An 8085 Microprocessor based monitor system for a 750 cc Honda motorcycle

This system replaces the analog speedometer and tachometer gauge cluster of a 750 cc Honda motorcycle with a computerized monitor system based on the INTEL 8085A microprocessor and family of peripherals. The system adds the enhanced functionality of engine temperature, battery charging, fuel level, turn signal, and kick stand monitoring and status display. A security function is also employed as a guard against unauthorized use or theft. The speedometer and tachometer functions utilize phototransistor sensors generating pulses derived from stock cable connections to the engine block and front wheel. The engine temperature, fuel level, and battery charging functions are implemented via A/D conversion of external sensor inputs. Turn signal and kick stand status functions are implemented by software polling of external switches. The system incorporates a small keyboard for input of a five digit security code. If the code input is correct, ignition is enabled and normal operation may follow. If the code input is incorrect, ignition is disabled, and the motorcycle horn is activated as an alarm. The operator is allowed two attempts at entrance of the five digit code. All system functions are displayed via various configurations of 7-segment and discrete LED displays for operator feedback. The system utilizes the twelve volt motorcycle power source and is contained on three double sided circuit boards. The system software was developed on the INTEL SDK85 system design prototype kit and transferred in final form to an on-board EPROM

An Alternative Procedure to Quantify Soot in Engine Oil by Ultraviolet-Visible Spectroscopy

"This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Tribology Transactions on 02-11-2019, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10402004.2019.1645255."[EN] Due to new pollutant emissions standards, internal combustion engines need several emission control strategies (and related procedures) such as exhaust gas recirculation, diesel/gasoline particulate filters, and selective catalyst reduction that allow them to comply with complete requirements defined on those standards. These strategies result in faster degradation of engine oil, one of the most relevant consequences of which is an increase in soot contamination level. All of these strategies facilitate soot generation. Consequently, soot is one of the most important contaminants present in engine oil. The main technique to measure the content of soot in oil is thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), but this technique has certain limitations. TGA requires a long and specific procedure and has limitations in measuring small concentrations of soot in oil. Therefore, the design of an alternative technique to quantify soot in oil is relevant. One alternative is Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, but it also has limitations related to low concentrations of soot in oil. This work presents an alternative technique based on ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy that allows quantification of small soot contents in used engine oil samples and avoids potential interference from other typical contaminants or those related to measurement processes, such as sample cuvette material.Antonio Garcia-Barbera was supported through the Programa Nacional de Formacion de Recursos Humanos de Investigacion of Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (Grant Number BES-2016-078073).Macian Martinez, V.; Tormos, B.; Ruiz-Rosales, S.; García-Barberá, A. (2019). An Alternative Procedure to Quantify Soot in Engine Oil by Ultraviolet-Visible Spectroscopy. Tribology Transactions. 62(6):1063-1071. https://doi.org/10.1080/10402004.2019.1645255S10631071626Squaiella, L. L. F., Martins, C. A., & Lacava, P. T. (2013). Strategies for emission control in diesel engine to meet Euro VI. Fuel, 104, 183-193. doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2012.07.027Piock, W., Hoffmann, G., Berndorfer, A., Salemi, P., & Fusshoeller, B. (2011). Strategies Towards Meeting Future Particulate Matter Emission Requirements in Homogeneous Gasoline Direct Injection Engines. SAE International Journal of Engines, 4(1), 1455-1468. doi:10.4271/2011-01-1212Johnson, B. T. (2008). Diesel Engine Emissions and Their Control. Platinum Metals Review, 52(1), 23-37. doi:10.1595/147106708x248750Johnson, T. V. (2008). Diesel Emission Control in Review. SAE International Journal of Fuels and Lubricants, 1(1), 68-81. doi:10.4271/2008-01-0069Mohan, B., Yang, W., & Chou, S. kiang. (2013). Fuel injection strategies for performance improvement and emissions reduction in compression ignition engines—A review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 28, 664-676. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2013.08.051ALKEMADE, U., & SCHUMANN, B. (2006). Engines and exhaust after treatment systems for future automotive applications. Solid State Ionics, 177(26-32), 2291-2296. doi:10.1016/j.ssi.2006.05.051Bensaid, S., Caroca, C. J., Russo, N., & Fino, D. (2011). Detailed investigation of non-catalytic DPF regeneration. The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, 89(2), 401-407. doi:10.1002/cjce.20408E, J., Xie, L., Zuo, Q., & Zhang, G. (2016). Effect analysis on regeneration speed of continuous regeneration-diesel particulate filter based on NO 2 -assisted regeneration. Atmospheric Pollution Research, 7(1), 9-17. doi:10.1016/j.apr.2015.06.012Tripathi, A., & Vinu, R. (2015). Characterization of Thermal Stability of Synthetic and Semi-Synthetic Engine Oils. Lubricants, 3(1), 54-79. doi:10.3390/lubricants3010054Karacan, Ö., Kök, M. V., & Karaaslan, U. (1999). Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry, 55(1), 109-114. doi:10.1023/a:1010136222719Heredia-Cancino, J. A., Ramezani, M., & Álvarez-Ramos, M. E. (2018). Effect of degradation on tribological performance of engine lubricants at elevated temperatures. Tribology International, 124, 230-237. doi:10.1016/j.triboint.2018.04.015Wattrus, M. (2013). Fuel Property Effects on Oil Dilution in Diesel Engines. SAE International Journal of Fuels and Lubricants, 6(3), 794-806. doi:10.4271/2013-01-2680Sharma, V., Uy, D., Gangopadhyay, A., O’Neill, A., Paxton, W. A., Sammut, A., … Aswath, P. B. (2016). Structure and chemistry of crankcase and exhaust soot extracted from diesel engines. Carbon, 103, 327-338. doi:10.1016/j.carbon.2016.03.024Pfau, S. A., La Rocca, A., Haffner-Staton, E., Rance, G. A., Fay, M. W., Brough, R. J., & Malizia, S. (2018). Comparative nanostructure analysis of gasoline turbocharged direct injection and diesel soot-in-oil with carbon black. Carbon, 139, 342-352. doi:10.1016/j.carbon.2018.06.050George, S., Balla, S., Gautam, V., & Gautam, M. (2007). Effect of diesel soot on lubricant oil viscosity. Tribology International, 40(5), 809-818. doi:10.1016/j.triboint.2006.08.002Antusch, S., Dienwiebel, M., Nold, E., Albers, P., Spicher, U., & Scherge, M. (2010). On the tribochemical action of engine soot. Wear, 269(1-2), 1-12. doi:10.1016/j.wear.2010.02.028Green, D. A., & Lewis, R. (2008). The effects of soot-contaminated engine oil on wear and friction: A review. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D: Journal of Automobile Engineering, 222(9), 1669-1689. doi:10.1243/09544070jauto468Bredin, A., Larcher, A. V., & Mullins, B. J. (2011). Thermogravimetric analysis of carbon black and engine soot—Towards a more robust oil analysis method. Tribology International, 44(12), 1642-1650. doi:10.1016/j.triboint.2011.06.002VAN DE VOORT, F. R., SEDMAN, J., COCCIARDI, R. A., & PINCHUK, D. (2006). FTIR Condition Monitoring of In-Service Lubricants: Ongoing Developments and Future Perspectives. Tribology Transactions, 49(3), 410-418. doi:10.1080/10402000600781432Van de Voort, F. R., Ghetler, A., García-González, D. L., & Li, Y. D. (2008). Perspectives on Quantitative Mid-FTIR Spectroscopy in Relation to Edible Oil and Lubricant Analysis: Evolution and Integration of Analytical Methodologies. Food Analytical Methods, 1(3), 153-163. doi:10.1007/s12161-008-9031-6Ess, M. N., Ferry, D., Kireeva, E. D., Niessner, R., Ouf, F.-X., & Ivleva, N. P. (2016). In situ Raman microspectroscopic analysis of soot samples with different organic carbon content: Structural changes during heating. Carbon, 105, 572-585. doi:10.1016/j.carbon.2016.04.056Russo, C., Apicella, B., Lighty, J. S., Ciajolo, A., & Tregrossi, A. (2017). Optical properties of organic carbon and soot produced in an inverse diffusion flame. Carbon, 124, 372-379. doi:10.1016/j.carbon.2017.08.07

Seafloor seismic monitoring of an active submarine volcano : local seismicity at Vailulu'u Seamount, Samoa

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 5 (2004): Q06007, doi:10.1029/2004GC000702.We deployed five ocean bottom hydrophones (OBHs) for a 1-year seismic monitoring study of Vailulu'u Seamount, the youngest and easternmost volcano in the Samoan Archipelago. Four instruments were placed on the summit crater rim at 600–700 m water depth, and one was placed inside the crater at 1000 m water depth. An analysis of the first 45 days of records shows a very large number of seismic events, 211 of them local. These events define a steady background activity of about four seismic events per day, increasing to about 10 events per day during a week of heightened seismic activity, which peaked at 40 events during 1 day. We identified 107 earthquakes, whose arrivals could be picked on all five stations and that are likely located within the seamount, based on their similar waveforms. Two linear trends are defined by 21 of these events. These are extremely well correlated and located, first downward then upward on a steeply inclined plane that is close to the axial plane of the southeast rift as it emerges from the main summit of Vailulu'u. These events resemble volcanotectonic earthquakes from subaerial volcanoes in displaying very coherent seismic waveforms and by showing systematic, narrowly defined progressions in hypocenter locations. We propose that these events reflect brittle rock failure due to magma redistribution in or near a central magma reservoir.The bulk of this work was funded by NSF-OCE, in grants to HS and SRH and the OBSIP facility at Scripps

Outcomes of Durable Mechanical Circulatory Support in Myocarditis: Analysis of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support Registry

Myocarditis can be refractory to medical therapy and require durable mechanical circulatory support (MCS). The characteristics and outcomes of these patients are not known. We identified all patients with clinically-diagnosed or pathology-proven myocarditis who underwent mechanical circulatory support in the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support registry (2013-2016). The characteristics and outcomes of these patients were compared to those of patients with nonischemic cardiomyopathy (NICM). Out of 14,062 patients in the registry, 180 (1.2%) had myocarditis and 6,602 (46.9%) had NICM. Among patients with myocarditis, duration of heart failure was22%, 1-12 months in 22.6%, and \u3e1 year in 55.4%. Compared with NICM, patients with myocarditis were younger (45 vs. 52 years, P \u3c 0.001) and were more often implanted with Interagency Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support profile 1 (30% vs. 15%, P \u3c 0.001). Biventricular mechanical support ( biventricular ventricular assist device [BIVAD] or total artificial heart) was implanted more frequently in myocarditis (18% vs. 6.7%, P \u3c 0.001). Overall postimplant survival was not different between myocarditis and NICM (left ventricular assist device: P = 0.27, BIVAD: P = 0.50). The proportion of myocarditis patients that have recovered by 12 months postimplant was significantly higher in myocarditis compared to that of NICM (5% vs. 1.7%, P = 0.0003). Adverse events (bleeding, infection, and neurologic dysfunction) were all lower in the myocarditis than NICM. In conclusion, although myocarditis patients who receive durable MCS are sicker preoperatively with higher needs for biventricular MCS, their overall MCS survival is noninferior to NICM. Patients who received MCS for myocarditis are more likely than NICM to have MCS explanted due to recovery, however, the absolute rates of recovery were low

An Instrument to Measure Skeletal Burden and Predict Functional Outcome in Fibrous Dysplasia of Bone

Abstract An instrument to measure skeletal burden in fibrous dysplasia was developed. Biological and clinical relevance was shown by correlating skeletal burden scores with bone markers, quality of life, and ambulatory status. Childhood scores predict adult ambulatory status, and scores were unaffected when bone markers decreased with bisphosphonate treatment or aging. Introduction: Fibrous dysplasia (FD) is a skeletal disease with a broad clinical expression. There is no objective method to assess the extent of skeletal involvement or predict outcome. We developed an instrument to measure skeletal burden that correlates with physical function, health-related quality of life (HRQL), and ambulatory status. Materials and Methods: Seventy-nine patients with FD underwent bone scintigraphy. The skeletal burden score was derived from a weighted score based on the regional measurement using bone scintigraphy to estimate the amount of FD in anatomical segments. Six readers scored 20 scans twice to determine the inter- and intrareader agreement. To assess biological significance, scores were correlated with bone markers. To assess functional outcome, scores on the SF-36 (adults) or CHQ-PF50 (children) were correlated with skeletal burden scores. In a group of patients who had bone scans as children and adults (n = 6), the ability to predict ambulatory status was tested. Skeletal burden scores were assessed in patients before and after treatment with pamidronate (n = 5). Results: The inter- and intrareader agreement of burden scores were r = 0.96, and 0.98, respectively (p < 0.001 for both). The scores correlated with markers of bone metabolism and HRQL (Spearman rho, 0.54-0.67 p < 0.001 and −0.43, p = 0.001, respectively). The mean score of patients who ambulated unassisted was significantly lower than those requiring assistance (p < 0.001 unassisted versus crutch and/or wheelchair). In unassisted ambulators, younger patients had higher scores, suggesting high childhood scores may predict adulthood impairment. In six patients with childhood and adulthood scans, childhood scores >30 predicted assisted ambulation in adulthood. There was a negative correlation between bone markers and age (Spearman rho, −0.42 to −0.70; p < 0.001), but not age and skeletal burden score. Pamidronate treatment decreased serum alkaline phosphatase but had no effect on the skeletal burden score. Conclusions: This is a validated and reliable instrument for the measurement of skeletal burden of FD and is able to predict functional outcome

EXPRES I. HD~3651 an Ideal RV Benchmark

The next generation of exoplanet-hunting spectrographs should deliver up to an order of magnitude improvement in radial velocity precision over the standard 1 m/s state of the art. This advance is critical for enabling the detection of Earth-mass planets around Sun-like stars. New calibration techniques such as laser frequency combs and stabilized etalons ensure that the instrumental stability is well characterized. However, additional sources of error include stellar noise, undetected short-period planets, and telluric contamination. To understand and ultimately mitigate error sources, the contributing terms in the error budget must be isolated to the greatest extent possible. Here, we introduce a new high cadence radial velocity program, the EXPRES 100 Earths program, which aims to identify rocky planets around bright, nearby G and K dwarfs. We also present a benchmark case: the 62-d orbit of a Saturn-mass planet orbiting the chromospherically quiet star, HD 3651. The combination of high eccentricity (0.6) and a moderately long orbital period, ensures significant dynamical clearing of any inner planets. Our Keplerian model for this planetary orbit has a residual RMS of 58 cm/s over a $\sim 6$ month time baseline. By eliminating significant contributors to the radial velocity error budget, HD 3651 serves as a standard for evaluating the long term precision of extreme precision radial velocity (EPRV) programs.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomical Journa

Gendered Discourse in the Political Behavior of Adolescents

The roots of adult civic and political participation originate in pre-adult experiences (Verba et al. 1995) and high school extracurricular activities offer students opportunities to develop interpersonal and leadership skills. In this research, we ask whether adolescents also learn gendered norms of political discourse through extracurricular activities. This project assessed gender differences in participation at the 1999 Model United Nations of the Southwest (MUNSW) at the University of Oklahoma. Important differences in participation were observed in the number and character of speaking turns taken by male and female delegates. We find that contextual factors, such as the sex of the committee chair, the issue areas addressed by the committee, and the timing of the session in the conference significantly influence who participates in the discourse, but the percentage of female participants surprisingly does not. The character of the political discourse suggests norms dominated by masculinity.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Fitting state‐space integral projection models to size‐structured time series data to estimate unknown parameters

Integral projection models (IPMs) have a number of advantages over matrix-model approaches for analyzing size-structured population dynamics, because the latter require parameter estimates for each age or stage transition. However, IPMs still require appropriate data. Typically they are parameterized using individual-scale relationships between body size and demographic rates, but these are not always available. We present an alternative approach for estimating demographic parameters from time series of size-structured survey data using a Bayesian state-space IPM (SSIPM). By fitting an IPM in a state-space framework, we estimate unknown parameters and explicitly account for process and measurement error in a dataset to estimate the underlying process model dynamics. We tested our method by fitting SSIPMs to simulated data; the model fit the simulated size distributions well and estimated unknown demographic parameters accurately. We then illustrated our method using nine years of annual surveys of the density and size distribution of two fish species (blue rockfish, Sebastes mystinus, and gopher rockfish, S. carnatus) at seven kelp forest sites in California. The SSIPM produced reasonable fits to the data, and estimated fishing rates for both species that were higher than our Bayesian prior estimates based on coast-wide stock assessment estimates of harvest. That improvement reinforces the value of being able to estimate demographic parameters from local-scale monitoring data. We highlight a number of key decision points in SSIPM development (e.g., open vs. closed demography, number of particles in the state-space filter) so that users can apply the method to their own datasets

The nature of fibrous dysplasia

Fibrous dysplasia has been regarded as a developmental skeletal disorder characterized by replacement of normal bone with benign cellular fibrous connective tissue. It has now become evident that fibrous dysplasia is a genetic disease caused by somatic activating mutation of the Gsα subunit of G protein-coupled receptor resulting in upregulation of cAMP. This leads to defects in differentiation of osteoblasts with subsequent production of abnormal bone in an abundant fibrous stroma. In addition there is an increased production of IL-6 by mutated stromal fibrous dysplastic cells that induce osteoclastic bone resorption

Pediatric supracondylar fractures of the distal humerus

Supracondylar fractures of the humerus are a common pediatric elbow injury that are historically associated with morbidity due to malunion, neurovascular complications, and compartment syndrome. True anteroposterior and lateral radiographs are essential not only for an accurate diagnosis, but also for creating a treatment plan for these injuries. A staging system (based on the lateral radiograph) for classifying the severity of the fracture helps guide definitive management. Nondisplaced fractures are treated initially with a posterior splint, followed by a long-arm casting. Closed reduction and percutaneous pinning is the preferred treatment for displaced or unstable fractures. If there is any question about fracture stability, patients should be seen within 5 days postoperatively for repeat radiographs to ensure that the reduction and pin fixation has been maintained. Understanding the anatomy, radiographic findings, management options, and complications associated with this fracture allow physicians to limit the morbidity associated with this relatively common pediatric injury