Thermal control system for a spacecraft modular housing

The development of a thermal control system for a spacecraft module is discussed. The wall structures are composed of superinsulation in some cases and of thermally conductive material in other cases. Heat pipes are installed to provide a path of heat transfer from the interior of the module to space. The design of the system makes it possible to maintain a relatively uniform temperature throughout the module with side variations of the amount of heat dissipated by the components within the module

Quantifying the impact of services liberalization in a developing country

The authors consider how service liberalization differs from goods liberalization in terms of welfare, the level and composition of output, and factor prices within a developing economy, in this case Tunisia. Despite recent movements toward liberalization, Tunisian service sectors remain largely closed to foreign participation and are provided at high cost relative to many developing nations. The authors develop a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Tunisian economy with multiple products and services and three trading partners. They model goods liberalization as the unilateral removal of product tariffs. Restraints on services trade involve both restrictions on cross-border supply (mode 1 in the GATS) and on foreign ownership through foreign direct investment (mode 3 in the GATS). The former are modeled as tariff-equivalent price wedges while the latter are comprised of both monopoly-rent distortions (arising from imperfect competition among domestic producers) andinefficiency costs (arising from a failure of domestic service providers to adopt least-cost practices). They find that goods-trade liberalization yields a gain in aggregate welfare and reorients production toward sectors of benchmark comparative advantage. However, a reduction of services barriers in a way that permits greater competition through foreign direct investment generates larger welfare gains. Service liberalization also requires lower adjustment costs, measured in terms of sectoral movement of workers, than does goods-trade liberalization. And it tends to increase economic activity in all sectors and raise the real returns to both capital and labor. The overall welfare gains of comprehensive service liberalization amount to more than 5 percent of initial consumption. The bulk of these gains come from opening markets for finance, business services, and telecommunications. Because these are key inputs into all sectors of the economy, their liberalization cuts costs and drives larger efficiency gains overall. The results point to the potential importance of deregulating services provision for economic development.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Health Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform

Individual personality differences in adjustment to retirement

Includes bibliographical references.2015 Summer.Retirement is an important life event to study at present, because more people are entering their retirement years and are spending more time in retirement than ever before in our nation’s history. Historically, research has shown mixed results on effects of retirement that are not accurately explained by any one theory. These mixed results suggest the possibility of individual differences in retirement adjustment that may not be accounted for with aggregated data. Wang, Henkens, and Shultz (2011) proposed a comprehensive framework of retirement adjustment: the resource-based dynamic perspective, which reasons that adjustment is influenced by antecedent variables, via level of resources possessed by the individual at a given time. The current study seeks to assess the relation between personality as an antecedent variable and retirement adjustment in a longitudinal analysis of participants from the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study. Resources are also modeled as covariates in the analysis. Results should be interpreted with caution due to limitations in model fit. Results from the Growth Mixture Model (GMM) revealed two classes of retirement trajectories and certain personality traits were significant as predictors for these trajectories. Implications for both research and practice are discussed

Effective Math Manipulatives To Use With The B.E.S.T. Standards In Grades K-6

The focus for this research paper was to explore which math manipulatives are the most effective for each strand of the B.E.S.T. standards. The review of literature provided information about the history of math manipulatives, what are math manipulatives, B.E.S.T. standards, and the six strands. A review of the most commonly used math manipulatives was part of the literature viewed during the research process in order to see how those manipulatives can be connected to the B.E.S.T. standards, so that students can effectively understand more abstract concepts

Evidence of Climate-Induced Range Contractions in Bull Trout \u3ci\u3eSalvelinus confluentus\u3c/i\u3e in a Rocky Mountain Watersehd, U.S.A.

Many freshwater fish species are considered vulnerable to stream temperature warming associated with climate change because they are ectothermic, yet there are surprisingly few studies documenting changes in distributions. Streams and rivers in the U.S. Rocky Mountains have been warming for several decades. At the same time these systems have been experiencing an increase in the severity and frequency of wildfires, which often results in habitat changes including increased water temperatures. We resampled 74 sites across a Rocky Mountain watershed 17 to 20 years after initial samples to determine whether there were trends in bull trout occurrence associated with temperature, wildfire, or other habitat variables. We found that site abandonment probabilities (0.36) were significantly higher than colonization probabilities (0.13), which indicated a reduction in the number of occupied sites. Site abandonment probabilities were greater at low elevations with warm temperatures. Other covariates, such as the presence of wildfire, nonnative brook trout, proximity to areas with many adults, and various stream habitat descriptors, were not associated with changes in probability of occupancy. Higher abandonment probabilities at low elevation for bull trout provide initial evidence validating the predictions made by bioclimatic models that bull trout populations will retreat to higher, cooler thermal refuges as water temperatures increase. The geographic breadth of these declines across the region is unknown but the approach of revisiting historical sites using an occupancy framework provides a useful template for additional assessments

METAL CONTAMINATION AND FOOD WEB CHANGES ALTER EXPOSURE TO UPPER TROPHIC LEVELS IN UPPER BLACKFOOT RIVER BASIN STREAMS, MONTANA

Reduced invertebrate abundance and diversity are common responses to metals contamination in mining-impacted streams. The resulting changes in community composition may have implications for metals accumulation and transfer through the food web. We investigated how changes in invertebrate community composition (abundance, species richness, and food web complexity) influence metals bioaccumulation and exposure risk to upper trophic levels along a contamination gradient in the upper Blackfoot River Basin, Montana. Invertebrate species richness exhibited the strongest decline with increasing sediment metals concentrations, driven by the loss of metals-sensitive taxa. These changes in invertebrate community composition resulted in a decline in the proportion of invertebrates in the scraper functional feeding group, likely influencing dietary metals exposure to the invertebrate community. Additionally, invertebrates with a strong propensity-to-drift increased with sediment contamination, potentially facilitating metals transfer to fish and higher trophic levels through predation. Using invertebrate exposure values (invertebrate abundance x metals concentrations), we found that moderately contaminated sites in our study area produced both the highest invertebrate exposure values and the highest fish tissue metals concentrations. Considering both changes in invertebrate community composition and metal concentrations is an important step towards understanding and evaluating potential toxic effects to upper trophic levels in mining-impacted streams. Note that there are several datasets associated with this article

Interfaith Inquiry: Learning From Community-Based Research, Pluralism, and Student-Faculty Collaboration

Abstract On Catholic college campuses, community outreach and inter-faith cooperation occurs most often under the direction of Student Life Offices, often with strong leadership provided by Campus Ministry. Within this more traditional approach, students learn a great deal about the value of both enterprises, though their learning remains largely undocumented, unassessed and, without the benefit of earned credit hours, unrewarded. A team of faculty and students at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa are in the process of a following a different approach. After five years of coordinating interfaith conversations and scripture study with centers of worship throughout the Dubuque area, including Christian churches, Jewish Temple, and the local mosque, faculty and student interns created a survey designed to gauge attitudes toward religion throughout the city. By working not only with places of worship but also with local government and businesses, faculty and students are collecting responses that can provide data on each site as well as information on more general, community-wide trends. At this early stage in the process, the group has completed surveys of five institutions, and although that number is too small to reveal conclusive evidence about religious attitudes in this Midwestern town of 60,000, it has been sufficient to disclose the type of learning students are experiencing throughout the project

Fire and Fish Dynamics in a Changing Climate: Broad- and Local-Scale Effects of Fire-Induced Water Temperature Changes on Native and Nonnative Fish Communities

Fire is a key natural disturbance that affects the distribution and abundance of native fishes in the Rocky Mountain West. In the absence of migratory individuals from undisturbed portions of a watershed, persistence of native fish populations depends on the conditions of the post-fire stream environment. Stream temperatures typically warm after fire, and remain elevated until riparian vegetation recovers. An additional threat to native species is that nonnative fishes have invaded many waters, and these species tolerate or prefer warmer water temperatures. Thus, forecasting the long-term effects of fire on native fish populations requires an understanding of fire dynamics (size, distribution, frequency, and severity), the extent and location of changes in riparian forest structure and time to recovery, changes in stream temperatures associated with these forest changes, and how native and nonnative fish respond to changes in water temperature. To perform spatially explicit simulation modeling that examined the relations among fire disturbance, stream temperature, and fish communities, we upgraded and then linked the fire-forest succession model FireBGCv2 to a stream temperature model to project changes in water temperature in the East Fork Bitterroot River basin in Montana under an array of climate and fire management scenarios. Model projections indicated that although climate led to increases in fire severity, frequency, or size, water temperature increases at the basin scale were primarily a consequence of climate-driven atmospheric warming rather than changes in fire regime. Consequently, variation in fire management—fuel treatment or fire suppression—had little effect at this scale, but assumed greater importance at the scale of riparian stands. By revisiting a large number of previously sampled sites in the East Fork Bitterroot River basin in Montana, we evaluated whether bull trout persistence and other native and nonnative fish distributions were related to temperature changes associated with fire and recent climatic trends. Although fires were related to marked increases in summer water temperatures, these changes had a positive effect (westslope cutthroat trout) or a negligible effect (bull trout) on the abundance and distribution of native fish species, whereas the abundance of nonnative brook trout markedly declined in some instances. Fire-related changes in factors other than the thermal regime may have contributed to these patterns. In contrast, at the scale of the entire basin we observed an upward-directed contraction in the distribution of bull trout that was unrelated to fire. We concluded that this may be a response to temperature increases related to climate change