Strengthening Ontario\u27s System of Housing for People with Serious Mental Illness

This article describes recent work to support recommendations for improving Ontario’s system of housing for people with serious mental illness. This multifaceted project engaged stakeholders in discussions concerning strategies for improving the system based on (a) values that underlie housing programs, (b) evidence of effective housing practices, (c) the current status of the system, and (d) international practices for monitoring community mental health systems. Stakeholders reviewed summaries of the work and discussed implications for improving the provincial system of housing and supports. Recommendations are made for improving the system, focusing on both regional and provincial level actions

Wind loads on ground-based telescopes

One of the factors that can influence the performance of large optical telescopes is the vibration of the telescope structure due to unsteady wind inside the telescope enclosure. Estimating the resulting degradation in image quality has been difficult because of the relatively poor understanding of the flow characteristics. Significant progress has recently been made, informed by measurements in existing observatories, wind-tunnel tests, and computational fluid dynamic analyses. We combine the information from these sources to summarize the relevant wind characteristics and enable a model of the dynamic wind loads on a telescope structure within an enclosure. The amplitude, temporal spectrum, and spatial distribution of wind disturbances are defined as a function of relevant design parameters, providing a significant improvement in our understanding of an important design issue

Native and Radiation-Induced Defects in III-V Solar Cells and Photodiodes

Photodiodes made of III-V materials are ubiquitous with applications for telecommunications, photonics, consumer electronics, and spectroscopy. The III-V solar cell, specifically, is a large-area photodiode that is used by the satellite industry for power conversion due to its unrivaled efficiency and wide range of available materials. As a device driven by its minority carrier diffusion length (MCDL), the performance of a photodiode is sensitive to crystallographic defects that create states in the forbidden energy gap. Defects commonly arise during growth of the crystal and during device fabrication, and they accumulate slowly over time when deployed into the damaging environment of space. Defect-assisted carrier recombination leads to lower MCDL, higher dark current, reduced sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio, and, in the case of solar cells, reduced power conversion efficiency. Consequently, the development of photodiode technology requires techniques for detection, characterization, and mitigation of defects and the inter-bandgap states they create. In this work, III-V material defects are addressed across a variety of materials and devices. The first half of the work makes use of deep-level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) to deduce the energy level, cross-section, and density of traps the InAlAs, InAlAsSb, and InGaAs lattice-matched to InP. An in situ DLTS system that can monitor defects immediately after irradiation was developed and applied to InGaAs photodiodes irradiated by protons. Evidence of trap annealing was found to occur as low as 150 K. The second half begins with development of GaSb solar cells grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GaAs substrate intended for use in lower-cost monolithic multi-junction cells. Defect analysis by microscopy, dark lock-in thermography, and dark current measurement, among others, was performed. The best GaSb-on-GaAs cell achieved state-of-the-art 4.5% efficiency under concentrated solar spectrum. Finally, light management in III-V photodiodes was explored as a possible route for defect mitigation. Textures, diffraction gratings, metallic mirrors, and Bragg reflectors were simulated by finite difference time domain for single- and multi-junction GaAs-based cells with the aim of reducing the amount of absorber material required and to simultaneously reduce MCDL requirements by generating carriers closer to the junction. The results were inputted into a device simulator to predict efficiency. A backside reflective pyramidal-textured grating was simulated to allow a GaAs cell to be thinned by a factor of \u3e30 compared to a conventional cell

Mission Planner Algorithm for Urban Air Mobility Initial Performance Characterization

In this paper, an initial characterization was performed of the Mission Planner algorithm developed by NASA for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations research. The algorithm plans conflict-free trajectories for flights to support a given set of UAM passenger trips. The UAM trips are planned in an on-demand, first-come, first-served manner, such that any given trip is subject to the constraints imposed by previously planned trips. For this analysis, the mission planning algorithm considered only the trajectory constraints from previously-planned trips in one test condition and added vertiport constraints for the second test condition. The conflict and constraint resolution strategies used by the Mission Planner were characterized by their percentage contribution to planning iterations, their percentage effectiveness in those iterations, and their contributions to the departure delay applied to each UAM trips flight. With the exception of the climb and descent vertical speed strategies, most strategies showed reasonable or good performance in all test scenarios. In the test condition with vertipad constraints enabled, both the total number of iterations executed, and the number of flights that required planning iterations, was reduced for all scenarios. This was the result of the natural conditioning of the traffic achieved with scheduling and the additional information available to the Mission Planner from the vertiport scheduler. The next steps for this work will include improvements to the mission planning strategies and analyses with additional constraints and under other demand scenarios

Management of an Accessory Bile Duct Leak Following Pancreaticoduodenectomy: A Novel Approach Utilizing a Percutaneous and Endoscopic Rendezvous.

Biliary leaks are uncommon but morbid complications of pancreaticoduodenectomies, which have historically been managed with percutaneous drainage, reoperation, or a combination of both. We report a de novo percutaneous-endoscopic hepaticojejunostomy from an anomalous right hepatic duct injured during pancreaticoduodenectomy to the afferent bowel limb. The percutaneous-endoscopic hepaticojejunostomy was stented to allow for tract formation with successful stent removal after 5.5 months. One year after the creation of the percutaneous-endoscopic hepaticojejunostomy, the patient remains clinically well without evidence of biliary leak or obstruction

Biennial wormwood (Artemisia biennis) competition with soybean (Glycine max)

Biennial wormwood has become a serious weed of several crops in the northern Great Plains of the United States and Prairie Provinces of Canada. Greenhouse replacement series experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of watering regime (stressed and non-stressed) and nitrogen rate (50, 100, 150, and 200 mg kg-1 of soil) on competition between soybean and biennial wormwood. Soybean height was reduced after 9 weeks of competition with biennial wormwood compared with soybean grown in monoculture, whereas biennial wormwood plants were taller when grown with soybean than in monoculture. The change in plant height indicated that biennial wormwood height was increased due to interspecific competition, whereas soybean height was reduced. When moisture was limited, the relative yield of biennial wormwood was greater than that of soybean, indicating that biennial wormwood was more aggressive than soybean. Soybean growth was unaffected by an increase in nitrogen rate, whereas biennial wormwood fresh weight was 30% greater when the nitrogen rate was increased from 50 to 200 mg kg-1. Biennial wormwood aggressivity tended to increase as the nitrogen rate was increased from 50 to 200 mg kg-1. Overall results suggest that the negative impact of biennial wormwood competition with soybeans under field conditions may increase when soil moisture is limited and nitrogen fertility is increased.L'armoise bisannuelle est devenue une importante mauvaise herbe pour plusieurs cultures dans le nord des Grandes Plaines des États-Unis et dans les provinces des Prairies au Canada. Des expériences avec des séries de remplacement ont été menées en serre afin d'étudier les effets du régime d'alimentation en eau (stressant et non stressant) et de la quantité d'azote (50, 100, 150 et 200 mg kg-1 de sol) sur la compétition entre le soja et l'armoise bisannuelle. Après 9 semaines de compétition avec l'armoise bisannuelle, la taille du soja était inférieure à celle du soja en monoculture alors que l'armoise bisannuelle était plus grande en présence de soja qu'en monoculture. Les différences dans la taille des plantes montrent que la compétition interspécifique a fait augmenter celle de l'armoise bisannuelle et diminuer celle du soja. Lorsque l'eau était un facteur limitatif, le rendement relatif de l'armoise bisannuelle était plus élevé que celui du soja, ce qui montre que l'armoise bisannuelle était plus agressive que le soja. L'augmentation de la quantité d'azote n'a pas affecté la croissance du soja. Cependant, le poids de matière fraîche de l'armoise bisannuelle était 30 % plus élevé lorsque la quantité d'azote est passée de 50 à 200 mg kg-1. L'agressivité de l'armoise bisannuelle a eu tendance à augmenter lorsque la quantité d'azote est passée de 50 à 200 mg kg-1. Globalement, les résultats montrent que les impacts négatifs de la compétition entre l'armoise bisannuelle et le soja, dans des conditions naturelles, peuvent s'accroître lorsque l'eau manque et que la quantité d'azote disponible augmente