5,777 research outputs found
Development and commissioning of a small engine test cell
For the purposes of providing the Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines, and Emissions (CAFEE) of West Virginia University (WVU) with the ability to perform engine dynamometer and emissions testing on small engines in the range of 40 horsepower or less, a new test cell was built and commissioned within the CAFEE annex facility in the Morgantown Industrial Park in Westover, WV. The test cell was designed to be used with existing CAFEE emission testing equipment.;Test cell commissioning demonstrated the ability of the system to properly operate full steady state test cycles, as well as capture steady state continuous gaseous emissions data and gravimetric particulate matter data. During steady state tests, which followed the ISO-8178 test cycle, the dynamometer showed the capability of holding engine speed within 2% of the reference set point value, and within 1% on a mean basis. Similarly, setpoint reference torque loads between 10 and 60 ft-lbs, which were based on a full map of the test engine, the dynamometer was able to hold torque within 2% of the reference value, for each point and within 1% on a mean basis.;A series of steady state tests performed on a 4 cylinder Isuzu CP201 Transport Refrigeration Unit (TRU) diesel engine resulted in baseline engine out emissions data (g/bhp-hr) for HC, CO, CO2, NOx, and PM of 4.31, 2.71, 751.98, 7.33, and 0.591 respectively. Controlled emissions results, with an exhaust aftertreatment Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) containing an internal catalyst layer, resulted in reduction in HC, CO, and PM of 81, 84, and 86% respectively. The reduction in PM of 86% by the DPF was within the requirements of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Low Emission TRU (LETRU) Level 2 PM reduction requirement for Verified Diesel Emission Control Strategies (VDECS)
Arrested Development: \u3ci\u3eArizona v. Gant\u3c/i\u3e and Article I, Section 7 of the Washington State Constitution
In Arizona v. Gant, the United States Supreme Court held that the search of a vehicle incident to arrest is permissible in only two situations: (1) when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment; or (2) when it is reasonable to believe that evidence relevant to the crime of arrest may be found in the vehicle. Because Gant expressed a standard more protective than that established by the Washington State Supreme Court, Gant induced a state of confusion in Washington, where it has long been maintained that article I, section 7 of the Washington State Constitution offers broader protections than those available under the Fourth Amendment. Since Gant, the Court has twice attempted to redefine the search of a vehicle incident to arrest under article I, section 7. In State v. Patton, and subsequently in State v. Valdez, the Washington State Supreme Court adopted a standard closely resembling the first Gant prong. However, neither decision expressly adopted or rejected the second. Because the second prong is supported by historical Washington case law, the Washington State Supreme Court should adopt a modified version of the Gant rule, with an added proscription on the opening of any locked containers located during the search. Such a modification would satisfy the heightened privacy protections of article I, section 7
Measuring and Modeling Neighborhoods
The availability of granular geographic data presents new opportunities to
understand how neighborhoods are formed and how they influence attitudes and
behavior. To facilitate such studies, we develop an online survey instrument
for respondents to draw their neighborhoods on a map. We then propose a
statistical model to analyze how the characteristics of respondents and
geography, and their interactions, predict subjective neighborhoods. We
illustrate the proposed methodology using a survey of 2,572 voters in Miami,
New York City, and Phoenix. Holding other factors constant, White respondents
tend to include census blocks with more White residents in their neighborhoods.
Similarly, Democratic and Republican respondents are more likely to include
co-partisan census blocks. Our model also provides more accurate out-of-sample
predictions than standard distance-based neighborhood measures. Lastly, we use
these methodological tools to test how demographic information shapes
neighborhoods, but find limited effects from this experimental manipulation.
Open-source software is available for implementing the methodology.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures, and appendices. This revision includes two
updated figure
Determinants of anemia and hemoglobin concentration in haitian school-aged children
Anemia diminishes oxygen transport in the body, resulting in potentially irreversible growth and developmental consequences for children. Limited evidence for determinants of anemia exists for school-aged children. We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial in Haiti from 2012 to 2013 to test the efficacy of a fortified school snack. Children (N = 1,047) aged 3–13 years were followed longitudinally at three time points for hemoglobin (Hb) concentrations, anthropometry, and bioelectrical impedance measures. Dietary intakes, infectious disease morbidities, and socioeconomic and demographic factors were collected at baseline and endline. Longitudinal regression modeling with generalized least squares and logit models with random effects identified anemia risk factors beyond the intervention effect. At baseline, 70.6% of children were anemic and 2.6% were severely anemic. Stunting increased the odds of developing anemia (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 1.48, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.05–2.08) and severe anemia (adjusted OR: 2.47, 95% CI: 1.30–4.71). Parent-reported vitamin A supplementation and deworming were positively associated with Hb concentrations, whereas fever and poultry ownership showed a negative relationship with Hb concentration and increased odds of severe anemia, respectively. Further research should explore the full spectrum of anemia etiologies in school children, including genetic causes
Priming bias versus post-treatment bias in experimental designs
Conditioning on variables affected by treatment can induce post-treatment
bias when estimating causal effects. Although this suggests that researchers
should measure potential moderators before administering the treatment in an
experiment, doing so may also bias causal effect estimation if the covariate
measurement primes respondents to react differently to the treatment. This
paper formally analyzes this trade-off between post-treatment and priming
biases in three experimental designs that vary when moderators are measured:
pre-treatment, post-treatment, or a randomized choice between the two. We
derive nonparametric bounds for interactions between the treatment and the
moderator in each design and show how to use substantive assumptions to narrow
these bounds. These bounds allow researchers to assess the sensitivity of their
empirical findings to either source of bias. We extend the basic framework in
two ways. First, we apply the framework to the case of post-treatment attention
checks and bound how much inattentive respondents can attenuate estimated
treatment effects. Second, we develop a parametric Bayesian approach to
incorporate pre-treatment covariates in the analysis to sharpen our inferences
and quantify estimation uncertainty. We apply these methods to a survey
experiment on electoral messaging. We conclude with practical recommendations
for scholars designing experiments.Comment: 32 pages (main text), 18 pages (supplementary materials), 4 figure
The controversy in the process: potential scattering or resonance ?
The reaction shows a broad peak at 1.5
GeV in the channel which has no counterpart in the
channel. This "resonance" is considered as a candidate for a
state in the "s-channel". We show, however, that it can also
be explained by potential scattering of via the -
exchange in the "t-channel".Comment: 12 pages, latex, 3 postscript figures, to appear in Zeitschrift fur
Physi
Decreased microbial co-occurrence network stability and SCFA receptor level correlates with obesity in African-origin women.
We compared the gut microbial populations in 100 women, from rural Ghana and urban US [50% lean (BMI < 25 kg/m2) and 50% obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2)] to examine the ecological co-occurrence network topology of the gut microbiota as well as the relationship of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) with obesity. Ghanaians consumed significantly more dietary fiber, had greater microbial alpha-diversity, different beta-diversity, and had a greater concentration of total fecal SCFAs (p-value < 0.002). Lean Ghanaians had significantly greater network density, connectivity and stability than either obese Ghanaians, or lean and obese US participants (false discovery rate (FDR) corrected p-value ≤ 0.01). Bacteroides uniformis was significantly more abundant in lean women, irrespective of country (FDR corrected p < 0.001), while lean Ghanaians had a significantly greater proportion of Ruminococcus callidus, Prevotella copri, and Escherichia coli, and smaller proportions of Lachnospiraceae, Bacteroides and Parabacteroides. Lean Ghanaians had a significantly greater abundance of predicted microbial genes that catalyzed the production of butyric acid via the fermentation of pyruvate or branched amino-acids, while obese Ghanaians and US women (irrespective of BMI) had a significantly greater abundance of predicted microbial genes that encoded for enzymes associated with the fermentation of amino-acids such as alanine, aspartate, lysine and glutamate. Similar to lean Ghanaian women, mice humanized with stool from the lean Ghanaian participant had a significantly lower abundance of family Lachnospiraceae and genus Bacteroides and Parabacteroides, and were resistant to obesity following 6-weeks of high fat feeding (p-value < 0.01). Obesity-resistant mice also showed increased intestinal transcriptional expression of the free fatty acid (Ffa) receptor Ffa2, in spite of similar fecal SCFAs concentrations. We demonstrate that the association between obesity resistance and increased predicted ecological connectivity and stability of the lean Ghanaian microbiota, as well as increased local SCFA receptor level, provides evidence of the importance of robust gut ecologic network in obesity
One-Time Compilation of Device-Level Instructions for Quantum Subroutines
A large class of problems in the current era of quantum devices involve
interfacing between the quantum and classical system. These include calibration
procedures, characterization routines, and variational algorithms. The control
in these routines iteratively switches between the classical and the quantum
computer. This results in the repeated compilation of the program that runs on
the quantum system, scaling directly with the number of circuits and
iterations. The repeated compilation results in a significant overhead
throughout the routine. In practice, the total runtime of the program
(classical compilation plus quantum execution) has an additional cost
proportional to the circuit count. At practical scales, this can dominate the
round-trip CPU-QPU time, between 5% and 80%, depending on the proportion of
quantum execution time.
To avoid repeated device-level compilation, we identify that machine code can
be parametrized corresponding to pulse/gate parameters which can be dynamically
adjusted during execution. Therefore, we develop a device-level
partial-compilation (DLPC) technique that reduces compilation overhead to
nearly constant, by using cheap remote procedure calls (RPC) from the QPU
control software to the CPU. We then demonstrate the performance speedup of
this on optimal pulse calibration, system characterization using randomized
benchmarking (RB), and variational algorithms. We execute this modified
pipeline on real trapped-ion quantum computers and observe significant
reductions in compilation time, as much as 2.7x speedup for small-scale VQE
problems
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