Negotiating the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement

Difficult and sensitive issues will command the attention of US and Korean officials as they negotiate a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA). The United States will have to put long-standing US barriers to Korean exports of textiles, apparel, and steel on the table and resolve problems with South Korean access to the US visa waiver program. In turn, South Korea will have to open new opportunities for US goods and services, including autos, beef, and rice. Such a deal will pose a stiff political challenge for Korean officials. However, they will be under pressure in any event to reform their farm programs--either in the context of a final deal in the WTO talks or in response to Chinese initiatives in the region, which Korea will need to match. Both Korea and the United States also have important foreign policy interests in the FTA, particularly enhanced security on the Korean peninsula. South Korea would like the FTA to promote the policy of constructive engagement with North Korea, which the former has been pursuing by extending trade preferences to goods produced in the Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea. However, such a request would put the entire negotiation in jeopardy since the US Congress would reject preferences for the North Korean regime.

Advanced technology applications for second and third general coal gasification systems

The historical background of coal conversion is reviewed and the programmatic status (operational, construction, design, proposed) of coal gasification processes is tabulated for both commercial and demonstration projects as well as for large and small pilot plants. Both second and third generation processes typically operate at higher temperatures and pressures than first generation methods. Much of the equipment that has been tested has failed. The most difficult problems are in process control. The mechanics of three-phase flow are not fully understood. Companies participating in coal conversion projects are ordering duplicates of failure prone units. No real solutions to any of the significant problems in technology development have been developed in recent years

Using geophysical surveys to test tracer-based storage estimates in headwater catchments

Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to Stian Bradford, Chris Gabrielli, and Julie Timms for practical and logistical assistance. The provision of transport by Iain Malcolm and Ross Glover of Marine Scotland Science was greatly appreciated. We also thank the European Research Council ERC (project GA 335910 VEWA) for funding through the VeWa project and the Leverhulme Trust for funding through PLATO (RPG-2014-016).Peer reviewedPostprin

Observation of H_2O in a strongly lensed Herschel-ATLAS source at z = 2.3

The Herschel survey, H-ATLAS, with its large areal coverage, has recently discovered a number of bright, strongly lensed high-z submillimeter galaxies. The strong magnification makes it possible to study molecular species other than CO, which are otherwise difficult to observe in high-z galaxies. Among the lensed galaxies already identified by H-ATLAS, the source J090302.9-014127B (SDP.17b) at z = 2.305 is remarkable because of its excitation conditions and a tentative detection of the H_2O 2_(02)-1_(11) emission line (Lupu et al. 2010, ApJ, submitted). We report observations of this line in SDP.17b using the IRAM interferometer equipped with its new 277–371 GHz receivers. The H_2O line is detected at a redshift of z = 2.3049 ± 0.0006, with a flux of 7.8 ± 0.5 Jy km s^(-1) and a FWHM of 250 ± 60   km   s^(-1). The new flux is 2.4 times weaker than the previous tentative detection, although both remain marginally consistent within 1.6σ. The intrinsic line luminosity and ratio of H_2O(2_(02) − 1_(11))/CO(8 − 7) are comparable with those of the nearby starburst/enshrouded-AGN Mrk 231, and the ratio I(H_2O)/L_(FIR) is even higher, suggesting that SDP.17b could also host a luminous AGN. The detection of a strong H_2O 2_(02) − 1_(11) line in SDP.17b implies an efficient excitation mechanism of the water levels that must occur in very dense and warm interstellar gas probably similar to Mrk 231

Detection of the 13CO(J=6-5) Transition in the Starburst Galaxy NGC 253

We report the detection of 13CO(J=6-5) emission from the nucleus of the starburst galaxy NGC 253 with the redshift (z) and Early Universe Spectrometer (ZEUS), a new submillimeter grating spectrometer. This is the first extragalactic detection of the 13CO(J=6-5) transition, which traces warm, dense molecular gas. We employ a multi-line LVG analysis and find ~ 35% - 60% of the molecular ISM is both warm (T ~ 110 K) and dense (n(H2) ~ 10^4 cm^-3). We analyze the potential heat sources, and conclude that UV and X-ray photons are unlikely to be energetically important. Instead, the molecular gas is most likely heated by an elevated density of cosmic rays or by the decay of supersonic turbulence through shocks. If the cosmic rays and turbulence are created by stellar feedback within the starburst, then our analysis suggests the starburst may be self-limiting.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, accepted by ApJ Letter

Dietary molasses enhances ruminal biohydrogenation and partially alleviates diet- induced milk fat depression

Dairy Research, 2008 is known as Dairy Day, 2008Milk fat depression remains a problem on dairy farms, and in recent years, incorporation of distillers grains (typically with solubles added and often dried) has contributed to this problem on some farms. In this study, we evaluated whether molasses could prevent milk fat depression in cows fed a high-risk diet. Replacing up to 5% of dietary corn with cane molasses linearly increased the yield of short- and medium-chain fatty acids in milk, indicating a positive effect on de novo fatty acid synthesis in a milk fat depression environment. Molasses, however, tended to linearly decrease milk yield and linearly decreased milk protein yield, resulting in no net effect on energy- or solids-corrected milk yield. These results indicate that the potential exists for sources of dietary sugar to prevent milk fat depression, but further research is needed to determine when sugar sources might be most effective

Functional design for operational earth resources ground data processing

The author has identified the following significant results. Study emphasis was on developing a unified concept for the required ground system, capable of handling data from all viable acquisition platforms and sensor groupings envisaged as supporting operational earth survey programs. The platforms considered include both manned and unmanned spacecraft in near earth orbit, and continued use of low and high altitude aircraft. The sensor systems include both imaging and nonimaging devices, operated both passively and actively, from the ultraviolet to the microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum

Redshift Determination and CO Line Excitation Modeling for the Multiply Lensed Galaxy HLSW-01

We report on the redshift measurement and CO line excitation of HERMES J105751.1+573027 (HLSW-01), a strongly lensed submillimeter galaxy discovered in Herschel/SPIRE observations as part of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES). HLSW-01 is an ultra-luminous galaxy with an intrinsic far-infrared luminosity of L _(FIR) = 1.4 × 10^(13) L _⊙, and is lensed by a massive group of galaxies into at least four images with a total magnification of μ = 10.9 ± 0.7. With the 100 GHz instantaneous bandwidth of the Z-Spec instrument on the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, we robustly identify a redshift of z = 2.958 ± 0.007 for this source, using the simultaneous detection of four CO emission lines (J = 7 → 6, J = 8 → 7, J = 9 → 8, and J = 10 → 9). Combining the measured line fluxes for these high-J transitions with the J = 1 → 0, J = 3 → 2, and J = 5 → 4 line fluxes measured with the Green Bank Telescope, the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter Astronomy, and the Plateau de Bure Interferometer, respectively, we model the physical properties of the molecular gas in this galaxy. We find that the full CO spectral line energy distribution is described well by warm, moderate-density gas with T _(kin) = 86-235 K and n_H_2 = (1.1-3.5)x10^3 cm^(–3). However, it is possible that the highest-J transitions are tracing a small fraction of very dense gas in molecular cloud cores, and two-component models that include a warm/dense molecular gas phase with T _(kin) ~ 200 K, n_H_2 ~ 10^5 cm^(–3) are also consistent with these data. Higher signal-to-noise measurements of the J _(up) ≥ 7 transitions with high spectral resolution, combined with high spatial resolution CO maps, are needed to improve our understanding of the gas excitation, morphology, and dynamics of this interesting high-redshift galaxy

Z-Spec: A MM-Wave Spectrometer For Measuring Redshifts Of Submillimeter Galaxies

We are building a background-limited, broadband millimeter-wave spectrometer (Z-Spec) for observations of CO rotational transitions from high-redshift dusty galaxies. The large instantaneous bandwidth (195 to 310 GHz) will enable redshifts of dust obscured galaxies to be unambiguously measured. Z-Spec uses a waveguide-coupled grating architecture in which the light propagation is confined within a parallel-plate waveguide. The grating is extremely compact compared to a classical free-space system. An array of silicon nitride bolometers cooled to 100 mK will provide background-limited performance. Z-Spec serves as a technology demonstration for a future space-borne far-infrared grating spectrometer