Solid sorbent air sampler

A fluid sampler for collecting a plurality of discrete samples over separate time intervals is described. The sampler comprises a sample assembly having an inlet and a plurality of discreet sample tubes each of which has inlet and outlet sides. A multiport dual acting valve is provided in the sampler in order to sequentially pass air from the sample inlet into the selected sample tubes. The sample tubes extend longitudinally of the housing and are located about the outer periphery thereof so that upon removal of an enclosure cover, they are readily accessible for operation of the sampler in an analysis mode

Design and development of a deployable self-inflating adaptive membrane

Space structures nowadays are often designed to serve just one objective during their mission life, examples include truss structures that are used as support structures, solar sails for propulsion or antennas for communication. Each and every single one of these structures is optimized to serve just their distinct purpose and are more or less useless for the rest of the mission and therefore dead weight. By developing a smart structure that can change its shape and therefore adapt to different mission requirements in a single structure, the flexibility of the spacecraft can be increased by greatly decreasing the mass of the entire system. This paper will introduce such an adaptive structure called the Self-inflating Adaptive Membrane (SAM) concept which is being developed at the Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory of the University of Strathclyde. An idea presented in this paper is to adapt these basic changeable elements from nature’s heliotropism. Heliotropism describes a movement of a plant towards the sun during a day; the movement is initiated by turgor pressure change between adjacent cells. The shape change of the global structure can be significant by adding up these local changes induced by local elements, for example the cell’s length. To imitate the turgor pressure change between the motor cells in plants to space structures, piezoelectric micro pumps are added between two neighboring cells. A passive inflation technique is used for deploying the membrane at its destination in space. The trapped air in the spheres will inflate the spheres when subjected to vacuum, therefore no pump or secondary active deployment methods are needed. The paper will present the idea behind the adaption of nature’s heliotropism principle to space structures. The feasibility of the residual air inflation method is verified by LS-DYNA simulations and prototype bench tests under vacuum conditions. Additionally, manufacturing techniques and folding patterns are presented to optimize the actual bench test structure and to minimize the required storage volume. It is shown that through a bio-inspired concept, a high ratio of adaptability of the membrane can be obtained. The paper concludes with the design of a technology demonstrator for a sounding rocket experiment to be launched in March 2013 from the Swedish launch side Esrange

The association of statin use after cancer diagnosis with survival in pancreatic cancer patients: a SEER-medicare analysis.

BackgroundPancreatic cancer has poor prognosis and existing interventions provide a modest benefit. Statin has anti-cancer properties that might enhance survival in pancreatic cancer patients. We sought to determine whether statin treatment after cancer diagnosis is associated with longer survival in those with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).MethodsWe analyzed data on 7813 elderly patients with PDAC using the linked Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) - Medicare claims files. Information on the type, intensity and duration of statin use after cancer diagnosis was extracted from Medicare Part D. We treated statin as a time-dependent variable in a Cox regression model to determine the association with overall survival adjusting for follow-up, age, sex, race, neighborhood income, stage, grade, tumor size, pancreatectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, obesity, dyslipidemia, diabetes, chronic pancreatitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).ResultsOverall, statin use after cancer diagnosis was not significantly associated with survival when all PDAC patients were considered (HR = 0.94, 95%CI 0.89, 1.01). However, statin use after cancer diagnosis was associated with a 21% reduced hazard of death (Hazard ratio = 0.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.67, 0.93) in those with grade I or II PDAC and to a similar extent in those who had undergone a pancreatectomy, in those with chronic pancreatitis and in those who had not been treated with statin prior to cancer diagnosis.ConclusionsWe found that statin treatment after cancer diagnosis is associated with enhanced survival in patients with low-grade, resectable PDAC

Impact of Manure Application on Phosphorus in Surface Runoff and Soil Erosion

Effects of method of manure management and dietary P were compared on 21 natural runoff plots to monitor the long-term impact of dietary P to P losses in runoff and erosion. Reducing feed P resulted in a 33% reduction in manure P content and soil test P buildup and runoff losses of P also were directly proportional to feed P inputs. The timing and management of manure are also important considerations for controlling P losses in runoff in the year of application. However, residual effects of timing and management are probably small. Management criteria designed to assess the potential for landscape P-loading (i.e. “P-index”) correctly weight winter applications as more detrimental than planting time applications

Performance Profile and Carcass Characteristics of Steers Fed Optaflexx

An experiment evaluated the live BW response of steers being fed Optaflexx for various durations. The design consisted of two Optaflexx levels (0 vs. 200 mg per steer daily) and two Optaflexx feeding durations (28 or 42 days immediately prior to slaughter). However, Optaflexx was started on the same day (day 151 of the feeding period). Feeding 200 mg/steer daily of Optaflexx significantly (P\u3c0.01) improved final BW, ADG, and F:G compared to controls. Feeding 200 mg /steer daily of Optaflexx provided 16.4 and 18.8 lb of added BW above controls for the 28 and 42 feeding duration, respectively, but most (approximately 87%) of this weight gain was within the first 28 days of the time that Optaflexx was fed

Performance Profile and Carcass Characteristics of Steers Fed Optaflexx

An experiment evaluated the live BW response of steers being fed Optaflexx for various durations. The design consisted of two Optaflexx levels (0 vs. 200 mg per steer daily) and two Optaflexx feeding durations (28 or 42 days immediately prior to slaughter). However, Optaflexx was started on the same day (day 151 of the feeding period). Feeding 200 mg/steer daily of Optaflexx significantly (P\u3c0.01) improved final BW, ADG, and F:G compared to controls. Feeding 200 mg /steer daily of Optaflexx provided 16.4 and 18.8 lb of added BW above controls for the 28 and 42 feeding duration, respectively, but most (approximately 87%) of this weight gain was within the first 28 days of the time that Optaflexx was fed

Distillers Grains and Livestock are Important to Ethanol Energy and Greenhouse Gas Balance

A life cycle assessment of the impact of distillers grains plus solubles (DGS) on mitigation of energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions comparing corn ethanol to gasoline demonstrates the importanceof feeding wet DGS (WDGS) to feedlot cattle to optimize the environmental benefit of ethanol production relative to gasoline. Ethanol produced in Nebraska has a superior environmentalimpact compared to ethanol produced in Iowa or Texas

The potential use of service-oriented infrastructure framework to enable transparent vertical scalability of cloud computing infrastructure

Cloud computing technology has become familiar to most Internet users. Subsequently, there has been an increased growth in the use of cloud computing, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). To ensure that IaaS can easily meet the growing demand, IaaS providers usually increase the capacity of their facilities in a vertical IaaS increase capability and the capacity for local IaaS amenities such as increasing the number of servers, storage and network bandwidth. However, at the same time, horizontal scalability is sometimes not enough and requires additional strategies to ensure that the large number of IaaS service requests can be met. Therefore, strategies requiring horizontal scalability are more complex than the vertical scalability strategies because they involve the interaction of more than one facility at different service centers. To reduce the complexity of the implementation of the horizontal scalability of the IaaS infrastructures, the use of a technology service oriented infrastructure is recommended to ensure that the interaction between two or more different service centers can be done more simply and easily even though it is likely to involve a wide range of communication technologies and different cloud computing management. This is because the service oriented infrastructure acts as a middle man that translates and processes interactions and protocols of different cloud computing infrastructures without the modification of the complex to ensure horizontal scalability can be run easily and smoothly. This paper presents the potential of using a service-oriented infrastructure framework to enable transparent vertical scalability of cloud computing infrastructures by adapting three projects in this research: SLA@SOI consortium, Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI), and OpenStack