Advanced Membrane Devices. Interim Report for the Period October 1996--September 1997

Under this Cooperative Agreement, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. has continued to investigate and develop improved membrane technology for removal of carbon dioxide from natural gas. The task schedule for this reporting period included a detailed assessment of the market opportunity (Chapter 2), continued development and evaluation of membranes and membrane polymers (Chapter 3) and a detailed economic analysis comparing the potential of Air Products membranes to that of established acid gas removal processes (Chapter 4)

Paradigm Shift in Responding to Drug Users and Addicts: From a Criminal Justice to a Public Health Approach

Recently, there has been a paradigm shift in the way Americans have come to view drug users and offenders, particularly those affected by the current opioid epidemic. Unlike crack, this epidemic has led to humanistic and compassionate responses to treating the addiction and processing its users. While once stigmatized, demonized, and punished as criminals, today opioid addicts are treated using the medical model. We argue that the new paradigm has ushered in a public health approach, rather than the traditional criminal justice response that brings negative offender processing with adverse consequences. In the end, we believe that the new approach will be effective in treating and reducing opioid use. However, both criminal justice and public health approaches should be applied

Development of a system for teaching CS1 in C/C++ with Lego NXT robots

ABSTRACT This paper describes the development of a system for teaching C/C++ using a Lego™ NXT in a CSI college course on introductory programming. The programming of the NXT robot has been implemented using a C/C++ cross-compiler, which generates code that runs on an Open Source firmware platform, nxtOSEK. The system has built in commands and objects that run the motors and receive information from the sensors that are on the robots. The cross-compiler has been embedded in an Open Source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Code::Blocks. The programming environment for the NXT has evolved from a previous development using the Lego™ RCX and has the advantage that it utilizes a Bluetooth interface, while the RCX uses a tower based infrared communication device. The NXT is more reliable and can be programmed to pair a specific interface with a particular robot, so that there is no cross-talk when different robots are utilized in a classroom setting. The IDE and robotic software executes on a virtual machine running under the freely available software, Sun™ VirtualBox. This allows for a uniform programming platform for Windows, MacOS, and Unix/Linux. The use of robots in CS1 affords science and engineering students the opportunity to learn sensorymotor based control, to work with an IDE early in their careers, and to gain experience with development and debugging tools that can be utilized throughout the students' academic and professional careers