The Ability of Specific-wavelength LED Lights to Attract Night-flying Insects

This paper describes a portable collecting light, designed by the authors, that weighs 0.3 kg, is powered by 8 AA batteries, and uses 9 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to attract night-flying insects. Five different wavelengths of these LED lights, all within the long-wave ultraviolet spectrum, were compared to each other and to a commercially-available 15w fluorescent ultraviolet tube light for their abilities to collect insects over a series of 5 nights in July 2016. There was no difference in order richness, total specimen abundance, or the specimen abundance of most common orders between any of the wavelengths tested. Most LED wavelengths, however, caught fewer Diptera specimens than the fluorescent tube light, largely due to a lower abundance of chironomid midges. Differences in specimen abundance were greater based on sampling date or specific sampling location than based on type of collecting light. Due to their greater portability and possibly lower bycatch of Diptera, these new LED lights are presented as a potential alternative to ultraviolet tube lights

The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now

Among the many important implications of Houghton et al’s (2009) timely and illuminating JISC analysis of the costs and benefits of providing free online access (“Open Access,” OA) to peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal articles one stands out as particularly compelling: It would yield a forty-fold benefit/cost ratio if the world’s peer-reviewed research were all self-archived by its authors so as to make it OA. There are many assumptions and estimates underlying Houghton et al’s modelling and analyses, but they are for the most part very reasonable and even conservative. This makes their strongest practical implication particularly striking: The 40-fold benefit/cost ratio of providing Green OA is an order of magnitude greater than all the other potential combinations of alternatives to the status quo analyzed and compared by Houghton et al. This outcome is all the more significant in light of the fact that self-archiving already rests entirely in the hands of the research community (researchers, their institutions and their funders), whereas OA publishing depends on the publishing community. Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that this outcome emerged from studies that approached the problem primarily from the standpoint of the economics of publication rather than the economics of research

The Lovely Invader: A Documentary on Lonicera Research

For over a year a half, I followed Steve Maheux, a Biology major, throughout his journey to conduct a research study on honeysuckle, an invasive plant. He posed a question regarding the possibility of predicting the occurrence of an invasive plant based on certain environmental factors: soil depth, soil pH, neighboring plants and other aspects that would make up an ideal environment for this menacing plant. The focus of my documentary was to show what true research looks like in all of its tedious glory. Research isn’t fancy. It often doesn’t make for “sexy film,” but it is vital for those revolutionary results that change the way we understand our world. So often we see documentaries that gloss over the research. I wanted to introduce a non-science-oriented audience to the steps that actually make up a research project – the mechanics of how scientists and researchers come to their conclusions. Steve’s research produced inconclusive results. While results may be the crucial factor for the scientific community, they aren’t always for the actual people involved in the research. Therefore, while I wanted to focus on the details of Steve’s research project, I also wanted the audience to see what motivates a person to engage in a research project and how they deal with inconclusive results. Something draws people to research and it isn’t the endless hours of data analysis in a lab or spending one’s life searching for the answer to a question that may not even exist. To me, science is engaging because it involves people dissatisfied with merely existing in the world around them – they yearn to know the processes and systems they are a part of. In my documentary, I wanted the audience to see those two tracks: the hard science of the research project itself and the personal story of a student who had questions about a plant and sought an answer. This project began by sitting alongside Steve as he studied other scientific papers on invasive plants – I read the papers to gain knowledge of the area. I kept in touch with him as he revised his own research plans and learned of the various stages of setting up a research project. I spent a month during the summer of 2008 inSyracuseto film Steve working inGreenLakesState Park. During the fall of 2008 and spring of 2009, I continued to film him both in the field and the lab as he began to analyze his data. Throughout this process, I became fascinated with the idea of the actual person conducting the research, as opposed to the results of the study. With footage of both my interviews with Steve and the year following Steve throughout his process, I began to piece together a film that focused on the human story that will always tread alongside research. Overall, this project represents the desire to pair science and film in a meaningful and educational way. Sometimes documentaries only show the “pretty pictures” of science and nature. I endeavored to go beyond that, not only focusing on the specific details of the science involved in research, but also the discipline that is required and cultivated during those studies. Scientific enquiry is fascinating and I hope that scientists always continue to ask those questions, even when, like Steve, their first attempts don’t return dramatic results

The influence of frame pitch and stiffness on the stress distribution in pressurised cylinders

An analysis is made of the stresses occurring in stringer reinforced cylinders due to the restraining action of the frames. Graphs are presented showing the effect of variation in frame pitch and stiffness, on the bending moment and shear force in the skins, and the hoop stress in the skins between frames. The results are used to show how the optimum structural geometry can be chosen for any given stress ratios

On the constraints defining BPS monopoles

We discuss the explicit formulation of the transcendental constraints defining spectral curves of SU(2) BPS monopoles in the twistor approach of Hitchin, following Ercolani and Sinha. We obtain an improved version of the Ercolani-Sinha constraints, and show that the Corrigan-Goddard conditions for constructing monopoles of arbitrary charge can be regarded as a special case of these. As an application, we study the spectral curve of the tetrahedrally symmetric 3-monopole, an example where the Corrigan-Goddard conditions need to be modified. A particular 1-cycle on the spectral curve plays an important role in our analysis.Comment: 29 pages, 7 eps figure

Optimum design of a band reinforced pressurised cylinder

The surface stresses in band reinforced cylindrical pressure vessels are examined, and an equivalent stress determined by using the Mises- Hencky criterion. By comparing the equivalent stress to the band stress, the efficiency of the structural material can be established, and by equating these stresses to their respective yield stresses, the theoretical maximum strength of the structure can be found. Once the material properties of the shell and the reinforcing bands have been specified, the optimum structural layout can be determined

Dangers to the Child in Operative Deliveries

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