure and service templates, as well as education in research data curation in Library and Information Science (LIS) schools

In situ endoscopic observation of higher-order mode conversion in a microwave mode converter based on an electro-optic probe system

Visualizing the electromagnetic field transformation inside a microwave mode conversion region has been considered to be only realizable by simulation studies. For the first time, we present a comprehensive experimental observation of the electric field transformation occurring inside a metallic waveguide TE01-to-TE02 mode converter. An efficient electro-optic (EO) probe and its associated probing system were used for measuring the electric field pattern in the external near-field region as well as in the internal and penetrated region of the mode converter. Utilizing the optically measured field patterns at the aperture of the mode converter, the conversion performance from the TE01 mode to the TE02 mode can be also evaluated. Experimentally measured field patterns near the apertures show excellent agreement with simulation data. The mode conversion to the next higher-order mode (TE01 to TE02) was experimentally demonstrated with phase-stabilized and field-animated post processing. The presented in situ endoscopic photonic measurement technique for the field evolution inside a semi-enclosed structure could be used for visually inspecting manufacturing errors in fabricated structures, and could be of great interest for research on higher-order mode formation and transmission.open0

Empathy as the Moral Sense?

In his recent work, Michael Slote argues that empathy is what Hutcheson called 'the moral sense'. The most innovative argument he offers for this claim is that our empathic reactions play a crucial role in fixing the reference of moral terms. I argue that Slote's bold proposal faces all the main problems of analytical naturalism, as well as some of its own. I suggest that empathy may nevertheless play a more modest and indirect role in acquiring moral knowledge

Practices of Metadata Use in Research Information Management Systems

This poster reports on a study that examines the practices of metadata use in a research information management (RIM) system ResearchGate. Understanding these practices can help institutional repositories to better align their RIM metadata models with researchers’ needs and priorities. The study identified three categories of RIM system users. The study’s preliminary findings suggest that community members are more willing to share their personal information and provide full-texts of their works on ResearchGate compared to readers and personal record managers.This research is supported by an OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Research Grant for 2016 and a National Leadership Grant from the IMLS of the U.S. Government (grant # LG-73-16-0006-16)

Towards a metadata model for research information management systems

This research is supported by an OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Research Grant for 2016 and a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) of the U.S. Government (grant # LG-73-16-0006-16). This article reflects the findings and conclusions of the authors, and does not necessarily reflect the views of IMLS, OCLC, and ALISE