Utilizing Economic and Environmental Data from the Desalination Industry as a Progressive Approach to Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Commercialization

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a renewable energy technology that has to overcome several key challenges before achieving its ultimate goal of producing baseload power on a commercial scale. The economic challenge of deploying an OTEC plant remains the biggest barrier to implementation. Although small OTEC demonstration plants and recent advances in subsystem technologies have proven OTEC’s technical merits, the process still lacks the crucial operational data required to justify investments in large commercial OTEC plants on the order of 50-100 megawatts of net electrical power (MWe-net). A pre-commercial pilot plant on the order of 5-10 MWe-net is required for an OTEC market to evolve. In addition to the economic challenge,OTEC plants have potential for adverse environmental impacts from redistribution of nutrients and residual chemicals in the discharge plume. Although long-term operational records are not available for commercial sizeOTEC plants, synergistic operational data can be leveraged from the desalination industry to improve the potential for OTEC commercialization. Large capacity desalination plants primarily use membranes or thermal evaporator tubes to transform enormous amounts of seawater into freshwater. Thermal desalination plants in particular possess many of the same technical, economic, and environmental traits as a commercial scale OTEC plant. Substantial long-term economic data and environmental impact results are now widely available since commercial desalination began in the 1950s. Analysis of this data indicates that the evolution of the desalination industry could be akin to the potential future advancement of OTEC. Furthermore, certain scenarios exist where a combined OTEC-desalination plant provides a new opportunity for commercial plants. This paper seeks to utilize operational data from the desalination industry as a progressive approach towards OTEC commercialization

Quantized Circulation in Racetrack Atomtronic Circuits at Non-Zero Temperature

We extend previous theoretical investigations of the creation of quantized circulation states by stirring Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) confined in ``racetrack potentials. The previous study, {\em Producing Smooth Flow in Atom Circuits by Stirring}, used the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE), which is valid at $T=0$ K. Here we use a non-zero temperature model based on the Zaremba, Nikuni, Griffin (ZNG) theory to simulate stirring racetrack BECs. The two main goals of this thesis are 1) to understand the effects of temperature on the production of circulation and 2) to understand the mechanism by which the circulation is excited. We find that it is possible to produce circulation at non-zero $T$ in much the same way as at absolute zero, and the consideration of thermal effects is important for determining the precise amount of circulation obtained by stirring for a fixed total number of atoms. We also present a case study of the mechanism by which stirring produces flow in the GPE model

Potential repellency of cedarwood oil from a novel extraction method to stored product insects

Producers lose 10-30% of crops during storage, processing, and marketing after harvest each year to stored product insects (1,2). Globally, there has been a rise in insecticide resistance to phosphine, the most common fumigant for these pests (3). As a result, producers need to diversify post-harvest IPM methods to preserve existing tools. One alternative strategy is push-pull, whereby a repellent is used to “push” an insect away from the commodity of interest, while also simultaneously “pulling” the insects to an alternate location away from the commodity using an attractant (4)(Fig. 1). This system notably requires a long-distance repellent. One potential repellent includes cedarwood oil, which has shown repellency to termites and ants (5,6). A novel extraction process for this compound has been developed, which leaves many of its main constituents intact (7). However, to date, this compound has never been assessed for repellency to post-harvest insects

ERTS-1 applications to Minnesota land use mapping

Land use class definitions that can be operationally employed with ERTS-1 imagery are being developed with the cooperation of personnel from several state, regional, and federal agencies with land management responsibilities within the state and the University of Minnesota. Investigations of urban, extractive, forest, and wetlands areas indicate that it is feasible to subdivide each of these classes into several sub-classes with the use of ERTS-1 images from one or more time periods

Six-body Light-Front Tamm-Dancoff approximation and wave functions for the massive Schwinger model

The spectrum of the massive Schwinger model in the strong coupling region is obtained by using the light-front Tamm-Dancoff (LFTD) approximation up to including six-body states. We numerically confirm that the two-meson bound state has a negligibly small six-body component. Emphasis is on the usefulness of the information about states (wave functions). It is used for identifying the three-meson bound state among the states below the three-meson threshold. We also show that the two-meson bound state is well described by the wave function of the relative motion.Comment: 19 pages, RevTeX, 7 figures are available upon request; Minor errors have been corrected; Final version to appear in Phys.Rev.

Preparation of clinical-grade recombinant canarypox-human immunodeficiency virus vaccine-loaded human dendritic cells

Preclinical data are reported that support a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine strategy using recombinant canarypox-HIV vectors (ALVAC-HIV) to load human dendritic cells (DCs) with HIV antigens. Clinical-grade DCs were infected with good manufacturing practice-grade ALVAC-HIV vaccine constructs. ALVAC infection, HIV gene expression, and DC viability and function were monitored by use of immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, blastogenesis assays, antigen-specific interferon (IFN)-γ enzyme-linked immunospot assay, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay protein detection. The vaccines infected both immature and mature DCs, and intracellular HIV-1 Gag protein was detected within hours. ALVAC-HIV induced DC maturation that was mediated by tumor necrosis factor-α and induced DC apoptosis that was directly related to the length of vaccine exposure. Of importance, the infected DCs remained functional in T cell stimulation assays and induced HIV antigen-specific CD8+ T cell production of IFN-γ from cells of HIV-1-infected individuals. These data support an ongoing HIV vaccine trial comparing conventional vaccine delivery routes with ex vivo vaccine-loaded autologous DCs for immunogenicity in HIV-1-uninfected volunteers

Calculation of production and decay of radioisotopes for future irradiation experiments and ion beam facilities

Abstract.: The design of future radioactive ion beam (RIB) facilites requires the forecast of radio isotope inventory after irradiation. At CERN - ISOLDE, we developed a software that estimates the activity of irradiated materials as a function of time dedicated to radioactive waste management. This tool can also be used for licensing procedures, planning of irradiation experiments and the estimation of yield

Sonoluminescing air bubbles rectify argon

The dynamics of single bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) strongly depends on the percentage of inert gas within the bubble. We propose a theory for this dependence, based on a combination of principles from sonochemistry and hydrodynamic stability. The nitrogen and oxygen dissociation and subsequent reaction to water soluble gases implies that strongly forced air bubbles eventually consist of pure argon. Thus it is the partial argon (or any other inert gas) pressure which is relevant for stability. The theory provides quantitative explanations for many aspects of SBSL.Comment: 4 page