Method of producing refractory bodies having controlled porosity Patent

Production of refractory bodies with controlled porosity by pressing and heating mixtures of refractory and inert metal powder

Grain growth inhibitor for porous tungsten materials

Boron, either uncombined or combined with nitrogen or carbon added to tungsten powder prior to processing, effectively inhibits grain growth. The tungsten material is stable up to 1800 degrees C

Wire bundle formed into grids with minute interstices

Deforming the ends of a bundle of closely packed parallel wires to restrict the interstices to substantially uniform and minute dimensions produces grids or filters for ion engines. Porous metal structures made by this process are also used as fuel cell electrodes, diffusion membranes, and catalysts

Method for controlling density and permeability of sintered powdered metals

Improved, relatively low-cost method has been developed to produce porous metals with predetermined pore size, pore spacing, and density, utilizing powder-metal processes. The method uses angular not spherical tungsten powder

The Secular Beyond: Free Religious Dissent and Debates over the Afterlife in Nineteenth-Century Germany

The 1830s and 1840s saw the proliferating usage of “the Beyond” (Jenseits) as a choice term for the afterlife in German public discourse. This linguistic innovation coincided with the rise of empiricism in natural science. It also signaled an emerging religious debate in which bald challenges to the very existence of heaven were aired before the wider German public for the first time. Against the belief of many contemporaries that empirical science was chiefly responsible for this attack on one of the central tenets of Christianity, this essay shows instead that the role played by Christian dissenters in the negation of the Beyond. The polemical invocation of an empty Beyond coincided with the separation in the mid 1840s of two dissenting sects – the Deutschkatholiken (“German Catholics”) and the Protestant Free Congregations – from the main Christian Churches. During the Revolution of 1848, these sects, later known as Free Religious Congregations, deepened their critique of the Beyond as they articulated a new creed of radical humanism and natural scientific monism. Yet, despite their secularist agenda the Free Religious failed to fully secularize. The essay concludes by suggesting that the anticlerical activity of the Free Religious and affiliated freethinking organizations, which lasted into the 1930s, marks a century in which movements of radical political and social dissent remained open to and indeed partially dependent on the negation of the Beyond in order to sacralize humanity and nature

Measuring Local Aggregate House Prices

This study evaluates the ability of a range of popular aggregate house price indexes to predict house prices out-of-sample at the transaction level for a small geographic area. The analysis particularly addresses the utility of spatial econometric methods. The results suggest that spatial econometric methods, which more explicitly consider the spatial aspects of observed house prices, provide better predictive accuracy as compared to more traditional estimation techniques, such as the repeat sales index, a hybrid repeat sales-hedonic price index, and hedonic price models estimated through least squares. The conclusions are drawn from a sample of 38,984 single-family residential real estate transactions for the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin over the years 2002-2008.House price index; Spatial econometrics; Forecast evaluation

Evaluating the Dynamic Nature of Market Risk

This study examines the systematic risk present in major crops for the United States and three corn-belt states. An index of commodities is used in conjunction with cash receipts to generate dynamic estimates of the systematic risk for each crop and state. In our study, we find that beta estimates from a time varying parameter model (FLS) and OLS formulation are substantially different. From our graphs of betas over time, one gains insight into the changing nature of risk and the impact of institutional and macroeconomic events. Systematic risk is shown to increase for most crops over the analyzed period with significant changes in volatility after the collapse of the Bretton Woods Accord.Systematic risk, flexible least squares, single index model, farm policy, macroeconomics, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Farm Management, Financial Economics, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Marketing, Risk and Uncertainty,

A Prospective Randomized Study Analyzing Preoperative Opioid Counseling in Pain Management After Carpal Tunnel Release Surgery.

PURPOSE: Prescription opioid misuse has become increasingly prevalent in the United States. Preoperative opioid counseling has been proposed to decrease opioid consumption after surgery. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of preoperative opioid counseling on patients\u27 pain experience and opioid consumption after carpal tunnel release (CTR) surgery. METHODS: A prospective comparison of consecutive patients scheduled to undergo CTR surgery was conducted. Patients were randomized to receive either formal preoperative opioid counseling or no counseling. All operations were performed with the same miniopen CTR surgical technique, and the same number of opioids were prescribed after surgery. Daily opioid pill consumption, pain levels, and any adverse reactions were recorded. RESULTS: During the day of surgery and the first day following surgery, patients in the group with counseling reported significantly fewer prescribed opioid pills consumed compared with patients in the group without counseling, while experiencing no significant difference in pain level experience. In addition, patients in the group with counseling reported a significantly lower number of total pain pills consumed over the course of the study than the group without counseling. No major adverse reactions were noted in either group. CONCLUSIONS: Preoperative opioid counseling was found to result in a significant decrease in overall opioid consumption after surgery. TYPE OF STUDY/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic II