Testing the flammability of materials exposed to arcs

Apparatus tests flammability and ignition characteristics of materials in close proximity to incandescent metal fragments or spalls ejected from intermittent short circuit arcs in air or oxygen rich atmospheres. It simulates a situation where an exposed live wire makes contact with a grounded member in areas containing organic matter

Private provision of local rural roads

The rural road and bridge problem is the lack of funds to upgrade and maintain the rapidly deteriorating rural transportation infrastructure. The research analyzed the concept of privately provided public roads through a utility maximization model, with a joint product aspect. The jointness coming from the private, public benefits of a road. Equilibrium conditions of road provision, under Nash-Cournot behavior, were derived. A comparative static analysis was conducted on the Nash-Cournot model. Pareto-optimizing behavior was also investigated and the results compared to Nash-Cournot provision levels. The Pareto-optimal model indicated conditions where a set of roads could be abandoned;A benefit-cost analysis was conducted to identify the set of abandonable roads. Low-traffic roads were abandoned or converted to private drives through the use of a computerized road network. The results indicate that potential exists for closing some roads to public access;An investigation was made into the political implications of such policies. The decision of public provision of roads is made by a body of elected officials who are susceptible to pressure. An example presents an illustration of economic incentive rural residents have to fight the road conversion policies

Effect of vessel wettability on the foamability of "ideal" surfactants and "real-world" beer heads

The ability to tailor the foaming properties of a solution by controlling its chemical composition is highly desirable and has been the subject of extensive research driven by a range of applications. However, the control of foams by varying the wettability of the foaming vessel has been less widely reported. This work investigates the effect of the wettability of the side walls of vessels used for the in situ generation of foam by shaking aqueous solutions of three different types of model surfactant systems (non-ionic, anionic and cationic surfactants) along with four different beers (Guinness Original, Banks’s Bitter, Bass No 1 and Harvest Pale). We found that hydrophilic vials increased the foamability only for the three model systems but increased foam stability for all foams except the model cationic system. We then compared stability of beer foams produced by shaking and pouring and demonstrated weak qualitative agreement between both foam methods. We also showed how wettability of the glass controls bubble nucleation for beers and champagne and used this effect to control exactly where bubbles form using simple wettability patterns

The Rhetoric of Synnationalism: A Model of Foreign Policy Discourse.

The United States, as other nation-states, claims legitimacy as an agency for the expression of the aspirations of its people. This political structure appeared as part of a historical process that implied a transfer of authority from ruling elite(s) to the public. However, U.S. foreign policy discourse evidences an incomplete relocation of authority. In matters of sovereignty and national interests, the policy establishment considers itself more capable of decisions than ordinary people. The establishment tends to view citizens as masses disinterested in and incapable of understanding vital decisions of the state. The policy establishment assumes the public\u27s role is best limited to a general endorsement of expert opinion. This study proposes a model for the analysis of U.S. foreign policy discourse to explain how popular opinion is constructed in that arena. \u27Synnationalistic discourse\u27 is used to name this rhetorical genre. This term is used because of a tendency of the discourse to produce mass confidence in and acceptance of foreign policy items as these are discursively situated in the nation state vision. This model of discourse analysis is used to discover how popular support was gained by the Reagan Administration for a particularly controversial agenda item, the Strategic Defense Initiative. This study suggests the Administration used synnationalistic discourse to recontextualize the Strategic Defense Initiative as the American mission. The result was that S.D.I. became a commanding persuasive symbol, a rhetorical icon, within the sphere of popular opinion. The benefits of this model are two-fold. Because the model proposed by this study does not presume rational standards embraced by the classical tradition, it should be more useful for the analysis of U.S. foreign policy discourse. Second, the model may have a restorative function, showing how the discourse subverts the rhetorical tradition by being an instrument for hegemonic control. By showing how this speech is constructed, it may suggest a site from which a citizen voice could enter foreign policy debate

Designer Receptors Enhance Memory in a Mouse Model of Down Syndrome

Designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADDs) are novel and powerful tools to investigate discrete neuronal populations in the brain. We have used DREADDs to stimulate degenerating neurons in a Down syndrome (DS) model, Ts65Dn mice. Individuals with DS develop Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) neuropathology and have elevated risk for dementia starting in their 30s and 40s. Individuals with DS often exhibit working memory deficits coupled with degeneration of the locus coeruleus (LC) norepinephrine (NE) neurons. It is thought that LC degeneration precedes other AD-related neuronal loss, and LC noradrenergic integrity is important for executive function, working memory, and attention. Previous studies have shown that LC-enhancing drugs can slow the progression of AD pathology, including amyloid aggregation, oxidative stress, and inflammation. We have shown that LC degeneration in Ts65Dn mice leads to exaggerated memory loss and neuronal degeneration. We used a DREADD, hM3Dq, administered via adeno-associated virus into the LC under a synthetic promoter, PRSx8, to selectively stimulate LC neurons by exogenous administration of the inert DREADD ligand clozapine-N-oxide. DREADD stimulation of LC-NE enhanced performance in a novel object recognition task and reduced hyperactivity in Ts65Dn mice, without significant behavioral effects in controls. To confirm that the noradrenergic transmitter system was responsible for the enhanced memory function, the NE prodrug l-threo-dihydroxyphenylserine was administered in Ts65Dn and normosomic littermate control mice, and produced similar behavioral results. Thus, NE stimulation may prevent memory loss in Ts65Dn mice, and may hold promise for treatment in individuals with DS and dementia

"Any lady can do this without much trouble ...": class and gender in The dining room (1878)

Macmillan's "Art at Home" series (1876–83) was a collection of domestic advice manuals. Mentioned in every study of the late-nineteenth-century domestic interior, they have often been interpreted, alongside contemporary publications such as Charles Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste (1868), as indicators of late 1870s home furnishing styles. Mrs Loftie's The Dining Room (1878) was the series' fifth book and it considers one of the home's principal (and traditionally masculine) domestic spaces. Recent research on middle-class cultural practices surrounding food has placed The Dining Room within the tradition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management (1861); however, it is not a cookery book and hardly mentions dinners. Drawing upon unpublished archival sources, this paper charts the production and reception of The Dining Room, aiming to unravel its relationships with other contemporary texts and to highlight the difficulties of using it as historical evidence. While it offers fascinating insights into contemporary taste, class and gender, this paper suggests that, as an example of domestic design advice literature, it reveals far more about the often expedient world of nineteenth-century publishing practices

Effect of Particle Size on Droplet Infiltration into Hydrophobic Porous Media As a Model of Water Repellent Soil

The wettability of soil is of great importance for plants and soil biota, and in determining the risk for preferential flow, surface runoff, flooding,and soil erosion. The molarity of ethanol droplet (MED) test is widely used for quantifying the severity of water repellency in soils that show reduced wettability and is assumed to be independent of soil particle size. The minimum ethanol concentration at which droplet penetration occurs within a short time (≤10 s) provides an estimate of the initial advancing contact angle at which spontaneous wetting is expected. In this study, we test the assumption of particle size independence using a simple model of soil, represented by layers of small (0.2–2 mm) diameter beads that predict the effect of changing bead radius in the top layer on capillary driven imbibition. Experimental results using a three-layer bead system show broad agreement with the model and demonstrate a dependence of the MED test on particle size. The results show that the critical initial advancing contact angle for penetration can be considerably less than 90° and varies with particle size, demonstrating that a key assumption currently used in the MED testing of soil is not necessarily valid