En route to the industrial applications of ionic liquids for metal oxide production and biomass fractionation: A sustainable avenue to advanced materials

In the context of climate change, it is essential to use renewable materials and to reduce the environmental footprint of industrial processes. This work focuses on the feasibility of implementing a low-cost Ionic Liquid (IL) in a large-scale biorefinery for bioethanol production (the ionoSolv process). The selected feedstock was Eucalyptus red grandis, a fast-growing hardwood. The lignocellulosic biomass was fractionated at laboratory scale, using aqueous N,N,N-trimethylammonium hydrogen sulfate (20 wt% water), at different temperatures and reaction times, to maximize glucose recovery (86%). Experiments under CO2 atmospheres (sub and supercritical) revealed that the ionoSolv process is pressure insensitive. A detailed Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) for a biorefinery using the ionoSolv pretreatment was performed and compared to one using the acid-catalysed steam explosion pretreatment. With the ionoSolv pretreatment, the composition of the cellulose-rich pulps can be tailored and high-purity lignins can be recovered. The economic performance of both pretreatments are similar. From a sustainability perspective there are trade-offs: the ionoSolv process consumes 25% more energy (with potential for optimization) but consumes less chemicals and produces less waste. These results indicate that this process can be a competitive alternative. During the development of this process, and other IL-based processes, the interaction of ILs (neat and aqueous) with metals was investigated to establish suitable materials of construction. It was observed that the corrosion behaviour of metals exposed to ILs is system dependent. Surprisingly, water can act either as a corrosion inhibitor or promoter. A semi-quantitative classification method for the different corrosion behaviours observed was developed. Some metals exposed to aqueous ILs formed particles, resulting in the inadvertent development of a novel process for metal-based materials at large-scale: Oxidative Ionothermal Synthesis (OIS). A high-level TEA suggests that OIS offers economic and environmentally advantageous production of bulk and advanced metal-based materials, such as zinc oxide.Open Acces

Addressing the Recidivism Challenge in San Diego County: Learning from Lived Experience Approaches

The problem is as old as the justice system itself—how to reduce the chance that an individual reoffends after they commit an offense and become involved with the justice system. This challenge of reducing recidivism remains critical. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are over 120,000 individuals in state prisons in California. Another 380,000 cycle through jails in California every year. In 2021, roughly 25,000 individuals were released from prison in California each year. This is the scope of the challenge. In San Diego County, a wide variety of agencies and organizations are working to address the recidivism challenge. In addition, although there is no way to measure this accurately, there is a willingness across the spectrum to experiment with new approaches and solutions. This report focuses on one area of relatively new and promising approaches—those that elevate the talent and expertise of individuals with “lived experience” with the justice system. Support for lived experience approaches is growing both nationally and in San Diego. Beyond the rising number of lived experience initiatives, this type of work in San Diego has become largely normalized. There is broad agreement that lived experience work should be part of the portfolio used to reduce recidivism, with clear demand from stakeholders involved in reentry, including law enforcement officials, service providers, community members, and, crucially, justice-involved individuals. Given the growing prevalence of and support for lived experience approaches in San Diego, it is important to create a deeper understanding of how to increase the impact of these approaches. Toward that end, this report identifies strengths of lived experience approaches to amplify, challenges of lived experience approaches to mitigate, and lessons from lived experience approaches that can be applied more broadly.https://digital.sandiego.edu/ipj-research/1057/thumbnail.jp

LANDSAT-4/5 image data quality analysis

A LANDSAT Thematic Mapper (TM) quality evaluation study was conducted to identify geometric and radiometric sensor errors in the post-launch environment. The study began with the launch of LANDSAT-4. Several error conditions were found, including band-to-band misregistration and detector-to detector radiometric calibration errors. Similar analysis was made for the LANDSAT-5 Thematic Mapper and compared with results for LANDSAT-4. Remaining band-to-band misregistration was found to be within tolerances and detector-to-detector calibration errors were not severe. More coherent noise signals were observed in TM-5 than in TM-4, although the amplitude was generally less. The scan direction differences observed in TM-4 were still evident in TM-5. The largest effect was in Band 4 where nearly a one digital count difference was observed. Resolution estimation was carried out using roads in TM-5 for the primary focal plane bands rather than field edges as in TM-4. Estimates using roads gave better resolution. Thermal IR band calibration studies were conducted and new nonlinear calibration procedures were defined for TM-5. The overall conclusion is that there are no first order errors in TM-5 and any remaining problems are second or third order

The relationship of sensor parameters to applications data analysis

A stochastic model for the data acquisition system in a multispectral scanner system, like the one utilized by the LANDSAT satellites, is presented. A list of noise sources which are known or presumed to have a significant effect in the information extraction process was constructed. Since the shot noise introduced by the photodetectors in the sensor system is signal level dependent, an atmospheric model was adopted which could adequately describe the amount of radiation that gets into the sensors based on the atmospheric transmittance. An analysis was carried out to find the output spectral statistics in terms of the input signal statistics and the system parameters. This was integrated into a set of FORTRAN programs that when supplied with, the class statistics, the noise levels introduced by the sensor system, the atmospheric transmittance, and the atmospheric path radiance, can be used to estimate the classification performance. In order to show the beneficts of this model a series of runs were performed in which the Thematic Mapper multispectral scanner was the system under consideration

Correcciones al diccionario de americanismos y al lexicón de fauna y flora

Insistiendo La corta edición mimeografiada del "Diccionario de Americanismos" que dimos a la publicidad en 1925 nos trajo, como era de esperarse, una extensa crítica autorizada por reconocidos maestros en los estudios lingüísticos americanos, la cual se publicó en 1928 bajo el título de Fe de Erratas de mi Diccionario de Americanismos. Poco después, en 1931, salió a luz la segunda edición del Diccionario. Acerca de esta edición, más difundida que la primera, recibimos muchas y muy buenas observaciones dadas a· conocer en Suplemento ("Boletín de la Academia Argentina de Letras", Buenos Aires, 1940 - 1944), del cual se hizo una tirada aparte en dos tomos; en Nuevo Suplemento ("Boletín de la Academia Chilena", Santiago de Chile, 1945), y, posteriormente, en Novísimo Suplemento ("Boletín de Filología", Montevideo, 1945). (…