Survey for naturally occurring radioactive materials at a gas fractionation plant

Marcellus Gas Company (MGC) is a midstream energy company operating natural gas gathering and processing assets in the Marcellus Shale region, primarily in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. At the time of the study, MGC was interested in surveying for naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) at their primary fractionation facility in the region, the Ohio River Fractionation Plant. A NORM survey, consisting of over 300 measurements, was conducted at the site to evaluate the need to implement the company\u27s written NORM program and to assess for additional controls to protect employees against ionizing radiation exposure. Additionally, a qualitative exposure assessment was performed to identify similar exposure groups and tasks with NORM exposure risk at the facility. The site NORM survey identified several pieces of equipment with NORM readings over the company\u27s internal limit, requiring implementation of additional controls for NORM. Following a review of the applicable regulations concerning NORM, as well as industry best practices, additional recommendations were made to MGC to protect employees from potential exposure to ionizing radiation. These recommendations include additional training, monitoring, and written program updates

Youth Decline in Church Growth and Attendance

Youth attendance in the church has declined in the recent past. The reason for their decline is that they no longer find a church to be socially and spiritually relevant to their lives. The paper seeks to provide a solution to the problem through spiritual formation and increasing the depth of youth programs so that they can remain socially relevant to the lives of the young people. This will be done by encouraging youth people to know who Jesus is and how to have a personal relationship with him through faith

Effects of selective herbicide application on vegetation and invertebrates for northern bobwhite, and small mammal communities within managed pine forests

Decline of northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) populations during the past 30 years in southern portions of their range has increased efforts to improve habitat quality by integration of wildlife and forest management. Prescribed burns and herbicides have potential to benefit bobwhites, vegetation, invertebrates, and small mammal communities in pine-dominated systems. This study was conducted at 700-hectare Louisiana State University Idlewild Research Station of LSU\u27s Agricultural Center in East Feliciana Parish. The experiment was conducted on 3, 10.12-hectare, 75 to 85 year-old, over-mature, uneven-aged pine stands on hilltops and sloping terrain. Experimental design included vegetation, invertebrate, and small mammal response to 3 treatments of 2 types of selective herbicide (imazapyr, imazapyr + glyphosate) and a control applied after an initial prescribed burn. Each stand served as whole plots and treatments as subplots within a split-plot arrangement. Treatments were randomly assigned and replicated across 3 stands. Herbicide treatments were more effective at improving vegetational structure for brood-rearing and nesting bobwhites. Plant and invertebrate species diversity declined on herbicide treatments during the first year, but increased on imazapyr plots during the second year. Bobwhite food plants increased on imazapyr plots for the first year and were greater on both herbicide treatments the second year. Herbicides reduced sweetgum but neither negatively affected hard mast producing species \u3e 10 cm dbh. High overstory canopy closure and drought conditions may have negatively affected vegetation response. Herbicides did not produce bare ground percentages preferred by bobwhites. Prescribed burn alone created and maintained escape cover more suitable for bobwhites. Overall, imazapyr provided greater benefits to bobwhite, retained floristic species diversity, and greatly improved invertebrate diversity. Small mammal abundance increased on herbicide treatments presumably because of changes in vegetational characteristics and communities, and increased plant and invertebrate diversity on imazapyr treatments. Additionally, Peromyscus species was most common mammal trapped on all plots. Future research should evaluate vegetative response to herbicides under variable canopy conditions and different imazapyr application rates. We recommend managers target areas where prescribed burns are not possible and apply imazapyr strategically to create diverse, patchy habitat

Discovering Image Usage Online: A Case Study With "Flatten the Curve''

Understanding the spread of images across the web helps us understand the reuse of scientific visualizations and their relationship with the public. The "Flatten the Curve" graphic was heavily used during the COVID-19 pandemic to convey a complex concept in a simple form. It displays two curves comparing the impact on case loads for medical facilities if the populace either adopts or fails to adopt protective measures during a pandemic. We use five variants of the "Flatten the Curve" image as a case study for viewing the spread of an image online. To evaluate its spread, we leverage three information channels: reverse image search engines, social media, and web archives. Reverse image searches give us a current view into image reuse. Social media helps us understand a variant's popularity over time. Web archives help us see when it was preserved, highlighting a view of popularity for future researchers. Our case study leverages document URLs can be used as a proxy for images when studying the spread of images online.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Presented as poster at JCDL 202

Abstract Images Have Different Levels of Retrievability Per Reverse Image Search Engine

Much computer vision research has focused on natural images, but technical documents typically consist of abstract images, such as charts, drawings, diagrams, and schematics. How well do general web search engines discover abstract images? Recent advancements in computer vision and machine learning have led to the rise of reverse image search engines. Where conventional search engines accept a text query and return a set of document results, including images, a reverse image search accepts an image as a query and returns a set of images as results. This paper evaluates how well common reverse image search engines discover abstract images. We conducted an experiment leveraging images from Wikimedia Commons, a website known to be well indexed by Baidu, Bing, Google, and Yandex. We measure how difficult an image is to find again (retrievability), what percentage of images returned are relevant (precision), and the average number of results a visitor must review before finding the submitted image (mean reciprocal rank). When trying to discover the same image again among similar images, Yandex performs best. When searching for pages containing a specific image, Google and Yandex outperform the others when discovering photographs with precision scores ranging from 0.8191 to 0.8297, respectively. In both of these cases, Google and Yandex perform better with natural images than with abstract ones achieving a difference in retrievability as high as 54\% between images in these categories. These results affect anyone applying common web search engines to search for technical documents that use abstract images.Comment: 20 pages; 7 figures; to be published in the proceedings of the Drawings and abstract Imagery: Representation and Analysis (DIRA) Workshop from ECCV 202

Money? Money! Money$ or Creative Funding: You Can Write Fee for Service Contracts as an Income Source

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Regional Working in the East of England: Using the UK National Standards for Public Involvement

Plain English summary: Involving patients and members of the public to help shape and carry out research is recommended in health research in the United Kingdom (UK). There are a number of regional networks of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) groups, which support the collaboration between researchers, patients and public members. We are a group of researchers, patients and public members who came together via a PPI regional network in the East of England to collaborate on a research study about the extent of feedback from researchers to PPI contributors.The aim of this paper is to use the recently developed UK National Standards for Public Involvement to structure our thinking about what worked well and what did not, within our recently completed study. We believe this paper is one of the first to use the National Standards to structure a retrospective reflection on PPI within a study.Our findings showed that there are benefits of regional working, including easier access to public members and bringing together researchers, public members and those who run PPI groups for research collaboration. The main challenges included involvement of people before studies are funded and working across organisations with different payment processes.The National Standards for Public Involvement has provided a useful framework to consider how best to involve patients and members of the public in research and could be a helpful structure to reflect on successes and challenges in individual projects and also regional, national or international comparisons of PPI in research. Abstract: Background Regional networks of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) organisations, including academic institutions, health and social care services, charities, patient and public groups and individuals, can play an important part in carrying out health research. In the UK, recommendations by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) encourage the use of regional, collaborative networks with shared resources and training. Methods The newly developed UK National Standards for Public Involvement were used as a framework for a retrospective reflection of PPI within a recently completed research study which focused on feedback from researchers to PPI contributors. PPI contributors, those running PPI groups (PPI leads) and researchers involved in the study have contributed to this reflection by completing evaluation forms throughout the research alongside notes of meetings and co-authors' final reflections. Results Results revealed a number of successes where the regional network was particularly useful in bringing together PPI contributors, those who lead PPI groups and researchers. The regional network helped researchers to get in touch with patients and members of the public. Challenges included involving people before funding and bureaucratic and financial barriers when working across different organisations in the region. The importance of working together in flexible, informal ways was key and on-going support for the PPI contributors was vital for continued involvement, including emotional support not just monetary. The first four National Standards of inclusive opportunities, working together, support and learning and communications were particularly useful as means of structuring our reflections. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is one of the first research studies to use the UK National Standards for Public Involvement as a framework to identify what worked well and the challenges of PPI processes. It is suggested that as more reflective papers are published and the National Standards are more widely used in the UK, many lessons can be learnt and shared on how to improve our Patient and Public Involvement within research studies. Evaluations or reflections such as these can further enhance our understanding of PPI with implications for regional, national and international comparisons.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Evaluating Food Commodity Procurement Strategies

We use a case study approach to determine the primary factors affecting food manufacturers' commodity procurement decisions, as well as to examine the strategic nature of commodity procurement departments. The research fills a gap in both the commodity and procurement literature. A large literature exists on commodity marketing; however, very little exists on the topic of commodity procurement. Existing procurement literature tends to focus on non-commodity products rather than commodity products. The results suggest a model for the strategic role of commodity procurement departments within food manufacturers. The initial procurement strategy must be supply maintenance, which once accomplished, allows the commodity procurement department to progress to a profit-focused strategy, which is generally cost-based. Finally, the role of the commodity procurement department can expand by offering additional services to customers, such as designing promotional programs.Marketing,

Library Cooperation and the Development of the North Carolina Information Network (NCIN): From the Great Depression Years to 1992

This article recounts the history of the development of library networks, computerization of library processes, and the uses of technology in libraries in North Carolina from the Great Depression to 1992

Development of Attachments for the Quanser Qube

The Quanser Qube is an integrated servomotor lab hardware platform [1], shown in Figure 1. This platform includes not only the direct-drive brushed DC motor, but also two encoders as well as the data acquisition system. One encoder is used to measure the rotation of the DC motor’s shaft itself. It is supplied with two standard items, an inertia disk and an inverted pendulum. The inertia disk is a small aluminum part, which mounts to the equipment using magnets. The inverted pendulum also mounts to the equipment with magnets, with an encoder that plugs into the equipment to provide an additional sensor input to the system. The system includes an amplifier and other necessary components in order to be controlled with either LabVIEW or with MATLAB/Simulink, with the LabVIEW control requiring the National Instruments myRIO device [1]